Jen's Christmas Nightmare

"Haha, no, I'm really not one way or the other, I think I'm hetro but not really sure. I can't find a girl I like and I don't think I'm into guys either and I don't want to commit either way until I'm sure. I've got lots of friends, bros and bitches, and I like being out with them as friends but just not prepared to take any of my relationships any further."

"What are you, only 19? Nix, everyone gets confused, you have all these hormones flooding into your body and you don't know what to do with them. And don't call girls you know bitches, we don't like it. Look, I was shy and afraid to commit, too, when I was your age, I didn't really have a steady boyfriend until I was 20 and living away from home and felt that even if I made a mistake no one at home would find out, so I really went for and committed myself to the first guy who really showed any interest in me. Bad mistake, he was interested in any girl, even a gawky, misfit girl like me, and he did treat me like a bitch. I ended up stuck with a cheating mind-abuser for about eight years that I regretted as wasted time until I found your Pops. Actually Junior found me, saved me from my own insecurities. Yeah, he really popped the bubble I was in and Junior, for me, just turned out to be the perfect man, just perfect."

"Yeah, Pops is amazing, we're X."

"X?"

"Yeah, like he's so diagonal he's a bona slash, so him and me we're both super half-Xs, yeah? He's like the fridge back slash and I'm like the fridge forward slash, so together we're a smackin' X. Sorry, you look confused, I guess the language has moved on since your last days here in the pod. Anyway, my Pops, your Junior, he's so fridge he's what kids here would call 'ice'n'nice'. Out of all the dads I know, he's like all my friends' shining example of what a father could and should be."

"Yes, he's pretty special, I'm going to miss him."

"Noo, Mums, noo! You and me we are going to put everything right. Now, Sats, when she got her box, I was only about 9. She had the box in her room and we were playing an online group game on our tablets, and another one of my sisters was ribbing her about the box, teasing her that because Mums said Sats wasn't to open it she wasn't as badarse as she always boasted she was. So she opened it, against your explicit instructions...." Nix looked at me perhaps for censure and I shrugged.

He continued, "inside her box, was a carved figure a bit like this," he pointed to St Nick's figurine, "only Sats' was a snowman I remember, about the same size, with a note wrapped tightly around it, tied with cord, that she unrolled and read out. I can't remember it word-for-word exactly, but it was something like, 'remember what I told you, Sati, do not open this box until I and only I tell you to. That won't be for years yet, so keep it safe in your room here, even if you move out to college. Then you grab your brother James from wherever he is and all his fully loaded guns and the three of us will all wrap our hands about each other's hands and around the snowman and I will return us to where I came from'."

"And that note was in my handwriting?" I asked, "And you do have fully loaded guns?"

"It was your handwriting I think, you used to leave me reminders to do my practice all the time. But I need to take you to the games room to check out the guns first. Then you need more sleep before we go."

"But time is—"

"Yes, time is of the essence, but we have all that time on our side. You determine where and when we arrive and, if we are to succeed, you need to be rested not tired and I need to make sure we have all the resources we need to take with us. OK?"

"All right, but you said you were only about 9 at the time?"

"Yeah, I see where you're coming from here, but they are not tha]

type of gun," Nix spoke as he directed out of the sitting room into the sun room.

"The games room isn't in the cellars?"

"No, I don't know when you and Pops moved the games room, but it has been in a separate building ever since I was little."

We stepped outside and it was warm for mid-December. We walked along a path running behind the garage, which itself had doubled in size since 2020, the pathway lighting up by sensors as we walked along, up to a newish-looking low building and stepped inside.

"You keep guns in here and you leave the doors unlocked?" I said, thinking I probably sounded like his nagging mother. Perhaps it comes natural, I've only been a mother of seven for about three hours and that comment just came out sounding like it had become my normal 'critical mum' voice.

"All the doors are locked," Nix said, with the sort of voice that you might use to a simpleton who has woken up from a long sleep with no clue how the modern world works. "The handles are programmed to recognise me, if it didn't know the handprint of the person trying the handle, the door would remain locked. I expect you could open the door too, all the door handles are all programmed to recognise us and even log the comings and goings so even if Mums is in the North Pole, she knows if I've come home late, or that I opened my bedroom door and raided the fridge at night."

