and so we chan[n]el a bit of jess… :)

“Oh,” I gasped. We were on our way to meet with Jared, when we passed the Chanel store. I pulled up, dragging Rachel back to look in the window – she’d kept walking.

“We don’t really have time to go shopping, Ash,” she said, matter of factly. There was, however, a tinge of envy in her voice. We couldn’t really afford it either.

“But look, Rachel,” I said, pointing out a pair of really cute little ballet flats. “Just look at those shoes!” Rachel just kind of gazed at me, like I was a bit mad and she wasn’t sure whether to indulge my fantasy or to tell me I was being silly.

“Yes, Ash, they’re shoes,” was all she ended up saying. I smiled.

“Ah, Rachel… wait for the days when shoes become something you buy just because you can,” I replied. As much I had been considering some of the benefits to living in 1938, I realised then that there was no hope of me ever wanting to stay here.

“Shoes are a necessity, Ash. You buy a pair, you wear them until they fall apart and then you buy another pair,” she tugged on my arm, pulling me away from the shoes, away from Chanel.

“Not where I come from, they’re not,” I sulked. “Before I was… Before I left home, I had nearly 200 pairs of shoes,” I told Rachel proudly. She stopped short, glancing at me sideways. I don’t think she believed me.

“Two hundred pairs? How on earth did you manage to ever wear that many?”

I smiled at her, pleased to have grabbed her attention.

“Oh, you know,” I shrugged, linking arms with her and continuing on our way, “I had a pair for every outfit I owned.”

“You had that many pieces of clothing, as well?” Rachel looked somewhat aghast at the idea that my wardrobe might possibly be bigger than her entire apartment, which it was, but I’d at least distracted her, for the moment, from our upcoming meeting with Jared. She’d been on edge all morning about it, and to be honest it was driving me somewhat insane. I couldn’t deal with all this nervous tension that was just floating around – it was a complete waste of energy, especially since we both knew that everything was going to turn out ok in the end. It, like the limitations on my caffeine intake, was frustrating the daylights out of me, and I’m ashamed to say that I was having difficulty keeping myself in check, even for Rachel’s sake.

“I used to be the ladies fashion buyer for David Jones,” I said, rather wistfully. “It afforded me a lot of freedom in what I was able to accumulate in the way of clothing and accessories.” I closed my eyes for a moment, guided by Rachel’s firm grip in mine, and allowed that memory some substance. It had been quite some time since I’d thought about my life prior to my incarceration – at first it had just hurt so much to remember it, then it had become irrelevant. I’d learned quickly that in jail no one cared who you had been, only what you had done that had gotten you behind bars. It was a very distant memory that I pulled up now, meetings with suppliers and designers, negotiations to get their lines in our stores by a certain date, the free clothes and shoes and hats and jewellery as they’d all fought to win us over. The stress of putting together advertising, of meeting budgets and planning inventory. The long meetings with the VM and operations teams to make sure everything was displayed correctly. No, I didn’t really miss it. Bits of it, yes. But for most of it, I was glad it was part of my history.

Even though Rachel kept us moving at a fairly rapid pace, her interest in my story had been piqued and I could feel her desire to know more. I was referencing something she had no possibility of ever knowing, and of perhaps even comprehending. From my history lessons, the 1930s were full of decadence, art deco, rebuilding and rediscovery. People like Chanel, Amelia Earhart… they were recreating the world in a positive light, allowing us the opportunities and freedoms we had in my time. If you’d asked me what I thought 1938 might have been like before I’d leaped, I would have told you that it was spectacular. But now, after having been here, after having seen it and spoken to the people that live here… well. Life just wasn’t as luxurious as the history books or Hollywood ever made it out to be.

I felt a bit sorry for Rachel – she probably deserved a bit more recognition for the things she was about to do than she ever received. And she would have fitted in well in my time. I almost wished I could bring her back with me. I looked over at her. She was so full of questions.

“Who’s David Jones?” she asked. I smiled, a little smile of amusement.

“It’s a department store – they sell nearly everything and it’s supposed to be rather exclusive,” I replied with a wink.

“In Australia?” I nodded. I loved that, for Rachel, Oz was so exotic. A far away land, full of potential and new beginnings. It seemed strange to think that at this very moment that I was in that my homeland was so completely different to the country I knew it as. That it had really only just started to come of age, gained independence, was beginning to grow. It was so young in comparison to the Australia that I knew. The stories I was passing on to Rachel about home would not be what she saw if she were to go there now.

