"That is disgusting," Aqua said as Richard gutted a fish.

"Well, it's your turn to do it," he retorted, handing her the knife.

She was holding the small fish she had managed to catch which was disgusting enough and gave Richard a discouraged look. He smiled at her and urged her to go on. She split the fish's belly open, inserted her hand, and pulled out the guts; their texture was nasty, and having to rip them apart made her squirm. She then removed the gills and chopped off the head. She didn't puke, so Richard was very proud of her.

"Just wait until you learn to gut a boar." Richard laughed when Aqua made a face of disgust.

It was a warm afternoon, not too sunny, and Aqua felt inspired to do nothing. She took one of her blankets and laid it on the sand, where she sat to contemplate the ocean and her new life. Back in the outside world, she was about to start a new job, her first serious job; she was also thinking about pursuing a postgraduate degree, although she knew that actually doing it would put unbearable stress on her shoulders. But here on the island, inside the snow globe, none of that mattered anymore. Nothing mattered; she could live a stress-free, capitalism-free life now. It could be like a permanent vacation, with some hunting added to it.

"What're you thinking of?" Richard interrupted her contemplation.

"My new life on the island," she answered sincerely, a little nostalgic.

"Oh…" He seemed to be debating whether or not to tell her something. "You know… If you don't want to stay here… I suppose I could find a way to get you back home," he finished without looking at Aqua, who thought over this surprising proposition.

"Oh! Well… I don't know. I don't really have a home anymore. I guess if I ever get tired of living in the middle of nowhere, I'll ask you to send me back," she smiled, "but for now, I'm content here." Richard smiled, too, giving her butterflies. She looked down at the sand and noticed that Richard, fully dressed as he was, was sitting directly on the sand. This bothered her. "How can you sit on the sand like that?" He didn't answer but instead gestured at himself, sarcastically. Aqua rolled her eyes. "Of course, but doesn't the sand bother you?"

"No, why would it?"

"I don't know," she shrugged. "I don't like sand… It's coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere," Aqua said monotonously, looking over at Richard to see his reaction.

"Yeah, I suppose you're right," was all he said. Aqua raised her eyebrows at him, but he didn't seem to catch it.

"Really? 'Anakin Skywalker'? You don't… You don't get the reference?" she asked, but Richard frowned, unsure of what she was talking about. "'Episode II, Attack of the Clones'?" Still nothing. "'Star Wars'?" she asked almost desperately. Richard gave her a funny look, as if she had just spluttered out senseless words. "Huh. Well, I guess you don't get many films on an island."

"You're right about that."

"You do know what films are, right?"

"I do, actually," Richard said, chuckling.

"Yeah, well. Although, Star Wars has been a really big thing for many years, so you should at least have heard of it!" Aqua took Star Wars very seriously.

"I'm sorry. Never heard of it." Richard found the whole situation really funny.

"Well, you're missing out on something amazing," she said very seriously and gave Richard the side-eye while he chuckled. They stayed in comfortable silence, listening to the waves, for a little while. Aqua thought that, since she was going to stay on the island, she might as well ask him about something that had been haunting her for days, and that Richard had kept from her. "Richard, what's the 'other, very important task' your people are taking care of?"

"I knew you wouldn't let it go," he smiled. He took a deep breath, and Aqua could already tell that it would be something very serious. "It's a bomb," he said dryly, and Aqua's jaw dropped. "A hydrogen bomb." Aqua's blood went cold. "I presume they've already buried it, so it's safe now," he explained.

"Safe?! It's an H bomb! That thing is the opposite of safe!" Aqua was starting to get nervous.

"Hey, don't worry, really. I've been assured that burying the bomb would keep the island safe for many, many years, alright?" Richard tried to calm her down.

"Why would the Army bring an H bomb here?" she asked, trying to breathe more steadily.

"From what they told me, they were carrying out nuclear tests in South Pacific islands. They found us and thought it would be a good idea to try their bomb here."

