Chapter One-Hundred-One: Intervention
Anna Carrero biked slowly past Downingtown East High School.
"See you tomorrow," she said to the high school, biking to a stop at the Route-113 traffic light.
Waiting for the traffic light to allow her to cross, Anna stared at the nearby CVS on the other side of the busy road, taking a deep breath. Although time was of the essence, she had been in no hurry to bike here, because who in the world ever enjoyed going to a drug store for emergency contraception?
The traffic light turned green.
Anna biked across Route-113 and navigated into the Wawa parking lot, adjacent to the CVS. She dismounted her bike, storing it temporarily in her sylladex as she walked up to the CVS's entrance and ducked inside.
The air conditioning inside the CVS was a bit too chilly for Anna's liking. "It's April," Anna muttered, heading for the drug store's pharmacy section. "Why turn on the AC in April?"
Ignoring her goosebumps, Anna scanned the many shelves full of pills and medicines, looking for emergency contraception. Within a minute, she found it. "Hello, old friend." Anna liberated a box of Plan B from the top shelf. "It's been too long."
Anna brought her newly acquired Plan B to the checkout counter, waiting impatiently for the distracted cashier to stop complaining about her children.
"Ed, I'm telling you, it's a blessing that no one loves you. Don't ever have kids," warned the woman behind the cash register, who looked to be in her late fifties or early sixties, with rapidly graying hair. "They'll suck you dry and give nothing back. Just last week, I got a call from Downingtown East informing me that my son is now one step away from expulsion."
"Which one?" asked the portly man hard at work restocking the candy shelves. "Josh?"
"No, Joshua is my ten-year-old," corrected the cashier. "Blake is my sixteen-year-old, and do you know what he did this time?"
"I'm sure you'll tell me," quipped Ed.
"Four months ago, a teacher found Blake liquoring up in one of the school bathrooms," said the cashier, who still had yet to acknowledge Anna. "But clearly that wasn't enough, because last week Blake decided to bring pot to school and smoke it in the same bathroom. How stupid can you be? I'm working every afternoon this month just to put him through that damn school, and this is how he repays me? It's ungrateful."
"Excuse me?" Anna's simmering impatience was swiftly approaching its boiling point. "I'm on a timetable, here. Can you please just let me buy this and leave?"
Sharing an eyeroll with her coworker, the cashier turned to finally acknowledge Anna, smiling a smile which really looked more like a grimace. "Anything else?" she asked passive aggressively.
"Nope." Anna took a deep, silent breath, digging out the remaining fifty dollars cash she'd taken from Gino's wallet. "Just the zygote zappers."
The cashier's grimace deepened into a scowl as she scanned the box of Plan B. "Hardly something you should be joking about, young lady. I'm going to have to see some ID."
Anna blinked. Not again. "For Plan B?" she asked. "You gotta be kidding me. I'm eighteen. It's legal for me."
"You seem younger," surmised the cashier.
"I know how old I am."
"But I don't, not without ID."
"That's fucking ridiculous."
The cashier's already sour expression soured further. "More ridiculous than murdering the unborn?"
Anna seriously considered harming the cashier. It would not be difficult. One well-aimed throat punch, and the cashier would be gasping in agony on the floor, fighting for her next undeserved breath. Law enforcement would likely then arrive with an abundance of prying questions. Not wanting the police to sift through her sylladex, Anna breathed deeply through her nose, and in a much calmer tone of voice, she said, "Please. I don't have my ID. I lost it. But I really need this, okay? You were literally just talking about how sucky it is to have kids, sooo, can you give me a break here? Time is of the essence, and-"
"If you don't have a valid ID, you have nothing to buy at this CVS." The cashier took the Plan B box and stashed it somewhere underneath the counter. "Unless you want a candy bar?"
Anna's fists slowly clenched. "Clearly your son's stupidity is inherited."
The cashier picked up the nearby store phone. "Anything else you'd like to say before I call security?"
"Yeah." Anna squinted at the cashier's nametag. "Yeah, Karen, how did such a huge stick get lodged so far up your cunt? I'm surprised having two shitty kids couldn't dislodge it. You pro-life piece of shit. Go fuck yourself, and imagine the shock you'll feel when you die and realize there is no god."
