Microstory 1741: The Clock

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I hate this clock. It reminds me of the worst years of my life. When I was a child, my foster parents would time everything I did. Homework, chores, umm...well, I guess there isn’t a third thing on that list, because those were the only things I did. I suppose showering isn’t a chore, but that was timed as well. They said they were getting me ready for the real world. Apparently, in their jobs, every task they completed was measured and recorded, and that was how they got paid. I asked them a few times, did they get paid more for more complicated tasks, but they said no. The rate didn’t change at all. The point was to keep track of when they were working, and when they weren’t, such as when they were walking to the location of the next task, or using the restroom. They were expected to be at work for ten hours a day, but they only get paid for their recorded time. They were so proud of themselves. Other workers recorded an average of eight and a half hours of actual work, which meant an hour for lunch, and another half hour for the in between times. My foster parents, however, averaged nine hours and forty-five minutes. They said they organized tasks so that it was easier to switch from one to the other, they literally ran when they had to, and they...well, let’s just say they weren’t too careful when it came to their bathroom breaks. They sometimes saw that as an opportunity, because even though janitorial services weren’t technically in either of their job descriptions, they could still get paid for cleaning the facilities. The word diaper was thrown around once or twice too. They actually acted like I should aspire to be as hard-working as them one day. I never bought into it. I don’t worship the clock.

My parents are dead now. They left this world with nothing, and not just to spite me. They worked so hard in their jobs that the company didn’t want to promote them, and they didn’t want to be promoted either. A promotion would mean a salary, and more freedom than they could have handled. They hated their bosses, who didn’t work hard enough, and focused too much on their personal lives. My parents didn’t have lives of their own. They were too exhausted when they got home that they ate their dinner, read something boring, then went to bed. After I came into their lives, they had to squeeze in a lot of strict overbearing criticism, so they couldn’t read as much anymore. When they were too old to work, since they didn’t have any hobbies, they had absolutely nothing to do. You can ask the professionals what killed them, and they’ll give you a scientific answer, but I contend that they died from the realization that their lives were always pointless. The company where they worked for forty-five years closed shortly before the deaths, because they too were old-fashioned, and ultimately meaningless in a world that moved on without them. So here I am with virtually nothing. My parents were in so much debt that the bank had to repossess nearly everything they owned. Fortunately, it seems to have covered it, so I won’t have to make up the difference. They even managed to leave me with one thing: this damn clock. It represents the futility in work for work’s sake. It spins around in circles, and never goes anywhere. Yeah, I hate this clock, but I also need it. For as much as it pains me to see every day, it’s also a consistent reminder of what I don’t want to be, and how I don’t want to raise my own baby boy, who’s scheduled to make his debut in three months. It shows me that time only means anything when we use it to enjoy doing the things we love, with the people we love.

Dardius: Meliora Rutherford (Part VII)

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Savannah Preston: Hello. I figured it was high time we met. Hi, my name is—

Meliora Rutherford: I know who you are.

Savannah: Are you sure? Because...

Meliora: Yeah, I know. I can see the hat.

Savannah: You can?

Meliora: Listen—wait, what do you want me to call you?

Savannah: Savannah will be fine.

Meliora: Fine. Listen, Savannah, I’m not going to interfere with what you’re doing. You think you’ve seen a lot, and it gives you some sort of entitlement to manipulate the passage of time on a grand scale. But you’re a little baby compared to me, and you haven’t seen past your nursery. I have been all over the bulkverse, and I can tell you that all this...is pointless. You’re going to lose, and you know that, because you’ve seen the future.

Savannah: No future is immutable.

Meliora: That’s not entirely true, and you’re going up against the Matics.

Savannah: So what? They’re not so amazing. Mateo is a dum-dum.

Meliora: He is, and you’re right, they’re not powerful. He’s a salmon, and she’s a spawn with limited abilities. But that’s not really what we’re talking about here. What makes them so special is all their friends. People want to help them, and they do. You can’t beat them, not because they’re better than you, but because no one will let you. My God, Savannah, your own daughters are helping them. Nerakali and Arcadia are powerful, so you should be scared.

Savannah: I’m not worried. When this all comes to its inevitable climax, I can count on Arcadia to betray her new friends, just like she always does, and I can count on Nerakali to break down and go along with it.

Meliora: It’s over, Madam Preston. You have hundemarked everyone on your list, so why are you putting this off?

Savannah: I was hoping to get your help.

Meliora: Why would I help you?

Savannah: All powerful being to all powerful being.

Meliora: ...

Savannah: All right, very powerful being, at the least.

Meliora: What do you want from me?

Savannah: How do you do that thing you do?

Meliora: Are you going to elaborate, or just—I do many things. I really am all powerful.

