E L E N A

When you were flushed with sleep in bed and eyes gently shut, lost in the grand delusions procured by your mind once you laid to rest. There was no sudden light startling you awake or soft sounds of strangers lurking in the shadows. There was sleep─sweet, sweet sleep, in which you dreamt of a sunset and a kiss─until there wasn't.

Until your eyes were covered with a dark cloth and you were blindly led outside. Shoved into a car and driven away from your home, where there was no one left to chase after you. No family to mourn you, no friends to miss you.

You couldn't sleep anymore during the ride. Under the blindfold, time ceased to exist. What was left to do but surrender to the darkness?

When the car finally came to a halt, a pair of hands pulled you from your seat. A painfully brief moment of fresh air is all you were given before a door hissed open. It shut quickly behind you like a mousetrap.

You were quickly led to a room and sat on a cold, metal chair. The air carried a sterile scent that made you faintly sick. The process continued promptly and smoothly. You wonder how accustomed they are to it. They pressed your fingerprints with cold ink onto cardstock. Your makeshift pajamas─an oversized t-shirt and sleep shorts─were exchanged for a cotton bodysuit; their gloved hands left an itchiness on your skin. They took samples from the inside of your cheek, a strand of your hair, and a urine test. Then, you remain seated and patiently wait another hour before they return and escort you through another door.

As you were led through the halls, you could hear indistinct murmurs dancing around you. They grew in volume, quickly, until they took up all of the silence left. An echo of whispery voices swarming around you until another door closed behind you.

They locked it and sealed you in your tomb. The cloth was removed from your eyes, though there was nothing to see besides a blinding, golden light pointed directly at you.

"State your name," a deep voice spoke from the darkness.

You momentarily frowned; your system was still in shock. But then, a second light flashed white, followed by the jarring shutter of a camera lens. You answered them and said your name aloud.

"Is this really necessary?" You squinted to make out the faces of your captors past the light.

Nothing. Darkness. Pitch black. In fact, you'd never seen darkness like this before─the kind that envelopes everything else with it, until only a deep void spans across anything perceptible. "TimeLine is a strictly private organization," the voice replies. Sounds with no source. "Following your agreement as a TimeLine agent, certain precautions are taken throughout the process."

The white light flashed again, then again, and you wonder how many pictures they really need.

When it finally stopped, a small screen illuminated itself to life across from you, presenting the TimeLine logo in its big, blue letters. A video began to play:

"Established in 2010, TimeLine corporation is a covert, privately-owned organization founded on the principle of improving the world through the use of time-altering. This process requires the tessellation of projected light beams through a film-like material called "essence", created and patented by TimeLine. Light beams live on beyond the human eye. Time is merely a perception."

"TimeLine agents, when exposed to the light beams of essence, are transported through the tessellation to the desired time of light. This transformation is referred to as 'hitching' lightwaves through our present timeline, referred to as 'the seam'. Agents may feel lightheaded, nauseous, exhausted, confused, and sensitive to sunlight upon hitching. It is highly advised to administer 24-hour intervals between each hitch."

The screen then reads:

"Your mission [ MISSION 829 ] is to prevent the death of Subject #6251, known as Michael Jackson. #6251 is categorized as a Class 1: Critical Event. Access subject file for more information. Verbal, physical, or even visual contact with mission subjects can lead to potential risks; take caution." Mission 829 has been attempted by [ 20 ] agents. Successes: [ 0 ] NAME: Margot

Upon signing, you hereby surrender yourself to the essence, fulfilling your mission for the sake of humanity, and agree to the circumstantial danger of your role as an agent traveling through light. You understand that this is an isolated task and you will not have contact with your time of light apart from your submitted logs. The future of the commonwealth is indebted to you for your service.

You signed with your index finger along the blank space, loopy and truly unlike your actual signature, but two guards whisk you away nevertheless. Whatever prospect of life you had left was now sloppily signed away in fine print. In truth, what does it matter if you aren’t who you say you are? They couldn’t care less. You’re a pawn, a soldier, a disposable agent to their experiment. Then again, you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think it was worth it.

The world have given up hope. Corrupt governments and their corrupt institutions poisoned the land before you were born. You grew up seeing barren fields outside your window on car rides, murky water from the bathtub spout, dirty, gray clouds blanketing the sky. You still remember the sickness. The coughing, the runny-noses, the constant dull headache. And once you were old enough, you were on your own. Alone, as was the rest of the world. How can such lonesomeness be so collective? How can everyone be so close yet so far apart?

TimeLine was a last resort. It certainly was not your dream to work for an underground company whose name you'd only heard ill of. But what else was left?

If the world left to you was so unbearable, surely the only resolution would be to explore a new one—one that already existed.

When you stood across from the theater doors, the moment suddenly became entirely real. It left a shiver throughout your bones. Your life—fragments of it flashing before your eyes; car rides, rainy mornings, funerals, birthdays, breakups, first times—will never be the same after this. You could hardly call it your own anymore.