Without waiting for a reply, Anna immediately exited the CVS, delivering a powerful kick to the nearest public garbage can.
The garbage can was metal, and Anna's kick resulted only in a stubbed toe.
"God fucking damn it!" Anna balanced on one foot for a few moments, squeezing her afflicted toes while wondering what she should do next. She needed Plan B as soon as possible, and there were other drug stores not too far away, but Anna did not want a repeat experience. "Why do people suck?" Perhaps she could pay a stranger to buy it? "With my fucking luck, I'll just get screwed over and lose the money," Anna muttered.
What to do?
Anna gazed at Downingtown East High School, just across the street, and in that moment, she conceived a plan. She would return here tomorrow. She was going to get her Plan B, and this time she was not going to pay for it.
"So, what the hell do I do with you?" Anna asked the fifty dollars in her pocket, no longer needed for Plan B. "Could always go to the mall. Should I spend you frivolously at the mall?"
Finding no convincing answer to the contrary, Anna deployed her bike and considered the best route to the Exton Square Mall.
Thousands of people filled Tenebrae Avenue. Like a slow-moving river, the crowd followed Cass and Gwen down the cobblestone road into the tattered, disheveled, dimly lit Duskfall District.
With each passing minute, more and more curious Dersites emerged from homes, workplaces, and alleyways, drawn by the momentum of the steadily swelling crowd.
"Sylph!" Breathlessly pushing her way through the crowd, Elunes finally caught up to Cass and Gwen. "Witch! Please, this is most irregular-"
"My name isn't Witch," interrupted Gwen, "and her name isn't Sylph. Use our real names."
"I do not know your real name," admitted Elunes. "What shall I call you?"
"Call me Gwen."
"Cassandra, Gwen, you must please encourage this crowd to return to Royal House Square," implored Elunes, falling into step with Gwen and Cass and speaking quietly to avoid being overheard. "Greenflame Plaza is not the recognized Conclave seat. Any policy-making assembly in Greenflame Plaza is an unlawful assembly, and therefore incapable of enacting the necessary changes you seek."
"Incapable?" Cass, regarding Elunes with disdain and mild amusement, gestured to the crowd of thousands following closely behind. "Look around. Do we seem incapable to you?"
"You have been gone a long time," Elunes reminded Cass. "There are certain norms we have established in your absence, and going against precedent will only cause greater trouble in the future. A public conclave is only lawful if it is convened within the Royal House."
"Whose bright idea was that?" asked Gwen, frowning at the sight of three Dersites huddling together in a nearby alleyway to share a scrap of bread.
"It was my idea." Elunes walked past the three hungry Dersites without looking at them. "How else are we to avoid having people forming their own Public Conclaves? What happens when one Public Conclave disagrees with another and opposing laws are passed?"
"Public Conclaves shouldn't be creating laws in the first place!" exclaimed Cass. "That's not what conclaves are for. Who will bother to fix the power grid and replant the gardens when everyone is busy vying for control of a lawmaking process? For each day people have only scraps of bread to eat, it becomes clearer and clearer that your attempts at laws have not worked."
Stubbornly, Elunes refused to give any ground. "Expecting people to live without laws is naïve and unrealistic."
"Expecting people to live without food and light is just plain stupid," retorted Gwen, gazing up at the dim, flickering city lights of Duskfall District. Noting the abundance of gutted, partially collapsed buildings, she added, "This place looks like a warzone. What happened here?"
"I told you already," said Cass, stepping around a sizable crater which had been gouged into the cobblestones six years ago by an artillery blast. "There was a battle."
"You left out the part about half the city getting destroyed."
"The Red Miles are unkind to everything they touch," agreed Elunes.
"The Black Queen did all of this?" asked Gwen.
"A fair amount, yes." Cass could now glimpse Greenflame Plaza in the near distance. "When we severed Our Home from Derse, the Queen reacted more or less the way I expected. She lost her temper and attacked us directly, which made her vulnerable. We were able to kill her, but here you can see some of the cost. We will be rebuilding for a long time."
