The couple stepped up the flight of stairs to their second floor apartment as Amber -- a girl they knew 35 years before -- walked out of her apartment across from theirs.
She looked at the couple, they were old, Amber figured. Probably in their 50s. Pretty old.
"Hi," Amber said as she looked at them. They looked just like Marty and Victoria. Was it Halloween? Amber wasn't sure. She'd spent the previous few days drunk and fucked -- but she was relatively sure she hadn't lost a month of time.
"Good morning," Martin managed. "We're Marty's parents. You must be Amber," he said. It was bizarre to him. To know this woman's future as she was completely clueless.
"You look just like him," Amber said.
"This is my wife," Martin said, introducing Vicki to Amber.
"Hi," Vicki said.
Very creepy, Amber thought. Marty's mother looked just like his girlfriend. She'd read about these kinds of desires in her psycho-sexuality class. Very Oedipus. She hadn't thought Marty was that way, but he was a bit awkward in his intelligence. Maybe Mommy was the only woman who loved him, so maybe he was just looking for a Mommy-clone with Victoria.
Vicki tried to think of something to call herself. Vicki or Victoria -- what she used to call herself -- would have been too strange -- and they hadn't quite figured out how to handle moments when they might be recognized.
"I'm Mrs. Rochester," she managed.
Amber wanted to shake her head to get the cobwebs and cum out ... she'd drank too much alcohol and cum in the past two days. Instead, she just smiled and started walking down the flight of stairs.
"Nice to meet you," she said. "I have to get to class. Hope to see you around," she said -- but she wasn't sure she wanted to.
Martin and Vicki knew that girl's future. She'd die in 1998 in a car crash along an interstate in Memphis, Tenn. She fell asleep at the wheel, careening across Interstate 40 and hitting an oncoming vehicle, killing a minister and scientist in the other car as well. A triple-fatal wreck was Amber's fate. Part of their mission wasn't to change time, yet. This was an experiment. Martin Rochester had figured out the technology of FluX, so he was able to demand the first experiment.
In the year 2023, President Harold Wilson and a handful of the top scientists awaited the results. It was classified Top Secret, messages about it hand-delivered and immediately burned. None of the technology was in any server anywhere. Only the three computers hardwired to one-another to get FluX to work.
Martin and Vicki walked into the apartment. It seemed so, small. They both started laughing uncontrollably as they toured their first apartment together. In their history, this was their experiment. But they'd leave here after the next semester for a place with a single bedroom that they'd start to share after they got married.
They got married in 1990 after their tragedies.
They were here to just get them beyond those few tragedies. That was their only mission. It was a personal one. Dealing with 9/11 and the attacks on Orlando in 2019, those time-travel switches could wait. This one mission, though, was both an experimental one to see how life could be switched -- and if it was worth the tinkering with time. Nobody really knew.
Plus, what do you do? Stop Osama bin Laden? Or go back and stop Adolf Hitler? Go back and end slavery before it begins? Go back and check out the validity of Christ or Buddah? Nobody was really sure.
Thus, the experiment.
"We lived in a small place," Martin said. He looked down at the newspaper. August 31, 1989. Perfect. He took from his nap sack an envelope.
Vicki picked up the phone book and looked up a hotel where they could stay. Check in wasn't until 3 p.m., but they couldn't stay with their younger selves just yet. Plus, this apartment wasn't meant for four; it barely was meant for two.
She called and made the reservation. She looked at her husband as she held the clunky phone that was tied to the wall. How did anyone ever live this way, she thought, a smile coming to her face.
"You are a genius," Vicki said. "I don't believe we are back in 1989. Do you know how horny I was that year? I spent so much time trying to stop myself from myself."
"How did that work out for you?"
"Well, remember how depressed I was that second year we were married because I didn't know what we were doing by just having sex and not having kids?"
"Of course, hon," Martin said. He knew their history all too well. That was part of the reason they were here. To make it so they could reproduce. It's a strong desire in humans.
Vicki sat down on the futon where her younger version had been hamstrung by horniness earlier in the morning. "Come here," she said.
Martin walked over and was about to sit down when she stopped him by holding her hand on his left him. She unbuttoned the button and zipped down the fly on his dockers.
He thought he might need to write this down for his after-action report. Time-travel makes people horny. Very horny.
She looked up at him.