I'm Nine Again 21 Carbon Dioxide

The darkness of the small pocket of s.p.a.ce was illuminated by a bright green glowstick that Alice had cracked open. We had dug my hand out from under the rubble, my fingers were completely crushed. Luckily Alice had carried a first aid kit with her in her backpack and we were able to patch up the wound, but it didn't look good. I might just lose my fingers from this. Although having my fingers possibly be amputated was the least of my concern right now. Alice felt her way around the rubble walls, looking for some way she could find our way out. After trying to dig her way around to no avail, she leaned back against one of the rubble walls.

"I don't suppose we have any mobile phone reception, do we?" Alice asked rhetorically.

I shook my head, "We are under tons of tons of collapsed mountain," I said, "I'm pretty sure we're airtight as well."

"Airtight, so that means," Alice started.

"Yep," I said, s.h.i.+fting my body to sit upright, "We're probably going to run out of oxygen sometime."

"Do you know how long?" she asked.

"No idea, but we are in a pretty small area," I said, "I don't think it's going to take long."

"Will it hurt?" she asked, "When, you know, it happens?"

"No," I said, "From what I remember, it's just like getting drunk. We'll feel all funny and woozy, then go to sleep."

"That kind of sucks yeah," she said.

"Yeah."

There was a long silence as we both contemplated the situation, we had found ourselves in and the complete futility of it. Alice was the one to break the silence.

"When I was four years old," she said, "I was sick, and my father took me into his office at work. He used to work for an ASX 200 company."

"You were a rich kid?" I asked.

"Eh, middle cla.s.s," she said, "He had a middle management position in a sales team. But anyway, that day he took me into the office, everything was going horribly. The sales software wasn't working, and no one was able to take orders, so he was running around like crazy and I was all snuggled up in a blanket in the corner of the office watching him run around like crazy!"

"I used to work for a company like that," I said, "All of our computer systems were sub-optimal so they would always crash, making all of our work take so much more effort."

"This was an ASX200 company though," Alice said, "It's funny because I didn't understand what that meant at the time, but everyone was acting like the world was ending. Everyone except their marketing team. There was this one guy who I got the biggest crush on. While everyone was running around, he was leaning back on his chair drawing up some designs for a pamphlet."

"As long as the marketing team has a coffee," I said, "They are pretty unaffected by anything else going on in the company."

"He had so many coffee cups!" Alice laughed, "He didn't have one coffee cup that he would reuse, his desk had like four or five coffee cups on it."

"My a.n.a.lysis is spot on then," I laughed.

"Anyway, he saw me in a blanket in the corner of the office and smiled at me," Alice said smiling, "And he ripped a page out of his sketchbook, whatever he was working on, and started drawing something else. After a while, he came over to me and sat down with me. He'd drawn a little comic book with 'Blanket Girl' as the hero!"

"He drew you!" I said.

"Yeah!" Alice laughed again, "He came over and said, 'I've drawn this comic about blanket girl saving the office from chaos, but I don't know what she's saying in any of these panels,' and he showed me these panels that all had empty speech bubbles. So we sat there and came up with a story about how 'blanket girl' fought away all of the evil hackers that were taking over the office computers for evil things."

"That's really cute, sometimes we meet really great people in life," I said.

Alice continued her story, "The funny thing was the second we finished writing the comic and read over it once, everyone in the office started cheering because the computers were all working again, and everyone was able to get back to work. He smiled at me and said, 'Good work Blanket Girl!' and ripped the page out of his sketchbook and gave it to me. I know now that it was just a ma.s.sive coincidence, but I was four at the time. I thought that me, Blanket Girl, had just saved the company from the evil hackers and I bragged about it for so long."

"That's crazy!" I laughed, "At the exact time you finished the comic the computers came back!"

"Yeah! It was great! But that's where the good parts of this story end," Alice said sombrely, "The next time I went to my dad's office was a few months later and I couldn't find the guy. I asked my dad where he was and all he said was that the company couldn't afford to pay him anymore, so he had to go away. When I was older, I investigated the company my dad worked for and it turned out that after that big day of the computers going down, there was a bunch of data leaked and the company lost millions of dollars in contracts. They were de-listed at an ASX200 company, that's when I think I really realized that the guy was made redundant and let go. That's when I was old enough to understand how bad it really was to lose your job. I never learned the guys' name and Dad forgot his name so there was no way for me to track him down to see how he was doing or where he was."

