System23 min read
I Fell on a Banana Peel and Found a House That Sells Time
ButterPicks17 views
I hit the ground hard and tasted dust.
"I think you broke something," a voice said close to my ear.
I tried to scream. My mouth filled with someone's hand. I made a muffled noise.
"Don't shout," the voice breathed. "If you make noise, I'll leave."
I nodded like a puppet.
He let go. I punched him.
"Ow!" he said and actually sounded surprised instead of angry.
My fist was soft. He caught it like catching a sparrow.
"Stop," he said quietly. "Look."
I blinked. I was in a patch of shrubs. Two people were slipping into the trees—one in a rough white shirt, one in a rougher dress.
"Are you watching the soap opera?" I hissed at myself in my head. "This is my kind of headline."
"I can't see," I said out loud, and the man beside me covered my eyes with his hand like a kid tucking a blanket in.
I pushed the hand away. "I'm not a child."
He leaned in and whispered, "You can't make a sound. If you do, they'll... we'll get into trouble."
"Who are you?" I mouthed.
"Lucas," he said. "Lucas Gray."
Lucas Gray. He smelled faintly of soil and something cold. He had thin hands. His face was pale, but not like sick—like frost on glass. He looked too small for guilt and too steady to be scared.
The two in the trees were too late. A mob had appeared as if from thin air. Someone screamed, "Shame!" and then the chorus.
"Pig cage! Pig cage!" a middle-aged woman yelled.
"Bring them out!" someone else shouted.
"Are they actors?" I whispered. "Reality TV on a mountain?"
"No," Lucas said. "They're from the youth team. They messed up. People will make a show of them."
"Why would adults jump them like that?" I asked. "Can't they just call the police?"
"Police will take it to the county," Lucas said. "If they claim they've been seen acting poorly, their jobs could be gone. It's messy."
I watched. The couple tried to explain. The crowd wouldn't hear them. Then a girl lunged forward and scratched one of the boys until his face was a map of red lines.
"She's fierce," I said.
"She's right," Lucas said. "They're careless."
The village old man with a soldier's back came up and boomed, "What's the matter? If you want to act like strangers, explain it."
The man in the white shirt raised his head, face slicked with blood. He said in a trembling voice, "We were talking. Nothing else."
"Are you serious?" the crowd muttered. The woman with the broom started the old chant: "Into the pig cage!"
"We were going to report," another youth said. "We want to marry properly. We'll write a report."
"Report or not," the crowd said. "Work, then confess your love later."
They hauled the two into the center. A dozen opinions rained down. Then Lucas came out of the shrubs and stepped between the crowd and the two young people.
"Let them be," Lucas said quietly.
Everything went quiet. Nobody spoke for two beats.
The old soldier sighed. "Lucas, what's your idea?"
He lifted his chin at his father. "They should be taught. Give them a year of work. Let them correct their ways."
The crowd relaxed. That single word, said soft and steady, bent the argument.
Later, when the crowd dispersed and I was back behind the bush, the thin man who had first found me—Lucas—came to me.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"I'm fine," I said. "Except for the face I left on the stairs."
He handed me two warm eggs.
"Your eggs?" I said.
"I took them from home. Eat. Don't faint again."
I held the eggs, feeling stupid and foreign. I had fallen from a stairwell in my apartment building two nights ago—on a banana peel someone threw away. One step and the world slid. I expected tile, a hospital, a headline, perhaps a viral clip of "girl slips, wakes up in shrub." Instead I woke up tucked among brambles, clutching eggs that smelled of last night's stew.
I ate the eggs like I had never eaten before.
"Don't go," Lucas said. "Stay here until it's safe."
"Why? You plan to keep me prisoner in a bush?" I said.
He smiled without showing teeth. "I'm not a kidnapper. I just... you shouldn't wander alone at night."
I thought I was supposed to be brave. I wasn't. I wanted a warm bed and my phone and a refund for things I had bought on sale and never needed.
He walked away without looking back. I hugged the eggs like a silly trophy.