"Why, though?" murmured Gwen, her eyes glazing over as she contemplated spending millennia living with Dersites. "Are we stuck out here forever?"
"I don't know. Maybe?" Cass tried to ignore her quickening heartbeat, keeping her gaze fixated on the approaching Greenflame Plaza. "Either way, if a civil war breaks out and everyone kills each other, we will have no company to keep us sane. Do you think you and I will tire of each other after the first ten thousand years with no one else to talk to?"
After a long silence, Gwen took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. "You seem pretty cool, so, I doubt it, but I get it. Point taken. Let's fix the whole goddamn city."
"Gimme two cinnamon sugars, two sour cream and onions, two sweet almonds," said Anna to the Auntie Anne's Pretzels cashier, "make that three sweet almonds. And an original. And some sweet glaze dipping sauce. A lot of sweet glaze dipping sauce."
"Picking up for the whole family, are you?" chuckled the cashier, inputting the order.
"Nah," Anna replied. "I'm going to shove four of them into my face right now and save the other four for later."
"Um." The cashier could not tell if Anna was joking. "Any drinks? Any lemonade?"
"Puckery sugar water? I think not."
Rolling her eyes, the cashier said, "That'll be $28.98."
Anna took out her remaining fifty dollars cash, putting thirty dollars on the counter and pocketing the rest.
"One dollar, two cents is your change." The cashier dropped a dollar bill and two pennies into Anna's hand, as well as a receipt. "You can pick up your order at the other end of the counter."
Anna stepped aside for the next person in line, waiting impatiently for her soft pretzels. All she'd had to eat today was a toaster strudel sandwich, and the debacle at CVS seemed to have burned right through the strudel sandwich's energy, leaving Anna once again with a grumbling stomach.
A mother walked by, pushing a stroller which contained a sobbing baby, whose wails only intensified when it made eye contact with Anna.
"Nope." Anna glared at the baby. "Never ever."
The Exton Mall was a bustling hub of activity, especially on the weekend. Hundreds of people filled the spacious hallways, constantly entering and leaving the wide variety of different stores, restaurants, and outlets.
Anna peeked over the nearby railing, looking down at the nearest first-floor atrium, where three separate mall promenades converged. Built into the center of the atrium floor was a stone pool of glittering water. Every thirty seconds or so, the pool's fountains activated, much to the delighted amusement of children clustered around the pool's edge. Parents of the playing children sat on nearby benches, hollering occasionally when a child strayed too close to the water.
Behind the fountains, Anna recognized Habitat, a fun little store which sold counterculture-themed apparel.
A small family of a woman and her two young kids emerged from Habitat, stopping for playtime at the fountain. While the woman joined the other parents on the benches, the two children scurried up to the edge of the fountain pool, tossing pennies into the glittering water.
A thick layer of quarters, nickels, dimes, and pennies glinted from the bottom of the fountain pool.
"Okay, three sweet almonds!" announced one of the Auntie Anne's employees, prompting Anna to look away from the fountain. At the pickup end of the counter, the employee held a bulging paper bag and called out the items on the receipt. "Two cinnamon sugars, two-"
"Me! Mine!" Anna snatched the paper bag out of the Auntie Anne's employee's hands, leaving her receipt on the counter. "Thanks, have a good day," she said. "Live like the world is ending tomorrow. Don't go to sleep tonight with regrets."
The Auntie Anne's employees watched Anna leave, exchanging bewildered glances with each other.
Anna munched on a sweet almond pretzel as she took the escalator to the lower floor of the Exton Mall, walking over to an open bench and sitting down by the fountain pool. She opened one of her sweet glaze dipping sauce containers, adding a welcome layer of flavor to the sweet almond soft pretzel experience.
The fountains came back to life, shooting twelve streams of water five feet into the air above the pool's surface.
Anna closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying the sound of falling fountain water.
Upon finishing her first sweet almond pretzel, Anna switched to one of the sour cream and onion pretzels. "So good," she hummed between bites. "Sooo gooood."
