A Journey to Reality

This story does NOT contain any sexual acts or indications, which is why it is appropriately placed in the "Non-Erotic" section. Please do not read it if you are expecting any. This is an emotional tale of a young woman who takes a journey back in time to learn the truth about her own beginnings, and gets a new outlook on things as a result.

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"Just let me use it once, Graham."

"No, I need to do some more testing. I'm not even sure the device is really safe."

"But it does work, and you've used it with no problems."

"Only twice," he flashed a wry grin, "and besides, it's ok for a scientist to be his own guinea pig."

Crystal contemplated him for a few moments. She didn't believe in being pushy with friends, but this was important. Through most of her life, she and her mother had not gotten along together, and Crystal had believed for a long time that she was adopted. This was her one chance to find out the truth. "Look, I've stood by you through this whole project. I've located components for you, and covered your backside when everyone wanted to know what you were up to in this little basement lab of yours. The very least you can do is let me try it once."

Graham hung his head, and Crystal knew that she had won. "Ok, just ONCE. But you have to do exactly as I say." She smothered a smile as he began to explain the usage of the device that she already knew as well as he did. It was a hand-held apparatus, no bigger than a garage door opener, and it held the power of time travel.

"I haven't had any time to do anything new with it." Graham explained. "All we can do is set the year; no date, no time, no location. It will take you to this exact spot however far back in the past you want to go." He grimaced a bit and adjusted his glasses. "Well, within the past 50 years, anyway."

"It's fine, I just want to see what things looked like around here the year I was born." That was a lie. With three weeks left until her birthday, what Crystal really wanted to do was find her mother and see if she looked pregnant. Since the woman would have only been 15 years old at the time, Crystal sincerely doubted it. "What exactly was in this spot in 1968 anyway?"

"A corn field. Your neighborhood was built in 1966, but mine and everything else this side of Palmer's gas station was still just farm fields back then."

"Palmer's has been around that long? Amazing." She shook her head as she thought about the run-down little station at the end of the street. "Ok, so I come out in the middle of some corn. At least nobody will notice me at first."

"You need to make sure nobody notices you much at all. When you get there, go straight to the edge of the field, right alongside the gas station. You'll see a small bench next to a phone booth. Just sit there and take in the sights."

Crystal gave him a questioning look, followed by a frown. "That's all?"

"That's all, and I mean it Crystal. I have no idea how bad we could screw things up if we changed something back in time, and I don't want to find out. I'm not even sure we should be trodding through the corn stalks."

"Yeah," she giggled "like that freaky time travel story about the guy who killed the butterfly and screwed up the beauty in his time, or something like that."

"Don't laugh, that author may have had a more realistic view than we think." He ran his hand through his hair and continued. "The device will self-activate after exactly 30 minutes to bring you back here, so make sure you're back in the corn where you can't be seen before it does." Graham set the date and then pushed the button to activate the device, which he then handed to her. He pointed to the small blue button on top. "Just push that when you're ready to go."

She gave him a re-assuring smile as he backed away from her, and then she took a deep breath and pushed the button. At first she felt nothing at all, but then an overwhelming sensation of floating engulfed her body and her vision clouded until she felt as if she were suspended in a heavy fog.

Almost as soon as it had started, the fog dissipated until her eyes focused on the mature corn stalks surrounding her, and the pungent smell of damp soil and foliage greeted her nose. She glanced down at her body and verified that she was still in one piece. Aside from a lingering sensation of light-headedness, she felt fine.

Crystal slipped the time travel device into the pocket of her frayed blue jeans and looked at her watch. Graham had said that she'd have 30 minutes before the device transferred her back home, so she didn't have much time to find her mother, even though the town wasn't large.

When she reached the edge of the gas station parking lot, she paused to consider her next move. She knew that her mother had dropped out of school the year she'd supposedly gotten pregnant, so finding the girl that was rumored to be fairly wild may be more difficult than Crystal had originally anticipated. Still, if said girl was truly nine months pregnant, that may have slowed her down a bit.

