5 Duality Of Centuries

She had just returned home from the school cart. With her little school bag, her tattered dress, and her little wooden clogs she tap danced to the door. Then gently pet her cat on the head, before walking in. 'What took you so long?' said the cat. Lisa placed her back on the table, and picked the cat up.

'It always takes a while for my cart.' she said. In this neck of the woods, there was only horses and carriages unlike even just a few blocks later down the sidewalks. In the other district, even just a little bit further from her house, sometimes you will see carts riding in the same road as current hybrid car models. This was her luck, if she had been raised in any house further she would have enjoyed the benefits of the city. Because her neck of the woods was stuck in the late 19th century, there was no homework to be had. Thus most of the rest of the day was usually spent being bored.

Lisa exited the hall and placed her bag in her room, then after walking back downstairs exited the kitchen door to the porch. Then she did a little tap dance, tapping taps down the sidewalk through the neighborhood. Until finally she had to stop at the local candy shop, that if she had visited the one in her neighborhood she would have not been aloud in. But because it was the city, she go inside again. Thus she takes off her black ribboned straw hat, and then stares a the candy available in the store.

And here the cashier cat played with deck of fifty two.

'Ah Lisa, I see you caught me playing cards again. Which piece of candy would you like to have?' said the cat.

'I'll take that one.' Lisa pointed to a penny caramel.

The social rift between centuries was slow at first. But eventually it became more pronounced. Scientists from the new century created a time rift that was never completely repaired, and thus little trickle through enable presidents and mayors of various 19th century years converse with politicians from the present of 2279. She never seen so many feminine boys, some of which were not boys at all but girls with boys body make up. This is what you call gender identity dysphoria, and beyond the scope of this story. She exits the candy shop, and then her talking cat followed her here. 'Did you mother say not to wander off?' said the cat.

'I don't care what mother thinks.' said Lisa.

She visited her boyfriend just down the road, who was playing with his portable gaming device. Lisa always found him fascinating because she herself never got to benefit from this technological innovation just down the road in her town. The town where ghost intrude into the lives of the living, and cosmic abominations cross over into our own reality. Yet here in the present she felt safe. 'I'm playing a text-adventure.' said Danny.

'What's a text adventure?' said Lisa.

'A game where you get to play the role of someone and get to make choices in their lives in a text-based medium similar to novels.'

'Sound very eggheaded.'

'Aren't we all eggheads sometimes?'

Finally they had lunch at the local restaurant, a ham made from a pig that happened to be the pig bullying one the pigs she knew growing up. She felt a mixture of disgust and pleasure, for it was the mean ham from a decade ago.

Diane thought she knew her Danny.

Instead there was more to him than she could possibly have expected. He led a certain kind of secret life she never let her into. Even in high school he would boot up a distribution of Linux. As she would sit back and watch him pinch his pimples, and he would always be so secretive. Know she knew why.

When they were young and went on adventures together across the backyard, they would travel across various ruins across periods of history, as well as various planets that were unexplored by man. They ran from vampires, murderous cyborgs, and totalitarian dictators that wanted to shape them into compliant citizens. Yet it was always him that would help the both of them escape. There was never any point in bringing a digital video camera, as it would never tape the footage. Yet even with these adventures she never felt like I really knew him.

Diane had tried various times in her school years to encourage him to become a writer, after all he almost certainly had the imagination. But over time they had gradually began to drift further apart. she had not seen him for months.

Diane was living in a new apartment at the time, and although she could barely afford the rent and upkeep to make ends meet. She owned a little Hedgehog which who was provided with a proportional rolling wheel. Before that point she considered keeping a goldfish. The reasons were obvious: they were dumb, easy to take care of, and rebellious to a fault. In some way they reminded her of her older brother. The brother she knew. Diane would always reflect about the things she did not know about him.

She also owned a talking cat. 'Your brother is a mystery, perhaps him not meeting you is for a reason.' Diane wanted to shove the cat, yet was to kind. It was time to sleep. And she would sleepily sleep, sleeping nightmares about things her brother would hide from the world. She would wake up in a breathless panic. So she got up and drank some carbonated bitter water. The thought of him would never go away, and now she understood why.

There was a last argument before he left the house. On the computer he would be, typing up strange stories for Diane to read. Though he would take criticism relatively well, Diane wondered if there was something missing on the page. If she were a witch she would sprinkle it with sage, yet in Danny's eyes he could sense that no blessing would help. He would rather eat his breakfast food and then before for the morning rain.

He was always sensitive about not being good enough, and its mere reassurance would bother him more than if Diane critiqued his work in a false way. Though Diane always felt the stories were fine, although they had a slightly different flavor from the adventure that they would use to have as kids in the middle grades. Darker, edgier, more depressing. He was the sheep, and whatever lover his fictional girlfriend would be would be the sheep.

The stories felt on some level like alter egos, he drifted thoughts to her while he ate waffles at breakfast.

Over time Diane would missed sitting with him, being by his side. And together eating waffles they would stare out to the backyard with their eyes wide.

His downward spiral arrived faster than I expected. Only a bullet train could be faster, and I regret the day I once called him a bastard. He would later change his name, to things other members considered profane.

The next month came and went. News headline: Woman run over by truck. The realization hit, she was never a brother at all.

And I wasn't there.

Except that was the myth Dannie, now no longer Danny was living. For she felt that everything up to that point was a lie.

