The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 27, 2020

« < » > Table of Contents

Yesterday, Mateo called his parents and asked that they be in Las Vegas in one year’s time. He spent the rest of the day with his aunt, exploring the city with what little money they had. They got to know each other a little better. She didn’t know where his birth father was, but she suspected that he too was some kind of traveler, and that he was completely out of control of it. It made him feel better to know that the reason Mario wasn’t in his life might be a pretty damn good one. Mateo and Daria gave each other a hug just before midnight. “Oh, dry mouth,” she said. They were departing at the same time. Once he jumped back into the timestream, he walked to the agreed upon motel and knocked on the door. His father, Randall sighed. “Well, we got a vacation out of this.”

He could see his mother, Carol packing behind him. “But it’s time that we leave. If we don’t get back to Topeka in 24 hours, you could be stuck in the middle of nowhere.”

“I wouldn’t want you to have to go through this again. I’m so sorry, mom and dad.”

“Don’t be,” Randall said. “It’s given me an idea. We’ll test it out later.”

Despite the fact that the route was an hour longer, they drove through Arizona and New Mexico to get back to Kansas. They had always had a rule about Utah; in that it was off limits on principle. Ever since Colorado legalized marijuana, it was kept in the same category. They called these locations “loci non grata”. In only a few years, these policies would become impractical, as more and more states were following Colorado’s lead.

Almost exactly halfway into their trip, they were passing through Las Vegas, New Mexico when the car began to smoke. “No, no, no!” Randall cried. There was a loud tapping sound as the old vehicle slowly decelerated to a complete stop. He tried the key, but it wouldn’t turn over.

“Honey, it’s smoking. You can’t drive a smoking car, even if you get it started.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about cars!”

“I think it’s the radiator,” Mateo jumped in. “In movies, they pee on it.”

Randall turned around and gave him the stink eye. “That’s only when they don’t have water.”

“You are not going to spray water all over the engine, not having any clue what you’re doing. We’ll call a tow truck. I don’t even know why you don’t drive an electric car like everyone else.”

Randall ignored her. “Okay, Google...”

“Yes?” came a comforting voice from the aether.

“Would you please send us a tow truck?”

“It’s already on its way. I could also retask a nearby drone to assess the vehicle’s condition before the truck gets here,” the computer suggested.

“That would be great, thanks,” Randall answered.

“No problem, Randall the Man.”

“Randall the Man?” Mateo asked.

“She and I are really close,” his father explained.

Moments later, they could hear a soft buzzing sound, coming from the distance and growing closer. A small drone appeared from the trees and greeted them. Randall stepped out of the truck and lifted the hood. Mateo watched as the drone zipped back and forth, scanning the system and analyzing the data. It even checked the undercarriage. Once it was done, it hovered in front of Randall’s face. “I have begun orders for two parts that you will need to return your vehicle to working condition. I need your authorization for payment.”

Randall began to lift his hand to the drone but Carol stopped him. “Wait, how long is this going to take?”

“The parts will arrive by long-distance drone late tonight. Your car should be ready tomorrow afternoon,” the drone answered.

“Randall...” Carol started.

He placed his thumb on the drone which responded with, “payment accepted.”

“We need these parts, either way,” Randall told his wife. “We’ll rent a car and come back for the truck next week.”

“Would you like me to send the rental car to this location?” the drone asked.

“Make it the cheapest one you have.”

“The cheapest driverless car, please,” Carol corrected.

“Authorization required.”

Randall placed his thumb on the drone again.

“If you would like,” the drone began, “I could play music while you wait.”

“Classical. Please and thank you.”

While they were waiting for the rental car to arrive, Mateo called Leona to ask how things were going. She was liking her classes, but she was swamped. She was taking more than a full schedule of courses, and just could not skip today to see him. She said that she would be waiting for him at the house when he got back, though. He smiled. He had only known her for a few days, but he liked her quite a bit. She had matured so much since he had met her. His parents were about the same as they always had been, and he hadn’t kept in touch with most of his friends. Seeing the changes a young adult goes through over the years in such a short period of time was phenomenal and bizarre. It was like a four dimensional television series. But even that took longer to experience.