One of the children playing near the fountain overheard Anna, giving her a weird look. "Why are you talking to yourself and shoving pretzels in your mouth?" asked the child.
"What can I say, kid? I'm my own best company." Anna took another big bite of her sour cream and onion pretzel. "And if you ever had the chance to grow up, you would have learned how amazing it is to not have anyone telling you how many pretzels you're allowed to eat. Honestly, the key is the sweet glaze dipping sauce."
The child frowned. "If I grow up? What do you mean if?"
"Oh." Anna blinked, licking several of her fingers, knowing the best way out of this situation was to lie through her teeth. "Right. When you grow up. You're definitely gonna grow up. You're gonna live a long old life, you're gonna fall in love, and you'll get gray hair. Or no hair. Don't worry about it."
Confused and unsettled, the child returned to the fountain pool, mingling with the other kids.
Taking her last bite of the sour cream and onion pretzel, Anna produced a cinnamon sugar pretzel from the Auntie Anne's bag, rising from the bench and walking into Habitat, eager to leave before any angry parents could begin searching for the person who'd suggested their nosy child was not going to grow up.
After perusing Habitat's T-shirts, incense, hats, and posters without much inspiration, Anna moseyed over to the checkout counter, where jewelry and zippo lighters were on display underneath the glass.
"Looking for anything in particular?" asked the cashier.
"Not really," replied Anna, inspecting the various earrings, studs, and industrial bars.
"That's the way to do it," said the cashier. "Trust those impulses."
"Yep. Juicy impulses." An industrial bar adorned with a familiar musical symbol caught Anna's gaze. "How much for the treble clef industrial bar?"
"Right on, that's a really cool one." The cashier opened the glass counter from his side, removing the chosen industrial bar. "Sixteen bucks."
"I'll take it." Anna took out her remaining twenty dollars, placing them on the counter. "That is cheap."
"Lucky for you, today we have a sale on metal," explained the cashier, ringing Anna up, taking the cash and giving Anna back her change. "Good impulses, after all. Would you like a receipt?"
"Nah, thanks, I'm good." Anna grabbed her newly purchased industrial bar, captchaloguing and stowing it away in her sylladex. "You seem cool, you gave good impulse advice, so can I give you some sage life advice in return? Do something fun tonight. The world we know won't last much longer, so don't wait for tomorrow. Trust me. Tonight could be your last chance to do something fun."
Anna exited Habitat, leaving another bewildered cashier in her wake.
Cass stood with Gwen upon an elevated stone speaking platform, watching a huge crowd grow even bigger as more people flowed into Greenflame Plaza.
Towering behind the speaking platform was Greenflame Plaza's central obsidian obelisk. Cass glanced up to the top of the obelisk, where green fire usually burned from a metal brazier, but today there was no green fire to be seen.
Looking back down, Cass asked, "How close are we?"
A Dersite sound technician hummed quietly as he connected two large speakers to a concealed omnicrystal power source underneath the platform's stone surface. "One minute."
"Not a bad turnout." Gwen surveyed the slowly swelling crowd. "Looks like nearly ten thousand folks."
"Biggest turnout I've ever seen at a conclave." Cass watched the technician connect the two speakers to each other with a different type of cable. "Still nowhere near the full population, though."
"How many people live here?"
"Millions. Probably more than New York City. There should be a census by now, but I haven't had the chance to see it." Cass swept her gaze across Greenflame Plaza, allowing herself a moment to feel the awe of witnessing thousands of people gathering to figure out a new way forward. "You're right, it's still a good turnout."
The sound technician plugged a microphone into one of the speakers, snapping his fingers over the mic to ensure the sound issued from both speakers. Satisfied, the technician offered the microphone to Cass and Gwen. "You're all set."
"I'll get you started." Gwen took the microphone. "Hello, folks," she said into the microphone, her voice amplified by the speakers. "Thank you for coming." Gradually, the crowd settled down, and Gwen continued. "When you woke up this morning, this probably isn't what you expected to be doing with the rest of your day, and who can blame you? This entire situation is insane. I was dead an hour ago, can you believe that? I'd honestly rather just get drunk for a little while, then focus on rebuilding society. Is booze still even a thing here?"
