Maggie Wilkins

History
Maggie was born in Paris, but was raised in Melbourne, Australia. Since the age of four, Maggie’s life has been devoted to ballet. It her grandmother’s choice, not hers, but Maggie has never complained. Her mother died when she was eight and her father was never around, so her Grandmother was the one left responsible for her care. In order to allow Maggie to focus on ballet, her grandmother taught her at home all the way through high school. Instead of attending college, Maggie auditioned for and was accepted by the Australian Ballet Company at the age of eighteen, just like her grandmother had always hoped.

At the age of twenty, Maggie’s grandmother passed away. Now that there was no one to satisfy by becoming a successful ballerina, Maggie suddenly found that she was free to do whatever she wished. She enjoyed dancing, but ballet was starting to bore her. Her entire life had been ballet and nothing else and she was tired of it. While she was in Melbourne, Maggie met a boy, Lucas, fell in love. When he asked her to move to London with him, she immediately packed her bags and dropped out of the academy.

Two months later, Lucas had a change of heart, which resulted in a fight, which resulted in Maggie stuck in London alone. Thankfully, she had enough money to secure a small flat and her past with the Australian Ballet Company helped her get a job with a modern dance company. For a year her heart mended, her bank account gradually revived, and her life became semi-stable. Things were boring again, but she was alright with that.

Then one day a box arrived at her doorstep with a small card that read “The personal effects of Mr. J.S. Wilkins to be opened only by a Ms. Margaret Wilkins, daughter of the aforementioned.” Since she had never really known her father, the knowledge that he was deceased wasn’t nearly as upsetting as she had expected it to be. Maggie took the box back into her flat, sat down on her bed and opened it. There wasn’t much, a thick leather wristband, a photograph of him and five others that she didn’t recognize, some notebooks, a small handgun, a wad of money, and a letter addressed to her.

Margaret,

''If you have received this, it means I am dead or believed to be, but most likely I am. I'm sorry that this is the way you had to find out, but as I haven’t exactly been a part of your life, I trust you aren’t too upset by my passing. ''

''However, that is not the point of this letter. I want you to understand that nothing in this world is quite what it seems; there are universes, creatures, planets that you have never even dreamed of. I want you to see them, to truly experience the world. The wristband I enclosed will allow you do exactly that. The instructions for its use are in the small grey notebook. Be careful; use the handgun only when it is absolutely vital to your safety.''

Love,

Dad.

She had always expected that her dad was a bit loony, but this letter proved it beyond a doubt. Maggie packed everything back inside the box, stuffed it under her bed and went to work. Six months went by until she touched the box again. During that time she had attempted to forget about her Dad’s letter entirely, however one phrase kept tickling her thoughts. “Nothing in this world is quite what it seems.” All of those strange occurrences that she had dismissed stood out to her; the strange stories in the news suddenly seemed slightly sinister. Finally, after an unusually terrible day at work, Maggie locked her door, closed the blinds and opened her dad’s box again.

The wristband was the first thing that she focused her attention on. A moment of examination revealed that the wristband opened to reveal a small control panel. Maggie quickly found the grey notebook her father had mentioned and flipped it open. “Vortex Manipulator (Time travel device)” was written on the first page in the same hasty script of the letter. Maggie spent the rest of the night reading the notebook and examining the device and attempting to understand its capabilities.

She hasn’t quite had the courage to use the wristband to go anywhere yet, but her curiosity is making her braver by the day, especially since work hasn’t been very pleasant lately.