The first thing that Cody noticed as he woke up was the horrible taste of his mouth. His lips had to be pried open, his blankets were a mess, and his pillow was drenched in sweat. Either he'd just gotten the best sleep of his life, or he'd gotten the worst. With the pounding headache that quickly made its presence known, he was inclined to believe the latter. A sudden thud snapped his attention away from himself. His roommate had woken up just before him, only now jumping off his bed. Cody and Trent's eyes matched, any pretense of niceties thrown out the window. Their locked eyes narrowed at the sight of one another. Cody was the first to speak.
"Do you want something, or are you just waiting to kiss me too?" he spat out with venom.
Trent didn't hesitate to strike back. "Nah, you're already busy locking lips with Gwen, right?"
Cody gritted his teeth, having to dig his nails into his hand so that he wouldn't leap up and slap Trent across the face. His enemy just wanted to get a rise out of him, that was all. When Cody didn't respond, Trent scoffed as if disappointed in Cody's hesitance to continue fighting, leaving soon after. Cody's eyes drifted to the bunk next to him, the one formerly occupied by his best friend.
"I miss you, Zeke. If only you were here instead of Trent," he sighed. "I wish that bear hadn't attacked you. Honestly, thinking about it, I wish I hadn't meddled with Heather's diary plan. That only seemed to make things worse. Now Trent hates my guts and is willing to betray Gwen's trust, Owen and Courtney are out because of me and you're the one that got attacked by that bear. I guess my existence hasn't been that helpful, huh?" Cody paused as if a ghostly Ezekiel would pop into existence. Of course, no one heard his regrets. His thoughts clouded his mind, becoming the only thing he could think about.
"I-I have only made things worse, haven't I?" Cody realized, a short gasp escaping his mouth. He ran his hands through his hair. "It's just what I was worried about. But… what can I do to fix it?" He thought for another moment, though quickly realized it was fruitless. He was essentially trying to figure out time travel. Even as the only person to have experienced it, he had no idea how it worked. But he had to try, for the sake of all those that he'd wronged by existing. A conveyor belt of thoughts sped through his brain, each holding an idea of how to fix everything. Every idea was faulty to some degree, but eventually he had to land on something. Then, it struck him. If he couldn't come up with a good idea, maybe someone else could. But who would entertain such a ridiculous idea?
The plastic spoon poked at the oatmeal that Chef had served. Well, oatmeal was a stretch, but that was the closest thing it looked like. Still, the skinny teen needed to eat something. Pushing up his glasses, Harold swallowed his pride and shoved the spoonful of food into his mouth. That was when he noticed Cody standing in the doorway, almost manic in nature. After scanning the room, Cody sped to Harold's table and sat across from him.
"Harold! Let's just say someone were to have time-traveled and was now regretting that and wanted to go home but they didn't know how because they didn't mean to do it and they've completely screwed up by making everything worse and do you think that the old timeline still exists and-"
"Jeez, calm down," Harold said, swallowing the food he'd shoved in his mouth.
Cody panted from his desperate tirade. He closed his eyes, waiting for his mind to finally slow down enough for him to formulate what he needed to say. "What do you know about time travel?"
For any ordinary person, this was a completely ridiculous question, one that nearly justified the amount of lockers Cody had been shoved into over the years. Luckily for the nerd, Harold was no ordinary person. "What do you mean by time-travel? Like, the types of time travel? You know, a whole new timeline, a timeline that cannot be changed by the past, or one where you can change the future. Is that what you're asking?"
Grateful for Harold's lack of confusion, Cody clarified what he meant. "No, I more so mean the method of time-travel itself. And I guess to be specific, it would be the type where you can change the future."
Harold took in the knowledge for a moment as he collected his thoughts. "Well, shouldn't they use the machine they used in the first place? Or am I correct in assuming that they aren't in control of their travel?"
Cody nodded. "Yeah, yeah, the second one. Let's say someone traveled back in time involuntarily, without any knowledge of how they did so. I'm sure you've seen plenty of time travel movies. Does this plot ring a bell?"
Harold scratched his forming goatee. "Well, I guess it sounds a bit similar to Gopher Day', but only in the sense that this theoretical person wouldn't know why it was happening to him. You're talking about someone who can change the future and doesn't just live out the same day. Even in movies, most of the time there is a real machine or some other device that does this for you. If it's involuntary, I'd say that the time-traveler would just have to wait and hope that they get to return to their original timeline."
Cody looked disappointed to hear this news, something that Harold took note of. "Cody, what's with all the time travel questions?" he finally asked. Cody froze in shock. Granted, he wasn't being subtle at all about his questions, but he was hoping that Harold's thirst for explaining things to others would take precedence over logic. Luckily for Cody, he accidentally found himself a way out.
"Time-travel? What are you two dweebs talking about?" Duncan scoffed, grabbing his tray from an uninterested Chef. "Are you two seriously that dorky, that's all you guys can talk about?" he laughed as he sat as far away as he could from the pair.
"Gosh, Duncan! If you could learn to keep a conversation that has a word longer than four letters, maybe you wouldn't be so insufferable!" That last comment angered the punk as he stood up with his fist clenched. "You wanna say that again, Dweebus?! Go ahead, I dare you!" At the first sign of confrontation, Harold immediately backed down and relented the win to the punk.