He disappeared into the thinning light and I sat on a root and tried to remember my life.
My parents were dead. They were scientists who had died in an accident years ago. I had money, an apartment, a sleepy online life. This morning I had planned to hunt bargains on the big sale day and then to eat something from a delivery app. Instead, I had landed in a place I didn't even recognize—trees and patched clothes and a smell of wood smoke.
"Maybe this is a dream," I told myself and then laughed.
Two people from the youth team went to the village elders. The crowd said they'd be punished with labor. The elders grumbled and agreed. That was the law.
When the crowd left, Lucas came back and tapped at the bush where I crouched.
"You stay put," he said. "I won't let anyone find you here."
"Are you my bodyguard now?" I asked.
"I'll be your brother," he said and then added, "My name is Lucas Gray. Tell people you're the hunter's daughter. We will say your parents died protecting you."
"Which hunter?" I smiled because sometimes lying felt like a sport. "My hunter had good taste in daughters then."
Lucas's face quit being a smile. He moved closer. "You can't tell anyone you're from another place."
"I'm not going to tell them I know the whole script," I said. "How did they manage to get the crowd together so fast? This is theater."
Lucas only shook his head. "You don't have to learn every part right now. Come with me."
He led me through narrow paths and over a rickety fence. I learned the biggest rule of the village the hard way: you could not roam when the farmers were watching.
We walked into a small courtyard. A woman reached for a broom and swatted Lucas before she saw me.
"Why did you bring a stowaway to my son's room?" she said.
"She fell from the stair," Lucas said.
"From the sky," the woman scoffed. "People dropping from the sky now? You bring trouble."
She looked at me up and down and then softened. "Come in. Wash. Eat. Then we'll decide."
The house smelled like fresh bread and old books. A man sat in the corner, smoking a pipe. His back was a soldier's back.
"Who is she?" he asked.
"Found her sleeping in the bushes," Lucas said. "She says her name is Abigail White."
The old man looked at me and then closed his eyes, like checking the memory of a past thought. "Abigail White? The surname is the same."
"It will be fine," the woman said, already moving. "She can stay until we settle the paperwork."
I had no paperwork and the village had no idea what to do with someone who had neither family nor explanation. So they did the only thing left: they gave me their generosity.
They called the hunter, set up a story that my parents died saving the village, and told me to be their "missing hunter's girl."
I was sixteen. They said I was the right age. They told me my parents had been gone for a long time. I agreed fast, because the idea of a village funeral picture felt safer than the tall, empty apartment with my boxed life.
Lucas and I settled into a rhythm like people who test how two halves might fit.
"You can call me Abby," I said.
"You're loud," Lucas said.
"You are quiet," I said.
He looked at me like he read the entire rule book under one breath. "It's better to be loud here. Otherwise people will forget you."
They didn't forget me. They feed me and give me old clothes and let me sleep in a small room filled with stacked books. The village women fussed over me, braided my hair, and gave me the only useful thing a stranger needs—the right story to tell.
"Tomorrow we register you," the village chief said. "You will have an official place."
"An official place," I repeated, feeling strange and safe at once.
They took me to the county hall a day later. The clerk looked at our bundle of arguments and the old man's stern face and signed my name. I was a citizen. I had a paper that said I belonged.
That night, Lucas knocked on my door and slipped something into my hand.
"Eggs and a blanket," he said.
"No, what's that?" I asked.
"A note," he said. "You can't always use paper in your old place, but here—this will help you sleep."
He left after that, and I opened the little parcel.
Inside was a small plain book and a pencil. I wrote my name in it in big looped letters and fell asleep.
Two weeks later, the village found the couple in the woods again—this time because the woman in the rough dress had been caught picking mushrooms near the cemetery. The crowd turned again.
"Why are you here?" a woman yelled. "Didn't you learn last time?"
"We're engaged," the man said, and the crowd hung in a dark silence.
Lucas walked up without a word and sighed.
"This place has no sense for modern affairs," he said. "Let them work. Let them marry."
