99 Balloons

Alaia walked out and was immediately greeted with the thick, bitter scent of burning smoke and rubber. She recoiled and coughed before remembering to put on the oxygen mask that was given to her and other civilians by the leaders in the bunker. After a few moments of hungrily gasping for breath under the mask, she still stubbornly held her eyes shut, even when her coughing fit was long ago remedied. She dreaded opening her eyes again and witnessing the place she called home for so many years in complete and utter ruin, but she reasoned with herself that she couldn’t stand there, blind and rooted to the floor like a statue forever. She clenched her clammy palms, and with a sharp exhale and face set in determination, she reanimated her frozen body and surveyed the landscape in front of her.

Distantly, she could hear exclamations of shock and horror from some and wailing sobs of despair from others. Yes, of course, it wasn’t any secret that everything was destroyed in the battle. Everybody knew that no person or place on earth was spared from the malice of war and death, that anyone that didn’t make it into the bunker did not survive. There wasn’t another adequate shelter for hundreds of miles, so this would’ve been their only chance. The problem was, it was quite different seeing the proof of destruction. Actually seeing it for the first time after five months inside, waiting for it to become safe enough to explore. Before then, it was merely a nebulous thought floating around everyone’s heads, one that they could, and did, ignore. Could you blame them for wanting to escape from reality, when reality was really as cruel and oppressive as this?

The first thing Alaia noticed was that every building was leveled. A person would have fared better in the streets trying to avoid the bombs and attacks, for under, in, or even near a building they would’ve been crushed, or at least trapped for so long without rescue that they would have starved. They were all dead. Her mom, her dad, her friends Vivienne, Karis, Willow, and Callum, all of them. That fateful day before The End, Callum sped off like lightning since their friends weren’t picking up their phones and he had to check on them and bring them to the bunker, to safety, or he’d never forgive himself. He promised a quick return, but never made good on his promise. In fact, he never came back at all. She should’ve understood, especially by now, after so much time to think, that they were gone, but the thought ringing in her head was new and incomprehensible, as if she were learning it for the first time. They were all dead.

She batted that revelation out of her head as soon as it came, telling herself that she was being silly, and that she already knew that. A small voice at the back of her head argued that if she knew, she surely never processed it, but Alaia dismissed it. Because she didn’t want to process it. Still, the anger and self-loathing managed to seep into her consciousness like poison seeps into a bloodstream. Angry for not following Callum, angry for taking so long to understand the gravity of the situation, angry for still not allowing herself to grieve, angry for never allowing herself to feel, but at least it wasn’t grief. At least it wasn't despair that was cutting into her mercilessly.

She droned along, carefully disconnected and detached from everyone and everything she refused to acknowledge, towards the only thing that wasn’t leveled; a faded, gray, soot-covered brick wall. It was leaning at a slight angle against other pieces of rubble, and she pressed the palm of her hand upon it until it was just about welded into the concrete. She observed that its texture was rough and chalky, grounding against her fingers, and concentrated on that. Concentrated on that, and not on her loved ones or her failures, the time she’d wasted keeping her heart at arm’s length when they were still alive and the time she’d never get to spend with them now that they were dead- No, she wouldn’t. If she had it her way she wouldn't for as long as she lived. Instead, she felt along the wall and breathed deeply.

After a few minutes spent focusing solely on the way the coarse blocks made the skin of her palm tingle and sting faintly, suddenly, to her surprise, her hand fell straight through the wall. She floundered like a fish out of water before finally using her right hand to brace herself, and was left staring at the predicament her left hand was in. She blinked slowly, stupidly. Looking at her hand she found that she had, in fact, not put her hand through a hole she didn’t see, but rather put it through a solid brick. She gazed owlishly at the sight. Clearly, she was hallucinating. Confidently leaning her weight on her hand, as if to make a point to herself, her whole body fell through with a yelp, and she braced for impact.
She expected to feel herself hit the ground, only she never did. She felt strangely weightless for several heartbeats, and couldn’t see or hear anything. Her soul felt as if it were floating untethered to her body, a sensation that was actually oddly peaceful rather than terrifying. After an eternity of pleasant nothingness, gradually, her senses returned to her and she snapped her head up with a sharp inhale. Alaia knew two things then; one, she was standing in front of the very brick wall that she had been leaning on earlier, and two, this was most certainly not the place she left a few seconds ago somehow.

