RE: Trailer Trash, 6 pt 8 (Patreon)

“Elena… I’ve already lived out a different life, one that went past 1998,” Tabitha revealed in a slow voice.

“She’s from the future!” Alicia blurted out.

“I’m from... a future,” Tabitha corrected. “A different future. This time through is significantly different, because of things I’ve tried to change.”

“She’s from the future!” Alicia said again. “Like, she’s for real from the future. She knows things that nobody else could ever, ever know. She knew about the shooting, she—”

“Alicia, whoa,” Tabitha chided her friend, holding up a hand. “Not all at once, let’s let her process this bit by bit—it’s a lot to take in.”

“Sorry,” Alicia said with a sheepish smile. “It’s true, though. She’s from the future.”

“You’re... from the future,” Elena echoed in a flat voice, staring at Tabitha.

“I’m from the future,” Tabitha nodded, wearing an unsure smile as she attempted to gauge Elena’s reaction.

In all honesty, Elena felt no reaction at all. She registered the words her two friends were saying, but all the same they didn’t seem to parse at all—the meaning behind what they were trying to convey just wasn’t processing, and Elena didn’t find herself to be particularly in the mood to puzzle out what they were actually trying to tell her. Instead, she stared at Tabitha, waiting for the girl to explain herself.

“Okay, here goes…” Tabitha took a deep breath and began to recount her story.

“In my first life, I was Tubby Tabby. I was an overweight little... trailer trash girl, who grew up in a very low income neighborhood. After some circumstances with the older sisters of a friend of mine, and then some comparatively minor bullying incidents, I developed this rather crippling case of social anxiety. Kept to myself throughout school, my hobbies were just, like, watching TV and reading. Staying home. I didn’t have friends.

“Enrolled in the community college in Elizabethtown, later eventually transferred to Northern Kentucky University. My college years were all… still a mess. I was fat. Hated myself. Really struggled to interact with people.

“The major I was pursuing, secondary education English—at first I thought I wanted to be a teacher, but it—it.. well, it wasn’t for me. The more I learned, just… the more I realized it wasn’t for me. My actual social development basically started throughout that time period, during my last years at Springton High and my first years at college. At least, if you could even call it development; I spent my time online. Livejournal. Fanfiction dot net. Gaia online, even. Dozens of little proboards forums, geocities webrings, messenger friends, mIRC—”

“Wait wait wait,” Alicia scrabbled to retrieve her sketchpad and pencil. “Lemme write these down.”

“Please don’t,” Tabitha looked mildly alarmed. “Please don’t, I—listen, I’m not proud of my history there. I was going through a difficult time, and there were a lot of internet communities for… those of us who were also going through difficult times.”

“That doesn’t sound bad or anything,” Alicia tried to reassure her as she began writing furiously. “These are website addresses? Live journal, fan fiction something, and guy online? My Dad has an internet service, so—”

“You don’t—” Tabitha made a face. “Well. You’ll understand when we all get there. It was bad, it was this total cringeworthy… I can’t explain. I won’t explain. All my posts are gone like they never existed now, so I can safely pretend my dark past there just never ever was.”

“...Go on,” Elena prompted.

“Yeah, anyways,” Tabitha said with reluctance. “At some point, I thought I could be the next Rowling or Meyer, become the next big thing writing young adult fiction. Gave up on teaching and finished school with just my English major. Tried to write my Goblin Princess trilogy, got through the first two books with this Canadian publisher before all of that fell through. Was deep, deep in debt from school, because I wasn’t on scholarship, and also hadn’t been working.

“So, after Northern Kentucky U, I came back home and got a job at the Safety Plant. The one in Fairfield. Worked there for… years and years. Tried dating, because I was terrified of winding up alone, and, um. Well, dating was worse than being alone. I wasn’t comfortable being in my own body, let alone uh. Sharing intimacy with another person. Let alone the kind of person who—uh, okay yeah I’m actually not ready to get back into all of that right now.

“Time went on. I got older, fatter, and more miserable. Just like my—well, uh. Moved out of the trailer when things got bad between my mother and I, and… um, she died not long after. We weren’t on horrible terms or anything when it happened, things had just been… difficult between us. She saw too much of herself in me, or… I don’t know. Complicated. Really complicated now, with some of my new perspective. Uh, anyways. My dad died—cancer, brain tumor. My one close writer friend died—suicide, actually. Started working at the Springton Town Hall when I got older—well, I was just old, really.

