Plans for going back to the History

1. Go to my Math lesson, and pretend that I’m going to the bathroom, then sneak out in the back door.

(Warning: must go there like forty minutes before the class.)

2. After sneaking out the door, take bus 34 to the suburb. And sneak into the building.

(Warning: If being found out, lives are gone.)

3. …

“But wait, you didn’t list a plan at all,” Akeva taps my shoulder from behind “You only wrote what we are going to do, but how exactly are we going to sneak into the building?” “I thought you know your father.” I put down my pen and raise my eyebrow. “Well, yeah, he usually goes out of the building for like an hour to have a walk on Saturday, and it’s usually the time where the building is almost empty except the servants.” Akeva scratches his head.

“And then, we sneak into the building, and on to the third floor, say the passwords, and get to the machine. If it doesn’t succeed, we come back and try it another day. Deal?” I ask. “Deal.” Says Akeva finally. “we need to pack though.” I pull out my extremely large school bag. “I don’t want to be starved to death in the history, and if it’s winter, I will not be frozen to death either.” “Yeah, that’s fine. We do have some minutes.”Akeva says approvingly. And we get it all ready when my parents knock on the door.

Honestly, I’m really nervous when my parents arrive at home. I let Akeva hide downstairs, so that my parents won’t think that I’m doing nothing at home. “How’s the day?” Mom asks, dad nodding behind her. “Fine,” I lower my head and focus on my tea, avoiding eye contact.

“Is there anything you want to tell us?” Dad steps forward. “Well yeah,” I lie, “So there was a really hard problem, and I’m feeling better now, so I guess even though I missed the Chinese class, I can still go to the math. “Good girl,” Dad says, “Then I will send you there a bit earlier than usual, so you will have time to talk to your teacher. Besides, your mom and I are going out to our university too.” “Cool.” I turn around so that they cannot see the grin on my face.

When we walk down stairs to get the car, I sign Akeva to come out. “What’s s…” I eye him, and Akeva quickly changes his words. “Hello Racheal, fancy meeting you here.” He is such a great actor that he pretends to be a perfect gentleman.

“Oh, Racheal, this is your foreign friend, isn’t he?” Mom walks beside me. I nod. “Hello, Akeva Cardamone, nice to meet you.” They shake hands.

“Racheal often talks about you.” Mom says, while my face is turning red again, “So how long will you be staying here?” “Exactly a year, Ms. Lin.” Akeva answers politely. “Good, what’s your father’s job again?” Mom asks. “A teacher.” Akeva answers. “Oh, that must be great. We are all teachers, how funny!” then my mom begins to laugh even though there is really nothing to laugh about. Akeva and I just stand there, very awkwardly. “Where are you going Akeva?” Dad walks up to us. “I really want to hear a Chinese math lesson, SO I WONDER IF…” Akeva stops a little to look at my parents.

“Oh sure, of course, that will certainly be lovely.” My mom opens the door for us. “And Racheal, what’s that bag for? It looks really heavy.” “Um,” I quickly tuck in a sleeve of cloth that is showing, “Nothing actually, just books and stuff.” Luckily, mom just sits back in her seats, keeping silent. “Well done.” Akeva whispers. “Shut up.” I whisper back. At exactly forty minutes before the lesson, we arrive together. “Have a great time!” Mom calls out in the car.

“Yeah, right.” I murmurs. “Now go to your classroom, hand in your homework, and I’ll wait for you beside the back door.” Akeva orders. He sounds a lot like commander in chief. I nod, and walk up to my classroom. My teacher is already there, “Hi Racheal, so early.”＂Yeah.” I say, wondering what he will ask me to do. “I have a hard question here, it’s in English, should be easy for you.”

My heart sinks. Three minutes already passes. “Um, sure.” I take the question. Thank god it isn’t too hard. “Um, Mr. Wang, I have an upset stomach.” I say after I finish. “Help yourself.”

I hurriedly come out of the classroom and head for the back door. When I finally open the back door, Akeva is already waiting for me for a long time. “What kept you?” He asks impatiently. Not waiting for an answer, we rush to the bus stop. Maybe because that God is helping us greatly, just a minute after we arrive, the bus comes. “Hurry up then.”I call. We hop on the bus, and the bus moves away from the city. “Thank God that your classroom is not far from the suburbs.” Akeva says, ＂Seriously though, what kept you for such a long time?＂ “It’s just my teacher who wants me to solve this English math problem, so it took some time.” I explain.