It was exciting to be riding in his first driverless car. The seats were faced towards each other, as there was no need to be at the wheel. Mateo was given the whole back seat where he was able to sleep. When he woke up later, he found his parents to be napping. That was just awesome. Why his father refused to move with the times and own one of these himself was something he didn’t understand. They would later tell him that the concept of owning one’s own car was going out of style anyway. Many people preferred to inform an app on their phone that they were in need of getting to a location, and a car would just come get them. If the prospect wasn’t rendered meaningless by his condition, Mateo wasn’t sure he would like that. The freedom of having his own possessions made too much sense to him.

Even with their delays, they got back to the safety of their home by midnight. Leona was cooking them a midnight snack of buttered noodles. His favorite. Mateo was brushing his teeth when he remembered what his father had said earlier. He went back downstairs. “You said you wanted to try something.”

He looked at his watch. “Oh, yeah. It’s almost time.”

“What is it?”

“Say goodbye to your mother and your...Leona.”

After that was done, it was nearly time. Randall timed it out, then held his son in a tight embrace. “I’m going to try to hold you down. If that doesn’t work, maybe I’ll get to go with you.”

“I don’t think that’s going to work,” Mateo said.

“It worked with you and your aunt,” Leona said.

“It just doesn’t...” he tried to find the words. “It doesn’t feel the same. When I jumped to Vegas with her, it felt much different than my jumps. It was...more forceful, more jarring.”

“Well I’m going to try it,” Randall said. “If it doesn’t work, then fine. What’s the worse that could happen?”

A year later, Mateo learned the answer to that question. His father had succeeded in neither keeping him from jumping, nor jumping with him. He had, however, suffered a heart attack, and died.

« < » > Table of Contents

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 26, 2019

« < » > Table of Contents

Mateo gently removed his face from Leona’s. She gave him her best evil smile. Then she turned around and grabbed an infant from Carol’s arms. “Mateo Matic, say hello to your son, Theo.”

“What!?”

“I’m kidding,” she laughed. “He’s my baby brother. Half-brother.”

Carol pursed her lips. “Wasn’t funny when you told us you were going to do that joke, and it isn’t funny now that you’ve actually done it.”

Leona handed Theo to Mateo. “Funny from this side. How was your trip, honey?”

“Instant,” Mateo replied. “Theo does sound like he’s named after me.” He lifted the baby’s hand with his finger and shook it politely. “Little odd.”

She took Theo back. “It’s a family name. Er...well, not really. But my dad says he was incapable of naming him anything else; like it was already his name, and we were just discovering that fact.”

Everyone went to bed. Leona’s father and stepmother were on a vacation, so Carol and Randall were taking care of little Theo. He was technically Leona’s responsibility but she, of course, had classes to worry about. They were more than willing to pick up the slack, having felt a deficit since the onset of Mateo’s condition. Frida’s father passed not long after Mateo’s last departure. He lived long enough to see Frida’s engagement to her now-husband, but not long enough to be there for the wedding. Kyle was better than ever, and had all but moved on with his life. He was back to being a lawyer, and was rumored to be a far more genuine one than before.

Upon waking, Mateo snuck out of the house again. He needed some alone time. It was selfish of him, but he had just spent the last several days dealing with all this. It was true that he would be completely alone in only a few weeks when everyone would be dead, but he couldn’t help it. He and his friends liked to hang out at the large cemetery on the edge of town, but there was a smaller one in the middle of nowhere that only he knew of. That was his secret hiding place. There, he could find some of the oldest graves he had ever seen. There were those who had died in the early 19th century. It was peaceful and calm, and not just metaphorically. It was literally calm. Something about the formation of the trees, or maybe by divine choice, made the air milder than just outside of its borders. When it was cold outside, the secret cemetery would be warmer, and during the summer heat, it would be cooler.

He leaned up against a headstone and began to pray with his birth mother’s rosary. “Sorry to disturb you,” came a voice from the side. He opened his eyes and saw a middle-aged woman dressed in two coats. It was much too warm for that. She took the first one off and stuffed it in a bag. “Could you tell me where I am?” She removed a bottle of water from her bag and took a long drink from it.