"Great, now I can't even eat this I'm so angry!" Duncan yelled, picking up his untouched tray and dropping it in the trash can. As he stepped out the door, Chef looked through his window to the main dining hall and sighed. "Ungrateful little brat. Didn't even take a bite! How am I supposed to…" he trailed off, wandering back into the kitchen.
"You really oughta apologize to the guy, y'know," Cody said, swiftly trying to move on from Harold's suspicions.
Harold just shook his head. "How can I talk to that Neanderthal? He's got no brain, no taste, and no compassion."
"I mean, I get you. I do. But you also leave dirty underwear around, dude. Regardless of how annoying he is, you've gotta stop doing that stuff and just apologize."
"Not until he apologizes to me first!" Harold said with a "HMPH!" at the end. Cody could only sigh and hope that it would work out for his friend. Harold was done with his food by the end of their conversation, so he said goodbye to Cody and left him alone.
"So that didn't work…" he mumbled, absently poking at his bowl. His thoughts once again drifted back to the many failures that he had endured this time around. "I'm sorry I couldn't help you guys," he said quietly. His return to his thoughts in the morning made him think of one of the first things he thought about that day, Ezekiel. Suddenly, his brain was flooded with thoughts of the better things he had achieved.
Tyler and Lindsay's relationship lasting longer, Gwen and his reunion, Noah's ever so slightly better send-off, the hours and hours he spent with Ezekiel, who was sure to never become a zombie-like creature in this timeline. A smile grew on his face as he stood up and stepped outside.
Bridgette and Geoff sat on the beach staring into each other's eyes, not registering anything else besides the one they loved. Both Beth and Tyler were sitting down, listening intently as Lindsay babbled on and on about something neither of them likely cared about. They were just happy to listen to Lindsay talk. Gwen was silently crying on the porch of the Gopher cabins, Leshawna right by her side, talking to her and occasionally making her chuckle through the pain. They were all having fun, despite the circumstances. Cody even got joy out of Trent trying and failing to hit on Heather, who looked disgusted by the attempt. She spotted Cody looking at her and rolled her eyes, walking off into the woods as quickly as she could to escape her pursuer.
Cody sat down on the stairs of the mess hall. "I can't go back in time and ruin all of this," he whispered. "I can't just try to go back and undo my mistakes at the slightest sight of sadness. I've been given this rare opportunity, and I need to ride this out. I'll stick it through till the end and I'll make it right. Everything."
Cody spent the rest of the day with his friends. He spent a little time with Gwen and Leshawna as he and the latter made sure that Gwen knew things would be okay. She wasn't over the ordeal from the previous day by the end, but she ended in a considerably better mood.
Later he would end up talking to Beth after her two companions snuck off into the woods. Cody hoped that they wouldn't encounter the queen bee who had left for the woods earlier. The two discussed the previous night's elimination and the shock it brought both of them.
"I jutht can't believe that they'd vote poor DJ out!" Beth said with wide eyes. Cody nodded with a stoic expression. "Me neither. But apparently, the guy missed his mom. I don't know if he asked them to vote him out, but I'm sure the guy's happier wherever he is." Cody knew that last part to be true. Playa des Losers was top-notch, especially for the teens.
As the night began to wind down and people began heading to their cabins, Cody followed suit. However, as he stepped up to his door, he heard shouting coming from the other room. Despite his hesitation to eavesdrop on the girls, the shouting was so loud that he would likely hear it from his room anyway.
"And what gives you the right to do that, skinny?" Leshawna yelled, and Cody could immediately tell who she was talking to.
"Well, excuse me! It's not like it worked out for me either! Now I've got a lovesick puppy following me around everywhere! Honestly, it's so aggravating!"
"Uh uh! You don't know what aggravating is yet, girlfriend!" Cody left the two to continue their screaming match, not even feeling satisfied by Heather getting insulted. He was right in that he would continue to hear them, even in his room. However, he decided to tune them out as much as possible. Trent was already in the room and asleep, so luckily there wouldn't be a second screaming match at the same time from the Gophers. Cody climbed into bed and instantly fell asleep.
A/N: Our first free day in a while, and I thought it was fun. Cody gets to talk to Harold, which is a relationship that I haven't gotten to explore as much as I wanted to up until this point. Cody was eventually going to have a point where he just wanted things to go back to normal, and Harold was a pretty good person to use that with. He's smart enough and friendly enough for Cody to talk to him about this type of stuff, but ignorant enough to not immediately question Cody's intentions. This chapter also seeks to be a bit of a callback to the first chapter, with Cody wondering if he should even be meddling with the past. Owen was the one to help him out last time, but this time, Cody was mature enough to get through his little crisis himself. The rest of the chapter was fairly short, but I tried to take a different approach to this free day. Instead of Cody going around and talking to random contestants across his day, it was more of a montage of what Cody did throughout the day. I wouldn't say this is a particularly important chapter in the grand scheme of things, given that the issue this chapter is brought up and concluded within just the one. But not only did I think that this was an important issue for Cody to tackle, but this was just a break between the last two chapters/episodes. The last two episodes I've had to cover are probably my least favorite in the season, only rivaled by 'X-Treme Torture' and 'Not Quite Famous', so getting to some better ones, ones with more meat and story to them, is exciting. Especially the next episode/chapter, not only one of my favorite episodes of the entire show, but a really fun one for me to write.