The Ink that Binds Us

Annalise searched through her massive walk-in closet, trying to find a presentable outfit to wear. What does one wear to a ‘casual’ dinner with the president? She wondered.

Just as Annalise was trying to choose between a red dress or a blue one she noticed something that hadn’t been there before. A small, brown package lay on the floor. Across it read:TO THE DAUGHTER OF PETER ALSTON.

How strange, her father had never given her anything other than brain challenges. Annalise often assumed that she and her mother were just there to make her father seem like a family man, and not the scheming villain he actually was. Running her fingers along the lip of the box she carefully peeled back the tape. She opened the box

Inside, a small letter rested, nestled atop piles of tissue paper. She frowned. Nobody used paper anymore, she looked at the tattoo of her fathers initials on her wrist, everyone with an Alston Chip had one. As long as the person who wrote this letter had a chip they could mentally send her everything they wanted to say. But Annalise had always been a curious person, so she began to read.

Dearest daughter,

If you have found this letter that means I am gone. Dead or otherwise incapacitated and for that I am terribly sorry. If you’re reading this letter it means I am probably a terrible father, I’ve probably never paid you any attention or acted like I cared about you. Again, I apologize for that, but I hope that you can at least take solace in the fact that in another world I am most certainly one of the better fathers, one who pays attention to you and showers you with compliments. It is too bad we didn’t end up in that world. I realize you are probably very confused by this letter, I do not have much time but I will explain our situation as best I can to you.

I am destroying our world, you probably already know this since right now, it is your world too. You see, the Alstons are not like others, we come from a line of the best and brightest. We are prodigies but we are also tyrants. We are a disease that must be eradicated. You already know that I have invented a new technology, one that allows people to communicate by brain using a chip in their wrist. It is a very deadly technology. It may not seem deadly, but soon it will evolve and when it does the governments will be able to use it for mind control. This chip is not just my invention, it is the chip of all the ones before me, the chip of your ancestors. Over time, the generations before us have been collecting knowledge, ideas upon ideas all stored in a few notebooks. These notebooks were passed along generations in hopes that one day, one of us would discover a technology that could save the world. And that is what I did, except my chip is not going to save the world but end it. It will be taken advantage of and it will destroy us all.

You, my darling daughter, must stop this. You must prevent this technology from killing us all. Within this package I have included a small, circular, device. While it may look like nothing it is actually your key to saving the world. This device will take you back in time, the red button turns it on, the left dial sets the place you want to go and the right dial sets the time. It is very powerful so use it wisely. Turn back to the year 2035. Do not put it in a place, if this package has found you that means you are still living in my childhood home. Once you get there I need you to befriend me. Not me, but the ten-year-old version of me. Get him to trust you all while you’re searching for the notebooks. The same notebooks I mentioned before. They’re unlabeled but you’ll know them when you find them. They’ll probably be hidden, I trust that you can find them. Once you do, you need to destroy them. Burn them so nobody else can use them. I’m trusting you, don’t let me down. And whatever you do, DO NOT let little Peter discover who you are, where you’re from or what you’re doing.

The world is counting on you,

PETER ALSTON

Annalise stared at the letter, her hands trembling. All she had been looking for was a dress and instead she had found a teleporter. (And unsurprisingly, another brain challenge) She looked back and forth from the name at the bottom and the initials on her wrist. The signature looked similar to her father’s but she knew from experience that his signature was easy to forge. This was probably all just one big joke. How was she supposed to save the world? Annalise felt a burst of anger, it was just like her father to give her something like this, just like him to tell his twelve-year-old daughter that the entire human population was counting on her.

She picked up the small device, it was heavy. The place was already at San Francisco. The time was blank. She twisted the right dial, a year appeared. 1776. Yikes, she definitely didn’t want to go that far back, she turned the dial until it read 2035.

Am I actually doing this? Her finger hovered over the red button. It was supposed to start the machine. What does that even mean? Taking a deep breath Annalise pushed the button. Nothing happened. Annalise groaned, it was all just a big prank. She’d gotten worked up for no—

The rest of her thought vanished as an unidentifiable clicking noise filled the room. The last thing Annalise felt was a tug. Then everything went black.

. . .

“Hello” Annalise opened her eyes, a blond little boy with bright blue eyes was peering down at her. If it wasn’t for his short blond hair that was so different from her own long brown hair Annalise might’ve thought she was staring at her own reflection. His lips looked like hers, his cheekbones were the same, even his right dimple was the one she always saw on her in pictures

She groaned, she must have hit her head really hard on the way down, it felt like she’d been run over by a truck.

She sat up, looking around at the unfamiliar green field and the grayish-green house beyond it. Wait. That was her house! But it was a lot smaller. Where were the gardens? And the pool? And the balcony that led to the master suite?

“Are you real?” Annalise startled at the sound of the boy's voice, he squinted at her for a second before a grin overtook his face, “Because if you’re not, that’s okay! I keep asking the stars for a friend and it seems they’ve sent me one! That’s why you’re here, right?”

Annalise found herself nodding, “Y-yyyyes! You’re exactly right! We’re going to be best friends.”

The boy didn’t look convinced, “If that’s true, then what’s my name?”

Annalise’s mouth went dry. Who knows what would happen if she guessed wrong, but the little boy was growing more suspicious by the minute so for once in her life, Annalise decided to trust her father. “It’s Peter! Peter Alston!”

