Angela Marie Walton was born in 1784 to a wealthy slaveowner. He wasn’t the
cruelest person in the world, but he did own people, and that was wrong in
every time period. Angela grew up fascinated by the black people who worked
for the family. She liked to watch them, not to remind herself that she was
superior, but also not because she felt that they should be treated as
equals. She was indoctrinated into the world she lived in, and she had
trouble fathoming any world beyond it. She had somewhat contradictory
feelings on the matter. It was wrong how African people were taken from
their homes, and forced to live somewhere else. But the slaves her father
owned today were not Africans. They only knew this country, so they ought to
stay. They deserved to be treated well, but they were uneducated, and
perhaps they could never be taught to be civilized, so at least this gave
them a purpose. They had a roof over their heads, and food to eat, and she
rationalized that there was little difference between that, and a freeman
who had to work for a living. They weren’t getting paid in coin, but in
living resources, so maybe that was good enough.
As Angela grew older, her contradictions started slipping away. She stopped
seeing the good in the system, and started focusing more on how broken it
was. Life was about choice, and these slaves were fundamentally not given a
choice. The fact that they were born into this was not their fault, their
lack of education was not their fault; nothing was their fault. She slowly
became an abolitionist. But there was a problem. She was still a woman; a
girl, actually, and her opinion mattered very little. If she spoke out
against the injustices, she could lose everything. What she needed to do was
find a husband who felt the same way. She did, in a man named Ed Bolton. He
was more outspoken about his sentiments, and she admired him for that. In
1809, she began a courtship, of course, against her fathers wishes. But it
didn’t matter, because once she was married, she wouldn’t have to worry
about what her father thought, or how he felt. Ed wasn’t the richest man she
knew, but he made a decent living, and he would be good to her.
Unfortunately, they never made it to their wedding day. On September 9 of
that year, Ed Bolton disappeared from his home, and wasn’t seen again for
two years.
In the meantime, Angela lost what few privileges she had, and was forced to
marry another man. This man was far more cruel to his slaves, and he firmly
believed in their inferiority. Angela’s father didn’t even like him all that
much, but he felt betrayed by his daughter for the whole Ed Bolton thing,
and vindictive towards her, so her husband was her punishment. Her husband
was as abusive to Angela as he was to the other humans he owned, and it all
came to a head in 1816, when he dealt her a fatal blow. Ed Bolton was
returned to the timestream when it happened, and tried to save her, but was
unable. Angela’s husband took this as an opportunity to frame Ed for the
crime, and when the latter resurfaced yet again five years later, the law
swiftly intervened. He disappeared after three weeks, but the true killer
was never caught, and Angela was still dead. Fortunately for her, there was
life after death, and she spent the next three centuries making up for her
past sins, until she was finally promoted to Counselor. Then it ended, when
she tried to counsel a group of other time travelers, and it prompted a
major demotion.
Over two hundred years after Angela’s death, new life was coming into the
world. A woman of unknown identity was giving birth to a baby boy,
completely alone. Down the hall, a man named Lowell Benton was killing
someone else. The victim had done nothing to Lowell personally, but Lowell
had a power. He could see people’s sins. Or rather, he always saw their
sins. Whenever he looked at someone, the worst thing they did in their past
flashed before his eyes. If he looked at them a second time, the second
worst thing they did flashed. The cycle would continue ad nauseum, and the
strain from this drove him crazy. It drove him towards murder, because dead
bodies didn’t ever show him any visions. Funny he didn’t seem to get the
idea to just go live out in the woods somewhere, and avoid people. He
decided that being a vigilante was his only option. When he heard the
screams of the mother after finishing his last jobs, he became curious. It
sounded like she was in pain, but it didn’t sound like someone was
purposefully hurting her. He quickly picked her lock, and broke in to find
her alone, on the floor, with some towels. The baby was coming, and there
was no time to get her to a medical facility. The most surprising thing was
that she wasn’t giving him any visions. His theory was that the baby had
never sinned, so it was sort of interfering with the signal, but the truth
was that being in labor forced her to think of nothing but the pain, and
whatever her sins were, they were buried so deep that Lowell couldn’t get to
them.
