Page 7 of Harbinger of Destiny

“Can you spare some food? Just a little?” he asked, his voice almost timid.

She sensed that he hated begging, and he rarely asked her, even though he often saw her walk by with food in her hand. Their eyes met, and in that moment, she knew he needed the food more than she did.

Amy approached him and bent down, placing the container in his lap. “Here, it’s not much, but it’s good. I had some earlier,” she lied, while her stomach growled in protest.

“Thank you,” he said with a smile. “God bless.”

“Have a good night,” she said and turned around to see her bus approach. She got on it and closed her eyes until she reached her destination. The apartment she shared with five other girls was in a large apartment building in Westwood, close to UCLA’s campus. She would have loved to attend the university, but her meager funds only allowed her to attend a community college.

Don’t reach for the stars, Amy, she warned herself, or you might get burned.

Arriving at the apartment, she went straight to the kitchen to heat up the pizza slices she kept there. She opened the fridge, but the box was gone. She turned around, looked at all surfaces, but it was nowhere to be found. With dread she opened the trash, and there, torn up, lay the cardboard box, empty.

She heard a sound from the door and looked up. Paula, one of her roommates stood there. “What happened to my pizza?”

“I’m a vegetarian, I didn’t eat it.” The girl shrugged. “Tracy’s boyfriend was here earlier. He might have eaten it.”

Amy’s jaw tightened.

“What’s the big deal anyway? That pizza was already two days old.” Then Paula just turned around and left the kitchen.

Amy just stood there, forcing down the tears that welled up. Frustration, helplessness, and hunger collided inside her. Today, she didn’t have the strength left to fight her emotions, to fight the anger and the injustice. She made it to her room and locked the door, before tears ran down her cheeks like a flash flood. She didn’t fight them any longer. She was too tired to fight. Tomorrow, she would start again, but tonight, she allowed herself to be weak and wallow in her pain.

4

ENTER THE TIME TRAVELER

Santa Monica, Wednesday, April 2, 2025

Joshua Fletcher had arrived in Los Angeles a week earlier. He was in no rush to make contact with the woman assigned to him. She wasn’t going anywhere. Instead, he used the time to get himself set up. He used his charm and the corporate payment apps he’d been issued to secure a cool studio apartment with a partial ocean view just off San Vicente Boulevard, where boutiques and restaurants lined the broad street.

From the apartment, he could walk to all amenities, which was important, because he’d never learned to drive a car. The one-week training on life in 2025 hadn’t included driving lessons. Very few people still knew how to drive a car. Since cars were self-driving in 2085, there was no need for it. It was a shame though, because when he looked at the different cars driving down the streets of Santa Monica, particularly those that had no roof—which were apparently called convertibles—he would have liked to experience what it was like to feel the wind in his hair while driving around without a destination.

Cruising, he’d overheard a group of young guys his own age call it. Or rather, cruising for chicks. Apparently, cars in 2025 were chick magnets. Maybe he should get one. It couldn’t be all that hard to drive. Besides, he had a California driver’s license. A fake one, but it would pass muster. The more Joshua thought about it, the better the idea sounded.

Why the instructors at the Institute for Time Travel hadn’t thought of this was beyond him. After all, his mission was to seduce a young woman so she would travel to the future with him. This meant that he had to be more desirable than his competition, and from what he’d observed so far, every eighteen-year-old guy in Los Angeles had a car. It wouldn’t exactly be sexy if Joshua went on a date with the woman assigned to him using a bus. What was her name again?

In the privacy of his apartment, Joshua tapped on his wrist and opened up his holocom, the communication device every person over the age of five wore. A hologram popped up and hovered over his arm. There she was: Amy Brooks. She was pretty in a girl-next-door kind of way. The few pictures he’d been able to download to his holocom before his departure were taken when she was fifteen or sixteen years old. Dr. Mandell, the instructor who’d gone over the details of his mission, had told him that no other photographs of the girl were available. Apparently, she wasn’t active on social media, and didn’t have a driver’s license or passport.

However, the picture Joshua now looked at showed promise. By now, at age nineteen, Amy should have bloomed into a pretty woman, not stunningly beautiful, not like Kelly, but maybe that was better. Stunningly beautiful women could turn into cold-hearted ice princesses. Joshua had no intention of dealing with somebody like that ever again. This time he would be the one to terminate the relationship, not the woman.

But first things first.

It wasn’t hard to find a car dealership. There were plenty along Wiltshire Boulevard in Santa Monica. However, he realized very quickly that purchasing a brand-new car was out of the question. The prices were beyond the limit allowed on his payment apps, a limit the technical staff at the Institute for Time Travel had set. It was meant to protect the time travelers from being exposed.

The payment apps were linked to large corporate accounts in existence in 2025. They had been chosen from an array of companies whose accounting methods were less than stellar and where charges would remain undetected for months, before getting flagged for fraud. Because fraud it was. However, there was no other way for the time travelers to finance their stay, since very little paper money printed before 2025 was still available in 2085.

With a new car out of his price range, Joshua went to the first used-car dealership he found. Rick’s Rides the sign said. Joshua walked into the lot with several rows of various cars parked close together. Big signs with prices in the windshield of each car made it easy to narrow down his choices.

“You look like a man on a mission.”

At hearing the male voice, Joshua whirled around. A balding man in blue pants and a checkered jacket approached, his hand stretched out in greeting. Joshua hesitated. In the future, people didn’t shake hands anymore. It curbed spreading diseases. But humankind in 2025 hadn’t learned that lesson yet.

The man didn’t seem to mind that Joshua didn’t shake his hand and smiled instead. “I’m Rick. What can I help you with?”

“I’m looking for something… you know… for cruising.”

“Ah, of course, I think I have the right thing for you. A total bargain. And in such good shape.” Rick waved at Joshua to follow him to the far corner of the lot. “There it is. I haven’t sold it yet, because I’m waiting for the right person. Somebody who’ll appreciate the beauty of this car. A young man like you.”