1930s
Thankful for both of their knowledge of the Great Depression, Ashley and Helen were able to safe guard their assets ahead of time and were able to make it through this financial crisis relatively unscathed. In order to not stick out by flaunting their large wealth, they penny pinched like all the others to blend in. By the time 1936 had rolled around, things for Helen had begun to slow down again, eventually leading her to decide to move back in with her daughter, to live at the multi-storied Edwardian house Ashley owned out on the west coast of the United States in San Francisco. Ashley at that point in time was working for the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper as well as being a well-hired calligrapher on the side for several companies and for private events hosted by wealthy individuals.
During one early afternoon in the middle of August, Ashley took Helen by complete surprise. Helen had gone out to run an errand while Ashley had just laid down on the couch in the living room. When Helen returned about an hour later, she found Ashley hovering in the center of the room up near the ceiling, in a supine position about eight feet up.
Helen came to a dead stop and shockingly exclaimed, "Bloody hell!" at the unnatural sight.
At the unexpected arrival of her mother being back sooner than she thought, Ashley lost her concentration and immediately fell out of the air, her back smacking flat against the hardwood floor with a very painful and loud THUD.
At causing the unintentional fall, Helen quickly ran over to her daughter out of concern and kneeled down to her, asking, "Ashley, are you all right? What in the world were you doing up there like that!?" still not being able to fathom the sight that she just saw before her.
Ashley moaned as she rolled over onto to her side a bit and sat up, one of her hands rubbing the back of her head. "A little bit of 'Stiff as a board, light as a feather', and 'There is no spoon', ow…, and maybe some 'Casper' thrown in," she admitted, wincing as she tried to stretch the kinks out of her neck and back, making her way to rise to stand before her mother who also rose up with her. Helen instinctively took Ashley by her arms to help her regain her balance, letting go once the initial swaying had subsided.
Helen still wasn't quite sure what Ashley was getting at other than referencing lines from pop culture movies 'The Craft' and 'The Matrix'. "I'm mean, can you explain to me what just happened and what you were doing to end up that way? How was any of that possible?" she questioned with a concerned yet straight face.
Ashley knew that there was no way that she would be able to get her mother to let this go. She was caught outright and was now forced to spill about the recreational activity she had been trying to keep hidden from her mother for as long as she could. Her time was now up.
"I was experimenting with my teleportation ability," she truthfully admitted with the tell-tale guilty face she made when she did something she wasn't supposed to.
At hearing that, Helen was a bit surprised, worried, a tiny bit angered, and somewhat accepting. "That was caused by your teleportation ability? How?" she genuinely wondered.
"Well, I was kind of using the ability to slowly phase into energy, more like the turning of a knob increasing the output rather than from off to on all at once like a light switch," Ashley replied as helpfully as she could. "I had been testing my theory that I could float if enough of my matter wasn't technically 'there' for gravity to affect."
Helen was honestly intrigued by this revelation. "How long have you been experimenting with this?" she asked eagerly, and a little bit more seriously than she had intended.
Ashley felt really guilty at this point. "For about the past seventeen years, starting near the end of 1919," she frowned.
Helen was slightly upset to hear that her daughter felt like she had to hide this from her for so long. "Darling, why have you never told me about this?" she asked softly.
"I didn't want to worry you. You said that you didn't want me teleporting if I could help it, and I thought if you knew I was playing with it that you'd get upset," Ashley said, looking down.
"Oh Ashley, you know I would never forbid anyone from exploring their natural gifts," she comforted. "I'm sorry if you thought I meant that you should never use it, I just said that so you would be more careful. While the chance of you catching an electrical entity like your father is incredibly low, though still a possibility, your chance of someone catching you teleporting out in town is far greater. At the time, you weren't very familiar with your surroundings and the landmarks of the era. I felt it was best that you didn't accidentally end up in a random location, spontaneously out in front of a crowd of other people." With a sincere look, Helen added, "I just wish that you had come to me with this so that we could have worked through it together," she revealed, reaching forward to gently lift Ashley's chin.
"Really?" Ashley asked hopefully.
"Really," Helen replied with a kind smile. "Now, how far have you gotten with this experimentation of yours? Can you show me what else you've been doing with it?"