“I was sixty years old, and I’d been having these persistent migraines—concerning, after what happened to Dad—and all Springton did was keep prescribing different medications at the problem. When I eventually put my foot down, because I’m starting to miss work because of these headaches, they send me to Louisville for a more thorough check. I get into this big custom MRI machine… and something happens. It sends my mind back in time, where I’m in the same machine but just a little girl getting her concussion looked at. The concussion from being pushed off of that trampoline, back in middle school. Here in 1998.”

“So, the MRI’s really a time machine!” Alicia gaped at the reveal. “Tabitha—oh my God!”

“Maybe?” Tabitha nodded. “It sent my mind back, at least. I’m not sure how useful that is, though—I think the caveat was that my past self here had to have interacted with the machine.”

“Wait, wait,” Alicia slapped her sketchpad on her knees. “Have you like, investigated it or anything? What’s special about that MRI, who made it? Has it sent anyone else back? If we get into that same machine here in 1998, isn’t there a chance our future selves could, uh, bridge through into our bodies here?”

“Um… it’s possible,” Tabitha admitted. “I suppose. I thought about it a little bit, but I’m not sure what would happen. The MRI would have to do the crazy screeching scraping metal freaking out thing, I think. And then, you’d either… wake up with your mind overwritten by future you, or you’d come out normally, live through your life until you hop into the thing again and then get sent back. Maybe. I’m not sure how it exactly works, and the apparent mechanics of it might be a matter of… perspective?”

“Tabitha… how serious are you about all of this?” Elena asked, trying to be as tactful as possible.

“Very,” Tabitha winced. “Completely. I do realize how crazy it sounds.”

“I didn’t believe it at first,” Alicia admitted. “But like, she will fucking convince you. Back when I met her in the first weeks of school, she was in the school library at lunch every day, boning up on treating emergency gunshot wounds and police response stuff. Then, out of the blue she knows right where to be to save Officer Macintire.”

“That was… actually a fair amount of luck,” Tabitha let out a slow breath. “I only remembered that it was early-ish October, so my plan was to be out there at that spot every day. And, I didn’t save him, I just managed to get it called in a little earlier and prevented some of the blood loss.”

“You saved him,” Alicia refuted. “Literally. Like, he was supposed to die, and then because you intervened, he didn’t. Right? That’s literally you saving his life.”

“I mean… I guess,” Tabitha said with an uneasy expression.

“He was supposed to die?” Elena asked.

“I can’t speak for what was supposed to happen, but... he did die in my first lifetime,” Tabitha said. “I was watching TV and heard the gunshot, but I didn’t go outside to see what happened, or anything. He bled out in the ambulance on route to the hospital, and… they couldn’t resuscitate him. He passed away.”

“But, this time, he didn’t,” Alicia said with excitement. “Because, Tabs here was ready and waiting, right there when it was about to happen. She ran up and knew what to do right away, was shouting all the medical whatever to me to tell the dispatcher, the—”

“I wasn’t shouting at you—”

“—make and model of the shooter’s getaway car and everything,” Alicia continued. “‘Cause Tabitha knew it was gonna happen, and she’d been holed up in the library every day researching like, gunshot wound trauma and stuff. Like, I knew. Somehow, I knew that she knew. It was just too convenient.”

“Elena?” Tabitha prompted, apparently noticing Elena’s terrible expression. “Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not,” Elena let out a bitter chuckle. “I just—I don’t get it. It’s not funny, and I don’t like it. After how worried I’ve been, and how much this whole thing with us has been tearing me apart—I just. I don’t get it. The people who I thought you were wouldn’t do this to me. Did the both of you think it would be, what, funny? It’s not fucking funny, and if—”

“Elena,” Tabitha’s expression fell. “It’s… it’s true. We’re not making this up, and it’s not a joke. I really, honestly, truly did come back in time, from the year 2045.”

“Bullshit,” Elena shook her head. “I… I honestly can’t believe you’d try to pull this on me right now.”

“I wouldn’t try to pull anything on you,” Tabitha prompted with an encouraging smile. “I think you know that. But. I don’t blame you for being skeptical. Ask anything, please, and I’ll answer as best as I can.”

“Okay. What do I invest in to become a billionaire?” Elena asked, crossing her arms in front of herself.

“Well, Alicia and I will be investing in Alphabet Incorporated,” Tabitha explained. “The initial public offering for their stock should be in either 2004 or 2005, at about a hundred dollars a share. I think.”

“Not oil? Or silver?” Elena pressed. “Not electronic frontier stuff, like IBM or Microsoft?”

“Oil prices should spike up in the next year or two because of the war in Iraq,” Tabitha admitted. “Well, the next few years. 2002? But, Alphabet Inc’s Google becomes one of the most successful internet services, and I’m putting all of my money on it.”

