Inception

Anne dressed him as best as she could and then after a Herculean effort she got him into the car, drove as fast as possible through the dark night, passing street and traffic lights in rapid succession. Nick lay in the passenger seat curled up in a semi-fetal position.

She drove to East Plains in record time and blew through the gates before the guard sitting in the red brick booth could scramble off of his stool to stop her. Building 43B loomed ahead of her and as she approached she not only could see but also hear the great funnel cloud churning over the building.

She wasn't scared only resigned to the inevitable, and almost as confirmation of that, Nick started to convulse again. Chopra, dressed bizarrely in a running suit, met her as she pulled in front of the building, two of his assistants were walking with him, and their hair and clothes were blowing about in the strong winds.

They hurried to the car and immediately opened the passenger door, and Nick, who had been leaning against the door, nearly fell out. At that time, he was just coming out of a grand mal seizure.

"How many has he had," Chopra asked Anne as she ran around the car.

"I don't know. Too many. They just keep coming."

"Let's get him inside," Chopra said and motioned to his assistants.

They laid him on the sofa in Chopra's office, as Anne paced the room. No one seemed to know what to do.

"We have to take him into the hanger," Anne announced almost offhandedly as she paced the room.

"You sure?" Asked Chopra. "That's exactly the opposite of what he said he wanted."

"I know. I know. But if we don't, he's going to die, isn't he?"

"I don't know?" Chopra answered.

"But what do you think?"

"If he keeps having these seizures, yes I think he's going to die."

"So, we have to bring him to the machine," Anne said resolutely.

"We are making suppositions based on assumptions here," Chopra said, being always the scientist. "How do we know what, if anything, will happen."

"We have to do something, sir," one of Chopra's assistants muttered as Nick, who still hadn't gained consciousness, started to moan in pain. "I think he's having another fit."

"Please doctor," Anne begged. "Please!"

"I just want you to be aware," Chopra said motioning to his assistants to move him. "This just might kill him."

"Yes. Yes, I know." Anne said crying. "I know."

"Okay then, let's go."

The two young assistants each took one of Nicks arms and draped it over their shoulders, carrying him between them with his head loose and bobbing, his feet dragging across the floor. Anne opened the door to the office and they quickly got him down the hall and into the hangar.

The machine was functioning when they got there, with its power cord still unplugged and lying loosely on the floor where Chopra had kicked it days before. The two assistants laid him before the machine like a sacrificial lamb and backed away from it as if the were retreating from some ferocious beast.

Chopra approached but stood at a safe distance. It was only Anne who came and knelt by Nick in his agony.

"Nicky? Nick? Baby, can you hear me?" She wept for him. "Please talk to me." But he lay comatose on the floor.

One of the assistants came to Chopra and whispered in his ear, "Do you see how he looks?" The young man ventured a look at Nick and Anne, and then back towards Chopra. "He looks like he's aged twenty years."

"Yes," Chopra agreed. "I've noticed it little by little each day, but it's more pronounced tonight."

"She doesn't seem to see it, though," the assistant added.

"No, she doesn't," Chopra said and then looked at Nick lying lifeless on the floor. "I don't know what to do. Maybe we should call an ambulance?"

"Anne?" Nick whispered hoarsely out of his stupor. "Anne, are you there?"

"Yes Nicky, I'm here. I'm right here baby."

"Anne," Nick repeated. It was obvious that he was just calling out her name and not seeing or hearing anyone.

"Baby, I'm here. I love you baby." Nick slipped into unconsciousness once again and then his body went rigid foreboding another seizure.

"Please stop!" Anne screamed at the machine. "You're killing him. Stop!"

But the machine didn't stop. The lights on it seemed to shine brighter and the gauges went wild with their little fluorescent dial markers fluctuating back and forth violently.

Anne sat back on her legs and collapsed with her head in her lap just before a blinding light was emitted from the machine, flashing down upon the stricken man, blinding everyone who hadn't shielded their eyes, and then he was gone, instantaneously as if vaporized, to which Anne cried out as if the world were coming to an end.

Nick knew nothing, felt nothing until he was being shaken awake by a man who was calling his name.