Many in the crowd nodded.
"Really?" Curiosity piqued, Gwen asked, "Are any of you brewing or distilling your own stuff? Or is it just a dwindling supply of leftovers? Raise your hand real quick if you're making your own stuff, because, we should chat after the conclave is over."
Two people deep within the crowd raised their hands, and Cass quietly cleared her throat.
"Alright, folks," said Gwen, noting the two people who'd raised their hands. "I'm turning this over to Cass. Let's all be respectful, and if anyone whips out any knives or guns, I swear to god, I will cut you." She held the microphone out to Cass. "All yours."
Cass accepted the microphone. Without bothering to greet the crowd, she declared, "We are adrift in the dark. No one is coming to help us. We are truly alone."
A new silence settled over the restless crowd.
"We call this place Our Home because it is the simple truth," asserted Cass. "At our first Public Conclave, Our Home was the only name we could agree upon, because it left no one out, and it served as a reminder. Do you remember?" Cass allowed a moment to pass. "Most of you would not remember. Scarcely more than a hundred of us attended that first conclave, which is why it is good to see so many newcomers here today. We should continue to hold Public Conclaves outside, so that no one in the future may lock anyone else out of such a vital process."
"If you mean to demean me," interrupted Atrex's reedy, defiant voice from somewhere nearby within the crowd, "you should address me directly!"
Cass frowned as Atrex emerged from the crowd and approached the speaking platform. "No one has demeaned anyone. I merely stated facts. Do you feel conflicted about your choice to act like a monarch and bar people from attending conclave?"
"That is a gross mischaracterization," insisted Atrex.
"You have no authority to decide who attends conclave and who doesn't," declared Cass, "which means you have no authority to lock the Royal House's doors."
"I was defending my life!" protested Atrex. "Have you forgotten the thousands of people Elunes gathered to shower me with compliments? Was I supposed to throw open the doors and embrace a mob's desire to kill me? What reasonable person would ever agree to such a thing?"
"What reasonable person focuses entirely on securing a voting majority within a conclave which will starve if the food supply catastrophe he is ignoring is not fixed?" Elunes stepped forth to confront Atrex in full view of the crowd. "Would a reasonable person stoop to inciting his followers to throw bricks at my windows and bar me from conclave?"
Discontented murmuring began to permeate the crowd, and a palpable tension crept through the air as individual members of the crowd wondered whether or not it was again time to whip out their knives.
Sensing the danger, Cass acted quickly. "Both of you, that is enough." Her amplified voice filled Greenflame Plaza, quelling Atrex and Elunes's arguing. "Clearly the two of you have a history, you've obviously been at each other's throats for a long while, but we are out of time. You will have plenty of opportunities later to air your grievances, but for now, we need to fix the lights, and we need to fix the food supply. Can you both agree on that?"
Glaring at each other, Atrex and Elunes acquiesced with a begrudging silence, but it was not enough for Cass.
"I'm going to need to hear both of you say it," Cass insisted. Gesturing to the crowd of ten thousand witnesses, she added, "And so will they."
Looking like someone who'd just been asked to drink battery acid, Elunes swallowed her pride and declared, "I agree. We need to eat."
"Yes." Atrex closed his eyes for a moment, no doubt rolling his eyes behind closed eyelids. "On this, I will agree."
"Where is Iris?" asked Cass. "Why is she not here with you? She knows how to cultivate crops. She of all people should be here."
"Elunes did not tell you?" Atrex bitterly held back his laughter. "Of course she didn't. Why would she?"
Cass frowned. "Tell me what?"
"Elunes has allowed you to excoriate me for barring her from conclave," said Atrex, "but where do you think I got the idea? Two years ago, as punishment for bungling the census and Project Harvest, Iris was removed from conclave, and do you know who proposed the resolution to do so?"
Cass looked at a visibly uncomfortable Elunes. "Is it true?"