“Google,” Elena repeated, trying out the word for size. “It sounds… just even the name sounds really dumb and made up, Tabitha. You could’ve gone with, I dunno, Max Corporation, or MicroTech Enterprises—”

“—Omni-Corp, InGen, uhhh, Umbrella Corporation—” Alicia threw in helpfully.

“—but instead, you go with Goo goo ga ga?” Elena ridiculed. “Like, really? That’s what you’re going with?”

“You’ll both get used to it,” Tabitha gave them both a helpless shrug. “Google. Everyone and anyone uses it, it’s so common it turns into its own common verb, it becomes a facet of our culture.”

“Becomes its own verb?” Elena couldn’t keep the doubt out of her voice. “Google becomes a common verb, that everyone uses? Do you... realize how stupid that sounds?”

“So, like, I would Google Elena in the face? Or, something?” Alicia grinned. “That’s verbs, right—action words? I’m so bad with English stuff.”

“If you were to Google Elena, it would mean you searched for her name online,” Tabitha explained. “Google could present you with her information, photos of her, links to her profile or account on different major websites.”

“Oh, and people are going to do that a lot?” Elena asked.

Something about this was starting to not feel right to Elena. Carefully watching the frail-seeming redheaded teen sitting up in the hospital bed, Tabitha seemed a little too composed. Elena knew all about mentally preparing for a debate and readying herself for potential arguments her opponent might pose to her. Tabitha wasn’t the type, but she also didn’t seem to have grown tense or on the edge of becoming flustered by running into an inevitable question she wouldn’t be able to answer. Instead, she seemed serene and almost a little wistful, and the disparity almost lent a tiny sliver of credence to the absurdity of her claims.

But, it’s impossible. It’s a pointless farce to even consider it, and I don’t understand why we’re even…

“Sometimes,” Tabitha answered with a small shrug. “To Google something means to search for information on the internet, so it’s more broad than just looking someone up. Google is where you’d go if you had a question about anything—or even if you don’t know how to properly phrase what you want to ask, because it has this autocomplete field. You would Google a recipe if you were interested in trying to make something new, you’d Google the route to the airport and your phone would verbally guide you to your destination—by comparing your current GPS location to online maps of the area. I used Google daily when I was writing, because it’s basically a thesaurus, dictionary, and Wikip—uhm, encyclopedia all at once. Or, at least, it’s connected to all of them.”

“Wait, what’s Wikipeep?” Alicia laughed. “What were you about to say?”

“Err… Wikipedia. Yes, I realize how silly that must sound now, too. The whole internet concept is… a rabbit hole that really leads all the way down into wonderland,” Tabitha said. “People search for what they’re interested in. Movies, celebrities, fashion, finance, current events, cultural trends, funny pictures of cats, videos to watch, and… yeah, a whole lot of pornography.”

“Ooh la la!” Alicia waggled her eyebrows suggestively. “Funny pictures of cats, you say? Tell me more.”

“I’m going to actually have to try to explain what memes are,” Tabitha sagged back on the bed, covering her face with her good hand. “Jesus. How do I even…?!”

“How much does Google cost to use?” Elena asked.

“For searchers? Nothing,” Tabitha said. “But, by profiling both the individual searchers and the overall market trend, they can make an obscene amount of money via ad revenue, targeted advertising and all that.”

“Commercials?” Alicia guessed. “You’re saying they basically run commercials?”

“Pop up ads,” Elena corrected. “That’s what they are on the internet. We have our own computer at home. I have my own email address.”

“Not… exactly,” Tabitha winced. “But, you’re close. Pop-ups and spam emails were an early internet thing, they were too obnoxious to be effective for long. Google algorithms are a lot more subtle. Say a searcher has Googled information on baby care; maybe a young mother wants to know about… teething tips, or when to wean them off baby food, or anything like that. Google remembers their search, and from that point onwards the ads this searcher sees—on Google itself or on any number of sites that use Google’s advertising—will be all the cutest baby clothes, the hottest best-selling baby toys, or parenting books guaranteed to impact their child’s development.”

Okay, now she’s even trying to double down on things by actually trying to use it as a verb and a noun…? Elena narrowed her eyes. Does she not somehow realize how stupid the name sounds?

“Likewise, a guy searching for how to fix his engine problem will get ads related to his make and model of car, local auto services, cheap car parts, accessories, et cetera. A Star Wars fan Googling Star Wars stuff would get—you know, advertisements for toys and memorabilia, I guess. Google figures out what you’re looking for, and then profits by presenting advertisements, articles, and whatnot based on what you’ve clicked on in the past. They’re very good at getting clicks, and the whole clickbait culture gets frankly absurd after a while.”

