The History Project
She Pushed the "Abort" Button, the mission was a complete loss. She slumped back in her chair awaiting the signal from mission control, demanding what the hell went wrong. She thought for a minute, but still couldn't come up with a reason they'd accept.
"Mission contr-" there was a staticy interruption, "Come in Lunar scout vessel." She leaned forward and hit the button to shut off the radio with her fist.
'Damn it, I'm not ready to tell you what went wrong yet' She slumped back into her seat once again. She'd finally found what she was looking for, but couldn't bring herself to destroy it like mission control wanted her to. 'He built this, well rather helped built it, when the lunar mission then got stranded, and they had to improvise. It was his design. He was so smart, and also handsome too...' Her thoughts wandered back to about three months ago. 'Who'd thought that a simple college trip to the past would end like that one?'
The trip had started normal enough. The college history class took a trip back to the 20th century, leaving about a month before Finals. They were going to live among the people of that time for two weeks to learn, observe, and test their knowledge of the time period. She'd ended up in a hotel in San Francisco, in 1999, towards the end of August.
The first day, on her way out of her Hotel room, she ran into him, literally ran into him. They'd each been reading the newspaper; he to know what was going on, she to try to figure out where exactly in time she was; and they walked around the corner colliding head on.
As they apologized, and helped one another up, she caught her breath. 'Isn't that? No, couldn't be, like I'm really going to run into him' and she shook the thought away. Then they both continued on their way.
She didn't see him again until two days before she was due to leave. This time he was wearing his NASA uniform. 'It has to be him,' she thought, and wove through the crowd as inconspicuously as she could. She soon got close enough to read his name patch. It read L. Dandilyon. 'It's him,' she thought.
"Haven't I seen you before?" he asked, interrupting her thoughts. She blinked in surprise, and stopped where she was.
"Yeah," she finally manages to answer. They both stood there for a minute, oblivious to the surrounding bustle of people.
"It might have just slipped my mind, but I don't recall your name..." He finally said, then ran his fingers almost nervously through his blond hair.
"That's 'cause I haven't told you yet... it's Alandra," She replies.
"Alandra... I like that name, it has a distinct ring to it. I'm Lucas." He held out his hand for a handshake, and he put a friendly smile on his face.
She smiled back, and took his hand for the handshake. She realized she was looking him straight and level in the eye, if not slightly looking down at him. 'I knew he was short, but I didn't realize he was this short.' She was short compared to most people in her time, but she'd found she was just a bit above average height for this time period.
"I was just heading out to lunch, would you like to join me?" He questioned.
'It would be so cool if I did, but what if it disrupts the time line, but then again it could be a predestination paradox, and if I don't go I'll be changing the time line, but what could I do to change the timeline by not going, but then again, what could I change by going?'
"If you don't want to go, all you have to do is say no..." He said taking her silence negatively.
"I was just trying to remember if I had anything else I had to do. I'd love to join you for Lunch. Where are we going?" She answered, and mentally reprimanded herself for not deciding faster.
"Well, I had planned on going to this one little cart by Pier 39, but that was before I invited you along, I think this one little cafe overlooking the bay would be better." He told her, and they started walking again.
She stopped herself from correcting him 'It's the Estuary, but in this time they called it the Bay. We probably would too, except the late 21st century in their obsession with correctness, renamed it the Estuary.
"What are you thinking about?" he asked.
"Oh, nothing," she answered.
"You sure? It didn't look like a nothing. It looked like a complete thought."
"Well, actually, I was thinking about the bay, and wondering why it's not called an estuary, because that is what it is."
"I never quite figured that one out, but you never know, they may rename it one day."
"That they might..." she half answered. She was tempted to tell him they will, and it will be mostly because of his great great granddaughter's rallying.
"But it would sound weird to most for a while. But then renaming Candlestick park Three Com Park is still considered weird, and most people still call it Candlestick"
"Uh-huh..." She half answered, she was busier watching him than she was listening to what he was saying.
"What'd you think when they did that?" he asked, catching her off guard.
"Huh?" She snapped back to listening to what he was saying.
"What'd you think when they renamed Candlestick?" he repeated.
"I'm not from around here, and I'm not a fan of Baseball..." She replied. 'And as far as I knew until history class in college it had always been Three Com, and it'd been torn down over a 100 years before I was born.'
"Where are you from?" he asked, and they walked into the cafe that was their destination.
'I was born in a colony on Venus, and moved to a station orbiting Saturn when I was three. Now I'm in college on Mercury right now... but I can't tell you that...' she thought following him towards a table.
"Is it really that hard of a question? Or were you abducted by Aliens, and don't know what planet you were on?" he asked with a joking smile.
"Something like that." She sat down at the table, and he sat across from her.
"And what'd they do to you?"
"Nothing, they just wanted to talk."
"That's unusual, they normally perform tests, and experiments."
"They said they accidentally picked up the wrong specimen, but they couldn't return me for a while... Then you know what? They dropped me off in the wrong time period. And they told me they'd only send me back to my correct time period if I find, and seduce a man by the name of Lucas Dandilyon, who's one of the members of NASA, and it seems I may be goin' home sooner than I thought..."
"That's quite a story. And who am I to keep you from gettin' home? Not that I'm not gonna make you work a little at it," he replied, and then winked with a chuckle.
"I can live with that... Even if you aren't buyin' my story." She smiled.
"But seriously, where are you from?" He leaned forward, put his elbow on the table, and rested his chin on his hand. She gazed into his green eyes.
"Well, I'm from...Well, where are you from?"
"You're avoiding the question, aren't you?"
"I didn't study for the pop quiz." She half smiled.