At her mother's request, Ashley began to demonstrate to her all of the progress that she's made thus far in how she was able to manipulate the ability. "Alright. Here goes nothing." Ashley began the display with turning just her left hand into pure energy starting at her fingertips, followed shortly by the rest of her arm, and then the rest of her body before returning back into her solid form again. "I was able to control the ability enough to become energy without actually having to go anywhere, avoiding traveling through another dimensional plane in space. I can stay here, moving within this plane with time rather than outside of it. What you caught me doing earlier was trying to be only part pure energy, about every other cell or so, maybe more. Well, that's as precise as I think I was being. I'm not exactly sure."
Helen was beyond impressed. Ashley's pure energy form had somewhat reminded her of the wispy Guardian entity that she encountered back in 2009 while she was at the Mayan ruins she had tracked down to find a possible cure for her longevity. Ashley's form while still partially translucent, was more condensed and concentrated, staying pretty much that of her actual body; so much so that Helen could still make out the definition of Ashley's face with ease. While her atoms of energy displayed properties of being a fluid as she moved, they also seemed semi-static and preferred to return to stay relatively in the same position they were in once before, retaining a somewhat organized magnetic pull to one another. Her form was also very bright, a lot of the heat coming off of her had shifted along the spectrum into being visible light with a barely perceptible red hue. "Fascinating. How is it that you are able to control this?"
Ashley tried to explain to the best of her ability. She really didn't know how to describe it other than it was more of a feeling of her enforcing her mental 'want' for her body to do something. It was different from the specific desire to be somewhere else, in which the case to teleport required the use of an actual mental image of where she wanted to be. With phasing, she wasn't absolutely sure if her body actually did it exactly the way that she thought she wanted it to or not. Which is why more testing would be required, something her mom can now help her with. She wanted to explore the more physical aspect of it with another person.
Ashley then phased her left hand again. "Is it all right if I touch you while I'm like this? I've never had anyone else around to try it with. I don't know what it would feel like being in contact with another living object," Ashley requested.
Helen was curiously excited to know the feeling as well and gave her permission; replying with, "Of course," and offered her right hand out to her. When Ashley carefully came into contact with her mother's fingers, Helen couldn't feel much of any resistance. The closest she could liken it to was as if Ashley hand was like the consistency of dense morning fog. You could briefly feel it ghost over your skin, but you couldn't exactly touch it in any way. On Ashley's end, while she as well didn't encounter any physical resistance, she could feel this 'tingling' sensation as her atoms of energy could identify the similar yet different frequency of the atoms that made up her mother's cells.
"Can you feel anything?" Ashley asked.
Helen shook her head. "Not really, no."
"Hmm," Ashley said as she stopped the contact between them and un-phased her hand. "I want to try something else. I want to see if I can phase you with me". Helen nodded her agreement. Ashley then moved to take both of her mother's hands in her own. On the count of three, Ashley phased just their hands and the results were very unexpected. They both gasped at the sensation as it felt like both of their nervous systems had connected into becoming one shared being. Each of them could simultaneously feel the entirety of the others' body as well as their own. Helen could also now feel a tingling 'buzzing' sensation in her hands where each of their separate yet familiar energies came into contact with one another.
"Oh my God, this is insane!" Ashley freaked out. "I can feel you! All of you! I can feel you breathing and even your toes!"
Helen looked up at her from their now glowing hands, mirroring the same exact expression Ashley had of absolute shock and amazement plastered all over her face. "Don't stop or let go just yet," She requested. "Can you fully phase the rest of us completely?" And with that, Ashley did just as she was asked and it was beyond anything that Helen could have ever fathomed. It was incredibly strange and somewhat like an out-of-body experience, yet it wasn't. She could feel that she was physically still 'there', yet not 'there' all at the same time, as well as that of Ashley's being. She felt like neither of them were tied to the planet anymore in a sense, that while there was still gravity, that there wasn't any more sensation of weight, yet they weren't exactly floating weightless either. She now understood exactly the feeling that Ashley was trying to describe but couldn't. It's like she had the freedom to control and move her 'being', her energy, without any restraint. She could literally 'sense' three-dimensional space and her position within it like a quadrant system and that she could 'move' within it without actually having to move herself. Another surprising find was that she and Ashley could fully communicate with one another without any actual words, or sounds being made, conveying not only thoughts but also emotions, sensations, and memories. It was completely ubiquitous where they could sense each other's wants and desires with total understanding and reason without any effort or error. It's like they were each two halves of a single whole.
