My Death Saved My Life

I was born in 1843. I turned sixteen in 1859. I turned seventeen in 1999. No, I did not mistake the digits in that date.

It begins, I suppose, with my life in the 1800s. Suffice it to say that I was unhappy. I was an intelligent woman, which at the time was considered to be something of an oxymoron. I thirsted for knowledge and freedom I could never have.

The worst came when I was sixteen. I was engaged. My fiancé was a friend of my father’s. He was old, stupid, and cruel. I would not marry him, I insisted, to no avail. Plans for my wedding were made. I was measured for my dress. My fate was anchored in stone.

So it was that I climbed to the highest, steepest cliff I knew. I stood on the edge, taking in the breathtaking view one last time before I allowed it to literally take my breath, permanently. And then I jumped.

I did not expect to survive the fall. I did not intend to survive the fall. So you can imagine my surprise at slowly waking in a plain room, with a woman standing over me. Something was different about her from every other women I’d known, I observed, as I slowly pulled myself to awareness. She had short hair, for one thing, and she wasn’t wearing a dress. She asked softly but firmly, “Are you awake?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m dead, aren’t I? Is this… heaven?” I had not expected to end up in heaven, but this place hardly fit the description of hell.

“No, you’re not dead. You had a bad bump on the head, but you should recover with no more than a concussion.”

“Oh.” I didn’t see how it was possible. The cliff was far too high for the fall to give me only a concussion.

“What’s your name?” the woman asked me.

“Fidelia Williams.”

“How many fingers am I holding up?” She held up three fingers.

“ I believe three is the answer you want, though technically your hand is holding up all five of your fingers.”

She smiled. “And what year is it?”

“1859.”

Her smile faded. “I’m going to have another doctor come in and examine you, okay?” she asked too gently. “Fidelia, it’s 1999.”

I knew that was impossible. But so was being alive, and I could tell by her face that she was not joking. And I did not want to be thought mad.

“I was joking,” I told her, in a tone that implied that should have been obvious.

I eventually persuaded her that I was well enough, both physically and mentally, to be released. I had, apparently, been found unclothed; I was given some new clothes from the hospital’s lost and found so that I would not have to walk around in a hospital gown. It was incredibly strange, wearing the new, unfamiliar clothes I’d been given—trousers, called jeans, and a plain shirt in an unfamiliar style. But the people I observed around me, men and women, were wearing similar clothes, so I knew I had not been tricked into wearing a fool’s costume.

I did not mean to tell them that I had nowhere to go. But they pressed for me to have someone come get me, and I eventually let it slip that I was an orphan. I’d hoped that would be enough to make them let me leave on my own. Instead, they called “the proper authorities.” When I was finally discharged, it was into my new foster home.

I was incredibly lucky there. My foster parents were good people, a couple who desperately wanted children of their own but were unable to have them, and they opened their hearts to me.

Still, those first few weeks were the hardest. I spent most of my time at the library, reading up on the history that had passed between my time and the present. Events had happened, things had been invented, society had changed utterly. Once I had at least a basic grasp of the present world, I began to read popular fiction, to get an idea of how the society I was now a part of worked, how people interacted, what was expected.

I was shocked by what I learned, but not unpleasantly so. Here, in this time, dreams I’d never dared to have could come true.

That was ten years ago. Eventually, I learned to fit into the present world, and if I was considered a bit old fashioned and socially awkward, it was a mild inconvenience at worst. I learned everything I could, both academically and culturally, and when I graduated, I went on to college.

I received a degree in women’s studies. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. I’d been given a great gift, and I wanted to repay it. I just wasn’t sure how.

It was then that I first thought of going back.

It’s not that I’d never thought of it before, but until then, it had been a fear rather than an idea. I’d lived in terror of suddenly finding that I’d been pulled back to when I’d come from, or of waking up in 1859, my whole life having been a dream. But this was different. Though I still dreaded the past, I thought about the difference I could make. I knew things that I hadn’t known before I’d left, things that nobody would know for over a hundred years. If I went back, I’d have power. I could make a difference, help others get the same chances I’d had.