"It was a complex situation," explained Elunes. "In an effort to create more farmland, Iris attempted to confiscate property. People's homes were threatened. The backlash was severe enough to threaten our stability and survival. Iris agreed to leave conclave, to calm the backlash, and it worked. We survived."
"Iris was Project Harvest's greatest chance of success," corrected Cass. "You survived an immediate threat by politically exiling your best chance at dealing with the long-term threat. That's not survival, that's just putting death on hold."
"Get the crowd involved," Gwen quietly suggested to Cass, noticing a restlessness returning to the crowd, "or you're going to lose them."
"Okay, we are going to need volunteers," announced Cass, returning her attention to the crowd. "Everyone who has farming experience, come up here to the front, and I mean everyone. Farming, gardening, you name it. If you've seen someone else plant a flower, come up to the front. And will somebody please go fetch Iris? It is unacceptable that Iris is not here."
Anna, biking down Swedesford Road away from the Exton Mall, glanced at the final sunset she would ever see on Earth.
Brilliantly colored clouds ablaze with red, orange, and purple light lent a fiery quality to the western sky. Anna stared into the heart of the sunset for as long as she could before returning her focus to the road ahead.
The sunset would not last much longer, courtesy of the oncoming storms.
After leaving the Exton mall, Anna had first noticed storm clouds approaching from the northeastern sky, and now they were much closer. The wind grew unsettled, shifting erratically every few minutes, and by the time Anna turned from Swedesford Road onto Ship Road, she felt flecks of rain on her face, arms, and legs.
Anna biked faster, following Ship Road all the way to the Route-100 traffic light, eager to get inside before any kind of torrential downpour arrived. While waiting for the traffic light to change, Anna saw lightning flicker deep within the approaching storm clouds.
Thunder rumbled in the distance.
Waiting patiently on the far side of Route-100 was the Exton Diner, where Anna intended to wait out the rest of the night. Soon, her past self would return home from nearly twenty-four straight hours of weekend partying, which meant Anna could not use her bedroom tonight.
"I'm spending my last night on Earth in the Exton Diner," Anna mused to herself, still waiting for the traffic light. "What could be more fitting?"
When the traffic light turned green, Anna biked across Route-100 and entered the Exton Diner's parking lot. Captchaloguing and stowing the bike in her sylladex, Anna pulled open the diner's entrance door and stepped inside, where she was greeted by a familiar presence.
"Well, hello again!" said Anna's waitress from yesterday. "Two days in a row? That must have been really good German chocolate cake."
"It was," mused Anna. "It really was. And I appreciate what you did for me."
"I'm not sure what you mean." The waitress motioned subtly with her eyes to the right, and Anna noticed an older man standing behind the register, casually eavesdropping on the conversation. He wore what appeared to be a manager's uniform.
"You told me the German chocolate cake would make me melt," clarified Anna, speaking with clearer diction so the manager would have no problem overhearing. "And you were right. It certainly did make me melt, and it's why I've come back for more."
"Right this way." Winking at Anna, the waitress picked up a menu and led Anna to the same booth at which she'd sat yesterday. "Would you like a minute to look over the menu, or do you already know what you want?"
"Let's start with a coffee," replied Anna, taking her seat. "We'll take it from there and see how we feel."
"Sounds good." The waitress filled Anna's water glass before walking away. "I'll be right back with your coffee."
Outside, the rainfall intensified into a steady downpour, and Anna watched through her booth's window as the swiftly moving storm clouds swallowed what remained of the sunset. "So long, old friend," Anna murmured to the sun. "I appreciate the life you've given me. Not the sunburn, though."
A familiar gray car came into Anna's view, slowing as it approached the entrance to Marchwood Apartments, just across the street from the Exton Diner. The gray car turned into the apartment complex's front parking lot, coming to a stop. One of the car's back doors opened, and out clambered the Anna Carrero native to April 12th, 2009.
Past Anna closed the car door, and the car pulled out of the parking lot, speeding away.
"Here's your coffee." The waitress returned with Anna's coffee, placing it on the table. "Can I get you anything else?"
"Um." Anna watched a visibly intoxicated Past Anna stumble towards the wrong apartment door. "Oh god."