"In other words, you don't want to tell me?"
"It's not that I don't want to, it's that I can't."
"And why can't you?"
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, 'Where's the damn waitress or waiter?' She thought. "I can't tell you that either..." She looked around, the cafe was practically deserted. The only other people who could be seen was an older couple, and a ditzy looking blond girl, probably about 17, with a waitress's apron on.
"You work for the FBI or CIA or somethin', don't you?"
"No, if I did, don't you think I'd have my cover story worked out already?"
"Maybe they didn't give you one, and you're supposed to seem like a nut case or something."
"If you think I'm supposed to be a nut case, I'll tell ya the truth. I was born in a colony on Venus, moved to a station in orbit around Saturn when I was three, and lived there until I moved to Mercury for college, which I'm on a field trip for history class these two weeks, and I'm leaving two days from now to go back." And she looked at him, head tilted to one side, awaiting a response.
"Well, I've been on the moon," he said, almost braggingly.
"I went there on my sixteenth birthday. Aren't the earth rises breath taking?" She released a sigh of relief, he seemed to be taking this as a joke. 'Good, my professor won't kill me,' She thought.
"Have you two been waiting to order long?" The waitress walked up, tossed her blond hair over her shoulder, then pulled a disgusting wad of colorless chewed gum out of her mouth.
"Yes we have, but it's okay... Crystal." Lucas told her, reading her name tag.
"Okay, so like, what do you want?" She remember the wad of gum in her hand, glanced around, then stuck it under the table Alandra and Lucas were sitting at. Alandra wrinkled her nose in disgust. Lucas rolled his eyes.
"What's the soup of the day?" He questioned, and Alandra looked at the little stand up menu on the table.
"Um... I think our regular cook's out today, so... like I think there's no soup today," Crystal answered, obviously having to put some hard thought into that sentence.
"Stupid ditz," Alandra muttered. Crystal glanced at her, but said nothing.
"I think I'll have a BLT and a root beer," Lucas said. Crystal looked at him, and smiled.
"Okay... the BLT's the sandwich with bacon, and tomato, and lettuce, right?" She asked him.
Lucas sighed, "Yes."
"Okay, chips or fries with that?" She scribbled on her tablet which was now in her hand.
"Fries."
"Okay, and you ma'am?" Crystal turned to Alandra, cold glare in place on her face.
'Ma'am? I can't be more than five years older than her, and she's callin' me ma'am?' Alandra sighed. "I'll have what he's havin'."
"Okay." Crystal scribbled on the pad again, flashed another smile at Lucas, than walked off.
"This is what they replaced the last chic with? At least the last one was prompt and polite, also not a total ditz. So what if she dressed like a slut, and was a little on the Gothic side?" Lucas muttered.
"Is it usually this uncrowded?" Alandra inquired.
"No, usually it's packed to the gills. But the last time I was here, they had a different Waitress. I can see why it's so deserted now. What were we talking about?"
"The earth rise on the moon, I asked aren't they breath taking?"
"That doesn't even begin to describe..." He looked like mentally he was back on the moon again, if even that close to earth. "Right after I'd been on the moon for the first time, and had first seen the earth rise, I returned to my girlfriend of three years. She broke up with me only moments before I would have asked her to marry me. She said I was never around enough..."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"It was probably for the better though. She was always a nervous wreck whenever I was on a mission, from the moment I went into isolation before to the moment I was let out of quarantine afterwards. It probably would have killed her to be married to me. And it would be twice as bad if we'd had kids, she'd worry for them too..." he paused for a few minutes, "Sorry to be dumping this all on you, especially since I don't know you that well."
"It's okay. I don't mind at all." She smiled reassuringly, "I'd listen to you drone on about lima beans if that was the only way I'd ever hear you talk."
"Well, I don't think I'd drone on about lima beans..." He said with a smile.
"Did I just say that out loud?" She blushed a deep crimson.
"How about I tell you something I'm thinking, then we'll both be embarrassed, and neither of us will have more of a problem than the other?"
"Okay... so what are you thinking right now?" She was slowly fading back to her normal color.
"Right now? Well... I was thinking... can't I tell you something else I was thinking?" He was squirming in his seat, his face slowly reddening.
"By trying to avoid answering the question, you've peaked my interest in what the answer might be, so what were you thinking right then?" She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand, with her elbow on the table, an interested look on her face.
"You've got to promise you won't get offended when I tell you."
"Okay, I promise," she answered, then thought, 'He probably thinks I look like a slut in this mini skirt, and low cut tight fitting shirt.'
"Well, I was just thinking that... I was thinking how sexy you look... And how I'd love it if you'd..." He didn't finish, his face now the deepest shade of Crimson humanly possible.
"If I what?" She persisted. "Damn, he's attracted to me, and I to him, and I have to leave in two days. Damn it!"
"I'm guessing you didn't mean to say that out loud either," he commented.
"How much did I just say out loud?" She started to blush again.
"Why don't we leave, and we'll talk back in my hotel room, obviously we aren't going to get any service here." He stood up, and offered her his hand, helping her stand. Then they walked out of the cafe hand in hand.
"Miss Nylsol! Come in. This is mission control." Alandra pulled herself back into the present.
"Sorry mission control, try again? Your signal isn't coming in right or something," she replied, lying. 'If only they knew...' She thought, then remembered having to bribe the surgeon back at boot camp to keep it quiet. 'Only two more weeks of required service, then I can go back to my normal life, though I don't know how normal it'll be. Then it won't matter who knows then.' She smiled. 'If it's a boy, I'll name him after his father... Lucas Nylsol, I like the sound of that.'