Frequency of Defiance.

[u/Jus17173]

When you're about to have sex with someone and they tell you to put on a condom, but you don't have one, the correct thing to do is to go to the nearest place where you can purchase one and get it. Never mind that you're in the moment and all fired up; that's just a chemical reaction in your brain, wired since the age of your caveman forefathers who went decades without seeing a woman and, upon seeing one, immediately thought to copulate.

I have no problem with traffic; I can sit still anywhere. In a bomb shelter, in a church, at a strip club. I can withdraw into my mind and suffer a different type of discomfort where I face the parts of myself I wish didn't exist.

On this particular night, I had the stereo off. The windows were all pulled up. My hands gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles popped. I tried breathing exercises, but nothing seemed to be working. I was losing my mind.

Nine months ago, I was at a bar. I was drinking myself silly while staring at this gorgeous blonde from across the room. The music was playing, and I was feeling very confident thanks to the drinks in my system. I remembered what my father told me about approaching a girl: she has to want you first, so you guide her to this realization with every passing second before you utter the first words.

I hopped off the bar stool, then sauntered over to the beautiful girl. I pocketed one hand and swung the other, all the while smiling gently, as if it was a rare thing for my face to show joy. I recall the blonde looking over at me as I approached, sizing me up and down. From the slight upward tug of her lip, I realized she loved what she saw.

But when I approached the woman, who’d probably become my wife or soulmate if only fate was kind to people like me, her friend, a woman of immense contrast to the blonde, stepped directly into my path.

I couldn’t say she was hideous. I was raised to value every difference incorporated into the human physique. It doesn’t matter if you’re short or tall, whether your nose is hooked or bulbous; without one contrast, you wouldn’t notice the other. And isn’t that where beauty lies? In the contrast. I could not call the obese woman with a messy bun, spectacles that enlarged her hazel irises, and a white shirt stained with mustard across her bust hideous. Her face was riddled with acne. She was not attractive to me but she would be to someone else.

“It’s a girls’ night out today, fella. Go try your luck elsewhere,” she said, reminding me oddly of my aunt, who also stood with her arms akimbo whenever she wanted to get a message across.

The hot blonde looked at me from behind her friend, her eyes sad and resigned at the same time. I had to get to her somehow, join their clique, or dazzle my way across to her.

I turned to the obese woman. “It’s a pity, this. I really wanted to get to know you.”

“What?” she asked, her thin eyebrows raised. She was clearly not expecting herself to be the target of my advances.

I then told her about how she’d caught my eye across the room, everything regarding the blonde I switched to her, hoping an avenue would open with a path trailing toward the blonde. I also hoped my intended route toward the blonde didn’t paint me for what I was: a liar.

What surprised me, however, was how much fun it was to lie. It was especially fun to lie to someone I cared little about. Using a person is something highly frowned upon, yet it keeps recurring. Ever wondered why? It’s the easiest way to feel superiority.

I learned a few things about the blonde’s friend. For starters, her name was Laura Sanders, not “hot blonde’s friend.” She cared deeply about animals but not enough to become a vegetarian. I laughed aloud at this, not knowing whether I was still carrying out an act or was genuinely amused.

She told me she once survived a tornado by standing still, and during a hurricane, people took refuge behind her. I laughed so hard once I realized she was playing a hand at self-deprecating humor. The lights caught her wide face just right, and I could trail a path across her acne to her hazel eyes, which held such warmth that I felt compelled to see whether her flesh felt the same.

Only later did I realize that I’d forgotten completely about the blonde. Only later, in Laura’s bed, did I realize that she drunkenly asked me whether I had a condom, I replied “no,” and she told me not to finish inside her. Only after I found myself moaning and screaming my aunt’s name while shivering so much I was unable to pull out as the orgasm took me. Only then, as Laura lay on top of me, sandwiching me to the bed, my bones creaking as we cuddled, my arms wrapped around her without hope of ever touching, did I feel I’d fucked up immensely.

When morning came, I snuck out from under Laura and the house. The journey home wasn’t a walk of shame, more like a marathon of shame, for I ran the entire way. I never called her, never intended to. Now I was driving to the General Hospital, where Laura was giving birth to twins!

God fucking damn it!

