Microstory 1259: Tasha Rutherford

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Catalina Lenz was born and raised in Wyoming, but she wanted a change of pace after college, so she literally spun a globe, and decided to move wherever her finger landed. She immediately realized she didn’t want to live in another country, or the middle of the ocean, so she had to spin a couple dozen more times before finally landing on Kansas City. She would come to regret not trying for one more spin, or for giving Western Australia a shot. Not long after she moved, she got herself mixed up with the street gangs, particularly a high ranking member of the Business Ends, which once controlled a lot of Downtown KC MO. His anger and desire for violence increased proportionately to the drop in power he and his men had over the city. Another gang was taking over, and he took his frustrations out on Catalina. But she stayed, because she had spent almost every dime she had to travel across four states, and hadn’t ever found a way to support herself. Then she learned she was pregnant, and everything changed. Now there was this other person who couldn’t survive without her. She knew she had to get out to protect her daughter. If only she had realized that someone had already come up with a protocol for this, the plan would have gone much smoother. There was only one person she knew she could trust, but he had already done so much for her, and she didn’t want to burden him, or place him in danger. She snuck out on her own, and made her way to a little village in Illinois called Makanda. That wasn’t where she was trying to get to, but she felt it was safer to stay out of the big cities, which had more security cameras, and she could only travel so far in one go. This was where her ex-boyfriend’s lieutenant caught up with her, but also where she met some really nice people who had a way to help.

They ended up contacting the man who would have been able to help her back in Kansas City had she known anything about him. His real name was Duane Blackwood, but his nickname was The Forger. He was able to provide Catalina and her baby with new identifies, transforming them into Tasha and Sabine Rutherford. This was more than just just a few slips of paper, and a convincing passport. Duane had the ability to send data, and sometimes memories, through time. Birth certificates, hospital records, report cards, parking tickets, job applications, ID cards, even tourism photos; all these and more were believably sprinkled throughout history so that Tasha Rutherford was an undeniably real person, with a true background. The Forger also provided her with a little bit of seed money, so she could get her start somewhere else. Not wanting to make the same mistake twice, she ended up choosing to live in Perth, Australia, and loved it there. She kept a low profile, but her granddaughter certainly did not. In the future, most diseases were eradicated, but some were trickier than others. Cancer could be essentially suppressed using medical nanotechnology, but that wasn’t really a cure. People who underwent these treatments lived fulfilling lives, no longer actively aware of their condition, but this was still just managing the symptoms. Marcy Rutherford and her team started developing their cure for colorectal cancer in the 2080s, and finished it by 2095. Their efforts proved to be invaluable in research beyond this one form of cancer, as the unique method they used to combat the cancer cells could be adapted, and reapplied to other forms of cancer, and even some other diseases. Thanks to other medical advancements, Tasha lived long enough to see her granddaughter’s amazing accomplishments, and be thankful that she was afforded a rare second chance.