The boy smiled, offering her a hand up, “You do know my name Friend! Wow! I think we are going to be best friends. Race you back to the cottage!” Peter bounded off, leaving Annalise to chase after him. This was weird, really weird.

. . .

Throughout the day things got even weirder. Peter learned Annalise’s name so he could stop calling her ‘Friend’ and Annalise learned many things about her father she hadn’t known.

Like how he loved peanut butter sandwiches, and how he had rescued a baby bird who had fallen from its nest and broken its wing. She also learned that he didn’t like to talk about his father. She assumed his father was a lot like the Peter Alston she knew. Distant, unfeeling and a genius.

Annalise often found herself looking at the tattoo on her wrist. PA. It was the mark of her father’s chip, a tattoo everyone who had the chip wore. Usually she covered it with a bracelet, trying to erase any mark of her father that she could. But in this time Annalise wanted to understand how, how had her father, a gentle, loving boy, become exactly like his father.

“Come on Annalise!” Peter was running down the halls, laughing. This Peter laughed a lot. He was looking at her, mischief painted on his face when he ran straight into a tall man in a suit.

Marcus Alston. Annalise’s grandfather and Peter’s father. “Watch where you’re going, Peter.” Marcus scolded. That’s when Annalise noticed what he was holding in his arms. Notebooks.

It had to be them. Annalise had kept her eyes out for any sign of the notebooks with no luck. This was definitely not a coincidence.

Marcus was still scolding Peter, “I was just thinking you might be ready for the notebooks, but maybe we’ll wait another year.”

Peter straightened up, “I’m ready, Papa! I’m ready tonight!”

Marcus smiled at the boy’s obedience, “Good.” and with that he patted the boy's cheek and walked away.

As soon as his father was gone Peter deflated, “I hate him! Why can’t he just give me the notebooks?”

Cautiously, Annalise asked, “What notebooks?”

Peter looked up, “I’m not supposed to tell anyone but you’re not real so I guess it’s fine.”

The Alston family is full of geniuses, like Papa, and all those geniuses have put their greatest unfinished projects into those notebooks. Once Papa finally gives me the notebooks I’ll have generations of Alston knowledge! I just hope he does it soon. I already have some ideas of my own I want to add!”

Annalise couldn’t help but gasp, it was exactly as her father had explained. And if that was true, then everything else must be too! She had to burn those notebooks.

. . .

That night Peter brought Annalise to dinner. When he saw Marcus sitting at the table he gasped, stopping Annalise and whispering to her, “Papa’s having dinner with us! He never does. I think I’m going to get the notebooks tonight! I can’t disappoint him.” He gave Annalise a pitying look, “I think he thinks you're one of the servants' kids, you’re going to have to wait outside. I’ll bring you something later.” Annalise smiled and nodded to show she understood, at least she wouldn’t be stuck here for very long. No matter what happened that night Annalise knew she wasn’t going to stay here any longer, she wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to tell Peter she was actually his daughter from the future.

She watched from the hallway as Peter entered and sat across from Marcus as the servants laid out plates of roasted duck with mashed potatoes and green beans. Neither father nor son touched the food.

Marcus cleared his throat, “So, Peter.”

Peter looked up, trying and failing to keep a straight face, “Yes?”

“I think you’re ready. You’ve shown a lot of maturity recently and a lot of ingenuity, it’s time for you to have the notebooks.” With that he brought out the books, laying them on the table. Annalise stared at them. This was it. She had to act. She had to save the world. Even still, the look of Peter’s grinning face flashed through her mind, the way he accepted her from the start. The way she felt like she could relate to him. But then she saw the Peter she knew, the cold-blooded villain who only cared about himself.

She couldn’t let Peter become that man.

“Wow thank you fa—” Annalise didn’t let Peter finish his sentence as she swooped in, grabbing the notebooks and running.

“Who is that girl?” Marcus did not sound pleased, “STOP THAT GIRL!” Servants jumped in front of Annalise, trying to grab the notebooks from her. She dodged them, trying not to drop the notebooks. There was no place to go, servants were everywhere. Thanks to the better work-out equipment in the future, Annalise was a lot faster than them but she was tiring quickly. She ran up. Up and up and up and up until she reached the roof. Luckily, it was empty, but it was about to get very crowded.

She grabbed the lighter she had pocketed earlier, bringing it to the pages. The notebooks caught fire, barely. Without fuel the paper could only burn so fast. Annalise blew on the pages, hoping to coax out a bigger fire. She could hear the footsteps getting closer. The notebooks weren’t burning quick enough.

Someone grabbed her from behind. Annalise screamed.

“Shhhh.” Peter whispered. Annalise kept wiggling to get free. Peter caught her wrists, “I can get you out of this.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Marcus’s threatening voice filled the rooftop. Out of the corner of her eye Annalise could see then notebooks were burning but still not fast enough.

People filled the rooftop, and this time it wasn’t the servants but the guards. Guards with guns. And all of those guns were pointing at Annalise.

“Annalise.” Annalise looked at Peter, she expected him to be scared of the guards but her father hadn’t even noticed them. He was looking at her wrist, the wrist where her chip lay. Her bracelet had dropped further onto her arm and where it once was were the initials. PA.

Peter looked around like he was looking through new eyes, he saw the burning notebooks, the guards with guns, his angry father. He saw all the ink that had led to this.

The ink in the notebooks, the ink in the letters he was so fond of writing. The ink on Annalise's skin.

He stared at Annalise. He took in her features, the features so similar to his, the blue eyes he had only seen in his family. He inhaled sharply.

“Who. Are. You?”