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Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; while loving someone deeply gives you courage. —LAO TZU
Deep.
Kai H.E. and 2 other people liked this
“I didn’t just happen along, Bob. I’ve been watching over you and Laura.” Slipping his pistol into his shoulder holster, the man looked down at Laura. She stared at him wide-eyed. He smiled and whispered, “Guardian angel.”
Ahh I wonder if that's gonna be the case?
One of the greatest sorrows of human existence is that some people aren’t happy merely to be alive but find their happiness only in the misery of others.
That's super tragic and very true.
Shivani Singh liked this
She now knew that life was frighteningly subject to tragedy and change, blue and warm one moment, cold and stormy the next, so you never knew when a bolt of lightning might strike someone you cared about. Nothing lasts forever. Life is a candle in the wind.
Indeed.
If the world was hard and cruel and unpredictable, then it did not seem wise to show the slightest weakness.
Easier said than done.
Some things are meant to be, and no one can prevent them.
Feels that way sometimes.
Understanding wasn’t always necessary, as long as you believed.
I like that. A lot.
Thelma said, “So what’s your problem, Shane? Sounds to me like some big, shy hunk of a guy has a crush on you. Lots of women would swoon over this.”
Me included.
Still not looking at her, he flushed and said, “Well, sure, but I didn’t... wasn’t ready... didn’t think the time was right.”
Awww he seems adorable!
Because of your story I thought I’d use the toads, that whole secret admirer bit with the gifts, as a way to soften you up, and I planned to reveal myself after the third or fourth toad, I really did, but I kept delaying because I didn’t want to be rejected, I guess, and I knew it was getting crazy, toad after toad after toad, but I just couldn’t stop it and forget you, yet I wasn’t able to face you, either, and that’s it. I never meant you any harm, I sure didn’t mean to upset you, can you forgive me, I hope you can.” He stopped at last, exhausted. She said, “Well.” He said, “So will you go
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Lol awww so cute!
She was not a petite woman, but on his arm and under his umbrella she felt positively tiny.
I'm jealous.
She stepped to the head of the stairs and watched him descend, and he was halfway down when a gust of wind turned his umbrella inside out. He fought with it the rest of the way, twice almost losing his balance. When he reached the walk below, he finally got the umbrella corrected—and the wind immediately turned it inside out again. In frustration he threw it into some nearby shrubbery, then looked up at Laura. He was soaked from head to toe by then, and in the pale light from a lamppost she could see that his suit hung on him shapelessly. He was a huge man, strong as two bulls, but he had been
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So frickin wholesome lol. I LOVE THIS SO MUCH IT HURTS
When he threw open the door and got out of the Pontiac, the driver—a tall man in dark clothing—was holding an object that, too late, Laura identified as a submachine gun. Her guardian said, “Kokoschka!” Even as his name was spoken, Kokoschka opened fire.
Oh dammit no!
As Laura dropped below the line of fire, she saw Danny struck in the back. He was hit at least once, maybe twice, and she jerked as if the slugs had hit her. He fell against the front of the Blazer, dropped to his knees.
No! Are you serious right now?
‘Get under the Jeep,“Danny said, pushing her hand away. His voice was thick and wet, as if something had broken in his throat. “Quick!” One of the bullets had passed completely through him. Bright blood oozed down the front of his blue, quilted ski jacket.
Omg, come ON!!! This cannot be happening.
When she was completely under the Jeep, pulling Chris against her to give him what little additional protection her body could provide, she heard Danny speak to her from the front of the vehicle. “I love you.” Anguish pierced her as she realized that those three short words also meant goodbye.
Ugh this frickin SUCKS!!!
Stefan fired again. The slug hit Kokoschka in the upper body, and the submachine gun stopped firing. Stefan’s next and last shot took Kokoschka in the head. It was over.
Way too late now, Stefan.
“I’m afraid, yeah, but I feel good about being prepared. All my life I’ve stood by while people I love have been taken from me. I’ve done nothing about it but endure. Well, to hell with that. From now on, I fight. If anyone wants to take Chris from me, they’re going to have to go through me to get him, they’ll have to fight a war.”
There ya go
Fighting doesn’t preclude enduring. I can fight, and if fighting fails, I can still endure.”
Love it.
After discovering his meddling in the events of Laura’s life, after sending Kokoschka to get him and Laura, why would they walk away from the gate when they had to wait only eleven minutes to learn the outcome of the confrontation?