"Nick. Nick. Is it you? Holy shit, what's happened to you," said the voice that entered, then exited, Nicks consciousness like a voice outside a dream.

"What? What?" Was all Nick could say as the person who was trying to wake him sat him up.

Nick opened his eyes, and after rubbing the moisture out of them, he could see that he was in the hangar room of building 43B. Not the 1989 version that he had left, but the 2017 version of that store room, and the voice that he had heard was coming from David Reznick.

"Come on buddy," David said trying to get Nick to his feet, a sense of relief evident in his voice. "We have to get you to the hospital, but I think your mother will be happy to hear about this."

Anne sat across from her son who lay in a steel contraption of a hospital bed, a heart monitor and IV were hooked up to him as he slept. She wondered how much had this ordeal changed him mentally, for physically he appeared to have aged some twenty years.

She hadn't had much of a chance to speak with him in the last thirty-six hours since he was rarely conscious. They had been able to exchange a few passing pleasantries, but most of the time he was either sleeping or being treated by a bevy of doctors and nurses.

She wasn't even sure that he was aware that she was there. A new text message came on her phone. It was another well wisher asking about Nick, but there was little she could say about his condition on account of the government gag order, and besides she really didn't know.

She couldn't tell them that since he entered the hospital he had been barraged by a troop of government doctors conducting a myriad of tests trying to determine...who knows what they were trying to determine, and none of them would even venture a diagnosis.

Still, she could at least relay that he was resting easy and was in no pain. And as she was answering the text, what she thought were two doctors entered the room, a young Asian man in a white lab coat and a brutish redheaded woman in a fashionable business suit, along with a nurse in scrubs.

She knew something was up since this time they didn't ignore her as they had been, usually treating Nick as some sort of scientific phenomenon. This time they immediately addressed her.

"Ms. Martin," the young Asian doctor greeted her with only a hint of an accent. "I'm doctor Wong and if I have your permission, I'd like to talk to you about your son's condition."

"Is there something wrong?" Anne asked.

"Well no, not as an immediate concern, but we need to do some more tests."

This, Anne could decipher, was altogether a different situation. When she first arrived at the hospital, more than a day ago, she had signed a ream of paperwork, and then nothing since. A new request for permission by these people had all the earmarks of more, invasive procedures.

"Is this necessary?" Anne questioned.

"Ms. Martin, I'm Mary Connelly, the redheaded woman spoke up in a syrupy sweet voice. I work for the defense department."

"Oh," Anne said with some surprise. "I thought you were a doctor."

"No," Connelly laughed. "Nothing like that. But I am familiar with these procedures. It's nothing invasive, it's just that theses procedures are experimental."

"Is this necessary?" Anne again posed the question with an authoritative air.

"Well," Wong chimed in sensing an impasse. "We need to address the causes of his accelerated aging."

"Yes, it's hard not to notice that. Is it only his face that's affected?"

"No one has spoken to you about this," Connelly spoke as if generally surprised.

"No one has spoken two words to me."

Connelly looked at Wong, and Wong spoke up, "We just assumed the hospital administrators had spoken to you."

"No. No one has. which I find amazing, especially since I'm his mother."

"Well," Wong continued. "Apparently your son has experienced some sort of accelerated ageing due, we assume, to the incident."

The incident in question, which this guy didn't want to acknowledge, and struck Anne as amusing, was his disappearance, allegedly brought on by this machine. Anne knew that he had traveled in time, and she suspected the doctors knew also, though they would never admit to that fact. It was all so hush-hush.

"He has the general physical attributes of a man much older, say in his late forties," continued Dr. Wong.

"Is it permanent?"

"Hard to say, but my belief is that it's not reversible."

"You're saying his whole body has aged twenty years in twelve hours?

"Yes," Wong said with an appreciation for what he was saying. "Scans of his heart, lungs, brain, and joints are consistent with a man in his late forties, maybe early fifties."

"My age, you mean?"

"Yes, though I'm not really sure how old you are."

"I'm fifty-two, but no matter. And what do you account for this change?"

"I can't say."

"Why, because this is some sort of government secret?"

"Yes."

"Dr. Wong, I happened to have been Dr. Chopra' s assistant while he was working on the machine. I know more about this than the two of you."

