I’m sure there’s very few people who ever really like to describe themselves, and I’m sure that you should probably ask about me from the perspective of everyone else, but never the less, I can give you a history lesson in 1000 words.
I was what was referred to as a contemporary. I’d been with the Nulla Tempus project since it’s inception, nearly a year now. There was only a handful of us left that had been leaping that long – some had sadly met their ends, others had decided to finish serving their time rather than risk another leap. No one yet had actually worked off their freedom. I was the closest to doing that, but one slightly major fuck-up, thanks mostly to Dom, had pushed back my release a bit. Of course, I think there may have been some other factors involved in that, like Dean’s disappearance and my involvement with Aiden, but I’m still not really sure yet.
Anyway, you want to know what I’m like, right? Well, I’ve got really long, straight chestnut brown hair. I used to keep it cut short and layered and dyed with red highlights, but after my incarceration it was a little difficult to be so precious about something as insignificant as your hair. And besides that, after it grew I kind of became attached it – I liked the luxury of having long hair, of being able to plait it – something I’d never been able to do before – and Dean had once mentioned that he preferred short hair, so after that I kind of kept it long just to annoy him.
My eyes are probably considered hazel, although they’re mostly green around the outside with a concentration of amber around the iris. In my left eye there are two separate, large flecks of dark brown in the centre. You don’t really notice this unless you look really closely at my eyes, but it kind of freaks me out a bit. I spent a lot of my childhood obsessing over how that happened, why my eyes were so completely different and what it might mean for the future. It wasn’t until I was undergoing medicals for the Nulla Tempus project that I was told it was nothing but extra melanin in that eye, a chemical which absorbed more light. The doctor told me I should embrace it, as it made me “unique”, but I’m not sure whether or not to take that positively, especially in light of the Nulla Tempus project. It seems the ‘unique’ people can never escape it.
I’m short, about 5 foot 3 inches, and fairly petite. I’ve always played a lot of sport so I’m in fairly good shape physically, and once I was incarcerated I didn’t have a lot to do other than work out at the gym, so while I look like a bit of a princess (and quite often act like one), I can certainly hold my own in a fight (and have been known to, as well, but I’m not going to get into that here – you already know I’m a ‘bad person’…)
I guess the benefit of being put onto the Nulla Tempus project was the little bit of freedom it affords. I get my own apartment, even though it’s constantly monitored, but that also means that I have the luxury of a wardrobe and my own bathroom again. I’m allowed to go shopping, online at least, and I’ve finally been able to use moisturiser and a nail file again. My bathroom at home always slightly resembled a Priceline store, and I was a bit of a poster girl for Garnier products. It was the one thing that nearly killed me when I was facing jail time. But now I’ve got it back, and any spare cash I manage to pick up generally goes towards my cosmetics addiction. Lucky I’ve also picked up a few tricks about how to bring things back with me when I leap too, so a lot of what has accumulated in my apartment is actually, on a technicality, quite old. It’s amazing what people will pay as well, just for a little bit of history.
I’m 29 years old, and I’ve served nearly five years out of a ten year sentence. The deal with Nulla Tempus was that I would get out at 5 years, if I spent a year working with them to get it ready for public use. I guess they figured if they used people who were ‘no longer safe to the wider community’ it wouldn’t matter so much if something happened to us. Even though part of the agreement with the mentors, first with Dean and now with Aiden, is that they’re supposed to do their best to keep us alive, there aren’t really a lot of precautions taken in order to do that. Us leapers are just sent back and left to our own devices to try and complete the assignment to the best of our ability. Of course, we’re all implanted with GPS tracking devices, so they can bring us back whenever they want to, meaning there’s no point in not at least trying to complete the assignment, and the level of security placed on us when we’re back in time is often a bit over the top. But, I did kill a man, so I guess from their perspective it’s probably a bit justified.
I’d like to point out here that I’m not a bad person, not really. I mean, I get angry and frustrated and depressed and I’ll be the first person to admit that I’ve done some pretty stupid things as a result of those emotions taking control. But not any more so than anyone else. And I never set out to actually kill Daniel, it just kind of happened that way. As far as I’m concerned he deserved it and I’m not sorry it happened, just maybe a bit annoyed that no one was able to understand why it happened. But anyway, you can’t really change the past and there are some things you have to do in order to be able to learn and grow as a person. We’ve all got baggage. It’s how we carry it that defines us. And I refuse to be defined by Daniel…
Random Murmurs 