Chapter 12: Mind Chaos
1st Alternative Universe - Tuesday 10/08. Morning.
"MAX! PLEASE!" She screamed on the top of her lungs, trying desperately to break free from the track pray.
"I DON'T WANT TO DIE. I DON'T WANT TO DIE."
Chloe could feel the vibrations of the immense machine on the floor under her, the awful sound of her heart running fast, beating life through her veins. A life that would be ripped off her in just a matter of seconds.
"I haven't found Rachel yet! I … I can't just go now, I must… And she's here. MAX IS HERE. SHE'S HERE AND I WILL NOT DIE LIKE THIS NOW THAT SHE CAME BACK TO ME."
Exactly like the day before, time seemed to slow down. She didn't see her life going backwards, she didn't see her father or her childhood playing again in her mind.
"She's never leaving me!" Her own childish voice rang in her ears.
And then, over the sound of the train breaking, sparks taking off the ground like fireworks, she heard it. A loud metallic sound… and her foot was free. Max had pulled the plug.
"OH MY GOD SHE DID IT."As fast as she could she got up and stumbled out of the train's way, the burst of wind shaking her clothes around her as the locomotive passed, just centimetres away.
The train continued on its tracks and finally went away, as she turned around and found Max, right at the other side of the tracks, her dark blue eyes bright with tears.
Breathing fast, Chloe walked over where Max was and without hesitation, without any shadow of a doubt she rounded her with her arms and hugged her friend, tight.
"You okay?" Max asked anxiously; her warm breath clashing against Chloe's shoulder and her heart beating strongly, giving away how scared she was.
And to her surprise, Chloe smiled nervously, her voice cracking as she spoke.
"You saved me again." She said in awe, rocking them both from side to side, absorbing Max's warm presence in her arms and… holy shit.
"Crazy… now we're totally bonded for life!" She said, the lump on her throat tight as she pulled back to look at Max's face.
The brunette smiled at her for a second, her eyes still bright with tears and worry but with such relief and care in them that Chloe could feel Max's gaze firing up a wild spiral of butterflies in Chloe's stomach that arched up through her lungs and formed a spontaneous smile.
Again.
"Oh my god, okay I get it. Stawp!"
"Damn, that was close…" Max said, with a hint of relief.
Refusing to let go of her, Chloe looked at the last spot she saw the train. The forest seemed so quiet now that the impossibly loud shriek of the brakes was silenced. Her hands itched at the lack of contact when Chloe finally let go, taking a deep breath, filling her lungs and trying to process what just had happened.
"She keeps saving me. And… damn, its like the first time i'm not okay -whatever- with going in … fuck, a few months not. If she just knew… I need to figure this out. I really, really do because it's driving me fucking insane."
"Aren't you glad I took you away to a nice quiet desolate spot?" Chloe joked, trying to keep her mind in order, though all her thoughts were rampaging against each other.
She passed an arm over Max's shoulders and dragged her closer before starting to walk on the trails, making their way back home. The shorter girl rested her arm on her waist, sending a not unwelcome shiver.
"It was cool to spend time in your lair." She said, with a tiny smile on her tone. "But I have to get back to school before my next class…"
"God… I really don't want to let go…"
"Since you're the mysterious superhero…" Chloe said cheerfully. "I'll be your faithful chauffeur and companion!"
"My powers… might not last, Chloe." Max replied, with a worried tone.
And again, she spontaneously smiled. Those words still ringing in her ears, her chest filled with warm.
"She's never leaving me."
"That's okay." Chloe said softly. "We will. Forever."
The sky, that in the morning was clear and blue, was now gray and filled with ominous clouds, as the wind carried them and covered Arcadia Bay.
During the short journey back to the school, a comfortable silence kept their company, only interrupted by some occasional comment from Max. Chloe's mind, on the other hand, was a bit louder than usual.
"I guess everyone would like, you know… question a few things if their best friend saved their ass from death twice in less than twenty four hours? No? Oh, and of course the fact that friend can fucking go back in time? No time travel story ends okay, dude..."
She put the truck to a halt right in front of the main stairs leading back to Blackwell and the first drops of rain impacted softly on the streets and buildings, adding their music to the wind.
"Thanks for the ride, Chloe. Right on time for my art lesson." Max said, smiling fondly at her.
"Thanks for coming with me." Chloe replied, with a smile on of her own. "Sorry to be so boring…"
"Nothing exciting ever happens to us, right?" Max's joyful tone filled the cab of the truck.