Why indeed? A trap? Relocation?
Obviously no one knew about either his intention of destroying the institute or his attempts to turn Laura’s life away from a series of ordained tragedies. No one except Kokoschka. Damn it, Kokoschka had to know because he had shown up on the mountain road with an Uzi. So why hadn’t Kokoschka told anyone else?
Exactly what I wanna know.
Laura was a long way off, and he might never see her again.
I wonder if he's related to her. He obviously loves her in his way.
His heart was racing. With those two murders he had cut himself off forever from his own time, his own people. From here on, the only life for him was in Laura’s time. Now there was no turning back.
You are one determined dude. I hope I get answers as to why you're doing all of this
Stefan recognized the voice, but he did not want to believe what he heard. He brought up the pistol as he swung around to confront his challenger: The man who had raced into the lab was Kokoschka. Impossible. Kokoschka was dead.
What the crap?
With dismay he understood why Kokoschka was not dead in Big Bear in 1988. Kokoschka had not made that trip yet. Kokoschka had only now learned of Stefan’s perfidy, when he had discovered the bodies of Januskaya and Volkaw. Before the public power supply was restored, Kokoschka would search Stefan’s office, find the detonator, and disarm the explosives. The institute would not be destroyed.
But how does that explain his presence in 1988 if you didn't kill those people yet to trigger him to go there? Ugh make it make sense! Did Stefan return too early?
The complications of time travel were confusing even when one pondered them with a clear head.
You got that right
His entire left side from neck to waist throbbed with pain. He hoped that the bullet, in passing through him, had torn no arteries and that the rate of blood loss was slow enough to allow him at least to reach Laura and see her face, the face he loved, one last time before he died.
Oh you better not die dude. I need answers. But at least I already saw that he loves her.
Why was she so sure that she was heading for trouble and that the night’s violence was not yet at an end?
Could they track the belts somehow?
“Just give me—” Laura stopped, stunned by what he had said. “Like something in one of my books? In one of my books! Oh, my God, you know who I am.”
Well he DID associate the events with a story, Laura haha
“Listen,” he said, “maybe I won’t tell them anything.” “Yes, you will,” she said. “You may think you won’t, but you’ll tell them everything. If you weren’t going to tell them, then there wouldn’t have been a police report or a newspaper story, and without that record in the future, those gunmen couldn’t have found me.
Lol frickin' genius of her son to have suggested this whole theory to her. It makes perfect sense. He ALREADY told them.
“When do you come from? Huh? The year 2100? 3000?” In his paper-dry voice, her guardian said, “Nineteen forty-four. ”
What? He's From the PAST?!? What a fantastic twist.
“Berlin?” Chris said. “You mean—Berlin. Germany?” Sleep claimed the wounded man, not the unnatural sleep of a coma but restful sleep that was immediately marked by soft snoring, though in the moment before he slipped away, he said, “Nazi Germany.”
Ugh just what we need. Nazis.
“I know what he said. But it doesn’t make sense, does it? If they had time travel in 1944, we’d know about it by now, wouldn’t we?”
Unless he destroyed the evidence which I guess he did. Or....DID he?
“There seems to be some cosmic mechanism that prohibits time travelers from meddling with their own pasts in order to change their present-day circumstances. You see, if they could travel back in time to their own past, there would develop certain—” “Paradoxes!” Chris said excitedly.
Lol Chris is adorable
“So after you traveled to our house last night, Kokoschka traveled to 1988 and killed my dad. Jeez! In a way, Mr. Krieger, you killed Kokoschka forty-three years after he shot you in that lab ... yet you had shot him before he shot you. This is wild stuff, Mom, isn’t this wild? Isn’t this great?”
I'm still so damn lost lol
Also, Kokoschka probably figured if he followed me to 1988 and killed me there, I would not therefore have ever returned to the institute from that mountain highway and would not have had a chance to kill Penlovski. He no doubt thought he could pull a trick with time and undo those murders, thereby saving the head of the project. But of course he could not do so, because then he would be altering his own past, an impossibility. Penlovski and the others were already dead by then and would stay dead. If Kokoschka had better understood the laws of time travel, he would have known that I would
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Lol help me understand!!