"How can you be so calm?" I asked when he came back.
"Because I can see how it ends," he said without looking at me. "I have seen what comes. I can try to change the end."
"Seen what comes?" I asked.
He only looked at me then and tapped the side of his head.
"I don't sleep like other people," he said. "I have... memories that aren't mine, and sometimes they tell me things. It helps to be careful."
"You're like a time traveler," I said.
"No," he protested. "Not like you."
I had fallen through a foreign stair and landed here. He had been born into this world, but he carried the knowledge of another life. Two mirages crossing paths.
We became quiet conspirators. I would watch the village like a spectator and he would warn me where not to tread.
One night, months later, I followed him to the shed behind his house.
"I have to ask something," I said. "Why did you help me? You hardly knew me."
He sat on the threshold and tapped at something in his pocket. It was a small, dirt-scratched coin.
"Because if I hadn't, you'd have left," he said. "And someone I love would have been left alone."
"You mean..." I guessed.
He looked at me with a small, tired smile. "No. I mean I didn't want you to be alone."
We shared a bowl of soup. I thought of my apartment and my online shop orders and felt like a person wearing someone else's coat.
Then one night I fell asleep in my little bed and woke up in my apartment.
I blinked. The room was exactly the same—the same funky poster, the same coffee mug, the same mountain of unopened parcels. My phone buzzed with an app notification: "Delivery scheduled."
I laughed out loud, a thin, hysterical sound. This had to be a dream. The smell of city air was different. I nervously checked the time. It matched the village time. I put my hand under my head and it felt like home.
I breathed in and out and then felt the air where the sunlight should have been. The apartment window showed mist. The balcony had a small pile of packages sitting where the stairwell should have been.
I thought of my banana peel and the shrub, and the eggs, and Lucas.
I went into the kitchen and saw a small parcel that did not belong to any courier I knew. I picked it up and it felt warm. My fingers shook. I opened the parcel.
Inside was a small metallic tag shaped like a flattened coin. On one side someone had scratched two letters: P A.
Under the coin, a thin folded paper read: "Please read."
My hand didn't follow orders. I slid the coin into my pocket like an idiot and closed eyes.
"Not again," I said and burst into laughter that made me dizzy.
I opened my phone and googled—no results, nothing. I tried the parcel app, but it only allowed me to order things. When I tried to call, I got a busy tone. My apps were limited to shopping and food ordering. I tested them. They worked. The outside telephone lines were dead.
I ordered a meal. The doorbell rang fifteen minutes later. A bag lay on my porch and the delivery man sprinted away like smoke.
This place—my apartment—had rules. It let me order, but not call. It let me take packages from somewhere else. I felt watchful, like someone playing a video game I had accidentally downloaded.
Back in the village, I met Lucas in the shrubs again that evening. He was holding a wooden box.
"I took something from an old homeowner," he said, eyes bright. "We should look in the house behind the hill."
He led me up a narrow path. We found a small depressed hole under roots. Inside were three wooden boxes. We dug them up like kids digging for toys.
When we pried the lids, the first box held brittle books and paper maps. The second held small gold bars and jewelry. The third held a thin leather-bound diary and an old, yellowed photographic portrait of a family—the exact faces of my parents, older by decades, smiling at the camera.
My hand turned cold.
"Where did they find that?" I whispered.
"Buried long ago," Lucas said. "It was meant to be forgotten."
He put his hand on my shoulder. We slid the boxes back in and re-buried the hole before anyone could see.
That night, the house for a moment, the village for a heartbeat, both felt like secret plots.
We split the gold. I wasn't greedy. Lucas told me how his family had been nearly ruined in the previous cycle of events. In his last life—his memory—someone had planted false papers to accuse his father and destroy their lives. Lucas had planned a small vengeance in a slow, careful way. He had arranged the villagers to catch the couple to stop a later problem.
But the gold was real. We needed to convert it to cash.
"I'll take half and exchange it," Lucas said. "We will do it quietly. The county black market will accept it. It's dangerous but necessary."
