Aiden blinked against the light that shone bright above him. He could hear the voices of people walking around. Casual, they talked of everything that concerned them. Their boyfriends, school work, the weekend that was coming up, all normal things for teenagers in college to talk about.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light that was in such contrast to the dark he had just left, so Aiden simply sat on the ground and waited. He knew the sounds of this place. He was near his old college. A smile broke his lips as he realized at least this time he wouldn’t have to steal a vehicle to try and race here. That jump had been a total waste of time; the police had just thought him crazy and ordered a psychological exam done on him after locking him up. His smile grew larger knowing he could zone in on the correct destination area better now.
With his eyes adjusted, Aiden looked down at his clothes. His jeans were faded and worn, and his blue shirt was in dire need of a cleaning. He raked his fingers through his hair in a desperate attempt to straighten the tangle it had become. With no mirror to see in it was the best he could come up with though. He hoped that the professors wouldn’t take too much of an interest in him and just leave him alone. He needed to stay out of sight, to lay low. The more people he talked to, the less time he had to work. He had a little spare time but it was foolish to waste it.
Standing, Aiden tried again to brush off the worst of the grime and make his clothing look presentable. A glance around the campus told him where he was, and that he had at least five-minute walk to the science lab. Aiden did his best to avoid running straight through the yard knocking everyone over on the way. It was more important that he remained as calm and normal as possible. People seemed to notice things when he jumped back, things that weren’t normal, and no matter what, he had to avoid his past self. That never went well. Aiden shivered with the memory.
The unfamiliar softness of the grass felt alien under his feet. So many things had changed in his future; he had to bring them back. All of them! Grass and plants were becoming so rare in his new world that he had to struggle against the urge to just lay down and feel the cool blades against his face. Aiden focused again and pushed the front doors open to his former, yet oddly, current college.
"How ironic," he thought as he once again set foot on the polished tile floors. "This is where it all started, yet when I am back here and need my magic the most, it doesn’t even work."
Aiden turned to the staircase that worked its way down into the basement of the college. His destination was deep below the building where all the science geeks were working on their experiments and trying to disprove the laws of physics that had stood since before written history. He was a part of some of those experiments. In particular, his past self was working on one that proved the speed of light wasn’t a constant. It was only a theory and one that every single person he had mentioned it to thought him a fool for trying to disprove. Yet he knew even in this past he was on to something. It was a shame that he couldn’t convince his prior self to give it up. When he tried, those timelines had turned out even worse than the one he returned to now. At least when he had left the future he knew, the earth hadn’t been burning.
Aiden shook his head. It wouldn’t do any good to think of those other fragmented timelines now. He had to stay focused. By his calculations, he had only about five hours in this time period before his body in the future came to a stop at the ground and he returned to his own time.
Aiden’s math wasn’t the sharpest in this area but trial and error had done most of the work for him. He had learned that for one second of falling he had about one hour in the past. He had less than five seconds of drop time after all that climbing.
As Aiden listened to his footsteps echo in the stairwell, he couldn't help but think about the magic that he possessed in the future was how little it cared for rules. It would have been funny if it weren't so serious. Math and magic didn’t seem to get along very well. Yet it was the rules of height, distance, and speed, combined with his magic, which brought him back to where he needed to go.
Aiden reached the door he needed to go through and slowly pushed it open, listening for the voices that he hoped wouldn’t be there. He didn’t need to get caught explaining things again; it just took too long. The room was clear, but the lights were on, so Aiden knew someone would be back soon. "Damn, I will have to try and come back in a little bit."
Aiden closed the door being careful not to make a sound. He didn’t want to alert any of the other students. He spun around to head down a normally unused hall to wait for everyone to go home, but he collided with someone coming the other way. All he heard was a squeak and a thump as Jessica hit the floor in front of him. "No. Of all the people!"Aiden had to think quickly. If he had run into anyone else he might have been able to get away with what he was doing here, but Jessica knew him best, after all she was on the top of the list of people he was trying to save.
"Oh, crap! I’m sorry Jess! I didn’t see you there. Are you ok?" Aiden tried his best to hide his face and offered his hand to help her back to her feet.
"Yeah I’m ok, what were you doing in there? I thought you had gone back to your dorm for the day?"
Aiden silently thanked his luck that at least his other self wouldn’t be showing up any time soon. He remembered what he had been doing this day, and knew that he hadn’t planned to come back until late that night. Having an intimate memory of what had happened in the past did help him work around his formal self.
"Umm yeah, well I forgot some of my papers. So I just came back quickly to grab them. I am going to head back up now. Are you leaving?"
Aiden crossed his fingers that Jess would be leaving and he could sneak back down to work uninterrupted.
"No, what you said earlier today has really got me interested. I want to go over that last experiment’s results we did and see if it really is possible to use a laser to increase the speed of light."
Jess reached down to pick up some of the scattered papers that had fallen to the ground beside her but stopped short. She seemed to survey him as her gaze flicked back and forth over him.
"Aiden, you look different. Are you ok?"
Aiden cursed his luck again and bent over to help her shuffle some of the papers back together.
"Yeah I’m ok. Don’t worry about it. I just have something on my mind. Are you sure that you don’t want to just head out for tonight?"
Aiden snuck a glance at Jess to see her reaction; luckily, her eyes were not on him but on the lab door. Aiden had seen that look of drive on Jess’s face before and he knew he was going to be fighting a losing battle, so he decided to act fast. He would not get a chance to do anything in the lab tonight if he didn’t get her out of here.
"No, I can’t stop thinking about those results. I know our last test was inconclusive but…"
Aiden decided to switch tactics. He placed his hand on Jessica’s back, slid it slowly up, and down. "Well maybe you would like to go up to the bar instead and we can talk about the results there."
Jessica’s head spun around and she looked at Aiden again with confusion in her eyes. "You always told me you don’t like to drink."
Aiden switched his grip to Jessica’s hand and started to walk her away from the lab. "Yeah, well something about today just really says I need to have one. Come join me, please?"