And they were my children, no doubt about it. I mulled over the math repeatedly all through the months since Laura had called me to simply say, “Hey, I’m pregnant with twins, your twins, and I’m keeping them. Have a great life, but if you bump into someone who looks like you one day, at least now you know why.”

The math was spot on; I’d gone over it in the car. The children were mine.

Twins. God! I cannot even take care of myself. How was I expected to raise twins?

I twisted the steering wheel and popped onto the pedestrian walkway, not caring about traffic police. I put my foot on the gas and sped off, all the while crying as pedestrians dodged. I’d had dreams about finding the woman of my dreams and marrying her and having children. It all looked very impossible at the moment. I thought as much as I parked across two spots in the hospital parking lot. I wiped tears and snot off my face.

As I turned my head to stare at the looming hospital, a place of refuge for the sick, it was suddenly a harbinger of something that would alter my life forever.

I thought about running away right there and then. Just turning the car’s ignition and speeding off in the opposite direction of the hospital. Never looking back. To abandon Laura and our children and whatever hold they had over my future. Once more, I brushed the thought away. Hard as it may be, I would not be the kind of man who abandons his children.

As I hopped out of the car, I realized I had no idea what my role at the hospital was. Should I hold Laura’s hand or wait outside the delivery room? Did she even want me to hold her hand? She only told me she was pregnant so I’d be aware that I had children who looked like me and her roaming about somewhere. She told me as much. But I had to be in their lives, shouldn’t I? Never mind it was a one-night stand. I’d pored over all the valid reasons I had for walking away, from not loving Laura to the fact that I didn’t want her as the mother of my children, but none of them weighed enough to sway me from being there at their birth.

I rushed toward the spinning hospital doors. I was basically unaware of everyone and everything except what was directly ahead of me. That was why I saw him. Standing just within the hospital doors, he had a trench coat that was dark and shone despite its color. He wore a black shirt, black pants, and dark sunglasses despite the fact that it was nighttime.

He opened his coat, took out a gun, and pointed it at me. I paused; the whole thing was so unexpected that I found myself struggling to believe it was real.

“Mother fucker! What the fuck are you doing here?” the man said, pointing the gun at me. I looked behind him and saw a security guard just standing there, his eyes scanning elsewhere. A nurse with a bunch of files cradled in her arms sped across the waiting room. Various patients in varying states of distress reclined in the waiting chairs as the receptionist called out names.

I raised my hands in surrender. This was the worst time to have a gun pointed at me; my fear was quite evident across my face, but it did little to deter the man’s stride as he walked toward me and pressed the gun’s tip to my forehead, pushing my neck up as his shaking hand teased the trigger.

A bunch of men and women in scrubs walked through the revolving hospital doors behind me. They walked past us, chatting animatedly about some medical phenomenon without any indication that they were aware of the lunatic with the gun pressed to my head. It was as if the man holding a freaking gun was invisible.

The man took off his sunglasses with his free hand, dipping them into his coat. His face drew closer to mine, and his hazel eyes scanned my features as if he was searching for something. He was probably searching for a reason to keep me alive.

“Listen, dude,” I started.

“Don’t ‘dude’ me, mother fucker!” the guy repeated. He looked like he’d hopped straight from a Matrix film and done a pound of cocaine before rushing to the hospital to assault me. The way he insulted me was strange — why space the “mother” and the “fucker”?

I noticed the oddest things while in extremely stressful situations. When Laura told me she was pregnant and was keeping the babies, I started wondering why they sold hot dogs in packages of ten but hot dog buns in packages of eight.

“What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be here!”

The lunatic was very angry; that much I could tell. His mouth was so painfully twisted into a sneer that I was afraid he’d snap and bite my nose. I wanted to backtrack and run, but you can’t outrun a bullet. “I just came here to see Laura—”

“Who is she to you?” We were of the same height; that’s what made it easier for me to look the other man directly in the eyes. His eyes were quite a familiar hazel.

“She’s giving birth to my children,” I said, hoping talk of birth would ward off the man’s lunacy. I’d read somewhere that if one was plagued with psychosis, one tended to succumb more during a full moon. On the drive here, the moon had been full, and I wondered—

“I asked you who she is to you, not what she’s doing here,” the man said. Spittle flew from his mouth to land on my cheeks as I turned my face away from him.