"Does she do that?"

"No, at least I don't think so, but all the kids at school say the same door lock jokes, because everyone has these locks on domestic properties, and in public ones the toilet doors know someone has entered, so only the inside handle works until that handle opens the door again. It's very simple technology for the toilet door handles coated in a pressure sensitive surface and don't need to be programmed for individuals, unless you have executive toilets."

"Wow, such a simple idea."

"It works, great for keeping nosy siblings out of your bedroom. Anyway, to stop my other version of my mother freaking out, I'll get into the system and delete your presence."

"Oh, yes I know that I would freak out if I thought there were two of me running around."

We both relaxed and laughed at that.

I looked around, it was better than the room we thought we were going to make in the cellar. It was a huge, light and airy room with all sorts of games machines, a pool table, an antique jukebox, some settees and armchairs to relax in, some of which were originally in my house, old but well made and still being used. Nix opened a cupboard on the far wall and inside were at least a dozen short and stubby guns. Nix pulled one out and showed it to me.

"They are electric and kept fully charged by the holding rack. They are fitted with quite a small but powerful battery, and this black coating all around the barrel is also able to collect solar power from the sun, enough to keep you firing all day if it's sunny enough. The power is used to compress air, which is released to fire the paint pellets or store the charge in the battery in the stock."

"And you are good at shooting with this, better than Sati, since you were 9?"

"I could hit a freckle on your nose from 220 metres now. Back when I was 9 I was good from 200 metres. I haven't improved, it's just that the technology got way better. I suggest we take the white paint, (A) because it is more opaque which is down to the pigments used and (B) because the fact that it's paint won't be so obvious in the snow and ice of the North Pole."

"Smart. But everyone's locked in the Main House cellar. We have to get in there first and presumably the UV lamps are in the ceiling or high up on the walls and they'd be like ducks in a barrel to paint balls. But, how are we going to get into the cellar in the first place?"

"You said they have UV lamps all over the place to detect movement, so we could use guerrilla tactics, by hitting their lamps all over the place wherever they are, so it looks like there's continuous movement past all of their sensors, they would be up all night chasing around finding out why alarms are going off and no-one's there. They'll see they've been painted over but as they are cleaning one detector, others will be going off all over the place. Eventually they would ignore the signals because we would be coating them more quickly than they can keep them operating or check them out. We have fifteen guns, lots and lots of ammo and plenty of mischievous elves who would love to make a nuisance of themselves. Eventually they will ignore the alarms, we then break into the cellars, blot out the UV lights and the Santas can teleport out."

"Brilliant," I said, "Let's get going."

"Wait, wait. Hold on a moment. That's only plan A, which we would be forced to use if we go back to the North Pole on Wednesday whatever the date was when you left."

"The 18th of November it was," I said.

"Right, well, there's a Plan B, which I would prefer and I think actually worked. So, do you want to try your hand at firing these guns first, to see how you do?"

"All right, I'll have a go." I pointed the one I was holding at the wall and fired. There was just a short and fairly quiet pneumatic puff and the wall about four metres from me had a 200cm splodge of bright red paint in the middle. "Hey, that's fun!"

"Yeah," he laughed, "just wait until you see that splash on that wall in 25 years' time and you tan my arse! You only allow us to fire them outdoors and only at the targets set up in the southern pasture." We walked to the doorway and he fired at a weather vane cockerel on the roof of the guest house, a long way away it looked to me. He fired twice and both shots hit, after it stopped spinning you could see that he had hit both sides of the weather vane.

"It's water soluble, so a couple of showers and it should be clean, only," pointing to my outstandingly red splodge on the games room wall, "it doesn't rain much indoors."

"When you get back here, tell her it was me. Oh, if you get back. Oh no, Gronwynk told me my Santa teleporter was one-way only."

