Seeing is Becoming: Freelancers (Part VII)

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The man’s office turned out to be the remains of Stonehenge. He called himself the Delegator and claimed that it was his job to help salmon figure out what they were supposed to do with their new lives. Yalshi was allowed to witness the meeting, as long as she kept quiet. “They’re going to be doing something different with you two,” the Delegator announced to them.

“Different how?”

“Most salmon aren’t given a conscious choice. They’re dropped wherever and whenever the powers want them, and they’re expected to do whatever they’re told. And for the most part, you’ll do the same. However, after each completed mission, you’ll be given a few options for your next assignment. These options may send you to Earth, to another planet, to the past, or the present. You’ll be given a bit of information, and from there you can make a decision. Isn’t that great?”

“You force us into these decisions, but since most people have no illusion of free will, you expect us to be grateful that you’re letting us decide where to risk our lives?”

“I expect nothing. I’m middle management,” the Delegator explained. “But I am getting the feeling that something has changed. You’re not the first salmon to have been granted a weird exception. Though, to be honest, that hasn’t technically happened yet since we’re in the past.” He shook the tangent out of his brain. “It is my guess that the powers have recruited someone new. Don’t quote me on that, but I think he’s interested in changing the program. It would certainly explain why you and only a handful of others are being treated differently. Again, I’m not sure that that is how it works. I have more information about this than you do, but I don’t have all of it.”

“Ya know,” Vearden began, “there’s one thing I’ve already decided. I don’t really care. I don’t care who the powers that be are. I don’t care why they’re doing this, and I don’t even care about figuring out how to stop it. I can stop it. You can drop me wherever you want, but if I don’t want to do something, I just won’t.”

“Speaking from experience, bad things happen when you don’t do what you’re told,” the Delegator said. “I don’t mean that I’ve seen it happen; I mean that I’ve caused it. Yes, I’m different, but also very much like you. My job as Delegator is just another mission. I exercise very little control.”

“How about you exercise some of the control you do happen to have right now?” Saga asked, but it was more of a command.

“Pardon?”

“Let me chose my next mission. Forget the multiple choice. I want to go where I want to go.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“1743,” Saga answered.

The Delegator lifted his head, considering the proposition. “I cannot guarantee such a request.”

“Well, what can you do?” Vearden asked.

“I’ll tell you what.” The Delegator rubbed his eyes from exhaustion. “I need you to make a quick stop for me. It’ll only be a few hours. Afterwards, if the powers have accepted your motion, then you’ll find out. If not, it’s out of my hands. I’m not certain you’re quite understanding that I’m more of a messenger than anything.”

Vearden whispered to Saga. “Is there any point trying to reason with these people? Do we have any chance?”

“I think they can hear us even when you whisper,” Saga returned. “Which, to be honest, probably means that we don’t have a chance. But I don’t like the idea of being pushed around. That’s why I became a freelancer.”

“That’s your name!” the Delegator exclaimed. “The Freelancers.”

“I’m sorry?”

“We like to give each other nicknames. That’s yours.”

“We are not children,” Saga insisted.

“Fine.” The Delegator was noticeably hurt. “I’m still gonna call you that,” he muttered under his breath.

“Where are we supposed to go now?” Vearden asked.

“Would you like to have a final moment with your alien friend? You won’t ever see her again.”

Yalshi had been so good at keeping quiet, that Saga and Vearden had forgotten that she was even there. “This has given me an interesting bit of insight,” she told them.

“What are you going to do with it?”

She looked to the ground for answers. “Knowledge is power, right? I’m going to seize control from my father, and make a few changes to our cultural biases.”

“We will return in another few decades to check on your work,” Saga smiled.

“He just said you wouldn’t be able to.”

“We don’t follow the rules,” Vearden said. “We will see you again.”

Yalshi smiled back at them. “I better get going. Who knows how long I’ve been away?” She stepped back through the portal. It shuddered and faded away, slowly revealing a different view. A few graves could be seen by the moonlight.