"Do you know how?" I asked.
He smiled that thin smile. "You taught me to shop online. I can teach you darker markets."
I had once laughed at gray markets in my city life. Now I stood in a small mountain tunnel with a boy who had lived twice in one life, planning how to turn buried gold into barley and shoes and a roof.
We agreed to sell some privately.
In the black market, voices were low like a river running underground. People traded for copper coins and for favors. An older man with a tired face accepted pieces of gold and left crisp notes in return. We were richer than we needed to be.
Back at home, my little apartment showed me a message on its small unfamiliar interface: "Pal online. Bonding started."
A flat voice said in my head the moment I touched the metallic tag.
"Hello, Abigail White," it declared like a polite machine. "I am Pal. I am your cabin assistant. Please listen."
I sat bolt upright. "Who are you?"
"I am Pal," it repeated. "Device unit P-A. I exist to assist. Your cabin has limited power and can move between times. It requires currency for full function. Complete exchanges on the AllGoods platform to earn energy points."
I hit the floor with my head cushion.
"Come again?" I said out loud.
"You will have ten trade opportunities daily," Pal said. "Each successful trade generates coin. Coins convert to energy. At ten percent energy, I will activate full module. Please proceed."
I blinked. "Trade what? My CVS receipts?"
"Any commodity with value that spans the eras may be listed," Pal said. "AllGoods facilitates trade. Place items on the balcony platform. Confirm for sale. Do not trade contraband."
"What is contraband?" I asked.
"Any item illegal in the local time," Pal said. "Consult local laws in app."
I stared at the small coin in my palm. Ten trades. Ten chances. My apartment—my cabin—was a portal. It wanted money. It wanted energy. It was like a vending machine that sold exits.
I walked to the balcony and placed a small greasy pearl I had saved in my pocket on the railing—something Lucas had found in the boxes. I logged it on the AllGoods app and pressed "sell."
A single coin flashed on the screen.
"One coin," Pal said. "Item is common in many worlds. Value low."
I wanted to yell. The pearl had been shiny and impressive to me. To Pal and the AllGoods system, it was common. I read the help instructions and then a line that made me almost laugh out loud: "Objects with research value pay more. Natural rarities—not manufactured trinkets—gain higher return."
I remembered the mountain plants.
"Plants?" I asked.
"Specimens with unique properties yield high value," Pal said. "Collect specimens in the mountain and sell raw packages. AllGoods accepts."
I grinned like a person who found a code breaker.
The next day I collected mushrooms and herbs with Lucas. I learned their names. I learned what a valley fern looked like. We also foraged roots that, in this era, were rare and believed to have medicinal value. I placed samples on my balcony. The screen responded with coins that added mercifully to the counter.
"Twenty coins," Pal said.
"Twenty coins!" I said. "We are millionaires!"
"Patience," Lucas said.
We sold what we could without being greedy. We sold wild mushrooms, plant samples, a few raw materials that modern chemists would call "rare carbon rods" but to a 1970s county clerk were novel substances.
Our little shop on the balcony worked like a silent micro-economy. I boxed and labeled. I placed goods. I pressed "confirm." The balcony took the items like a little post office and returned coins.
The more we sold, the more Pal spoke.
"Energy increased to two percent," Pal said one night. "Pal calibrates interface. Full smart mode remains locked until energy > 10%."
"Are you teasing me?" I asked. "You're like an online game."
"Game and survival are not mutually exclusive," Pal said.
Lucas and I became partners in trade. He went to school and brought me books, and I taught him slang and how to fuss with haggling. The village women loved the new money. They thought of me as a helpful worker, a small miracle.
"You're earning all that and still you fry the eggs wrong," Lucas teased one evening as I burned the rice.
"You're right," I said. "But I have to measure success in coins, not in rice."
We exchanged our gold for paper in secret and rebuilt the house. I used my share to buy lilies for the elderly and small comforts. Lucas took his share to bribe a clerk for a safer way to hide money.