"Only one way to find out, let's gather all these guns and paintballs and go and open my box and see what my letter says."

Nix's letter was wrapped around a miniature wooden Christmas tree beautifully painted with brightly painted decorations. His letter was similar to what he remembered of his sister Sati's letter, except it mentioned the Christmas tree rather than the snowman, and there was no mention of gathering any other member of the family, so only the two of us were going back to 2020.

I borrowed one of her/my coats with a hood from the utility room and found some nice boots that fitted me. They were old but had been kept nourished and polished and were supple and comfortable. When I got back to the sitting room with my trophies, Nix was sitting on the settee with the letter in his hand.

"I turned the letter over, Mums," he said, "in the letter you have written that the Santa transporter you used is a one-way transporter as you were correctly told but it is not restricted to just one use, which means it can be used to bring me back here to 2045 once we've dealt with your little problem. So I can still go to the Ball, or at least the students' party." He picked the Santa up and put it in his pocket. "Now, after you've had a sleep, we are going back to the place where you left, which was where?"

"Our stable at the group of eight cottages we used to use back then."

"Yeah, we still use it as our NP pod, it has a sign up saying 'HSH', 'home sweet home', and we stay there all the time rather than the Main House, and Gramps and Gramma come and stay here in the spring and summer in the guest house outside."

"You get on all right with your grandparents?"

"Yeah, they spoil all of their grandkids rotten."

"I haven't been able to get on with Hilde, not yet anyway."

"With other people, Gramma is what we call 'hobohoov', in other words she sucks like a bad vacuum, but nowadays with family, and as far as I know, you too, she's sweet and kind, generous with praise and encouragement, oh and cuddles, we get lots of cuddles."

"Good, I'm glad. I got off on the wrong foot with Hilde and that's not something I should tell you about, but then I've only been with her for any length of time for the last week. Perhaps having grandchildren has mellowed her. So, we off in say six hours?"

"Yes, but you wrote to me in the letter wrapped around my Christmas tree that we need to go back on the Saturday evening as early as we can, then head for the Main Square, because that is where the Saturnalians have their portal. Apparently during the night, around midnight she thinks, because she didn't have her phone with her to accurately tell the time. The portal will emit a beam of UV light as it opens just before they come through, so we need to be in the area ready to fire the paint at them and we have to use the laser targeting system to open up any body armour they have and damage the skin."

He flicked a switch on one of the guns, and a small but bright green light shone onto the ceiling.

"But you don't use the laser when shooting, do you?" I asked, "or you didn't when you were demonstrating."

"No, I never ever had to, but these guns were made to Mums' particular specification. From the time I could walk Mums had us all practising at standing targets, so from the age of three I was using them in normal play and she also had us doing distant target practising. It turned out that I was the best shot in the family, blessed with 20/20 vision."

"But you wear glasses."

"Only around the house, I'm long-sighted and need glasses to read, watch the streaming screen and in the kitchen. When I'm out in the field I take them off because at distance my eyes are perfect. I don't need to read what colour I'm firing because the ammo is colour coded. So, what were you doing that Saturday we're supposed to go back to?"

"On Saturday we came home early evening and er," I blushed as I recalled the events of that evening, "we went to bed."

Nix grinned and held up his hands in defence, "I don't want to know the details. Definitely spoilers, us seven kids realise you and Pops must've made whoopee at least seven times but we've assumed all of that was in the distant past."

"Oh, my god, I hope not," I muttered.

"And who or what was in the stables that night?"

"Just reindeer. There was Vonnie and Jessica, who pull your Pops' sleigh. For my sleigh I have a sweet female called Rachel and a cocky young bull called Ritchie, who is upset with Rachel because he just lost his antlers and Rachel has a magnificent pair that he knows she'll keep all winter."

