The love you save may be your own...
Some day you may be all alone...
Stop it!
Save it, girl!
Baby! Ooh!
You better stop the love you save may be your own
You'd better stop! The love you save may be your own!
Please, please
Or someday, someday baby,
You'll be all alone
-- The Jackson Five (The Love You Save)
=/\=
Rick and Sheilagh sat down in his office and were about ready to get down to business when there was a door chime. It was Tom. "Am I interrupting anything?" he drawled.
"No, of course not," Sheilagh said, "We were just about to start looking at news stories from Kent State, and compare them to the master time file."
"Oh," he said, "I, I think on my end of things, it's a more or less foregone conclusion where the difference is."
"Really?" Rick asked.
"Yeah. We, uh, there was a woman killed right in front of us," Tom said.
"That's not necessarily a change, yanno," Rick pointed out.
"I know. It's just; it feels like it should be what's wrong," Tom said.
"I know what you mean," Sheilagh interjected, "I mean, I know I was supposed to see four people get killed, and a bunch of other people wounded. And I did, but it still feels off."
"Any handle on who the woman was in 2026?" Rick asked.
"Not a clue," Tom replied, "This is, the uniforms they wore, most of them were in bad shape. Name patches were torn off or partly missing. And I know there were people who stole others' uniforms, so a guy like me could be wearing a uni with the name R. Daniels sewn on the arm patch."
"Why would anyone want to do that?" she asked.
"They usually also killed the uni's owner, and stole his or her ration card," Tom explained, "There are millions of people starving in this era."
"My God," she said, "It's hard to think of them as the same species as the people I saw marching in 1970. A little over fifty years later, and it's all so changed."
"It's right around the twentieth century when things start to really speed up," Rick pointed out, "Head into the 1600s and the styles don't change much, and people are still riding horses and reading by candlelight, a good two hundred years later."
"The whole thing is strange," Sheilagh said.
"It can be a lot to process," Rick admitted, "And I'm sorry we won't be able to really sit and talk. I know how you're feeling. I was a basket case after the first time I went out, and I didn't even see anybody get shot," he paused, "Shall we look at the news stories?"
"Sure," Tom said.
Sheilagh fiddled with her PADD, "Looks like there were four killed, and nine wounded, on May fourth, 1970."
"Who are the dead?" Rick asked, pulling up the master time file on his own PADD.
"Uh, the dead are Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, William Knox Schroeder and Christine Ellen Hynde," she said.
YOU ARE READING
Ohio
FanfictionThis time, they had no one to blame but themselves. Time was again messed up, but no one else was at fault. Still, someone was watching, and taking notes. And they had their own dilemma to deal with - how do you decide who lives, and who dies? Who's...
