The Puzzle of Escher Bradley: Chapter Five

« < » > Entire Story

After an awkward conversation with the lovely couple, I say my goodbyes, and drive back to the station. Both fortunately, and unfortunately, none of us knows exactly what’s going on. We’ve all lost about an hour of time, during which we were presumably together. There aren’t any inexplicable marks on our respective bodies, and we don’t feel injured, or otherwise in pain. They have the strangest sensation that they’ve been crying, but have no recollection of what might have triggered their sadness. The upside is that they’re more embarrassed about it than I am, and I get the impression that they’re not going to rat me out to my superiors. A detective with the ability to lose chunks of time is no detective at all. I obviously need to investigate this issue, but right now, I think it’s important to return to my desk. Since I’m not yet working on a case, and it’s my first day on the job, I have no reason to be out in the field yet. Extending that period of time would just make things worse.

The first thing I notice when I step into the the police station is that there is nothing different about it. No one has noticed that I was gone, or really cares. Benefits of working in one of the largest cities in Kansas, I guess. Everybody’s too busy with their own stuff to pay attention to anyone else. I was this close to moving to the small town where my mother grew up. No real interest in living in Missouri, though.

“Yo, Hummel,” I say as he’s passing by.

He stops. “That’s Sergeant Hummel to you,” he tells me. “Or just Sergeant.”

I chuckle once.

He looks at me seriously.

“Hummel, you’re not a Sergeant.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Bran? Did you take the wrong medication this morning?”

“Man, you—” I get a peek at his badge, and it’s certainly designated for a sergeant. Last I saw him was this morning, just before my missing hour came up. I was handing him paperwork that I didn’t have time to do myself. Which he was happy to complete because he tries and impress everyone who can further his career. Yes, he’s older, and more experienced, than me, but I made detective first because I’m better. That he’s suddenly a sergeant makes absolutely no sense, and I’m sure it has something to do with my missing time. Of course, I can’t say any of this to him. “I’m just messing with you. Sorry.” I shrug it off as playful office banter.

“You need to get it together, Bran. You’re a detective now. Act like one.” He starts walking away as I nod. “And there’s some paperwork on my desk with your name on it,” he adds without looking back.

I rush over to his desk to find the exact same stack of documents I handed him this morning...in my reality. So some things are the same, and others are different. The trick is not figuring out which are which, but finding a way back to where I belong. This isn’t my world, and even though I don’t so far dislike it more than the first one, it’s unfamiliar, and that makes me uncomfortable. I speed through the paperwork so I can get to my lunch break, and work on my own problems.

“Thank God your back,” the woman from before says to me as I’m getting out of my car in the couple’s driveway. “Some weird stuff is happening to us.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Why? What happened to you?”

“No, it’s...not important. Literally tell me about it.”

“Follow me.”

As we’re walking up stairs, I can hear her husband rifling through some boxes in one of the rooms. “Cheryl, take a look at thi—” He notices me there. “Oh, it’s you.”

“What is all this?”

“We don’t know,” Cheryl answers, shaking her head. “It’s kid’s stuff, but we don’t have kids.”

“I’ve been looking at it...holistically,” Tyler says. “It belongs to one kid. He likes dinosaurs, astronauts, and drawing. It’s a bit weird that he has both cabbage patch dolls, and trolls, but I dig it. Cheryl, I think we had a son.”

“How do you know it was a boy?” I ask.

He holds up a pile of clothes.

“Oh my God, this is crazy. When I got back to the station, I noticed something different. One of my colleagues has suddenly been promoted. Twice. That’s impossible for just one day.”

“Somebody’s messing with our memories,” Tyler laments

“Or we messed with our own memories. Or we were exposed to some kind of toxic chemical. Or I’m dreaming, and you two don’t exist. We just can’t trust anything we perceive in reality. Maybe nothing is real.” I’m not usually this philosophical, but I’m at a loss.

“I think, therefore I am,” Tyler notes. He picks up a photo album and starts looking through it.

Cheryl digs into the boxes, trying to find hard evidence that they had a son. Perhaps he scribbled his name on his favorite toy, or scratched his initials on the bottom of a pinewood derby car he and his dad built together, but mostly his dad.