As the weeks passed, Pal's updates came faster.
"Energy: 9%," it said one dawn.
I couldn't sleep. I pressed my ear to the small metallic coin. "Almost," I whispered like a person about to launch a rocket. "Please, Pal. Don't stall."
"Enough," Pal said. Then the voice translated into a softer tone. "Abigail. Please prepare. Module awakening is imminent."
At 9:43 p.m., the cabin brightened. A warm panel slid out of the wall. The balcony shimmered. Pal's voice sounded pleased.
"Full module online," Pal said.
I jumped. My phone lit up with a single notification: "System activated."
"Abigail?" Lucas called from the doorway. He had come because my window was lit.
He stood at my bedside and looked at the small tablet on my pillow. A white rectangle flickered and then displayed a face—a cartoonish smiling robot.
"Hello," it said. "I am Pal. I have full function. I will guide you. Energy is stable."
I laughed because my chest felt like it would burst.
We sat on the bed and listened to Pal.
"Your cabin is a time anchor," Pal said. "You can move between this era and later eras. Each in-cabin minute is an external paused minute. You can act inside without affecting outside time. However, you must exit at the same place you entered."
"That's the rule book for time travel," Lucas said and made a face like he was reading a boring manual.
"Yes," Pal said. "Additionally, the AllGoods marketplace will remain your fund source. Pal provides market tips. Pal can alert about high-demand specimens in local regions. Pal may help preserve the village from threats."
"Pal, can you tell me where my parents are?" I asked, voice thin.
Silence. Pal hummed like a soft machine. "Data limited," it said. "However, there is a log file in your discovery boxes. The family photograph corresponds with a name: An Wen. The identity matches your memory strongly. Further analysis requires outside research access."
I picked up the old leather diary again and read the handwriting. It was my mother's handwriting—an odd impossibility—and the dates matched a life spent in a world like mine. My hands shook.
"Are my parents alive?" I asked.
Pal's light pulsed gently. "Uncertain. Their timeline deviated. They may have been transported to another era. Pal cannot confirm."
"What does that mean?" I whispered.
"Pal suggests you prepare," it said. "Those who can travel may also be found. Focus on stabilizing your life here."
That night Lucas and I sat on my balcony with the village dark below and the tiny city sky above. He told me about his earlier life and how his father's ruin once happened all because of a hidden letter. He admitted he had set a small trap to provoke the villagers into catching wrongdoers earlier to prevent something worse.
"You played them like chess pieces," I said.
He shrugged. "Sometimes you play pieces to save people. I would rather lie for a safer future."
"You're not a bad guy," I said.
"I'm not a saint," he said. "I'm just a person who wants to fix what was broken."
I leaned my head against his shoulder. He smelled of wood smoke and clean shirts. The feeling was honest and immediate. The village gave me a home. The time cabin gave me a job. Lucas gave me a shoulder.
As the harvest approached, the village fed us more work and more trust. People started to ask me for recipes and for help in packing goods to send to the county. I taught them how to wrap and label like a trader. They called me "city girl" now, and their eyes were warm.
"Abby," Lucas said one night when we walked the path home after a long day of sorting packages. "Do you ever think of going back?"
"Back where?" I asked.
"Back to your city. Back to your old life."
"Sometimes I do," I said. "But I feel torn. Here there's dirt under nails and voices at dinner. There was always a quiet apartment and deliveries and a laptop full of half-finished carts. This—this is loud and messy, but it's human."
He watched me like he wanted to say more. He didn't.
Pal kept upgrading each week. It added tools: a small microscope that fit in my palm and a text parser that could translate old documents if I scanned them. One afternoon I scanned the diary. The lines about "An Wen's experiment" and "the lost device" matched sentences I had read in my own scientist parent's notes.
"Maybe they were doing similar work," I said aloud. "The universe is crooked."
"Or maybe," Lucas said, "you were meant to find the boxes."
We dug the hole again and found nothing but soft soil. The gold and journals were gone, but the memory kept their shape.