Savannah: How do you jump to other universes?

Meliora: Very carefully.

Savannah: I’m serious. I want you to teach me.

Meliora: You think you’re done with the work you need to do in this brane, so you’re ready to move on to another?

Savannah: Isn’t that what happened to you?

Meliora: Yes, but I went to those other worlds to help people. And before you start arguing that what you’re doing is a necessary evil, spare me the apology. You know what you’re doing is wrong. The love of your long life died, you flipped out, and corrupted your own life’s mission.

Savannah: You listen to me now, buckaroo billy. I may not be the holy angel saint that you are, but I have my reasons, and I’m not evil. Mercury’s family had to die so he could become the hero his city needs. Mateo had to die so he could return through an extraction mirror with temporal invincibility. My daughter had to die so she could have eight more chances to be a better person.

Meliora: Why didn’t Arcadia earn the same gift?

Savannah: She already became a better person when she stepped onto The Prototype.

Meliora: And your son? Why did he have to die?

Savannah: That wasn’t me.

Meliora: It wasn’t? I thought—

Savannah: That I was the architect of the hundemarke’s entire journey? No. Plenty of people have used it to serve their own agendas.

Meliora: Well, I didn’t know that.

Savannah: Maybe you’re not as all powerful as you thought.

Meliora: That’s how you talk to someone whose help you’re asking for?

Savannah: Will you help? Is there a world where that happens?

Meliora: Well, there is one, yes.

Savannah: You mean...?

Meliora: I can’t teach you how to jump universes. It’s not a skill; it’s just something I can do.

Savannah: I was to understand you spent decades in training for it.

Meliora: I did, but it was always in me. No one else could replicate it. I can help you escape to another world when the time comes, but that will be your home forever, unless someone helps you travel somewhere else.

Savannah: You would do this for me? You would go against your own mother?

Meliora: Leona Matic is not my mother.

Savannah: No, Nerakali blended her brain. She remembers the reality where she and your father got married.

Meliora: Horace Reaver isn’t my father. Lincoln Rutherford is, because he’s the one who raised me.

Savannah: Everyone knows the story. Rutherford took you in when your mother died, and your father went to prison. He barely had anything to do with your life.

Meliora: That’s the story I spun. I was very young and stupid back then. I came up with this story about choosing ones and powers that be, claiming they were one and the same. I was trying to create a reality where people believed I could exercise more control over the salmon than I really could, and the best way to do that was convince people I was removed from foster care, and indoctrinated into the system. My birth father died in prison, and Lincoln Rutherford raised me for years, until I felt confident enough to go back in time and alter the past. Everyone calls me Meliora Rutherford Delaney-Reaver, but my name is Meliora Rutherford.

Savannah: Does he know that, the Lincoln from this reality?

Meliora: He knows everything. Literally. He is a great man, and I try to honor him everyday with my actions. So I’ll help you, but only to stop the dream team from killing you. If that future comes to pass, they will never recover from what they did to you.

Savannah: Mateo and Leona have killed before.

Meliora: I’m not talking about them. Your daughters will regret what happened, but since they used the hundemarke, they won’t be able to go back and change it. We all know what happens when a Preston spirals.

Savannah: We don’t know if they use the hundemarke on me. That’s a big mystery.

Meliora: You die from by means of the hundemarke; that’s no mystery.

Savannah: ...so it can’t be changed. It really is inevitable.

Meliora: No, there’s a loophole.

Savannah: ...?

Meliora: The other world. Nothing is more powerful than the bulkverse; not even the hundemarke. It has consequences, though. Time will never be the same if you do this. In fact, it will undo everything you have ever done with the hundemarke.

Savannah: What?

Meliora: There is a reality out there where the hundemarke does not exist. All we have to do is get you there, and then you can leave. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll die, but not you you. It will be a different version.

Savannah: Well, why do I have to go to another universe, if I can just live in this other timeline?

Meliora: You can’t stay there forever. It’s unstable. You have to leave, and let it collapse behind you.

Savannah: Why would you do this for me? I came here asking for help, and you were very adamantly against it. What’s changed in the five minutes since we’ve been talking.

Meliora: It has been longer than five minutes for me. After you told me that you weren’t responsible for your son’s death by means of the hundemarke, I took a little detour, and investigated the timeline to corroborate your story. That was about a month ago.

Savannah: I must have blinked.

Meliora: No, I froze you in time for three seconds while I disappeared, and returned.

Savannah: Why are you like this? How did a salmon and a spawn...spawn someone like you?

Meliora: I won the lottery. It’s as simple as that. The fact that my birth parents experienced nonlinear time before conceiving me made it so that I was genetically predisposed to being born with time powers. At that point, it was a crapshoot which ones I got. I could have ended up with anything, and it just so happened that I ended up with pretty much everything.