“Clickbait. Culture,” Alicia spread her hands out in the air. “It’s crazy how she does this—all of these sound like they could be totally real things, right? Once you get her going, she’s completely full of this stuff. Like, I don’t think she could keep making these up nonstop, Elena.”

“Okay then,” Elena sighed. “What’s ‘clickbait culture,’ exactly?

“That’s… oof,” Tabitha made a face. “Resorting to certain kinds of sensationalism to bait people into clicking on links. Headlines that promise to reveal something interesting—like, say, college professors HATE it when students use this one simple trick! Or, a purported list of fifteen student tricks that college professors HATE!

“Tricks, tips, secrets, life hacks, reveals, or even just framing a set of information as something that shocked other people, or made their jaws hit the floor. Media sites on the internet will resort to just about anything to get you clicking on their link and earning them their fractions of a penny in advertisement revenue. They’ll lie and slander, frame opinion editorials as fact, extrapolate crazy stories from skewed, completely misleading, or downright fabricated statistics.”

“Okay, like tabloids, then,” Alicia laughed. “Like the Sun or the Enquirer you’d see at a checkout line.”

“Yes! A lot like tabloids,” Tabitha nodded quickly. “I’d forgotten about them. Only, when in the privacy of their own home and at no apparent cost to them, people are a lot more likely to carelessly click on things like that. It’s the same for porn—they might not go out of their way to buy it in real life, but when they have free and anonymous access to it through the internet…”

“That’s gross,” Alicia looked thoughtful. “But, yeah, I believe it.”

“Setting… all of that aside,” Elena decided to return to their earlier subject. “How much will Google stock be worth in the future?”

“Twenty years should turn each hundred dollars we put into Alphabet Inc... into about three grand,” Tabitha said. “I know it keeps going up after that, but I’m hazy on the amounts because all of this was from some random article I remember reading, and… the value of a dollar becomes a whole lot more variable as time goes on.”

“A hundred bucks becomes three grand—three thousand dollars?” Alicia exclaimed. “Tabitha—holy fuck!”

“Over twenty years,” Tabitha cautioned. “But, yes. It’s not by any means the best investment, or even the highest payoff, probably. But, it’s a good one, and it’s the one I’m sure of.”

“Then, you’re set for life, basically,” Elena asserted. “If you already know you’re going to have this unlimited amount of money.”

“Not unlimited,” Tabitha shook her head. “You can’t make money without first investing money, which I don’t have right now. I think Google will be a popular stock, and I don’t remember at all how many shares will be available, or how much their price will fluctuate early on. The cost of buying property is going to quadruple in the near future, both of you are likely going to face a steep rise in tuition costs, and there’s an economic depression coming up with nine-eleven.”

“Nine-eleven,” Elena repeated.

“It’s… a large-scale terrorist attack coming up soon,” Tabitha revealed with a grimace.

“The one with the airplanes, right,” Alicia remembered, turning to Elena. “It’s not Russia, either, this time.”

“Alicia,” Tabitha groaned. “You’re really not helping.”

“Sorry!” Alicia smiled. “I’m just excited. I’ve—we’ve both really missed hanging out with you, Tabs. Everything around you gets just absolutely crazy.”

“...Okay,” Elena said slowly. “Tabitha. I think you should—um, have you been keeping a notebook of these supposed major events that we’ll be seeing? A diary? I feel like if you are actually trying to be serious about this, you need to sort out future events by their… significance.”

“I thought it would be dangerous, so I wasn’t really writing things down,” Tabitha shrugged. “It’s still dangerous, kinda, just… I almost died, there. I think it’s important to have both of you know what I know, or at least as much as I can remember, just in case… something happens.”

“Yeah, or we could just make sure nothing happens to you?” Alicia scowled. “I know it’s like, the elephant in the room or whatever, but holy fuck, Tabitha. You almost died, it’s a big fucking deal, and it affects all of us in a big way. Okay?”

“Right. That’s… that is right,” Tabitha looked down at her hands in a slightly guilty way. “None of this happened in my first life. I’ve been… kind of sticking my nose in some events this time, and getting… unexpectedly severe reactions.”

Absentmindedly letting her gaze travel from Tabitha’s hands to the folds of the blanket that covered the girl’s legs, Elena for the first time started to see how the whole claiming to be from the future thing Tabby was espousing connected. But, literally WHY? Why make all of this up? Why run with this unbelievable and impossibly convoluted tall tale? If I don’t buy it, there’s no way any of the adults ever will. It doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense.

“Tabitha,” Elena looked up at her friend. “Why exactly was Erica Taylor so out to get you?”

( Previous, 6 pt 7 | RE: Trailer Trash | Next, 6 pt 9 )

/// Sorry, this one meandered a bit.