Dibs on the Sleeping Bag
For a moment, the two girls were frozen, eyes wide.
Amy was the first to react. "That is so not fair. I didn't do anything!"
Caiti's lower lip wobbled, but she stuck her chin out stubbornly and glared at Zane. It was all he could do not to grin at her. He didn't know any little kids: she was the first one he'd ever spent any real time with since he'd been one himself. But there was no way they were all like her or the world would be totally over-run with them.
"You're in 1947," Jo responded to Amy. "You definitely did something."
"In 19 – what?" Amy's voice squeaked. From her look of horror, it was clear that she'd had no idea. Turning on her little sister, she hissed, "We are going home, right now. And if you ever touch my handheld again, I'll…I'll…I'll…I'll do something terrible!"
"Excellent plan," Jo agreed. She started to turn back to the room that held the bridge devices, but Zane put a hand on her shoulder.
"Not so fast," he said. "How long have you been here?" he asked the girls.
Amy shrugged, but Caiti's glare didn't change. "Not long, maybe like ten minutes or so?"
Zane thought for a moment, and then shook his head. That was too long. "I hope we brought a lot of food," he said to Jo. "Oh, and dibs on sharing your sleeping bag."
"What?" she snapped at him. "And no!"
"They're with us for the duration," he told her.
"What?" Amy's snap was almost as firm as her mother's. "I can't stay here. I have school!" Caiti didn't say anything, but her glare faded and a little smile curved her lips.
"What are you talking about?" Jo demanded.
"Ten minutes means that the wormhole opened twice. Wherever he is, Grant turned on the bridge device, it didn't work, and he turned it off. He probably tweaked it a little, and then turned it on again. We got here the second time he opened the wormhole."
"Okay, so?"
"One trip per wormhole. If we send the girls back to the future now, they're using our trip back. Once they do, we have no way to be sure that we can make it back there, and if that's the case..." He let the words trail off.
"When they get there, they can turn the machine off and then turn it on again," Jo suggested. "We'll spend the time we need here, but get back there just a couple minutes after them."
Zane looked at her, not wanting to reply out loud, wanting her to figure it out so that he didn't have to say the words.
But his kids weren't his for nothing. "We might not exist anymore," Caiti said, and then promptly stuck her thumb in her mouth.
"What?" This time Amy and Jo said the word simultaneously, Amy with horror, Jo with dismay.
Zane sighed. He should have known Caiti would figure it out but he really wished she hadn't. He looked at her. Her blue eyes, so much like his, were steady on him. She didn't look scared. Probably she should be.
"What does that mean?" Amy asked.
Zane looked at Jo. Had she figured it out? But she was looking just as confused as Amy. "If we change the future in such a way that the kids don't... then we can't count on them being there to turn the machine on."
She still looked confused and he sighed. "There's no way to be sure that they'll be there to turn the machine on for us. So let's just leave it at we're all going back to the future together, okay?"
"But, Dad," Amy protested. "I have school! My class field trip to Portland is tomorrow."
Caiti took her thumb out of her mouth long enough to say, "It doesn't matter how long you spend here, dummy. You'll get back right after we left." Okay, so Caiti was his kid. Amy was maybe not.
"No name-calling," Jo ordered, pointing at Caiti just as Amy swatted the back of Caiti's head.
"And no hitting," Zane added, frowning at Amy.
Amy rolled her eyes, and sighed, the aggrieved sigh of a put-upon teenager. "I barely touched her." She turned toward her little sister and glared. "Besides, this is all her fault."
"Yeah, how exactly did you wind up here?" Jo asked.
"Caiti stole my handheld," Amy ratted her sister out. "When I realized it was gone, I knew she must have taken it but she wasn't home. I took Jaime's transporter to S.A.R.A.H. and found her in the storeroom, but then S.A.R.A.H. changed, and we were here."
Zane looked at Caiti. He could make some guesses, based on what he was like as a kid. She would have taken S.A.R.A.H.'s certainty as a challenge. She must have taken Amy's handheld and come back to the smart house to see if she could break S.A.R.A.H.'s defenses. And depending on when she got there…
"You overheard us, didn't you?" he asked, trying to keep his voice gentle.
Gentle, though, was probably a mistake. Her blue eyes filled with tears, although they didn't overflow. The chin went up and the thumb went deeper. "We're in a loop," she sniffled. "And I'm not real."
Ouch. Zane stilled, not sure how to respond, but Jo had no such hesitation. She took three steps forward and fell to her knees next to the girls. "Oh, honey," she murmured, pulling Caiti close in a hug. "You are as real as can be."
Caiti cried, big gasping sobs that shook her whole body while Jo held her, rubbing her back and murmuring soothing words into her ears.
Amy looked at Zane. "I don't understand," she said, voice small.
He stepped closer, feeling as uncertain as he'd ever felt. This sucked. This really sucked. "Eureka's been trapped in a time loop, caused by a paradox. No one can move forward in time until we fix the paradox. That's what we're trying to do. But we don't know what the future – our future –," he clarified, gesturing between Jo and himself, "—will be like. Apparently it hasn't always been the same."
Amy bit her lip, and Zane continued hastily, "We haven't lived through it yet. We don't know what it'll be. We don't know what we'll do."
"So, sometimes you don't have Caiti?" Amy asked, and then she asked the obvious follow-up. "Sometimes you don't have any of us?"
Zane grimaced. Shit. It was seriously weird to try to tell a kid that you'd barely ever even kissed her mom, much less conceived her. And it felt like a totally inappropriate conversation to have with a teenage daughter he'd barely met.
"Don't worry about it," Jo said, standing, bringing Caiti with her. The little girl was clinging to Jo like a limpet, face buried in her shoulder. "We're going to make it work."
"How?" Amy asked plaintively.
Jo and Zane exchanged glances. Hell, Zane thought. He'd really like an answer to that question himself, but he hadn't figured anything out. How could they break the loop, but still make sure they got the future they wanted?
"Dada?" said a plaintive voice behind him.
Zane whirled. A toddler, wearing nothing but a diaper but carrying a sheaf of paper, was standing right behind him. Zane nearly fell over in his haste to back away.
"Holy crap," he swore, as the little one yawned widely.
"Sawa sez to tew you dat if it idn't recorded, it…I forget." The toddler yawned again. "Oh, and to gib you dis." The toddler pushed the papers toward Zane.
A/N: I'm going to admit the truth, which is that I'm kind of just playing. I do have a global idea of where I'm going and what's happening, but...yeah, this is a lot less structured than past stories of mine. I know who this kid is, but I didn't know that he was coming back in time to join us. He was only supposed to show up in the epilogue, and Zane was supposed to figure out the trick himself. I don't know why he's here! Oh, well, he's making for a fun next chapter.
Also, thank you to everyone who has reviewed! To all of you who haven't, allow me to confess that reviews are totally motivating to me - when I know other people are interested in learning more I am much more likely to write more instead of just imagining the whole thing (and this really matters now that school has started).
Also, also, thank you so much to everyone who has visited my ghost story. I promise I'm working on that one, too - major sex scene coming up so it's taking me a while (and yeah, I keep switching back to Jo/Zane because they're easier. But I'm definitely not leaving it for long.) If you haven't tried it, the link is in my profile. And thank you to those who have!