Rachel was slowing down, thank Christ because my legs were beginning to burn, and I saw that we were nearly at our meeting point. Jared, for some strange reason, had chosen to meet us at the Place de la Concorde, and while I appreciated his attempts at an arbitrary meeting that was not going to look suspicious to anyone or that would be easily overheard, I did wonder about the significance of it. Meeting at a place that had previously been the site of the executions of those believed to be betraying the Republic didn’t really sit well with me, considering we were kind of planning a similar betrayal, albeit on a much lesser scale. Still.

As we paused to scan the crowds for Jared, I felt Rachel tense beside me. I turned to look where she was, thinking she’d spotted Jared and groaned inwardly. Her hand sought mine and she clasped it tightly.

“How?” she said quietly. “How did he know?”

“It’s Dom,” I replied evenly. “He knows everything.”

meet Ash…

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…

introducing the boys – Dom, Aiden & Dean…

DOM:

Dom was a god. There was simply no other way to describe him. His broad shoulders and back, muscular arms, chiselled chest – all of him was perfect and looked exactly as though he had been carved from stone and put on earth to deliberately make women realise what they wanted and couldn’t have.

He was every man’s worst nightmare, as whenever he moved women would stop to watch him. He was perpetually coveted as women stopped mid-sentence, mid-action even to admire him, stare at him, drool over him.

Of course, there was no denying that Dom was gorgeous. And even though he wasn’t really my type, at least in the looks department, even I had to admit that he was beyond attractive.

He was tall, standing at around 6 foot 2 inches, and very solid. I imagine that running into him would be somewhat like being thrown against a brick wall, and he could easily bench press 120kg without even breaking a sweat.

His dark hair was cut short, shaved tightly against his head, although there was a slight sign of something resembling the beginnings of what can only be described as a Mohawk. Occasionally, and especially very early in the mornings, you would catch a scent of something that smelled suspiciously like hair gel, but his hair was really cropped too close to his head to warrant the use of it.

His eyes were what got me, and probably what every other woman fell for as well. Set deeply below a high forehead and underneath thick, dark, luscious eyebrows they were brown, the colour of melted chocolate. When you looked into them, you disappeared. They were a disk of smooth, even colour, just two little rounds of chocolate with his pupil at the centre. I often wondered if he wore contacts, because the spread of colour across his eyes was so smooth that it just didn’t look natural. And it was rather unnerving just how intense those eyes were. If you’ve ever seen those chocolate fountains, with dark chocolate in them, then you might have a slight understanding of what Dom’s eyes were like. They were, of course, ten times more intoxicating than that chocolate fountain.

His nose was thin and just a little crooked, the result of several breaks. It was, perhaps, the only thing about him that was slightly imperfect.

Beneath it his lips were full, the bottom lip just a smidge pouty, enough to remove any sense of arrogance that may be present. His lips were encased within a thin goatee which was immaculately styled and usually reflected whatever was in fashion at the time. I quite often thought that the scent of hair gel may have sometimes emanated from his goatee.

The colour of Dom’s skin, too, was dark, a deep mocha that was light on hair. On his chest you could find a patch of dark hair, just a loose covering which tapered down into a snail trail that disappeared into his pants, but over his arms there was even less. His arms were exceptionally well toned, every muscle visible regardless of whether he was flexing or not. A tribal tattoo curled it’s way around his left bicep, turning into text down the side of his chest that ran the whole length of his body to his foot. It wasn’t in English, and I hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing the script in it’s entirety so I wasn’t sure what it said. Nor did I have the courage to ask Dom about it, mostly because I didn’t want him to actually know just how much time I’d spent looking at him, but also because underneath parts of the tattoo were scars that looked as though they were memories that were better left untouched.

Dom also smelled amazing. Like, unbelievably amazing. I have no idea what aftershave he wore, or what kind soap and shampoo he used, or even the type of laundry detergent, but by god it was amazing. If you could have bottled Dom’s scent and sold it, you would have made a fortune. I quite often got caught out breathing deeply every time Dom got close to me. At one point it was beginning to get embarrassing, but then I realised that Dom kind of expected it since everyone did it to him, and it just became one extra joke between us. However, I do remember one time when Dom offered me his jacket, because I was cold, and I swear to everything that is unholy that I nearly came, just from being enveloped by his scent.

