**Brooklyn Robarts' Story Continued**
Suddenly, a strange cyclone appeared above my head. I instinctively stepped aside as the force of the wind pushed me further from my original position. My old footprints were about a foot deep. I couldn't tell if I had been standing there long enough for the dirt to settle around me like an artifact or if the ground was simply soft. Had I sunk into a bog?
As the swirling walls of the time tunnel descended to the ground, I caught a glimpse of my reflection. I looked old and haggard.
"I'm 26," I murmured to myself.
In that moment, my reflection transformed to reveal a newly married young man who looked clean, fresh, and utterly confused.
Stephanie stared at me in shock from the other side of the tunnel.
"What's wrong, honey?" I asked my wife.
"My hair! It's bouncy and curly, mahogany with reddish highlights. When did it change?" she exclaimed, her eyes wide.
I knew the answer. "Stephanie, your hair has always looked this way..."
"Whoa. Wait, what?" Stephanie said incredulously, looking at me.
"Where's your complex, multipurpose helmet?" I laughed, thinking she wouldn't understand, but to my surprise, she did.
"My helmet? It's on the dining room end table. I got sick of it," she replied. "What…"
"Please go get it. You'll see," I smiled.
"Okay!" She danced away with a perfect pirouette. I laughed again. "That's my girl!" I cheered for her.
When she returned, she had a heavy helmet with a visor. "First, look at the mirrored walls of the wormhole," I instructed.
"Oh, the multidimensional space-time continuum force field that continuously pushes and pulls me!" What a long-winded explanation for a kid.
Stephanie examined her reflection. After a few minutes, she put her entire head into that monstrous dome with all its complexities. With effort, she leaned on the curved object in front of her. Finally, she closed the visor over her face.
"Wow! My hair is now blonde, long, and full of big waves. I didn't know this transparent, translucent, sparkly, and bulletproof armor made my hair look so different from what it really is," a surprised Stephanie said. "That answers a lot of questions. May I take this off now?" she pleaded.
"Yeah, sure. Let me help you, honey."
Afterward, she remarked, "Oh, that's heavy. It has a computer installed inside it. I heard my voice rattle off information. I recall working on that project. I was researching the Vitality Family Tree, with all those unpronounceable names and dates of birth. Of course, I knew something weird was happening. There's no such thing as an unpronounceable language. The dates weren't actual birthdays. What was all of that?"
"Okay, we're duplicated by the magic sunwater, which makes the new person healthier than the original. In those cases, anyone who touches the water might get DNA from someone else who was in that sample of water. I don't know how anyone can trace ancestry with that information," I reflected. "Did you know that if a chip breaks off from a larger rock, something extraordinary happens?"
"Ooh! I saw this. A chip fell into the river after I climbed out of it. First, the rock regrew to the same shape and size as it was before it lost any pieces," she said, breathless as always when she finally finished.
"Yes. Also, a bunch of rocks will continuously appear. I don't know how to stop that," I announced to my wife.
"Oh, yeah. Just wish that you could go back in time to solve this problem. Just keep saying exactly what you want to do, and you will reach the exact moment when the chip falls. Just repeat yourself. For example, Doug said, 'I want to watch the chip fall from the stone. I want to catch it.' He cooed like a dove at the wishing well/fountain of youth. While that prevented the boulder from forming, it also occurred. Doug managed to drink from or walk into the enriched river so many times that he began to glow red in his red clothes. My brother became pure red electricity. He could shrink or grow in proportion. He could even resume human form at any size. At a microscopic size, Doug can find DNA, minerals, and materials in the water around an object or living thing. Somehow, Doug can combine animate and inanimate objects, which means he can give life to a rock by merging human or animal cells with it. Doug also accidentally created a series of humanoid trees. Each new organism was more human and interesting than the previous one," Stephanie said.
I looked at the time tunnel, which stood there like an unusually long tree. I pressed a button, and it instantly materialized. The strange thing then disappeared. A clipboard with paper, a pencil, and an eraser lay on the ground atop my footprints.
"Oh, Stephanie. What is this place?"