It was much louder and a great deal more whole than the silent, ashen remains of the earth she was left in. It looked as if it were completely untouched by war at all, and Alaia stood thoroughly dumbfounded. Carefully, Alaia took off her oxygen mask and inhaled languidly, and found that the air was miraculously clear. She looked around, and it began to register that this place was more subdued than she’d ever seen before in her entire life, more like a town than a city, more filled with family owned businesses as opposed to big corporations, and the technology was prehistoric. It looked just like how her grandparents described it as when they were small… huh. The afternoon sun was smiling down on all those milling about, and as enticing as it was to simply bask in the warmth and cheery glow of natural light after five months of it being hidden away by the bunker and the blanket of ash in the atmosphere, she still had to figure out what was going on.

A woman was walking down the sidewalk Alaia was standing on, so she took the opportunity to ask, curiosity getting the better of her. “Excuse me, what is the year?” The woman openly gawked at the question, but Alaia was staring so intently that she simply had no choice but to answer. “I- uh… 2030?” Alaia’s heart just about stopped. That was 60 years earlier than the calendars kept in the bunker. How on earth..? This had to be a dream. “Thank you so much ma’am, have a good day,” she responded, and ran off like a rabbit from a fox before the woman had the chance to respond. She stopped in an alleyway and caught her breath, mind racing a mile a minute. She knew what she had to do, if she really had gone to the past somehow, and this wasn’t all some elaborate dream. She was almost certain that the latter was true, but she sure didn’t want to give up the opportunity if she were wrong.

This was the year before her grandpa went to college. If she could stop him, if she could nudge him along a different path, maybe… Anxiety clutched wildly at her heart in a vice grip. But how much would it change? No matter. This was necessary, whether she liked it or not. For the greater good, for the fate of the world for goodness sake, was this really a hard choice-? She shook her head, swallowing all of her apprehension and fear, pushing them far down where the light never shines and made up her mind. Her grandfather lived in one quaint home for the whole of his adult years, and Alaia knew its address by heart…

Even with all the homes and buildings she did not recognize, she maneuvered through the streets effortlessly. They were the one thing that was basically unchanged, and if you lived in one palace for long enough, you would eventually, voluntarily or not, memorize all of its twists, turns, and secrets. It was like listening to a song every day for a few years, forgetting about it, and upon playing it once more, realizing that you still remember every single lyric. It had been four years since she trod along that familiar path to her grandfather’s house, four years since the man died of old age, but it was still as easy as breathing. Thank goodness for that, because if she actually had to think about what she was doing, Alaia didn’t know if she would be able to follow through with it.

Once she finally reached the door, her consciousness finally kicked in and was sounding the alarm bells, but she managed to force her hand upon the doorbell. It sang merrily in reply, but the tune was deafening to her ears. “If you’re trying to sell me something, you’d best get onto the next house instead of wasting your time on me,” the man inside responded practically immediately, and continued in a sardonic voice, “I’d love to chat, but I’m busy at the moment.” Alaia’s face scrunched up. She thought for a second that she had, somehow, come to the wrong house. The voice she’d heard was nothing like the quiet, thoughtful, practical grandfather she knew. Finally, after a few seconds of being still as a boulder in her confusion, she cleared her throat and spoke up.

“Uh, no, no selling! I’m…” Well, she hadn’t thought this far. What was she going to say in order to be allowed inside? “Alaia. Alaia Everleigh. A friend of a friend,” she continued, and then an idea sprang up and hit her upside the head, “you know, Harry Thatcher!” Her grandpa regarded him as one of his best friends, and during this time, one of his only friends.

“Hello Henry. I’ve heard a lot about you, and he and I both wanted us to meet! You just weren’t responding through the phone to either of us, so he gave me your address instead.” She gave a fake, but hopefully convincing laugh. “If I know Harry, I’m pretty much certain that this is as much about me meeting you as it is his way of checking up on you. He was busy today, and I’m sure he’s lamenting not being able to come himself.” Her grandpa was notoriously horrible at keeping track of his phone.