"Yeah… exciting… alright, this is as good moment as any. Here we go…"
"Listen…" Chloe started, with now a serious tone and expression on her face. "Your rewind power has to be connected to that snow yesterday. That might explain your tornado vision…"
"Explain what?" Questioned Max, raising an eyebrow. "Snow equals a ginormous twister that takes out Arcadia Bay?"
There was a really, really awkward pause before Max finished her sentence with shaky, unsure voice.
"You're high."
"Wake up, Max. You saved my life twice now." Chloe stated, looking at her with determination in her eyes. "You altered the course of my destiny, yours, and whoever. Do you know about Chaos Theory?"
"What do you know about Chaos Theory, Miss "I hate math"?" Max mocked her with a smirk.
"Five years ago, asswipe. Some people change."
"Hell yeah people do…"
"And your situation is the perfect storm for quantum physics."
Max just shook her head, unsure or maybe it was just trying to dismiss her urgency. To no avail.
"Why me? I'm just a geek girl in some small town."
"A perfect example of "strange attractors"." Chloe replied, with a shit eating grin. "Don't they teach you kids anything at Blackwell? We have a tornado, rewind power and freak snow… Hello Armageddon! So let's party with your power, rock star!"
Max shook her head at the last bit of her sentence, pretending to not enjoy her friend enthusiasm. Her warm smile betrayed her as Chloe's grin went wider.
"Like you said, Professor Price… a superhero needs a sidekick."
Chloe looked at her again, with a smartass response already formulated in her mind… but instead, the sole presence of Max right in front of her killed that line of thought. Instead, her mouth was faster than her mind and she spoke again, with a really soft and unfamiliar voice.
"How can it be such a shitty week and yet one of the best of my life?" She asked, almost like wanting a real answer, almost like the question wasn't rhetorical.
Max's eyes were bright when she replied.
"Because we are back in action again!"
And with those final words, they exchanged their old hands salute and Max stepped out of the truck. And Chloe drove away.
She entered the room, without even bothering to close the door behind her. She just let herself fall on the bed with a sigh and a ridiculously big grin on her face.
"Goddamn it, i'm all over the place"
She rolled over, laying on her stomach and took off the beanie, running her fingers through her hair anxiously. Her mind was a total mess, between superpowers, time travel and Max. Max all over it. Just the image of her, worried to death after the train episode or her shy stand, pointing the gun on Frank, to protect her… Not even in her wildest dreams she would have thought Max would be that brave. She always was when they were kids and took the heat but they were not kids anymore… and she did it all the same. With step-douche first, then Frank…
"And here I thought that I would be your bodyguard when we grew up… and Max ended up being my badass hero, even more than she used to be. Ugh, I sound like a damsel in distress what the actual fuck have you done, Caulfield?"
But she knew. Of course she knew. She never stopped. And even if it was confusing as fuck because her conflicted and silent feelings for Rachel…
On impulse, Chloe took her phone from the pocket of her jeans and opened the messages tab. With a tiny grin, she wrote fast, her fingers almost slipping from the screen and hit sent.
"I'm a total fucking dork. What the fuck am I doing?"
[Sent - Tuesday 10/08 11:05am]
[To: Max]
Max
The boss with the gun
Marry me
Her grin intensified a bit the next minute, when her phone buzzed with a response. She let scape a little chuckle and then shook her head in disbelief.
[Received - Tuesday 10/08 11:06am]
[From: Max]
Illegal in oregon
For now
[Sent - Tuesday 10/08 11:06am]
[To: Max]
Fuq that shit
Elope
She dropped her phone and covered her face with both hands.
"Why this is so complicated? I can't just feel like this. Is stupid, it was gone. Rachel… fuck. Rachel didn't ever erased all this. Even if I love her this is so much different. This is so different. This is so confusing."
If she had already a hard time sorting her feelings out before, it certainly was getting worse and worse by the minute. The unpredictability of the latest events still managed to leave her at a loss of words, confused, unable to actually process it all and reach a final conclusion. Right now, everything was a total mess. Chaos theory in its more pure form.
"Chaos theory…" Chloe rolled over once again and sat on the bed, putting her beanie on. "If we are going into this… I need to figure out so much shit, I'd better start somewhere."
She went directly to her closet and started to throw out all the useless items as she searched what she was looking for. She was certain the book couldn't be hard to find, since it was one of her latest attempts to actually fall asleep at night and shut her thoughts for a while.