"All I know is that a hysterical child comes here time and again. I was called to do something. The thing is, I don't know what horrifying catastrophe caused the child, or her older versions, to land in this neighborhood. Wait! Here she comes now!"
Out of nowhere, a little girl with strawberry blonde hair came running along the river, which had also just appeared. When she saw me, she...
Out of nowhere, a little girl with strawberry blonde hair came running along the river, which also just appeared. When she saw me, she hugged me. She backed up so she could walk around and calm herself.
"Hi. I'm a version of you from a different time," Stephanie said to the newcomer. "Why do you have a tantrum when you come here sometimes?"
In one series of repeated journeys to this place, when there's a house, I'm still yelling about what I wanted to do, and the fact that I'm sucked into a quantum leap. It gets scarier and scarier to get whisked away by this cyclone. The more I scream, the worse it gets. The walls revolve faster and faster. A white blurry thing appears on the inside walls of the tunnel. I don't want to go back and forth in time. I have this amulet that monitors my health. When I'm not happy, it alerts the time tunnel to come. Then, whether or not the situation is solved, the tunnel keeps coming. I found that if I move out of the way, the tunnel won't be able to get me. All the same, another one finds me. I don't know who is summoning me. I hate time travel."
"Do you know why you were sent to the house?"
"I think that, if I go back far enough, to be born somewhere new, I will have a different life. I won't have to endure whatever ailment or catastrophe I had in my original life.
For example, I forget that I'm the only Stephanie, and that there are very few original people on this magically revealed island. Oops. You want short answers.
1. Fast forward over the bizarre history.
2. When I got married, a bunch of things interrupted my wedding.
3. There was a wild ride of driving up and around a strange mountain to a set of buildings that were somehow connected.
4. A common theme was that after a fantastic wedding, my husband and I enjoyed a long and amusing reception. After that, we went home to one of two mansions atop a mountain. Barely an hour after getting to sleep, my husband awakens me to go down the hill, to a soup kitchen. I don't want to attempt any in this overtired and worn-out condition. I end up serving meals to people at 3:00 am. I kept having so many different time travels with wild variations, that I thought hundreds of different women got married. Each one had to serve at the 3:00 a.m. meal."
"I think I understand," I said. I'll see if I can write some short notes. I guess a version of you from the future sent this clipboard to me.
Is that everything?"
"Listen. I've been kidnapped, and locked in a car. I don't know how I got out of that car. It seems that as the co-ruler of this place, you let the convicted kidnappers go. I don't know how many times someone climbed my tower, got past you, and boom. I even had a separate court convict you. How did you escape jail? It's illegal to pardon heinous crimes. You pardoned someone who tried to kill your wife, after only 5 years of penitentiary time?"
"I don't know that timeline. By the way, what's my name?" I changed the subject to see what she would say.
"Oh, you corrected me on that one. You're Brooklyn Robarts, born in Brooklyn, New York City," she replied. "You changed the subject."
"I can't comment on something I don't remember. Doug, are you still here now?"
Doug said, "Oh. I think you're the original Brooklyn Robarts. At this point, you would not have had any Vitality Island Adventures yet. This way, whatever you experience is permanent. You make your own destiny now. All of the other versions of you never existed. You haven't touched the magic water. On the other hand, I don't know how to get to Stephanie's original self. She's gone back to ten years before she was even born, then to some random point in the future so many times," Doug said.
"Well, Doug," Stephanie started saying something. I noticed we were in our new home in Connecticut. She still had the silly flowers in her hair, from the only wedding that I remember. She wore the modest white gown with all of the overlapping layers from the shoulders to the long skirt hem. She looked like a slender Christmas Tree, from a distance.
"Brooklyn, are you listening to me?" My annoyed wife asked without sounding annoyed. I don't know how she did it.
"What? A lot of weird things happened to me just now," I said. I didn't know how to explain this stuff to her.
"Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't know that. Just to freshen your memory, we just saw something on the news. You said you recognized your family, as the people whose drinking water was poisoned. They looked like frog people to me. They were claiming
to be the rulers of two islands. Their Island was affected when some group poured frothy waste and acids into their river. The thing is, there isn't a river along the coast of Connecticut. It certainly does not encircle two different continent-sized islands.