Remember Mammy Jincy, the fortune teller mentioned briefly in the first chapter of GWTW? She's front and center in this story. Obviously, I don't own GWTW, writing for fun only.

2050 AD – Somewhere in space.

Jincy looked at her crystal ball that she'd positioned in the center of her space ship, and for the umpteenth time, shook her head. She'd punched in the year 1873 and the zip code for Atlanta, Georgia on the ball's keypad, put her hands on the crystal, closed her eyes, and concentrated with all of her might on Scarlett and Rhett Butler. And what she saw and heard was Rhett telling Scarlett he was leaving, didn't give a damn, then walking up the stairs of their huge mansion. Then she saw Scarlett sitting at the bottom of the stairs, obviously upset, but raising her chin as if making some kind of resolution. Then, the picture hazed over, and that's all she had been able to see.

She sighed and floated away from the crystal. She'd never been able to see past that scene in the couple's life. She didn't know if they had been able to work things out, or if they spent the rest of their lives apart. The matchmaking side of Jincy was thoroughly disappointed. She liked to see couples who were meant for each other stay together.

This was Jincy's third life on earth (or in space, if you will). Her first one began in 1800, when she was born in New Orleans to a couple who practiced voodoo. They owned an underground business, selling potions and lending their magical powers to the poor souls who would come to them for help. "Give me something to make him love me!" a young woman would beg them, who desired a man who'd wanted nothing to do with her. And Jincy's mother would look into the eyes of the woman and say, "Well, I can do that, but you must be sure you want to be with this man who will take other lovers on the side." You see, Jincy's mother was a seer – clairvoyant. She knew what would happen in the future, and could often read minds. In a case like this one, she was wise to the fact that the man the woman wanted would be bad news for her, and would do nothing but make her life miserable. So she'd open her cupboard, pull out some vials filled with different colored powders, and begin mixing them together. "Here," she'd say, handing the potion to the young woman. "Take this once a night for 21 days, and you'll forget you ever loved him." The bewildered woman would pay for the potion and leave, and in 21 days, believe herself to be cured of loving the wretched man, and consider herself lucky.

Jincy's mother was pleased with herself that she was able to guide these souls to a better life, and didn't feel guilty that the potions she sold them had no real value, except for their powers of suggestion. After all, the advice she gave them was invaluable, something that they were not likely to receive from anyone else. Jincy's father did not possess the gift that her mother had, but he was a good businessman, and helped his wife grow her clientele with his natural charm and shrewdness.

Young Jincy was in awe of her mother for her special gift, and wanted to be just like her so she could help people like Mama did. But try as she might, she could not see into the future, nor read minds. "Don't worry, my child," Mama would say. "It'll come to you one day. You must be patient." But Jincy had little confidence that the gift would ever come to her.

Then in 1813, her mother died suddenly of scarlet fever, and her father, heartbroken over losing his beloved wife, stopped caring for himself, grew weak, and followed her in death not long after. With no other relatives to care for her, Jincy was taken in by a slave broker, who promised her food and a roof over her head. She was sold to a rich planter in Georgia, and traveled east to live on a plantation with about a hundred other slaves.

The work she was forced to do was grueling – picking cotton in the suffocating Georgia sun, baling hay until her back ached so badly she could no longer stand up straight. But, she could not escape, as the repercussions for runaway slaves was fierce, so she was resolute to do her time until the end of her days, then finally be free to join her mother and father in the promised land.

Thirty years later, Jincy was 43 years old. She had graduated from a field worker to a house worker, and thankfully, didn't have to slave in the scorching heat anymore. She'd been bought and sold two more times, and now was at a third plantation, owned by the prominent Charbonnet family. But she led a monotonous life, and the family she worked for kept to themselves, never wanting to become especially friendly with any of their slaves. Suffering from utter boredom, Jincy began daydreaming more and more, and she was reprimanded by her master and mistress frequently for slacking.