“Oh,” exclaimed the man inside, and there was a clamor and rustling. After a bit of waiting outside, the door was opened. “I’m so sorry for not answering any of you, I’ve been a bit busy…” He looked back longingly at his blueprints, like a starving man stares yearningly at food they can’t have, and Alaia could tell very plainly that he would rather be hunched over them once more, closed off from the outside world. This saddened her inexplicably, an irrational part of her brain confused as to why he wasn’t happy to see her. Why he was treating her like a stranger. “Will you come inside?” She snapped back to attention. Those were the words that she had been dreading and hoping to hear. “Oh, yes! Thank you so much, my feet hurt after all that walking…”

They talked of the weather, music, and other such things of little consequence, until they finally came across the thing that mattered; his blueprints. “So, meteorology, huh?” “Yep! Going into college for it soon.” Alaia’s heart pounded fiercely and warningly in her chest, but before her instincts could stop her, she steeled her resolve. “I hear that job’s gonna be a lot less valuable in the future, are you sure?” His head jerked up at that, and her heart sank like a lead balloon. “Excuse me? I’ve never heard that in my life! Where on earth did you hear that?” He sounded offended and mildly annoyed, and Alaia had never heard her grandfather speak like that towards her in her whole life. Every cell in her body was screaming that this was wrong, that this wasn’t really him and that she must be mistaken, that this wasn’t the real him, but it was. It was as much a part of him as his older counterpart was, but she just couldn’t accept it. Her entire being was rejecting it.

“Well, even still, I don’t care if that’s the truth,” he continued, too preoccupied with defending his passion to notice her discomfort. “I’m doing it whether I’ll be prosperous or not. It’s my calling.” “Your calling?” she echoed faintly. Her grandpa always scoffed at the idea. “Uh, yes? Many people do,” he snapped back, and Alaia’s blood ran as cold as ice. This man was nothing like the person she loved. They spent a very long time going back and forth about this, until his face was so red with outrage that she wouldn’t be all that surprised if he exploded right then and there, and it looked like he was more than ready to kick her out. At last, desperately, she resorted to pleading. “I’m just trying to help you! Argh! What happened to you? Why are you so cold-?” She cut herself off, realizing her mistake.

He scrutinized her carefully before speaking again. “Look, do I know you? I certainly don’t recognize you.” No answer. He started again, “Look, I assure you, whoever you think I am, I think you might have the wrong person.” Ain’t that the truth? Alaia sighed, and understood that there was no other way to dig herself out of the hole she all but flung herself into. Slowly, she pulled out from her back pocket a piece of technology from the future, its closest resemblance being a phone of his era. He gaped like a fish at it for a few minutes, never seeing anything like it before (save in possibly a few sci-fi movies), before the date set on it finally beckoned to his attention.

“I don’t- how..? Is this a joke? Am I dreaming? Where did you get this from,” he questioned in an increasingly shrill and troubled voice. She simply shook her head. “No, I-... I have to be dreaming.” He pinched himself roughly and winced, regretting the motion as soon as he initiated it. “Alright. Then I’m hallucinating…” Terror seized Alaia by the shoulders and shook her to her core. If he didn’t believe her, if she wasn’t dreaming herself, it would all be for naught! “Well, whether it’s a hallucination, dream, or pure reality, would you really want to risk it?” His eyes narrowed, “Risk what exactly?”

She stood still for a moment, as if she wasn’t expecting her purposeful allusion to prompt questioning, before she reluctantly began pulling up pictures and news articles of the escalation of the war and the resulting wreckage of the world in the aftermath. His eyes widened more and more in utter horror with each new event he read about, slowly beginning to understand. It had finally happened; World War III. The last article she showed him was about meteorologist… Henry Everleigh, who set off 99 highly advanced and unfamiliar looking weather balloons, which made their way above a neighboring country, who perceived these as a threat of attack. The key event that set off the chain reaction, like one unassuming domino causing a thousand others to fall.

“Oh my god,” he breathed. “Oh my god. I started all of this?” Henry turned towards her in distress, breathing like he had just gotten the wind knocked out of him. “Yes. All of that. So, I ask again; do you really want to risk dismissing this as a dream or hallucination?” Henry looked at her in disbelief. “No! No, certainly not! What kind of a question is that?” He leaned towards her in his seat, and she could almost see all of the thoughts running behind his eyes. “Wait wait, how did you even get here in the first place? Have we really become so advanced in such a short period of time that time travel is an option in your era?” Alaia shook her head in negative and shrugged helplessly, “I honestly couldn’t tell you how I got here, but it definitely wasn’t through a time machine… well, almost definitely. You never know. Anyway, maybe it was fate or destiny that I stumbled across it, or maybe it was just pure stupid luck. Either way, I was given the ability to warn you.”