I try to think of what next step we could take. If we’re looking at the problem the wrong way, what could be the right way? Think, Bran. You’re a detective, for God’s sake. What would Pender do? “Have you met your neighbors yet?” I suggest. “Maybe they saw something, or know something, or something weird is happening to them too.”

“We spoke briefly with our neighbors to the South,” Cheryl answers. “They were about to leave for family pilates class, so we didn’t spend a lot of time together, but they didn’t seem bothered by anything.”

“We knocked on the door of the people on the other side of the empty lot to ask if a package we sent ahead of time had showed up on their stoop,” Tyler adds. “I suspect I screwed up and put the wrong address on the form, but they didn’t see anything. They seemed perfectly content with their own reality too.”

“What empty lot?” I ask.

He keeps his eyes on the pictures. “To the North.”

I walk across the hallway to another room, and peer out the window. The house next door is about as far from this one as any two houses ever are in the suburbs. “I don’t see what you’re seeing. There’s a house there.”

He comes over, a little frustrated by the tangent, and looks out as well. “No. There’s not.”

“Holy shit.”

I run out of the house and approach the house next door. The other two follow.

“You really don’t see that?” I ask of them.

“I just see grass, and some dirt.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“An invisible house. Are you kidding me? Literally, are you kidding me?”

They don’t seem like they’re lying. I walk up the steps, and into the house, completely ignoring the whole thing about probable cause. Fortunately, this doesn’t seem to belong to anybody. It's completely empty, and it’s cleaner than any building I’ve ever been in. Except for the fireplace. I can see a small patch of dust, or maybe ash, surrounding an even smaller shoeprint. It sure looks like it could be that of a child’s, and there is just the one. Letting that go for now, I run a quick sweep through the downstairs, and then the upstairs. In one of the bedrooms, I find a closet that feels familiar and new. I open the door to find that it’s not a closet at all, but some kind of a lift. Like somewhere between an elevator, and a dumbwaiter. Realizing this to be my only lead, I step into it and push its one button.

After a half hour of what feels like going up, the lift stops. I exit back into the room where I started, assuming this all to be a drug trip. Someone has poisoned me, and now I’m wandering around like an idiot. I think that I’m in a house, but maybe I’m teasing the edge of a cliff. Well, probably not a cliff since this is pancake Kansas, but I could still be in grave danger without having any idea. Whatever, I’m just going to keep going as if everything’s real, and normal. If I die, then I die. I didn’t pick this job because it would be safe, or easy.

I go back downstairs, and back outside. Cheryl and Tyler are still standing there on the lawn of a house they can’t see. It’s unclear exactly what they do see, but if only one thing is clear, it’s that they can no longer see me either. I keep going, feeling myself drawn down the street. My hallucinations follow me everywhere I go. At first, the houses are normal, but then I start seeing things that can’t be there. In place of one house is a desert, and in another, a lush garden. I can see the entire island of Manhattan, and an extreme closeup of Jupiter. It’s like this road is some central hub, connecting multiple places together. A teleportation station. A waypoint.

In the distance, I see a figure standing in the center of a house lake. It’s not frozen over, but he’s not falling through. Upon noticing me, the figure pulls his arms back, and then forward, somehow using his own energy to propel his section of water forwards. As the figure approaches, I start being able to see that he’s a young boy. He eyes me curiously. “What are you doing here?”

“I took the elevator.”

He looks over my shoulder, in the general direction of the invisible house. “Most people don’t see that.”

“Do you live in this world?”

He smiles. “I live in all worlds.”

“So, you’re the one doing all this? You’re...stitching these different places all together.”

“Stitching,” he repeats. “I was thinking about calling this merging, but now stitching is a contender.”

“My friends back there,” I say, trying to remain calm, and act like I been there. “We think they’re missing their son. There’s evidence that he exists, but he’s nowhere to be found, and they can’t remember him. Are you...are you him?”

“Nah, my parents are...well, they wouldn’t be looking for me. Whether they could remember me or not. This is a big place. Your boy might be here, but I haven’t seen him, sorry.”