“I don’t think there’s a name for this graveyard,” Mateo answered.

“No, I mean...I mean the city,” she clarified.

That was an odd question, but she was dressed in more layers than necessary. She must have been a nomad. “We’re a few miles Southwest of Sherwood Lake. In Topeka, Kansas.”

“Oh, wow,” she said. “That’s not far from home.”

“Where do you live?”

“Kansas City. I don’t suppose you were driving that way.”

“I wasn’t.” She was deeply saddened, clearly having been far from home for a long time. He had selfishly left his family at home and come to cemetery to pray. This was a sign. It was a very Catholic sign. She needed help, and he was the only one around. The chances that she would be here at this special place during the one day of the year that he was in the timestream were too low. She needed to get to Kansas City, so he was going to take her there. “But I am now.”

They stepped into the truck and headed out. She introduced herself as Daria. When he introduced himself with his full name, she laughed. “Are you joking?”

“No, why?”

“That’s my name too,” she claimed. “I’m Daria Matic.”

“Ah, well. It’s my birth father’s name. I never met him.”

She sat in silence for a good long while. At a glance, it looked like she was working something out in her head. “His first name wouldn’t happen to be Mario, would it?”

He freaked out, and his first instinct was to stop the car. But he remained calm, and kept driving. There were very few things that Mateo knew about his father. One was his first name, one was his last name, and the other was that he hated pickles. That’s all his birth mother had ever said. In fact, the third one had slipped out in the middle of dinner once, and she treated it like a matter of national security; like she had just committed treason. He tried looking for him, only for intellectual reasons, but he could find no trail. Mario Matic was a ghost. “Oh, my God. Are we related?”

“Looks like it. Are you a traveler?” she asked. She emphasized the word in a way that made it seem like she wasn’t just talking about a person who goes to other places. Traveler was a category. It was a species.

This time, he did stop the car. “On my 28th birthday, I traveled forward in time exactly one year. I get one day every year, and then I’m forced to move on. My girlfriend...I mean, my friend calls it a timeslip.”

“Oh, interesting,” Daria said thoughtfully.

“Do you do that too?” he asked, not sure what answer he was looking for.

“I’ve never heard of any time travel. I’m a teleporter. Like you, I can’t control it. But there doesn’t appear to be a pattern. When I start having dry mouth, I have a few minutes to gather my things, and then I’m gone.”

“I don’t get dry mouth. I get really tired before it happens, but it’s always at midnight anyway, so I don’t know if that’s part of it.”

“Yeah, I call that my indicator. Speaking of which, I’m really thirsty.”

“Well, we can stop somewhere. Oh...” He realized what she meant. She was about to leave again. “We’re not done with our conversation!”

She rummaged through her bag to make sure she had everything she needed. “I am certain that we will see each other again. These journeys are controlled by someone, and they know we didn’t have enough time. That was surely done on purpose. But I have to get out of here. If someone is too close to me, I risk bringing them along. It’s not uncommon for me to end up in Antarctica.” She tried to open the door.

“Oh, it gets stuck,” he apologized. “You have to—just...here.” He leaned over to get it for her.

“No!” she screamed, but it was too late. They disappeared.

They were still in a sitting position when they teleported out, so they fell to the concrete upon arrival. “Had a little too much to drink?” a stranger asked jokingly as he passed by with his friends. Mateo got to his feet and looked up to where he could see the Eiffel Tower. “Heavenly father, we’re in Paris,” he exclaimed.

“No,” Daria said. She moved his head over so that he could see the Arc de Triomphe. Those two landmarks were not that close together. And they weren’t that small. No, they weren’t in Paris. They were Vegas. Either way, he wouldn’t get back to his family for another year, at least.

« < » > Table of Contents

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 25, 2018

« < » > Table of Contents

Mateo fell asleep again after catching up with his parents. A lot had happened over the course of the year. They continued to make up stories about his adventures overseas. He had reportedly spent the bulk of his time in Africa, but had recently begun work in Central Asia. Kyle was released from the facility, but still received some care, and was not at 100%. Frida started a relationship with a man she met at Veterans Affairs. He was particularly helpful with providing her father with the medications and services that he needed. They didn’t think he would live to see Christmas, though.

