Summary: Decisions can change your life, for better or worse. Those decisions can be strong enough to even create a parallel universe….. (sucky summary, but a good story, I think.)
Disclaimer: I don't own Meet the Robinsons or any of its characters. I only own my own characters and the plot.
A/N: Enjoy my first ever Meet the Robinsons story! I've been low on ideas for new stories, so once I got inspiration I jumped at it.
"What am I?", Wilbur asked Cassie Carlisle, his adopted sister. She was fairly new to the Robinson family and she just starting to get the hang of things. She had joined the Robinson family shortly after her father's death. Her father was a close friend of Cornelius. Not wanting her to go through what he had and knowing how hard it is to be adopted when you pass the age of thirteen, he adopted Cassie.
She sat on her bed and looked up from her thick hardcover book. It looks like she hardly made a dent in it. Wilbur had joked about how slow of a reader she is. She then countered back that at least she had the patience where as he would have used it to play catch with Carl. Cassie looked to Wilbur, who was moving around in a robotic way and making beeping noises as if to talk. She raised her eyebrow in amusement and smirked.
"A stereotypical robot?", she guessed, marking the place in the book where she left off.
The two teens were bored out of their minds. They were even bored to the point of cleaning their rooms and discovered Wilbur's floor after who knows how many months. Now they were playing charades in her bedroom to pass the time. After ten minutes in the game, Cassie had picked up her book, but continued to play just to humor him.
Wilbur rolled his eyes, "Your turn." He then moved to the gray mushroom chair near the foot at the bed, angled to look at the T.V., and sat down. Cassie took her book and started to hit her head with it in frustration. She then set an annoyed glance his way.
Wilbur thought for a moment before he snapped his fingers and answered, "Suicidal nerd." Now it was Cassie's turn to roll her eyes. She grabbed the pillow she was lying back on and chucked it at him. He slightly moved his head to the left and easily dodged it.
"How can there be nothing to do around here, seriously!", Cassie exclaimed in disbelief, the back of her head hitting the bed headboard. The Robinson household was unusually quiet since hardly any of the family members were at home today. Many were off to conventions in nearby towns and were going to be gone for a few days. Cornelius was on another business trip and Franny was out, taking Bud and Lucille to a doctor's appointment. Carl was also out of the house, running errands. That left Cassie and Wilbur to be bored out of their minds in an empty house. Wilbur thought for a second and a smile creped on his face.
"What's with the smile?", she asked slowly, starting to feel awkward.
"Come on.", Wilbur motion her to follow him as he stood up from his chair, "We're going out." She raised an eyebrow in confusion, but follow anyway. Cassie grabbed her messenger bag on her way out the door. Wilbur led her down the stairs and stopped in front of the garage door before turning around to face her.
"The garage?", Cassie asked skeptically, jabbing her thumb to said door, "What's so great about the garage?"
"It's not the room, dummy, it's what's inside." He then opened the door carefully opened the door and slipped in as if he was expecting someone to catch them. Cassie followed suit, rolling her eyes at how dumb he had look doing it. She turned back around to lock the door and looked around to where her brother had gone to. She soon found him getting ready to take off in the shiny red time machine.
"The time machine?", Cassie said slowly, "You know we're not suppose to touch it let alone drive it."
"Who said mom and dad needed to know?" Wilbur asked slyly, using the glass dome as the time machine as a mirror. He then turned his attention to Cassie who was still skeptical about it still. "Or we could just stay here and die of boredom.", he continued, pointing up to signal their bedroom. Even though she was still reluctant about it, Cassie hurried to the time machine and was followed by Wilbur who sat in the driver's seat. Setting her messenger bag on the floor, a thought had occurred.
"Just where and when in time are we going?", Cassie asked.
Without turning around, Wilbur answered, "That is an excellent question." He then pressed in a time and date and got ready to take off, "We're going to visit an old friend."
"You mean you've done this more than once?!", the girl hissed.
"Maybe like once or twice," he then whispered, "Or maybe fifteen."
"Fifteen! And you've never been caught?", his sister asked in disbelief. Wilbur rolled his eyes and continued to take off to the past.
14 year old Cornelius "Lewis" Robinson started on his way back home from helping Franny on her homework. Sure he was already in Collage and had more homework than she did, but that was what friends were for. Besides he could also get his work done while he helped her, so it was a win-win situation. He would be home in no time if he took the short cut, so that's what he did. Instead of going into the next neighborhood, Lewis continued down the path that was decorated with trees on one side and the other a row of somewhat unkempt bushes. It would also be a great place to walk for the shade from the late May sun. Lucille, his adoptive mother, didn't like the idea of him walking that path since hardly anyone went on it. It was a perfect place for someone to get kidnapped. Lewis had reassured her that he was fine and would be careful, just to ease her mind. Half way down the path, the thick, green bushes started to rustle. He stopped and looked toward the sound, but saw nothing. Lewis shrugged his shoulder and continued walking, dismissing the sound as a stray cat moving around.