The sidewalk that was raining had just become soaked. Sounds of the cars filled the urban landscape with horns, the honking was loud enough to bust millions of ear drums at once. Yea, those drivers were ensconced for the honks for the traffic, the traffic was something to be ensconced about. Up the stair case, our main character is reading an old text-book, while attending to a command prompt.

#include

int main() {

printf("Hello World");

return 0;

}

It had been many months sense they had tried to learn how to program in regular c, and c plus plus. The basic rules of the programming were simple: the semi-colon functioned much like a period for C languages, and one bytes was eight bits. But even merely trying to figure out when to declare a variable before assigning it was much different from what they were used to in attempting to learn the language. Thus they closed up their lesson for the day:

#include ,.h>

int main() {

print("Fuck this shit.");

return 0;

}

And that was the end of their first work day.

They are frying up some beef for tacos, and just doing their regular thing during the evening. Then there is a knock at the door.

Dannie, not Danny, worked the night shift at a local grocery store. Got herself a stocker position. Day by day she would go through various items. The boring life. Dannie was careful not to situate her employment in the same neighborhood as her family. After all she wasn't sure whether she would want to see her family again. Dannie also had another means of employment. Though somewhat afraid to meet Lisa again down on the road to 1920, it was something that she feared less than if she were to see her family again.

At three o'clock sharp long after the rush hour traffic of the afternoon, at night she could enjoy herself in various intoxicating substances: marijuana, liquor, among other things. Thus she was never completely certain whether her perceptions on reality were absolutely certain.

Dannie boards the bus on the way to town center, takes some tweezer and takes out her splinter. And then cringes on the way to the center.

And here she meets Lisa with a grimace.

'I thought you'd be happy to see me.' said Lisa.

'I knew we should not have came.'

'No it's not that.' said Dannie.

Lisa and Dannie visited the park. Lisa's talking cat would converse with various companions he had meet across the duality of centuries. Little girls would tap dance and play hop scotch on the sidewalk with wooden clogs upon the murals drawn with glow in night chalk. Yet for Dannie, things will never be the same. At least it was thought at the time. 'Remember when you used to be my old flame?' said Dannie to Lisa.

'Yeas ago, why Dannie and not Danny?' said Lisa.

'Well isn't it obvious?' said Dannie.

'I thought you were gay.'

'Everyone thought I was gay, now let's watch the sunset. Watch the children dance and play. Delivery this last hurray, and stay this night.'

In the neighborhood of the 22nd century, it was always night. Nobody where you were you could not get the same amount of sunlight as you would from walking to the next town over.

And here they make this solace. In their lost childhood into forever.

Sometimes in life you will retreat from friends. At other times you will seek to make amends. Yet at other times you simply try to live your life, but can you? So tap dance into a new life, take care of your youth, for in our age it is dwindling into the present. Dannie would eventually go back to meeting with Lisa from time to time, and rekindle this old rhyme. They would make pumpkin pies together, and season them with thyme.

In the following week Diane would meet up with Dannie. At first she could not believe that Dannie was still alive. Dannie, Danny at the time, wanted her parents to tell her she died, as she not want try to explain to her sister, who she had grown up with so long ago, that she was going to change her gender. She knew that for Diane this would be to much of a mind bender. Dannie feared that she would be labeled a gender bender.

Yet now, all those fears have come to an end.

They could all three enjoys adventures together again. Into the new life, a new world. A new set of responsibilities.

In this neck of the woods, there are only horses and carriages unlike even just a few blocks later down the sidewalks. In the other district, even just a little bit further from her house, sometimes you will see carts riding in the same road as current hybrid car models. This was now all of their luck, for Diane, Dannie, and Lisa will raise kids just a few blocks down from where Diane and Lisa grew up now without the benefits of the city. But this was alright, they could life how they want.

It was their new found youth.

Dannie and Lisa have their kids. Diane had become an aunt, that would go onto to tell her own set of adventures with mutated zombies, murderous cyborgs, and totalitarian dictatorships. It is note able that both Diane and Dannie would go on to establish to different versions of the same genre. With Diane it focused more on existential angst, while in general Diane's tended to be more pop oriented.

It was a few months later when they split again, as Diane had moved elsewhere for a higher paying job, and Lisa had went off to write some of her own books about her own adventure between the duality of centuries. Dannie on the other hand would continue to write more stories though would gradually move further and further from her original sources of childhood imagination. Her stories took on a kind of immediacy that here original work had lacked. Case in point, Nadine would from time to time write mini-travelogues about her adventures job hunting.

Dannie would go through walks through the duality of centuries, finding for new sources of inspiration. On one hand she was curious whether the area had that same kind of nostalgic feel as her earlier life, but as she walked through the old town she found it no longer had that old town feel. Rather the duality of centuries became more tight knight. People like her friend Lisa would often come out of their own time period to visit friends in the present.

Eventually there would be no more duality. The duality of none. The old duality initially was something that Dannie was able to get used to, but this was something else. For not only were carts and cars riding on the same city-streets, and people in pillories would get old computer hard drives thrown at them, but the old centuries began to take on a different direction from the present. Flying steam cars existed in the same physical plane as gas guzzling land bounds. She wandered then, how soon will thinking of each time separately would be outlawed.

Dannie didn't have to wait long, the Arch Duke of the empire of Chicago would eventually have political meetings, who wished to erase history. After all nobody below a certain minimum wage threshold deserved to know the past. Especially if there future was the past.