"Hm?" asked the waitress.
Past Anna, trying her house keys unsuccessfully on a neighbor's door, finally realized her mistake and trudged over to the correct apartment door, knocking over the neighbor's flower pot in the process.
"Some eggs, I guess?" Anna suggested, nervously looking around the street and parking lot outside to see if anyone was around to witness Past Anna's drunken spectacle. "Eggs. And home fries."
Past Anna doubled over and puked into the grass next to the broken flower pot.
"How would you like the eggs? Scrambled? Fried?"
"Uh…" Anna watched through the window as Past Anna spat out the last vestiges of vomit, staggering over to the front door of her apartment. Fumbling with the house keys, after four or five seconds of earnest effort, Past Anna quickly gave up on trying to unlock the door. "Do you do Eggs Benedict?"
"We certainly do."
Past Anna turned around and retched again, this time splattering the patio outside her apartment's front door. She gave up the struggle to remain standing, opting to sit on the ground. She seemed to pass out for a moment when her head lolled forward, but within a few seconds Past Anna regained consciousness and picked up her head, leaning back against the door.
"Actually, I'm sorry, I gotta go." Anna scooched out of the booth. "I didn't have any of the coffee."
"Is everything okay?" asked the very understandably confused waitress.
"Yep, everything's gonna be totally fine." Anna stood up and walked quickly to the exit. "I'll probably be back later."
Anna left the Exton Diner, sprinting across the rainswept Marchwood Road, through the Marchwood Apartments parking lot, all the way to where Past Anna sat in front of her home's front door. "Jesus fucking Christ, what's the matter with you?" Anna crouched at her past self's side, placing a hand on Past Anna's forehead. "Can you hear me?"
Past Anna did not respond.
"Wake up." Anna tapped her finger on the center of her past self's forehead, causing Past Anna to open her eyes. "Welcome back. Let's get you inside before someone calls an ambulance. If the authorities get their hands on you, we're both sunk."
"Whaaat…?" Past Anna stared into her own eyes, realizing slowly that she was face to face with a clone of herself. "…the fuckin' fuck?"
"You are wasted." Anna threw one of her past self's arms across her shoulders, helping Past Anna stagger back to her feet. "No wonder I barely remember what happened today. Or tomorrow, for that matter. Have you slept since you left yesterday? Have you eaten anything? What am I saying, of course you haven't."
"You'remee," murmured Past Anna, her words slurring together. "You're me. Izziss some kinda joke?"
"It's all just a silly dream," Anna assured her past self, producing the house keys from her sylladex and unlocking the apartment's front door, ushering Past Anna inside. "Best thing to do is let it play out and sleep it off."
"I'mmm gonna throw up."
"Don't you dare." Anna pushed the front door closed with her foot, helping Past Anna over to Great Uncle Andrés's stair lift. The stair lift whirred to life, slowly transporting Past Anna up the stairs. "Wait 'til I get you into the bathroom."
"Mmmkay, buuut, I'm nossosure I can hold it." Past Anna made a noise which sounded halfway between a hiccup and a belch, and a thin line of vomit trailed from the corner of her mouth. "I can't hold it. Ohhh god, I'm gonna throw the fuck up."
"You'll hold it." Anna glared at the maddeningly slow stair lift. "C'mon, faster, you fuck, move faster."
AUTHOR'S NOTE
In 2009, when Ashes and Grist (and Homestuck) take place, Plan B was not available over-the-counter (without a doctor's prescription) to people under the age of 18. Later in 2009, a federal court order changed the age restriction to 17 and over. When the FDA nearly dropped the age limits in 2011, President Barack Obama and his administration intervened to keep the age limits in place.
In 2013, when another federal court order lifted the age restrictions, the Obama Administration chose to appeal this decision in court. Within less than two months, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the scrapping of age restrictions on over-the-counter Plan B, and rather than continuing to the Supreme Court, the Obama Administration chose to drop its appeal.
As a result, there are no longer any age limits today for over-the-counter Plan B.
Happy Zygote Zapping, friends.
-The Amateur