"I'm very well aware, but you don't have clearance. Not anymore."

Anne was more than a little pissed about how these people were dancing around the subject at hand, and all in the name of government secrecy. They knew her background, and they knew what she knew.

"That's asinine. I was there, back in 1989 when Nick materialized right in front of that machine out of thin air, and I was there five days later when he vanished before our eyes. I am uniquely knowledgeable about this whole incident, and yet none of you have thought to speak with me."

"Again, I know, but you worked for the government, you can understand my dilemma."

"So can I assume, doctor, Ms. Connelly, that you work for the government, and not here in the capacity of helping my son?"

"We are here to do both," Connelly answered.

"Let me put it to you this way, is he free to go?"

"Well yes, he is here voluntarily," Wong skirted the issue. "But you have to understand..."

"I understand that as soon as possible I'm taking my son home."

"Anne, Anne," they all heard Nick call out from behind them.

"Yes Nick, I'm here", Anne said and hurried to his bed.

"Where am I?" He asked finally seeming to be alert.

"You're at Nather Hospital, dear. How are you feeling?"

"Okay, I guess. What year is this?" He asked, sarcastically.

A look of understanding came across Anne's face, and she smiled.

After the doctor and Ms. Connelly left, Anne stood next to his bed.

"I guess you have a few questions for me?" Nick said in a quiet and subdued voice.

"Just one. How could you do this to me?"

"I wasn't trying to do anything to you."

"I'm your mother."

"I know. And I know I'm splitting hairs here, but you weren't technically my mother at the time. I wasn't even born yet."

"Don't argue semantics with me."

"I'm not. I don't know how to explain this to you. Yes, you were my mother, but at that point in time you weren't."

"I think that when you get better," she said looking sorrowfully at him. "You should think about looking for a place to live."

"Anne, don't be like this."

"And stop calling me Anne. I'm your mother."

"No. No your not. Not anymore."

Two days later after Nick had recovered sufficiently, and both he and Anne had been debriefed by their government keepers, he was free to go home.

David was with them at the hospital that morning. He had been given the day off by the Aldrich Corporation to help with Nick' transport home. The company's efforts were not by any means a reflection of their generosity, but merely an attempt to smooth things over after the incident, and to forestall any future legal action.

"Thanks once again for helping out," Anne said to David who was sitting in the back seat of her Volvo as they pulled out of the hospital parking lot.

"Any time Mrs. M," he replied seeing her beautiful eyes in the rear-view mirror.

David's attendance that day was less about his altruism and more about seeing Anne again, and she didn't disappoint him wearing skin tight white jeans, knee high, high heeled boots and a tight, low cut black sweater.

"Yes," said Nick from the passenger seat. "Thanks for all your help."

"I love you man. There's no one else that I would wait all night in a warehouse for, but I did this for your mom," David said with a snort.

Nick knew that this was no lie. He knew the extent of David's crush on Anne. He could see how much his mother was flattered by David's attention, and how much she liked to tease him. Her tight, revealing outfit was no accident, though Nick was not averse to staring at the eye candy.

"What are you looking at?" Anne asked him back at the hospital, after she bent down to help him settle into the wheelchair he would take out of the hospital. She had caught him glimpsing down her sweater, her wonderful breasts only partially restrained by her lacy black bra.

"You," he replied gratuitously.

I'll have to watch what I wear around you," she said roughly though she did so with a smirk on her face.

"I know who you're wearing this for, and its certainly not me," he said flashing his own smirk and a look at David standing nearby.

"The difference is that he doesn't expect anything, and he's always a gentleman."

This playful banter, fostered by Nick over the last two days, told him that maybe she was coming around to his way of thinking. Though he knew she also had a long way to go before she would willingly jump in the sack with him. It was quite conceivable that she never would, and she still hadn't recanted her request that he find another place to live.

"How are things at East Plains?" Nick asked David over his shoulder.

"About the same. Rumor has it that they've taken the machine to another part the complex to study it, but as of yet they haven't gotten it to even turn on, never mind transport anything."

"Good," Anne said with some conviction.

"Oh I don't know," Nick said again smirking. "I have no regrets about how things turned out."

Anne shot him a quick look, replete with daggers.

