“Can anyone tell me what a paradox is…Jeanie?”

The attractive, blonde student flipped her hair with an assured smile at her handsome professor.

“A paradox is caused by a modification of the natural order of events as defined by the basic laws of physics.”

“Very good Jeannie, now who would like to reiterate the chaos theory?”

The professor scanned the auditorium and his eyes came to rest on Lilly Morgan. He sighed when he saw that her head was down and her body moved rhythmically in a pleasant nap. He walked up to her seat and tapped her arm. She stirred and raised her head, trying to look alert.

“The chaos theory means that however small a change made in the past, the change made will have greater and greater effect, as you look further down the time line.”

The professor looked at her in wonder and went back to the front of the room.

“That is correct Lilly. They say that you can retain a lot of things through osmosis.”

The entire class laughed and Lilly turned beet red. She sat up taller in her seat and moved her long hair from her eyes, looking straight ahead.

“I’m sorry Professor Boyle, I just had a long night studying…”

The professor put his hand up with a wave. “There’s no need to give me a life story, you got the correct answer this time. I would hardly call singing Blondie songs in the Purple Pit, studying.”

Lilly held back from responding to that remark. Professor Boyle was very stuck up. It was okay for him to criticize you in front of the class, but there was never a chance to defend yourself.

“Danny, could you give me an example of the chaos theory?”

“Sure, um…stepping on a flower could have an effect…this change could create a different future.”

“Okay, how so?”

“Well...the flower you stepped on could die and that say that affects the pollination of the actual garden. You may have had white and pink flowers in the original time line, but when you go to the future you notice that they are now yellow and red?”

Lilly watched as Danny smugly twiddled his thumbs; confident he gave an appropriate response. Professor Boyle was also satisfied.

“Good example, now if you all just apply your brains to the material you’ve learned in the last few months, this final should be easy.”

Lilly held her ears. The piercing, discordant sound of the last bell sent shivers to her teeth. They used this particular one at the academy to get the students prepared for the sound-barrier breaking noises that could occur when flying through the cosmos. All the students in ‘Temporal Anomalies Course-B’ scattered out of the auditorium. Lilly picked up her books unenthusiastically; the day was not half-over and now came all the physical courses after lunch.

“Hey Lilly bean-pole, why don’t you want to come eat with us?”

Lilly cringed and turned around to Danny, he was a short guy with slicked back hair that tried too hard to hang with the A-list rookies. The ringleader of which was Jeannie Hornsby. Danny was always cracking jokes about making bases with her. He furthermore always had to poke fun at Lilly because of her height. Being five feet ten, Lilly was more than aware that she towered over many of the other girls. She had put up with the jokes since puberty.

“Sorry, Danny bean-sprout…I have other things to do.” She said as flippantly as he did.

“Hey, no need to get nasty, I get ya…You know you looked great at the club last night, that sparkly purple top and black make-up…when you got up to sing that place was rocking!” He moved in closer to her, more closely than she wanted him to.

“Thanks, I knew ‘One way or another’ would get you all moving.” She referred to the eighties hit song from Earth.

“I don’t know the eighties, but who cares? We should all be able to have a little fun before graduation.” Danny pulled out his comb and ran it through his greased head, a very trademark sign of his fifties background.

“Right, only one month away. So Danny, ‘Rock around the clock’ is more your speed? Not that it’s not cool; I love that music too. Hey speed-o, I have to go, I’m just going to grab a chicken salad. Last time I had a heavy meal before the A-G chamber…”

“Oh yuck, don’t remind me, you created your own multi-colored universe that time.”

“Yeah…very bad idea to have Mexican before a flight test.” She blushed.

“Oh look, Jeannie’s giving me the eye, I better step on it.”

Lilly rolled her eyes; Jeannie was actually looking at Tim Dawson who was standing behind her. She grabbed his arms fervently.

“You’re right Danny! You better run like the wind!”

Lilly chuckled as he bee-lined to Jeannie and her flirtatious smile turned sour. She wanted to flaunt it every chance she got, “well, she’s going to have to take the good with the…not so good.” Lilly thought as she strode to the cafeteria.

Lillia Morgan was ‘plucked out of time’ from the year two-thousand-seven at the ripe age of twenty-one. She lived a simple life in the sparsely populated regions of North Dakota, but she had an alarming amount of desires for a better one. Her father had died when she was in her early teens and her negligent mother left her when she was twenty. She woke up one morning to find a scribbled note and a few hundred dollars to help her ‘get by.’ Lilly took on the responsibilities of the house, grateful that she was an only child. However, her mother’s departure with her father’s insurance meant giving up dreams of college and broadcasting. She started working two jobs to keep up with the mortgage.

She took a job waitressing some evenings at ‘Harold’s Bar & Burger’ where she would often sing a few numbers. And she was also a cashier at the local Waldbaums. Her Voyager life started on one particularly reckless night she was coming home from a late shift at the bar. Her own jalopy finally broke down and she took to walking on the roads, not a smart decision since they were very dim and desolate. One of the local drunks was speeding toward her, wavering all over. Just as he was about to slam into her, she was blinded by a white light and landed in a blue waiting room. Everything was explained to her within the next few days and then she had the vital operation. Since the frontal lobe procedure a year ago, she hasn’t, nor cared to recall, much of her previous life. And that was the case for all potential field voyagers past and present.