Savannah: So now that you know I was telling the truth, and maybe I’m not as bad of a person as you thought, you’ll help me survive my hundemarke death?

Meliora: I will, but I won’t do it for free.

Savannah: What’s your price?

Meliora: As we’ve established, I’m very powerful, but I don’t have a mind like yours. You can see the threads of time, and make subtle changes to arrive at the outcomes you want. I need that gift now. There are several people who are meant to attend Mateo’s memorial services here on Dardius. They were all torn away from that, for reasons I do not yet understand. There is someone else; someone like you, who is manipulating events from the shadows. They’ve been destroying Nexus replicas, and causing other problems. My month-long sabbatical allowed me to rule you out as a suspect. I’ve also ruled out Mirage, Boyce, and Zeferino. I don’t have any reason to believe the powers that be themselves are involved, but I can’t rule them out yet. Either way, I need someone smart enough to combat their changes. I’m going to give you a list of people. I’m not going to tell you anything about them, but the list itself is dangerous. You could hurt a lot of people with it, so I have to be able to trust you. With your skills, it’s a simple task. Get these people to Dardius within the next hour, and I will help you. Miss even one of them, and our deal is off. Cause harm to any one of them, and not only is our deal off, but I will kill you myself. Like I said, your hundemarke crusade has been completed. This mission doesn’t interfere with that, but you can help a lot of people feel a lot better about themselves by helping them go through this catharsis. Mateo is important to people, throughout all of time and space, and they want to be there for him. Do you think you can help?

Savannah: I can make no promises. I would have to see the list first. Just a glance, to make sure there aren’t any conflicts of interest. You can erase my memories if I choose to decline because of something I see there.

Meliora: I agree to your terms. Here it is.

Savannah: This one is going to be tough. I know a lot about his timeline, and he would not be cooperative in later years; I can tell you that much.

Meliora: When would you suggest we take him?

Savannah: Uhh...2027.

Meliora: He didn’t even have his brain blended back then.

Savannah: I can arrange for it to happen early, if I have your permission. You said I’m not allowed to hurt these people, which I have no problem with, but this is a bit of a gray area. I don’t know who Pribadium Delgado is, but I think I can get everyone else with just a few historical nudges. This guy is more complicated, though, and brain blending isn’t exactly pleasant. He has a lot of really bad memories, so it’s going to be particularly bad for him.

Meliora: Do what you have to do, but he’s really busy in 2027, so make sure he gets back before anyone there misses him.

Savannah: They won’t even know he’s gone, until he...tells them about it.

Meliora: Okay, go ahead. You have fifty-seven minutes now.

Savannah: I only need one.

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Microstory 1254: Apothem Sarkisyan

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All of the Sarkisyan children were named after mathematical terms, but Apothem Sarkisyan’s older sister, Dodeka was the only relative that he ever knew. His father was killed by a time traveling vigilante, leaving the two of them parentless. The rest of the children were being cared for elsewhere. Concerned for their wellbeing, a powerful choosing one named Meliora kept the siblings from foster care, and relocated them to a planet millions of light years away, where she had begun to populate a protected hotel for those who had been negatively impacted by time travel. Dodeka would come to work at the hotel, and unwittingly start a movement that would translate into an entirely new society, but Apothem had no such aspirations. Technically, at the time of his arrival, working was not a requirement. Of course, he was a child at that point anyway, but as he grew up, he didn’t really see the need for having a job. He did, however, seek adventure, and if there was one thing the warded planet didn’t provide, it was a life of excitement. He was in his early twenties, and living a relatively sedentary lifestyle, when a special machine arrived. It was called The Crossover, because it was capable of traversing the space between separate universes. The operator at the time was seeking guidance from Meliora on an unrelated matter, but since the Sarkisyans were close to her, Apothem was around. The crew agreed to give him a tour, and he was so fascinated by the machine that he expressed a desire to travel on it with them. Seeing no reason not to, everyone agreed to let him leave, but it was not without conditions. The Crossover regularly experienced personnel turnover, none of whom were only passengers. Everyone had something to do, even if it was only to complete missions on other worlds. Apothem could only come if he contributed in his own way. The only thing that he was qualified for, however, was working in the hotel section, so that was where he went. He didn’t really have any experience in the industry, but he often watched his sister work, so he had some idea of what to do. This was how he became Kingdom Hotel’s bellhop, eventually adopting the moniker of Bell. This wasn’t part of some master plan, and they weren’t codependent, or anything. He and his sister found their respective callings under wildly different conditions, and in the grand scheme of things, they had wildly different responsibilities. He would go down in history as the longest running crew member of The Crossover of all. Operators and pilots come and go, but he just stayed with it. Sometimes the job was really stressful, but most of the time, he just hung out, and visited strange new worlds. This was the life, and he would never give it up.

