Chapter 25

We stepped through the gateway and into a world that’s a bit hard to describe.

Why is it hard to describe? Well ... have you ever played the fallout games? Where the world is a giant dust ball and all the buildings are ruins ... Think of that. Yeah, that’s what it looked like on the other side. We stepped out onto a street that I would’ve known, had it not been a dust ball. It was my street. And It took me looking around to realize it. I was able to figure it out from small things, like locations of hydrants, certain house numbers that were still present.

“Oh god.” I said finally figuring it out.

“Where is this?” She asked.

“Well, we’re on my street, but ... I’ve never been to this world before.” I said looking around.

“Well, it should do us better than the last place. There’s useable shelter here.” She said pointing at my house.

“Yeah, and we can jump back to other worlds for food and water, right?” I asked sarcastically.

“Okay so it’s not the best but it came from your data.” She said as we walked to what was once my house.

We stepped inside. The roof had fallen in on the kitchen, but the furniture was all still there. She took a seat on the old couch as I headed to the bedrooms to find anything of use. I started with my room. Weird thing was, it looked like MY bedroom. It had my television, or at least the old shell of it. The bed was rotted out, but minus the rot and the slight stench, it was my room. Next I headed to Heather’s room. Same basic thing, but oddly enough, I found her diary. It was still in decent condition. I checked Kimmy’s and Donnie’s room next and found Kim’s diary. With the books in hand, I headed to Mom’s room only to find the roof had collapsed in there too, same with the other rooms. Finally, I headed to the end of the hall and checked the bathroom. Everything, minus the rot seemed the same, so I headed back to the Livingroom.

“What’d you find?” She asked.

“My sisters’ diaries.” I said softly.

“Still here?” She said.

“Yeah.” I said. “It’s odd, I mean the rot of the furniture suggest some time has passed.”

“Standards of this type, I’d say 10 years or so ... the roof collapsing could’ve been something else. From the state of things, I’d say some sort of devastation hit the area.” Tessa explained as I opened Heather’s diary and leafed through it. “Wait, isn’t it a violation of privacy to go through someone’s diary?”

“Not with me, these are my sisters, remember? We were having sex, being intimate...” I started.

What I found was mind boggling. I stopped on a page saying that there was some experimentation gone wrong, and the news was saying it was my fault. I had been killed in the blast ... I had been killed? I leafed backwards and found the date that Heather slept with Ji. Then back to when I had brought Tabitha back. The days were described in detail and they were the same ... was this the future? I leafed through until I found a date that I supposedly returned and grabbed Tessa’s generator.

“What are you doing? That’s property of...” She started as I looked at the dials and my expression changed.

“When were you born? What year, Tessa?” I asked blankly.

“I don’t know! I’m from 5282, why?” She asked.

“You ever wonder why my DNA only slightly matched that guy that killed all those people? Like I was his great great grandparent or something?” I asked.

“No, DNA tests can be flawed still. The database can be corrupted, or the sample could be read wrong...” Tessa said.

“When was the last time you saw it that way?” I asked.

She got a blank look on her face.

“You don’t know, because you’ve never seen a flaw, have you? Your tech is that far advanced. Far enough advanced that you were able to have a gateway generator within hours of my arrest.” I pointed out. “Where mine took a super genius to make.”

“What are you saying?” Tessa asked.

“Your universe is a future to mine.” I said.

“That’s impossible.” Tessa said.

“You said you were born in 5282.” I said pulling my wallet from my pocket. “During your questioning, you, and your fellow officers never once asked for my identification. I kept wondering why, and I think I just realized why. In your world, you don’t use such archaic things, and therefore none of my information is on file for you.”

I opened the wallet and pulled out my license and handed it to her. She looked at it and her face went white.

“No, this ... this ... this is ... is ... is ... is impossible.” She stuttered out.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re not Joshua Samuel Jacobs, but Joshua Timothy Swartz. This has to be a forgery. You can’t be him. You can’t be the same guy.” She said.

“I don’t get it.” I said as she looked up from the license to me, her eyes wide.

Had she been standing, she would’ve fallen back. She looked like she had just seen the most horrific thing in her life. She was a cop, and emotionless during our questioning session. But here she was, aghast at seeing my information, and looking like she was about to cry.