“I feel like I’ve been here before.”

“You may have. This dimension is tricky. Spend too much time here, and it screws with your brain. I may look like a child, but I don’t age here, and time doesn’t always pass in the real world. I recommend you go back, and forget you saw anything.”

“No,” I argue. “I think I already have forgotten things. What I need to do is remember them.”

He breathes deeply. “I may know a girl. But it’s hard to get ahold of her, and her prices are pretty steep.”

“How do I find her?”

He starts sliding away slowly on his impossible water. “I’ll let Nerakali know that you’re lookin’ for her. She’ll find you if she wants to negotiate a contract.”

“Hey, wait!” I call up to him while he’s still in earshot, walking forwards a little to keep it that way. “What your name?”

“Glaston,” he says in a British accent. Then he pauses for effect. “Kayetan Glaston.” Then he zips away faster than the speed of sound, and all of the crazy lot portals disappear.

As soon as I step out of the elevator, and back into the real world, my memory is erased once more. I recognize Tyler and Cheryl, but I still don’t quite understand why I’m there. I go through this whole thing about seven more times over the years before one of the children I encounter in the other dimension happens to have the ability to manipulate people’s minds. She had the coolest name ever, but I can’t remember it, because I think she erased it from my mind as she was putting everything else back in. In fact, she erases everybody’s name, theoretically so I can’t look into them further. I remember meeting them, but not their names. She lets me keep Escher Bradley, though, so I can technically continue that search, but it has no way of moving forward. His parents gradually forget him further, eventually getting to the point of being able to give his stuff away and wiping their hands clean. Now there’s no proof he ever existed, but my certainty is immortalized in cement.

I run down a few more leads, but nothing comes of them. I even go back to Stonehenge, which is where my parents once took me for vacation. This is where I had my first encounter with time stuff that I can’t explain. I witnessed a girl disappear through one of the doorways. Her parents flipped out, trying to find her, but it didn’t look like they loved her very much, because they seemed more concerned with how losing her made them look. I don’t know how I could have forgotten all this, or whether there are any other memories that the memory girl never gave back. Maybe I can manipulate time myself, or I spent my whole childhood in fifteenth century Spain. I do doubt it, though, because the girl seems to actually strengthen my mind. Other, minor, things change around me. Hummel switches between being a sergeant, and a uniformed officer every few years, with no explanation for how he thinks he was promoted. He’s only nice enough to carry a conversation when he’s in uniform.

I frequently return to the invisible house. Sometimes it appears, and sometimes even I can’t see it. Ever since the last child, though, I haven’t gotten the elevator back. It’s like it wanted me to find the nine of them, and once I did, that was enough. I do find a doorknob up the fireplace, but that’s it. Before I know it, it’s the third millennium, and another child is missing. Along with nine others.

« < » > Entire Story

Microstory 645: Death of an Ocean

< > Table of Contents

You will recall that the planet of Kesliperia was once orbiting a single star in an otherwise empty system. There were no asteroid, comets, or other orbitals. There was just Kesliperia, and its sun. Then one day, a second sun suddenly came into existence, with no rhyme or reason. Scientists never did figure out where the star came from, or how it arrived in the area. It did have a drastic effect on the planet. At geologically impossible speeds, the topography of the planet began to shift. Mountains rose from the ground out of nowhere, and new oceans separated the continents. The gravitational pull from this new star was enough to throw just about everything we know about physics out the window. This is not the only change that Kesliperia would have to endure, however. According to original eido, Mateo, the Sword of Assimilation is a fickle and unpredictable object. It randomly shifts between realities, time periods, and branes, without any provocation. Apparently, if in the possession of someone, it can remain where it is, but if that owner loses it briefly, they may find themselves without it forever. By this phenomenon, the Sword of Assimilation—after centuries—finally reappeared to our people, this time on none other than Kesliperia. We do not know where it came from, or where it’s been this whole time, or really, if any time has passed for it at all. We were just grateful to have it back...but it did not come without its cost. It evidently brought with it some kind of technology with which we here in Fostea are not familiar. Soon after the Sword was removed from it, the planet’s surface transformed once again. The oxygen suddenly disappeared from its atmosphere. Again, we don’t know where it went; just how it affected the world. This caused many terrible things to happen to Kesliperia, namely the destruction of every single living creature, but it also managed to fulfill a taikon. With no oxygen to create its liquid form, the hydrogen in the oceans evaporated, and bled into outer space. If this sounds familiar, history buffs might realize that this is not the first time something like this has happened—though, this time, it happened much faster. There was no time to evacuate the world, or do anything to protect themselves. The Kesliperians in both nations, even after having recently found peace between them, all died. Of course, Lightseers rejoiced, for this was foretold in the Book of Light. Even better, this was not the only effect the Sword of Assimilation—or whatever it brought with it—had on on our faith. It also somehow managed to tidally lock the planet with its new sun.