“Is that for us?”

“Indeed,” the Delegator confirmed.

The two of them walked through the portal without another word. On the other side, they found humans driving land vehicles into the cemetery. They were talking and laughing joyfully, spreading throughout the graves to start their own conversations.

A stranger holding a beer approached them. “Hey, are you two here for the party?”

“Uh no,” Vearden said apologetically . “We just came to visit an old friend.”

“Ah, sorry for your loss. We can move to a different corner, if you’d like.”

“Is this some morbid goth party, or something?”

The stranger giggled. “It’s a birthday party. We used to hangout here as kids. We don’t get too rowdy, though. Mateo, the birthday boy finds cemeteries to be inexplicably comforting.

“Mateo you say?” Saga asked, giving Vearden a look.

“We knew him way back when. Could we say hi?”

“Yeah, sure. He’s over there.” The stranger nodded vaguely in one direction. “I’m Kyle, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Kyle,” Saga said, offering her hand.

“We’re The Freelancers,” Vearden said, much to the dismay of his friend.

They walked over and could soon clearly see the face of Mateo Matic, a man who appeared to be particularly special, even amongst other salmon. “Is that really him?” Saga asked of Vearden.

“It most certainly is,” he replied.

Saga lifted her hand again and shook Mateo’s. “We’ve heard it’s your birthday.”

“That’s what they tell me,” Mateo said.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight. Already feel like an old man.”

“Happy with your life?” Vearden asked.

It was a bit of a weird question, but Mateo seemed open to it. “Actually, I am. It hasn’t always been easy. I’ve experienced loss. But I’m in a pretty good place now. I couldn’t imagine it getting any better.”

“Oh,” Vearden said. “Well, be careful.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s just something my mother used to say before I left the house. It’s become my catchphrase.”

“I see.” He patted both of them on the shoulders. “Well, have a beer or two. I know we’re in a place of death, but tonight, we celebrate life.”

They spent the rest of the night getting to know other people at the party. Despite them being strangers, everyone accepted them and treated them like they belonged. Saga informed Vearden that it was presently the year 2014, which was more than a decade earlier than the time they originally left. They kept an eye on Mateo, mostly out of curiosity. The Delegator had wanted them to be there at that particular time, so it must have been meaningful. Exactly at midnight, they saw Mateo disappear. His beer exploded, sending a few remaining shards into Kyle’s skin. As they were running to help, Vearden noticed something wrong. “Saga.”

“What?”

“Tombs don’t usually just put a date on the front, right?”

“Of course not. They engrave the family name on it.” She looked up and saw the date January 3, 1743 marked over the door of the tomb. The lettering had a light but definite glow to it.

“I think this is our ride.”

“Come on, V.” Saga took Vearden’s hand and led him towards the tomb that was doubling as a portal. “There are a couple of people that I would like you to meet.”

The two friends opened the door and began a new time-traveling adventure together.

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Microstory 95: Crying Man

I was headed back towards my crappy new apartment after a lonely walk along the river when I noticed a man on the other side of the street. He was sitting up against a parking garage. I was too far away and listening to music, so I couldn’t hear him, but he was clearly crying. No, not just crying; he was bawling. He looked like a loved one had just died, or his life had somehow otherwise been ruined. I told myself that there was nothing I could do about it, that he was a stranger, and that he probably just wanted to be left alone. Even though I’m known for being distant and socially awkward, I felt the urge to go over to him. Without looking for traffic, I jaywalked across the street and slowly approached him, no clue what I was going to do once I got there. Without saying a word, I leaned my back against the wall and slid down next to him. At some point, he noticed that I was there, but he made no move. He didn’t ask me to leave, and he didn’t try to tell me what was wrong. Gradually, I began to feel his pain. Without knowing the details of the actual event, I started to feel an incredible sense of loss. This was not about being fired, or a broken down car, or a breakup. This was profound, primal, and real. As my eyes began to tear up, his bellowing turned to blubbering, and then to sobbing, then to weeping, until finally he was only sniffling. Thoughts flooded into my head. I was remembering all the pain that I had felt in my entire life, along with his. My first really bad grade in school, his best friend moving out of the state; crashing my father’s car, dropping his mother’s favorite wine glass; my divorce, his struggle to find a job; the death of my dog, and the sudden death of his infant son. For a few moments, we were one person. And then we were separated once more. He stood up and breathed deeply several times. “Thank you,” he said, “for being there. And for somehow helping.” He walked away, and I never saw him again.