Then one day, the house was expecting a visitor. A Mr. John Wilkes, the master of Twelve Oaks plantation, came riding up to the main house while Jincy went out to fetch the children to come wash up for supper. In her daydreaming state, Jincy did not see Mr. Wilkes, and turned and walked right into the path he was riding on. Mr. Wilkes could not stop his horse in time, and the stallion grazed Jincy, knocking her down, causing her head to hit the ground with a loud thump, knocking her unconscious.

When she came to, she was surrounded by Mr. Wilkes, and her own master and mistress. "Foolish woman!" her mistress hissed. "How dare you run into Mr. Wilkes like that? Why don't you watch where you're going, Jincy!" Mr. Wilkes spoke quickly, "Please don't blame her, Mrs. Charbonnet. The fault was all mine. I couldn't get my horse to stop in time."

Jincy looked up at all of them and shook her head to clear the cobwebs that had formed in her mind. Then suddenly, it was all clear. She felt like she knew Mr. Wilkes, although she'd never met him before in her life. She knew he was a kind man, had a wife who was sickly, and several small children to care for. She even knew their names…Ashley, Honey, and India. He had a butler named Tom. She even knew that Mr. Wilkes was going to buy a new horse next week, and would build an addition to his plantation in a year. Jincy closed her eyes, and opened them again. Was this the Gift? Was this what her mother had, but she herself had suppressed for her whole life, only to have it come to her after hitting her head?

Her thoughts were interrupted by her master. "I may just have to put her back in the fields, John. Jincy's been nothing but trouble the last few months, and she's not pulling her weight inside the house anymore."

Mr. Wilkes, noticing the woman's face cringe at that news, and seeing something in her eyes that told him she was something more than just a field hand, spoke up. "What do you want for her, James? I need a woman to help my wife care for our children. I think Jincy may be just right."

So, Jincy went to live with the Wilkes, serving as the children's mammy. The family was kind to her, and her days with them were as happy as it was possible for a slave to be. The Wilkes were an odd sort for this part of rural Georgia, it was true, with all of their traveling to Europe, reading Shakespeare, studying art. But they made her feel as if she were almost a member of the family, and she felt lucky indeed to have been struck by John Wilkes' horse that day.

The Gift stayed with her, but she didn't dare let on that she had it, lest they think her some kind of a witch or unholy. She did, however, use the Gift in her everyday work, especially when caring for the children. She knew when they faced small dangers, and she was able to guide them away from it. She knew when they told little lies to get something they wanted, and she raised her eyebrows at them and seemed to see through their souls in such a way that they hung their little heads and guiltily confessed the truth. She even knew years later when the kind and gentle Mrs. Wilkes was at the end of her days, and tried to make her exit out of this world as easy as possible for her and her family.

Time went by quickly, and in 1861, she had a direct encounter with one Scarlett O'Hara. It was at a ball that the Wilkes' hosted, and she was sitting on the bottom of the stair landing, flanked by those wild Tarleton twins. Young Miss O'Hara was only 15 years old, but Jincy saw that for all of her youth, she was a sly piece, very clever and sure of herself, and had a way with the boys. She was pretty, charming, and knew how to flaunt her feminine wiles and drive the young men crazy. The other girls didn't especially care for her, as she had wandering eyes, and they often wandered over to other girls' beaux with lashes batting, and she would smile so that her dimples made an attractive appearance.

Jincy had been handing out lemonade to some of the guests, when one of the twins spotted her. "Mammy Jincy!" a twin called out to her (she didn't know which one, they looked so much alike). "Come tell us our fortunes!"

To amuse the Wilkes children over the years, Jincy had played a sort of game with them, where she'd hold one of their hands, and tell them what their future beheld. But that's all it was, a game, for the Wilkes' minds were too clouded, too blocked by dreamy thoughts for Jincy to really read them. She couldn't really use the Gift, so she'd make up stories about who they would marry, how many children they would have, where they would live, and so on. But they were amused by the game, and eventually, the word spread that Jincy was good at telling fortunes. And somehow, the Tarleton twins got wind of it, and were anxious to entertain Scarlett.