Crystal decided to head directly for her grandparent's house, which was located only a six blocks away on the same street that her own house was located on in the future. If she didn't find her mother there, then she could always bully Graham into letting her use the device to try again later.

As she hurried along the sidewalk, she marveled at how odd it was to see her own neighborhood so differently, yet eerily the same. In this era, there were no cracks in the clean sidewalks, no litter at the curbs, and every store seemed to glow in its coat of cheerful bright paint. The windows sparkled in the bright sunlight, and a group of bare-footed children bounced past sitting astride some sort of large rubber balls with handles at the top.

She passed a barber shop, which would be replaced by a tattoo parlor in her time, and then gazed at the record store in which she knew that none of the customers would understand what a CD or an MP3 was; their music only blared from the tiny grooves of black vinyl platters. A fresh bakery resided where later a cigarette store would be, and a tiny grocery stood on the corner that would only hold an abandoned building in her own time.

Crystal stopped in front of the grocery store and eyed the soda machine there, amazed at the sign that boasted that a single dime could buy the refreshment. She fished a coin out of her pocket and fed it into the machine, then marveled at the glass bottle that emerged. Yes, things were very different here.

It took her a couple of minutes to figure out how to get the metal cap off of the bottle, and in that time the bell over the grocery store's door jangled as a young girl emerged carrying a small brown paper bag. Crystal froze as she immediately recognized the familiar face of her mother, though thirty-some-odd years younger, and the fact that she was indeed uncomfortably pregnant.

The girl never even looked at her as she crossed the street in front of her, and Crystal stared agog as her mother made her way down the opposite sidewalk. Dressed in flat leather sandals, faded bell-bottom blue jeans, and a loose white angel-style top, she was everything that Crystal had ever pictured a typical 60's teen to be. Everyone besides her own mother, that is.

Feeling vaguely stunned, Crystal realized that she already had the answer that she had come seeking, but some impulse made her move to follow along at a safe distance, curious to know more about this enigma that was so unlike the woman that she had been at odds with for so many years.

She noticed that very few people greeted the girl as they made their way down the street, and that she walked quickly, with her head down so that her long straight hair covered her face.

A school bus lumbered past, and the car full of teenagers following behind it slowed as it neared Crystal's mother. They began to yell insulting remarks at the girl, calling her a tramp and worse, and one of them threw something out of the window at her. The girl dodged the item and pretended to ignore them as she continued walking.

Crystal felt an uncontrollable fury rise to the surface at the scene playing out before her. This was supposed to be the era of peace and love, wasn't it? So where did these kids come from? She broke into a run and quickly closed the distance between them, throwing her soda bottle at the front of the car and yelling a few obscenities of her own at the horrid teens. They stared at her with astounded looks on their faces as the driver gunned the motor and sped away.

She smiled briefly as she thought of what a picture she must have made; a grown woman in attack mode screaming words that only a few sailors in this era probably used. But Crystal's smile faded as she realized that her mother had stopped walking and now stood within a few feet of her. It gave her an odd feeling to look at the girl's swollen belly and know that it was *herself* in there, waiting to come into a world that she would never remember seeing as she was seeing it now.

As the girl turned her sad brown eyes up to Crystal and whispered "Thanks," she felt as if some invisible knife had twisted in her heart. This was not the angry judgmental woman that seemed to devote her entire life to telling her daughter everything that she was doing wrong, nor the woman that Crystal had taken to ignoring and avoiding as much as possible. This was just a scared and sad girl, no more than a child herself, who was already paying dearly for one single mistake and collecting the emotional scars that would last her entire life.

Crystal just nodded at her... after all, what was one supposed to say to one's own mother before they were even born?

"I'm not, you know..." the girl swung her hair away from her face and focused on some point across the road as she spoke.

"Not...?"

"Not what those kids said about me. I only went with one boy."

"Oh?" Crystal ignored the inner voice that reminded her that she'd already done and said more than she should have in this time, but she desperately needed to hear that her mom wasn't the careless hellion that the elder neighborhood gossip had sometimes made her out to be.