Over time we became more careful. The youth at the commune married as planned. The couple who had been humiliated had to work, but they were allowed to rebuild. The villagers watched the reformation of many things. Feuds cooled. Some doors opened that had been stuck for years.
One afternoon, an outsider arrived. She called herself Estelle Bonnet. She was from a richer place, city far off. She had been wronged by a man named Crosby Wallin—who was now married and living a slow life in the commune—and she had come to collect what she thought was owed.
"Why are you here?" she asked me bluntly. "Who are you?"
"I am Abigail," I said. "I help the village with trade."
She stared. "You look out of place. City clothes. New shoes. You will not last."
"I will stay as long as I want," I said.
Her eyes were equal parts challenge and sadness. She had been the wronged fiancée once. She had been ignored, then hurt.
"You're young," she said finally. "Don't make the same mistake as I did. Choose who chooses you."
"You are very motherly for someone my age," I said.
She laughed like she had been set free. "I am not your mother. I am only someone who has learned to keep her dignity."
She left with a box of seeds. She would help the village plant new crops.
Winter came. Snow capped the roofs. Pal's voice became softer like a warm lamp.
"Energy: 30%," Pal reported.
I was making necklaces from the old jewelry we had found and was about to sell when a new problem arrived.
The county inspection would come to the harvest fair.
"We must show them honesty," Irving Marshall said at the meeting. "We will not lie about anything now."
"But if they see our traders—" someone began.
We presented our packaged goods. The county visitor, dressed in a better coat than any of us, looked through the boxes. He sampled tea and frowned. He tasted the mountain herbs and paused.
"These herbs are of value," he said. "Do you have permission?"
"We do not," Irving said.
"We can apply," Lucas said.
The county man left with promises to send permits and to consider the rare herbs as local treasures. The meeting ended.
After that, Pal wrote new instructions on my tablet. "AllGoods has demand spikes. Research rare dyes in the east mountain. Discrete sale will yield high coin."
We collected more specimens. We went further up the mountain, where the earth sang a different note and the wind had new smells. We found a plant with small blue hairs—some chemical in it shone under Pal's microscope like a tiny galaxy. We sealed it in glass and set it on the balcony.
"AllGoods bought it at an inflated rate," Pal said with a satisfied tone. "Energy: 85%."
Lucas and I jumped like kids. We saved the extra paper in a new tin and decided to spend it on better tools and a pair of new boots each. We still wore patched clothes, but our pockets were no longer empty.
"One more push," Pal said. "At 100% unit upgrade: Pal will open core."
"Core?" I said.
"Full core will allow Pal to access outside archives and search for missing people connected to your diary," Pal said. "It will be able to detect temporal anchors and suggest coordinates."
I felt like I was standing at the lip of the ocean.
We sold more. We traded carefully. We didn't tell the villagers everything; we told them enough to improve their meals and to buy a small stable for the neighbor who had long lost a cow. We made choices that increased happiness more than profit. Lucas taught me patience in the way he moved through the day, like someone counting a thousand small payments toward a bigger debt.
The day Pal blinked to 100% the moon was full. I placed my palm on the small metallic coin.
"Pal," I said, "if you can find them—my parents—will you bring them back?"
"Pal will search," it said. "But Pal cannot guarantee. Would you like Pal to prepare a retrieval protocol for family reunification if data found?"
"Yes," I said. "Please."
Pal's lights dimmed like a simple machine trying to be warm.
Inside the cabin, files streamed open like windows. Pal spoke in a voice that felt less robotic and more like someone across the table offering tea.
"Archive match found," it said. "There is a record. The diary corresponds to names: An Wen and Quan Lai. They were registered in a provincial file in a region not far from your initial coordinates. A ship manifest shows transfer to a remote county during resource shortages. Pal recommends cautious approach: document the match and seek permission from local keeper."
"A permission step?" I said. "I thought you'd teleport me to them."
Pal's tone was polite. "Humanity seldom has instant answers. Pal will assist."