Microstory 1184: Andar ‘Jiminy’ Jeffries

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There once was a child who was living in an unsafe environment, being raised by unfit parents. He was forced to feed and entertain himself whenever they were out doing whatever. One day, he was pretending to be in a war. Lucky for the neighborhood, he did not have access to any real firearms, but he did make-do with what he could find strewn about the yard, like tools and pieces of a torn down shed. He started throwing them around, making believe that they were bombs falling to the ground, shrapnel bursting from an explosion, or bullets flying from a gun. One such of these items was a mallet, and he threw it so hard that it soared all the way over the fence, and landed on the head of a four-year-old boy named Andar Jeffries. Andar’s mother rushed him to the hospital, where he was treated for a head injury, and found to be far less hurt than he could have been. He had a particularly strong head, and was healing quickly. It was nothing supernatural, but it was impressive, and fortunate. Andar’s parents might have sought retribution against their neighbors, and even severe punishment for the child, Braeden. Instead, they contacted family services, and began the long and nasty process of taking the neglected boy in as a foster child. Once this process was complete, the Jeffries moved to Kansas City, so they could all start new lives together. Their compassion and magnanimity molded both boys into loving, understanding, and generous people. They became brothers, and never had to see Braeden’s birth parents again. Word somehow got out about what happened, and Andar was given the nickname of Jiminy, since his story was not entirely dissimilar to that of the Talking Cricket’s in The Adventures of Pinocchio. He didn’t care for it much, but no one could ever know this. He was too thoughtful and agreeable to let anyone believe they were doing something he didn’t like. Braeden was the only person he could confide in, and be completely honest with. Not even their mom and dad would be good sources of support, because they would always just suggest he remain helpful and courteous anyway.

Though they were both taught the same values, Andar and Braeden were very different individuals. Braeden was creative and energetic. He continued to leverage his imagination, though now in far healthier ways, but still involving mallet-throwing. He would grow up to work at a place called Wreckreational Therapy, where customers could relieve stress by damaging assorted items. Braeden would come to run the place, and later open three more branches in Kansas and Missouri. Andar, on the other hand, was cool and observant. He preferred to sit quietly with a good book, or engage in an interesting conversation, especially with someone who was smarter than him. His parents were actually concerned for his sedentary lifestyle, and pretty much demanded he exercise, in whatever way he wanted. He decided to become a runner, because it was fairly inexpensive, and easy to start and stop at will. As it turned out, though, he was pretty damn good at it. Before he knew it, he was racing in competitions, and focusing a hell of a long more on it than he ever wanted to. But again, he didn’t feel he could voice his resentment to his loved ones, because he didn’t think they would understand. He quickly became a contender for the City Frenzy, though he would never win, because his heart just wasn’t in it. He never felt that rush that came from victory, or the exhilaration from the competition itself. He only really did anything because it made others feel better. He grew up too, and had to spend some time in regular therapy, as well as his brother’s wreck rooms, to change for the better, and start taking care of himself. He eventually realized he didn’t have to run anymore, and never did in the first place. He dedicated his life to academic pursuits, and eventually became a moral philosophy professor, which is where he found true happiness.

Microstory 1133: Carol Gelen

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Carol English was raised in a very poor family, which lived in southeastern Missouri, starting in 1950. Her parents wanted the best for her, and sacrificed their own happiness so that she could have everything she needed to succeed. They both started saving—not for their own college fund—but hers, when they were still in high school, even though she was years from being born. They always knew they wanted a child, but after marrying at age seventeen, decided to wait until they were financially stable. Carol was the first in her bloodline to get a higher education. Three Rivers was a recently founded community college, so she wasn’t exactly set for life, but it gave her the tools she needed to start a decent career. After receiving an associate’s degree in pre-dental hygiene, she took out a loan so she could go through Missouri Southern State University’s dental hygiene program. A year into her first job, Carol received news of her mother’s mother’s decline in health. She decided to move out to Topeka, Kansas to help her parents take care of her grandmother, because nothing was really tying her down in Williamsville. She quickly found herself a new job, and a future husband in her first patient, Randall Gelen. She was making pretty good money, but much of it had to go back to her family. Well, she didn’t necessarily have to give out all this money, but she felt it was the least she could do after all the support she received from them growing up. At some point, she was sending regular checks to a second cousin that she had never even met, and never asking for repayment. Randall had his own family issues, so they were living pretty modestly when an opportunity knocked on their door. They had never outright decided to not have children, but that didn’t seem to be the path they were on. But a child had recently lost both of her parents to tragedy, and needed some stability. Carol never questioned why the two of them were sought out to care for a foster child, when they weren’t even licensed. It was another three months before they were approved to become foster parents in the first place. Still, this was a gift, and they did not take it for granted. Carol was raised to be Christian, but didn’t care much for the church, yet she couldn’t help but wonder if there was a God out there, planning all this for them. Leona’s arrival seemed like fate. Or maybe, if Carol didn’t attribute it to some higher power, she wouldn’t be able to justify her involvement at all. Neither of them had any experience with children, and they had no idea whether any of this was going to work out. Fortunately, things turned out great. They fell in love with Leona, and ended up adopting her into their forever family.