Microstory 644: Reclaim the Sword of Assimilation

< > Table of Contents

The next taikon marks the beginning of the Week in One Day. During the course of a standard twenty-hour day, ten taikon were fulfilled in succession, overlapping each other as necessary. Earlier taikon shared days with others, and more later will do the same, but this is special for being a harrowing journey involving a small number of people. The first involves the most powerful weapon known to man. Sacred Savior, Sotiren Zahir, along with his followers, first witnessed the power of the Sword of Assimilation while our ancestors were still trapped on Earth. A ruthless and charming man suddenly appeared in their midsts. With him came the Sword, as well as a handful of supposed former friends who were trying to keep him from having it. We know very little about how the Sword was created, but this mysterious visitor revealed that it comes from a different universe entirely. He was hoping to procure it for Sotiren as a gift of friendship. Having been living in advanced civilization for centuries, humans have encountered just about every phenomenon the universe has to offer. Why, our ultimate origins are sourced from another universe, so even that isn’t unusual. But we have not seen anything like what the visitor described. The other universe is right next to ours, and it follows the exact same physical laws as this one. Travel between them is, though not the easiest thing ever, quite trivial to us now. We regularly traverse the kasma when we need something from the other side, careful to avoid our oppressors of days past. Prior to the completion of any of the exodus ships that would finally take us home to this galaxy, the idea of parallel universes was even more fantastical than it is now. At least outside of a virtual simulated environment, that is. And these more distant universes sounded far more interesting than we can see here.

The visitor and Sotiren took to each other, and immediately developed an unbreakable friendship, and an unshakeable alliance. They both knew that the visitor—and newest eido—would one day be forced to continue his journey across the kasmic void, so he wanted to help while he was still around. He fought at Sotiren’s side, against his once-comrades, hoping to garner the Sword of Assimilation from them. As the eido was struggling with his former lover for the weapon, the blade slipped, impaling both her, and another man who was merely caught in the crossfire. Unfortunately, the other travelers eventually escaped with the sword, taking the eido with them. None of them has been seen since. The man who was accidentally stabbed with the Sword, however, was rushed to medical treatment, and spent the next couple of weeks recovering. As if his body were waiting for him to be well enough, he one day disappeared, and didn’t reappear for another year. He spent the whole day then trying to figure out what was happening, only to find himself jumping a year once more come the stroke of midnight. He has been doing that for the last several centuries. To him, only a few years have passed since that fateful day on the field of battle. Seeing this, Sotiren realized that what the visitor had said of the Sword of Assimilation was true. It could transfer great power from one person to another. He predicted that the Sword would one day return to our universe, and that is exactly what happened. Its return heralded not only the beginning of the Week in One Day, but also specifically Eido Mateo’s return to this universe. But he came back different.

