We were herded into the glass walled elevator with no idea of what to expect. There were fifty of us slightly anxious and talkative until the elevator began to descend. Silence fell when we realized the years printed on the wall outside the elevator were going backwards. We had entered the elevator as confident spectators, when we stepped off into the darkness it was the year 1400 and I was no longer Beverly Reed Scott. I was a West African woman of royal lineage sold by a kinsman drunk with greed.

The waves crashed against the hull of what I believed was my coffin. They were relentlessly methodic and in some way soothing. I thought again and again death would rescue me and each time my eyes opened I regurgitated the truth and cursed my will. It was a gradual turn from despair to resolve but I turned. I listened to the rhythm of my heartbeat and sang the songs of my home. My breath answered the call of the waves and I learned to keep the pace of the ocean. I taught myself to flee my body when the men came to use it. In time I could dissipate my being and merge with the breeze. I learned from the waves my purpose was of the highest order.

I was to live. It became clear to me my life was valued by the unknowable unnameable force that is the Divine. I began to see things. A new race of people not of my homeland nor of the land on which they lived. They were a people unto themselves a blending of the best of all of it. They would unshackle us all. They would transform themselves a million times over until one day they would remember they are the transformers. I saw them creating a new humanity right in the midst of chaos and madness.

I knew my lineage was necessary to create The Ones.

My husband’s voice brought me back to present and I looked around dazed and confused. My eyes landed on the little girl in the picture he was speaking about. “She looks like Caitlyn,” he said. Caitlyn is our granddaughter.

Look at the pictures. You tell me.