The Traveling Sunflower

A girl sat on a street corner, snacking on a packet of salted sunflower seeds. Her brown hair was in braids, and her bangs were kept out of her face with two barrettes on each side.

It was a small, boring town in which she lived, one where nothing ever really “happened.” That was why she was sitting, waiting, on that street corner. It was her means of making something happen, her last resort. She was getting out of her nowhere town, running away, in the most efficient way she had heard about. She carried only a backpack with clothes in it to last a week, but enough money to buy her a month’s worth more, saved up from her weekly allowance. She had been planning this for a while.

She wanted to travel someplace exciting. It didn’t really matter where. But boredom was not the only reason she wanted to leave the place she called home. She had just started seventh grade and the other girls at her school had already gone through puberty, and they made fun of her flat chest and short height. The fact that she was in band didn’t help either; most girls at her school took choir or art. Her classmates seemed to get meaner and more cliquish each day. She just wanted to be in a place where she could belong.

And she had heard about the man in the big blue truck that sent lonely girls to exciting, welcoming places; rumor had it that if someone stood on the corner of Maple Grove Place and Pleasant Stream Drive at midnight, he would drive up and let them in. They would never be seen by any mundane neighbor or cruel “schoolmate” again.

Her friend Casey had already done it. She remembered how she had become fed up with her stepfather’s verbal abuse and decided to run away. She knew about the man too, almost everyone in town did. Some thought he was an urban legend. But Casey believed, and she knew the risks, but she said she had to try. The braided-haired girl had been skeptical, but the morning after Casey said she was going to see if the man was real, she wasn’t in school. She hadn’t been in school since.

Some people thought these lonely girls were taken away to bad places, “kidnapped”, and the girl supposed that could be true. But she firmly believed that this man was just helping youth get a fresh start.

She looked at her watch. It was midnight. She glanced up and down the street, her eyes wide with anticipation. For a few minutes, there was nothing, and she considered heading back home. But then a blue truck came down the street, its headlights dimmed.

It wasn’t a normal truck, though. It had a strange orange panel over the front bumper with a black tube on top of it. There might have been more to the contraption, but she couldn’t see well with it being so dark. As the car approached her, the driver rolled down the window, and he turned on the lights inside the car. She saw the man wearing a simple red sweatshirt and blue jeans. The man looked just a bit older than the girl’s sister, who was in college.

He opened the passenger door.

“What’s your name? It doesn’t have to be your real one; I just need to be able to call you something.” He looked her up and down, and noticed the packet of sunflower seeds she held in her hands. There were only a few seeds left in it. The girl opened her mouth to speak but the man said, “You’re Sunflower. That okay with you?”

The girl nodded, put the last of the seeds in her mouth, and munched on them. Then she put the packet in the pocket of her pants.

He gave the girl a small wave. “I’m Snow.” He laughed and gestured to the passenger’s seat. “You can see why; I drive a snow-blower truck and all. Come on in, Sunflower.”

The girl hesitated for a moment, then obliged, hopping into the seat.

“When do you want to go?” Snow asked her.

Sunflower furrowed her brows. “What do you mean? I want to go now.”

He stared at the girl. “You know what this thing is, right?” he asked, motioning to the orange panel with the black tube. “This is a snow-blower truck, but it does a whole lot more than blow snow around.” He grinned at the girl. “It’s a time machine. So I ask again, Sunflower, when do you want to go?”

Sunflower was unsure of what to do. She wanted to travel, but did she want to travel in time? Was it even possible? But then she thought of Casey and how happy she must be, wherever or whenever she may be.

“I want to go to the future. 200 years into the future. I assume you’ve been there before?” she asked, genuinely curious.

He nodded. “Yes, I have. Good choice on the time. The city of Aliora should be a good fit for you. I believe I’ve taken one of your friends there.”

Excitement bloomed in the girl’s chest. Could she see Casey again?

Snow took a remote-like device from his pocket and pressed a few buttons. The snow-blower in front of them started whirring and the air rapidly coming out of the black tube was so loud, Sunflower had to cover her ears.

“Buckle up,” Snow said, and the girl fastened her seatbelt.

Then he slammed his foot on the accelerator and Sunflower was thrown tightly against her seat. Their surroundings started to blur until they disappeared completely, and the girl understood that they were somewhere else, somewhere far away from her home. Everything she saw around her was a spiraling mess of blue and white. Then ice started to form on the vehicle, and Sunflower shivered as the car became very cold.

“The time vortex is colder than anything else in existence,” Snow said as he continued to press buttons and maneuver the vehicle. “You need a truck like this to get through it, as well as the right quantum mechanisms to travel to the vortex in the first place.”

They traveled through the vortex for…The girl couldn’t quite remember how long. It felt like she had been there for days or maybe just a few seconds. But eventually the ice on the car started to melt, the blue swirls started to fade, and when her new surroundings appeared in front of her it felt surreal.

Most of the buildings were what she expected: sleek, shiny, tall, or in interesting shapes that would have been called “modernist architecture” in her time. There were hardly any cars on the roads and the ones that were had nobody in the driver’s seat.

Snow drove up to a large park that was situated in what he called “the heart of the city.” He parked the car on a curb under a tree. “Welcome to the year 2214. There’s something you should see,” he said.

They both got out of the car, and Sunflower followed Snow into the park, where he led her to a large fountain. She looked at the statue that stood atop it. Something was so eerily familiar about it, but she didn’t quite know why. The statue was of a girl her age, with braided hair, holding a shield. The girl noticed what she was holding in her other hand: a sunflower. Looking more closely, she realized there was only one difference between her and the statue; that she had her bangs put to the side but the statue’s bangs were hanging thick on her face.

So she took the barrettes out of her hair, letting her bangs hang down. She didn’t understand why, but the statue had to be of her.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” said a voice from behind the girl. She turned to see a woman with dark turquoise hair, a white crop top, and silver leggings.

Another woman stood beside her, this one with lilac hair and a white jumpsuit. She said, “You are the one meant to save our past so that we can exist in this future.”