In the morning, Mateo sent Frida a text message, asking for Leona’s address. He snuck out of the house to speak to her. His parents wanted to figure out what they were going to do about it together. She had been unrealistically receptive to their lies that he hadn’t really disappeared; that she had been dreaming, or even hallucinating. He didn’t know her at all, but something told him that she was faking her acceptance. He just didn’t know what she was planning to do with such information. She lived in the dorms of a college that was only about an hour away, having graduated from high school a semester early. His car had been repossessed by the bank during his first disappearance, so he stole his father’s truck and drove off.

“I’ve been expecting you,” she said after opening the door. “My roommate is in class. We have plenty of time to talk.”

“What do you think you know?”

“I may be bad at math, but I can do simple arithmetic,” she explained. “You disappeared one day, and were reported back a year later. Then you weren’t seen for another year. And then another. And then one year ago I saw you pop out of existence in your living room. I’ve done my research. That’s called timeslipping. It’s when you travel through time but don’t use some kind of machine or device, and have no control of it. The fact that you return exactly one year later suggests either a superior intelligence, or this weak theory I have regarding the Earth’s revolution around the sun. Despite the solar year being one of our primary sources of mapping out and making sense of the cosmos, it has very little to do with the organization of the universe as a whole. The fact is that the most likely culprit responsible for your condition is an unfathomable entity, like God.”

“Wow. When you say you’ve done your research, you’re not lying.”

“You’re the reason I’m taking both physics and a religious studies course for my first semester.”

“You don’t have to do any of this, Leona. This isn’t your concern.”

“It’s going to take...” she started to say, “well, it’s going to take four days, but I will figure out how to explain this. I may not be able to stop it, but we will at least understand the physics.”

“Leona...”

“And in only three days, I won’t be too young for you, and you’ll be able to stop looking at me like a lost puppy dog.”

“But you just said it. Three days. This has been plaguing my parents for years, but it hasn’t even been a week for me. I don’t even know your last name.”

“It’s Delaney.”

“Right. That’s all I needed. Crash course on Leona Delaney. Now I tell you all my secrets, and let you waste four years of your life getting a degree in a field you’re not actually interested in.”

“I’ll study physics and philosophy if I want to. And you can do literally nothing about it.”

“We’ll never be together. And I think you know that. You may even like it. Being a hung up on a guy you can only see once a year. Pretty romantic. Like a fairytale. It ends only with your death. Don’t let yourself be alone when that happens.”

“If anyone else had said something like that to me, I would kick them out of my room. But I have 365 days to get over it, and only a few hours to see you. I’m not going to waste what little time we have. I don’t care how you feel about me, and I can’t help how I feel. Hell, you may wake up tomorrow and find me married to someone else. So what does it matter to you what I do now? You have an unavoidably distorted perspective of the world.”

He had no response.

“Great,” she continued. You wanna get some breakfast? I’ll tell you about how the apes have taken over the world, and how sea otters can talk now.” They spent the rest of the morning getting to know each other. It could have been incredibly awkward, but it wasn’t. She was refreshingly easy to talk to, and it was certainly a relief to have an open conversation with someone other than his parents. She talked about what the current president was doing, the latest celebrity nonsense, and the subtle advances in technology. Automated vehicles were gaining some heavy ground, with legislation already passed in the majority of states, allowing some level of hands-free driving.

Randall and Carol were not happy with his decision to handle the “problem of Leona” on his own. But they were most upset about losing half a day with him. They had a late lunch together, and invited Frida and her boyfriend over for dinner and games. It was a well-deserved break from all the drama. By having those two there, they were forced to pretend like their lives were perfectly normal. No timeslipping talk at the table.

Leona came over just after eleven o’clock and assured them of her kindhearted intentions. They had a late-night snack of ice cream, and stayed up talking until 11:58. They then hugged and said their goodbyes. Just before the strike of midnight, Leona planted a passionate kiss on Mateo’s lips. He was gone before he could react. One year later, he jumped back into the time stream, only to be quickly overwhelmed by a second kiss from her. Sneaky snake.