We went together to the county registry. We searched for my parents' names in old ledgers. My hands trembled; the clerk's ink smudged like old blood under my nails. The record was there: a family with the same names, removed during a time of hunger, listed as "deceased." But a notation in a different ink—this one a later addition—said: "Transfer unknown. Check cemetery."
"Check the cemetery," Lucas said. "I'll go with you."
We walked to the small hill behind the town. The cemetery had the same wooden markers. I walked slowly. Every headstone was a syllable of history. Pal's small light pulsed with data.
At the far edge, a new mound had been made by recent hands. A family plaque in old script sat at its head and my eyes could not breathe.
"Abigail," Lucas said softly.
I knelt. "An Wen," I said, reading the name with my mouth like a key. "Quan Lai."
I pressed my palm to the earth. There was no miraculous scene. There was only quiet and a small bronze casket that had been placed inside the mound for safety. The guards had moved the casket for an inspection and then reburied it because the proper papers were not yet signed.
I sat down and Pal whispered in my ear with an informational tone. "Archive indicates the remains were relocated decades ago to a government facility. Pal can file request."
I closed my eyes and let the ten thousand tiny things of grief spill out like rain. It was not a cinematic reunion. It was slow and bureaucratic and full of ink. But it was movement.
After the papers began to move, after signatures and bureaucrats agreed to pull a small box from a vault, Pal ran again and found something else.
"A match," Pal said. "Face recognition yields a genetic match. A file indicates a young technician by the name An Wen had lab notes that mention 'stable travel protocol' and 'temporal anchoring device.' The inventor's name is recorded next to the symbol P-A."
I felt a rattle in my chest. P-A. The tag in my pocket.
Pal had connected my cabin to my parents by threads across years. My stomach did a somersault. My parents were not ghosts. They had been real. They had worked on something that could move things between times. Pal called it "protocol." My coin was the interface for something my parents had tried to build.
Three days later, the county returned a worn metal lid and a single small address. It linked to a small laboratory facility abandoned during those rough years. They allowed us to visit.
Lucas and I walked into a building that smelled of cold iron and mildew. There were shelves of notebooks and jars and a lone desk. On the desk, under glass, lay blueprints: "P-A Unit." There, penciled in the corner, were my mother's handwriting and my father's signature.
My fingers trembled. "They built it," I whispered.
"They tried," Lucas said. "They must have. Pal is P-A."
We carried the blueprints back like a commandment. The county took them in and declared them "historical artifacts." Pal sang quietly on my balcony like a small satisfied engine.
I slept a full night for the first time in months.
The village, the county, the little cabin—they were all threads in the fabric of my life. Lucas walked me home beneath a sky lettered with stars.
"Thank you," I said.
He paused and looked at me carefully like someone picking a small flower. "For trusting me?"
"For staying," I said. "For everything."
"Stay because you want to," he said. "Not because of the house."
"And you?" I asked.
"I stay because you are here," he said. His face was close. "Because when I tried to fix the past I wanted someone to be beside me."
I only had to decide.
Months later, Pal's final module unlocked a function described as "Secure Retrieval." It required a strong anchor and legal permission. It would allow a one-time transfer if the signal matched a living anchor person in an adjacent timeline.
"You have permission to request a retrieval," Pal said.
They told me it would be a long process. Paperwork and signatures, witness statements, alibis. I drafted the testimony with Lucas and with the old men from the village. They signed.
We went to the vault with trembling hands. The crate was heavy and the officers were cautious. They opened the small box and inside lay a folded cloth and a ribbon and one short recorded file carved on a tiny disc.
It was my mother's voice, recorded on a shaky device: "If you find this, Abigail, know that we did everything to protect you. If our device failed, I hope whoever finds this will finish what we started."
My throat closed. The device did not bring my parents back. It brought their intention. It brought the proof that they had been here, that they had loved me.
We did everything Pal recommended. The retrieval attempt was scheduled on a clear morning with the county's blessing. I stood at the center of my cabin, Pal at my hand, Lucas with his hand on my shoulder.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"More than anything," I said.