The girl scuffed her toe along a crack in the sidewalk as she spoke. "He said he loved me, and our love was just beautiful and all that," she shrugged, "And said we'd get married as soon as I was old enough. But then I found out that he was a lot older than he told me. He was really in his 20s, and was already married with kids."

"Does he know that you're...?"

"Yes. He said the baby's not his."

Crystal was suddenly furious at a man she'd never known, the jerk who had sired her. "Who is this guy? Didn't you tell anyone?"

Panic flashed in wide brown eyes. "Oh no I can't do that! My father would kill him if he found out, and I don't want dad in jail. My mom couldn't take that."

Pondering this entirely different view of the situation, Crystal struggled in silence to come to grips with the new reality that was before her. Her mother was nothing like the ogre that she had created in her mind, and Crystal felt the cold fingers of guilt creeping through her as she thought about what that this girl had endured, and would continue to endure in order to protect those around her. All of the nagging and bullying when Crystal had been younger was just because her mom had wanted better for her, and Crystal was ashamed of herself for the many years that she had retaliated with nothing but meanness.

"What's your name anyway?" the girl asked.

"Crystal Dawn Nn... Norris," she stopped herself just in time to avoid giving away her true last name: Nichols.

"Crystal Dawn," her mother murmured the name distractedly before introducing herself, "I'm Monica Nichols. I live about a half a block up; do you want to hang out for awhile?"

Though she knew that she should decline, the temptation to see what her grandparents' house had looked like, combined with a sudden urge to spend more time with her mother made her agree. As they walked along in companionable silence, her mind brought forth yet another issue that had always bothered her. She briefly thought of Graham's warning, but risked changing history by blurting, "You know your baby will have a much better life growing up if you go back to school."

Monica gave her an incredulous look. "Oh I can't. They kicked me out you know," she gestured at her stomach, "Because it's a bad example, being PG and all. But I'll try to get a diploma later, and I'm getting a job as soon as the baby's born."

Again Crystal was shocked. There had been several pregnant girls in her own high school, who weren't treated any differently than the other students, and they certainly never got kicked out for it. This was an era of much less peace and freedom than she had ever understood.

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A feeling of nostalgia washed over Crystal as the girls approached the cornflower blue house with the tiny porch in front. Both of her grandparents had been dead for quite some time, and it seemed like forever since she had enjoyed the hospitality of this home. But even here things were different.

The giant lumbering oak tree that stood in the front yard was still nothing but a hopeful branch here, stretching no taller than her chin as its tiny twigs waved at the sun. There were no arching trellises yet to hold the prize roses that her grandmother would grow, and no cheerful carriage lamps to light the walkway. Only a small porch step resided in front of the door, but Crystal could see that work was already being done there to build the large covered patio that she had always known.

As she sat on the small retainer wall alongside the end of the driveway, Crystal felt a moment of embarrassment knowing that her own car's bumper would crack that same wall 16 years in the future when she got her driver's license.

"Want some? I crave them all the time now." Sitting beside her, Monica had opened the little grocery bag was offering to share the chocolate-covered peanuts inside.

A sense of deja-vu washed over Crystal as she reached to retrieve a couple of the treats and murmured her thanks. Her mind flashed back to times when she was a very small girl, when she and her mother would share this same candy while watching TV together. Times had not always been bad between them, and she knew that it was her own stubbornness that had helped to put an end to them. She really did like this girl, and knew that if they had been born as peers, they would definitely be friends. It was a haunting thought.

Crystal's eyes were now drawn back to the front of her grandparent's house, to the two men that were placing bricks on a bed of gravel to form an intricately patterned patio. Her hand went to the tiny scar on her forehead, realizing that in a little more than a year she would be toddling across it in her tiny Stride Rites, and falling to earn a cut that would require two stitches to close.