"An epic fail, since I actually ended up enjoying it instead of being bored to sleep. Not even that turned out okay."
She eventually found it. The covers were worn out because of how many times she read it, waiting for the sleep to come or for the sun to raise. The back of the book was a bit scratched because, once, she just threw it to the other side of the room in a rush of fury for not being boring enough.
"Mystic Weather" by Dr. Karswell. Of course most of it could be real or not, let's say she never consider the facts outside the science the book tried to explain as true, but she also didn't expect that her best friend would show up five years later with the inexplicable ability to reverse time.
"Eh, who the fuck knows anymore?"
She took the book to the desk, kicked her boots off and sat on the chair. Her eyes flicked over the familiar words of the first chapters as she tried to remember more or less what she had read there. In the meantime, she turned her laptop on, in case she had to look for something.
Chloe spent a while drowning in information, as much as she could find. Her mind ended up being total chaos, as she gathered everything that seemed relevant and… believable?
She flicked the pages of the book, trying to keep an organized -yeah, right- line of thought.
"What is time? Well yeah, according to Einstein time was an illusion, like… a relative thingy. Depending on who ask and what they experiment and the speed they move through space."
She scratched her head through her beanie and pouted slightly.
"How was that goddamn basic physic formula? Time is… distance over speed, right? Yeah, yeah I'll write that down."
Another half an hour. At this point, she was just laying on bed, her head hanging upside down from the edge, the book held with both hands as she tried to assimilate information.
"So, this nerd also said that time has "direction"... well yeah, I mean time is supposed to move forward… hah, tell that to Max now, that would make both of us cringe as fuck."
Her thoughts went to Max for a few moments. Was she in class now? Oh, of course she would, she's a total nerd. Did she change much about that? Didn't seem like it. Chloe remembered she had a lot of trouble focusing on stuff though. She wondered for a second if it kept happening to her. She remembered one time they were doing homework, sitting at the table downstairs. Since she was older, Chloe already knew the topic Max was struggling to learn for her upcoming test. She tended a lot to just… space out, even with Chloe trying to explain her the correct way to do it.
She frowned and shook her head, retaking her nerdy inner mumbling.
"Alright, so let's say that "time direction" can be… altered? I mean you move forward or backwards on the same time line. That could create an ah… alteration? Like is she generating different outcomes every time she uses the rewind? Well, shit that is scary. Like, I could be dead in at least eleven or twelve universes. Ugh, nevermind."
"Nobody would ever miss you, punk ass! Would they?!" Nathan's voice sounded loud on her ears, his hot breath on her face as he pressed the barrel of his gun against her stomach.
"She's never leaving me!"
She shook her head again. Eh, focus is a challenge.
"Where was I?" She stared at the page of the book in confusion. "Oh, yeah, okay."
"Behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions… well, fuck you too. Our lovely butterfly effect and Chaos Theory, saving Chloe's ass since 2013. Ugh, that joke was awful."
Another half an hour of intense reading, occasionally interrupted by Max jumping in her thoughts. It was impossible to guide her mind to a place where the brunette wasn't present. She couldn't get her out of her head. And those feelings she thought had faded long ago but still somehow alive… an abandoned campsite whose embers still had the power to start a forest fire.
"And holy fuck they did…"
She kicked herself mentally and changed positions, now laying on her stomach, her arms extended before her, grabbing the book with her fingertips.
"Focus, Chloe, focus… okay, so basically small changes in initial conditions of whatever crap you consider as a system can generate changes in said system, making the prediction of any outcome impossible. Mostly if those outcomes are determined by the initial conditions. Ugh, this is a total mindfuck. Okay so, we can't say that saving my ass is a "small change" in the initial conditions of basically anything. Like I said, Max altered my destiny, hers, and whoever... That would be a massive change in initial conditions of… well, reality? That specific moment in time? Timeline? Universe? At any rate, the present "determines" the future but… any slight change on that "present" may generate… multiple… futures? I'm not 100% sure that every time she rewinds it generates another universe entirely… crap, this is full of "what if's" i'll not be able to solve in a fucking lifetime."
Changing positions, she sat on the bed, her legs hanging from the edge now, her eyes narrowed as the train of thought kept going. Eh, train. Enough trains for today. Or forever.
"Let's say for now she has the ability to… move? Through time? I mean time is not affecting her so, taking into consideration that other nerd's theory… she's the one travelling or moving into the timeline, not the timeline moving. Okay, that would possibly clear that shit out. So no, no multiple universes unless she actually could…? Nah, this is not a fucking sci-fi movie and she can only rewind just a minute or two tops I guess.."
