The Mystery of Springfield, Kansas: Chapter Three

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I expect to find myself in the other dimension I’ve been to before, but it is nothing like that. It’s cold and frightening and filled with near-blinding light. I can see that there are objects around me, but everytime I try to focus on something, the intensity of the light increases, blocking it from full view. The only way I can keep from running into things is if I keep them in my peripheral vision, for anything else overwhelms my eyes. I call out to Hokusai for a little bit, but quickly grow tired of it, literally. I have no reason to believe she’s still anywhere near here. I keep walking, but very slowly, holding my hands out and pivoting so I don’t collide with anything. My God, who knows what dangers are around me? There could be an entire field of knives. Just, like, the ground is knives. I recognize it as a crazy idea, but as I’m trying to shake these fleeting thoughts from my mind, I encounter my fear. The ground is knives.

I don’t know how it’s possible, but the powerful light dims enough to show a few square feet before me. The business end of numerous knives are protruding from the ground, swaying in the wind as if mere wheat on the plains. No, this is nothing like the other dimension. This is Nightmare World. Every fear you have will be made manifest, just by you worrying it might. And there will be no escape from this, because even if you think of something you believe to be innocuous, the world will present it in the most horrible way possible. I will not be able to fight a giant marshmallow monster on my own, which is definitely on its way, because it’s all I can think about. The light recedes some more, and I see something in the distance. It’s a very large tree, on which someone has built a treehouse. I have no fear of treehouses, and I wasn’t thinking about them recently, so it must just be something that’s here on its own.

I reach down and tear one of the knives out of its place. It comes out like a tuft of grass; difficult and messy, but possible. I wait there, staring at the place where it used to be, assuming two more would grow back in its place, but they don’t. I keep doing this, building myself a path to the tree. Sure, I should probably just turn around and get the hell out of here, but I’m a detective. If nothing else, maybe Hokusai needs my help. If her experience here is half as bad as mine, she could sure use it. It takes a really long time, but I manage to get all the way through. When I reach the treehouse, I collect myself and examine my surroundings once more. It’s much easier to see than before, though there is still so much light around me that I can’t tell where it’s coming from. The rate the light was dimming would suggest that it is simply this world’s own perverted version of nightfall.

There’s evidence that the treehouse once had a rope ladder leading up to it, but it’s no longer there. I’m going to have to do this the hard way. I used to love climbing trees, but I haven’t done it since I was in single digits. I still remember how, though, and it’s not too difficult getting up there. The hardest part is figuring out how to get from under the floor, to the door, without falling on the death knives. I regret being so hasty with this. I should have taken some time to rest and warm up. Now I either take my chances and jump over to the edge of the house, or I climb back down and risk being far less lucky in my second attempt. I decide that I might as well not retrace my steps, and just go for it. I snag the edge and, while barely holding on, push the door open with my other hand, and lift myself in.

I half-expect to see Hokusai waiting for me with a smug look on her face, but it’s completely empty. The place is pretty sparse, but obviously someone was living here. There’s a decent low-to-the-floor twin-sized bed. Next to it is a desk with what looks like a lamp on it. The windows are covered in blackout curtains, but the lamp-like thing has been rigged to stream and control the natural light from the outside. Clever girl. There are stacks of papers next to the desk, and on top of a miniature refrigerator. It isn’t cold inside, but none of the unidentified meat in there has spoiled, so it was probably working at one point recently. Sitting neatly on the desk is a single sheet of paper. Well, it’s not so much a single sheet as it’s several sheets cut up and taped together, ultimately forming one sheet. Each section appears to have been written at different times, and only later put together.

Detective,

I hope this letter never finds you. After retrieving your flashlight, I hope you either decide to give up, or upon replacing the batteries, you discover that it no longer works. This is a terrible place, and it’s taken me months to learn its tricks. Everything here is dangerous, except for anything within the bounds of the treehouse. I have been living here alone for one three four seven months one two three years. Don’t worry, time won’t necessarily pass for you as fast as it does for me. As you might have noticed, the world recognizes your fears, and gives them to you as if you had asked for them. My worst fear is time, and losing too much of it before I find my daughter. If that’s never been a problem for you before, it shouldn’t be a problem now.

I’ve left for you a few things that might help. The goggles on the corner of my bed will protect you from the light, and allow you to navigate. The stack of papers under the bed should help you figure out what happened to Springfield. I believe those two boys you were searching for are still alive. The goggles, the knob, and the flashlight could help you find them, along with a few other objects that I’ve tracked, but never actually found.

Please ignore the hoarder stacks. As many things as I’ve been able to conjure here, I never could figure out how to summon a filing cabinet. They’re part of my own investigation, but they won’t do you any good. Half of them are in a shorthand of my own devising, so you wouldn’t be able to decipher them. The other half are just my diaries.