Microstory 643: Confirmation of War

< > Table of Contents

In the wake of the farce known as The Summit for Patience, the conquest was sidelined. The Highlightseers were too busy shoring up our ranks. Besides, our rivals believed us to have agreed to peace, so we couldn’t do anything for awhile. This caused them to lower their guard, so we could develop a strike plan. With all players in place, we were ready to start the next phase of our war for the galaxy. Unfortunately, the gray doorway message from Aurora Meeker was making this endeavor a little bit more complicated than it was before. Meeker was clear enough that we knew we wouldn’t be getting any third chances to stave off some kind of permanent retribution, but vague enough that she could have been talking about her anger over any given Fostean behavior trait. Most Highlightseers agreed, however, that she was probably generally against any form of mass violence; war and conquest included. Though her taikon was prophesied, just like all others, the way in which is was achieved was not expected. There were still many things that would need to happen in order for the entire taikon passages to be realized. Violence could not be taken off the table without dismantling everything we believe in. So the plan was altered to account for this change in dynamic; a compromise, as it were. Strategic military representatives were held in place where they were on every known planet in the galaxy, with reinforcements being quietly channeled in as needed. We then instituted an old practice carried over from the second galactic wars centuries ago. A confirmation of war is not the same thing as a declaration. Technically, we are already in war, and technically it does not need to be confirmed—nor are wars usually. Confirmation is largely an economic and social exercise. Some societies institute curfews, others halt interstellar travel. Some families modify their shopping behavior, others seek refuge in other locations, or even hide out in bunkers. A confirmation of war does not require any fighting, just the expectation that an attack could occur at any moment. We hope this to be enough to satisfy the requirements for this taikon, while simultaneously averting punishment but these mysterious gray overwatchers.

Microstory 642: A Fool Made Intelligent

< > Table of Contents

Decades ago on Earth, there came about a film media adaptation of book called The Wizard of Oz. It’s about a young girl who ends up in another world, where she meets an eclectic group of people and creatures. Her new friends each have their own problems, and they find themselves working together to those respective ends. A humanoid feline needs courage, a robot needs an organic heart, and...uh, some guy made out of straw needs a brain. Though we in Fostea have our own art to produce and distribute, we do like to keep up on what’s going on in other systems. For defense tactics purposes, mostly. We sometimes even develop our own franchises based on the ones created somewhere else. Lactea is famous for this with their Hitch franchise, which seems never-ending, and is just as a banal as its Earthan progenitor. Even with this overwhelming amount of entertainment, from all corners of the universe, The Wizard of Oz has ended up being a man named Keir Banister’s favorite movie of all time. In fact, he does very little with his life unrelated to the canon. He cosplays the character’s costumes every day, apparently cycling through them in a complex and orderly manner. At one point, he asked his parents to transition his body into that of a humanoid feline. He chose to stop midway through the procedures, remaining in a hybrid form for a couple years before switching back to a standard human form. His parents incidentally got him into the film when he was a child, not knowing that it would basically become his entire life. They were just trying to give him some joy since he was born with neurological problems that prevented him from contributing to the economy on his own, and could not be helped by modern neuropharmacology. Wizard of Oz paraphernalia were his proverbial security blankets, providing comfort in the face of unintelligence. That all stopped as soon as the godlike being, Aurora Meeker finished her gray doorway message to the galaxy. Banister was suddenly one of the most intelligent human beings in the galaxy. He was knowledgeable, eloquent, and sophisticated. He immediately started explaining extremely complicated things about how the universe works, then soon moving on to making previously only theoretical claims about science and progress. It was like they switched him out with an entirely different person who looked exactly like him. It was clear that Keir Banister was helping Lightseers fulfill the forty-second taikon.

Microstory 641: Return of the Meek

< > Table of Contents

There has been much debate about the origins of our galaxy. After all this time, we still can’t agree on where it came from. Most people believe it to have been created just like any other galaxy has; through natural and simple means. Scientists have found evidence, however, that seems to contradict this hypothesis. First of all, while it’s impossible to get too close to the galactic center, we can tell that it is not a black hole, which is a fairly common feature across galaxies. Though we have been unable to run reliable tests, or gather accurate data, the data we do have shows it to behave unlike anything else in the universe. It most closely resemble what’s known as a white hole, but even that is not a fitting enough description. Certain religions, including sects of Lightseed, believe that this galaxy is actually the remnants of another galaxy, possibly in another universe. At some point, this parent galaxy was destroyed. The scattered remains leaked through a massive tear in spacetime, eventually recoalescing where we are now. The jet of light protruding from the center, which is also inaccessible, is supposedly the last remaining light escaping into this part of the cosmos. Sacred Savior Sotiren Zahir revealed during the first exodus that there was a planet showing evidence of an ancients peoples. He referred to these fallen structures as The Ruins of Gaiet, and said that he was only able to make out a single word written in a perceivable language. That word was Meeker, which he knew to be a family name. Since then, the Meeker name has been sacred in its own right, and thusly as illegal in Fostea as travel to the ruins. Still, people have been searching for the world that holds these ruins, always to know success. Not long after the Summit for Patience on Narvali, a message propagated itself across the stars. A woman appeared through a grayish doorway. Literally no one in the whole galaxy was any farther than a few meters from the nearest message door. In the distance behind this woman, viewers could see the Ruins of Gaiet. We knew this to be true, though no one but Sacred Savior had seen them before. She spoke to all in a calm and comforting voice.

