Time For Second Thoughts || One Quirk Later #2

It's been two weeks since June's One Quirk Later prompt, and while I'm not entirely sure about what I've written, what I've got is what I've got. *shrugs wildly*

(also this makes the third post this week. I haven't done that since I was but a baby blogger, flailing wildly into cyberspace. scary memories.)

Let's jump straight in and talk afterwards, shall we?

Time For Second Thoughts (and third, and fourth...)

 

It's not the first time Bobbie's seen a spot beside her abruptly go fuzzy and realised that something, something she's done or said has been bad enough that her future self has moved past regret and into Actually Doing Something.

...if she's honest, it's not the hundredth time, either.

But normally! Normally it's just. One corner of the room she can't see, one dead spot in the background noise.

Now she's standing in the middle of the study, surrounded by bookshelves, listening to the unnatural silence of the room and wondering how the whole place can be vaguely fuzzy. Exactly how many times did Future Her feel the need to return to this event?



Probably this means she should leave. Abandon the plan, abandon the information she knows is in here somewhere, accept that she's going to have to put several more years or maybe decades into figuring out time travel. After all, she evidently figures it out at some point. If this particular day and room and plan have bothered her future self—future selves?—so much that she repeatedly returned, it might be best to reconsider.

Or. Alternatively. She could... not do that.

The desk's drawers are locked. That's fine. So is the study door. (Bobbie has developed certain skills in her two decades of life. More importantly, she has collected gadgets.) She has the first drawer open in under ten seconds; the lock was supposed to need a fingerprint, but its programming can't be too complex if it fell to the tiny, modified EMP.

Stationery. A stapler. Business envelopes. A box full of black pens, the kind she's fond of herself for the easy way they glide. Hopefully the next drawers will have better contents.

The door creaks behind her.

Bobbie spins. There's no one there, nothing but a blur where she knows what she can't see, and then the door clicks shut as though nothing's happened.

She turns back to the desk, and the drawer below the first is open now, just an inch. She yanks it out to the full extent of its runners.

It's empty.

Well, not entirely. There's a couple of limp dust bunnies in the back, and a gnawed-on pencil stub rolling around.

The door handle rattles. This time she doesn't take her eyes off the lock she's working on.

The third drawer doesn't have what she's after, but it looks like she's getting close. There's letters and receipts and even one lonely blueprint for a bicycle which, as far as she can tell from the diagrams, is supposed to be able to ride across water. Or possibly lava, although that inspires a few questions.

She moves on to the top drawer on the right hand side. This is more like it. There's pages and pages of notes written in a cramped scrawl, dense with technical-looking text. She hauls the entire lot out of the drawer and dumps them on the desk—and receives a not-insignificant blow to the back.

It's a book. There's a book, lying on the heavy carpet, pages splayed. Her head jerks up and she dodges another with only seconds to spare.

"Come on!"

The third book, appearing abruptly from the blurred spot in front of the floor-to-ceiling shelves, hits the arm she's thrown up instinctively.

"Why are you—"

Two books at once, from either end of the shelves. Both hardcover. One has shiny metal corners, and that's the one which hits her in the leg.

A noise behind her, and she spins back to the desk. The pile of papers is gone.
Biting back a shriek of frustration, Bobbie opens the next drawer with a little less care for the silky golden wood than she had previously shown. Yes, it's a nice desk, but she's so done with this hunt for information.

And this drawer? Isn't empty, although it has obviously been emptied.

There's a single sheet of paper, folded into thirds. No dust. Bobbie flicks it open.
It's the same scrawl as before, but less dense, the kind of loose letters that come with haste and a less-than-ideal writing surface.

Stop looking inside my desk.

And Bobbie would have been more than happy to ignore the note completely, never mind that it's obviously for her. (Was a scribbled note supposed to deter her when the locks on the door did not? Honestly.)

Except this time, she realises that she recognises the handwriting.

The heavy silence sitting on the room seems wary but also, if she were to hazard a guess, smug.

She reaches across the desk and flips the nameplate around.

Prof. Robina S. Evanslee

...apparently she gave up insisting on the nickname, then.

Bobbie leaves the way she came. (But not without pinching two of those smooth black pens from the stationery drawer, because she really does like them and figures her older self must too, so it's an act of spite as well.)

She might not be the most law-abiding of people—for now, apparently, and isn't that a thought—but she knows better than to play around with temporal paradoxes. And a causal loop is not something she's willing to open.

There'll be time enough to cause trouble later.

• • • • • • •

Me: Same deal as the last story: does it make sense?? is
 it too confusing? do you have any idea what's going on???

Sister 1: Nope, I get what's going on.                              

Me, dubious:                                                                    

Sister 1: ...I read Artemis Fowl. I can handle your story.

• • • • • • •

For everyone who hasn't read the Artemis Fowl series, firstly, why not?? they're hilarious. Secondly, I have no idea if this story makes sense. But it's what I've written.

(Thirdly: I didn't really use the middle picture?? I'm disappointed in me too, because I was looking forward to the possibilities in that one?  But I was inspired by the mix of eras in the non-cordless phone and the overlaid messages, and that's what actually made this a semi time-travel story.)

• • • • • • •

Joining the One Quirk Later Society: The Temperamental Writer! Her self-described default writer setting is "a) brothers, b) angst, c) a bit of banter, and d) picturing a vaguely sci-fi world but you can’t really tell from what I actually wrote". So. Obviously I don't even NEED to tell you to go read her story, which is here.

Quirks will be going up on the last Saturday of each month, so the next Quirk will be on 25 July! (at least, my time. Who knows what the time zones will do for the rest of you.) But feel free to use any of the previous prompts! I'll still link to you. ;)


What did you think of Time For Second Thoughts? I'm not entirely sure what's going on with Bobbie, so let me know what you think she'd do. xD also I definitely didn't dredge up a title just before publishing this post. absolutely not. the very idea is ludicrous. What would you like to see from these prompts in the future? Have you done anything lately that's had you wishing for time travel afterwards? Tell me anything!