After a few more moments, Helen felt that enough time had passed in this state, and Ashley could sense her projected desire, returning them back to normal. The sudden rematerialization and pull of gravity caused Helen's knees to buckle and she fell forward; Ashley caught her with a hug.
"Woah, easy now, are you good?" Ashley inquired as her mother regained her composure and straightened. She still held a loose hold on her mom, not wanting to fully let go of her yet, just in case. "It may take some time getting used to your body again," She instructed.
Helen took a few deep breaths, her mind was spinning with what just occurred. "That was incredible!" she huffed. "Almost ethereal, like you're one with the universe on an atomic level. I could feel the fabric of reality itself and our place within it." Helen went to sit down on the piano bench just three feet to her left, taking Ashley by the hand to pull her over to stand next to her. "It makes a lot more sense to me now about how you were able to time travel," she coughed. "I never asked you this before because I didn't want to burden you or invade your privacy, but what were you thinking of when you teleported down in the sublevel?" she said looking up at her.
To answer, Ashley had to revisit her less than pleasant memories from that time. They were still quite painfully raw even after the passing of twenty four and a half years since that fateful night. "I was thinking of you, and how much I had hurt you," she admitted quietly, almost timid like. "There was this immense wave of regret that just swallowed me whole. It felt like a knife of betrayal had stabbed me though the heart, twisting ever deeper as I looked into your eyes, seeing you on the floor, afraid of me, begging for me to stop." Tears started dripping down Ashley's face. "I could feel my control slipping away from me again. Every microsecond that passed meant the closer I got to being forced to kill you and there was only one way I could stop myself from doing that. I knew it would hurt you, and I knew it would be the end of me, but I had no option but to take it. So I did." she quivered, finally letting out the rest of the breath that she had been holding in.
Helen stood and pulled her daughter into a firm embrace. She too had become glassy-eyed. It was hard for her to hear the emotionally charged statement without feeling a small form of regret for asking. "I'm sorry that I made you relive that moment, upsetting you wasn't my intention," she said with all sincerity.
"It's all right, I know you didn't mean too," Ashley solemnly acquiesced and pulled back slightly to wipe at her eyes. "It was almost a quarter century ago, but it doesn't feel like it. I can still remember every detail of that night like it was yesterday. Whomever said 'time heals all wounds' was a liar," she sniffed.
"I can't agree with you more," Helen calmly abided as she rubbed soothing circles into her back. "You can blame the source blood for that lovely little ability." Helen rolled her eyes and Ashley gave a tiny chuckle.
"So, why did you want to know what I was thinking?" Ashley asked, feeling calmed down.
Helen took a step back, separating a bit from her. "I was trying to figure out how you came to me through time. Regular teleportation requires you to focus on a place that you can see or can remember being. However, you literally landed at the foot of my bed, within several inches of me in a location you had never been before nor even knew of. From what I felt just earlier, phased in almost a quantum like state, a lot of how it seems to work is that it is based on energy sensing energy, not just physical energy, but emotional energy." Helen was at a loss and could only theorize. "Maybe the EM shield played a part in opening a bigger rift through time during your teleport, moving you mostly through time and not space, I don't know. With you saying you were focusing on me so intently, I can't help but think that you got drawn to my same energy signature elsewhere. That it wasn't so much as the place you were going to, but the person you wanted to be with."
"It certainly sounds plausible," Ashley shrugged. "I had been trying to figure that out for myself, but I could never really make much sense of it."
Over the course of the next four years, Helen and Ashley would continue to experiment with her teleportation ability, testing the boundaries, even secretly on other people. What they found was that while Ashley could phase with inanimate objects, she was drawn more towards living objects such as animals and other people, in the particular cases of the stray orange tabby cat she named 'Dunkin' that she had taken in off the street and her Uncle James Watson; who eventually got in on the know about his future God daughter / niece also being stuck back through time. A key factor they uncovered was that neural connectivity only worked exclusively between Ashley and her mother. Helen surmised that it might have had something to do with genetic closeness, that they both emitted a very similar cellular frequency in order to allow them to connect so intimately. This was supported by the fact that Ashley could indeed detect genetic differences, including if a being was human, had traces of source blood in them, and if they even carried a 'Y' chromosome which emitted its own little buzz unique to only males of the species. All of this new research was very enlightening to Helen.
