Chapter 13: Winter Break

For the next several weeks, Alexa studied and went to her classes. She tried to stay away from Hellion, because at least one of her accusations was true; Alexa was in fact working for Morgan Lefevre. She did well in all of her classes, and was very intuitive in the recovery of lost technology club. As time went on, the weather got colder and Winter arrived. There were days when it was cold and rainy, and Alexa wore wool leotards under her skirt to keep her legs warm. Most days after the last class, the Verso girls sat in the common room drinking hot chocolate.

Before long, it was time for Winter break. The students would get two weeks off from school when they could return home to their families. The week of Christmas, and the week of New Year's. When it came time to leave, Alexa packed her bags and used her neutrino dissimilator to shrink her terrarium, along with her shrunken captive. She stored the shrunken terrarium inside a backpack.

She caught a ride on the rocket sled with Ozymandias, and returned to her home in Southern California. The rocket sled pulled up and dropped her off early enough in the morning to avoid drawing attention. 

Alexa put her things away in her room, then took out her terrarium. From reading the technical manual for the class she took about neutrino dissimilators, Alexa knew that if she re-enlarged the terrarium with the shrunken captive inside, he would be restored to normal size. She took him out, then re-enlarged the terrarium. The shrunken man was on a much smaller scale than he had been when she first miniaturized him; he stood about as tiny as an ant. In order to re-enlarge him, Alexa would need to restore him to normal size momentarily, change the setting on her shrink ray gun, then pull the trigger and reduce him to an inch tall once again.

Alexa could have gotten her mother to help her with a second shrink ray gun, but she thought she could do it on her own. When the shrunken captive was restored to normal size, he bolted for the door. Before Alexa could change the setting and aim, he was on his way out the front door and running down the sidewalk. Alexa grabbed her communicator, because it had an app that allowed her to track a transponder injected into her captive when he was first shrunk. She used it to track his location.

Alexa ran out the front door, and followed him with her communicator in one hand, and the neutrino dissimilator in the other. Terry didn't know the neighborhood Alexa's parents lived in, but instinctively, he headed toward the park, which wasn't far away from Alexa's home. He was much faster than Alexa, but eventually, he got tired by the time he reached the park. 

Alexa was in great shape, so she caught up with him quickly, and fired the shrink ray gun. He was instantly reduced to an inch tall. Alexa approached him and towered over him.

"Don't ever try to do that again!" Alexa commanded, as she bent over and picked him up. Just as she turned to leave, Santiago ran up to her.

"Lexie!" said Santiago.

Alexa wasn't sure if she should show Santiago the captive or not; up until now, everything she had told him about the academy could have been dismissed as the ramblings of a lunatic. If Alexa ever wanted to play that card, she never could if she showed Santiago the shrunken captive.

"Look!" said Alexa, "This is my shrunken man. I had to re-size him, but when I wanted to return him to an inch tall, I had to restore him to normal size, and when I did, he tried to get away. I've got him now, it won't happen again."

"I made the mistake of telling my parents about the academy you're attending, and they think you're playing a practical joke on me," said Santiago. "Their other theory is that you're crazy like my cousin Hector. They basically convinced me that everything you said about being from the future is untrue, but now that I've seen your captive, I know you were telling the truth!"

"Just don't tell them any more about what I tell you or show you about the academy," Alexa replied. Santiago agreed to keep everything a secret from here on out. 

When Alexa returned home, her parents were concerned about ephemerals finding out about Alexa's captive, but Alexa reassured them that everything would be fine. She went to her room and set her shrunken captive on her dresser, which was long and horizontal.

"You're not to do that ever again!" Alexa demanded, slamming her fist down. "What if someone saw you? How would I explain you to a police officer?"

"I saw my chance and ran with it!" said Terry the captive. "You would've done the same in my position!"

"But I'm not in your position!" said Alexa. "You belong to me now, you will never return to your former life! Don't you realize that the only reason I found you is because the academy computers have you listed as missing after the date I acquired you?"

Alexa lifted her captive above her head and opened her mouth. "To my belly with you! Maybe that will teach you some obedience!" Alexa dropped him onto her tongue and closed her mouth, then swallowed firmly. He went plunging down her esophagus and splashed down in her stomach. It was dark in there, but he didn't need air to survive because of the immortality imbued by the shrink ray to anyone who gets shrunk. 

Alexa played video games for half an hour, and by that time she had forgotten that she had a shrunken man inside of her stomach. This thought made her laugh out loud. She then decided to vomit her captive back up. She got a bucket from the bathroom and used her neural stimulator to activate the gag reflex area of her brain, and her captive came forcefully out of her mouth, into the bucket. Alexa rinsed him off in the bathroom sink, then placed him in the terrarium. She went to the bathroom and cleaned the bucket really well, then returned it to its place under the sink.

Alexa returned to the living room, and watched television with her parents.

"Mom, why don't we have Futurian technology in our house?"

