~Act Two
*****
Ingrid arrived at the alley between 23rd and 24th shortly after Fillmore left to visit his mom in the hospital and find out when she was going to wake up from her coma. When she arrived she was greeted by the presence of half a dozen police cars parked along the sidewalks and strips of yellow caution tape draped around for one reason or another. They're making a big deal out of a bunch of stolen time watches, Ingrid decided as she took all of this into her photographic memory.
A policeman came running up to her. "Hey, little girl! Are you one of the kids from the Safety Patrol?"
"Yeah, I'm—" Ingrid began, reaching for her badge, but the policeman wouldn't give her the chance. He slapped a time watch into her palm; it looked like one of those weird calculator watches but instead of numbers it had this tiny timeline and a back button and a forward button. On the timeline a little red line marked the place which read 2004. This looks simple enough to operate. Ingrid fastened it to her wrist and glanced up at the policeman. "What year should I set it to?" she questioned him.
He shrugged. "I dunno," he admitted. "I'm just a policeman."
"I am aware of that," she said angrily, "but if I'm supposed to catch the guy who did this I need to know what time to set it to."
"Look, kiddie, there's a fifty-fifty chance of you getting it right," the policeman retorted. "It's either the back button or the forward button. Now, I need to join the other guys for a thorough examination of the alley, so you better get going now." And with that he turned and jogged back into the alley.
"Crackers," Ingrid growled. "He was a lot of help, wasn't he?" Again she studied the time watch. Which button should she push? What if she pushed the wrong one? Finally, Ingrid decided on the back button. It seemed more obvious that the culprit would go back in time instead of forward for…some reason. She held her breath, wished herself luck, and pressed the back button with her thumb.
Whoosh. She felt herself spinning as she seemed to be sucked down into the ground below, tunneling further and further back in time…
And just as suddenly as the sensation had begun, it stopped. Ingrid collapsed down onto a tiled floor inside what seemed to be a laboratory of some sort. She checked her watch; the year was 1991. She then dizzily stood up and, seeing a bunch of people crowded around something in the back of the room, ducked behind a file cabinet and crouched there to watch.
There were three people, two men and a woman. One of the men, wearing a bright white lab coat, recorded something onto a sheet of paper on a clipboard and turned to the two other adults. "Well, the experiment's complete," he informed them. "He's all ready for you now."
"What does he do?" the woman questioned.
"He was programmed to act as we believe children would act in the year 2004," the man in the lab coat replied. "He will live by all of the special terms we have created and wear torn clothes and smell bad, yet still have extreme talent in chess tournaments. We think we did a good job," the man added.
The second man stepped back about a foot, revealing a large robotic baby in a playpen. "Do you mind if we see it in action before we take it home?" he asked.
The first man smiled. "Of course you may." Reaching down into the pen, the man flipped a switch on the back of the baby's head.
"Yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo," the baby babbled.
"What's its name?"
"This is experiment #709886. You may call him Checkmatey."
Ingrid decided that she had seen enough. She was about to press the back button again when something caught her eye. Turning to see the drawer handle on the file cabinet, she noticed a lock of red hair caught in it. Hastily she removed a plastic bag from her backpack and stuffed the lock of hair inside. After checking around her for more evidence, the teen pressed the back button on her time watch.
The same spinning sensation overcame her as she was being transported back several more years into the past. She fell down onto another cool tiled floor. Afraid that she was back in the laboratory, Ingrid surveyed the room she was in before she would get up. But then she saw a bright red lobster mural painted on one of the walls. She was in the hallways of X Middle School…but what year was it? Ingrid checked the timeline on her watch: 1954.
The school bell rang suddenly, causing Ingrid to jump. The hallways were instantly flooded with students from sixth to eighth grade, all of whom running about in a hurry to get to their next class. Ingrid felt extremely out of place; with all the other girls around her wearing long skirts and ruffled blouses and herself in her modern black dress, she could tell that she stood out tremendously. She inched along the wall, trying not to be noticed by the other students and keeping an eye out for evidence that the thief might've left behind.
But then finally did Ingrid notice something out of the ordinary. She spotted a scrap of what looked like paper lying on the floor. Not just any paper though. Ingrid looked on the back of the scrap and immediately knew that she had found the next clue: it was the Kodak logo. This must've been ripped off the corner of a snapshot from someone's camera, and she was sure that none of these students would be carrying a portable camera along with them to school. She smiled to herself. One step closer to the thief.
"Mr. Truman, Mr. Truman, there she is!"
Startled, Ingrid stood upright and turned to see a young teen wearing a yellow skirt down to her ankle running up to her, leading a teacher toward her.
"Mr. Truman!" the girl was shouting. "Mr. Truman, that girl's skirt barely covers her knees! It's against the dress code! Get her in detention, Mr. Truman!"
Ingrid sputtered indignantly as the teacher marched toward her. Then, right before he reached her, she ran out to the other side of the hallway and into the girl's bathroom and locked herself in one of the stalls. She could hear Mr. Truman and the girl coming after her, but just before she heard the bathroom door start to open she punched the back button with her forefinger and waited for the sensation to begin.
For what she hoped was going to be the last time Ingrid collapsed to the ground. This time it was a fairly dirty, dusty ground outdoors, unlike the other places Ingrid had landed in. She checked the year on her watch: the red mark was on the year 1906.
Ingrid shakily stood up and looked around her, then immediately held her nose in disgust. Somehow she had ended up in some sort of junkyard. Huge mounds of trash rose up from the ground like mountains. "This is so disgusting," she moaned as the putrid smell of rotting garbage filled the air. "What would the thief be doing in a place like this…? Hey!"
Something small and warm and furry collided with her shoulder. Reeling backward and trying desperately to fight the thing off, Ingrid took off her backpack and swung it over her shoulder in an attempt to hit whatever was attacking her. She heard a loud yowl of rage as her backpack hit the animal and it fell tumbling to the ground.
Ingrid spun around and looked down to see a large male tabby cat glaring back up at her. She backed up in horror as the cat's hair stood on end, while it curled back its lip and let out a low, loud hiss.
Defensively she held out the backpack in front of her. "C'mon, just try it," she growled at the cat. "I dare ya, just go ahead and try it…"
What she didn't expect was for the cat to actually do as she dared it to do. It lunged at her head, causing her to shield herself with her backpack, which the tabby crashed into and fell back to the ground.
But before she knew it she could see all of the other mangled stray cats that inhabited the junkyard creeping out from the shadows, preparing to take her down. She backed up against a mound of greasy trash, pressing herself against it and waiting for them all to strike…
But then a bright flash, much similar to a camera flash, lit up the area. The cats screeched in pain and fright and fled the area. Ingrid spun around to face where the camera flash had come from and couldn't believe what she saw.
Standing on top of the mound of trash next to hers was a short figure with flaming red hair. Next to him was a crate overflowing with time watches, and on each wrist he was wearing at least six of them. Ingrid put a palm to her mouth in horror as she took in what stood before her.
"O'Farrell!!"
*****
End of Act Two
OooooOooooOoooh, ain't this dramatic? Yep, it was O'Farrell that she saw, and just to let you know I'm not going to go in the next chapter and say, "No, just kidding! It wasn't O'Farrell, it was some other real evil guy! Fooled ya, ha ha ha ha ha!" I just wanted to try something new this time.
~Teazer