Fostean Humans, my name is Aurora Meeker. She showed them the ruins. A friend of mine once lived here. It is the highest concentration of what few structures of my old worlds still exist after all this time. Thank you for respecting them. I have been watching you. Patiently. I assure you that I am not happy, though. I am very old, and few peoples have angered me more than you. I have promised to stay out of it. And for the most part, I will. But I will say this. If you do not change your ways, you will not survive long enough to regret your choices. We are not the only ones fed up with your behavior. Make no mistake, these are still our worlds. The only reason you’re here, is because we let you move in. We can just as easily kick you out...more easily, actually. This technology that I am showing you right now is nothing to me. There is nothing we cannot do, so do not test us. These are the only words you will hear from me, or from any of my peoples. If we feel you are not efforting yourselves in the right direction, we will take action, and it will be permanent. We did not create this universe so that you could hurt each other. Fall in line. That will be all. Then she, and her gray doorways disappeared everywhere. This was not what we thought the Book of Light meant when it said that the meek would return, but it is what has happened, and we must obey...to the best of our ability.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 24, 2139

« < » > Table of Contents

“Leona,” Mateo said, “this is Serif.”

“Oh?” she asked, like a mother to a child who’s just brought home that new friend she can tell will be a bad influence.

“Leona,” he repeated, “you met Serif years ago.”

“I did?” she seriously couldn’t remember. “I don’t recall that. Like...at all. Is she part of this...corrupted reality?”

“Well, yeah,” Serif said, “but I’ve been here for longer than that.”

“How long?”

“Since,” Mateo began, trying to remember exactly. He looked to Serif for help.

“2039,” Serif remembered.

“Right,” Mateo said.

“April 15, 2039; I was one of Ulinthra’s guests at the same time you were. In the timeline before Boyce killed Hitler.”

“Of course,” Leona sarcastically agreed.

Mateo sighed. “Oh my God. I’ve been spending this whole time trying to convince people of other people they used to know and love. It was difficult, because Arcadia had removed them from time. But here Serif is standing right in front of you, and you have no clue. Either Arcadia is losing her touch, or it’s just another wrinkle.”

“Well, if we failed to complete Nestor’s expiation, maybe this is part of our consequences,” Serif proposed.

“Not really fair,” Mateo said. “She never said there would be additional ramifications.”

Leona was not super happy about them talking to each other like they were old pals, but that was exactly what they were. Not long after this whole thing got started, Ulinthra had the two of them escorted to her secret base somewhere in East Bumblefork. There they met Serif, another salmon on their exact same pattern. She had been traveling with them ever since. That Leona could forget all of that was just adding salt to an already painful, wide open wound.

While Mateo and Serif were trying to talk things out, Leona was turning her head between them like a tennis match spectator, working the problem in her head. “What of hers am I wearing?”

“What?” Mateo didn’t understand.

She started pointing to her clothes. “I’ve got Lincoln’s belt, and Aura’s engagement ring. What did Serif give me so that I wouldn’t forget her when Arcadia tears her from time? If she’s really always been here, then I should have something.”

They frowned at the sad puppy. “Your ear.”

“What?” She felt her ears with her fingers, finding an earring on one that Serif’s great great grandmother had passed down through the generations. Paige had been given the other.

“I don’t remember this at all.” Her world had been turned upside down.