"Well, Mums, those reindeer are going to be our UV light spotters. Reindeer have extraordinary sight, so what looks black to us in the UV spectrum they can see. It helps them, in order to find food in Arctic conditions. We'll take both sleighs, and set up in the Main Square. When the Saturnalists come through, according to your letter, we'll shine the laser lights on them, apparently they are sensitive to any light which is why they are most active at night. The concentrated laser actually cuts into their skin and flesh right through to the bone, then we fire the paint at them. There is Alum in the paint which Mums formulated and the Alum is a poison which does little harm to their skin on the unbroken surface, but if it is ingested or gets into the blood through our laser cut wounds, then it can be quite lethal. You get in close and zap them at close range, I'll shine the laser on them from distance and hit any that you miss."

"It sounds like we have a plan, Nix."

And we did.

After filling in my journal I slept well that night, as if I was at peace with what had happened and pleased that it looked like I could do something to make what happened right again. I was left with many questions in my mind, such as how did I find out all these Saturnalists' weaknesses, when I knew nothing at all about them, why nobody seems to know anything about it and why was I sent here now, when Nix is 19, when we could have done all this when he was 10, or St Nick, who seems to have set this up in the first place, could have stopped the monsters coming in in the first place.

I also thought about my future self and her relationship with Nix. What was wrong that he so hated the name that Junior and I had given him? I had to admit that I had a similar problem with 'Jenny' and 'Jennifer' when I was his age, hence the change to 'Jenna' which I considered a little more cool, while he considered his 'Nix' as fridge. Parents and kids, I suppose it's a universal meeting point for conflicts? I mean look at Junior and his parents breaking up over his and their different choices of bride.

I was also concerned that I, meaning me as my future self, had almost bullied my son James from an early age to force him to become an expert paintball shooter simply to save the day back in my time. I mean, I was exposing him to danger in a time and place where he didn't belong. What if it all went wrong? Even if I survived, how could I live with myself? Why didn't my future self take responsibility for the paintball shooting herself and simply direct one of the children to coach me when I arrived and send me back on my own?

Why go through this pre-planned time travel lark at all, when St Nick could've sent me through to a contemporary paint ball club, I'd get the whole club 'tooled up' to go to the North Pole, shoot up the invaders, then send them all home again with a Christmas hamper and an unexplained gap in their collective memories? That made sense, what we were doing didn't.

They were worries, but nothing I could do anything about so I slept soundly until the alarm aroused me, fresh and alive six hours later. A shower, breakfast and we were all set to go. Then I thought more about the 'we' being set to go.

CHAPTER 14 CHRISTMAS SAVED

"Look, James," I said to the boy when I was dressed and ready to go, "you're a good kid, I'm proud of you for wanting to help me, but I need to do this alone. I honestly don't know what your mother was thinking when she wrote that letter to you and enclosed that Christmas tree teleporter. I'll gather up all those guns in a bag, go to my North Pole garage early Saturday evening, send one of the reindeer to fetch Gronwynk who will be able to gather a squad of elf paint-ball gunmen and we will be in the Main Square at midnight, with all the reindeer we need to detect the UV light that heralds the invasion, and then we zap them up close with lasers and guns. We stop the invasion, destroy their teleporter, then swear all the elves to secrecy and bury the evidence of the paintball guns out in the snowfields. It means none of the Santas, including Junior, will know anything about it because they will all be tucked up in bed and think that the invasion never happened. That, my dear boy, is why you're not going."

"No wait. If you wrote those letters to all my siblings, leaving them the impression that they had to accompany you, why didn't you just say in the letter, 'give my younger me all the paintball guns and white paint, make sure she knows how to use them but whatever you do, don't go with her or I'll tan your hides.' And why did you tell me that the teleporter you brought with you could be the means I can use to get back to my time? And, finally, why did you give these to all my brothers and sisters when you know very well that you only needed to write one letter to me and done it not seven years ago, but told me all about it this weekend just before I flew back in the old beat up ejet you assigned me to use? I mean you know it is the last week of term and know that I will be here because you already know what the date is today."

"Maybe, I got hurt in the paintball battle, not badly, otherwise Junior would never allow paintballs in the house, let alone allow the south pasture to be devoted to the sport. But if I do fall and hurt my head with concussion I might very well be hazy on the date that I arrived, and who exactly I met with here. I mean it could happen."