It’s been said that everything happens for a reason. That we were all born to make a difference, and to make our mark in the world. Carve our names into the depths of history that we can’t even remember before a certain time.

Yet if everything happens for a reason, then why do we feel so small all the time? Why does it seem like nothing we do is any good?

What if we don’t notice what our actions do though? Maybe it’s because we do one thing and then move right on to the next. We’re constantly moving forward, and it’s hard to keep track of what we’ve done right and wrong in our past.

But a wise man once said that there is nothing either good or bad; but thinking makes it so.

If this is true, then maybe things aren’t always meant to be noticeable. Everything does happen for a reason, but we’ll never figure out why most things happen. We’ve separated everything into good and evil, and it seems as if we’ll never get past that because we only want to determine why the bad things happen.

Not the good.

XX

Daniel will bid his parents goodnight one night and go into his dormitory, closing the door behind him like every other ordinary night.

He will go to sleep dreaming of the girl who sat in front of him in his educational classes.

In the morning, his parents will think he has overslept because he hasn’t gotten up at his regular time, so his mother will go to check on him, possibly to scold him for oversleeping once again.

She will find it strange that he is not in bed, or even in his room. She will call him through the telephone wires implanted in their skulls-joyful news to those who are tech savvy, isn’t it?-and only become worried when she finds that his telephone wire has been shut off.

That is not normal for him, because he always has it on.

However, while his mother panics far later in time, Daniel wakes up in a bed located in a normal enough looking room with a window and a dresser, nothing else. Well, there is an oddly shaped vase on the dresser except it looks like the antique his mother inherited from her great, great grandmother’s great, great grandfather. That’s about eight generations in front of him, he figures.

He doesn’t think too much about his new surroundings because he’s more concerned about why his telephone wire’s been shut off. He dials a friend of his, but there is absolutely no connection.

Maybe, he concludes, he was sick in the night and his parents took him to the emergency facility, and the facility doesn’t allow the wires due to their interference with the medical equipment.

That’s a reasonable explanation in his opinion. The sparse room makes complete sense to him, as well as his inability to use his wires. The clothes however, don’t. As he sits up in his stark white bed he examines the plain pajamas he’s got on. They’re definitely not emergency facility clothes, and they’re definitely not his own. He’s more stylish than that, he decides.

And no, emergency facilities wouldn’t put their patients in such hideous clothes, either.

Daniel wonders for a brief moment about his sudden disgust of clothing but brushes it off and pads towards the door in his room, figuring it will lead to a hallway in the facility where he can ask a physician what had happened to himself.

Daniel struggles at the door though. The door, for some unnoticeable reason, does not slide open when he comes close and thus he smacks into the hard wood before realizing it is one of those doors that he has seen in older buildings where an individual has to actually twist a handle to open the door.

“Now why would they do that?” He wonders aloud, rubbing his nose-which was rudely whapped against wood just moments before-and twisting the silver knob to swing open the door.

Without even thinking Daniel sends a wire feed through his mind and is a little perturbed when the feed does not go anywhere but back to him, claiming that it ‘is currently disabled’.

“Currently disabled?” He splutters. “But I’m just fine! These damned wires…who thought them up anyway? They only break half the time!” He wants to rant some more but outside of the door, something catches his eye.

For one, where he is obviously isn’t an emergency facility. Daniel only knows this because he hasn’t opened the door up to a hallway, but to an antique concrete lot that his History Educator taught them once held automobiles; automobiles were the blunt reason why all persons had been evacuated from their original environment in the first place. His History Educator also said that automobiles had created so much toxins and radiation that they destroyed their environment, and that “our ancestors didn’t even see it coming.”

Daniel goes through mental deceleration trying to figure out why he has ended up at the local museum, but in the end he figures maybe it isn’t even a lot. Maybe it’s the ground that will eventually become a new part of the emergency facility.

When people don’t know what they’ve gotten themselves into, they are willing to believe anything.

However, when Daniel sees something like one of the old, resurrected automobiles that he’d seen in the museum as a child whiz past him on a stretch of more paved concrete, he begins to doubt his own explanation. He looks to his left and sees trees; trees taller than even the tallest buildings around his home. He looks to his right and sees another door that is open.

Daniel is becoming extremely unnerved by this whole experience, but he leaves the ‘safety’ of his door and walks across the pavement in bare feet, striding towards the other door. He notices that the doors are entrances to a giant building in his opinion, two stories high even. The walls aren’t any kind of material he’s ever seen, but he has to admit that at least the plain white paint matches the rest of the place.

“Excuse me,” Daniel begins as he swings the other door open wider and peers in, “but I was wondering if anyone could tell me why my wires aren’t-.” He cuts off before he can say ‘working’ because he only sees one person in this room, and they don’t look as if they’ve got a clue as to why they’re there.