Microstory 94: The Verge

At the beginning of the 23rd century, the second most important discovery in the world was made. They had found the first evidence of the simplex dimensions. They continued to study its properties, and were able to tap into it a few decades later. After many failures and deaths that were covered up by the government, they were able to successfully send a vessel through the orange simplex. The volunteer astronauts traveled for only a matter of hours and ended up in what they thought to be the exact center of the universe. They were unable to navigate in any other direction. No matter how much force they exerted, they were only allowed to head in two directions; forwards or backwards. There was a bright light in the center of their universe that was presumably the source of this force. They tried to approach it, but were unable to do so safely. Instead, after long deliberation, they decided to build a large structure and literally cover up what one scientist called The Verge. It was a single point in space through which all moving matter in the universe passes. Matter, including ships, can travel either towards The Verge, or away from it, but it cannot subvert it. If there was a planet only a couple lightyears from your own, you had to head towards The Verge, and could then essentially turn around and head in a slightly different degree to your destination. After centuries of chaos, where anyone with a ship could claim any planet they happened to land on first, a group of people formed a military force designed to regulate interstellar travel. They later built a space station the size of an entire planet around The Verge. It would not be another few millennia before the absolute most important discovery was made. The Verge was actually not the center of the universe; it was only the center of the galaxy. And apparently, there were other galaxies. They just couldn’t observe them due to the light disruption of The Verge.

Microstory 93: Superfan

All the actors and actresses were shooting the scene perfectly when the camera started to glow. The crew stepped back from it, unsure of what was happening. A beam of light shot out of the lens and expanded. It formed into the shape of a man. He was sitting on the floor in nothing but his boxers, claiming to have been watching the show weeks from now, when it was airing on television. The science expert they had hired to consult on the show suggested they try to recreate the scenario. As soon as the visitor walked out towards the editing room to look at some old footage, he returned with the editor through another door, claiming that it had happened again, and that they were both from ten minutes in the future. Now that they knew the visitor could take people with him, the science consultant had an idea. They spoke with the government, and gathered together a group of scientists over the course of the next couple of years to study and test the visitor’s abilities. The final test was with a spaceship and a telescope that was capable of looking at distant light that was taking so long to reach Earth, that it was actually from the past. As soon as the visitor disappeared, along with a couple dozen volunteer geniuses from all fields of science, they all returned in a different and far more advanced ship. “Come on,” the visitor said. “We live in the Andromeda galaxy. All of our ships can travel faster than light now. And we’ve figured out how to become immortal.”

Microstory 92: Manifest Infinity (2 of 2)

Several years ago, the prototype of what was deemed to be The Perfect Race was discovered by a group of Fostean invaders. They kidnapped this individual and took it back to their galaxy. After much debate, they paired it with a second scientific endeavor. They were learning how to tap into the souls of living people and interact with the universes that lie inside. The inhabitants of any given universe is made in the image of its god, which meant that the godlings of the perfect creature were even more perfect than it, because they developed—from their perspective—by way of natural evolution. The Fosteans continued to hinder the intelligence of the prototype, but were unable to change the genetics of the people within its universe. These people were inescapably dependent on the original genetic arrangement of their god. One day, the laboratory was attacked by a group of insurgents, one of which was actually an Earthan human. In this man’s attempt to retrieve his friend’s daughter, they were both transported to the universe that was inside of the perfect prototype. Since time moves at a different rate in different universe, they spent over a thousand years there, while still tied to the timestream of our universe, where less than a minute had passed. This turned out to be a blessing, for this man and his ward lived adventures in the lower universe, and altered the course of their behavior. They instilled in them a sense of right and wrong so that they would choose neither to be soldiers for the Fosteans, nor exterminators for the rouge Lactean scientist faction. Instead, once they were all brought into our universe, they were found to be the most generous and loving race ever encountered.

