A Time Traveller’s Fable - Chapter 1

Lily

A Time Traveller’s Fable - A novel by Pete Brennan

Chapter 1 - Lily

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Lily hated school. Even more, she hated tests. Especially mathematics tests. She wasn’t worried about failing at all, as she knew she would pass. If she wanted to, she could use her ability to get the joint highest score in the class. All she had to do was copy off that teacher's pet and brainiac, Ricky. He always got top scores in mathematics tests, rarely missing an answer, so copying off him would guarantee near perfect marks. But near perfect would never do for Lily. 

Near perfect would raise suspicions as to how she had achieved such a score, as would submitting an identical test paper to Ricky. So rather than fully plagiarising the model student’s score, Lily planned to steal three answers from every four questions off Ricky’s paper and guess the forth. That should give her a respectable passing score of no more than seventy five percent on the test, providing Ricky was on expected form, and also avoid detection for her cheating.

The test and passing it were not the reason that Lily was particularly hating school so much this afternoon. On the contrary, her unique and infallible form of cheating made passing such tests trivially easy in fact. Ever since her powers first manifested, she had used them in school and every other walk of life to get ahead in any way she could. The problem was that it took SO DAMN LONG! 

She had to wait for Ricky write down a solution to a problem, draw a circle on her notepad, wait for the teacher to turn his back, stand up without drawing attention to herself, walk over to just behind Ricky, peak over his back and memorise the solution and his workings then jump back in time to just after she drew the circle. 

She had tried a few times to memorise entire pages before but it had proved impossible as she normally only got a quick glance before Ricky noticed her and shielded his paper with his hands or the Teacher started shouting at her. Such incidents happened almost every time before Lily jumped backwards, and they often involved the teacher or Ricky remonstrating and screaming ‘What the Hell do you think you're doing’? Lily would normally reply with a customary ‘Get fucked’ or a ‘none of your fucking business, dipshit! ’ before jumping back to the last time she finished drawing the circle on her test paper. It made the failed jump bearable; telling her teacher or his pet where to stick it, knowing she could erase it all and start again. 

She would do all of this again and again, repeating the whole process with every new question. But every jump back in time prolonged the length of her day's work of passing this test and, as she could only realistically gather one answer at a time, this made for laborious and time-consuming work. In a moment of weakness, she had briefly thought it might have been quicker to actually study for the test, but this thought passed almost as instantly as it had arisen.

Lily didn't much care about grades or passing the test in the slightest but with the rest of her grades slipping, and the possibility of her flunking out was looming on the horizon if they didn't improve, she had to pass. She was an orphan and a ward of the newly formed state whose food and board was contingent on her progressing satisfactorily in her education. And, as she had been informed at her last review, she was all out of chances. 

Her teacher knew how smart she was in reality and he had made it abundantly clear that he, the school board and the state had lost all patience with her. Nothing but a pass on this test would cut it. Pass, or she was out. She didn't know for sure what actually happened to orphaned kids who flunked out of school, but she knew they were never seen again. And judging by the way the new government handled every other matter of business, she knew it wouldn't be anything good. 

Lily was no stranger to being an outcast however, as she was constantly being picked on for being the only kid in school whose powers had not come in yet. At 15 years of age, this was deeply unusual and fellow students were not shy about letting her know about it. She had been subjected to all the screenings and blood tests the new regime frequently used and they all said she was indeed ‘Empowered’, (lucky for her given the fact that all who failed the screening tests were ‘disposed of’) and her powers will one day manifest. She was apparently just a late bloomer. A rarity, but it happens. 

She could never tell them the truth, of course. Time travel? It's a myth, right? A scientific impossibility. No-one would believe her anyway. Only those loony conspiracy theorists believed in ‘Time Travelling Empowered’ people. And if someone did actually believe her that would undoubtedly be worse. 

So she played along with the late bloomer narrative and took every last bit of ridicule and bullying. Several times over the years she had nearly cracked and revealed she already had her powers, but she always thought better of it at the last moment. Better bullied than dead or experimented on, she thought. 

On occasion her tongue would slip and she would reveal too much in conversation with some of the more friendly kids, and she would have to jump back a few minutes to undo her misspeaking. Once, she refused to speak to one of the other girls for nearly a whole day on behalf of some insult she had thrown at Lily during an argument they had had a recess that morning. She came to the embarrassing realisation that she was remembering something that had in fact never happened, as she had rewound time to avoid the argument entirely. Lily, who was not powerful enough to mulligan the whole day, tried to apologise to the girl for giving her the cold shoulder. But she couldn’t explain what had really happened as that would mean revealing too much, and her sorry fell on deaf ears. The damage was already done, and that girl and Lily never spoke again. 

So the hours ticked away during the mathematics test and Lily’s notepad filled up with the crudely sketched circles, (the teacher never understood Lily’s nervous tick of doodling circles whenever she sat a test). She had no idea how long she had been sitting this ‘45 minute’ test. She thought for at least 4 hours, but had no way to be sure. She estimated she had drawn over two hundred and fifty circles for a 75 question test. So many failed attempts at securing a viable answer. She was mentally exhausted. 

When the end of day bell rang she handed in her paper with the rest of the students and headed home. Back to the orphanage with all but the luckiest few of her classmates who had at least one family member who had survived the ‘Last War of Mankind’. 

[Next: Chapter 2]