Microstory 1108: Meliora Rutherford Delaney-Reaver

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Meliora Rutherford Delaney-Reaver was born in a different reality. Most people with time powers, really only have one specialty. This specialty may come with necessary secondary powers, or they may have multiple applications, but they’re usually all related. Someone who can travel back and forth in time often also has the ability to jump through space as well, but this is because space and time aren’t as separate as most people perceive. They won’t also be able to create pocket dimensions, though, because that’s an entirely different set of skills. There are indeed a handful of choosing ones out there who can manipulate time in multiple ways, however not all are created equal. Holly Blue, for instance, can invent different kinds of time-based technology. The Apprentice can quite literally learn other people’s powers, though he’ll lose any he doesn’t utilize often or recent enough, just like when a normal person’s brain loses neural connections. Of course, The Cleanser possessed the body of an entity known as The Mass, which was originally designed to maintain a balance in the timeline, and exhibited several characteristics in order to accomplish this. Meliora was special in that she natural came with a host of powers, and there’s never been a satisfactory explanation as to why. Her birth father, Horace Reaver was a salmon, who lived each day twice. He had no control over his pattern, and though there was only one person in histories like him, he wasn’t particularly remarkable. Her mother, Leona Delaney was spawn, and depending which reality you’re talking about, she was imbued with different patterns, but nothing astonishing either. Shortly after Meliora’s third birthday, Reaver was arrested for killing the man who killed his wife—along with a dozen or so innocent bystanders. She was subsequently sent to live in foster care, with a man named Lincoln Rutherford, who already had one adopted son.

A few months before she turned six, Meliora realized what she could do, when she found herself accidentally twenty years in the past, and she wouldn’t return to her date of egress until experiencing twenty years of life, but not all in order. She continued to jump around time, practicing her skills, and exploring history. The original plan was to go back to before her mother died, and stop it from happening, but she realized it was her birth father who needed to make a change for his own life. So she went back to the exact date she first left, and confronted him in his prison cell. Unbeknownst to the two men, her foster father was a guard, and happened to be stationed just outside his door at the time. When she sent Reaver back to his own younger body, Lincoln went through as well, and started making his own changes to the timeline. What Meliora discovered, though, was that no matter what she did, history could never reach a state of good. Every change came with an unforeseen cost, and any attempt to correct these new problems simply resulted in new costs. But through all these years, she realized the people who suffered the most were the normal humans, who often had no clue what was going on. So she became determined to find a place where all those negatively affected by other temporal manipulators could find peace and safety. She recruited the help of a spawn named Gilbert Boyce, who happened to have ownership of a planet millions of light years away that was shocking similar to Earth. It was here that she built The Sanctuary. It started with a single hotel, but grew from there, until the world became home to billions of people, many of which didn’t even know she existed.

Microstory 963: Adoption

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When I was four years old, and still felt okay with making wish lists, I asked for a baby for Christmas. I wasn’t asking for a baby brother or sister, and I certainly wasn’t asking for no doll. I just figured it was about time I have a child to raise myself. Of course this was an absurd idea, but that’s how deeply my imperative to raise children was, even back then. I ended up getting that doll, named him Johnny, and changed his clothes every other day. A few years later, I had still never had a girlfriend, and didn’t think I ever would. Surprise, Past!Self, you were right. A neighbor told me that some children weren’t raised by their parents; that they were given to other families. She didn’t go into detail about why this was necessary, but I figured it out over time. I realized that this was the most logical choice for me, and I’ve held to that sentiment ever since. There are currently hundreds of thousands of children today in foster care—in the United States alone—who have not yet been placed in their forever families. Many will age out of the system, and have to fend for themselves as adults. This reality bothers me quite a bit, and has led me to developing a fairly radical stance on the matter. I keep seeing TV shows and movies get into this issue. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy and girl can’t have children, so they find a surrogate. If it’s a comedy, the surrogate is probably crazy. If it’s a tragedy, the couple just go their whole lives without children. That’s such a terrible message to be spreading to audiences. Infertility/sterility are good reasons to not conceive a child, but not good reasons to not raise a child. It’s troubling how rarely adoption occurs to characters, and they almost never consider adopting an older child. Never forget, you have options.