Microstory 91: The Perfect Race (1 of 2)

Some time ago, a group of scientists from all over their solar system came together and formed a rogue faction. They were unhappy with the state of the universe, and decided to create the perfect race. This new creature would not be bred for war, or any kind of pedestrian violence, but it would be extremely difficult to kill, and its intelligence would be practically immeasurable. Its purpose would be to systematically end all life, using its superior intelligence, so that they could start over. My contacts in the system are still gathering data, however they have managed to relay to me key documents. The creature’s skin and bones are extremely strong, but also flexible, so that it can more effectively protect the other systems of the body. The muscles are much stronger than those of most other beings, and they are capable of manipulating their own mass in order to leap farther and run faster. They can extract energy from a number of different gases, and exhale at the same time as they inhale, so cardiopulmonary exchange is unhindered. Their bodies were designed to carry two of every single organ, with only one being used at a time. If one of a pair is damaged or otherwise fails, the other will take over. The failed organ will be filtered out and replaced by stem cells in a matter of months. If both of a pair fail, the body is capable of dropping itself into a state of extreme hibernation inside of a nearly impenetrable cocoon, so as to give the stem cells enough time and energy to regenerate. The most impressive feature is the fact that brain matter can be found throughout their entire body, giving them around 20 times the number of neurons as most people. When the government discovered this faction, the project was scrapped, however there was already a living prototype. It is illegal to kill any living being with a soul, so its neural processes were stunted to diminish the danger, and everything was all right; that is until the Fosteans discovered the project and co-opted the prototype in order to create the perfect soldier, leading to the story of Manifest Infinity.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 5, 2029 & ??? ?, ???

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Leona ran up to him. “Is this what it feels like? Like nothing?”

“What did you expect?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“We have to find a way to get you off of my pattern.”

“That ship has sailed, sweetheart. Did you notice? I’m now only a couple weeks younger than you. I started jumping after I turned 28, just like you.”

“We don’t know that you’ve started anything. You hacked into my anklet. That might have connected your device to me...temporarily.”

She started digging through her bag. “I can get that off.” She took out a sinister mini blowtorch and tore through his anklet like it was butter.

“Stop right there!” Salinger had burst through the door again, and was pointing her weapon at them. “You look exactly the same. What the hell happened here?”

Mateo sighed. “It’s been a year for you, but not for us.”

“Are you trying to tell me that you’re time travelers?”

“Timeslippers,” Leona corrected.

“We prefer salmon.”

Salinger stared at them for a few seconds. “Get inside. Both of you. You have any idea how much trouble I got into for losing you after making a big deal about calling the feds?” She kept her gun trained on them as she opened the door.

On the other side of the threshold was not the police station. It was Stonehenge, but different. There were many more stones than Mateo remembered having seen. It looked complete.

“What the hell is this?” Salinger asked.

“A meeting,” a man answered from the other side. “You’re not invited, but you can stay if you want. I don’t really care.”

Curiosity got the best of her, and Salinger walked inside, no longer worried about getting Mateo and Leona into the station.

Leona admired the architecture. “Is this how Stonehenge originally looked?”

The man looked around. “Oh, this? No, it’s been partially destroyed by now. It used to be a building. Now only the stones remain. In time, many of those will be stolen for other things. That is, until a bunch of historians come out and say, ‘hey! Quit stealing stones from this henge! Ya dicks!’”

“May I ask who you are?”