“That makes sense.” Akeva shrugs, “We are coming nearer and nearer to the building, I can’t believe I’m finally going to meet my mom.” “No seriously, I have no idea about what is going on here, and I just have to warn you for the last time, Akeva, Liu XinYi might just be lying about it. She cannot be trusted” I say. “ But she knows the time machine, Rachel. There is no pretending that she doesn’t know anything, and she knows about my mom!” Akeva draws a big breathe and begins to talk, slowly and gently, “Three years ago, my dad’s first time machine was on the work. But he didn’t want other people to know about it until it was finished. But he needed a person to test it.”

“So…” I start to understand which way this story will be going. “Yes, because I was too young, he sent my mother back a thousand years before this time. He knew that it would be dangerous, but he still did.” “But she can come back, can’t she?” I ask. “It’s planned that she would only be there for like an hour, but dad didn’t tell her the way back. The only thing he left her is the time machine, but she had no idea how to control it.” “That’s sad.” I comment. “It surely is.”

“But if Aria Liu came from the history where your mom is now, and she can come back, why can’t your mom?” I suddenly think of this question and ask. “That’s the problem.” Says Akeva shortly, “The machine could only be used one time for each person. In another way, Aria isn’t going back if the new machine haven’t been invented.” “But if we go back, does that mean that we are not coming back?” “You can’t say that, no,” Akeva says as she is thinking, “The new machine, I remember dad tell me about that, he says that the machine has two chances for each person. It’s more convenient for him to move from one to another time tunnels. The more it’s being used, the more chances you will get.”

“Okay?” I say uncertainly. “But I thought you had said that there’s basically no time passes in the history?” “That’s the case before, three days equals to one day in history because the machine can’t spin fast enough. And now, there is no time pass in current time, but time passes in the history.” “I don’t get it.” I conclude. “For example, you came to the history when you were eleven, and three years passed, and you are fourteen. Then when you come back, you will still be eleven.” Akeva explains slowly and clearly. “Got that one.” I snap with my fingers.

We run through the suburbs as the bus stops at the last stop. “We have fifteen minutes still.” Akeva runs so effortlessly, but I’m already out of breath. “Okay… how much farther?” I ask. “Well, according the “TDH” it will still take five minutes or so.” Akeva holds up his waist so I can see the tiny number that is showing our speed and how many miles we still need to go. “I hate this.”I groan while sweeping sweats from my forehead. “That’s why you need to go to gym more often.” Akeva has basically no sweats at all, and he is talking like he just came back sitting on a beach and doing nothing at all!

“Oh, shut up…” I say weakly, my lungs feel that they might burst. “We can’t stop here, Racheal,” Akeva looks at my painful face, with some of the pity shown “My mom is all alone in the history.” I suddenly notice a thing: the bag is still on Akeva’s bag. “Don’t… don’t you feel tired?” I ask. “No not at all.” Akeva answers, but his face is already turning sort of pink because of the weight of the bag.

Ten minutes before the class is on, we arrive at front of the building. “Rose garden fills with thorns.” Akeva says. It’s really like what he had said, the building is almost empty, but there is someone walking on the floor above us. “C’mon, keep quiet.” Akeva whispers. Together, we sneak up the stairs. When we arrive at the second floor, which is filled with machines and papers, the whole hall is full of the smell of burning wax. “Wait, hurry up!” Akeva pulls me behind a shelf. Just as we are well hidden, the sound of footsteps comes near. “That’s Mr. Kazarosian,” Akeva whispers, as an elderly white man comes across the hall way, “He has been with my dad for like twenty years already. Really creepy how he looks at you. He scared me to death when I was young” Akeva explains slowly. We wait patiently as Mr. Kazarosian walks away. “All is clear.” I declared in a really soft voice.

“Let’s keep moving then.” Akeva leads me to the third floor. “Do you remember which room it is?” I ask. We are lost, in my words, lost in a bunch of completely same rooms. “I only remember there was a star chart on its door. Here it is, come on!” Akeva pulls open the door. Thank god it isn’t locked.

“Now what?” I ask. The room is so quiet that it’s not normal. “Now we go through the tunnels and get to the machine.” Akeva says. He walks up to the wall. “Let’s try it here.” He taps the wall three times and draws some kind of picture before saying confidently, “ patefacio sursum!” The wall splits open like it did before. I catch one of Akeva’s sleeve when he is trying to walk in. “We should lock the door.” I nod towards the half opening door. “Yeah, you are right.” After the door is locked. We walks through the tunnel.