I wrestled with the idea. I didn’t know how to get back, but somehow, I knew that if I chose that path, I would find a way. It was not how to go back that worried me, but whether I should. I would be giving up so much. Would people be ready to listen? I knew the history, and I knew they wouldn’t. Could I persuade them anyway?

No. But it didn’t matter. I had to try.

I spent a year of research finding out how to do it. Finally, I knew for certain I would be able to make it back to my own time. It was not time travel as it is popularly thought of, that is, I could not travel at will to any time I wished, but as I had been born in that time, I would be able to return to it.

But not back again.

But could I really make myself do it? I’d tried to kill myself to escape it once; could I just willingly return? It was unlikely that I would do any good by going. But maybe I would. If I helped just one woman who would have been a slave to society get the chance to chose her fate….

But would I get that chance? And if I went back, I would be throwing away the chance I’d been given. I had been freed from that life; how could I throw tt away? Especially if it was for nothing?

I think I made the right choice. I do help women who might not otherwise be able to do so decide their own fates.

Now. In the twenty first century.

Age Is Just a Number

This idea was presented to me as a challenge by my esteemed accomplice, whose refrigerator runs but only in place on its treadmill, and who now owes me twenty five cents and a bowl of ice cream.

I don’t remember being born, so I don’t really know how it happened. My parents died when I was ninety-eight, you see, so they couldn’t tell me. I don’t think it could have been in the way children are normally born. I was not, after all, a child.

I was raised, if you can call it that, by my uncle and aunt. That must have been from when I was ninety-eight, to oh, I believe I moved out when I was eighty or so. At that point in my life, I had the physical and mental capabilities of any person my age. The problem was, I had only the experience and knowledge of the world I had actually gained. That, combined with the infirmities of age, were why I had to be taken care of.

So I lived on the farm with my uncle and aunt and my two cousins, who were what might be considered the inverse of my age. We were good friends, when I was very old and they were very young, but eventually—when they started school, I suppose—they realized I wasn’t normal, and began to avoid me.

I couldn’t go to school, of course. I was too old for an elementary or secondary school, and too uneducated for college or university. My aunt and uncle homeschooled me as best they could. They taught me reading and writing, and mathematics, and a little geography, and how to take care of sick pigs. As I grew younger, my body and memory improved. And yet, I always felt there was something important I didn’t remember.

When I was eighty, I moved away from my relatives. My parents had left me a little money. I got an apartment, and I got a dog. What I didn’t get was a job. I called it ageism. They called it suspicious that after eighty years, I had no education and no career experience. So I went to college. There was an article in the human interest section of the local paper about how I went back to school. I wasn’t actually going back as I’d never went to school in the first place, but that’s not important.

One of my greatest enjoyments in life was observing people. They’re like an alien species, a fascinating one. It’s not that other people were so different than me, but I somehow was not one of them. But I loved to watch people and learn about them, find out what they believed and how they thought and why.

I decided to major in philosophy, because I thought it would be interesting. It was interesting. However, a degree in philosophy from a community college does not provide many career opportunities. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I continued my education at a better school, and then, still unsure what I wanted to do, went on to graduate school. I was in my late sixties by the time I finished my PhD. I was offered a teaching job, but I didn’t accept. I’d spent the last ten or so years of my life observing the people in a university; I wanted to see something else of the world.


I spent a few years traveling. Not around the world; I couldn’t afford it. But around the country, driving a beat up car and staying in cheap motels. I enjoyed it. I talked to people. I watched people. I talked to more people. I went to different places and met different people, and eventually realized that they weren’t really different at all. Only I was.

And then I went to the Time Traveler’s Convention.

