Free False Future by Dan Krokos Page A

eyes, I’m seated at a table with three other Originals—Peter, Noah, and Rhys. They’re all talking, but I can’t hear them. I’m seeing through Olivia’s eyes.
    In the Thorn, Olivia says, “We had a meeting one day in September. I will never forget it. It was the day we decided to overthrow our own leadership. Once, we were not the Ruling Five. We were underlings to Miranda. She was the supreme ruler. And she was bad.”
    Shocking.
    Olivia goes on to explain that during her journeys through the Black, she discovered a new world. But it wasn’t an alternate universe…it was the past. It was our world. Our world and True Earth are the same place, just over a thousand years apart.
    “The other three Originals and I wanted to remove the director from power,” she says. “But the change in balance would’ve made us appear weak to other worlds like ours, ones highly advanced. So I came up with a plan based on my discovery. Only I didn’t share what I’d learned with the others. I foolishly decided to take it into my own hands….I thought I could change things myself.”
    The scene changes, and now we’re in a school—a junior high school judging by the kids. We watch a young girl with auburn hair carry her books through a hallway. I recognize the girl. It’s me. No one seems to notice Olivia is watching her—it’s like Olivia is invisible.
    A boy with short hair and dark eyes approaches the girl from the side, but she can’t see him because her hair is in the way. He brushes it out of her face and she jumps, then smiles when she sees it’s Noah. Slowly, she wraps her arms around his neck and looks up into his face. The way Noah smiles at the girl reminds me of how he used to smile at me.
    But that can’t be me ; that isn’t right. At that age, I wasn’t in school—I was training with Alpha team.
    “Is that the director?”
    “Yes,” Olivia says. “Back when she was living a normal life.”
    My heart starts to race. “Wait. Does that mean she’s still out there? In her normal life? If this is the past of True Earth, then she’s out there walking around right now.”
    “Yes…” Olivia says.
    “Well, where is she? We can find her. We can stop this right now.”
    “No, we can’t. I already had the director killed when she was a teenager.”
    “But you just said—” I begin.
    “Just watch.”
    The scene changes again. We’re on top of a building. It’s pouring rain. There is a dead body on the ground far below, blood pooling under it and mixing with the rainwater, but I can’t make out many details from this distance. Olivia turns her face to the rain, and I can feel the cold drops on my skin like it’s happening inside the Thorn.
    She keeps talking. “I replaced the teenage version of the director, the one who knew nothing of this, with a clone, one I could guide from a distance. And it worked. When I returned to True Earth, things had changed. I’d altered the entire history of True Earth, and my companions never knew any differently. The planet was stable. The director was a partner to us now, not a queen. We ruled together.” She shows me snippets of images, of the five of them ruling side by side, of the golden landscape I remember from my brief visit to True Earth. I watch the citizens of True Earth firing rockets into a smoggy gray sky. When they explode, a golden wave spreads out, changing the color of the sky permanently. “It was like recording over a tape.”
    Her words wash over me like water. I feel like I’m dreaming. What an unnatural thing, for us to exist right now. She’s stopped showing me images—I see only darkness.
    “Changes happening here and now had affected the future, but the trouble was, some changes don’t have as big an impact as others. And in the moment, there’s no way to know what’s important. Until you do it.”
    She sighs. “But I noticed things were beginning to deteriorate for True Earth. The unity was short-lived, and when it began to