The other part of Dom was that he was pretty genuine. I mean, besides the fact that he’d killed a guy with his bare hands, Dom was a pretty laid back, honest and selfless guy. He was loyal to a fault, which was probably his undoing in most things, but he stood up for what he believed in and he hated to see anyone get hurt. The amount of times I saw him stop to help little old ladies cross the road was ridiculous (although in all fairness, most of those ladies nearly had heart attacks from looking at Dom) but it was just who he was.

I think a lot of it had to do with army training, the discipline and hard work required to get him where he got to in the special forces meant that his personality had to be just as disciplined as well. Being a member of the Incident Response Regiment, part of the Australian Army’s Special Operations Command, Dom was a very highly trained (and dangerous, I guess), very intelligent and very unique individual. The guy he killed probably should have taken that into consideration before he started sleeping with Dom’s wife. Of course, I can’t figure out why any woman who had Dom would even fantasize about another man, let alone go there. For the rest of us mere mortals, Dom was the fantasy…

AIDEN:

Aiden was quiet, far more introverted than most people that worked at Nulla Tempus. I think that’s actually what made him attractive.

His blonde hair was fairly unkempt, but in that “I’ve spent at least an hour styling my hair to make it look like I just got out of bed” way, and I heard once that in his previous job he’d been given the “person who uses the most hair gel” award. When I first met Aiden, he had a big fuzzy beard that covered nearly his entire face. He actually looked a bit like a homeless person. But beneath that were these amazing blue eyes, always so full of emotion. They were the colour of blue steel, not bright or vibrant but overwhelming in their intensity, their completeness. Their openness. There wasn’t a single thing that Aiden thought that you couldn’t see reflected in his eyes if you were looking for it. I often joked with him that he would never be able to play poker against me, I would always be able to see his cards in his eyes.

Aiden was lean, angular, always a little on the too skinny side. He blamed excellent metabolism, but I think it was a bit of self-loathing that always prevented him from eating too much and not exercising enough. Whilst he never went anywhere near a gym (apparently they were dangerous), a lot of sport afforded Aiden a fairly well toned physique, and he was exceptionally fit. At some point in his history he’d been an Olympic snowboarder, and while he no longer competed he always made sure that he continued his training, to the point that often in downtime in the office you could invariably catch Aiden doing some kind of exercise.

Aiden was very tall, standing at 6 foot 5 inches, he towered over most people. But, unlike most tall people, Aiden carried himself at his full height. He didn’t slouch, he didn’t try to meet others at their level. He always drew himself up and stood tall, as though standing at attention and awaiting his next orders. Considering how reserved he was, this always struck me as a bit odd, because it made him very easy to spot in a crowd. He had broad shoulders and a narrow waist and the most amazing, tight arse. He lived in a two storey house, and I think he deliberately walked up and down those stairs a few extra times a day, because his arse was just… well, I hate to sound clichéd but it was like a peach. A nice round, ripe peach. I know some of the girls in the office would deliberately drop things in front of him, just so he would bend over to pick them up and they could sneak a look.

Aiden spent most of his time inside, working or reading a book. Yes, that was another reason Aiden was so attractive. He was the nerdy bookish guy. But, his sports, other than snowboarding, were also indoor sports – basketball and inline hockey – and as a result Aiden was always a little on the pale side. He had a driving arm tan, but that was about it. When he wore black it was kind of like looking at a chessboard. I caught him once looking at fake tans, but fortunately he decided it wasn’t worth the effort and maintained his white skin.

The thing about Aiden was when he smiled. It was, no joke, like someone had turned a light on. I don’t think I ever saw him with half a smile, or a pretend smile, or something that just wasn’t 100% genuine. When Aiden smiled, he really smiled, and you kind of felt like everything was going to be ok. That he could fix it, or he could make you feel better, or just that life wasn’t all that bad.

Aiden snuck up on a person. At least he did on me, anyway. I wasn’t really all that sure about Aiden when I first met him, he was just another guy and I really didn’t think he was ever going to replace Dean in my life. But before I knew it, and I can’t actually tell you when the changing point happened, Aiden was firmly part of me, very important to me and someone that I couldn’t survive without. Aiden just kind of managed to insert himself into my life without me seeking that connection out, and I don’t really know how it happened. But then Aiden is kind of like that. He has a habit of showing up just when you need him…

DEAN:

I don’t think I ever realised that I loved Dean until he’d disappeared.

Dean was the quiet type, not because he was shy or introverted, but just because he lived by the motto “if you’ve nothing nice to say, then say nothing at all” and he kind of took it a bit to the extreme. Dean wasn’t really likeable, but I think that was part of his attraction. He didn’t really care what anyone thought, he certainly didn’t care if anyone liked him or not and he sort of made it his mission to make sure that no one did.

