My nine lives

Selection day

Everyone has the day their life began, and by that I don't mean birth. I mean the kind of day that feels like a harsh awakening, like an icy door of a fridge revealing the next chapter to my life. My day was on a lifeless and tedious Wednesday; February 14th 2051. Selection day.

I’m sure that the first thought that emerged into your mind was valentine's day, and it was, however it did not intrigue me as much as selection day did.

Ah yes, selection day. Now how do I explain this without sounding like an upfront nutjob? 

You need to understand that before our world fell into perrill and was burnt to a crisp right before our eyes, many life changing secret experiments and revelations were made. One of which is time travel. We had only begun to get a grip of understanding how it worked and created a test module. This human size module wasn't fully functioning and not even close to being announced. My fathers company kept it for years in hopes of finishing it and becoming the first scientists to discover time travel. Yet, amongst all this hope occurred the many events that led to the end of the world. So most of the valid information was lost ,except  for the module itself. The tempus 42.  It works almost perfectly fine, however it only allows one person to travel at a time. Which was One of the many things my father's company couldn't understand. The survivors, which are us, have made significant and maybe even extraordinary use of the perplexing machine. The leaders decided that the only chance we have on saving humanity, is through time travel. They believed  that if we managed to go back 9 decades, we could discover what the cause of our failure was. ‘The mistake’ that ended the world. 

However, as effortless as this seems, only the strongest and the most quick-witted are chosen. Time travel has been reported to affect you brutally and mentally. wipe your memories, cause your muscles to wear away and even kill you. So every year, the prime youngsters are selected out of the silver chalice and trained daily to become ‘a traveller’. And that pretty much sums up selection day.

I get excited by it not because I have a chance of being chosen, but because it's entertaining to see which little sucker is gonna risk their lives for nothing. 

With a decent walking pace, I began to make my way to the I.R hall where the selection was being held. Hundreds and hundreds of annoying teenagers chatting and whispering, curious to find out who will be this year's traveller. 

A short girl next to me came up onto her toes and excitedly whispered, “Who do you think it’s going to be?”  I gave her a half smile because she seemed nice, and she was only trying to make conversation. With a loud sigh, I answered truthfully “ I know one thing for sure, it's definitely not me.” Suddenly, there was an awkward pause that I did not expect. I was hoping to get a giggle of some sort, but instead this supposedly ‘lovely’ girl opened her mouth. 

“ Oh my god, I know you !” she said half laughing. She did ? I thought to myself, attempting to scan through my memories to see if I recall this short girl. She continued, “ You're that girl that went nuts on drugs a couple of months ago!” My face turned pale, but the idiotic girl continued her story as if it meant nothing. 

“And you kept repeating your dad and moms name, it was the funniest shit !” She laughed as if her lungs were about to have an asthma attack. I could feel my blood beggining to boil and my mind finding out all the possible ways to get away with murder.  But she wouldn't shut up. 

“ Like I get that they died and shit, but if you're gonna keep going to the pills for help…” she made a small giggling noise. “ we should've left you on earth with them.”

My heart began to race at a ridiculous pace, still trying to process what this bitch just said. But nothing could stop me from what came out of my furious mouth next. “You know, I really hope you do get chosen…” I began. But the dumb girl didnt even let me finish, “ awww tha-” 

I quickly cut her off and said , “ So I can watch you die on the big screen, in the monitoring room as my morning show.” 

To understand me, you need to know that I can be ridiculously impulsive sometimes. Say things that first come to my mind with no filter. Good and bad. But I never regret it, especially not now.

There was a long silence, but I found it amusing seeing this shocked girl with her mouth gaped open. “ Have a nice day”, I finished.

I pushed past the teenagers to reach my friend, who was standing furthest from the chalice to get a good view. As soon as she spotted my face, a wide grin spread across her face. “Come to see the show”, she chuckled 

“ Of course” I smiled. 

However, our conversation was quickly cut off by one of the leaders, Rosamund. She had short brown hair in a kind of pixie cut and her glowing grey eyes could be spotted from a mile away.  Rosamund is good-natured and is the closest thing I have to a mother in this place. Her gentle and quiet cough, signaled the entire room to science.

The gleaming silver chalice shone a bright blue to reveal a name on a thin piece of paper, half crumpled. Rosamunds eyes widened slightly as she breathed in to reveal the name of this year's traveller. 

The dead silence was beginning to make my heart rate speed up. Surely the person couldn't be that bad to make Rosamund so shocked ? But my thoughts were quickly cut off by the words that formed from her mouth.

“Adira Damaris”