"You wanted to find him?" I asked.

"Yeah!" she said, "When I say I had a crush on him, I mean I was always daydreaming about Blanket Girl and the Comic book guy saving the world. This went on for more years than I'd like to admit."

"Did you ever end up finding him?" I asked.

"No, in fact when I first came back in time, I tried to find him again, years after I had given up. But Nah, I never found the guy."

"Way to end the story on a sad note," I said.

"But that's when I realized what I wanted to do in life," Alice said, "After realizing that the guy lost his job, I decided that I wanted to create a marketing firm where people could hire out marketing experts like that guy. That way their job would be based purely on marketing and not the failure of a sales system or something."

"That is such a strange defining moment," I said, "For such a moment to define your entire life. That's huge. Do you ever think he realized how much that day meant to you?" I asked.

"I doubt it," she said, "To him, it was probably just trying to cheer up some kid. It's my fault I let it define my life, not his."

"Now I really want to meet that guy," I said, "Everything that has defined you was spurred all from that moment."

"I guess you could say, it was our own little timeline divergent," she joked. I laughed along with her.

"I never did get to set up that marketing firm," she said, "It was one of the things keeping me going here," she said, "When I first got here, I thought, I'll become rich and set up that marketing firm. But then I got all depressed and stuff."

"Let's do it then!" I said.

"What do you mean?" Alice asked.

"When we make it out of here, let's use some of that money to start the marketing firm. We can hire a CEO to take care of it while we do our thing, but surely it's not a horrible investment," I said, "You can fund the whole thing!"

"Yeah!" Alice said with hope in her eyes, "Yeah we will!"

"We'll call the marketing firm, 'Blanket Girl!'" I said.

"YES!" Alice said laughing, "It will be known as 'Blanket Girl,' the number one marketing firm in the world!"

"You can answer the phone," I said, "and say, 'blanket girl here from Blanket Girl Marketing, how can I help you.'"

We both sat there laughing for a bit as we daydreamed aloud the future of a Blanket Girl Marketing firm. Eventually, the laughter died down into giggles and then again into silence. Again, we sat in silence until this time, I spoke.

"I don't think I've ever really had a defining moment," I said, "High school was fun. I hated it at the time, but I loved being able to hang out with my friends every day. After Highschool finished I was a bit lost. I just coasted from job to job, earning enough money to be able to hang out with my friends on the weekends. But as time went on, everyone started to go their separate ways. I tried to keep us together by still trying to get everyone going out every weekend to the bars, to see live bands but as the years went on, slowly the numbers declined until eventually, everyone stopped replying to my messages."

"That's horrible," Alice said looking sad.

"The last guy, the one who stuck around through all of those years said to me, 'Sean, it's time to grow up. High school was fun, but Highschool is over and it's not coming back. Start focusing on your future.' And that was the last I ever heard from the guy. I tried to message him, but he just didn't respond."

"All of your friends left you?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, "I was just trying to cling onto the good old days for as long as I could, but they were out their making something of themselves. One became a lawyer, another a doctor and another was a humanitarian aid worker. I was just coasting from job to job."

"Sean, I wouldn't have ever left you," she said, "I think you're pretty fun."

"Thanks," I said sitting in silence for a moment before breaking the silence again, "One of my best mates all through school got married and had kids. They looked exactly like him and from all the updates on social media, they also acted exactly like him to. Getting into trouble like we used to always do during school."

"Life goes on, it always has and always will," Alice said.

"You know he didn't even invite me to his wedding," I said, "I got onto the internet one day and saw all of these photos from a wedding and a party and everyone dancing around all happy and I was sitting alone in my room just staring at my computer. We were best friends in school and he didn't invite me to his wedding."

"Sean," Alice said. Tears started to roll down my face as I recalled the painful memories.

"I was so happy for him and at the same time I was so d.a.m.n angry at him," I cried, "Why the h.e.l.l wouldn't he invite me to his wedding? We've been through thick and thin together! We were always backing each other up in school fights, causing trouble in the cla.s.sroom, hitting on girls at lunchtime, we were always messing around and having fun and I just couldn't understand it. Why didn't he invite me to his wedding!?"

