After Sanaa was done sending her time message through the phone using a
fifty-two digit number, Holly Blue appeared. “Boy, am I popular today,” she
said.
“We don’t mean to disturb you,” Mateo said to her.
“Don’t worry about it,” she replied. “Susan knows when my line’s busy. What
can I do for ya? Where’s Leona?”
“She’s back in the main sequence,” Ellie began. “You see—”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Holly Blue interrupted. “I’ve known about the four
concurrent realities this entire time.”
“You have?” Ellie questioned. “Did you not tell anyone about them?”
“Weaver strongly recommended that I keep it a secret,” Holly Blue said,
referring to her alternate timeline counterpart. “What year was it for you
when you left the main sequence?”
“July 6, 2121,” Sanaa answered.
“Ah,” Holly Blue said, “there’s no hurry in getting back in that case. Leona
won’t be returning until July 8.”
“Really? Where is she?” Mateo was worried, but not in a panic.
“Oh, it’s fine. She just had to get to a meeting in the future. Mr. Fury
approved it. Or rather, he doesn’t have much of a choice when it comes to
her and her friends.”
Mateo wasn’t entirely sure what she was talking about, but he would discuss
it with Leona later. They needed to return to the issue at hand. Time was
running out for him to leave the Fourth Quadrant, whether Leona would be
waiting for him or not.
“You seem to have some understanding of our situation here,” Ellie said to
Holly Blue. “Do you know why we called you?”
“I don’t, but give me a second, and I may be able to guess.” Holly Blue
narrowed her eyes, and looked around at everyone, letting her genius-level
intellect fill in the blanks for her. “Based on the people who are here, I
can surmise that Ellie has finally begun to realize her mission to save the
residents of this reality.”
Ellie looked surprised.
“Yes, Miss Underhill,” Holly Blue went on, “I have access to information
from alternate timelines. I know more about you than you care for others to
remember. Don’t worry, I have no interest in divulging any of your secrets.
Judging by the Cassidy cuffs on your wrists, I know that Jupiter did not
fully approve of this mission, but he is allowing it. Or perhaps you
actually need the cuffs, because everyone knows that Ariadna doesn’t use her
powers herself.”
“Does everyone know what I can do?” Ariadna questioned, upset.
“Just everyone in this room,” Holly Blue answered. “Since Missy is here,
obviously your plan is to reset the speed of time. It must be pretty
important to you people, or Sanaa would not also be here. Do you guys know
what she did to her?”
Ellie nodded, but everyone else shook their heads.
“Anyway, you called me, because President Orlov needs the energy that the
time discrepancy provides—”
“Wait, you didn’t say anything about me,” Mateo pointed out, but he
regretted it immediately.
“Do you really want me to answer that?”
“No,” Mateo said. He wasn’t there because he served some purpose, or was a
clue to their situation in any way. He was just there because he had to be
somewhere.
“How did I do?” Holly Blue asked the crowd.
“Can you help us?” Missy asked of her. “Can you adapt my ability to make
temporal energy generators?”
“They would be more like a converter,” Holly Blue said, her voice rising in
the end, like it was a question, but it wasn’t, because she was the one who
knew what she was talking about. Then she sighed, and looked between Missy,
and for some reason, Ariadna. “Your ability isn’t good enough,” she finally
explained. “You can create temporal pocket dimensions.” She looked around,
indicating the world in general. “This is a spatio-temporal pocket
dimension. Or. Well. It’s not a pocket anymore, but whatever. My point is
that you can neither create nor control spatial dimensions.” Now she quite
deliberately faced Ariadna. “You, on the other hand...”
“Why does that matter?” Ariadna asked.
“I would need to adapt both of your time powers, and put them together.”
Holly Blue raised her hands in front of her chest, and moved them to lock
her fingers together at medium speed. “Both of you need to be involved in
order for this to work. Otherwise, the bubbles won’t do these people any
good.”
“Why not?” Ellie asked. “We don’t need to access the main sequence anymore.
That’s just what they’re using now, because that’s how this reality was
designed. If we separate from the main sequence, you can just build
something that uses time bubble energy.”
Holly Blue shook her head. “You’re not getting it. The main sequence is
self-sustaining. You’re stealing energy from it. The fact that they’re
moving at different speeds is what powers the grid in this reality, but that
only works because time flow on the other side is in turn powered by natural
entropy. If Missy were to go off and create her own bubbles, they could not
generate any power unless she continued to funnel energy into it from her
end.”
“I’m lost,” Mateo said, “as per yuzhe.”
Holly Blue prepared to clarify herself. “Well, let me make a car analogy.
Why don’t cars have small wind turbines, instead of using gas or batteries?
While the car is driving, the wind flows into the turbine, which spins, and
powers the motor.”