“You may, Mateo, indeed. But you won’t get a very good answer. I’m afraid that my head has been filled with so much other information that I’ve lost all knowledge of my own life. I do not know my name. The salmon just call me The Delegator.”

“You’re a puppet for the powers that be?” Mateo asked.

Leona stepped forward and examined the Delegator more closely. “Or he is one of the powers that be.”

“I’ve not yet ruled that out.”

“What do you want with us?” Leona asked cautiously.

“He’s here to tell you what you’re supposed to do,” Salinger explained. They all gave her a weird look. Did she know something? “Well, isn’t it obvious? That’s what a delegator does.”

“Quite right,” the Delegator agreed. “If a salmon has trouble figuring out their job; be it because they’re resisting, or because it’s too complicated to inuit, I step in. Which is...pretty much always. I think I’ve met every single other salmon.”

“And you don’t know how you know what you know, but you know who to contact, where to find them, and what to do with them?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“Do you always bring them to Stonehenge in the past?”

He looked around and smiled. “I do, mostly. I like this place. I don’t have to bring them here, but it’s become sort of my office. It provides a level of stability for me.”

“And I’m just here because I was in the way?”

“You’re here, Detective, because there was too little time between Leona’s initial jump, and you showing up. So I suppose you’re right; you got in the way.” He pointed toward the gap in the stones they first came through. “Step through that door and it will take you back home.”

Salinger began to walk towards the opening.

“Step through any one of the other doors,” he continued, “and it will take you somewhere else. And you’ll become one of us.”

Salinger looked back at him, unsure of what to say.

“You can do that?” Mateo asked. “You can just turn someone into a salmon?”

“She already is,” he started to explain. “She was initialized when she came into physical contact with a salmon after their own activation.”

Sad panda Mateo turned to Leona.

“She’s not your fault,” the Delegator said. “The powers still had to decide to activate her. If they wanted her, they would have found a way to get a preexisting salmon to touch her. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else. Though, to be fair, you’re a package deal. They obviously wanted you together, which is why they put you on the same pattern.”

“That doesn’t explain how I can choose to be one by walking through a different door,” Salinger argued.

“We all agree to this,” the Delegator corrected. “Both parties must enter into the proverbial contract, or nothing happens. Yes, as Delegator, I’ve been given the power to...recommend an applicant, but I do not exercise this ability often.”

“I never agreed to this,” Mateo said.

“On some level, you did. These people making this happen, they don’t think in conversations and remarks. Communication is more complex and fluid to them. A part of you wanted to go, so the powers made it happen.”

“You son of a bitch.” Mateo unenthusiastically lunged towards him. “I wouldn’t have done this to my parents! And my birth parents wouldn’t have done this to me!”

The Delegator was unfazed. “There is something you have to understand, Mister Matic. The soul is timeless. Literally. That’s what makes time travel and teleportation possible. It’s why there’s no such thing as a sociopathic salmon. Your soul knows absolutely everything there is to know about the universe; past, present, and future. It’s designed to guide you through your choices. The only difference between a salmon and a normal person is that mine and your souls are giving us access to a little bit more information than one might expect.” He gathered his thoughts. “It’s true, you...consciously did not want this, but your soul did. And you have to do what your soul demands of you. Trying to escape that directive is, well...impossible, at best.”

“What will my directive be if I step through a different door?” Salinger was apparently seriously considering the offer.

“I can’t tell you that until you try it. That’s the drawback. There’s no preparing yourself, and there’s no changing your mind. Either you do it or you don’t. I can give your soul a nudge by outwardly showing you a choice, but you still have to make it. Again, you can’t go against your soul. Whatever decision you make is what it wanted you to make.”

“Then I guess there’s no point trying to run from fate.” She turned to Mateo. “And I guess I won’t know until later whether I should thank you or shoot you for initializing me.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Mateo begged. “I don’t believe in fate.”

She tilted her head and smiled. “I kind of do. Fate’s just another word for God.” She started to back up towards a random opening. “When I met you, Mateo, I knew that my life was going to change. I’ve been searching for my place in the world, and this is my chance to find it.”