Everyone wants to be biologically related to their children, and they seem unwilling to budge on this. I don’t how well these fictional stories reflect real life, but judging from the number of foster kids, they’re pretty accurate. The fact is that there are already plenty of people in the world, so we don’t need to be making any more until we find a way to protect those people first. I would love it if your only way of having a child is by conceiving one, or using science, but there are too many kids in need of homes that can’t be unborn. Families come in all shapes and sizes. You don’t need a baby, and you don’t need it to be your baby. Older children need good homes just as much as the babies, but they are easily dismissed—or trivialized, which is how it looks in that new Racist Mark and Rose Byrne film, Instant Family. It’s true that I’ve not yet seen the movie, but since half the trailer shows people “hilariously” getting hit in the head with various objects, I don’t have high hopes for it. Now for the radical part, I’m not entirely convinced that conceiving children shouldn’t be illegal until every child in the world is placed in a good home. The problem is that this would be impossible to enforce, because any punishment for a breach would only hurt children further. So you’re free to go off and live your life as you please, while children across the globe are all but alone. If everyone with the means to adopt did so, our problem would be solved overnight. That’s really why I’m trying to publish a book, because nobody’s going to give a child to a single man who doesn’t have much money, and that has always been my life’s primary driving force. Without it, I probably wouldn’t have any ambition, because the next generation is perpetually the point of life.

Microstory 837: Family Trip

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Our parents died in a plane crash when my two sisters and I were still just children. Well, it wasn’t so much a crash as a hole blew through the cabin, and their row of seats was sucked out. The rest of the plane landed somewhat safely on the highway. The news of it was overshadowed by certain other aircraft tragedies that happened on the same day a week earlier. The third man with them left a family behind too, which served to bring us all together. My older sister wasn’t quite eighteen years old, but she was given emancipation, and started taking care of all four of us. I didn’t appreciate until I got older how much she did for us. The youngest of our foster brothers was a child prodigy, and a scientific genius. We all moved into their house, and found it to be equipped with a full laboratory in the basement that would bring Dexter to tears. He became obsessed with time travel, as you can imagine, hoping that one day, he would see his parents again. He had no plans to change history, seeing that as far too dangerous. All he wanted was to be able to speak with them again, and we supported his delusion. We discovered nearly ten years later that he was not so crazy after all, when he asked us down to his lab to show us something, and dropped us all the way back to 1974 with absolutely no warning. He wasn’t exactly aiming for that year, but he apparently hadn’t worked out all the bugs, so this was where we found ourselves. Only then, standing at the welcome sign, did we realize our parents all grew up in the same small Iowa town. As far as we knew, my mother and father stepped onto that plane without knowing the passenger they were seated next to, or his wife, who had died of cancer two years prior.

But here we were in Watland, a town so small I don’t even think they bother putting it on the map in 2011. We asked our resident physicist to send us back, but he said his recall device was damaged in the trip and he would need time to fix it, so we decided to go ahead with his plan to meet the younger version of our parents, who were now still in grade school. It was a surreal experience, being older than mom and dad, smiling as they tried in vain to build a sand castle with the pebbles under the jungle gym during recess. We knelt down to help them, glad for the fact that the 1970s were a different time, and the staff was too busy smoking around the corner to be bothered about five grown adults at a playground. We talked about what their favorite subjects were in school, and who their friends were. Just then our foster sibling’s new parents came over. They really did know each other this whole time. We wondered whether they recognized each other on the plane, or if it was just this crazy coincidence, and they had been too long estranged. The bell rang to end recess, and we knew it was time to leave. Our brother flipped a switch, and told us he was ready, revealing that the device hadn’t really been broken, and he was just stalling for time. But he was wrong, because if it wasn’t broken before, it certainly was now. We were stuck in the past, and he didn’t have the materials he would need to build a new machine, and get us back home. He worked on it for the better part of the rest of the day, though, and realized there was some kind of temporal interference, which he was able to track by rewiring his device. It led us to the edge of a cliff, where we found an eclectic group of people, strapping themselves into parachutes, and other gear. They smiled as we approached, seeing our futuristic clothes, and knowing we didn’t belong there, just like them. They hinted that they were from further in the future than 2011, but wouldn’t say exactly when. They provided us with our own special parachutes, which would evidently read our unique temporal signatures, and take us back to our own time, while they went off to theirs. Our brother seemed to think this to be sound scientific logic, so we trusted them, and strapped in too, ultimately finding ourselves back in the basement we had left, not minutes ago. It was another twenty years before I looked at my adopted children, nieces, and nephews, and remembered that I had already met them...in 1974.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 13, 2098

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Mateo’s predicted, but still surprising, reunion with Horace was going to have to wait. He had a responsibility to speak with his birth mother first. He woke up rather late in the afternoon of June 13, 2098, knowing that it had been two years since she saw him. This was going to be even more awkward than if he had been given the chance to explain himself entirely after first dropping that bomb on her.