"We don't want ephemerals to find out about us," Mrs. Lockport replied. "Your father is an engineer at a company, and all of his associates are ephemerals."

Mr. Lockport added: "Now that you know you're a Futurian, when you're older we can take you on vacations with other Futurians. We know of other places where we can really let loose with our advanced technology."

When Christmas day came, Alexa helped her mother peel potatoes in the kitchen, and did the dishes as they were used so her mother could keep the kitchen presentable as she cooked Christmas dinner. When they sat down to dinner, there was a huge turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, and home made buttermilk biscuits. For dessert there was apple pie and pumpkin pie.

When everyone was done eating, they were stuffed. It wasn't dark yet when Alexa went to her bedroom. She felt the same sense of vertigo as she did when Morgan Lefevre had summoned her in the past. The room was now the mirror image of the way it normally was. Alexa turned and looked at the closet and Morgan Lefevre was standing there.

"It is time to put the plan into action," said Morgan. "Now we shall rule as gods over the ephemeral world!"

'What do you need from me?" Alexa asked.

"When you return to the academy, I want you to set off this device," Morgan pulled out a cylindrical machine from a duffel bag. "Take this with you and don't let the faculty know that you have it, or what it is. This will prevent anyone in that reality from being duplicated when I set of the timeline generator."

"What about the Futurians in this reality?" Alexa asked. "I don't want my parents getting duplicated."

"I already have satellites in orbit in another dimension that will prevent Futurians on Earth from getting duplicated in the alternate timeline," said Morgan. "I have one more device that I want to give you, Lexie!" Morgan pulled another small device from the duffel bag. "This machine will allow you to abort the launch sequence that will activate my alternate timeline generator."

"When do you plan on launching the alternate timeline?" Alexa asked.

"After all the students and faculty are back on campus, about 48 hours after you return to the academy."

"Why do you want me to control the abort sequencer?" Alexa asked.

"I don't," Morgan replied, "I want you to activate the alternate reality generator. This device will allow you to do that, but I also have an abort function in case something goes wrong!"

"Victoria, the head mistress, said that if your plans don't go the way you expect, you're just going to kick me to the curb."

"On the contrary!" Morgan replied. "If I get captured by the faculty, you will have the abort sequencer to stop the launch, so in their eyes, you'll be the hero of the day! Then I can utilize you in the future, when I try this again!"

Alexa didn't appear confident. "How exactly will your plan work?"

"The device I invented and constructed is a reality splicer," Morgan replied. "The alternate timeline generator will establish a new timeline where we will rule over the ephemerals as gods. The reality splicer will switch the future of the reality on Earth as you know it with the future of the alternate timeline."

"So back on Earth, we will rule, but in the opposite reality, that will be the future we came from?"

"Precisely!" said Morgan. "We will the switch the futures of both realities! The reason I gave you the schematics of the timeline generator is because I wanted the faculty of the academy to be thrown off by what I was really working on, a way to splice realities. With my plan, I will be able to control the future of both realities, once we reach eight-hundred thousand A.D. through the process of aging, I will rule everywhere!"

"I hope I don't let you down," said Alexa.

"I will now return you to your reality," said Morgan, and Alexa got a sense of vertigo again and when she snapped out of it, she was back in her own bedroom. She hid the two devices Morgan gave her in her closet. Alexa's parents never knew she had been gone. She sat with them in the living room and watched television with them.

On new year's eve, Alexa met up with Santiago at the park. It would soon be time to return to the academy, and she wanted to catch up on what had been happening in his life. When he wad done sharing his personal experiences, he asked Alexa about her recent experiences.

"Morgan Lefevre wants me to help her with her plans," said Alexa.

"She wants you to help her take over the world?" Santiago asked.

"Yes, she asked me to activate something of hers when I return to the academy. Alexa went on to explain everything Morgan had told her when she brought her into a parallel world the other day.

"I guess there's no reason for you not to go along with her plan," said Santiago, "but I hope for my sake you consider what I told you on Thanksgiving break."

"I remember what you said," said Alexa. "But I'm divided. If I go along with Morgan's plan for world domination, I'll get everything I've always wanted, absolute power. But if I do that, I know my friends will be in a bad position."

"I hope you make the right decision!" said Santiago. "I know that will be hard for you, you're the most dominant person I know, out of the friends I grew up with. But if not for me, think of Roxie and Tricia, and our families!"

"That's the only reason I would choose not to go through with this!" said Alexa. "But like I said, I haven't made a final decision yet."

"Can Morgan do anything to you if you defy her?" Santiago asked.

"She has more technology than the faculty of the academy," Alexa replied, "but I still think they can imprison her if they capture her. Other than that, I don't know. We're dealing with immortal people who can manipulate time, so even if they locked her up for twenty years, what is to stop her from returning to my time to enlist my aid on another evil plan?"

"Maybe they can modify her behavior," said Santiago. "To rehabilitate her or something."

"I'm sure the people running the academy can do something like that, it's just a matter of whether or not it's against their rules and laws.