10 July 2025, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2794: lonely in a crowd

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

“I actually think Milton has a great idea for a 9-2-2 emergency service hotline – call it '9-2-2 for You,' and have everybody in Lofton County sign up to call us first before calling any of our grandparents or your dad or my Cousin Harry, and for us to call them when they have not called us first to tell them, 'You know you have messed up, right? Have you notified your next of kin and made out your will and stuff?'

“I think it's a great idea, and we really just need to get George and Milton signed up first.”

Ten-year-old Andrew Ludlow was talking to eleven-year-old Velma Trent next door about her brother nine-year-old Milton's great idea and how Andrew's nine-year-old brother George could be benefited as well.

“Yeah, I was talking to Vertran” – also nine years old, and Velma's first cousin – “about doing proof of concept stuff,” said Andrew, “and he said that if we can keep George and Milton out of trouble with 9-2-2, we can market that next to the powers that be in Lofton County because they need it.”

“Yeah, but, if we do that we're gonna need a time machine part,” Velma said, “because the Ridgeline Fire and the Bayard Heights washout go way back – way back, so if we're doing a 'Consequences-Are-Coming-for-You call, we gotta get there early.”

“Hold on a minute – hey, Grayson, can you blueprint a time machine for us real quick?”

Grayson Ludlow was Andrew's six-year-old brother, Lego engineer extraordinaire. There was nothing that he did not think he could build, especially since Velma had taught him how to work with clay too and his sisters enjoyed having him do papier-mache with them. But –.

“You gotta blueprint stuff,” he always said when going to get his blue construction paper and white crayons, “because failing to plan is planning to fail.”

Grayson considered Andrew's question.

“I can,” he said, “but the problem is bigger than you think. How far are we going back?”

“At least 30 years,” Andrew said.

“OK, we got a problem because our parents will be our age then,” Grayson said.

“And have even less of a clue – but look, Papa and Grandma will be grown, and they've always had their lives together,” Andrew said.

“This is true,” Grayson said, and went to get his paper and crayons.

“I need to do some research to figure out who we need to take the news photos of the consequences to in 1990,” Andrew said. “We gotta print them here, though, because there's no good cell phones and really no good Internet back then.”

“Yeah, Mom was telling me about dial-up modems and stuff,” Velma said. “You may as well have been calling dinosaurs in Jurassic Park back then, but they might have gone extinct before you could get online.”

“What blows my mind is that the computer was only eight years old – like, Edwina's age – when my great-grandfather wrote down how not to do the Bayard Heights mess,” Andrew said. “Like, 1952.”

“Oh, then we don't need to go back there,” Velma said. “They already got their call from your great-grandfather time-traveling from 1952. They just didn't pay attention.”

“You know,” Andrew said as he sat down, “you're right. They got their Consequences-Are-Coming-for-You call and just hung up on it. This is the kind of stuff that has people like us feeling lonely in a crowd … it's like you can hear a call no one else can, and they just keep rushing off to get consequences and calling you stupid for hearing what they won't hear that would save them!”

Velma considered this.

“Grandma Jubilee says that when people are insisting on moon-walking while drunk on the edge of a cliff, and you tell them but they think they're doing fine, you just gotta let nature take its course because if you try to do too much, they're just going to take you off the cliff with them when they start finally grabbing around trying not to fall when they are already falling. She said backwardness is stronger than you think in this world – just stay clear.”

“And there's another problem,” Grayson said. “You know that going backwards around the sun to do time travel takes rockets and stuff, flying backwards – but we can't even do stuff forward around here yet.”

“We probably need to get our time and space fixed first,” Velma said, “and then build on to the other stuff.”

“Yep,” Andrew said, “because we haven't heard from Milton and George in a minute, and that means they are due for a 9-2-2 call, any minute now.”

“Dad handed them both some books and they are voluntarily co-grounding, reading while he gets ready to grill later on,” Velma said.

“9-2-2 situations averted – it's working already!” Andrew said.

“Yep, that was a good idea Milton had,” Velma said.