Megan Quiroz, “American Dreamscape”
Izra had mixed feelings about new years.
It used to be fun. She and her mom would celebrate it together in their 2 bedroom apartment. Izra would run to the amenities store across from them and get apple fizz and chocolates, while her mom dug around their storage closet for the photo albums. Her mom believed that new years were a time of reflection, to look back at your past self and see how far you’ve come. And they had plenty of photos for that.
Apparently, her mom was pretty sentimental when she was younger and took photos of practically everything. The only photos of Izra were digital (it was hard to find places to print nowadays), so the albums were mostly reserved for her mother’s college life and onwards. That didn’t really matter. Those were her favorites anyway. They would cuddle together sipping their fizz, and her mom would point to a picture and tell her a story. Her story voice was Izra’s favorite. She was a quiet person by nature, but with that photo album on her lap, the memories practically burst out of her. From what Izra saw, her mother mostly hung out with a group of girls who seemed to spend more time on their hair than their grades. But she also talked about 3 people who were…special. They seemed ordinary, but the tall tales themselves were wild and full of laughter. She never met them, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know them. She lived in their joy and humor with each photo and story.
That was before.
Before her mother’s invention took off. Before they moved out of their tiny apartment and into the upper city where people had “Vics” instead of cars and attended the “Academy” instead of a public school. Before she was “Bridget McClain, Pioneer of Time Travel” and not just…Izra’s mom.
Bridget got them a vic of their own, the new one that could hover 10ft. It was fancy, sure, but Izra still missed the hum of their old car as it lulled her to sleep on those late night drives.
She guessed they were both a little sentimental.
Not like she was around enough to see those similarities. It may sound cliche, but some days Izra felt like her mom spent more time with a hunk of metal than with her own daughter. The hunk of metal in question (or as the tabaloids called it, The Time Traveler) was sitting in the corner of their penthouse living room, a scientific eyesore for all who saw it. Usually, it was in Bridget’s lab where she would tinker with it day and night, but since they had a christmas party with all of Bridget’s coworkers, it was out far all to see. Like a metal trophy she could parade around and not the creation that stole –
Well, it didn’t really know what it exactly stole, but it definitely stole something! It was it’s fault everything changed, and it was the reason she never saw her mom.
Needless to say, she hated it….But not enough to completely shadow her logic.
Part of her understood why her mother revered it. In a way, the time machine was like the photo albums: a window to a happier time. Izra… tried to not let it hurt. It made sense, in a messed-up kind of way. She wasn’t exactly a planned baby, and it’s not exactly easy, being a single mom. Plus, she knew her mom had some happy memories of the two of them. The ones before her were just….happier. And not so tinged with…grief.
Frick, she was crying now.
Well, what could you do? She had to admit, Izra could enjoy the bitter irony. A world renowned scientist, supposedly the vision of humanity’s future, is stuck in the past and refusing to let go of ghosts. If only there was a way to meet those ghost, maybe then she could understand why her mother held on so tightly to those old memories. I would certainly be something, to spend new years with the real people and not just the faded photographs. Didn’t her mother say one of her favorite memories was the 1999 new years?
If only…
She looked at the time machine.