His face was so pale and sickly that he looked like a ghost, and she felt a stab of sympathy for him. “You don’t have to give up meteorology if you don’t want to. Just stay away from weather balloons,” she said in the warmest, most comforting voice she could muster in her own fearful state. She put a clammy palm to his quivering shoulder. He looked at her strangely then, at the love and familiarity and grief dancing in her eyes, and his eyes shone with abrupt comprehension, as if seeing her for the first time.

“Ah, so… what you were saying earlier, ‘what happened to you?’... You know me, don’t you? In the future, I mean.” Alaia went as rigid as a board, hesitating, but ultimately nodded. “I’m not what you were expecting, was I? Am I really that much colder in comparison to the man you know?” He casted his eyes to his lap, deep in reflection and inner conflict, and her heart was suddenly flooded and was drowning in a terrible guilt. No one deserved to be compared to a version of themselves with more time and experience to learn from, a version that didn’t even exist yet… She tried to pull some grand words of comfort out of herself for several long minutes, until she finally recalled something.

“You met someone,” she started, and then her throat closed up, strangling her. Henry’s head whipped up. She swallowed her tears in defiance like a woman on a mission, and after a beat of silence she went on. “You met someone later on. You met a woman named Dawn.” Alaia chuckled, reminiscing. “My mother used to tell me all the time, ‘Two peas in a pod they were, and they always had an easier time brainstorming when they bounced ideas off of each other. They were a mighty team…’ You loved her with a tenderness I thought almost inhuman, and cherished her like she was the brightest, rarest treasure in the universe. You held that capacity for love and emotion in you since you were a child. It was probably just… lying dormant for a little while. Hiding in the back of your consciousness. You just need to pull it back up to the surface again and let it breathe.” It sounded a little too much like she was speaking to herself, and Alaia felt too hypocritical to hold her young grandfather’s gaze any longer.

“You say that as if it’s as easy as counting from one to ten,” he said wryly, and Alaia flinched. “Well, no, not as easy as that. It’s more akin to muscle memory I’d expect… it is still a part of you after all.” He studied her for a moment before relenting. “Yes, maybe so.” When he didn’t say anything else, an unfocused stare fixed upon the wall, she decided that this would be the best time to leave and allow him to absorb and comprehend all the information that he’d been given. Walking along the streets, dizzy and nauseous, she felt broken and content all at once. She had done it. She had really done it. After an hour and a half staggering like a newborn bull through the city, she reached her destination. She felt along the wall, just as she had done before, and as soon as she felt her hand fall through, she allowed the rest of her to fall down with it.

It was bright. So wholly bright that she wouldn’t be surprised if it had swallowed her whole. The world was covered with a blinding light, the lovely blue of the sky uncovered, the all-encompassing blanket of ashes from before completely absent. The tall white buildings and skyscrapers were now standing tall and unbroken, giant, otherworldly crystalline structures looming imperiously over the tiny creatures below. This was the reality she left not too long ago, and she simply could not believe her eyes. After a few moments, she was shaken out of her stupor by the deafening crashing of a garbage truck doing its job, just about jumping out of her skin.

The city shouted at her from all directions, overwhelming after so long in a muffled, lifeless world. It was like her ears had finally been unplugged after a millennia, leaving her in awe and feeling unpleasantly swamped. The murmur of conversation, the whir and loud honking of cars, and the barking of dogs assaulted her senses. Even still, it was a welcome discomfort, a reminder that everyone was safe and sound because of her decision. Yes, an easy decision to make logically, but much harder when you take into account the wild impracticality of human emotion. She remembered her mother’s words, in full this time, not half-quoted like before in an attempt to spare Henry from grief for a life that never was… For a granddaughter that never would be.

“Your grandparents met on the job in one of those weather balloon corporations! Two peas in a pod they were, and they always had an easier time brainstorming when they bounced ideas off of each other. They were a mighty team.” A pang burrowed its way through her chest and nestled between her ribs. Her grandfather never met her grandmother. Her mother was never born. She was never born.

She felt it the moment she stepped through the brick wall once more; she did not belong here. This reality did not welcome her, confused by such a spontaneous anomaly, but was resisting the urge to snuff her out on impulse for fear that it had just overlooked something. She guessed that that feeling wouldn’t ever go away as long as she lived, and she thought bitterly at the prospect of being reminded every day of her deed. Then, in an instant, she almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of it all. Of a place of such incredibly high honor like saving the world being regarded by her with resentment, instead of wonder and delight that such a chance was given to her.