“I don’t feel awkward about it,” Aura assured him.

“You don’t find it strange to be speaking to a son you can’t remember from an alternate timeline?” he asked.

“I’ve experienced stranger things.”

Mateo shivered at those words.

“Oh, sorry,” she apologized. “I recognize that your trauma was quite recent for you. It must be difficult, seeing people around you get past events that only just happened. I would find that quite frustrating.”

Mateo nodded gently. “The trauma of the time jumps themselves have become easier to swallow. I met a choosing one who had the ability to keep me in a temporal bubble for five years from my perspective. While there, she taught me some coping techniques. I’ve just not had time to meditate today, but when I do, I’ll have absorbed the time that I missed.”

“You can absorb time?” Aura asked with interest.

“Not literally. Sorry, that was unclear. I just mean that I can redirect short-term memories so that they feel older. It’s a technique the chooser picked up in the future that therapists use to help patients recover from post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“That’s fascinating,” she said. “You’re fascinating. I wish I could remember the reality where I knew you.”

“I don’t know that you do. The price would be too high.”

“No, not by this Blender woman. From what I hear, we can’t trust her. I just mean...tell me about yourself. Tell me about our relationship. Why did you not live with me? Was I a bad parent?”

“You were young,” he began to explain. He then paused to gather his thoughts. “A lot of people thought you were selfish for giving me up, but that’s not what happened. Your own parents were...unhelpful. You knew Randall and Carol from the hair salon. By coincidence, your schedule matched up with Carol’s for a couple months, and evidently you would spend more time than you needed there, just talking. Eventually, they took you under their wing and you became friends outside of the salon. When you found out that you were pregnant with me, they were the first people you told. Over the course of the next nine months, they took care of you, and of me, by extension. When I was finally born, it was a no-brainer. They just kept taking care of me while you took your time to grow up and mature.

“You didn’t sign any documents, you didn’t see a courtroom. We were all just a family. Had you not disappeared, like you evidently did in this timeline as well, I probably would have moved in with you in a couple years. You were ready by then.”

Aura did not speak.

“No, your friends didn’t understand why you remained in my life even when I had Carol and Randall. They thought that was a perfect opportunity to get out of your responsibilities. But you were so wise, so careful. So thoughtful. Carol and Randall weren’t just my parents. They were yours. They were there for you when no one else was.” Now he began to tear up. “They had so much love, and they could no longer manage it between the two of them.”

Aura was tearing up as well.

“I was angry at you for a very long time. For leaving us. They gave you more than I think that version of you realized, and you just threw it away. But they were never angry. No, not them. Not Randall and Carol Gelen. They still had all that love in their hearts, and they raised me to learn to love you again. And they raised me with religion because they knew it was important to you.”

Aura waited, understanding that he was not quite finished.

“I wish they could have been alive to see you return, to see that their faith in you was not unfounded. To see that it was not your fault, that someone else did this to you...to us. To see that they were right.”

“They sound like wonderful people.”

He was now full-on crying. “They were. You would have liked them. They were the same in this reality too. They raised my girlfriend for me. No matter what timeline these people create, those two will always be helping someone.” He wiped some tears away with his sleeve. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to talk so much about them. You asked about yourself.”

“I was asking about you,” Aura corrected.

Mateo nodded and sniffled. “I killed Hitler. That’s who I am. That’s what got me into this mess. That’s what erased me from this timeline, and here I was thinking that that was the worst part.”

She looked at him like a concerned psychologist. “So, what is the worst part?”

“That I didn’t hesitate. I pointed a weapon at a man’s head and set it off. Then I just stood there, like it was Tuesday. Removing you and Leona from my life was punishment for that. From God, or Satan.”

“We’re here now.”

“Exactly. That’s why The Cleanser is still doing this to me. I wasn’t able to suffer from my original punishment so he’s picking up the slack.”

“Mateo, I don’t think that’s what’s happening. You’re not being punished. God didn’t change the timeline, you did. That was a human choice, and as I understand it, you saved thousands of lives by doing it. What the Cleanser is doing to you is also a human choice. And he can be stopped. You just have to keep trying.”

“I’ve been trying. Nothing has worked. He’s too powerful.”