Jincy put down her tray and walked over to the trio. But the twins were too liquored up and too intent on impressing the pretty, vivacious Miss O'Hara, so of course they were unreadable. But when Scarlett put her hand in hers, she looked straight into her eyes, and Jincy thought she could see straight through to the girl's soul. It took only a millisecond, before Jincy blurted out, "You will marry a dark haired man with a black mustache." She could have told Scarlett more than that brief bit of info, that this man would be her soul mate, and the only person in the world who would truly understand and appreciate her for what she was. She could have told her that she would love this man passionately, and be happy beyond her wildest dreams with him if only she'd let him into her life with an open heart. But Jincy knew her place, and besides, the girl yanked her hand away, obviously not pleased with what was foretold to her.

The twins, already well inebriated, roared with laughter at Scarlett's obvious disgust at Mammy Jincy's prediction, but when she rose abruptly and began walking swiftly away from them, they ran towards her and begged her forgiveness until she finally relented, and her spirits rose again.

It was a brief encounter, but Jincy had regretted for the rest of her life, or lives, actually, that she did not grab the foolish girl by her shoulders and shake some sense into her. She knew that Scarlett believed herself in love with Ashley Wilkes, the Blond One, as Jincy thought of him, a man whom she'd practically raised from childhood, and who she knew shared absolutely nothing in common with the practical, feisty O'Hara girl. Oh, why couldn't she have made young Scarlett choose another path in her love life? But things were certainly different in the nineteenth century from the way things were in the twenty-first. Slaves just didn't go around giving unsolicited advice to spoiled rich girls.

Then of course, the war came, Twelve Oaks was destroyed, and Jincy was free. She spent the rest of her days working at an orphanage in Kentucky. But she had never forgotten Scarlett O'Hara. She'd heard through county gossip that she did eventually marry the black haired man, a Mr. Rhett Butler, and that they had a daughter who was tragically killed in a riding accident at age four. And Jincy's gift told her that Scarlett hadn't really known she loved her husband until it was too late, and he'd apparently fallen out of love with her. She also knew that before their daughter died, Scarlett suffered a miscarriage, resulting from a fall down the stairs after becoming enraged with Rhett.

Jincy never did learn what happened to Scarlett and Rhett after that. When she tried to use the powers of the Gift to show her what their eventual fate was, it failed her. And now, in the year 2050, even her state of the art crystal ball would fog up after Rhett's "I don't give a damn". It saddened Jincy that she hadn't been able to intervene, to use her gift to possibly make their lives together happy instead of tragic. She'd wanted to be able to help people, like her mother did, and Scarlett and Rhett had provided her the opportunity, but she'd been unsuccessful in turning their lives around.

And maybe, just maybe, that was why she was living her third life, instead of moving onto an afterlife, the one she believed in. Perhaps she had unfinished business, and it was preventing her from joining her parents in the promised land. The world Jincy lived in was full of great beauty, of loving, happy people, and wonderful memories. That's why she knew there was a heaven. She also lived in a world full of ugly, horrible things and evil people. That's how she knew there was a hell. She believed herself to be a good person, and while she may have to go through Purgatory first, she felt her final destination would be Heaven. But the obsession with her failure to help Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler, and save lives in the process, was possibly what was holding her back, forcing her to live life after life in this world instead of moving on to the next.

It was getting late, and Jincy was tired. She removed her space suit and shimmied into a light night gown. She lifted the glass cover of her bed case where her dog, Beasley, was already sleeping, slipped in, and closed the cover. As she shut her eyes and snuggled up to Beasley, she realized how exhausting it was thinking back so many years to her first life. But as she drifted into sleep, her dreams brought her into her second one.

TBC…

I promise the next chapter will have more "futuristic" elements, and cover all of The MW's requirements, which are:

Three things I want in my fic:

1. A space ship

2. Tight jumpsuits of state-of-the-art fabric

3. A bionic dog

Three things I don't want.

1. No 'fiddle-dee-dee's, please

2. No blushing or fainting or any other demure behavior

3. No aliens

A time period during which it takes place: The Future

And also, lots more Scarlett and Rhett to come. I wanted to make this a one-shot, but I think it will flow better if it's in about three chapters. Let me know what you think!