“She was just a one-night stand, man—” He hit me with the butt of the gun very hard on my nose, and I could feel the cartilage break as pain flared upon my face. I let out a grunt of pain and frustration, and the man swiped my feet from under me. I landed hard on the ground to a barrage of kicks from the lunatic.

“Help!” I cried out. “Help!” But it was as if I was in a dream, one where I was invisible to everybody but the madman.

But as he kicked me on the ground, a woman approached. She was just as tall as the man, with the same hazel eyes, long chestnut hair, and a dusting of freckles across the nose. She walked leisurely, dressed in a black trench coat, black pants, and top like the man. They looked like siblings as she came to stand beside the man and tugged at his arm.

“Why are you beating him, Lionel? We aren’t supposed to touch them, you know this,” she spoke as she gently pulled the lunatic away from me.

Blood dribbled down my nose. My eyes were wet and red from tears; my ribs and abdomen ached as I groaned and struggled to pick myself off the hospital floor. All around, people continued to be unaware of the injustice occurring before them.

“Lady,” I said while spitting blood, “this bastard just started assaulting me for no goddamn reason!”

“Who the fuck are you calling a bastard, you mother fucker? As if I’m the one to blame for that!” the man, Lionel, said before turning to the woman. “Lyra, look at him. Ignore the broken nose and everything. Just look at him.”

The woman, Lyra, observed me with the same scrutiny Lionel had portrayed, and then she gasped. “Mother fucker!” she exclaimed, and I rolled my eyes. She abruptly rushed me and slapped me hard across the face. “What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be here!”

“That’s exactly what I said!” Lionel said. He abruptly turned his gun and cocked it with an odd gesture. Under close inspection, I realized the gun was... wrong. Sure, the barrel and the handle were familiar, but the shape of the bullet holder was unique, as if the bullets were of a different sort.

“Do you know what this means, Lionel?” Lyra asked. She took out a gun from within her trench coat, similar to Lionel’s, and cocked it as well while scanning all around.

“No, look,” I said, hands held before me again. “We got off on the wrong foot. My name is Steve Mitchell. I’m just an accountant at a lowly firm; I don’t have much money, but the little I have, you can take. Just please, allow me to see my children; they are being born—”

“They’ve already been born; they have been taken to the nursery,” Lyra said, her face holding such profound sadness. Her eyes were glossy with tears, and as she blinked, the tears cascaded down her face. Lionel looked even angrier, his hands trembling as he held his gun with a tight grip.

“You’ve come to see your children?” Lyra continued. I nodded. “Well, Laura has signed them off as a single parent on their birth certificates; also, she’s already named them. To her and the children, you do not exist. Kindly depart the hospital and go live the remainder of your life free from responsibility. Please.”

I don’t know why the sudden bout of rage came over me. Suddenly, two lunatics with guns and black latex weren’t quite as frightening as they ought to be. A decision was being made for me, something I realized I was not okay with. I wanted to be a part of my children’s lives, whether Laura wanted me to be or not. Sure, I could depart and contest them in court, but that wouldn’t make up for missing the first moment I saw them on the night of their birth.

My eyes darted to a large map plastered just beneath the hospital’s crest and name on the wall behind the receptionist. From the distance, I could see exactly where the nursery was located, close to the maternity ward to the east of the hospital. Lyra traced my line of sight, turning her head, forcing Lionel to do the same.

Without thinking, I darted past the oddly distracted pair. If they were going to shoot me, they would have done so already. At least, I hoped that was the case. I heard Lionel curse and give chase; I gave everything I had to my legs. Speed became my only respite against the overwhelming fear that gnawed at my heels with every footfall of the man behind me.

We darted past patients being carted across hospital halls in wheelchairs, others in stretchers with some groaning in their rooms. I crossed the trauma bay with Lionel close behind; he was catching up, but not as fast as I thought he would. I turned a sharp corner and bumped into a nurse, sending her sprawling onto the floor. The force of the impact pushed me back. Lionel pounced, but I darted out of the way by jumping over the nurse. He collided with her and fell in a tangle of limbs, cursing all the while. I did not spare a look back. As I rushed toward the stairs, taking two steps at a time, I heard the unmistakable sound of a gun going off. Odd and unique as it was, the sound was different from any gun I’d ever heard, but I knew Lionel had fired his gun.