After eating a hearty salad she made her way across the extensive campus to the Voyager Training Unit. The V.T.U. was a series of imposing buildings that housed state of the art knick-knacks and training implements to make a Voyager physically equipped. It was open to all for use any time, but Lilly wasn’t one to be found pumping iron. She did her required athletics to the best of her ability and swam a little here and there on weekends. Lilly didn’t understand why every new male voyager felt they had to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. And the females were getting a little too bulky for her tastes as well. She heard about the steroid, Omega, being passed around campus, but she never touched the stuff. The head of the gymnasium once told her that a Voyager shouldn’t be soft; they needed to be firm bodied for those tough landings. If that was any sort of hint, Lilly took it with a grain of salt. She had a very healthy frame for a girl her size and the clinicians at one point made her gain a few pounds. However, she wasn’t always thrilled with her apple cheeks. Any weight she gained always traveled to her thighs and she had developed a self-deprecating humor about her size-ten feet.

The latest rumor going around was that VHQ was slowly discontinuing the older model Omni’s with their limited tracking range. The landings of those omnis were unstable and many a Voyager could be seen being rushed to the infirmary with broken limbs. The newer Omnis would still be brass and silver, but the OCC had perfected the science behind materializing and dematerializing human molecules. This was music to her ears. As tall as she was, Lilly was deathly afraid of heights. However, Voyager Academy insisted that all students learn the art of Cosmo flying.

-O-

Lilly came to the entrance of the Anti-Gravity chamber and put her hand on the activation pad. Her name and registration for the course lit up on the screen along with a horrible mug shot, and she was allowed access into the white room. She put her bag down and went to her assigned spot. The course instructor was a female Voyager named Olivia Dunne. She was a practical woman with a few years experience under her belt. Lilly could tell she was an over-achiever and that she had an aggressive spirit that moved her ahead of her peers. However, Voyager Dunne had a listening ear for her students and was very knowledgeable about the whole occupation. More than once Lilly would hear her shouting at some of the rookies to quit it with their ‘stupid heroics.’ She imagined that Voyager Dunne was once told that very phrase and took it to heart.

“Alright rookies, this is it, the final month of aerospace training. You’ve made it past the hard stuff, learning the science behind your cosmic voyages and you’ve even made a few test flights…” She looked directly at Lilly with a dry smile. “Well, most of you have made it…but you can’t give up, flying through the cosmos is going to become as common to you as eating and sleeping. It’s a vital part of your life and career as a Voyager.”

One of the students raised his hand. “Yes, Jim?”

“But what about the new Omnis they’re working on in the OCC? Won’t that eliminate the need for all these lessons?”

Olivia paced around with her hands in her pockets and laughed. “Well, as far as I know those omnis are still in a testing phase. It is every Voyager’s duty to know and accept this part of the job. Even if the new omnis come equipped with this materializing feature, if there was some malfunction, the omni would still be able to take you the old fashioned way. That is, through the air in a near blink of an eye. Some of you have also expressed concerns about malfunctions. No, you will not be bodily harmed should a malfunction occur. Your pre-set functions will kick in and transport you through the cosmos the way us ‘old-timers’ have always done it. In most cases the omni will lock the materialization function anyway if it detects a problem. So on that note, everybody up. You are each going to take a turn with the practice omni.”

The practice omni was pre-set to take you forward through time within a one-minute time frame and pre-calculated to land you on the soft mats at the opposite ends of the room. However, the cosmos trip itself was no different than if you were jumping between hundreds of years. Lilly began to shiver; she was dreading this day. All of her friends, who had done it, loved it. They said you barely realized that you were flying; it was like getting an extreme rush and then you landed. They admitted the first few times were frightening, but after a while it was like riding a rollercoaster. That was something Lilly confessed she had never done.

For the next half hour Lilly casually made excuses to shift to the back of the line. She did not go unnoticed by Olivia. She was called on after Missy Duncan landed with her new curly perm in disarray like tumbleweed.

“That was like, totally awesome! I can so like, do that again and again! It was like, so tubular!” Missy squealed in her Valley girl lingo.

Lilly cringed and stepped up to what they called the launching pad. Olivia made it quite clear a Voyager never knows when or where they would have to omni out of a situation. Lilly felt like the chicken from her salad grew wings in her stomach and her heart fluttered. Olivia handed her the omni.

“Okay Lilly, just take a few deep breaths and it will be over before you know it. Remember, best bet is to fly with arms out, so you have a better chance of using them to soften the landing.”

Lilly looked at her teacher with fear in her hazel eyes, but she shook it off and raised the omni. Olivia and the rest of the class waited patiently while she played with the button to control her shaking hands. The little mantra she made up for herself played in her head.

“Now I’m ready to be…extraordinary!”

She pushed the button and the universe burst around her. She was propelling faster than the speed of light. She knew she was screaming the whole time, but she couldn’t hear the sounds coming out of her mouth. She was enraptured as the cosmos flashed by her in a whirl of vivid colors and dazzling lights. She vaguely heard the sound that was mimicked by the school bell growing louder and louder until she materialized through the ceiling of the A-G room. The noise died down to a whistle and she landed in a daze on the blue mat, her body rolled over once and she kept herself face down, trying to control her shaking. Everyone in class cheered.

“Lilly! You made it!” Olivia exclaimed, helping her to her feet.

“And you didn’t lose your lunch!” One of the other guys yelled from the crowd. This incited everyone to laughter.

For the remainder of the month, Lilly managed her flights with ease and passed all of her final exams. When graduation day came, she proudly held her new omni high with the rest of the class of ’76. She really did feel extraordinary.