“I’m so excited now.” Akeva even smiles. “Really?” I ask disbelievingly, “I feel like I’m going to die here.” Not far before we stop walking, there is a really heavy trap door there. “Um, let me think how to say this one.” Akeva looks up at the ceiling, “Got it, tempus machina!” The trap door opens silently.

“Now, this pass will probably lead us straight to the time machine.” I say. Akeva nods, we walk faster now. Soon we are in front of the time machine. It’s still covered in blue lights just like last time. “We will need a controller to stop the protection!” I say anxiously. “That’s a problem.” Akeva says. He looks at his “TDH”. “I don’t think it will help you.” I point at it. “Racheal it’s only three minutes to your class!” Akeva points at his watch. “That means we still have some time.” I say quit calmly. Actually I wouldn’t have been so sure if my teacher hadn’t texted me that he was going out for some dinner and would not come back until five minutes after class.

Akeva taps his “TDH” three times, and the elf appears on the scene. “Mr. Cardamone, where…” the elf looks around the room. “Mr. Cardamone, you shouldn’t be here! Not without your father!” The elf squeaks. “We already know all about it, so now tell us how to get to the machine!” Akeva urges. “No, No Benny is going to be in big trouble!” Benny clenches his face.

“Tell, us!” Akeva nearly shouts out. His voice echoes around the room. “Shhh,” I put a finger to my lips to silent him. “We already know, so the rule doesn’t work on it anymore!” Akeva whispers desperately. “But if it doesn’t work, Benny is going to get in big trouble!” The elf now begins to hit his head. Though he can’t do any damage to himself since he is transparent “This elf is a lot like Dobby the elf.” I say. “Yeah, dad made it.” Akeva smiles. ＂Tell us.＂＂No!＂ The elf doesn’t face Akeva. ＂Then you don’t obey your master, you are breaking the rule!” There are only three minutes left, and we are getting desperate.

“Oh, move over!” I push Akeva aside. “Benny, what you are trying to do is not helping you!” I say quietly. The elf raises his head, his eyes full of blue tears, “But my master created me and let me obey his rules!” “But we are going to save your creator’s wife! If she is back, then your creator will surely award you!” The elf looks unsurely again. “I don’t know. Anyway, you shouldn’t go back, because…” It squeaks.

“Whatever the reason is, there isn’t lot of time left, so hurry up, make up your mind!” I urge. “Ms. Cardamone is in the Chinese’s history, The Three Kingdoms.” Benny says and buries his face in his hands again “Oh, no, that’s bad, that’s very very bad!” I gasp. “What?” Akeva asks. “Tell you later. And how do we get the protection of this machine.”

“Well, there is this password, and in English. It’s an urgent mission. And if you really want to know and to get it off, you have to say urgent missionem” Just as the elf finishes speaking, the blue lights suddenly disappears. “Great, hurry up, let’s go then. And thanks a lot, Benny, you are the best.” Akeva says.

Somewhere far, there is a loud beeping sound, followed by footsteps and shouting. “What do we do now?” I cried. “We go back to the history! Benny just bent his creator’s rule, and people would know that we had broken into this machine!” Akeva shouts. Because suddenly this room is shining with red lights and the sound of emergency.

The door opens as we approach. “Hurry up.” I sit down in a back seat, while Akeva takes the driver’s place. The shouting is coming nearer. “They are already in the tunnel!” I shout. “Wait, I’m trying to work it out!” Akeva’s hands tap quickly on the keyboards, and a list of names appears on the scene. “Come on, Racheal. Which one is it? I don’t get your country seriously!” I run to the screen and murmur under my breath, “The Yuan dynasty, certainly not, Tang dynasty nope, not that, the Zhou Dynasty, no it isn’t.” “Will you please hurry up?” Akeva urges. Just as I’m still looking, we all feels a bump from the door. “They are coming, hurry up!” Akeva shouts.

Then just as exactly that moment, I find it --- the Han dynasty, and The Three Kingdom. “This is it!” and Akeva presses the button beside it. I have a feeling that we are moving very fast. “Now we can relax.” Akeva sit back down on his chair. “That went pretty well, right?” “I’m nearly scared to death.” I lay on my chair. “Do you have a bathroom in here?” “Yeah, we do, Akeva presses a yellow button, and a small room appears. “Thanks,” I carry the bag with me.