He quickly recovers from the bewildered look on his neighboring patient’s face and refocuses on what is most important to him and his seventeen-year-old world; his wires. To him, communication was the most important thing ever.

“Well, are your wires working? Maybe mine’s just glitching.”

Deep inside the room on a bed, his neighbor-a girl about his age-just shakes her head because she has no idea what he is talking about, and she is now scared to leave her room. She has no idea where she is, and she won’t even consider the possibility of asking anyone else. She’s only known her family and some close neighbors all her life, and to suddenly become a tramp of a girl would forever ruin her reputation in Sussex.

Taking a deep breath, she decides she has to at least ask this new stranger something. “Doth thou know this place?” She asks in clear plain English. Well, to her anyway. Daniel screws up his face and cocks his head to one side, leaning on the door frame.

“Sorry, but what did you just say?” He wants to know. “I have a feeling you’re not from around here, are you?”

Her eyes widen in an expression between fright and calamity before she starts shaking. Daniel sighs, wondering what he’s done wrong but he figures it’s because no one’s turned on the lights in her room. It’s a little too dull in there for his tastes, so he looks for a light switch, wondering where the light panels are in the walls.

He finally spies something that looks like a switch, noticing that whenever he takes a step farther into the room, the girl scoots back a little on her bed. Obviously, he figures, she’s in the trauma center of the facility. But if she’s in it, then…so he must be as well, right?

But as he flicks the switch for the lights, he discovers this girl must be in here for more than trauma. She lets out a bloodcurdling scream as the vase on her dresser becomes vibrant with artificial light and almost falls off the bed trying to get away from it.

“Oh…my…god.” Daniel whispers to himself, not even that freaked out about the vase. He’s had Educators with decorative vases like that, so he’s not too worried about it. “It’s just a light.” He gives her a curious look before realizing that if she’s not from around here, maybe she’s never seen lights like this.

“Where are you from?” He asks, not even aware that it isn’t a casual question in her opinion.

“Sussex; where art thou from?” She asks, even her voice betraying her tremble.

Daniel still has no idea what she’s saying, but he gets the ‘from’ part and shrugs. “Oh. Never heard of it; sorry. This is Luna Parkway. Welcome to Jersey if you’ve never been here before. I’m Daniel.”

“Jersey…?” The girl whispers, unaware of her new companion’s friendly offering of his name. “Jersey is not near Sussex, nor in Great Britain. What hast become of thee?” Daniel catches on to Great Britain and laughs. Great Britain was the origination of modern culture, his History Educators informed him, but it was now a toxic waste dump.

“I don’t know what England you’re talking about, but Britain’s kind of a hellhole. Jesus, what’d you do to get put in the trauma facility; crack your head open?” When he says the word Jesus, Sarah can’t help but touch her forehead and both shoulders from right to left. She has only heard ‘Jesus’ in church until now and all her elders have always crossed themselves like that.

“Great Britain is not dead.” She informs him haughtily. “Sussex will conquer the Saxons one day, and shall preside over both lowlands and highlands.” Daniel suddenly remembers exactly who the Saxons were and laughs some more.

“You’re crazy.” He confirms. “The Saxons aren’t even alive. They’ve been dead for almost three thousand years.”

Sarah would have told him he was the one who was clearly insane, but it was too late. The idea had been implanted, and she glanced at the vase that now radiated artificial sunlight.

The odd clothes…and the odd doors, the confusing fancy street outside, and the tall trees.

She would never have thought she’d gone past the glorious days of the Anglo-Saxons by if Daniel had not talked about the death of her dear culture. However, since he had, she had to ask one more question.

It seemed ridiculous to say out loud, but she had to know.

“This is not the dawn of the tenth century, is it?” She inquires softly. Daniel almost laughs out loud again, but something stops him.

“Did you just say the tenth century?” He replies. “Um, sorry to burst your bubble but it’s more like-.”

“This is the twenty-first century.” A woman in a dark blue pantsuit interrupts them as she walks into the room, her dull hair pulled back into a tight bun. Daniel decides she must be one of the mental physicians in this ward and smirks.

“Hah, that’s real funny. Don’t try and trick her though. It’s the-.”

“Today is June 23, the ninth year of beginning of the twenty-first century.” The woman tells them a little more forcefully. “You were both taken from your homes, and now you are here. Neither of you were supposed to wake up for a few more days, but neither of you were given enough of the sedative. We are truly sorry for the inconvenience, but if you hold tight both of you will be home in a matter of weeks.”

Daniel would pass out, but he can’t; Sarah already has and he would look like less of a man if he did so as well.

He takes a nervous gulp of air and tries to make sense of this whole situation.

“So you mean to say…I’ve gone back to the twenty-first?” He dares to finally ask. The older woman nods seriously and points at his unconscious neighbor.

“And she’s come forward into it.”

Daniel swears, wondering what he’s done that he’s got to be stuck with a bunch of lunatics.