"I laughed and said, Life is easy. What I meant was, Life is easy with you here, and when you leave, it will be hard again."
-- Miranda July, "No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories"
------- FLASHBACK CONTINUED (1925) ------
"Oh, buddy," she said sadly. "What are you doing here?"
"You know," he said, his eyes twinkling just like his father's, "so many people love revisiting their childhoods. It's just that most of them don't get to do it quite so literally."
The steely gaze of death proved impossible to direct to a nearly identical set of eyes. Instead she covered her face, trying to hide her smile. "You're all grown up. And you're alive."
"Damn straight I'm alive."
She reached out her hand, stroked his cheek, his forehead. Searched his eyes. "You know you shouldn't tell me anything, right? About wherever it was that you came from."
"Trust me, I know how it all works. I'll only share the utterly frivolous." He opened his arms and gave her a long hug.
She hugged back, as tightly as she dared. She couldn't decide what was worse: To think that he's never left the island and is just time traveling now -- or that he escaped at some point and now he's back. As they pulled apart, she said, "As glad as I am to see you, you know I wish you weren't here."
"I know. You made me pro -- "
"HEY! What did I just tell you?"
"Yeah, yeah, fine. It's harder than the manual makes it seem."
She sighed. "Couldn't you just be off somewhere in the future, happily living your life?"
"Hate to break it to you, Ma, but this sort of is my life right now."
She tilted her head, not understanding.
"Well, I've been here about a year now. At the other camp, the one with more travelers." He smirked at her horrified look. "Oh, come on, you know that one's way more fun anyway. They have a guy there from the 22nd century! When he gets drunk and starts blabbing? It's fuckin' hilarious."
"Yeah, well, I'm thrilled you've been living it up," she said wryly. "That still doesn't explain why you're here."
"What, and miss all the fun? Everything's converging. You know we're in the whole vertex of events right here, right?"
"Not exactly, no."
"Right, I forgot, 'Wah wah, I was just a pawn,' yeah, OK, Dr. Warrior. Nice machete there." He nodded at the blade stuck into the sand a few feet away.
For Christ's sake, he sounds like James, Faraday and Miles rolled into one. She rolled her eyes. "How old are you, anyway?"
He shrugged. "Thirty-four," he said casually.
"You know you're supposed to be five, right?"
"Yeah, and how old are you supposed to be?"
"I won't even be conceived for another forty-five years."
"Yeah, time travel's a bitch."
"Your father used to say the same thing."
Jonah opened his mouth to speak, but she held up her hand. "I don't wanna know."
"Fine. Well, don't know 'bout you, but I sure could go for a beer."
"I think you've come to the wrong place for that. You want a frat party, buddy, go back to your own camp." She was bluffing and he knew it.
"Nah, I come bearing gifts." He opened his satchel, pulled out two bottles and a pocket knife. "Gotta be prepared for all eventualities, y'know? Sorry they're a little warm." He popped the tops expertly and handed one to her.
She held her bottle by the neck, didn't take a sip. Just looked at him. It was like the best gift and worst nightmare she could ever have, all rolled into one. "You know, I'm not entirely sure I should be having a beer with my five-year-old son."
He took a swig of his beer. "So. Out of all the weird things that have ever happened to you..."
"Well, guess I've finally found my number one," she said, and clinked her bottle against his.
"So, has your life been -- at least reasonably all right?" she asked him as they hiked back to her village.
"What happened to 'Don't tell me anything'?"
"Oh come on, throw me a scrap or two. Nothing major. But it would be nice to I didn't completely screw you up."
He grinned. "Nah, not completely. As you can see from my stunning demeanor, I'm remarkably well-adjusted. I mean, you alw -- "
"Hey!" She gave him a Look and then paused to whack a vine out of their narrow path with her machete.
"Y'know, this is gonna get really annoying if you keep interrupting me. I mean, whatever happened to 'whatever happened, happened'?"
"That last sentence makes my brain hurt." She pushed back the remaining vines and ducked under them, holding them up for him. "And you know, I'm not above sending you to your room without dinner."
"Time travelers," he scoffed. He ducked under the vines, saw her watching at him. He arched an eyebrow and gave her the blue-eyed death glare. Before she knew it, Juliet found herself doubled over laughing.
He started to laugh too. "Come on, you've had that coming to you your whole life!"
"I'm sorry, this is just too messed up," she protested, still laughing, covering her mouth with her hand.
"Yeah, well, trust me, it's plenty weird for me, too, if that makes you feel any better. I'm hiking through the jungle in 90-degree weather on Mystery Island. And my mom -- who's what? Eight years older than I am? -- has a wicked-ass machete in her hand."
She finally straightened up and found a path again, still smiling. "These vines aren't going to hack themselves out of our way, are they? All right, buddy, enough messing around. What are we supposed to tell people?"
"Do you actually think these people are going to be that shocked I'm your kid? And anyway, the first rule of time travel club is you don't talk about time travel club." He laughed, and she looked at him over her shoulder, confused. "Right, I forgot you haven't seen that movie."
She threw her hands into the air, partially charmed and partially exasperated by this her-James-Miles-Faraday hybrid trailing behind her like a duckling. "And see, right there, you give away too much. The very fact that you've even seen a movie in your life already tells me -- "
"OK, OK, OK! So I've been off the island and I came back. Don't tell me you're devastated to know that I've been to a movie theater."
"Well, thank God you've done something normal in your life."
"Now and again, yeah."
She hesitated for a long moment. "All right, listen. About half an hour before you showed up at the beach, Richard Alpert came to me and told me that he's supposedly getting me and you -- the little you -- off the island. Says he's getting together fake IDs and all that, says I'm supposed to leave. I'm not sure whether I believe him or not, but I'd rather not know details. At least not yet."
"Fine."
"Does anyone here actually know there are two of you now, or what?"
"Eh, a couple people do. I mean, look at me -- although I could at least pass as your brother. Anyway, if it's worrying you that much, I mostly go by Joe, anyway."
She huffed in disapproval. "I like your name."
"Please, if it had been up to you, I think my name would have been Buddy."
"I'm getting the feeling that we could go around in circles all day. But if at any point you would actually like to tell me why you're here, and it doesn't break any rules, please feel free, because I'm not getting any younger."
"Actually, as you just pointed out, you're negative forty-five. I don't think you could get much younger. But," he quickly added after she shot him a glare over her shoulder, "I'm here for a couple reasons. And judging by your special request to not know too much, I'll tell you one of them, OK? And it's a pretty damn good one, if I do say so myself."
"I'm listening."
"I'm a physicist. I'm part of the team who's been bringing travelers to the island. I've been working remotely for most of the past few years, but it was time for me to join up here."
"You're a physicist," she repeated slowly.
"That would be correct."
No wonder she was getting such a Faraday vibe off him when he was talking about the "vertex of events" and converging and whatever else earlier. Seriously, a fucking physicist? Couldn't he just be sitting in a lab somewhere? Giving a nice little Power Point presentation to bored undergrads in an air-conditioned lecture hall? She couldn't have encouraged him to go into something a little less involved in, oh, herding members of a time-traveling militia to Craphole Island? And a little less involved with exposing himself to a mind-boggling array of dangerous situations?
Juliet stopped, turned, trained her eyes on him. "I have a terrible feeling that you've sunk most of your life into the island, one way or another. But why do you have to sound so cheerful about it?"
"Because I'm right where I'm supposed to be."
"See, now that I refuse to believe. You know, considering we're about to go pick up another one of you from Dottie in about 15 minutes."
"Then you're just gonna have to trust me."