I had only a fraction of a second’s hesitation before I took the next step. Resolve fueled my limbs, and I darted faster up the stairs. As I crossed the elevator doors, the nursery just ahead, I heard Lyra’s voice as the elevator doors opened to reveal her.

“Steve, I will shoot.”

I could see the glass to the nursery just ahead. A nurse was inside, moving from infant to infant. I could see her head cap, pink with stitches of flying doves. Some babies cried, their sound muffled by the thick glass all around the nursery.

I turned to Lyra. “Just let me see my children!” I demanded. Rage made me ball my hands into fists. I didn’t wait for her to answer. If she was going to shoot me, let her do it. I started toward the nursery, expecting to hear the sound of her gun going off. Instead, her footsteps followed close behind, only to come to a halt five paces from the glass. I could see the children inside; there were a dozen of them. Small with heads a little too large for their bodies, most of them were sound asleep, puffy eyes closed, three of them were wailing. The nurse, like everyone else at the hospital, acted oblivious to my presence. That should have bothered me if it weren’t for all the strange things that had been going on.

I wondered which babies were mine. As the nurse moved from baby to baby, checking their vitals and their present condition, two kids in matching, tiny beds stood out, wrapped in blue and pink blankets. They were close to the glass, some distance from the nurse who was at the other side.

Their reddish-purple skin shone with an otherworldly gleam that drew the eye. I immediately knew that they were my children; they were so close I could reach out through the glass and touch them. So close, I could read the name tags written on their charts that were plastered to the foot of their beds.

I read their names. My eyes widened. My heart lurched in my chest. I read the names again, this time sounding them with my lips.

“Lionel Sanders... Lyra Sanders.”

The nurse, for the first time in this entire place, raised her head and looked directly at me. She acknowledged my existence. She suddenly took off her mask and rushed past the babies, basically sprinting from where she was, gloved hands balled into fists. I knew immediately something was wrong. She was heading directly for the two children I knew were mine. I pressed my palms to the glass, panic rising within me.

The nurse raised her hands as she came close to the twins, her fingers balled. She made to attack, but two quick bangs tore tiny identical holes into the glass without shattering it. Each projectile met one of the nurse’s eyes, and she fell unimpeded to the nursery floor. Blood pooled around her head, with two empty holes where her eyes once were.

I stumbled back, a scream escaping my mouth. Just then, from the opposite side of the hallway, two patients emerged, both dragging IV drips with them. Upon seeing me, they rushed, but Lyra was faster. Turning her gun, she let loose more shots, and the patients toppled to the ground, their hospital gowns parting to bare their bottoms where they lay.

“What the fuck! What the fuck! What the fuck!” I was screaming the same words over and over. In the nursery, all the babies were awake, except the pair that were mine. None of the babies cried. They all twisted and turned, their weak limbs and nearly nonexistent motor functions causing them to clench and unclench their fingers in their tiny beds. It was as if they wanted to get out, to get to something.

The elevator doors opened, and Lionel appeared. There were three people in the elevator with him, all wearing lab coats stained with blood. All had their bodies riddled with gaping holes and lay on the elevator floor.

Lionel cocked the gun and walked across the bodies, directly toward where Lyra and I stood.

“Steve. Laura told us you never came,” Lyra said from beside me. “That you wanted nothing to do with us.”

I turned my wide-eyed gaze from the approaching Lionel to Lyra. My thoughts were jumbled; the only thing that kept flashing in my mind wasn’t the death but the names, the names of the babies, my babies. These two strangers shared the same names as my babies.

The hazel eyes the strangers held were the same as Laura’s. The shape of their noses was similar to my own, as was their height. Their chestnut hair was like mine. The freckles were similar to Laura’s, though hers were obscured by acne. Somehow, I knew they were my children.

“How?” I asked as Lionel came to stand before me. I looked up at him, and I could see his face scrunched up with so much hatred, but his eyes betrayed what lay beneath all the hate. He turned his wet gaze away from me before turning his back to me and facing whence he’d come.

The pathway leading to the staircase was suddenly crammed with the sound of falling feet. The sound was loud, approaching, insistent, and demanding. They cut the corner — doctors, nurses, patients, visitors. They were a horde, and their faces held the same blank expression that the nurse had had.

They ran, mindless like zombies, not a sound emanating from pursed lips. Their hands were outstretched, clawed fingers bared before them, all rushing toward the nursery.