"Psst!"
Lewis stopped in his tracks again, looking around him once again.
"Psst! Over here!", the voice called again and greeted happily, "It's nice to see you again." Lewis looked to the bush and saw a pair of eyes looking at him. Half of his brain told him to run, the other telling him to stay, something of the voice seemed familiar in a way. Inside of the bush, Wilbur stiffened a giggle, before he would notice. Cassie smacked his arm causing him to rub the pain away.
"What are you doing?!", she hissed in disbelief, "Do you know how big of a pedo you sound like? Do you even know this kid?"
"Of course I do! Just watch.", he answered before redirecting his attention back on the blonde haired boy.
"Shawn, is that you?", Lewis asked with a nervous laugh.
"Awe, I feel hurt you can't remember me" Wilbur descided he should come out before he would run away, so he walked out of the bush and was greeted by a big friendly smile from his friend.
"Wilbur! Don't ever do that again!", Lewis laughed, playfully hitting the black haired boy on the arm, "So what's so important that you're endangering the time stream once again?"
"It's super important! There we were in at home and the worse thing happened! We were bored!", Wilbur explained a little too dramatic and then turned normal, "So we decided to visit you!"
"We?" That's when Cassie emerged from the bush as well with a twig in her black hair, which she quickly took out.
"Lewis this is Cassie, my adoptive sister.", Wilbur introduced, motioning his hand to the signal who was who.
"So, I adopt you when I get older?", Lewis asked her. Cassie looked dumbfounded before realization swept through her. She smacked Wilbur's arm once again and looked at him in disbelief.
"What was that for?!", he asked, rubbing his arm where she had hit again.
"We are so grounded when we get home.", she answered, "You took us to see dad's younger counterpart? Didn't it ever occur that he knows that we took the time machine?"
"Well, duh!", Wilbur stuck his tongue out to her, but wrapped his arm around Lewis' shoulder and smiled, "He's cool with it. He actually likes these visits."
After spending ten minutes of thing of what to go do, they decided to head to the park which was no big deal since it was on the way home anyway. They've been walking for almost ten minutes and were playing truth or dare to entertain themselves.
"Ok, truth or dare?", Cassie asked Wilbur as they made their way down the street. The three friends were just a block away from the city park. He stroked his chin as he thought of the choices.
"I know I'm going to regret this. Dare.", he finally decided. Cassie smiled big as she knew what she was going to dare him.
"Ok, skip down the rest of this street while singing the air force ranger song.", she dared. Lewis giggled at the thought of how stupid he would look.
"Fine. I'll do it in style!", he announced proudly. He stepped forward with confidence, but turned back to glance nervously at the two. Cassie motioned him to continue while Lewis just smiled at his soon to be humiliation. Wilbur gulped down before starting to skip down the street.
"Do you want to be an air force ranger?! Do you want to live a life of danger?! You don't want to be touched by strangers!", he sang loud as he skipped. Cassie and Lewis ran down the street when he was halfway, laughing at how many passerbyers were looking at him funny.
"Where is that song from anyway?", Lewis asked as they ran.
"It's from this anime show that I watched. Can't remember the name though.", Cassie answered. They finally caught up with Wilbur by a small brick fence next to the path going through the park.
"I am so getting you for this.", Wilbur muttered to his sister with a hint of laughter. She and Lewis were in a fit of giggles when they saw how many people were still looking at him funny and how stupid he had looked. Wilbur joined in after he couldn't hold back his own laugh. After they calmed down, Cassie and Lewis placed their bags against the wall while Wilbur leaned against the wall. Lewis glanced down the street and saw an ice cream truck stopped down the street.
"Do you guys want something?", he asked, motioning to the vendor. The two nodded their head and followed the blonde haired boy to the truck. Once they got to the front they quickly looked at the picture of the cold treats.
"Um, I'll take a snow cone.", Lewis told the person in the ice cream cone, pointing at the picture.
"I want a mint chocolate ice cream cone, please.", Cassie decided.
"I'll have a cherry popsicle.", Wilbur said. The ice cream man handed then handed each one what they ordered. Cassie and Wilbur were about to take out money to pay for their treat when Lewis stopped them.
"I'll take this one guys.", he said, giving the man three dollars.
"You sure?", Cassie asked, taking a lick of her ice cream.