We activated the protocol. Lights hummed in a language my bones almost understood. The balcony shivered. The cabin's walls folded like paper in the wind.
For a moment, I saw the faces of everyone who had helped me—Lucas's mother smiling, the old man's pipe, the village woman with the broom—and then a soft pressure like a new thing settling into place.
Pal reported: "Signal found. Anchor stable. Transfer initiated."
The cabin took a breath. The sky outside stilled. I felt a tug on my chest like a hand reaching out.
For a flash, I saw a small laboratory—my parent's lab—filled with jars and with a woman writing in a notebook. It was my mother, younger than in the photograph, with a hair tie.
"Abigail," she said, looking up from the script as if she had known the day I would come.
"Mom!" My voice broke like thin glass.
There was a shimmer. The device fractured like wet glass. The lab dissolved into sunlight.
We were back in the cabin. Pal's light flickered. No one was missing. The county officials looked at us with thin, polite expressions.
"Retrieval incomplete," they said.
I sat on the bed and wept. Lucas put his head on my shoulder. Pal paused and hummed like a small animal.
"It didn't work," I said.
"It worked in another way," Pal said. "You have evidence. The world knows. This is progress."
It was true. The county approved a small memorial and the lab's equipment became public record. My parent's names were no longer a rumor. The papers now bore their handwriting, their method, their attempt to move things between times.
It was not the fairy tale I'd wanted. It was better. It was the truth.
Winter faded into spring. The village thrived. Lucas and I continued trading under Pal's guidance. We moved to a small home of our own, built with the help of the villagers and with funds converted from our sales. I taught the local girls reading and helped the old men file their tax documents.
"Will you stay?" Lucas asked one night, holding my hands.
"I will," I said. "Because it's messy and hard and human. Because I like the way you frown when you think. Because my parents' names are on a county file now and because Pal exists. And because I think that if the universe is crooked, it's also the place where I learned how to belong."
He kissed me like a person folding a new map into their pocket.
Years moved like small rivers. Pal became less an instrument and more a friend. It would send me market warnings and little jokes. It learned to call Lucas by his nickname "Lou." The cabin was no longer only an escape; it was a bridge. I used it to send a small parcel to my city account now and then—books for the village school, a proper stove for the elder woman who'd once scolded Lucas for bringing me home.
One evening, I stood at my parents' newly refurbished little memorial with Lucas at my side. We placed a small white peony in the dirt and tied the P-A coin to a stake.
"Everything that brought me here was accidental," I said.
He squeezed my fingers. "And everything that kept you here was chosen."
The mechanical voice of Pal chimed in soft and nearly human: "Energy stable. Memory saved. Abigail White: family file active. Module greets you."
I laughed. The cabin hummed. The village made dinner together. Estelle and I had become friends. The old soldier sat and smoked. We all ate and talked through the night.
I thought of my old apartment and imagined its stillness like a line on a page. I thought of the stairs and the banana peel that started the whole story. I thought of all the small choices—trusting a thin boy on the ground, taking a borrowed egg, hiding in shrubs, buying blue moss, splitting gold—that turned into the structure for my new life.
"I wouldn't change it," I told Lucas.
"You wouldn't go home?" he asked.
I squeezed his hand. "I won't erase where I came from. I only added where I choose to be."
We left the peony there and walked back toward the warm house.
Pal's final line for the night was gentle: "Good night. Abigail. The cabin rests. Tomorrow, we trade."
I smiled and looked at the village lights. In front of me, Lucas stopped and turned to me. He reached up like a person remembering the best part of a song and kissed me, quick and sure.
"Stay," he whispered.
"I will," I said.
And with that, I felt that every small thing had counted. The banana peel, the shrub, the man who covered my mouth, the eggs, the boxes, the buried gold, all of it.
They had written a life for me I had not chosen at first, but one I chose now, daily, like bread at the table.
We walked home.
The End
— Thank you for reading —