« < » > Table of Contents

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 24, 2017

« < » > Table of Contents

While Mateo was slipping time for a year, the girl who had thrown up on him at the hospital managed to track him down. She arrived at his house with an apology casserole. For more than one reason, she was disappointed about not being able to speak with Mateo directly, but Carol managed to comfort her and relieve her of all guilt. For the first year that Mateo skipped, he was officially declared missing. For the following years, his parents had to claim that he was building schools and clinics in developing countries. They had to fudge his tax forms. The authorities were suspicious of this, but eventually let things go. There were witnesses at the hospital, so that helped to close the investigation. Unfortunately, their lie could blow up in their faces at any moment, and he would have no way of being around to help them.

The people who had been with him in the cemetery for his first jump had been the most freaked out about it. He spent his one day in 2017 going around to all of his friends to assuage their anxiety over the matter, proving to them that he was alive and well. Obviously, he had to exaggerate the part about being well. Kyle, the lawyer who had been looking directly at him during the initial jump had ended up in a mental institution. Mateo’s reappearance to him didn’t help anything at first. He became worse, assuming him to be a hallucination sent to torment him. Over time during the visit, however, things were able to get better. He even let Mateo hold him tightly and sing him his favorite classic rock songs. Kyle was kind of a jerk in his old life, and an apparently smarmy defense attorney, but he didn’t deserve this. Afterwards, Mateo took some time alone in the chapel, and prayed for him with his birth mother’s rosary.

He had always believed in God, and possibly even more so since the timeslipping problem started, but he had never prayed before. He didn’t like the idea of asking God for any more than he had already been given in life. But he wasn’t so much praying for God to help. It was more about asking for forgiveness. Even though he was not in control of the timeslips—at least not consciously—he felt responsible for the problems they had caused the people around him. At some point, he might even have to fake his own death. On the other hand, if he keeps going at this rate, he’ll quickly outlive everyone he knows by centuries.

His last stop was at his parents’ neighbor’s house. One of the girls from the cemetery, Frida lived there. She had moved back in with her parents to take care of her ailing mother who passed two years ago. She was now taking care of her father, and he wasn’t looking very good. When she opened the door, Mateo could see the teeneager from the hospital behind her. Evidently, Frida and Leona met in the front yard last year when she came by with the apology casserole. They soon became friends, bonding over having both lost their mothers. Frida was also her mentor, helping with math and college applications.

Frida was in the middle of a conversation and hadn’t seen anything at the cemetery that night, so she wasn’t as traumatized as some of the others. In the following months, she had been there for his parents, providing a shoulder to cry on when she wasn’t busy with her own family issues. She had always been kind and accommodating to others, even as a child. She didn’t let other kids push her around, but she never felt the need to win an argument or prove herself. She and Mateo dated for several weeks in high school but ultimately decided they were better as friends.

He tried to shake hands with Leona, but she seemed to be incredibly shy around him. When she left for the bathroom, Frida informed him that she had developed a crush on him. They talked about him probably a little too much, and the (made up) stories his parents told about the amazingly noble things he was doing for the kids in developing countries was doing nothing to change her feelings. He had a fleeting thought while Frida was explaining the situation. In only a few days from his perspective, Leona would no longer be too young for him. A handful of days after that, she would be too old for him. Not too much later, she would be dead. They would all be dead. Everyone would be dead by the time he had a hankering for Chinese food again.

Mateo shuddered and ran back home. He wept and complained in his parents’ arms until he fell asleep on the couch. It was nearly midnight before he awoke again. He jumped up, worried that they wouldn’t get to see him one last time. But they were sitting across from him in anticipation. “I’m so sorry,” he cried.

“We will be here when you return.” And they were. Exactly there. Midnight struck. Mateo jumped forward in time while looking at his parents. They were sitting in the same places as before, even wearing the same clothes, giving him hope that he hadn’t actually jumped this time. But no. They weren’t in the exact same position as before. And they even looked a little older. “Welcome back,” Carol was finally able to say to her son.