"Yeah, no problem.", he smiled as the three walked back to where they left their stuff. The park was not crowd, but had amount of people around. Kids were playing in a nearby playground and friends hanging out at the picnic tables. Lewis and Cassie jumped to sit on the brick wall while Wilbur continued to lean on the wall. They joked and talk while they ate their delicious frozen treats that were nice to have during this weather. After fifteen minutes, Lewis was explaining inventions that he was working on. This was his fifth attempt at trying to make it work.
"I think all I have to do is cross over the wires to fix it, but it can't be that simple.", Lewis thought out loud.
"Well, what you think is simple is what we think is complicated.", Cassie joked, "I wouldn't worry about it so much. You'll get it eventually. As we always say-"
"Keep moving forward", all three of them said together with a smile.
"Yeah I guess.", he said, about to take a bite of the snow cone. Somehow when he took a bite some of it got on his nose. He got cross eyed as he tried to look at. Cassie smiled and gave him a thumbs up as she licked her ice cream cone. Wilbur rolled his eyes but smiled as well at how he looked.
"Nice.", she laughed before taking a bite of the cone. Lewis attempted to lick it off but, obviously, was unsuccessful that way, so he just wiped it off. They noticed that the crowd from earlier started to thin as the sun started to set. As they said their farewells, they knew that more days like these were to come and they couldn't wait. Their lives couldn't get any better and they liked it that way.
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In a parallel universe where the 'what-if's exists and their outcomes thrive in the world, three teens were also together, hanging out at a corner. There were many differences between the scenes; the atmosphere, their smiles were instead frowns, and how dead and empty their eyes were. A big and key similarity between the two scenes was the three teens were the same people. Lewis leaned against an old green lamp post, a lit cigarette in his fingers; the hot side was the only heat source for them. The cold, December wind blew in long intervals causing them to shiver under their jackets. Cassie sat on the edge of the sidewalk, one arm leaning against her knees and the other leaning against her cold face. Her empty gaze stayed on the dark road, small coughs escaping her lips. Her black and green bangs grew long, covering her eyes. Wilbur sat next to her, his knees hugged to his chest and his head buried in it. One of his hands was holding a bottle at its neck and its body encased in a brown, crumpled paper bag. It was only morning, but it felt like forever. Their hands numbed from the cold. After a few minutes, a couple walked down the sidewalk, their footsteps in sync with each other. The girl roughly the age of sixteen, looked down at the three teens and then looked behind her. She wore a long tan jacket and a black skirt with stockings underneath. The boy, roughly the age of the seventeen, didn't even glance the teens' way. He wore a black plaid sweater and blue jeans. She stopped behind them, letting go of the boy's hand. He stopped when he notice she didn't follow and followed her gaze.
"Mitsuki, come on.", he smiled, motioned her to keep walking.
"Wait, Damien.", she told him. Cassie, Lewis, and Wilbur looked behind them to look at the girl named Misuki. "You know the bus stop is over there?", she informed them. They stared at her with a confused expression on her face. Did she really think they went to school? Lewis dropped the cigarette to floor and crushed it with his foot. Misuki then noticed that the three weren't wearing uniforms and the bus stops nearby were for boarding schools with uniforms. With this sudden realization, she looked at them with sympatric eyes. Guilty that they had so little while she didn't, she started to dig through her purse. Cassie and Wilbur exchanged glances, wondering what was going on. The boy named Damien saw what Misuki was going to do and grabbed her arm.
"Damien, let go. I'm just going to give them a couple of bucks and then we'll be on our way. You're so impatient.", she laughed, thinking he was joking around, digging through her cluttered purse. But then she knew he wasn't when he continued pulling her arm to keep walking.
"I don't think that's a good idea.", he whispered, the grin he wore disappeared to a stern look.
"And why not?", she asked with just a little hint of laughter, still continuing to try to get her wallet out.
"Because you don't know what they're going to do with the money.", he answered simply.
"They're just kids.", Misuki retorted, putting her full attention on her boyfriend this time when she spoke.
"Bullshit. Look, that one kid already has a beer.", he said, pointing at Wilbur. All of them looked at the bottle he was holding. Wilbur then took the bottle out of the paper bag to show that it was a soda bottle with just a little left. Wilbur had it look that way to make them seem tougher than they really were since on the streets you needed to be, so they wouldn't be messed with. The last thing you needed was a bunch of thugs thinking they can take advantage of younger teens and they have to others. Misuki then turned back to Damien, crossing her arms, wearing a look that seems to say, "You were saying?"
"Come on. They could use it for drugs, you never know.", Damien argued back, pulling her arms to continue. Before having her pulled away, Misuki secretly dropped a dollar for them, which Cassie slipped into her pocket so the boyfriend wouldn't have seen. Starting to walk away, Misuki looked back at the three teens one more time with sympatric eyes.
"Poor kids.", she thought in her head. Lewis' eyes stayed on the couple until they were out of sight, while Wilbur and Cassie continued to stare at the road once more.