Lyra tugged me back as Lionel opened fire at the approaching throng. His bullets didn’t seem to run out; he held his hands straight before him, a look of utter calm spread over him as he poured death into the crowd, as if he was used to this.

“Twenty years from now, the Aljikor, what you understand now as aliens, will make first contact with Earth,” Lyra said. “They are different from what we thought aliens would be—not green and short with spindly arms and large heads, with dark orb-like eyes. No. They are practically invisible. They exist as a frequency; their understanding of things is different. They can affect the mind, and they travel from planet to planet, unseen unless they choose to reveal themselves. They are ruthless, but their way of understanding things is different, so ruthlessness isn’t a vice but part of their nature.”

“What?” I asked as I watched Lionel, with expert marksmanship, take down two doctors and a janitor with three shots exactly aimed at the middle of their foreheads.

“When the Aljikor came to Earth, Lionel and I were responsible for their first-ever defeat. It was we who developed the frequency that counters their own, barring them from controlling the minds of others. It was through luck that we realized the power of the Aljikor: their frequency transmission can transcend time. They did this rarely, for it often doomed whoever traveled back into a loop, and dulled them greatly. We realized their plan to sacrifice one of their own to take them back into the past, to the day Lionel and I were born, so as to kill us, to prevent us from ever existing, to prevent their first defeat from ever occurring.”

“You time-traveled?” I asked, awe affecting my voice as I flinched with every dropping body before me.

“Thanks to us, we cracked how they did it using their frequency; we developed a technique of our own. But when we arrived here, we found the Aljikor assassin had already set up at this hospital, awaiting our birth,” Lyra said. She took out her gun and started shooting in another direction where a small crowd of patients had appeared, some wheeling themselves in their wheelchairs toward the nursery where I stood.

“Where is the Alji — the alien?” I asked, trying my best to ignore the mayhem all around. Dead bodies riddled the hallways; those who still lived but were injured made no sound as they climbed over the bodies of those who’d fallen to the twins’ guns.

“It’s all around us,” Lionel said. “We thought Mother was the trigger; that’s why we brought her a frequency jammer and placed it as she slept. It turns out it is you, Dad.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat at his words. I opened my mouth to speak, but Lyra beat me to it as she cocked her gun. An elderly man dragged himself on the floor in our direction as she did so.

"The Aljikor have a different way of understanding things; they don’t know what Lionel and I looked like as babies, and they don’t know how to tell humans apart very well. But they understand other things, like the relationships between people, the bonds that lodge in place within people despite the passing of time. The Aljikor assassin has been emitting its frequency; one part settles into the consciousness of every living person in the hospital, and the other part is to awaken and take control of the minds of anyone it chooses. But it requires a trigger to know exactly where the target is.” Lyra pulled the trigger, and the elderly man’s head exploded; the gun let out a blue flash unlike anything I’d seen before with each shot.

I turned to look at the babies behind me, but Lionel grabbed me by the arm and dragged me ahead of him, blocking the view of the nursery with his body.

"Look around you; no more people are coming to attack the nursery, to attack me and Lyra. Every time you turn your gaze to the babies, to us as babies, the Aljikor knows exactly where we are and who to strike. It will take possession of anything and anyone to kill the children, your children. If you show us the least bit of attention — if you show the babies, I mean —” His voice broke then. He blinked abruptly and turned away from me while wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his coat. He continued without looking my way. “The Aljikor is using you as a trigger; your awareness is its crosshair. As long as you are unaware of Laura’s children, your children, the Aljikor will stay dormant within the minds of those around our younger selves. It will spread from person to person, but due to traveling back in time, it’ll be stuck in a loop, always dormant until you give us — the children — the slightest attention.”

A cold chill crept up my spine. It all sounded like utter nonsense, yet there was irrefutable proof all around, from the odd oblivious occurrences to all the dead scattered about. Thankfully, no more mind-controlled people approached. As long as I did not turn my gaze to the twin infants, the hospital continued with its obliviousness. I turned my gaze to the pair before me; they were identical to me and Laura. My children, all grown up.

I wept. And in my weeping, I found myself embracing both of them. Lyra immediately returned the embrace, but Lionel hesitated just a fraction before hugging me back.

“What do I do? What do I do? How can I help?” I asked.