“Bit of a problem,” Randall said. “That girl, Leona saw you through the window last year.”

« < » > Table of Contents

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 23, 2016

« < » > Table of Contents

The time jump caused Mateo Matic to wake up. He heard footsteps running up the stairs. His father, Randall burst into the room. “Oh, thank God you’re back.”

“Has it been another year?”

His mother, Carol appeared in the doorway. “It has. This is not going to stop on its own. We already have an appointment set up for you. I don’t want to spend what little time we may have together at the hospital, but—”

“I know it has to be done,” Mateo interrupted. “We’ll have all the time in the world if we can figure out how to stop it.”

The appointment wasn’t until eleven in the morning. So after eating fourth meal, Mateo went up to the attic to look through some of the family belongings passed down through generations. He sat up there for hours, combing through everything he could find that had anything to do with his biological family tree. Most of the journal entries were mundane, and it wasn’t like his family kept records of absolutely everything they did. He had just gotten to a journal written in the mid-19th century by his great great great great grandmother when Carol called him down for the appointment. He stalled her, needing to learn more. The journal talked about when she first met her husband. He had appeared out of nowhere one day, dressed in outdated attire. Carol called him again, and he was forced to put the journal away for another time; perhaps for an entire year.

He spent the rest of the day undergoing medical tests. They drew blood, put him in machines, and asked him a lot of questions. Of course, he couldn’t reveal to them why these tests were so desperately needed. In the end, there was no conclusion. None of the preliminary results showed anything abnormal. It would be a couple weeks before they had all the information, which meant that his parents wouldn’t be able to discuss it with him for a year.

He was sitting in the waiting room for urgent care while his parents confided in a family friend who was a nurse in that department. A teenager came in with her father. He set her down in a chair across from Mateo. “Sit here while I check you in. Maybe you won’t drink after tonight.” The girl looked completely miserable. She was holding a plastic grocery sack, clearly filled with vomit. She was dry heaving and moving her head up and down, trying to find a comfortable position that didn’t exist. She wasn’t crying, but her eyes were teared up, probably from the strain.

“First time?” Mateo asked.

She massaged her forehead. “No, but he was right. It’s probably my last. I think a guy put something—” She couldn’t finish the sentence. Vomit rolled out of her mouth and into the bag. On the other side of the room, a guy vomited into his own bucket, as if it were a response to her. Illness was trending. As the girl tried to cough up more, the bag slipped from her grip and fell to the floor, spilling its contents. She instinctively pulled her head away from it. “Oh my God!” Before she could do anything else, though, more came up suddenly, much of it landing in Mateo’s lap. She just stared at him in horror, having no idea what she could say to him. After several days, and many years, it would turn out to be their meet-cute.

« < » > Table of Contents

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 21, 2014 & March 22, 2015

« < » > Table of Contents

Mateo Matic walked downstairs to find the living room packed full of people. Just about everyone he was still in contact with was there for his birthday, and a few old faces. It was completely ridiculous, and he loved it. His family and friends were the most important thing to him, and only one of them was missing. When he was only seven years old, his birth mother disappeared with no trace. She had never been the one to raise him, but she had been part of the family the entire time. His adoptive parents maintained a healthy relationship with her, and she was able to see him whenever she wanted. It was unclear where she had gone, or why she hadn't told him, at the very least. There was no evidence of foul play. There was evidence of nothing. The Gelens had been good to him, though, and he was grateful for his life. Except for the one thing, he couldn't imagine anything changing. Unfortunately, fate had other plans.

The party was spectacular, but it was lasting a little too long. He was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed. The guests started filing out at around five o'clock so that he could have a quiet dinner with his parents. They ate a delicious and healthy salmon meal and exchanged gifts. For most families, gifts were given to only the one in celebration, but his was different. For all three birthdays, each of them would find something to give the other two. They weren't the richest people in the world, but they felt they had everything they needed. The gifts were usually small and thoughtful. He made his adoptive mother, Carol a necklace out of seashells, a callback to a similar one he had given her twenty years before. He bought his father, Randall a new pack of razors. They had a nice laugh about that one. Carol had gotten him the same thing. He playfully threw up his arms and conceded. He would finally clean himself back up. Ever since his retirement, he had let loose, but was willing to go back on that one thing.