“Detective Salinger, wait,” Mateo said. “I never caught your first name.”

She smiled sweetly. “It’s Danica. But I was adopted, just like you, because my birth mother was hardly ever around. Her last name was Matic.” She crossed the threshold and disappeared into nothingness.

“Aunt Daria,” Mateo whispered to himself.

After Mateo turned back around, the Delegator acted like he had known exactly what was going to happen. “Now do you see?”

“Enough the the puzzles,” Leona said firmly. “What is our job?” She put air quotes around the last word. “What are you delegating to us?”

“That’s the brilliant thing,” the Delegator began. “Every salmon is given assignments, and it’s my job to dole them out. But you’re different. To my knowledge, you two don’t have any responsibilities. It is my assumption that the powers that be want to see what you choose to do on your own.”

The sun blinked and both Stonehenge and the Delegator disappeared, leaving them back in Kansas. Mateo and Leona spent the rest of the day speaking very little at a picnic table in the triangle where 130 Road, Aa Road, and Highway 191 and meet.

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Seeing is Becoming: Hunted (Part VI)

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“Did they send you back to Earth?” Vearden asked after releasing Saga from the hug. “I looked for you, but found nothing.”

“They did send me back,” Saga said. “To 1868,” she added.

“What?”

“I was there for three years.”

“How did you survive?”

“I met some friends. They’re like us. Two of them left 1994, and have been doing this a lot longer.”

“Three years,” he repeated. “I was in our time for only a year, using my alien blood to heal people.”

“Well, if that’s all the powers that be wanted from us, why are we back on Orothsew?”

“We call this planet Orolak now,” Vearden corrected.

He went about telling her what he learned from the Gondilak, as well as the things he had been doing on Earth before returning. She told her own stories about the mid-19th century. No supernatural healing for her, but life was never dull. Her and her new friends were always on some kind of adventure.

They were just finishing up their conversation when an arrow came out of nowhere and went right through Vearden’s shoulder. He casually broke it and pulled it out. “We have to go,” he said.

They began to run, zigging and zagging around the sharp needled trees. They ended up going through a dense area. Cuts and bruises formed all over their skin. Just when they thought that perhaps no one was following them, they discovered this to be untrue. There was a clear ruckus from behind. It sounded like a hunting party. “I thought you were on good terms with the Gondilak,” Saga said.

“I am. This must be the Orothsew.”

“No, they need us. They called us their champions.”

“Well, something’s changed.”

“Why aren’t you healing?”

Vearden looked down and grasped his wounded shoulder. She was right, it wasn’t closing up, and he couldn’t say why. He opened his mouth to question it, but found himself pushed down to the ground. An arrow flew just above his head and landed in a tree. A creature that looked not like an Orothsew, and not like a Gondilak, but like both, was on top of him.

“We have to go,” the creature said in a feminine voice. When they didn’t move, she yelled, “now!”

They hopped to it and kept on running through the trees. The stranger quickly overtook them and began to lead the way. She would change directions suddenly, apparently in an effort to hide their trail. Sometimes, she would use a tree branch to swing herself forward, preventing her tracks from logically connecting to each other. They tried to do the same, and were sometimes even successful, but only sometimes. She was agile, tough, and extremely quick. It was clear that she was slowing down for them, but she didn’t act frustrated. She legitimately wanted to help.

Soon, they were at the swamp. “Get in,” she ordered. “This will mask your scent.”

“Perfect,” Saga said, gladly lathering the mud and moss all over her body.

Vearden was more hesitant, having just spent a year in civilized society, but he did as he was told. He flinched as he stuck some of the moss in his shoulder wound after the friend who introduced herself as Yalshi claimed that it would help protect his blood from infection. “We should keep going,” he suggested.

“Yes,” Yalshi agreed. “But move more slowly, and take every opportunity to step on rocks and roots. At this point, we want them to think that we’ve disappeared completely.

