Jon's head was pounding as he slowly opened his eyes. The light caused the pain to increase for a few moments as his eyes adjusted. He could see he was lying in bed. It wasn't his own bed though. He slowly turned his head to the side hoping it wouldn't make his headache worse.
"Jon!" a familiar voice cried. As his eyes adjusted he recognised his mother sitting on a chair near the bed. Taking in as much as he could from his limited viewpoint he could see he was in what looked like a hospital room. A very sparse looking one, there was very little in the way of decoration.
His mother stood up and moved closer to the bed. Beside the bed was a small cabinet. On top was a jug of water and an empty glass. His mother picked up the jug and began pouring a glass of water. Jon noticed her hand was shaking quite a lot as she poured. She put down the jug and handed him the glass. Jon was thirsty, so he grabbed it and took a couple of big gulps. "What, What... happened to me?" he asked slowly. The water had helped but his throat was still dry.
His mother sat back down. "Well they think you fainted and banged your head." she told him.
"Fainted?" Jon asked confused.
"Yes we found you lying on the floor of your room. The doctor thought you might have concussion and they told us they have to be careful with head injuries and so I said I'd keep an eye on you till you woke up."
"Thanks, mom. My head is sore and I feel a bit woozy."
"Well.. err... Must be concussion after all." His mother fidgeted a little in her seat like she wasn't really comfortable. Jon appreciated she may have been here a long time.
"Do you need to go eat or drink or something?"
"No, No. I'm happy to stay." His mother emphasised the last word, which sounded a bit weird. She looked around like she'd spotted a fly.
Jon took a few moments to look at the room more. There was a door, cupboard, a sink and not much else. There was a window but the curtains were closed.
Jon tried to remember what had happened but it seem so vague and indistinct. All he could really remember was his head spinning and having some weird dreams.
"How long have I been asleep?"
"About twelve hours, more or less."
"I guessed it must have been a long time. I had some really intense dreams."
"Oh," his mother seemed to be more interested now "why don't you tell me about them?"
"Well it's kind of silly mom..."
"I want to hear."
This kind of struck Jon as odd. He had described dreams before and to be honest people might pretend to be interested but they generally weren't. He couldn't recall a time when someone randomly asked him to describe a dream he had had.
"Well, okay. There was this magic stone that would grant wishes and I used it to make a machine that took me to other dimensions."
"I never appreciated what an active imagination you had Jon."
For the next ten minutes he related all the adventures he dreamed while he'd been unconscious. Some of the details were a bit vague but Jon knew that was normal for dreams. As he continued to talk, the memories of the dreams became clearer and his headache started to subside.
He continued to notice more odd behaviour from his mother. She seemed to be enjoying the experience but wasn't really taking in the details, as if she was distracted. She was also getting different parts of the dream narratives mixed up as she commented on them. She also started making a lot of pointless asides. This meant Jon had to keep going over the same parts of the dream multiple times.
Eventually Jon had got to the part of the dream where the other Jon explained that time was moving at two different speeds.
His mother interjected. "...so you got the stone, twenty years ago?"
"Actually nineteen but yes, it sounds crazy but looking back, it kind of made sense."
"Hmmm, so could you take the million dollars back twenty, I mean nineteen years and put it in the bank?"
"I suppose so but it wasn't my money and it was only 990,000 dollars. I took some for travelling expenses."
"They do that in time travel movies though, put money in the bank go into the future and collect all the interest."
"Yeah that's a common trope." Jon couldn't tell if his mother was trying to deliberately slow down his storytelling or was being patronising because they had been discussing science fiction concepts.
"Imagine what it would be worth now?"
"Not that much, nineteen years compound interest at say four percent a year, " Jon did the mental arithmetic "that's, about two million, eight five thousand, seven hundred and eighty dollars. So just over double the original value."
His mother smiled. "I'm glad to see your math skills are getting better. You and that other Jon could have a million dollars each."
"Yeah....," Jon thought it was weird. He sat up in bed. He did the arithmetic again. He took each step slowly and spoke it partially aloud "...to the power 19... ...use logarithms they're easier... ...ten to the power... 2... 0... 8... 5... 7... 8... 0... ...and some change. That's what I got the last time."
His mother looked extremely nervous now. "I always knew you were a bright boy."
"I just did something that should take me around five minutes with pen, paper and a calculator. I just did it in my head, in about thirty seconds. I'm not that bright."
"Well it's probably the concussion..."
Jon was shouting now. "Mom, concussions don't make people smarter!" He swung his legs round and stood up. He felt a little unsteady but he was staying vertical. Looking down he saw the bottom half of his exposed legs. All he appeared to be wearing was a plain green hospital gown.
"Please Jon, go back to bed." She went to grab his wrist and he pushed her hand away.
Just then the door opened and two large male nurses came in.
"What's going on?" Jon demanded. As the nurses moved towards Jon, he leapt over the bed and made a run for the window . Jon pulled open the curtains. Behind them was a blank wall. Jon quickly realised that this wasn't a hospital room, this was a cell. The two large men grabbed Jon, turning him round to face them. Jon watched as a doctor then came through the door, followed by two female nurses.
His mother started pleading with the doctor. "He told you what you wanted to know. This isn't necessary, please!" She was practically screaming.
The doctor turned to her, "I'm sorry Mrs Madison, but your son's condition is deteriorating, he's having some sort of violent breakdown. Please wait outside till he is calm."
She didn't move and the female nurses started pushing her towards the door. They started to become more forceful as she resisted.
The doctor walked up to Jon. He was trying to struggle away from the male nurses but they were too strong and held him in place.
"Why are you doing this?" Jon asked.
The doctor said nothing as he leaned over. Jon felt a sudden sharp sensation in his elbow. The doctor stood back up and Jon could see a syringe in the doctor's hands.
His mother screamed from the corridor. "I'm sorry Jon, they made me, they threatened to take Zoe and Mikey!".
Jon thought he could see two men in military uniforms pull her away as his vision got blurry. Just then, everything went dark.