“It’s okay, love,” Mateo tried to comfort her.

“How could I forget? I am spawn. If she’s here, and I supposedly have her totem on my ears, why can I not remember?”

“Maybe it’s not working,” Mateo suggested, “or Arcadia found a way to alter that.”

“The totems were meant to have sentimental value. Maybe my connection to Leona just...isn’t strong enough?”

“That can’t be true,” Mateo said dismissively. It couldn’t be. “You love each other.”

“We do?” Leona asked.

“Oh yeah, it’s, uh...”

Leona was being impatient. “Mateo.”

“Well...”

“Mateo, are we polyamorous?”

Serif took the reigns. “We are, yes. At least...we were. I guess we won’t be needing the privacy hut tonight.”

“No, probably not,” Mateo agreed. “But we do need sleep. Obviously we’re all tired. Now, I’m not saying you’ll suddenly get your memories back overnight, but we should rest and deal with it in the morning. We shouldn’t try to argue with Arcadia after the day we had.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Serif said.

In the middle of an awkward breakfast wherein they discovered that none of the other island dwellers could remember Serif either, Arcadia teleported in.

“I hear you’re having some trouble,” she said, impersonating a repairman.

“I’m the only one who can remember Serif,” Mateo complained.

“Uhuh,” was all Arcadia said.

“Did you make a mistake?” Serif asked. “Did you take their memories, but forget to actually take me?

She was reluctant to answer, so she avoided it. Instead, she pointed to three of them. “You, you, and you. Come with me right now.”

“Why is Lincoln going with them? Mario asked.

“And why am I not?” Leona questioned.

Arcadia drew closer to Leona. “This is one of those times when what I say is law, and you questioning that can hurt you real bad. Stay here until I tell you otherwise.”

Leona was not afraid. “Okay.”

Mateo, Serif, Lincoln, and Arcadia all stood in a circle just inside of the treeline. The first three waited for the fourth to say something. They could still see the rest of the group eying them from the fire pit.

Finally, Arcadia spoke, “Lincoln, did you have something to do with this?”

“What?” he asked defensively. “No. Why? How?”

“Where is your art project?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said with feeble shrug.

Arcadia pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. “I know what you were doing with that thing. I didn’t put a stop to it, because I was totally all right with it. Kivi’s disappearance from history was not part of my plan, and I was rooting for you, Lincoln, but it looks like you screwed up.

Lincoln looked Serif over head to toe.

“Yeah, she does look a little like her,” Arcadia said, overexaggerating a head nod. “But not quite enough, huh?”

“Well, I was working from memory. I’m not The Artist, ya know. I was hoping to contact him so he could cut the detail for me.”

“Can someone tell me what’s happening?” Mateo implored them. “What does Kivi have to do with all this?”

“When you went back to the Hitler Tribulation, you altered the timeline. Slightly. That expiation both created Angelita...and destroyed Kivi. Mister Rutherford here was trying to remedy the situation.”

“Lincoln?” Mateo asked simply.

“It was meant to be a gift. When she was ready. When I was...done. I was gonna call The Artist to bring the statue to life, so you could have your daughter back.”

Mateo looked to Arcadia. “Is this possible?”

“It’s what he does,” Arcadia confirmed, “our father.”

“He’s your father?” Serif asked.

“He’s our creator,” she corrected. “He can create entire people; souls, minds, even memories. At one time, he and the Curator had a whole crew of people managing the timeline on a metaphysical level. Then they all left. But those jobs still needed doing. Unfortunately, it was literally impossible to recruit anyone else, so Athanaric Fury took his tools, and built me and my siblings out of clay. Then he gave us life, along with the powers we would need to act as a skeleton crew for The Gallery. Then we were thrown out of The Gallery as well, including Fury. He built the body that my brother, Zeferino ended up stealing. That’s why he had so many different powers, because it was Fury’s last attempt at protecting the timeline from people—well, from people like my brother. And my sister. And me.”

Serif was uncomfortable and worried. “Are you saying that Lincoln failed to make a good enough Kivi...and they ended up with me?”

“Sorry, kid. I know that’s not something anyone wants to hear.”

“So I’m not real.”