Minutes passed as she kept digging deeper and deeper in theories. Eventually, she found the specific chapter of the book she was looking for in the first place. She made a "tsk" sound with her tongue as she stood up and walked over to the desk again.
"And there it is. Weather and chaos theory. Bingo! Chaotic behavior exist in many natural systems… yeah, Nature is chaotic in essence. You're full of shit, book. The natural system behavior can be studied through analysis of blah blah blah… "
She let herself fall on the chair with a groan and forced herself to resume her reading. She lit a cigarette while at it.
"So, apparently there are some conditions that can be predicted, otherwise there would not be a weather forecast, like, obviously… but in this case, an alteration in the time-space could actually affect that chaotic system. Max's rewinding in the bathroom has a connection with that freak snow shit from yesterday that much is clear. You don't simply discover you have time travel powers and randomly there is a snowfall with eighty degrees... And well, that tornado vision."
She started through the window for a moment, her eyes bright as the engine in her head worked overdrive.
"So the use of her powers, moving through the timeline creates a… a chain effect? That could explain it since gravity is also involved in time-space theories… ugh, give me clear answers book!"
She frowned at the book for a few seconds, fighting the urge to throw it away again.
"Like "yes, your friend is fucking up time and space and that's why she has tornado visions!" or better "nope, your friend is hella high and hallucinating so, don't worry! She's just a geek with a great imagination!" Yeah, right."
The sun found its way to the top of the sky and started, slowly, to come down as the time passed. It was the afternoon when she finally closed the book over her desk and turned the laptop off. She rubbed her eyes in exhaustion, mentally speaking.
"Two states differing by imperceptible amounts may eventually evolve into too considerably different states… bullshit, bullshit… in any real system such errors seem inevitable - an acceptable prediction of an instantaneous state in the distant future may well be impossible." No shit sherlock! Then the vision is a possibility or just… bleh, I don't even know what i'm trying to figure out here."
She professed a descomunal yawn and stirred herself lazily. And then realized something. She sat straight on her chair and kept her mouth shut, trying to distinguish any sound of movement in the house. Nothing. Everything was way too quiet. By that time, Step-douche should be back from his shift at Blackwell. What the fuck?
Chloe got up, put her boots on, grabbed her cigarettes and keys from the desk and went downstairs, to find the living room and kitchen empty. The television was on, exactly like it was when she came in a few hours ago.
She dropped the keys and the cigarettes the moment she recognized the girls on the news. Even if the video they were showing was crappy and fuzzy, she would recognize Max anywhere.
As fast as she could, she almost jumped on the sofa, looking for the remote control to pump the volume up as she stared in awe how Max, holding a slim and fragile girl, walked out of one of the Blackwell buildings she recognized as the Prescott's dormroom, people all around them clapping and screaming.
"...event that has shocked Arcadia Bay inhabitants beyond words. This noon, a student from the recognized Blackwell Academy threatened to commit suicide, jumping from tone of the main buildings of the institution. The teenager, by the name of Kate Marsh, age 18, still hasn't talked with the press. According to the few students that gave their testimony, including the source of this video, said that a fellow student showed up on the roof and talked down miss Marsh. Maxine Caulfield, the hero of this story, refused to talk with the press about the incident. We will keep you informed when we….""Holy… shit…"
She recovered her things from the floor, her phone in hand as she walked through the front door, ready to storm back to Blackwell. Or at least those were her intentions until she went outside and saw the sky bright red as the moon shadow, big and dark, started to hide the sun from her sight.
"Okay... this is starting to really freak me the fuck out..."
After a few seconds, staring in awe, she tried to call Max. The call didn't got through though, probably lack of signal. She just sighed, hoped into the truck and instead of rushing to Blackwell, she ended up up hill, at the lighthouse, watching how the bright red light of the now half hidden sun dyed the bay with its warm tone.
[Sent - Tuesday 10/08 6:13pm]
[To: Max]
Sorry about Kate
I hope you're okay
This eclipse freaks me out...
She stared at her phone for a few seconds, unsure if she will receive a reply. A moment later, the device buzzed on her hand.
[Received - Tuesday 10/08 6:13pm]
[From: Max]
Let's find out what's going on!
Together!
"Together"
And her blue gaze got lost in the bloody red horizon for a while.