Randall gave his wife a self-help book about how to make decisions that she had been trying to decide if she wanted. After those were done, Randall made an announcement. In lieu of a traditional gift, the two of them had decided for set up a bank account for him. It was a long-term investment, designed to help support his future children. All that money stuff went over his head, but he was speechless. He gave them both a big hug. “This is the best birthday ever. Ya know...except for my seventh.” They smiled and nodded.

“Okay,” Carol said. I know we decided the account was our only gift, but I couldn't help it.”

“Carol, what did you do?” Randall asked, but it was obvious he knew what second gift she had chosen.

She pulled a metal rosary bracelet out of her pocket. The beads were in the shape of shells. At the bottom was an oval; one side of which showed an image of the Virgin Mary, while the other had an image of Jesus. An eleventh bead connected that to a depiction of the crucifixion. “This was your birth mother’s. You know, she was far more religious that we are. She was always leaving trinkets at our house, subtly trying to get us to go to church more often. This was the last one before she went missing. I don't know why I didn't give it to you right away. I suppose I just wanted my own reminder of her. But it’s time that you have it. You are my reminder of her.”

That was the last time Carol Gelen would see her son for an entire year. After dinner, Mateo left the house to hang out with his old friends. When they were underaged, they would gather at a graveyard on the edge of town, and drink. They wouldn't ever get too rambunctious, but it was just nice to be away from the adults; away from judgment. They had grown up and grown out of it by now, but they went back to reminisce.

He was enjoying a beer with a lime stuck in it when a friend from college slithered up to him and snatched the bottle out of his hand. “It’s almost midnight.”

“So, I'm not allowed to drink anymore?” Mateo asked.

“Nope. The birthday boy is designated driver on the day after his birthday.”

Mateo took his beer back. “Your jokes aren't even funny, because they have absolutely no basis. I swear, man. You need to stick to data entry.”

“I'm a lawy—”

Mateo didn't hear his friend’s last statement. For no reason, his beer shattered into a hundred pieces. “What the hell?” He looked around. He was alone. There were a dozen other people with him a second ago, but they were all gone. “Hello?” No one answered. “As far as pranks go, this was pretty impressive. I haven't had that much to drink. How did you disappear so quickly?”

“Hello” came a voice from behind. Mateo turned around and found himself blinded by a flashlight. “Is that you, Mateo?” It was Mr. Halifax, the gravedigger. He had been letting them use the cemetery since the beginning as long as no one got hurt, everyone got home safe, and they kept the grounds clean.

“Yeah, do you know where everyone went?”

He released a disappointed sigh. “Come on. I'll drive you home. Your parents will want to know you’ve come back.”

They didn't talk on the way back. Mateo tried to ask what the problem was, but Halifax just kept saying that it wasn't his place, and he wasn't no psychologist. Carol gave him a big hug and broke down crying when they opened the door. Randall was behind her, crying as well. After some time, he was able to get answers out of them. He had been gone for exactly one year. He had disappeared without a trace, just like his mother before him.

“It’s happened before that too,” Randall started to explain hours later, after everything had calmed down a little. “Your family have been keeping diaries, claiming that an ancestor of theirs was from the past, and had been travelling forward in time, meeting and interacting with them long after he should have died. During one of these times, he apparently fathered a child, starting a family that was always paranoid about it happening to them as well.”

“But it never did,” Carol continued. “Not until your mother. Of course, even after her disappearance, we didn't believe the outrageous rumors that time travel had anything to do with it. But if you say you were in the cemetery in 2014, and suddenly you're here, I don't know what to believe. Maybe it’s all true.”

“But I came back,” Mateo complained. “If I’m here, where is my mom?”

Randall shook his head. “We don't know, son. I promise you, though, we are going to figure this out. We are not going to lose you again.”

But they did lose him again. At the strike of midnight that night, Mateo disappeared for the second time. It was March 23rd, 2016.

« < » > Table of Contents