Dean had this brooding face, this perpetual crease between his eyebrows, like he didn’t trust anyone (which he didn’t, but that’s beside the point) and he was always waiting for someone to fuck up just so he could say “told you so”.

No matter how often he shaved, he always had a 5 o’clock shadow, which only accentuated the angles of his face. His nose was broad, his lips always closed together tightly. His light honey-coloured eyes were often angry and I don’t think I ever saw him smile. Not once. Not even a little bit.

Dean always seemed to be battling something internal, some inner demon that refused to let go. He was relentless in his pursuit of perfection – the whole Nulla Tempus project would have fallen over more than once if Dean hadn’t been promoted to project management early on in the piece, and he was the reason that many of the protocols that we lived by had been put into place. Of course, when it came to me, Dean seemed to have a great deal of trouble sticking to his own rules.

I still can’t figure out if that was because he thought it wasn’t worth the argument or if it was because he actually wanted to have the argument. Either way, as a partnership, Dean and I made every other team look like angels and saints. Together, we were nothing short of volatile, and I’m sure that more than once the directors had lengthy meetings about splitting us up.

Dean had short, dark brown hair that he styled (I swear the men in my life spent more time working on their hair than I ever did) and he wore it gelled up to a point, the front of it pushed back. It kind of had the appearance of a Mohawk from the side, but from the front looked a little flatter. Plus the sides of it were slightly longer, not shaved back entirely. Dean’s hair was the only thing that made him look like a person, rather than a robot – the rest of him was always so immaculate. I don’t know how he did it, but Dean was completely uncreasable. It didn’t matter what he was doing, or what he was wearing, but at the end of the day he looked as fresh as he had at the start of the day. Even first thing in the morning, Dean got out of bed looking exactly as he had when he’d gotten into it the night before. There was something completely unnatural about Dean.

I’m guessing Dean spent a lot of time at the gym when he wasn’t in the office, because he was kind of like a study in human muscular-skeleton. Name a muscle and you could have easily pointed it out on Dean. Dean didn’t have to take his shirt off to make women drool over his body and make men feel inadequate. He just had to stand there.

There was a lot of angst between Dean and the rest of the office. I’m sure that most of it was probably justified, but I never really spent enough time in the office to understand it. From rumours, emails and stories I heard from others, Dean was often a bit harsh. He didn’t forgive mistakes and he pushed his staff to their limits. Praise was not something that was easily earned from Dean (and I knew that from experience) and he didn’t publicly give credit for the hard work they put in.

But, once Dean left the office, that was it. He had two phones, one for work and one personal and never the twain should meet. No one in the office had Dean’s personal mobile number and after hours it was the only phone he would answer. It took 3 months before he gave it to me, and only then it was because I was running a job in a different time zone and I’d gotten myself into a rather deadly situation. Since Dean was charged with keeping me alive, he changed his mind about me being able to contact him out of hours.

Which was kind of the other thing that I think put people off about Dean. He was exceptionally private. There wasn’t a single person in the office, including myself, that knew anything about Dean’s life. No idea about his family, or his education, or his hobbies. I could tell you how he had his coffee but not what his favourite colour was. I could tell you that he got up in the morning at 5am, no matter what day of the week it was, but I couldn’t tell you what order he got ready in. He shared nothing, he asked nothing of you in return and he didn’t reveal a thing about his past.

As far as anyone knew, Dean actually was a robot and he didn’t have a past. But, I knew that there were secrets that Dean held onto that at some point he probably should have let go of, and they haunted him, that was obvious in everything he did, everything he didn’t say. I didn’t know what those secrets were and he had no intention of ever revealing them, so for most of our relationship, what happened was pretty “basic instinct”, but that worked for us. Conversation was limited to coffee and movies, with the occasional book thrown in and there were no expectations. We made time for each other when we had it and neither one of us ever overstayed in the morning.

However, Dean’s disappearance was a bit of a shock, especially to me, because I thought we had enough of a relationship – at least as mentor and ward – for him to have told me that he was walking away from the project. It could have been that I was finally getting under his skin, and that he was starting to form some kind of attachment to me, and perhaps he got scared and just ran away, but I’d like to think that, even though I knew very little about him, I knew enough of how he ticked to know that there was more to Dean’s vanishing act than just emotion. I can’t prove it yet, but there’s something else something going on…