My name is Remi. I'm 23. I'm a musician. If you live in Los Angeles, you might have heard of my band: the Marionettes. We're sort of a regular in the live circuit. If you like cute girls and punk rock, you should probably check us out. I'm not going to pretend to be humble. We're pretty awesome.
Fuck it. I'm pretty awesome. I love my life. I'm not going to apologize for that. I'm proud of who I am. I'm hot, confident, successful. I just wish that I'd realized it sooner. It took me a long time to figure shit out. I had a rough childhood and long story short: there are better ways for a kid to deal with a divorce than acting out and picking on kids. I've always regretted the insufferable little bitch I was, but I also know that it came from a place of real suffering.
If it sounds like I'm just waxing poetic, though, I'm not. You see, the year is 2030 and well, time travel is a whole thing. Discovered less than two years ago, it has completely rocked society. Technological progress is exponential when you can information-share *backwards*. Hundreds of millions of man hours have been devoted to perfecting the process and safeguarding its use. Every field of science from quantum mechanics to nuclear power have seen breakthroughs almost on the daily, and the governments of the world are struggling to keep up with all the changes that keep hitting us. People are calling it the 'Singularity'.
Even regular people can get in on the action now, although this new and boutique industry has all kinds of regulations. It's not the golden ticket to infinity that people thought it would be, at least for us plebs. Can't trust the masses with anyone remotely dangerous, you know?
The rules are hammered into you when you're going through the registration process. To provent anyone from damaging the timeline, a traveler may not interact with anyone except *their past self.* You must carry a device that somehow pre-emptively records your conversations and loudly censors any information that may allow people to significantly alter the timeline. You may not travel to any two points in time that are less than five years apart. You may not travel to any point earlier than you have already been.
So, like I said: not that great. But I'm also kind of glad that no one is accidentally going to bring about mecha-Hitler or erase me from existence. Plus, it's still pretty awesome. I'm actually going to be able to help little me out. My dad was in the military (which might explain a couple of my piercings...), so when my parents got divorced, things were extra shit. My mom got kicked out of base housing and I got thrown into a whole new city just in time to start junior high school. They actually timed it that way, as if finalizing the paperwork over summer vacation would somehow make things easier on me.
I still remember the night my mom told me that it was really happening. There wasn't going to be any magical solution to their problems. I was eleven years old. I was a month out of elementary school. We *would* be filling those boxes in the living room and I would *not* be seeing any of my friends in school next month. I remember the taste of my own snot in the pillow I cried into all night.
Now, time travel is the very definition of an exact science. You can choose when and where down to the meter and millisecond. I chose that night. I chose my bedroom closet. Cracking the door, I peer into my childhood bedroom and am hit with a tidal wave of nostalgia. 'I' am already asleep. My bed is a disheveled mess, the sheets still damp with tears.
I have to be careful about I introduce myself, but the company has provided a script. They've gamed out my younger self's reactions for the first three exchanges using recursive quantum branching, whatever that is. All I have to do is follow through with the script and deliver them with something approaching authenticity.
I crouch down by the bed. I brush aside her messy auburn hair, sticky with snot and tears. I say while she's just beginning to stir: "Remi, wake up. I'm from the future."
"Yeah, right," she mutters into her pillow, still half asleep. She shoves my hand away.
"No, seriously. Wake up. I'm you. You have to see this. You're *awesome*."
Another angry moan, but soon an eye cracks open. Then it's just like they said it'd be. She screams. She lurches away, scrambling to the far side of the bed and clutching the blankets to her scrawny little body in raw, instinctual fear. "Who the fuck are you?!" she squeals.
I knew all of this would happen, and it's still unbearably awkward. This little girl is staring at me like I'm a fucking criminal here to... I don't know? How real is an eleven-year-old's imagination? Do they have Adult Fears yet? I fucking hope not. I try to smile honestly. No creeper energy allowed. They were very specific about that. "I'm you!" I announce, all celebratory and smiles. "Don't you recognize yourself all grown up?! I'm from the future!"
And just like they predicted, she just stares. She stares long as hard as I stand up straight, hands out at my sides like some kind of ridiculous princess, and do a little spin. Denim shorts. Fishnet tights. Choker. I am a 5'1'' adorable little firecracker with bright green eyes and just all the spunk. Boys love me. Fans love me. Hopefully, kids love me, too. I don't usual deal with them.
"...You're *from the future?*" she eventually says, and not in disbelief. The script worked.
"Yes, Remi. The future. Like, with lasers and stuff," I state all light and fun. I'm not even lying. There are lasers now. It's sort of a problem. "What do you think are the chances that someone that looks *just* like you, but older, hotter, and totally badass, shows up in *your* room in the middle of the night and *isn't* from the future? Pretty close to zero, right?"
She just nods dumbly.
"Right?! Plus, I have *this*."
I almost fail to pull a little black notebook out of my back pocket. I could have worn looser fucking pants, but this is supposed to be a power play. The cover is old and frayed, its thin spine twisted and the whole thing folded in half to fit into what the fashion industry has collectively decided count as pockets, but see recognizes it instantly. I can see it in those big, bulging green eyes.
"Where did you get that?!" she cries, finally unsticking herself from the darkest corner of her bedroom wall. This is the journal in which little elementary-school-me had confided all of her deepest troubles and darkest fears. Granted, when I skimmed through it a few days ago, it all seemed like a bunch of trivial preteen angst, but to the girl suddenly scrambling forward to snatch it out of my hand? It's a life story.
She yanks it open. The pages are all full. She skips to the end. Just like the one stashed in the back of her little study desk, this one is almost full. It has a year and a half of neat little messages, each named and dated because that's how they did it on TV. Among the final entries, she finds the one she'd written this evening: angry scribbles about how her mother (and only her mother) had announced the finalized divorce. She wanted her to have time to process before dad got back from deployment, so there would be less drama while he helped them move. It had been a speech, not a discussion, and the discoloration from her tears are still discernable on the pages.
It was a little embarrassing clearing this thing with the eggheads back in the present. But there were only a couple pages after that, mostly about the move to the Los Angeles. I grew out of diaries after that. It will be fine to let her read it. Actually, it's lowkey cute. She scooches over and clicks on her little reading lamp and everything. She reads every word with all of the narrow-eyed scrutiny of a detective looking for clues.
"Obviously, you're going to be moving this month," I say, trying to break the silence that has descended and threatens to devour the mood. I can't clean that fact up with a cheery smile, so I don't even try.
"They don't even apologize," she gapes, and I have to avoid choking up at how her little voice cracks when she says it. Of course she found that part.
"Mom and dad are going through a lot of shit right now," I explain. "There's stuff they aren't telling you. They're suffering too. And you know dad. He never apologizes for anything. He just tries to fix it."
"Which is why he's taking the weekend to help us move..."
"Yeah..."
I chose this night because I knew for fact that I was all cried out. As she sits there, unable to look at me (basically a stranger), I know how empty and directionless she's feeling. I know that she *wants* to start crying again. But it also seems like I was right. She's too exhausted to find the tears.
"Mind if I, uh, yeah, I'll just... why don't you scooch over?" I say, almost appreciating the authenticity that comes with a total lack of eloquence. I push my way onto the bed, trying and failing to do the whole friendly-big-sister thing.
"Look, here's the thing. I came back here because there's something that I wanted you to know. So when I say this, I want you to listen carefully and really try to *get it*, okay?"
"...Yeah?"
Fuck. She even sounds like me.