The Jace Letters, Part Twelve

Yes, I'm terribly late in posting this. I think we're going to have to accept that the rest of this serial will be posted on a somewhat irregular basis. Just be grateful that you don't have to wait as long for each letter as Jace does!


The Jace Letters

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Part Twelve

Subject: The Why, If Not the How
Date: 11/17/09
From: JaceFace
To: NotaBeach

Aunt Sandy –

Another year has gone by. I'm in tenth grade now. At this rate, I'll be an adult by the time you get through this one day. But time seems to keep accelerating, so heck, I could be your age by the time your day is over!

I'm starting to suspect a reason for all this - not how it happened, but maybe why it's happening. I probably shouldn't say anything, though. This is the part in time travel stories when someone warns about knowing too much about the future. But I want to tell you anyway, at least this one thing, which could be totally wrong for all I know. I think this is probably about saving your life, or at least preserving it as long as possible. I mean, if you had just died right away in that accident, I wouldn't have gotten to know you as well as I do now, and nobody would have had a chance to try to keep you alive as that doctor is doing. Maybe all this time bubble stuff (if that's what it is) is the equivalent of cryonics, without the nasty side effects of freezing the brain into unusable mush. If you stay alive for another ten years of my time, medicine should get better, until whatever is wrong can be fixed, right? I hope so, anyway.

In case you're wondering, Ken and I are still friends, and still very close. But no, I haven't done anything with him that would shock my parents. We mostly have long, intense conversations, pretty much every day. And yeah, okay, he kissed me, once. I didn't like it much, but I'm not telling him that. He'll be getting his driver's license soon, and he wants to take me to Sedona and Deming, or at least one of the two. But I know my parents won't agree to any such thing, at least until I'm 18 or older. I wish I could just skip forward in time, the way you seem to do. Slogging through my teen years in normal time us dull and frustrating, especially when I know you're waiting for me to finish doing it!

Jace.


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The Jace Letters, Part Eleven

Yes, this installment is even later than the last couple have been. If you think about it, though, it's entirely appropriate at this stage of Jace and Sandy's story that each new email appears late and unpredictably.

The Jace Letters

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Part Eleven

Subject: Re: Sandy Lives! (I hope)
Date: 11/??/??? 095904r0731rffy08y
From: NotaBeach
To: JaceFace

Jace -

You asked whether Gabby has tried stitching me up. Better still: she's finally brought in a doctor to help me!

I don't know how he got in here, but of course I don't know how Gabby gets in here, either. She seems to be aging about as fast as you are, if not faster. She looks at least thirty as of this morning.

The doctor is about Gabby's age, maybe a little older. When I asked him his name, he said, "I'm not supposed to tell you that now." Isn't that an odd thing to say? But he seems very nice. He did stitch up my wounds, including some new ones that appeared while he was working on the others. He looked a little surprised and worried about this, but not nearly as much as you might expect. I'm sure he knows something about what's going on, but he confined his remarks to my medical condition. Like your friend, he's worried about internal bleeding, but for the moment he says there's little evidence of it. He offered me pain medication, but I need to stay alert so I can answer your emails as they come in. If it turns out I'm going to die soon, I don't want to waste any time being drugged out and drowsy.

Meanwhile, I'm feeling a little better, I think, and Gabby has brought me a fresh supply of food. The first day there was nothing here that could be considered perishable - no fruits or vegetables, no fresh or frozen meat. It was all stuff like Kraft Dinner with powdered milk and no butter, or beans and rice, or SPAM and other canned goods. Now Gabby seems to have have found a way to keep the food from spoiling at the speed of relativity. Today there was some cheddar cheese that didn't look too old, and potatoes, and a slightly squishy apple. Okay, it's not great, but it's something. Too bad I'm not hungry.

In your email you report that the man who disappeared from Sedona to Deming said the "road turned blue." I think I saw that, too. It wasn't just the road, though. It was everything at once. Blue.

I'm not going to try to talk you out of anything from this point forward. You're obviously a determined young woman, and I'm grateful that you care so much about your timelost godmother. All I ask is that you be careful, and try to avoid taking unnecessary chances. Will you do that for me? Please say that you will!

Sandy


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