Mercy and Davis walked up to a small convenience store about half a block from a long row of houses. They were there to get food for the others. They had just arrived in 1969, and no one knew how long they were going to be there.
As they were entering the store. Davis grabbed a orange basket off of a shelf near the door.
"So what do we get?" Davis asked.
"Something easy to prepare, and fast to make." Mercy said. She saw a cake display on the far wall. "Lord, I should have known better to shop on an empty stomach."
Just as they entered the main part of the store a large siren went off.
"What IS that?" Mercy asked covering her ears.
"I dunno." Davis said as the siren stopped. A group of people approached him. "I didn’t do anything." He said as a man who looked like the manager approached him. "I just walked in the door."
"That’s why I'm here." He said. "What’s your name young man?"
"Davis?" Davis said nervously, as if he didn’t know his own name.
"Davis, congratulations." The man said. "You are our 1,000th customer!" He cried out. The girls behind him half heartedly blew some streamers in his face.
"Great!" Davis said.
"Yeah really." Mercy said, who suddenly wished she had won instead but decided to see what he had won first before getting too jealous.
"What did I win?" Davis said as the manager motioned to a girl with a camera. He stuck himself in the middle of Mercy and Davis. He gave Davis a sign to hold up. It read "our lastest Weiner".
"You, my good good man have won a fifty dollar shopping spree redeemable at any time." He said after removing himself from between the too.
Mercy gave Davis a look. "Hey we can get enough food and still have enough money."
"Yes." Davis said. "But I really want a balloon too."
"Davis." Mercy said trying to hide a little smile.
"I know." He said. "Can we redeem it now?" He asked the man with a sweet smile. "We're from out of town, and we have some friends with us. Well not with us now but you know." He said politely.
The manager looked at him. Davis continued his innocent look. "All right." He said. "Here is the coupon. If it goes over fifty it comes out of your pocket."
"Great." Mercy said. She grabbed a cart. "All right, let's shop. Remember to be realistic. The food has to last for as long as we stay. That house has no electricity so we need essentials, water, bread, tuna."
"Can opener." Davis said slipping on it. "The hand kind."
"I hate those things. I threw one on the road once during vacation." Mercy said.
"Here, this will be handy." Davis said grabbing a cheap hibachi grill. "We can have bar-b-que."
Meanwhile as the duo went over to the meat section, a foursome entered the store.
"I can't believe we can't find a store with those little Cornish hens I love." Livvie said as Peter grabbed a cart. Davy and Brianna grabbed one of their own.
"Well this is the last store we can look at. The others are getting antsy by now." Davy said. "There’s the meat department."
Meanwhile at the meat section, someone else was having thoughts about the same food.
"Hmmm Cornish game hen." Davis said. "My mom loves these. She has a great teriyaki recipe for these. But my fathers a vegetarian, he hates them." He said. "But he cooks it for her anyway."
"Grab em then. There is two left." Mercy said. "And we've gotta get bread."
As Davis touched the last two hens, two other hands grabbed them at the same time. Davis looked up into the face of his own father, years younger.
"Guh!" Davis said after doing a double take that almost knocked him to the floor.
"I'm sorry if I scared ya." Peter apologized and offered Davis a hand.
"Not a problem." Davis said taking it. Mercy gave him a glace as Peter helped him up. Davis exchanged the same look with her.
"I was gonna get these game hens." Davis said almost apologetically.
"Me too. My girl, Livvie..." Peter said as he pointed out Livvie staring into a lobster tank. She had seen several that day as they had gone store to store but they still fascinated her. "she loves them."
"Me too." Davis said. "I get that from my mom."
Davy and Brianna appeared on the other side of Mercy. Davy almost startled her when he began to speak.
"Find what you want?" Davy asked.
"Yeah, but it seems these two nice people want to get it too." Peter said as Livvie joined them. "Only two hens left." He said.
"I only need one." Livvie said. "Looks like you are setting up for a barbque." Livvie said referring to the grill in the cart.
"We are. We're from out of town and starving." Mercy said avoiding eye contact with her folks. "Davis, that’s him, is the lucky 1,000 customer and we were just shopping."
"Heres an easy solution." Brianna offered. "What’s your name?"
"Mercy." Mercy replied.
"Ohhhhh, mercy mercy me." Davy lightly sang. Mercy finally looked at him.
"Yeah, that’s the one." She said. "You must be some kind of singer." She said.
"Yeah, we're in a group." Peter said. "You oughta come here us play sometime. How long are you in town?"
"Forever probably." Mercy said.
"Great, then you will have time to drop by." Peter said.
"That’s what I was thinking about." Brianna said. "Since these two guys and their friends are new in town, maybe they would like to come to our barbque. That way we can have both have the game hens, and not get into a strange fight in the meat aisle."
Davis looked at Mercy. "What do you think?"
"Who cares. I'm ready to eat a horse!" Mercy said.
"Ewww." Davy said. "Horses are for riding, dear luv, not for eating."
"Not if you've been to my high school cafeteria." Mercy said. "Let's go finish shopping."
"Great." Brianna said. "You can bring your boyfriend too."