“Well, they’ve tried to build them, and they do exist, but they’re
inefficient, because the turbines create drag, which means there’s more
demand for more wind, and you can’t get over that. The more wind you try to
put into it, the more drag you create, and it never ends.”
“Exactly,” Holly Blue agreed. “For Missy’s bubbles to be used to generate
energy, she has to keep adding energy, which is fine, assuming her power is
infinite, but that’s not what you’re asking me to do. My invention would not
be self-sustaining. You wouldn’t be able to get more energy than what you
put in to power the converters themselves. If you want me to build you
something, it has to extract energy from a separate supply, just like they
do now. Otherwise, you could plug a surge protector into itself, and
have infinite energy for no reason, and without paying into it.”
“Bottom line,” Ellie said, “can it be done?”
“Not without Ariadna. She has to consent to let me study her.”
They all waited patiently for Ariadna’s response. She never wanted to be
involved in any of this, but from Mateo’s perspective, it was a no-brainer.
She had the power to help, and she wasn’t doing anything else with her
abilities, so who could say no? “Well, who could say no to that?” she
revealed after building a little suspense.
Sanaa reached over, and nearly twisted Mateo’s arm off to check Leona’s
watch. “We don’t have long to get out of here, or we’ll be stuck here for a
month. So if this is all you need of us, we’re gonna slip back through.”
“How do we do that?” Mateo questioned. “Ellie needs Ariadna to get us back
to The Parallel, but Holly Blue needs her to stay here, for however long
until she finishes her new invention.”
“I can finish in a month,” Holly Blue said. “My invention can be built and
tested within that time frame. She doesn’t have to stick around for us to
mass produce it.”
“I really would love to see this all end,” Ellie announced.
“I can hang out here for a month. So can you,” Mateo scolded Sanaa.
Sanaa frowned. “Fine. But I want to stay on the opposite side of the city as
her.” She didn’t gesture towards Missy, or even look at her, but she was the
established target of all her hatred.
Holly Blue, Missy, and Ariadna stuck around, so President Orlov could find a
lab for them to work in. She mentioned something about Duke Andrews, but
something in her voice made Mateo worried that she was talking about a dead
person. He, Sanaa, and Ellie followed their own escort to the suburbs, where
they would be allowed to stay until it was time to return to the main
sequence. They were only half surprised to find out that they were assigned
to Fletcher House. Based on how Horace talked about it, a few people were
left untouched when their enemy, Tauno Nyland created this reality. He
copied every single person from Kansas City, and placed them here, except
for him, Serkan, Paige, and maybe some others. The true owner of this house,
Mercury Fletcher, was always assumed to be one of these other exceptions,
but there wasn’t enough data to prove this one way or the other. Until now.
A man stepped out of the house to greet them in the driveway. A presumably
different version of Mercury was at Mateo and Leona’s engagement party, so
even though they didn’t know each other well, Mateo recognized that this was
him.
Ellie shook his hand. “Congressman Fletcher, it is an honor to meet you.”
“Congressman?” Mercury asked, impressed. “It’s nice to know I go places.”
“I figured I ought to call you that, even though it was technically an
alternate version of you who ran for office.”
“Please, just call me Mercury, or Dupe!Mercury. Or hell, even Dupe!Merc.
“Will there be anything else, sir?” the driver asked of him.
“Nah, go on and go home. Make sure your batteries are full, though. I would
like to take these fine folks on a tour of our fair city tomorrow.”
“Very good, sir,” the driver said before leaving.
“We appreciate you letting us stay here,” Mateo said. “You have a lovely
home.”
“Especially the basement,” Mercury agreed. “You each have a room down there.
I don’t need to use it as a secret headquarters anymore.”
At the end of the summer in 2024, Mercury Fletcher sold his house, and
downsized to something more appropriate while he pursued a career in civil
service. Having been outed as the vigilante who was largely responsible for
bringing gun violence statistics in the metropolitan area to nearly zero, he
was lauded as a hero, and became quite popular around the country. Shortly
after he left, a small team of time travelers moved into Fletcher House, and
started using its facilities to save lives in the past. The Fourth Quadrant
was created about a month before any of this, however, so this version of
Mercury was still here.
Holly Blue was finished with her new creation in three weeks, but the window
was not yet ready for them to return to the main sequence, so the stayed for
the rest of the month. Unfortunately, calculations were a little fuzzy, so
it turned out that Ellie was unable to see Missy take down the temporal
bubble. Jupiter stepped in, and pulled everyone with a Cassidy cuff back to
reality, which was July 7, 2122. They quickly jumped forward a year to find
out the plan changed while they were gone. The temporal bubble wasn’t
destroyed, but reversed.
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