The candy threatened to stick in her throat as the elder man turned around and she recognized the face of her grandfather. He looked so young, so strong and full of life, and it was all she could do to keep from running to him and throwing her arms around him. She hadn't seen him in over ten years, since he had died shortly after Crystal had graduated college, and it had never occurred to her that she might see him today. Her thoughts churned with a confusing mixture of joy and sadness.

Monica's gaze followed hers. "That's my brother Mike, and my dad. Dad doesn't talk to me much right now." The pain in her voice revealed the unspoken truth behind it; her father was ashamed of her.

Crystal nodded in heartfelt sympathy as she watched them working in the sun. Mike hadn't really changed all that much over the years, but it was a bit amusing to see him wearing a head band and a tie-dyed shirt, as opposed to the stuffy business suit she'd always seen him in.

"Monica honey, who's your friend? Would you like some drinks?" a woman's voice floated from the open kitchen window.

"Sure." Monica stood up awkwardly and wiped her hands on her jeans. "Come meet my mom, she's nice."

Her mind screamed in denial as her feet followed Monica to the front of the house, but she could think of no polite way to refuse. Why did people always say that it would be nice to see their lost loved ones "just one more time" when all it truly did was make the sadness of loss that much deeper again? Crystal's grandmother had been her very best friend throughout her entire life, and Crystal had missed her dearly. It was horrible knowing that she could not even use this opportunity to say all of the things she wished she'd said before the woman had died, but instead had to act like a complete stranger.

A lump rose in her throat as the cheerful woman emerged from the house bearing a tray with glasses of lemonade, but she forced a smile to her own lips and murmured a polite greeting. Numbly, she followed her grandmother and mother as they sat on the tiny step and began to talk.

"Mom, this is Crystal." Monica jostled an ice cube around in her mouth as she spoke.

"Well hello dear, it's nice to meet you. Do you live around here?"

"No ma'am, I'm just visiting for awhile." Her mind scrambled for a way to get off of the subject, and she waved towards her grandfather and uncle. "What are they building?" She knew very well what they were building, but it was all she could think of, and she was relieved when her grandmother began to talk about the new patio, the flowers she was planning to plant, and other such safe subjects.

Crystal began to relax a bit, enjoying the sound of her grandmother's voice, but it was a short-lived reprieve from her inner turmoil.

"Oh! We've gotten a letter from Bill." The woman beamed happily at Monica.

"Far out!" Monica remarked, and then turned her excited gaze to Crystal to explain, "Bill's my oldest brother. It's kind of a big deal when we get a letter since he's still in Vietnam. He's coming home in a few months though."

"Cool." Crystal set her glass down and smiled past the blazing pain that gripped her insides, and then bowed her head and faked a sneeze in order to hide the tears that threatened to escape. She felt sick with the realization that the cheerful light of happiness in these women's eyes would be soon extinguished when they learned that Bill would never come home again. He would be killed a few weeks before he was due to leave, in an ambush in some war-torn jungle.

Emotion threatened her composure in pounding waves, and Crystal that knew she had to go. Standing casually, she glanced at her watch, gathered her strength and smiled again. "Oh goodness, I've got to go now. I promised to meet someone today and I think I'm late."

"Aw, bummer," Monica made a face, "I was hoping you could hang around awhile."

"You'll see me again, I'm sure of it." Crystal couldn't control the impulse to give her both her mother and grandmother a quick hug as she thanked them for their hospitality.

As an afterthought, she slipped the silver peace symbol necklace off of her neck and handed it to Monica. "I want you to take this, and whenever you're feeling down just remember that you've got a friend who cares." She knew that she would see the necklace again; her mother would give it back to her the year Crystal started high school.

Monica smiled brightly. "Thanks. I will."

As Crystal reached the sidewalk, she paused to allow a sleek silver Corvette pull into the driveway, and looked up to see Monica smile and wave to the sandy-haired young man behind the wheel. A sense of growing horror washed over her as Crystal realized that this was Monica's elder brother, the one who had died before Crystal was born, and her birthday was only three weeks away.