I sat there and sobbed for a moment before continuing, "That's when it hit me," I said, "I'm annoying. People are annoyed by me. They were annoyed that I would want to hang out all the time. As we grew up, they were annoyed that I was still acting like a teenager and by the end of it I think they were just annoyed that I stuck around, trying to hold everyone together when what everyone really wanted was to drift apart."

"Sean," Alice said again moving closer to me and wrapping her arms around my shoulders as I sobbed, "I don't think you're annoying, I think you're fun. I think you like to have fun and that's too much for some people. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a big kid. There are loads of big kids that don't care what anyone else thinks about them."

"That's all I wanted," I cried, "I just wanted to keep having fun. The adult world sucked. It was all bills and budgeting. There was nothing fun about it. I just wanted to keep having fun."

Alice moved her arms away from my shoulders and the warmth that she had provided was quickly erased. I could feel myself speaking but I wasn't trying to say anything. The words that I was saying was making no sense to me. Alice moved away from me and leaned back against the wall where she had sat for most of this time. Words still came out of my mouth in a jumbled mess. I couldn't control my body. My head tilted upwards and looked over towards Alice. The tears on my face started to dry up. And Alice started to speak. Her words were also jumbled and that's when I realized that she was speaking in reverse. I would speak in reverse and then she would speak in reverse. Eventually, she crawled forwards and started to feel around the rubble, but in reverse to how she was previously. She came over to me and it looked like she was ripping the bandages off my hand before I placed it back into the rubble and we both started piling the big stones back on top of my hand. It was like she was taking no notice of what was going on. Even my physical form was taking no notice of what was happening but in my mind, I could clearly derive what was happening.

Time was going backward. The rubble around us began to lift as the long hallway began to piece itself back together. We stood up and started running back as the sound of backward explosions were bringing the Preservationists base back together. I left Alice at the computer terminal as I walked backward into Scarlets room, reading her letter again. I walked backward back out of that room and both Alice and I strolled backward and out of the cave. We traversed the thick forest land path in reverse and disarmed ourselves at the boot of the car. Hopping into the car, it began to reverse up the gravel road and out onto the highway as we started to travel backward at top speed with Harry looking forwards. It was a scary sight. That's when everything started to slow down and then move forward.

We were no longer driving backward but forwards. Harry's eyes on the road where they should be and Alice leaning against the car door with her head tilted down. She might have been asleep. I didn't notice. My brain had gotten used to all of the sounds happening in reverse that it was a sudden shock to hear sounds as they were supposed to sound. Moving forward with time.

"We're nearly at the highway exit," Harry said.

"Wait!" I snapped.

Alice jolted up from her chair and turned to face me as I was flexing my fingers and stretching out my arms.

"What is it, Sean?" Alice asked.

"Let's not do it, it's going to be an elaborate trap. You're right Alice," I said.

"Are you kidding!?" she said, "You finally managed to convince me to go along with this plan and now you're saying we should back out of it?"

"Yeah!" I said, "I think you're right. You're a lot smarter than me and if you think that this might be a trap then I'll trust you!" I said.

"Are we turning off or not?" Harry asked.

"Nah," I replied.

Harry looked over to Alice who still had her gaze on me. She turned to him and shook her head.

"No," she said, "Keep driving to Melbourne."

We past the turn off for the mountain path and continued south on the highway towards Melbourne.

"Hey Alice," I said.
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"What?" she responded bluntly.

"I've been pretty s.h.i.+t today," I said, "I just wanted to say sorry. You can tell me what's bothering you whenever you're ready to, but I won't push for it. I trust you."

"I don't know what to say to that Sean," she said, "Thanks, I guess."

I was still in shock from what had just happened, but my heart had other things it wanted to care about. When we were underground Alice had told me that she loved me. Even if she doesn't want to admit it right now, and even though it took a life and death situation for her to tell me that she loved me. She still does love me. That's all the affirmation I needed right now. That was enough.

* * * * * *

The sun had just peaked its head over the horizon when he had decided to let the time return to its natural progression. The man with white hair watched on as the reversing sun started to then go back down over the horizon as the lights of the city started to come back on and the nightlife began.

"One hour should be enough," he said, "If time doesn't reverse in the next hour, then I can be absolutely sure that young Sean is in this divergent."

He took a sip from his gla.s.s of wine as he watched the city lights flicker on one by one below him.

"And if young Sean really is here, then it definitely has something to do with 'Him.'"