I’ve finally finished making the Time Reverser. We should test it to see if it works.
I take out the device, and once again, it starts pulsing. There’s a look of wonder and joy on everyone in the room.
“It really works!” Harriet signs, and says something aloud, presumably the same message for Ed and Andrea.
Ed reaches out to me, and I hand him the Time Reverser. I notice that in his hands, the pattern of the pulses has changed. Two lights form in the centre, fly to opposite edges of the device and fade, on repeat. The opposite of what it was for me.
Ed points the device at the table, and two identical uncapped whiteboard markers appear and start slowly rolling away from each other. If I understand what the Time Reverser is supposed to do correctly, these must in fact be two copies of the same whiteboard marker. The same whiteboard marker, no doubt, as the one still sitting by Harriet’s whiteboard.
Ed then hands the device back to me as I stop one of the newly-appeared markers from rolling off the table with my free hand.
The other newly-appeared marker is still rolling towards the whiteboard, slowly but picking up speed, and the marker Harriet set down next to the whiteboard suddenly starts rolling towards it. I aim the Time Reverser at them and hit the button the moment they collide. The two markers vanish. I set the marker I caught next to the whiteboard and place the Time Reverser on the table. The pulsing, which was back to the pattern of merging dots, stops, returning to a light shimmer.
We reversed the marker’s direction through time twice, so for a brief moment, there were three copies of it at once. One going forward, another going in reverse, and a third going forward again. But, if I understand what I just witnessed correctly, they were all the same marker.
The ride started. As the roller coaster came over the first hump, the boy next to her looked terrified. He grasped her hand reflexively. Slowly, his fear started to dissipate.
In the corner of the screen, Dave could see Hero, looking like he was going to be sick. As soon as the ride came to a halt, he rushed back through the screen and raced for the washroom.
“Sorry for holding onto you like that,” the boy apologised to Naomi afterwards. “I’m Chris, by the way. What’s your name?”
“Naomi,” she replied. “Are you going to be alright? You looked scared.”
“I’m fine. Let’s go on another one!” he declared.
The scene changed to a store. Dave watched the concerning words “Fifteen years later…” appear across the screen.
A young girl, maybe around two years old, ran with a toy in her hand, saying, “Mommy, look!”
She was addressing a pregnant woman in her twenties, standing next to a cart, with a phone to her ear.
“Hi, Chris,” the woman said. “Yeah, I’m at the store with Talina. – Just a moment, darling, I’m calling your father. – Dinner with the company? Okay, thanks for letting me know. When will you be back? Okay, see you tomorrow then. Love you.”
The scene changed to show a man at a restaurant, waiting for someone at a table for two.
“Love you too, Naomi,” he said. “Bye bye.”
Dave realised that the woman on the phone was his cousin. Hero, what have you done?
“Hero, come back here, now!” Dave shouted.
“Just a moment, I –” Hero said, followed by a unpleasant sound.
The scene changed back to the child at the store, who was looking at her mom impatiently. Naomi hung up and turned to see the toy in her child’s hands.
“You want it?” she asked.
“Please?” the child responded.
“Okay, Talina,” Naomi replied, adding it to the cart. “I’ll get it for you.”
It was at this point that Hero came back from the washroom.
“Wait, where’s your cousin?” he asked.
“That’s her,” Dave said, pointing the woman. “There was a time skip.”
#InReverse: The Cassells test out the newly built Time Reverser.
#MiwwduSitsomSelkieWIP Babysitting Naomi: No loud sounds, no quiet sounds, but I've got an unpleasant sound! Hero abandons Naomi in a movie because a roller coaster made him sick. Then it all goes wrong.