By now, he was used to gross things, and of course, death. With nothing
better to do with his night, he knelt down, and helped deliver that baby.
And when the mother died by whatever specific cause, he didn’t bother to
contact the authorities. He just stood up, and washed his hands. But the
baby kept crying, and it was starting to get on Lowell’s nerves. He was
about to leave when he caught one more glance of the infant, and felt a
calm. He had also never thought to surround himself with babies before, who
were the only living humans on the planet without sin. They could give him
peace. So he picked up the child, and took it with him on the road. He never
did call anyone about the dead mother, so by the time the autopsy confirmed
she had died while giving birth, Lowell and the child were so far away, that
no one could have made a connection between the two. He spent a week with
that baby before growing bored with him. Sure, he was a calming presence,
but he would start sinning eventually, and Lowell didn’t want to have to
kill him for it. Besides, there were plenty of targets that actually did
need killing, and running around with a child was obstructing that cause. He
happened to be in Kansas City at the time, so he dropped the kid off at the
nearest fire station, and moved on with his life with barely a second
thought. The firefighters, meanwhile, named their new charge Jeremy Bearimy.
“Wow, you know a lot about me,” Lowell said. “Every time you talked about
Ed, though, you gestured towards this woman right here.”
“I’m Ed,” Téa explained. “I died and was reincarnated as a girl.”
“Oh,” Lowell said. “Gotcha. Except, why would I rescue this Jeremy Bearimy
fellow?”
“Weren’t you listening?” Mateo questioned. “He’s the kid you delivered back
in 2018.”
“Yeah, so I saved him once. Why do I need to do it again?”
“Yeah,” Mateo realized, “why does he? Why do we need him?”
“You need a team,” Jupiter replied. “This is the one I’ve chosen for you.
You’re primary objective is Leona. Once Missy returns from The Fourth
Quadrant next year, hers will be Sanaa, Téa’s is Angela, and Lowell’s is
J.B.”
“J.B.?” Lowell questioned. “He’s doing the initials thing? Nah, I’m not into
that. Jeremy is a fine name, I’ll call him that.”
Jupiter stared at him a moment. “That’s between you and him, I don’t give a
shit.”
“Who’s the fifth person?”
“That is your first mission,” Jupiter answered. “Trinity is the new team
member who corresponds to Ellie. The problem is, I’m not sure where she is.
I figured she would be on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida—”
“Thayla-whatnow?” Lowell interrupted.
Jupiter sighed loudly. “Your first mission is to locate her, and bring her
into the fold.” He pointed to their wrists. “You’re limited as to when and
where you can do that, though.”
“Wait, what do these things do?” Lowell was an interesting character. He was
a bad dude, of course, and he questioned everything anyone asked of him, but
he didn’t seem antipathetic to these requests. He both wanted all the
information, and didn’t care what those answers were. Nothing was going to
stop him from helping, not because he was altruistic, but because he wasn’t
doing anything else right now.
“I’ll let Mateo explain. He’s your leader, by the way. He reports to me, but
you report to him, and if he tells you to do something, you better do it.”
“Or what?”
Jupiter lifted his primary Cassidy cuff; the one in control of all the
others. “Or I’ll switch off your time power dampener, and force you to watch
all of my sins. You think the people you’ve killed were bad, you haven’t
seen evil like mine.”
Now Lowell shut his mouth, and took a quarter step back.
Jupiter went on, “you are all on Mateo’s original pattern right now. I want
him to be on the Bearimy-Matic pattern, however. Fortunately for you,
through a loophole, those two components coincide with each other right now.
The issue is that this loophole ends in less than three weeks. You have that
long to find Trinity, figure out how to break into Tamerlane Pryce’s
afterlife simulation, and get at least J.B. out, so he can rejoin the team.
Lowell, there are only eleven cuffs total, which means you will be giving
yours to him. That’s your motivation. If you fail, you’ll be stuck like this
forever. Everyone understand what is expected of you?”
“Yes,” they all replied in perfect unison.
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