Sophia was three days from twenty when the world upended itself.
She had just finished with a customer's order - a hash brown and a McCafé cold brew -, handed it out the window, and whipped around to find the next one when a woman caught her attention from the corner of her eye.
She had a dazed expression, matching her rumpled clothes and unsteady gait. She was ambling towards the counter, and Sophie knew she was going to be the only one wiling to deal with a customer this early in the morning.
By the time she got to the counter, the woman was leaning against it like it was the only thing holding her up in a world that had gone completely insane.
Sophie politely coughed to get the customer's attention. She watched as the lady's head whipped up, and recognition flashed in her eyes. "Sophia. You don't know me, not yet, but I promise I can make your day much more interesting."
Yeah, this wasn't the first time someone had used that line on her, but it certainly was the first time her work uniform inspired it. "Look, miss, I'm-" A hand smushed her lips together, and outraged surged. How fucking dare she!
"I know you're mad, because I know a lot of things. You have a time travel pass-code, which has never gotten old each time I've used it." She took a breath. "Five hundred and forty seven, correct horse battery stapling, thirty ostriches won the Austrian war, and..."
She leaned close to Sophie's face. A pause in the breathless rant allowed her outrage to freeze into shock. "You once lost your virginity in an Arby's parking lot, in a stolen car." The shock shattered into several pieces.
"And before you say 'You found that in my journal'" - an accurate impression of her tone, if not her pitch - "you've never written it down there, and you don't use social media, so it's not like I could find it there."
Sophie's jaw hung slackly open as the woman spread her arms out. "I'm a time traveler, and I really want your help. Come with me? I have a plane ticket with your name on it."
-
"So, welcome back to the O'Hare airport." The woman - her name was Ivy, last name Harrow - spun around, stumbling into the woman in front of them. "You know? Fifty times I've been here, but it's a different person in front of me in line every time."
Sophie nodded. "Yeah, that's real interesting." She swiped away a text from her manager, asking her where the hell she was. "Hey, any chance you can help me out with my job? They aren't happy about me ditching the Sunday shift to hang out with a crazy woman."
A chortle came from Ivy. "Crazy, huh? What'd you tell them this time?"
"I said you were on a mission of life and death, and I was being swept up in it." She flicked another text, this time from her dad.
"Ha! I knew it. You owe me thirty dollars."
Sophie spluttered. "We haven't even bet! I've known you an hour!"
A wink from the woman in front of her. "But I've known you many years, and last time you bet you would say I was your girlfriend having a personal crisis. Not like money's an issue for us." She pulled out her phone - a beat up thing - and showed her an app.
It was a line-graph, trending steadily upward over the last five hours. "I can't say I wouldn't exploit the stock market... how much are you aiming for?"
A whistle as Ivy's finger tapped against her chin. "...I'm aiming for a billion? I was able to hit fifty billion by doing some unsavory things, but I'm really hoping for this to be the last one, and hacking high-profile Twitter accounts to manipulate stocks is just gonna get me in trouble."
Her finger continued tapping against her chin. "It's not even about the money. I want enough to live on, but it's more about the fact I can do it rather than the need to get as much as possible." The finger stopped. "It's a bit rote by now."
Her words finally found their way through her throat. "A billion dollars from stock trading won't get you in trouble!?"
Ivy's eyes lit up. "Actually, it won't!" The line shuffled forward. "I tested it. I don't get audited immediately unless I break the two billion barrier, so a billion should be fine. Plenty for you and me to live off of, right?"
Before she could respond to that - was she and Ivy involved in a previous loop? - she was being ushered forward by a TSA agent, and she fished out her driver's license.
Ivy had purchased her a ticket to Geneva Airport in Switzerland, and from her frenzied Googling on Business class for United was that Ivy had dropped over five thousand dollars on her alone.
She tried not to let her nerves show as she went through the scanner, and then pat-down. Sophie hadn't been told by Ivy why she was wanted here, but from all available evidence the woman was a time traveler. It was all she could do not to thrash the lady with her questions, but once they got on the plane she'd have time to press her.
Still. Business class for someone you just met. Her mind reeled as she grabbed her bag off the conveyor. The time travel must have driven her batty.
-
Sophia was chowing down on an airport sandwich and fries. Ivy was sipping on a Coca-Cola float, idly dipping a fry into her dessert-y beverage with one hand as she manipulated the stock market with another. Sophie wasn't allowed to look at the bill, but it was airport food.
If the time looper across the table wasn't currently making more cash than Sophie had ever seen in her life, she would've fussed at the waste of money. As it stood, she was enjoying the hell out of her reuben.
"So, I need to get the money stuff wrapped up before we board. We have..." Ivy's eyes flashed to the clock on the wall. "Thirty-five minutes till we board, and then a nine hour flight to Geneva." Her eyes went to Sophie, and she froze while chewing the sandwich. "We'll be able to talk on the plane about all the stuff you want to bring up."
She managed to swallow her latest bite. "I can't believe you. You knew my pass-code, so you are a time traveler, but to drop the thousands of dollars on tickets for the both of us... how long have you been looping?"
A finger wagged in above her plate. "Not now! On the plane. Promise not to ask any more, and I'll answer this one."
She nodded.
A drum-roll played from Ivy's hands rattling against their table. "The answer is... approximately a hundred and seventy years!" Sophie blinked. She tried to comprehend what Ivy had just said. A hundred and seventy years. _Fifty thousand_ days. She couldn't even wrap her head around the idea of living the same day for a hundred years, let alone staying sane through it.
"I know what you're about to ask next, and I'll go ahead and answer it for you. Special privilege, since you didn't directly ask." A wink towards her, fast as lightning. "How did I stay sane? Not sure I did!" A crazed smile crept onto Ivy's face. "I'm pretty sure I went nutty ten years in, but nuttiness is tied to your physical brain, and believe it or not that gets reset."
Two fingers walked their way across the table as Sophie's mind began to resemble a fork in a garbage disposal. "I woke up one day and realized I wasn't crazy anymore. Or at least, I think I'm not. Good enough to convince a series of psychiatrists!"
The two fingers stopped at the edge of the table. "I don't think I'm crazy, anyway. Definitely maladjusted, given that I've been living in a free-for-all sandbox nearly my whole life. I'll definitely need some help adjusting once I break it today."