"Really?" David asked. "After what it's done to you, I'd think you'd have nothing but hatred for that machine."

"Things have a way of turning out for the better," he said wistfully.

"Don't let Aldrich's lawyers hear you say that," Anne said.

"Speaking of which, what's our lawyer saying?" Nick responded.

"That we have one hell of a case," she smiled at him. "What with all the witness' and all."

"Why can't I have luck like that?" David said tongue in cheek. "I would have gladly been vaporized for the chance at a couple of mil."

Nick moved uneasily around the house that day. He felt much better, but in the hospital, they had installed a couple of tubes in him, and his abdomen felt a little sore from when, just minutes before he left, the nurse had unceremoniously pulled them out.

"You okay?" Anne said as he eased himself into the kitchen where she had been making dinner.

"Yeah, fine," he said snuggling up to her as she chopped vegetables. She hadn't changed outfits yet, and those white jeans just did a wonderful job of displaying her ass cheeks.

"What are you doing?" She asked turning around with her hands on her hips. Nick could tell that she was a little put off.

"Just getting comfortable."

"I don't believe you. What do you think is going to happen here?"

"I don't know Anne. I'm trying to feel my way through this too," he replied stepping back.

"You still haven't explained to me how you could do it."

"Anne, you're thinking of this the wrong way. I'm not the son that left here last Tuesday, and I wasn't him back in 1989."

"Bullshit."

"So what do you think, that your son after being whisked away by that machine, was transformed into this total pervert with a kinky desire for incestuous sex?"

"I don't know."

"I don't either. All I know, all I can tell you, is that something changed in me, and it wasn't perverse. I fell in love with that beautiful young girl that you were. I don't think of myself the same way, and I certainly don't think of you the same way."

"And what about me? After you left I got pregnant, delivered and then raised a baby boy. You! Not to mention not being able to tell anyone who your father was, as if I was some slut who got knocked up by a stranger. And I still don't know why I named you Nick, I never liked that name," she said both laughing and crying.

"What do you expect?" She continued. "I can't just forget all of that."

"Okay, I'm sorry. I didn't think."

"You never thought, and you especially never thought about me. All you wanted was to fuck me, and you didn't care about the repercussions."

"That's not true," he countered. "And you know it. I was falling in love with you."

"Oh, don't give me that crap."

"Okay," he said resolutely. "Fuck it. Fuck it all. As soon as I can, I'll leave."

"Where will you go?" She asked, suddenly remorseful.

"Justin has been looking for a room mate."

"Justin? Your friend, Justin, who lives in that shack downtown?"

"It's only temporary."

She turned and looked away from him. "You can stay here until you get on your feet," she conceded.

"No!" He said furiously. "That won't do at all. I'm leaving tonight."

"Where are you going to go?" She asked dismissively.

"To a hotel. I'll call David. He'd just love to come by and pick me up. That way you can shake your ass for him one more time today."

"Fuck you! Go! See if I care."

Nick just stormed out the door and made his way gingerly down the street. It wasn't until he was about a block away that he realized how idiotic his actions were. He didn't have either a cell phone or a wallet, and never mind money or a credit card. He had left them all back in 1989.

He didn't know what to do, he couldn't go back and face her, so he went for a walk. And as he walked he came to grips with Anne's side of the story. He had been a fool to think otherwise, though his point of view had changed, she was still the same woman that had raised him, and she thought of him as her son. He was asking her to commit incest, and there was no way around it.

He would have to move, there was no question of that, because in as little as a week his whole image of her had changed, now in his mind, and in his pants, she was the beautiful, bright, engaging young woman from 1989, and despite her age, he could no longer separate those two women.

He got about a mile away when he realized that his knee was starting to hurt. He had never had knee problems before, either at work or playing sports. This pain was new to him.

"Holy shit," he said under his breath. "I think I do have arthritis." He remembered the doctors in the hospital telling him that he did have the start of arthritis in his joints, but he never gave such a revelation much credence.

He found that he was not too far from down town, and so that was where he headed. Walking the streets of his home town brought back the not too distant memory of how Anne as a young woman, drove him through those same streets, but now the mom and pop shops were gone, displaced by chain stores. The old video arcade was now one of those nationwide pizza shops.