Clockwork

I was the first one to come back to Quarantine after I had finished my rounds. Maybe this plague was making an apathetic doctor out of me, but I couldn’t physically spend more than a few minutes with my patients. I didn’t want to get to close; most of them wouldn’t make it through the night as it was.

The Quarantine room was slightly eerie when you were the first one to enter and had to walk all the way across the room in order to turn on the lights. That trek was quite a long one when there were no windows to let in the nighttime light (because, of course, windows could let in more germs.)

“Felicity!” A voice hissed from behind me, and I spun around quickly. Footsteps shuffled behind me; part of me wanted to scream out to whoever was teasing me, but I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to provoke them. There was, of course, no one behind me, and I was now sure I was hallucinating. This eerie room always did give me the creeps…

“Felicity!” That same low voice hissed as soon as I had turned back around. Now I was quite sure that it wasn’t some hallucination. I felt like the mouse in the cat-and-mouse scenario; whoever was calling my name obviously was just toying with me as its prey. I didn’t really feel like wasting more time turning around; the longer I spent worrying about this in the dark, the longer it was going to take me to unveil my predator in the light.

“Felisss,” my pursuant hissed again, this time close enough that its voice whispered it into my ear, “ity.”

I broke out into a full-out run, desperately desiring to get out of this scenario. I dashed towards the light and flipped it, slightly aware that whoever it was obviously didn’t want to hurt me considering that he had been right behind me and had let me escape.

Once I had turned the lights on, he was nowhere to be found. “Really?” I scoffed, annoyed that the room was empty again. “Who is there?”

“I’m sorry, Felicity!” The same voice answered, sounding less intimidating then before. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

I spun around and he was, once again, right behind me. How he had ended up behind me by the light switch when I had deliberately escaped from him in the middle of the room, I’ll never know.

“How did you – “ I stuttered. “Who are you – “ He was a fairly attractive man with dark hair and a stubble beard covering his cheeks and chin. His eyes were an odd yellow color, and he was dressed in a suit as if he had just left from his day job. Apparently, breaking into quarantined, locked areas, was his second job.

“I, m’lady, am the one who will remain nameless.” He explained tapping me on the nose like you would a little kid. “All that matters is that you are Felicity, and I’m the one who’s going to help you find the cure.”

“Why do you have to remain nameless?” I said, growing more and more tired of the secrecy. “And how – how did you get in here? There are lots of security systems before you get in here, and unless you’re authorized to be in here…”

“Well I didn’t come in the front door, if that’s what you’re asking! That would just be asking to be caught. No, I ‘poofed’ myself right in here, to that very moment when I knew you would be alone in here.”

“Who the hell are you?!” I asked, becoming less and less convinced at the story, and wishing I would’ve been taking a long, hot shower by now.

“I’m from the future.” He finally said, and I sighed in disappointment that I actually believed this crazy could be of help to finding a cure. “Don’t give me that look, Felicity! I really am form the future! Look, this is my time traveler!” He pulled out an antique looking watch from his coat pocket. It was an old type of pocket watch that I had always wanted to get my hand on for its antiquity. The actual watch part had a cover that opened like that of a locket and it was hung on a silver chain. “You see that top hook?” I nodded, not sure if I was quite convinced yet. “You push that top part and it freezes the time that you are in. Then, you spin it right to go forward in time – like I would do to go back to my time – and left to go backward.”

“So if this is all true, why are you telling me this? Why did you come to me?” I asked, swaying to belief more than I was proud to admit.

“Because I need you to help fix my future,” he explained.

“NO!” I argued. “No! I can’t even fix what’s going on in my present, so I’m sorry that I can’t help you with your future!”

“It’s not just your present that has to do with my future; it’s your past!”

“What?!” He had almost lost me completely now.

“Listen, at one point, I was sitting at my parent’s favorite old diner, having dinner with this sexy girl that I planned on marrying, and then next minute: poof! The world is completely destroyed, and the next thing I know, I’ve got holes in my side and I’m slowly disintegrating. If we don’t fix things, my whole future is gone, and the world is going to be destroyed by this plague. You have to understand, Felicity, that this thing isn’t going to just go away. It’s going to keep destroying life until there is nothing left. There will be a big hole of barren earth left!” He explained; I became more confused as he did.

“And how do you know I can fix this?” I cried.

“Because all of this happened because of a little event that happened in your past! Ten years ago today – your birthday – you made a choice. A very bad choice… And it is affecting the whole world today.”

“How?!” I cried, even more annoyed. I knew exactly what day, what decision, I had made, and I was sure that hadn’t affected the whole world. It was one decision to break up with Danny. People break up with others every day; it’s only life changing for the two who are breaking up…

“Because it was your destiny to be together!” He explained. “You were supposed to have a baby with these special powers that – “

“Danny has a child! Isn’t that good enough for you?!”

“Do you see the plague being curable now?” He asked. “No! Their son doesn’t have the right ‘ingredients.’ This magic can only be made from an egg from you and a sperm from him!”

“No! No! No!” I refused. “I am not going to make a baby with Danny!”

“Yes!” He complained. “You have to! The baby that you conceive will be the cure to all of this! And once it’s conceived, you can do whatever you want with Danny. Lots of mothers do things on their own. All that matters is that a baby is born in order to stop this plague, just like you want.”

I remained silent. How many times had I wished that I had a child of my own? How often had I wished it was Danny’s?

“Besides, judging by the look on your face, you’re not sure if you made the right decision
those ten years ago… So let’s fix things…”

He reached out his hand, and I took it hesitantly…