Bravon sighed and motioned to the guard. “You stay here. We’ll be outside. Anything happens, anything, and you do what needs to be done.
“Aye, sir.”
“We’ll be just outside. Give her a chance. She managed to convince the Command Sergeant Major, and that’s no easy task.” Bravon opened the door for Wayne. He pointed at the older Emersyn. “And you… tell her what you told us. This is what you asked for, anyways.”
The door shut behind him, and the two were left alone.
Emersyn studied the other her, trying to make sense of how this was possible. The situation felt achingly wrong. Not only did she have to believe the woman in front of her was, in fact, her, but now she had some sort of message she’d brought with her?
The older Emersyn pulled a chair back and sat down directly across from her.
“What is this?” Emersyn asked, letting her hands drop, forcing herself to stare into her much-older self. “You’re not real.”
“Afraid I am,” elder Emersyn said. She leaned back in her chair, studying her younger self. Things were quiet between them for a minute. “You’ve probably got a lot of questions. The most important thing right now is that you believe every damn word I say. I’m going to start with that. I am you, and I’ll prove it.”
Emersyn watched her. Even her voice sounded familiar. It was gruffer and held more of an edge, but it was hers.
“Third grade. We had a crush on Joshua Pine. Followed him home twice a week for a month until he moved away. Remember that?”
Emersyn nodded her head a bit.
“Okay, and something more personal. I know I used to hate this: mom died when we were 12.”
As her eyes widened, the realization struck Emersyn in the face like a slap: this was her. She couldn’t deny it.
“Yeah, I remember,” the older Emersyn carried on. She cracked a half-smile. “I remember it all. Being afraid, not wanting to think about it. Who wants to remember their own mother’s death? We sure as hell didn’t.” She cleared her throat and sighed. “But it’s me, you can be sure.”
“B-but… how—”
“I’d show it to you, but the soldiers here didn’t trust me to keep it. There’s a gem that made all this possible. In my time, we called it the Requiem. It’s a gem that allows us to travel through time. There’s two or three of them we know of so far. There’s activation sites for the Requiems, the energy bonds within it, and it teleports you. I don’t understand all the fancy garbage they sling around with the science, but… it works.”
Emersyn watched, trying to process it all. She was open to hearing it. She had to be: somehow, there was an older version of herself sitting before her. But time travel, a gem called a Requiem, it was throwing her for a loop.
The elder Emersyn smiled. “Don’t worry, it took me seeing it to believe it, too. That’s why I’m here. We couldn’t just write you a message and throw it back. You needed to see this. You needed to see me.”
“Okay…” Emersyn brought her hands up and rubbed at her temples. “But why you? I mean, why me? What’s so important? I’m nobody. I work at Atriarch. I don’t see—”
“That all changes.” The older Emersyn leaned back in her chair, shifting uncomfortably. “At least, in my timeline it does. This is going to change everything. But I got out of that god-forsaken place. Found myself something I was good at. We had quite the ride.”
“And somehow I ended up in the army?” She couldn’t fathom the idea of gearing up, using guns, and fighting. It all sounded so foreign even in her mind.
Her counterpart cracked a smile. She was letting her guard down, Emersyn noticed.
“The army’s the best damn thing to happen to me.” She looked proudly at her dirty uniform. “Gave me a place to be myself. I didn’t have to worry about pleasing Gary, I wasn’t concerned with some marriage I despised, I could focus on myself. We were one of the older recruits, but I did pretty good.” She winked at Emersyn.
“Marriage? So Ollie and I…”
“Four years.” She shook her head. “It gets worse. A lot worse. But trust me, it gets better. You get these fatigues, you get that rifle.” Her smile gleamed. “You kick some serious ass.”
Emersyn couldn’t hide her smirk, but it was due to the absurdity of the claim. “I can’t really imagine it.”
The two studied each other for a long while.
“How’s this work exactly?” Emersyn asked. “Are you going to tell me every decision I need to make so I end up in the exact spot you’re in now?”
The notion of time travel being real left Emersyn staggered. She had more questions brimming at her mind than she thought possible to hold in her head. The occasional fantasy about rewinding the clock or an interesting question posed by a movie had her consider the concept, but she had no idea how many of those rules would apply in the real world.
The older Emersyn chuckled. “Not quite. I’m here to make sure you don’t end up in the spot I’m in, actually. If things go the way they did for me, your life is going to be hell. 20 years from now, the Ruskies end up combating us with nuclear bombs… we fire back, and the whole world goes to hell for it.”
Emersyn vaguely recalled the small bit of the news broadcast she’d heard about there being a new Prime Minister in Russia. Was that was started the whole thing? The seed that would grow into nuclear warfare two decades from now? “Okay,” she responded, trying to look at this information with an open mind. If she broke it down bit by bit and didn’t try to take it all in at once she felt better. “How does this Requiem fit into all of this? How’d you find it?”
“I didn’t. Some scientist in Idaho discovered it. Military swooped in and took possession of it, and from there, they tested its power. It’s one of those things you can’t really believe, at least not until you see it.” The elder Emersyn chortled. “First time I saw it, I almost pissed myself. When you take it to an activate site—”
“How do you find these activation sites?” Emersyn asked.
“They have this machine that tests for it, but the important thing is there’s one in Idaho. The time-jumpers have all said that they’re in the same spot no matter what timeline you’re in. It’s… a bit complicated. Hell, I don’t even understand it all. But what’s important is I’m here to stop that damn war from happening.”
Emersyn bit her lip. Her mind was slowly absorbing the information, coming around to it. She reached her hands up and rubbed at her shoulders, the air suddenly felt more frigid. She tried to dismiss the semantics from her mind and focus on the purpose of the other Emersyn: preventing this destruction she was claiming. “Okay, so how do we stop the war?”
Her counterpart shrugged. “Hell if I know. I told the Sergeant Major, he promised to pass it up the chain. I was sent back here after the war, but my Commander Thompson told me to make sure it starts here, because of the Prime Minister.”
“Got it.” That confirmed the suspicion Emersyn had: the Prime Minister was related.
The older Emersyn said, “The problem is, the military folks in this timeline aren’t exactly taking me at my word. Day or two before you showed up, they told me they wanted proof. They needed to see the gem in action.”
As if on cue, the door opened and Sergeant Bravon, Wayne Baron, and the guard who escorted Emersyn’s counterpart re-entered the office.
“Things going well in here?” Wayne asked in his high-pitched, southern drawl.
Emersyn let her eyes fall back to the table. “I can’t really… wrap my head around it all, but I get it.”
“That’s all we needed at this point. Just an acknowledgment,” Bravon said. “I think we’ve all looked to each other once or twice just to make sure we aren’t crazy.” He stopped, studying them both. A small smile cracked at the edges of his mouth. “I didn’t see it before, not when you two were separate, but you’re definitely the same person.”