“Of course you’re real.” Arcadia was confused. “How do you think Leona has your earring? You had a real effect on history, I’m impressed.”

“I wasn’t born, though. I was just...made. Do I even have a brain, or a heart, or skin? Is this skin?” She started pulling at the skin of her own arm.”

“Serif, stop it!” Mateo yelled.

“Why? I’m not a person. Just a big block of...rock! I don’t know what he used, what did you use? Marble? Granite? What species am I?”

“You’re the same species as Kivi was,” Arcadia answered calmly.

“What?”

“Lincoln knew that Fury could give life to the Kivi statue, because he had done it before. I don’t know why, but I kind of think she was supposed to be a gift for you, even then. Lincoln remembers that, so he was trying to repeat it.”

“I don’t know The Artist’s original intentions,” Lincoln added, “but she didn’t have a past either. She was about a month old when you two first met.”

“Well,” Arcadia said. “The first time you met her.”

“What does that mean?”

“Oh yeah, you ran into her on this island. She didn’t know why she was there, so you took her to the Archivist, who reset the timeline far back enough to delete her. I guess she had shown up too early? I dunno, that’s not really my responsibility anymore.”

“Can we get back to me, please?” Serif asked. “What’s going to happen? Are you going to erase me?”

“Do you want me to erase you?”

“Of course not.”

She shrugged. “I don’t really think I need to. I wouldn’t tell the others what you are, though, if you plan on staying. They’re already gonna have a hard enough time accepting you as it is.”

“What can we tell them?” Lincoln wondered.

“Whatever you were gonna tell them before I came here. You have memories of her, right?” she asked Mateo. “And you have your own memories?” she rhetorically asked Serif. “So just go from there. You can say that someone else messed with the timeline, or you can just blame me. It honestly doesn’t matter to me. I just need to know, Lincoln, how you contacted Fury.”

“I didn’t,” Lincoln replied with an honest tone. “I was going to, sure. But I hadn’t made it that far. Like we said, she doesn’t look quite close enough to Kivi.”

“Well, how were you planning to get in touch with him? You don’t have what you need here on Tribulation Island.”

Lincoln just stared at her with his hands in his pockets.

“Oh my God, you were gonna go Bill and Ted on me?”

“What is that?” Mateo asked. They were asking a lot of questions today.

“Retroactive preparation. It’s when you plan to go back in time and do something you can’t do right now. It creates an ontological paradox, which is dangerous as shit.”

“Not if you frame it right, which is something I know how to do,” Lincoln argued.

“Obviously not, or we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

He shook his head. “No, something else is going on here. Maybe I could one day screw this up, but the Artist wouldn’t. There must be a reason. Serif is supposed to exist,” he said before repeating himself directly to her. “Serif, you’re supposed to exist.”

“That’s comforting,” Serif lied.

“Well, no one has been taken out of time today,” Lincoln changed the subject. “Unless you’ve found a way to erase my memories too.”

“No. I was planning on letting you grieve for your loss yesterday. Every single player needed to cross the threshold, Mateo, not just you. I can’t bring Nestor back.”

“We figured,” Mateo said sadly. Through all this drama, they didn’t give themselves the time to be disappointed in themselves for having failed one of the expiations.

“If it’s any consolation, he was a screw up in his own right,” she explained. “His family kept loving him, despite his many mistakes; no one more than his sister, but he never felt like he deserved their forgiveness.”

Mateo nodded. “I can relate.”

Arcadia turned her head like she had heard her name being called. “Oh, I don’t want to be here for this. But good luck.”

“Good luck with what?” What was going on?

“Not even I can stop them from taking you, and I’ve learned not to piss them off.” She disappeared.

“Lincoln, do you have any idea what she’s talking about?” Mateo asked.

“I think maybe that,” Serif said, pointing towards the jungle.

They turned their heads to find a door sticking out of the ground, completely out of place.

“What the hell is that?”

Vearden Haywood opened it from the other side. “Come with me if you want to live,” he said in a thick fake accent. “Nah, I’m just playin’.” After another pause, he added, “but I am gonna need your clothes.”

« < » > Table of Contents