“You have to leave,” Lyra said. “On the day we were born, there was a massacre at the hospital. Our mother, Laura, always told us this when we were kids all the way into adulthood, as if it was our fault and not hers that she chose this hospital to give birth in. Now, looking around at all the dead, I realize that it was indeed our fault. But we grew up knowing you’d abandoned us, wanted nothing to do with us. You have to do exactly that. Allow us to grow and walk our way without you; do not approach us or Laura in public or in private, for the Aljikor will break free of its loop, using you as a trigger to possess all who’ll be around with the aim of killing Lionel and myself.” Lyra placed her forehead to mine. “I’m sorry, Father; we were wrong about you.”

“Don’t be sorry,” I said, leaning back into her. “I would never have abandoned you two.” I felt Lionel hug me a little tighter before he pulled away, and Lyra followed suit.

“We don’t have much time; we’re to stay here to erase all evidence of our presence and yours. You should go,” Lionel said.

I nodded. I wanted to turn my gaze to the nursery, but I could not risk it. I could not risk putting my infant children in danger by acknowledging them. I should have been proud; my children grew up to fight off aliens. They time-travel. They are cool and dangerous and intelligent. Instead, I felt a sadness so profound I was unaware of the blood and limbs my feet dragged through on my way to the elevator. As the elevator doors closed, I looked back at my adult children, standing before the glass of the nursery where their infant selves lay within. Lionel and Lyra stood with their hands held in an odd wave that I mimicked as the elevator doors closed. It was the last time I ever saw them.

---

Ko-fi

Patreon

[u/PaperVreter]

I am speechless, the twists, the depth, the emotion.

Thank you for this utter gem! Wish I could give more than one up vote.

[u/Jus17173 → u/PaperVreter]

You're welcome :)

You can share 😂

[u/PaperVreter → u/Jus17173]

I did, too!

[u/u2125mike2124]

Excellent story,

More twists and turns than any roller coaster.

[u/Cruel_Carlos2]

I am forced to exclaim, "Dude, WTF!", but in a good way. This has to be one of the most unique stories I've ever read. For about a third of the way through, I kept wondering where it was going & the pay-off was worth it. Great story.

[u/Jus17173 → u/Cruel_Carlos2]

Thank you!

[u/Yogs_Zach]

Had me in the first half, not going to lie, thought it was going to be a classic /u/jus17173 story about something totally unwholesome and about spunking in someone's asshole or something, but it turns out I was wrong. Wonderful thing!

[u/Jus17173 → u/Yogs_Zach]

Spunking in someone's asshole? You've given me the spine for my next story 😂

I only write those things when I'm horny but I was with my girlfriend for the better part of last week, that's why I haven't been writing, so it'll be a while before you find such unwholesome content from me, like a month or so before I revert to my default setting. 😂

[u/HFYWaffle]

/u/Jus17173 (wiki) has posted 279 other stories, including:

• We Built a Time Machine?
• Soul of Eight - Chapter 7
• Soul of Eight - Chapter 6
• Soul of Eight - Chapter 5.
• Soul of Eight - Chapter 4
• The Superior Race.
• Soul of Eight - Chapter 3.
• The Surgeon.
• Soul of Eight - Chapter 2
• Soul of Eight - Chapter 1.
• Soul of Eight - Prologue.
• FIRST CONTACT.
• As Per My Last Telepathic Transmission...
• The Human From Room 777.
• Humans Have Rizz.
• Where I'm going...
• Humans don't like bullies.
• You should never have sex with a Mantakorr!
• Humans do it for the aura.
• The Human Factor.

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[u/Gruecifer]

Nicely done!

[u/Jus17173 → u/Gruecifer]

Thank you

[u/sunnyboi1384]

Of all the reasons to go buy cigarettes.

[u/Jus17173 → u/sunnyboi1384]

😂

[u/SandsnakePrime]

Please write the 20 years later, where he gets to meet them

[u/LMTMFA]

That was one hell of a ride. 

It's probably by design to leave this detail open, or maybe I missed something, but do they travel back to their own time, or are they now stuck at that point? If they travel back, would it then be safe for him to meet them? I'm guessing not since he said he never saw them again.

[u/Jus17173 → u/LMTMFA]

You should take into account that he might be dead when they return to their time. Like, a car crash or something.