To her utter mortification, she did start laughing aloud. It was a shrill, hysterical giggle, like the cackle of a hyena, only put to an end when she was bumped into by a hurrying pedestrian, which finally reminded her that she was standing right in the middle of the sidewalk probably looking very much like a lunatic. “Sorry,” the boy shouted, still speeding along, and it took a few moments to register, but once it did, she was smiling like the sun, her hands shaking with adrenaline from both the panicked hysteria from earlier and ecstatic relief she felt now.

She knew that voice like she knew the back of her hand. She finally caught up with him, and breathlessly, breathlessly, she started. “Hey, Callum! Callum! Please don’t just walk away!” Callum stopped in his tracks and for a split second almost kept going, but the urgency in her voice, as if the world were ending, made him think better of it. He turned around, and looked at the woman with shaken inquisitiveness. “Do I know you-?” “You are braver than you know,” Alaia interjected hastily, finally setting her words free, letting her heart take over for once and spilling out every last bit of emotion she failed to give her loved ones in the Other Life. She had tears welling up in her eyes for the millionth time that day. Reality really was turning itself upside down, wasn’t it?

“You have a heart of steel as much as you have a heart of gold and I-...” she gritted her teeth, and attempted a smile, determined, “ I love you so much. I’m so sorry if I never showed it to you in the ways that mattered, I love all of you. Vivienne, Karis, Willow, all of you!” She was overflowing, love and regret clawing at her throat and choking her, and she simply couldn’t contain herself anymore, couldn’t keep her tears any longer, finally, finally letting go. Alaia hissed out, half sobbing, half whispering, “please remember…” She didn’t know if she meant for him to remember the words she was speaking now, or if she was foolishly willing him to remember a part of a life he never lived.

She stared blankly at the streets now, and it took all her strength to hold herself upright and not fall to the floor out of exhaustion and hopelessness like a puppet with all its strings cut, hollow and numb. What kind of a person was that? To have saved the world and still feel sorry for herself? Callum looked at her with worry and utter befuddlement. “Are you okay ma’am? I think you’re… maybe mistaking me for someone else? Maybe?” Callum’s eyebrows furrowed in concentration, trying to make sense of what was going on. “How do you know my name? And the names of all my friends?” Alaia was going to be sick, the acidic taste of bile working its way up her throat and melting her tongue, so she took a deep, painful, dizzying breath to try steadying herself, even though she knew it would be utterly useless.

“My name is Alaia. I… was a friend of all of you from 6th grade for a semester, and moved away after that.” Callum’s eyebrow shot up suspiciously. “I was having a very hard time that year, but you all made it easier for me to keep going. You all were so important to me, though I could never work up the courage to tell you,” she lied through her teeth. She never imagined that she could lie to any of her loved ones, much less Callum. Was this what she’d come to? Alaia laughed nervously. Why couldn’t she leave him be, with his steady, peaceful ecosystem he’d already created without her? Why was she trying to let herself in, uninvited, trying to latch on like a parasite? “I’m sorry for scaring you. It’s… nice to see you again.” What a monumental understatement that is…

She held up a shaky palm, and she knew that this was a bad idea. If her small interaction with her grandpa was enough to go by, this would be a disaster. All of those memories in her mind, creating an image of the Callum she knew but not the Callum she was getting to know now. One way or another, he would always fall short of some invisible standard that he knew nothing of. This was something no human deserved. This was selfish, selfish-

Callum smiled warily, but gently as a lamb all the same, and politely took her hand, deciding that her explanation was the only explanation that accounted for both her desperate sincerity and the odd absence of her in his memories. “I don’t remember you, but I’ll take your word for it. I’m glad you remember us so fondly. Are you really sure you’re alright?” Staring into his kind eyes, she decided that she wouldn’t survive if she didn’t allow herself this selfishness.

She sighed, resigned, and a little discomforted by the formality of the interaction, and finally responded. “Yes.” He quirked his head to the side slightly, probably noticing her strange disappointment, and Alaia already felt awful about this particular decision. “Okay… going my way?” “Yes,” she lied once again. She’s had no direction for a long time. He started again on his way without so much as another glance, and so she followed him. For one, dreamlike moment, she felt close to him again, falling into the rhythm of his footsteps and breathing. The polite, uncomfortable smile she received in response to her staring snapped her out of it, and she was left feeling gutted like a fish. Walking by his side, Alaia hoped and prayed that this would be enough for her greedy heart.

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