“Well now you have me. And Samsonite, and Téa. You have people who care about you, even if they don’t remember why. You do not have to do this alone.”

“You’re right.”

“It happens.”

“The Cleanser has been pulling me away from the people I love this whole time. He’s kept me isolated and angry. He knows that I can’t defeat him on my own, so he’s orchestrated these tribulations. But why? Why does he care so much about me?”

“He’s afraid of you.”

“I’m just a salmon, what can I do?”

“You own a planet. That’s a pretty big deal for someone like us, isn’t it?”

“You’re right, I do. But only because of The Rogue.”

“Yeah, I’m still not quite clear what his deal is. Is he good, is he bad?”

“He’s a Boyce is what he is.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that he positively detests Horace Reaver.”

“I thought he was dead anyway?”

“We’re time travelers. No one ever really dies.”

“What are you saying, Mateo?”

“Everything that has happened to me is designed to keep me alone, we’ve established that. Even if I overcome that obstacle, he knows who I’ll choose to help me. He knows that I’ll lean on you and Leona for support.”

“He sounds smart.”

“He sounds limited. Horace Reaver’s return was a calculated move. He and Nerakali think that I can never trust him.”

“Can you?”

“More than anyone else right now. Except for Boyce.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to start fighting back. Stay here.” Mateo left his room, ignoring Aura’s protests. He walked down the hall and opened Horace’s door.

“Mateo, how can I help you?” Horace asked, book in hand, reminding him of the time he was reading in Panamanian basement just before murdering Leona.

“I need your door.”

“It’s yours.”

Mateo closed the door behind him and then performed a Constructor knock on it, but he didn’t actually give Baudin enough time to answer. He opened the door to his headquarters himself.

Horace followed obediently.

“Sir, sir!” a man exclaimed. “You cannot come in here without an appointment.”

“I have a standing appointment.”

“Mister Matic, I know that is not true. And that man is not allowed within a hundred lightyears of this place.”

“He’s with me.” Mateo opened the door to Baudin’s office who appeared to be with a client, but there was no time to worry about interrupting them. “I need you to take us to Palace Glubbdubdrib.”

“I’m sorry?”

“This one thing and I’ll never ask for anything again.”

“Mateo, this is not a contest. You can ask me for favors, but I don’t see why you need to—”

“Can you send me or not? I just need a door that goes there. You don’t even have to come with.”

Baudin sighed slightly but pointed to another door. “That closet.”

“Thank you. Come, Horace.”

Mateo opened the closet door and entered the palace. Years had passed since they were last there, and it was obvious that no one had been around to take care of it. Cobwebs and dust littered the floor and furniture. “Crap. I should have been more specific.”

“What is this place?” Horace asked while Mateo was zipping through the hallways in search of the right one. “What are we doing here?”

“We are looking for the magic mirror.”

“I believe you’re mixing metaphors.”

“This is it,” Mateo finally said. He removed a small pocket knife from his handy time traveler’s tote and slit his own finger which he placed on the mirror. “I stand at the gates of life and death. Come forwards. Come forwards, spirits! Here is life. Boyce, rogue agent and trusted friend, smell blood! Smell life! I summon you!”

The mirror adjusted the scenery so that it was showing Makarion in his final moment. He had just revealed to Mateo that he had been the Rogue the whole time. They were just starting to form an understanding, and develop an alliance when the Cleanser somehow leapt into Makarion’s body himself and destroyed it from the inside. Mateo and Horace watched from the other side as the scene played out in slow motion, but then something happened that Mateo never saw the first time around. A figure, like a ghost, lifted itself from Makarion’s body and began to walk away from it. It wasn’t just any Boyce. It was the Boyce. It was the only Boyce that Mateo had ever known.

“Gilbert?”

“Mateo? You’re using the extraction mirror.”

“I am. What is happening? How are you...?”

Gilbert looked back to the exploding Makarion. “It looks like I’m about to die. The mirror was designed only to remove people from the timestream at their final moments, to avoid altering the timeline. Most choosers don’t worry about that, of course.”

“Would you...would you have ever told me that you were Gilbert? I mean that Gilbert was the Rogue. I mean...I don’t understand.”

Gilbert smiled and reached through the magical mirror to place his hand on Mateo’s shoulder for comfort. “I can explain everything, as long as you can explain what the hell Horace Reaver is doing with you.”

“So you can come all the way out of the mirror?”

Gilbert stepped through as proof. “I will have to return one day, but for now, I’m all yours.”

“Like Clara?” Horace asked.

Gilbert laughed. “Ya know, I may just get along with this version of you.”

“Come,” Mateo said. “It’s time to face the raven.”

“Not yet I hope.”

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