Circa Tempore: The Artificial Organic
Copyright© 2026 by E. B. Redfield
Chapter 14
November 18th, 2007
15 years before Kayla started transitioning.
“Get your ass out there!”
The garage door opened and David started walking through, but was shoved in the upper back, causing her to land hard on her elbow. Tears welled up in her eyes and she tried as hard as she could to hold them back. The door closed and her father’s footsteps thumped down the three steps from which she had just fallen. Each of his footfalls caused tremors in her heart.
“Get up and stop with the tears,” her father ordered, “I barely touched you, but I can give you a reason to cry if that’s what you want, David.”
David picked herself up, grinding her teeth as she fought with all her strength to stop herself crying. She turned and faced him. His six-foot frame perfectly blocked the door back into the house from her view. His arms were folded, but she could see her crumpled up report card in his left hand.
“You want to explain these grades?” he asked, holding the sheet up to his eyes, “C in social studies, D in science, C in math?”
“I got an A in English...” David started.
“Oh, and you want a pat on the back for that?” her dad cut her off. “You think you get a pass on the rest of this shit because you got one A?”
“I ... I...” her mind raced for the right thing to say, “I’m trying, I’m sorry!”
“That’s not what this report card says!” her dad spat at her, literally spraying her across the face. “You want to know what your teachers told your mom and I at the conference? That you get A’s on your tests, but you barely even do your daily work. Why is that?”
David’s heart hammered. This was a trick question. She’d been trapped in this conversation with him enough times to know there was no right answer. She could tell him the truth, “I don’t know,” and all he’d say was that wasn’t an answer at all. And it didn’t matter, because he wasn’t asking her out of any curiosity. He wasn’t asking because he would accept anything that she had to say. He wasn’t even asking out of any hope that she’d learn better or improve. He was asking because he wanted to make her say what he believed.
“Because I’m lazy,” she muttered, looking at her feet. Sharp pain stung her face as her father struck her with his open palm.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you!” he ordered, “Yeah, that’s right. You’re lazy. And at the rate you’re going, you’re going to wind up in jail or on the streets begging. Jesus Christ, if we could afford it, I’d send you to military school. Maybe they could knock some sense into you. God knows I’ve tried! But you’re just determined to amount to nothing, aren’t you?” David stared at the ground, and was immediately met with another blow to her cheek. “You answer me when I ask you a question!” he screamed at her.
“I’m sorry! I wont be lazy anymore! I’m sorry!” she cried, cowering under his raised hand.
“Yeah, you’re sorry; but I don’t think you said that because you mean it. I think you said that because it’s what you think I want to hear. And you’re going to get two more just for that. We’re going to make this sink in some day.”
Her heart sunk as she did her best to calm her breathing from the hit she’d just taken. There was never an answer that worked, no matter how much she tried. No matter how much she thought about the answer. There was never a response that would satisfy him. And then the truth hit her. He just wanted a reason to do this.
“Mrs. Waller said something to us,” her father continued, snapping her out of the daze. Her blood ran cold with the words, terrified that she knew where this was going, “She said you spend more time with the girls than the boys during recess. And she caught you playing house with that Mueller girl. Kayla Mueller. Mrs. Waller told us she asked you about it, said you told her you sometimes wish you were a girl.” He let that hang and glared at her in disgust, expecting her to explain herself.
A knife jabbed squarely into her stomach and twisted. Mrs. Waller had promised she wouldn’t tell David’s parents about that. Her mind raced, desperate for anything besides the truth.
“No!” she urged, “No, uh, I just said that I sometimes like playing with the girls because they’re nicer!”
Her dad glared for a moment, and David’s heart hammered. Please buy that. Please.
“So, you’re still not sticking up for yourself, huh? Still letting the other boys push you around?” He accused. “That’s it, you’re going to learn how to fight back. I’m telling Coach Teague that you’re signing up this year!”
David’s heart sank as she processed the idea of being forced to share a shower with the same bullies who tormented her on a daily basis, “Dad, please! I don’t want to wrestle.”
“Well, too fucking bad,” he snorted, “What are you gonna do instead, play house with the girls? No, it’s about time you started acting like a man. So that’s what you’re doing this year. Supposing they’ll let you. You better get that D up to at least a B by the time wrestling starts, do you understand? Cause if you don’t, we can always take you out of school and you could just spend your day with me! You want that instead?”
David screamed on the inside. She ground her teeth and fought every muscle in her body to keep her anger in check, but this also meant she couldn’t even reply. She would never trust Mrs. Waller ever again. Thankfully her dad took her silence as confirmation.
“Good,” he said, and then David’s entire body seized in fear as the man unclasped his belt.
January 15th, 3008
“There has to be a better way to deal with this,” Kayla insisted, “Maybe we can bring Glyph home with us? They could just...” she paused mid thought, jamming her eyes shut and fighting the desire to headbutt the window of her taxi. Her head still swam from the argument, and she was trapped in a vicious and sadly familiar cycle: reliving the argument over and over, constantly trying to find the right words to say to convince Craig that he couldn’t remain in the future, that he would have to go back with her. That she needed him to come home with her. Then her therapist’s voice would ring through her mind, reminding her that she couldn’t anticipate what every person needed to hear, and that she needed to accept that she couldn’t change minds simply by coming up with the perfect argument. She’d tried over and over again to refocus her thoughts into something more constructive, but before long she would just get pulled back into the argument and the cycle would begin anew. While she stared out the window, the news was playing from the speakers of her cab.
“ ... and the internal research shows that last quarter’s devastating paradox, which nearly wiped out the country Owhayji of the frontier world Ecrines, was not a spontaneous occurrence as was wildly speculated; but rather a catastrophic case of altered destiny. Some in the scientific community cast doubts on the findings of this investigation; claiming that no altered destiny case before had ever produced such a magnitude of destruction, and maintain the belief in spontaneous occurrences which they claim are the byproduct of temporal displacement abuse. The extremist group GCAID, or Galactic Citizens Against Irresponsible Displacement, in a public statement suggested that PTICA Industries funded investigations shouldn’t be trusted to provide an unbiased accounting of their own failures. However...”
“Attention Patron:” A deep voice chimed in, interrupting the news broadcast, “It has been five minutes since you entered your cab. Please select a destination, or you will be returned to your departure point and fined the standard fare, plus twenty percent.”
Sighing in exhaustion, she looked out the window at the beautiful afternoon skyline of Madrid. The city spanned as far as the eye could see in almost every direction except one, which was the coastline. She could barely make out surfers and various sports boats on the busy beach from her vantage point. As she took in the beautiful sight, a nagging feeling of wrongness caused her to frown. Was Madrid a coastal town? Maybe she was just confusing it with Barcelona.
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