Prologue: The Time Machine
Ever since Harmony Barbra Hudson's parents had passed, she had vowed to stop singing. Because whenever she uttered a single lyric, she thought of them, the parents she had lost. One of the few memories she had of them was them singing to her. "Faithfully" had been their favorite; Uncle Kurt told her it had been the song playing during their first dance at their wedding.
But Harmony knew she couldn't go her whole life without music, it was a part of who she was. Sometimes, whenever she felt sad, she would sing the chorus of "Faithfully" to herself, as if she could hold onto that memory and never let go.
At fifteen, her teacher had advised Harmony to join glee club, and she burst into tears at the thought before replying yes. It was on that day that she sat down in front of a tarp covered object in her Aunt Brittany and Aunt Santana's garage, unable to think of anything else but that. She had played one of her mother's old Barbra Streisand CD's in the background, which Harmony also loved. She held her locket in between her pale fingers, which contained on one side a picture of her parents and her, and on the other a little note from her mother. "My little Harmony…" it read. "I will love you always. Never let the music inside you go." And then were her mother's initials: "RBH".
Halfway through "Don't Rain On My Parade" the garage door opened and Harmony flinched at the sunlight.
"Hey, Harmony."
"Hi Rory."
Rory Anderson-Hummel was Harmony's cousin, the son of her Uncle Kurt and Uncle Blaine. They were the same age and both gifted singers. Whenever Harmony felt lonely or needed someone to talk to her parents about, she had Rory.
And then the door opened and a little brunette came bounding out. Sugar Lopez-Pierce was Harmony's best friend, the daughter of her Aunt Brittany and Aunt Santana, who were close family friends but not actually Harmony's aunts.
"What's the emergency, chica?" Sugar asked, before seeing that Harmony was now in the process of taking the tarp off the object. "Whoa! What are you doing with Mom's machine?"
"What do you think I'm doing?" Harmony spat. "I'm going to use it." The girl reached out and yanked off the cover, revealing a silver machine covered in buttons and gadgets, with a glass door opening to a small control room that could probably seat five comfortably and ten if crammed in well enough.
It was a time machine.
The time machine had been around for as long as Harmony, Rory and Sugar could remember. Brittany had been working on it since before her marriage to Santana (Apparently, their honeymoon had been to the year 3000 to check out the futuristic fashions) but she had unexpectedly put the machine away five years ago, when the kids were all ten. None of them had known why, the kids had often enjoyed having campouts inside or pretending to be time-travelers like Brittany. No one had mentioned the time machine since.
"We can't just use the time machine!" Rory interjected. "We have no idea how it works-"
Harmony cut him off as she lifted a small blue booklet from the back pocket of her gold star embroidered jeans. "The Lopez-Pierce Time Machine Manual: First Edition" was typed on the front. "I have the manual." She cried.
Sugar clapped her hands. "Nice thinking!" She complimented.
"This isn't a good idea," Rory called out as the two girls climbed into the control room eagerly, squealing and clapping their hands. Rory sighed, he knew he couldn't let his two friends go alone, and followed them.
Sugar was using a joystick to scroll down a list of dates, Harmony looking over her shoulder. "Where are we going exactly?" She questioned, raising one of her perfectly tweezed eyebrows at the glowing screen.
Harmony looked from her cousin to her best friend, hoping this was the right thing to do. "We're going to meet my parents."
"What?" Rory gasped. "No!"
"Why not?" His cousin retorted angrily, her arms crossed across her small chest. She was giving him the "bitch face", one of the several traits she had picked up being raised by her two uncles.
"You can't just go up to these people, introduce yourself, and tell them that you're they're kid from the future. If you say too much about the future, it changes the future!"
"I'm going to go to the year they got married," Harmony stated, as if that made a difference. "That way, if they find out who I am they won't be too freaked out."
"Alright," Sugar said, having selected "2019" on the list of dates. "Who's ready to go back in time?"
Rory opened his mouth to object and reached for the door, but before he did he felt himself slip as the time machine began to vibrate, knocking Sugar into the joystick.
"Hey!" She screeched at the clumsy boy before slapping the "Start" button. The time machine shook and spun and the entire craft lit up. They were going back in time.
None of them noticed that the selected year had moved in the struggle.