“I only learned that much later, after conducting much research into your life. The doctor who had delivered you in Denver, Colorado, in 1955-Markwell was his name—had been an alcoholic. Yours was a difficult birth anyway—” “My mother died delivering me.” “Yes, in that reality she died too. But in that reality Markwell botched the delivery, and you received a spinal injury that crippled you for life.”
Ahhhhh it all comes together now.
Feeling weak-kneed, Laura returned to her chair. “But why? Why did you go to such great lengths to improve my life?” Stefan Krieger looked at Chris, then at her, then closed his eyes when he finally spoke. “After seeing you in that wheelchair, signing copies of Ledges, and after reading your books, I fell in love with you... deeply in love with you.”
Awww he loves her! I knew it!
There’s something frightening yet reassuring in the way some power tries to reestablish destiny’s broken designs ... almost as if there’s meaning in the universe, something that in spite of its insistence on our suffering, we might even call God.”
Hmmm.
Without any adversity in your life, perhaps you wouldn’t have become the woman with whom I fell in love.” Silence settled between them. She listened to the wind, the rain. She listened to her heartbeat. At last she said, “I don’t love you.” “I understand.” “Seems like I should—a little.” “You don’t even really know me yet.” “Maybe I can never love you.” “I know.” “In spite of all you’ve done for me.” “I know. But if we live through this ... well, there’s always time.” “Yes,” she said, “I suppose there’s always time.”
Aww I hope she can love him.
And, of course, when this is all over, I’ll pay you back the cash you gave me and whatever you spend on the computer and these other things.” “Damn right you will, Shane. And forty percent interest. Per week. Compounded hourly. Plus your child. Your child will be mine.” Chris laughed. “My Aunt Rumpelstiltskin.” “You won’t make smart remarks when you’re my child, Christopher Robin. Or at least you’ll call me Mother Rumpelstiltskin, Sir.” “Mother Rumpelstiltskin, Sir!” Chris said, and saluted her.
Lol awww
Dr. Juttner entered the last of the numbers in the programming board that controlled the gate. To Erich Klietmann, he said, “You and your men will be traveling to the vicinity of Palm Springs, California, in January 1989.”
Ugh how the crap did they find out dammit!
It did not matter if he took two weeks or ten, for when he used Kokoschka’s homing belt, he would return to the institute only eleven minutes after Kokoschka had left it. His date of departure from current time would not affect his date of return in 1944.
Time travel. What a trip lol
“We’re safe here,” Stefan said. “Obviously, our presence in the house never becomes public knowledge. If it did, the Gestapo would have visited us already.”
Just wait, you guys. Sigh. I better learn how the heck their presence was found.
“On state route 111, approximately six miles north of the Palm Springs city limits, the woman will be arrested by an officer of the California Highway Patrol at eleven-twenty, Wednesday morning, January 25. She will be driving a black Buick Riviera. The boy will be with her and will be taken into protective custody. Apparently Krieger is there, but we’re not sure; apparently he escapes from the police officer, but we don’t know how.”
Omg seriousy? Why the crap would she even chance driving...oh!!! Could this be a part of the plan??? Then again, that'd be way to risky.
“On state route 111, approximately six miles north of the Palm Springs city limits, the woman will be arrested by an officer of the California Highway Patrol at eleven-twenty, Wednesday morning, January 25. She will be driving a black Buick Riviera. The boy will be with her and will be taken into protective custody. Apparently Krieger is there, but we’re not sure; apparently he escapes from the police officer, but we don’t know how.”
Okay, so perhaps it is their plan, because if not, what the crap were they thinking?!
“Somewhere on our way out to route 111, someone’s going to stop us, maybe a traffic cop, or maybe we’ll be in an accident, so there’ll be a public record, and then they’ll show up. Stefan, we’ve got to turn around, go back to the house.” “It’s no use,” he said.
Oh she caught on quick but yeah what is there to do now?
“It’s all right,” she said, trying hard to believe what she told him. “Stefan will be back in less than five minutes, honey. He’s got another Uzi, and that’ll even the odds a lot. We’ll be okay. We only have to hold them off for a few minutes. Just a few minutes.”
Ugh just a few minutes suddenly seems too long. Couldn't he have made it 30 seconds?
And soon Stefan would be here. No matter how long his work required in 1944, Stefan would program the gate to bring him back here shortly after he had left. He would rejoin her—and enter the fight—in only two or three minutes.
Oyyy this is so tense
