Page 8 of Dream Mates
“Well, yes, considering what happened to the others,” the prosecution added. “We have a full brain map of the events in question. It proves that Dr. Ellington isn’t the mastermind and what she says is true. Not that she’s the one on trial, as I would like to remind the defense.”
The defense froze. “You got authorization for a brain map?”
I didn’t even know what that was, and I had no memory of that. Though my head twitched, as if recalling the process. It didn’t sound fun. Their technology was so beyond anything we had.
The prosecution tapped on her tablet. “Your honor, we’re sending you the permits and scans.”
The judge nodded. “We’ll take a recess so I can examine this evidence and decide whether it’s admissible.”
Professor Jaffey lunged at me. “You bitch. If it wasn’t for me you’d be teaching kindergarten in your small town, married to some abusive, religious, asshole while popping out a kid every two years.”
Uniformed guards held her back.
Tears streamed down my face as Agent Weigmier led me out of the courtroom. I remembered how good Professor Jaffey had been to me. How helpful and patient she’d been as I worked through my childhood trauma to get to the point where Icoulddisobey my mother and reclaim the childhood love of math that I’d been forced to forget.
I first met Professor Jaffey when she taught a special seminar at my university in undergrad. My love of math had been truly rekindled, along with my hopes of getting my PhD. She’d taken an interest in me and encouraged me to apply to the university that she was going to be teaching at–even if it meant making my parents mad and moving to the other side of the country.
My doctoral program had been hard without family support. I’d been massively underfunded by the university and had to work and take out loans. But she’d invited me to her house for dinner, paid me to babysit her kids, and got me a teaching assistant position.
When she’d formed a partnership with Rydor Corp, I’d been honored to assist with her research, and then be hired after graduation–even if it wasn’t the project I’d wanted, and the pay wasn’t that great. Especially because I never got the opportunities to research, present, and publish like many of the others had.
Seeing her engage in illegal activity had confused me. It was the opposite of everything I’d come to know about her. But I’d given her the benefit of the doubt.
Hearing her accuse me of being behind it had broken me.
Her trying to murder me had destroyed me.
Chapter Three
Grace
While the judge went over the evidence, I sat in a small locked room, alone, with a weird sandwich and something that tasted like carbonated iced coffee. Even though my stomach was rumbling, I wasn’t interested in the strange food that tasted wrong.
Fear sat heavily in my belly taking up any and all available space. While I understood I was a witness, I still had no idea what was happening.
Also, the defense’s lawyers had beenmeanto me,even though their literal job was to get their clients off free. The best way would be to blame it on me.
Poor me. Literallypoor me.The main reason I’d been so underpaid at Rydor Corp was because money could be a huge motivator to commit crime.
Hoping the room had no cameras, I removed my phone from my pocket. No bars, no signal–just like last time. I set mine to battery saver, since even if they had a compatible charger, they weren’t going to let me use it.
In the notes section, I started writing down everything I remembered in case they made me forget again. Video or audio would be faster but would take more battery.
Obviously the Temporal Authority made me forget what happened, then remember. I wasn’t sure if it was the shot in the neck or the weird little bottle of juice. I also had no idea how I could understand everyone–and they could understand me. That wasn’t something they ever explained.
I still didn’t quite remember everything.
However, I did recall that the Temporal Authority was obsessed with secrecy. Which I understood. But did they really have to leave me in another world unable to remembermy own nameor that they were coming back for me?
Writing everything down would also help me work it out in my head.
After I’d gotten a lot of my memories down, no one had come for me. I had to pee. Howwasthis all going to go? When I finished testifying, would they take me back to Wes? Drop me back in the world I grew up in? Try me for some other crime?
I’d asked so many questions when they took me, trying to get answers, mostly out of professional curiosity. After all, parallel worlds weren’t just real but there was a reliable way to move through them, and a governing organization to police it all.
While I got zero access to things like equations, or the machines they used, I had learned travel was very regulated and entirely illegal in my class of world. But, the discovery of parallel worlds, or how to travel through them, wasn’t inherently illegal. Depending on how I handled it, had I managed to find a way to actually travel to Wes’ world, I might not have immediately been arrested or punished.
I’d been informed that because of my contact with the Temporal Authority, I’d never be able to engage in my side project or adjacent research. There were also a whole lot of rules, and no one would let me anywhere near them.