Naturally enough, I’d always been fascinated by time travel. You see, despite the hype and supposed impossibility of time travel, technically everyone travels forwards through time, at a fixed rate. But what about me? Which way was I going? I aged backwards, but I didn’t live backwards. I was born at a very old age in a certain year, and twenty years later I was twenty years younger, and so on, but I remembered the past, the events I had actually lived, not the future. But wouldn’t it be amazing to be able to go into the past, or the future? So when I saw the sign that said, Time Traveler’s Convention, of course I went in.

It was rather overwhelming. There were hundreds of booths, some simply selling books about time travel, or mementos from other times. Others had information about how YOU could learn ASTRAL time travel, whatever that meant. And then there were the people working on time machines, and hobbyists, physicists and ex-philosophy students interested in the theory behind it all.

These were the people I talked to most, because they were, if not necessarily the most interesting, at least the sanest. I discussed my question with them, keeping it hypothetical. Most of them agreed it was an interesting question. Some had interesting answers, but none really knew. Until I met Dr. Uschelia Green.

I almost didn’t go to that booth. Its sign read, in large letters, UNICORNS. Um, this is a convention on time travel, I thought. Only specific crazy people are supposed to be here. And yet, the guy I’d talked to a few booths over pointed me there and said, “She mentioned something like that.” So, I went.

Most people seemed to have the same feeling about unicorns in a time traveling convention as I did, and no one else was at the boot except the woman behind it. She seemed about the same age as I; I was 64 at the time. Her graying hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she wore a shirt with a picture of a unicorn and a timeline. “Are you interested in the research explorations through time that are taken by unicorns?”

“Um,” I said.

She handed me a pamphlet, which I took out of politeness and put in my purse. “Someone said you were talking about people who live forwards but age backwards, if that makes sense.” I didn’t add, It better make sense; you’re trying to tell me about time traveling unicorns.

“Yes, I understand completely. That’s what the unicorns do, you see. They’re immortal, normally, but they’re both very curious and very private. So they go on expeditions where they take a human form and live a human life. But they age backwards.”

“Why?” I still didn’t believe her, really. But I was curious.

“Well, partly because they’re immortal, and if they aged forwards they’d be too much at risk of dying in a mortal life. It wouldn’t kill them, of course, but they’d forget everything they learned. I believe it’s also in part because they’re not human and they’re not going to act like humans, even when they are.”

“Oh. And have you ever met one of these unicorns?”

“Oh, yes. I’m not one myself, but the man who was running the booth earlier is. They take human forms, you see; they don’t have horns or anything like that. They even believe they’re humans, for large parts of their lives. Until they find out otherwise.”

It was then that I knew. It wasn’t just what she was saying, because up until that moment I hadn’t really believed her. She hadn’t somehow convinced me; it wasn’t even the only logical explanation. But her last sentence awoke in me the unmistakable, positive knowledge that I am a unicorn.

It was like a catharsis, but it wasn’t. It was just knowledge, complete self-knowledge, which I’d always had but never remembered. The rediscovery was so powerful that I blurted, “I’m a unicorn.”

Had I been anywhere else, talking to anyone else, it would have been different. But Uschelia simply introduced herself, handed me another pamphlet, and asked whether I would be interested in joining their group. “We don’t have many unicorns here, at this time, you see,” she told me.

I needed to go home and think about it. I stayed awake all night, thinking. I turned over every bit of my life, seeing it with new sight, everything that had never made sense finally falling into place. I read both pamphlets. The Unicorn Time Travel Institute was a group that helped time traveling unicorns in their research. It provided funds for travel, support, ideas… and was eventually paid back when the unicorns returned to their own shape and existence, seemingly outside of time except when they felt like stepping in.

I called Uschelia back and told her I would love to be part of it. She was overjoyed. And since then, I’ve spent my life traveling and studying these strange, interesting beings known as humans, and preparing myself to report on them to my own people when I eventually am called home into my true form.