It's for the world, you consoled yourself as they walked you past the threshold. This’ll help the world.

They led you down the aisle, and into a cushioned seat in the third row from the screen. The theater is completely void of light. Your sight is completely futile in the pitch black.

Rough, gloved hands strap you down in your seat, and, left to your thoughts in the dark, the flashes of your life briefly resume. What had led to this; where did it all go wrong?

Eventually, the hands disappeared, and you could hear quick footsteps retreating into the darkness. It cloaked you, heavy and insistently. You began to suffocate on it.

Until something like a heavy switch broke and a bright beam of light projected onto the screen. You wanted to shield your eyes with your arm, but you found it completely impossible to move through the light. And soon enough, your eyes adjusted to the magnified rays. They glistened, and within them, small flecks made themselves present like stars through smog. They fluttered to a cohesive rhythm as if they breathed with one another; the essence.

You even began to see small, moving shapes of color coming together like brushstrokes on a canvas. And once they began to sharpen, you can hear faint sounds, muffled and layered.

The colors become pictures, scenes on the screen, and the sounds became voices, laughing and crying, shouting and whispering. And, beyond it all, in the echo of the voices is music. Sweet, soulful music that follows along with your pulse until you’re certain the music is a part of you.

Altogether, the light and sound come together as static broadcast through the seam, transporting you along with them.

“Michael!” A little girl’s voice echoes through the light waves.

A small boy runs through a hallway before he's suddenly on a stage with a microphone in his hand. His round, almost black eyes reflect a cheering crowd. Flashes of light, and the boy is older, in shimmering suits with sweat dripping down his neck and chest. Next, his face has taken its shape with age, his hair is longer, and his complexion has changed, but it’s undoubtedly him. Instances of him with his brothers, of him running through a grassy field, of him in a hospital bed. The young boy returns, but this time, he weeps quietly into his pillowcase, and the image morphs into his older yet childlike face. He cries in the mirror, he cries alone in a car, he cries with his back turned to a crowd. He cries in bed again.

“Just leave me alone,” he says to the darkness, to no one at all. No one can hear him—besides you.

“Please, leave us alone.”

The image glitches into the next. He's older again—you can hear it in his voice as he sings into a microphone. The bright colors of the stage carve a shadow of his figure into the air.

“Michael! Michael! Michael!”

Crowd chant his name. It comes through grainy police radio. It’s cried out throughout the world. You can hear it repeated in every voice that had ever uttered it, ricocheting in the theater walls until his name is the only thought your mind can fathom. You watch as these moments of his life, etched into the eternal seam of light, flash before you just as your own life had minutes ago.

You watch his tears, his joys, his secrets, and you wonder, what could your life be in the presence of his?

And you surrender to it. Tears well up in the corner of your eyes, though they never fall. You give yourself to the essence, and you feel as if you are floating.

When the light ends, you feel something begin inside you—a chill, that becomes an uneasiness in your stomach, but alongside it is vigor. Your skin feels indescribably different, and it frightens you before you realize you no longer don the industrial jumpsuit. Instead, a pair of bootcut jeans and a sleeveless blouse hug your figure.

Light returns to the theater through gold sconces, and the room is rendered unrecognizable. What was once gray pads on the walls are now gold wainscoting. Your seat is lined with a crimson velvet, and the air has a certain staleness as if it had been trapped in this room forever.

In your hand is a large leather satchel. Inside, you find an array of identification documents, envelopes of cash, a thick folder, sunglasses, and a tiny, golden pin adorned with a boldened TL.

Thank you for your service.

With no other choice, you move from your seat and make your way to the black doors at the end of the theater. Through their round windows, you can see an oddly unfamiliar light. When you enter the lobby, you can hardly adjust to the harsh light. You blindly stumble towards the front doors and quickly fasten the sunglasses around your head. Suddenly, everything becomes clear.

The street roars with speeding cars. A cool breeze amid the hot air smells faintly of salt. It’s clear and easy to breathe. A few people pass by on the sidewalk—a couple, a group of skaters, a runner, an old man with a cane. They all glance, some longer than others, but they continue on nonetheless as if you were not an imposter on their time.

Time. What’s the time?

No phone. No calendar or reminders app. Not even a wristwatch. Just the stupid corporate pin that taunted you from the depths of your bag.

You sigh, and when you inhale, you nearly choke on the air—the clearest, purest air you've ever felt. The taste of it was nothing at all. No smoke, no dirt, no chemicals, even despite the industrious setting around you. You breathed it again, and again, like you'd never breathed before.

Turning on your heel to the facade of the theater. Palace is emboldened in cursive, white lettering above the marquee, which lists various films: "King Ralph", "Sleeping with the Enemy", "Silence of the Lambs". And below the list, in smaller letter cards, reads the answer to your question—the undeniable proof that you were no longer in the present.

2/29/1991.