"I can't believe I'll say this, but I'm glad you killed them," Aqua said grimly. "Wait, nuclear tests? What for?" Richard shrugged. "I mean, yes, the world is shitty right now, but I didn't know the U.S. was running nuclear tests again!"

"What do you mean 'again'?" Richard asked, frowning.

"Well, uh, from what I know, the last time the United States tried their hydrogen bombs in the Pacific was, like, sixty years ago!"

"Sixty years ago?" Richard was starting to suspect something was off.

"Yeah, in the 1950s. Gosh, that's just horrible!" she exclaimed, imagining the outside world jumping into another, nuclear world war.

"Aqua, what year were you born?" Richard asked out of the blue.

"1994, why? What's that have to do with anything?" she questioned him as he went pale. "What is it?"

"This is the 50s," he said when he regained composure.

"Yeah, I bet that's how it feels like in a deserted island," Aqua quipped, wondering why he had brought that up.

"No, Aqua. We are in 1954," Richard said. Aqua looked at him as if he had gone mad.

"Yeah, right. I know you might not have calendars around here, but it's actually 2017."

"Not here, not now, no. You come from 2017, but right now it's 1954." He looked almost like a lunatic, spitting out nonsense.

"Oh, so what? I magically time-traveled?" Aqua was getting tired of the nonsense.

"Well, yes!" Richard could see she did not believe him. "Remember I told you we had visitors? One of them told me they came from the future. I saw him disappear in front of my own eyes. They arrived and disappeared the same day you said you washed up on the the beach." She twisted her features into a face of disbelief. He let out a desperate groan. "Look!" He brought his backpack and took out a journal he handed to Aqua. "Look at it and convince yourself!"

Cautiously, Aqua took the journal, which had PROPERTY U.S. ARMY printed on one of the covers. In it she found several entries and illustrations of a bomb, with JUGHEAD written above the drawings. All the pages were dated; 1954 written on every single one of them. One of the last entries read: 'Native inhabitants. Hostile.'

Aqua remained silent as she let the information sink in. She did believe Richard, coming to the realization that she had always suspected something to be wrong, that she had always felt an unnatural aura coming off the island. She remembered now, with sudden clarity, that she had indeed seen someone her father, perhaps lying on the sand a few feet away from her that first day, but who was inexplicably gone in the blink of an eye, making her believe that it had been nothing but an illusion.

"So you're telling me," Aqua said slowly and quietly, not looking at Richard, "that half of my family is dead, and the other half is probably alive sixty years in the future? You're telling me that my dad won't be born for another ten years?" Her voice broke, and tears started to flow. "How is this even possible?!"

"The Island has… special properties," Richard answered, hesitantly. "Time doesn't work the same here."

"What special properties? What is this place?" Aqua was going hysterical. She stood up and backed away from Richard, as if that could make his words be untrue. "I want to go back! SEND ME BACK!" she screamed. Richard followed her as she stumbled backwards toward the jungle with eyes wide and on the verge of hyperventilating. He lifted his hands and talked to her in his most soothing voice.

"There is no way back that I know of, Aqua." He approached her slowly when she stopped walking. Her hands were shaking almost violently, and she hurled the journal away when she noticed she was still holding it, as if it had burned her. "Aqua, dear," Richard called to her, "look at me. Dear, I'm afraid you can't go back. But it's going to be okay, you'll be fine." He ran to catch her when he saw her knees falter. He cradled her, rubbing her back as she hyperventilated.

Aqua's face and fingertips felt tingly as her breathing evened. She hadn't noticed before, but she now heard Richard's loving, off-key voice singing very softly to her in Spanish, and felt their bodies rocking from side to side as he tried to calm her down. She listened intently to his heartbeat, willing her own to slow down. The sky changed colors, and a gray cloud obscured the last rays of sunshine. Thin droplets of cold rainwater concealed Aqua's tears.

Though she didn't want to, she believed Richard's words; deep down, she knew that, for as long as she lived, she would never see her family again.