“Give it a couple days, and we might just do that.”

“We do not have a couple days.”

They spent the rest of the day, methodically escaping their pursuers. They hadn’t heard a peep from them in hours by the time they reached the creek. They waded through the water and proceeded upstream for another few hours, at which point Yalshi felt is was safe to clean themselves up and find shelter.

All they were able to find was a shallow and unsecured cave; just enough to get out of the wind and talk. “Why were they chasing us?” Saga asked.

“You are invaders,” Yalshi said plainly. “More than that, you’re human. A couple of your kind came here decades ago. One of them had the ability to heal, just like the Gondilak, and it is said that he used this to kill many on both sides. A Mongrel named Trijko took his opportunity to unite the Orothsew and Gondilak against the invaders. He dispensed with any who claimed that the two human invaders actually hadn’t killed anyone, but I’ve spoken with Uhyiopa, and I believe her. She knew the healing one personally and admitted to me that the massacre was a lie they made up to end the war.”

“This was decades ago?” Vearden asked. Where is Uhyiopa now?”

Yalshi drew a frown on her face. “She was killed for speaking so-called lies to The Mongrel King’s daughter. But I know the truth now, and I won’t let my father do this anymore. Even if it means we reform the schism between the two races, I won’t let them dishonor the humans who have a history only of helping our great world. I promise you, friends, that you will be vindicated. I will make Orolak safe for you once more.”

“You’re the king’s daughter, right?”

“Yes, I am. But I’m nothing like him, I assure you. I—”

Saga interrupted her. “I’m not saying you are. But I assume that mongrel means that you are born of both Gondilak and Orothsew blood?”

“My father is the result of genetic engineering. Gondilak and Orothsew cannot reproduce together, as no creatures of two species can. But scientists from an unknown land experimented with us many years ago. The king has no mother or father, but I am the result of a natural birth from him and another like him.”

“I see,” Saga said.

“How long has it been since the last invader?” Vearden asked.

“Why, it’s been at least twenty years.”

“And how long since the last human?”

“I haven’t heard so much as a rumor of a human in my entire life. I have no reason to believe that another has come through since the infamous couple. But you’re here now. You can show them that you mean us no harm, and visitors will once again be allowed through their magical doors.”

Vearden turned to Saga. “Maybe that’s the point.”

“The point of what?” Yalshi asked.

Saga answered instead. “We were the couple decades ago. It is true that we killed no one, but perhaps the lie your father and Uhyiopa told was what needed to happen. I’ve always felt that we were here to unite the two races and end the war. I just didn’t know we wouldn’t actually be around to see it.”

“If that’s true,” Vearden began, “what are we doing back here? If we’re done with our mission, why send us back? My healing powers are gone, and this is dangerous territory for us now.”

Saga shook her head. “I don’t know, V. Maybe they just wanted us to see what we had accidentally accomplished?”

“Or to tie up loose ends by having us killed,” Vearden suggested.

“Are you two really them? Why are your healing powers gone?”

Saga thought about it for a moment after Vearden showed that he had no answer. “You said you spent the last year on Earth healing people.”

“Indeed. I never really knew why. But I would have a dream with a sick or hurt person’s face, and their general location. When I woke up, I would have no choice but to go there and give them some of my blood. It worked every time.”

“And the last person you healed was one of us? That sounds significant. You must have been losing a little bit of yourself every time you healed, and this guy took the last of your special blood. Who was he?”

“I’m not sure. I did see his chart out of the corner of my eye.” He tried to remember. “It started with an M. Mark? Or Matthew?”

“Mateo?” Saga asked, surprised. “Mateo Matic.”

“Yeah, that sounds right.”

Saga just laughed. She laughed and laughed and laughed.

“What is it?”

“Oh my God, we’re all connected.”

“Yes, you are.” A man was standing outside, but he wasn’t exactly all there. He was between two large stones that were holding up a third stone. It looked like a portal to another place. “Please. Step into my office.”

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