"He's not my boyfriend." Mercy said.
"I'm sorry." Brianna apologized.
"That’s ok." Mercy said.
"Why not?" Livvie asked.
"Why not what?" Mercy asked looking at her incredulously. "Davis is a friend, I've known him for all my life."
"Okay." Livvie said.
"You can bring your friends too." Davy said.
"We have to go back to where we are staying." Mercy said. "They went on an errand and might be back by now."
"Yeah, but we oughta bring the food back to our place first." Peter said. "Might spoil quickly."
"Good point." Livvie said.
"Ok." Mercy said.
Soon after they checked out. They had collected only twenty dollars worth of food with them, along with what the others put in their cart. Since Davis said he wasn’t sure how long they were going to stay, the manager decided it was best to give him the remainder of the prize in cash. He even got the balloon he desired, for free.
Minutes later
"So much for not being spotted." Roark muttered.
"Who are you?" Mike asked again.
"Do you know any other questions?" Roark asked.
"Yeah, what are you doing sneaking around?" He asked.
"Well.." Roark said thinking.
"Just tell him honey." Bethany said.
"What?" Roark asked as Bethany helped him up.
"You know." She said grabbing his hand. "We're house hunting. We just came off our honeymoon and was hoping to find a nice place on the beach." Bethany explained. "I thought we could get a look at the neighbors."
"Yeah." Roark said picking up Bethanys lead. "It'll be our first home, right sweetie?" He said kissing her on the lips. This move took her by surprise.
"Ahh. So sweet!" Chea cooed.
Roark pulled back from Bethany. She blushed. "He's a sucker for PDA's." She explained. "That’s enough of that. Not in front of our might-be new neighbors."
"Are you all right?" Micky said. "Looks like you took quite a tumble."
"I'm all right." Roark said. "I'm pretty tough."
"He is. He fell down a flight of stairs when he was younger. I tell ya, he never tried roller skates again." Bethany added with a laugh. "Ah yeah."
"We're sorry to have bothered you." Roark said. "We gotta go. We have some friends to meet with." He said. "Plus we're no closer to getting to an electronics store." He thought, praying that he didnt land on the gadget, which would defeat the purpose of looking for help.
"Why not stay here?" Karen asked.
"What?" Roark asked.
"Stay here." Karen said. "We're having a BBQ after our gig tonight." Karen added.
"We're musicians." Mike said. "The Monkees."
"Yeah we know." Bethany said. Mike eyed her with a raised eyebrow. She then put her hand over her mouth. "I mean that’s what I heard."
"A friend told us about you guys." Roark said.
"They did? They must have liked us. The word is getting out." Micky deducted.
"Just like I thought it would." Chea said. "Why not come to the gig? You can bring your friends."
"That's a great idea." Micky agreed. "How about it?"
Roark and Bethany looked at each other.
"Eh, why not." Roark said. "We're probably going nowhere fast."
"That’s the truth." Bethany said.
"Come on, we'll show you the place." Karen said, as they started to go back up onto the beach.
"We'll catch up." Roark said as Bethany tugged on his sleeve. They walked slowly up from underneath the stairs.
"What was that kiss about?" She asked him.
"We needed a story didn’t we?" He asked. "I don't think the we're your kids from the future would have worked here."
"That’s true." Bethany said. "What’s our plan?"
"I guess we eat, maybe go look for the others later?" Roark said. "As long as they don't find out the truth right off, we'll be ok."
2001
"Okay, so the kids have the gadget." Chea said. "What ever happened to the other one?" She asked.
"What other one?" Livvie asked.
"We made one out of radio parts a long time ago. It was used once, but due to what happened to the girls in the icky future they told us about, we put it into mothballs." Micky explained.
"We haven’t seen it since." Chea said. "So I have no idea where it is."
"I think I do," Karen said. "Come on. Back to the attic."
The gang raced to the attic. Karen led them to a loose floorboard in the back of the attic.
"In all fairness, hon, if it was up here, then we would have found it in the search for the original." Mike said.
"Chea roughly knew where it was so we didn’t look through the whole attic. I left the emergency one here." Karen said placing her foot on the floorboard. She pressed down hard on it and it popped up. A beeping sound came from the space beneath.
"What’s that sound?" Brianna asked.
"I don't know." Karen said. "What was the last thing you did to it Mick?" She asked Micky.
"We placed kind of an inbox in it, so we can get messages from the other gadget." Micky said. "Let me see it." He said outstretching his hand. Karen handed him the device. "Okay there is two messages.One says that the tracker tracked it to 1969."
"Oh great, so we know where they are. What else is there?" Mike asked looking over his shoulder.
"One other message." He said. "From Mulder and Scully."
"What does it say?" Chea asked. "We hadn’t seen the agents since 1967."
"Bad news I'm afraid." Micky said.
"What is it?" Davy asked.
"Jonny and Bonny are out of jail." He said. "Not only that, they seem to have totally vanished!"
"Our kids are gone, they're gone. There has to be something to it." Peter said.
"I hope not." Chea said. "The last thing we need is our kids and
Jonny and Bonny meeting up in the past!"