"Don't feel bad for them. This was own choice." Was the last thing the three heard before the couple turned the corner. That's where he's wrong. Does he really think this lifestyle, if you want to call it that was their choice? No. This was when they didn't have any choices left.
They say choices and decisions can create parallel universe, where 'what if's become real, like what if the "father of the future" gave up. What would happen and how will it affect everyone? Wilbur and Cassie stumbled in this universe probably by accident. But then again, who knows? Maybe they were destined for this to happen. Either way when they tried to make sense of it, they just ended up confusing one another. It had started in their own time. Inventions made by Cornelius started to diminished, physically and mentally. The Robinson family and everyone else didn't remember those inventions, except Wilbur and Cassie. They were the only ones with the memory of things that started to disappear. Both got very worried once Franny didn't know who Cassie was.
"Oh, is this a friend of yours, Wilbur?", she had asked when the two fourteen year olds arrived home from school. They tried to rack any memory that Cassie was her adopted daughter, but nothing. That's when they ran to the time machine and went back to Lewis' time. The garage seemed to spin as they flew back in time. Big mistake they know now. Storming into what they thought was Lewis' room, turned out to be storage full of dusty boxes, broken inventions lying on the floor, and crumbled line paper all over the place. Desperately searching for the familiar spiky blonde hair, they searched from town to town. They finally found him in a city; miles away from the Robinson house. Once they parked the time machine, it disappeared like the inventions had in the future. Not a good sign obviously. That's when Cassie noticed something different about Wilbur.
"Your eyes!", she had exclaimed in the shadowed alleyway, "They're not brown anymore, they're green!" She then pulled out her compacted mirror and showed him. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. They ran out of the alleyway and down the street, looking for the mop of blonde hair they saw earlier. Finally finding Lewis, they pulled him into an ally and demanded to know why he was in this place. Struggling under Wilbur's grip, Lewis kneed him in the stomach in an attempt to be released; surprising the two teens. Before a big fight would have erupted, Cassie asked Lewis if he remembered them. He shook his head. Settling down, Cassie and Wilbur tried to have him remember. They had told him about them being from the future and him being friends with them as well as him being their father. They had continued saying that he grew up to be inventor, changing the future, rightfully earning the title "father of the future". But nothing, it's like his and Wilbur's adventure from a couple years back never happened along with their visits afterward.
Now it was Lewis' turn to say his side of the story. He use to invent, loved to in his free time. He even made a memory scanner that earned him recognition and finally a family to call his own. But as time went by hardly anyone took him serious. He had cracked under pressure and ran away to escape from his problems. Lewis never followed the phase, "keep moving forward" since he never knew it and never knew about his affect on the future. Dumb move on his part, he left without any money causing him to live on the street. Seeing as they seemed to know him, Lewis let Wilbur and Cassie stay with him. Now here they were; three months later and not any better. Wilbur and Cassie are trying hard to find a way to get back to their right time period, but it's looking bleak. As far as they know they're stuck here with Lewis just trying to get by. Who knows, one of them could be dead the next day or next week, they didn't know. Until they finally get to go home, the two will try to convince Lewis to keep trying and to keep moving forward, but he was stubborn. They tried to convince him to go back home only to be answered with a no. Lewis did want to go home because he didn't know if he could face his parents after he walked out on them. With Lewis obviously not ending up with Franny, Wilbur was still born somehow, explaining how he still existed and the color of his eyes changing.
The good thing about it at least they were all together, whether they were happy or not. It's better to face this with friends then by yourself. Wilbur sometimes blame himself for their situation they're in right now. Maybe if he had visited Lewis more then maybe some of that pressure would have disappeared. Cassie told he wouldn't have known this would have happened and not beat himself up so much. Even with all their horrible luck so far, they wait. What each of them is waiting for depends on their mood. Some days they wait for death or an ending for their crappy life their living right now. Other days they wait for an optimistic happy ending, like the kind you see in kids' movies, and a way back to the life they knew before all this. Sometimes they waited for someone kind to help them, like that girl who slipped them a dollar. Other times they would wonder if it was already too late to go back. The three months on the street have turned them into actual street kids. They could tell when someone was nice and when they weren't. They know if something bad had happened somewhere and stayed away from said place, just by the look people had when they walked by. They learned how to manage to get through their everyday lives with what so little they had; one way or another.
All they wanted now was a way back home, the home they knew and loved. They waited, but deep in their hearts the bitter truth was there.
They never will be going back no matter how much they wanted to.
A/N: I fail at endings so sorry about that. This one shot is like two stories in one which meant two endings. Reviews are greatly appreciated, so tell me what you think! ^^ Hope you liked it.