Feel free to anything in the fridge. No, it’s not cold, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s a timebox, which means it’s only been in there for a few seconds, no matter how much time has passed outside of it. The book we found has taught me to build a many wondrous things, including the fridge, and the quantum replicator, which I plan to take with me when I finally leave. The reason I’ve not left yet is because I returned to you the Rothko Torch, which is vital to reopening the portal. It has taken me this long to understand how to do without it. I do not blame you for this, it’s my own fault for not trusting you. This is all on me. I do know where my daughter is, however, and I will be using my newfound knowledge to get to her. Please, take what I have given you, and leave as well. No one should have to be here, even for just a few minutes. Don’t try to enter the Ruby Cave, don’t drink the sap of the blackthistle trees, and don’t—under any circumstances—close your eyes for an extended period of time outside the treehouse. I learned that the hard way. Just get out. Now.

With apologies,

Hokusai Gimura

I stuff the meat in my bag, along with the notes she told me to take. I put what I’m now calling the HG Goggles over my face, and make the climb back down. The goggles protect me from the light, leaving the environment looking like regular ol’ daytime. The knives are gone, so I run as fast as I can, just hoping that I’m going in the right direction. Before too long, I reach the wall. The house cannot be seen from this side, but the flashlight illuminates the wall just as well as before. After taking one last look at the new world, I step back through, and return to what was once Springfield.

Upon leaving the house, I discover that my car has disappeared, as has Hokusai’s. She perhaps would have taken hers, but not also mine. I get out my phone to hail a ridesourcing vehicle, but of course, the battery is dead, so I just start walking. After a while, a man in an old truck pulls up and offers me a ride. “What’s your name, friend?”

“Kallias,” I answer.

“That’s a great name. I’m Randall. Randall Gelen. What are you doing out in the middle of nowhere?” he asks.

“Car broke down. I was just passing through,” I lie.

“I’m on my way back to Topeka where I live, so I can drop you off anywhere between here and there.”

I take a deep breath and flip through the pages that Hokusai left me. “Topeka’s as good a place as any.”

“What about your car?”

“Let the birds have it.”

He just nods, completely without judgment.

“I appreciate this, by the way. Not many people would pick up a stranger in 2016.”

“2017,” he says simply.

“What?”

“It’s 2017.”

I say nothing at first, because a hitchhiker is dangerous enough. I don’t need him freaking out about me thinking I’m a time traveler. Obviously I spent more time in Nightmare World than I knew. Though I may not have the same issues with time as Hokusai does, it is still a concern for me, and that must have been enough for me to skip at least several months in only a few hours. It could be so much worse, though, so I’m just grateful it’s only been that long. “Of course, my mistake. Slip of the tongue.”

He nods again, still not worried I possibly brought with me one of the knife plants, and intend to use it against him. Just then, his car rings. “Hello?” he asks after pushing a button retrofitted on his steering wheel.

“Hey, dad,” the voice of a young girl says.

“Leona, shouldn’t you be in class?”

“I can make a call in between classes, I’m not hurting anyone.”

“Well, as long as you’re not hurting anyone...”

“When will you be home?”

“Early enough to catch you sneakin’ a beer with your friends.”

“All right, we’ll leave early then.”

He smiles. “I’m not too far away. I can pick you up this afternoon, if you need it.”

“Nah, I’m okay.” A schoolbell rings. “I better get goin’. Love you, dad.”

“Love you.”

“Just the one kid?” I ask, trying to make conversation.

“Yep. I know I’m pretty old for a teenage daughter. Carol and I adopted her after both her parents died. She’s a good kid, and she’s been through a lot.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“Got kids of your own?”

“No. I was a detective. I spent a lot of time looking for other people’s children, and knew I never wanted to risk going through that myself.”

“You were a detective? What are you now?”

I look out the window at the trees racing in the opposite direction. “I don’t know.”

“Well, if you’re lookin’ for a new job, I recommend you not apply at Analion.”

“What?”

“Sorry, I couldn’t help but notice your papers. If that’s an application for that company, best let it go. That place is fallin’ apart.”

I look down at Hokusai’s papers to see what he’s talking about. She says something about an astrolabe. Apparently I might be able to find it at a place called Analion Tower. “Oh, these are just...they’re nothing.”

He nods once more.

We make it to Topeka where he drops me off at a gas station. I buy a charger for my phone and hunker down at a coffee shop that has wireless internet. I start reading through the papers, and doing research on my first target. Analion, which is based out of Kansas City, is going through some tough times as of late. Hopefully they’ll be too busy with their legal troubles to notice when I break in there and steal a mystical artifact from the president’s office.

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Microstory 685: Salvation From the Quantum Darkness

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After every star in the galaxy disappeared all at the same time, we were forced to think about how life might continue without them. The Book of Light predicted that it would last for weeks in its current form, and even longer in some unexplained capacity. We assumed this meant that some stars would be returned to us in full force—hopefully the most important ones; the central worlds—while other remained shrouded, but we didn’t really know. Panic spread across every planet in Fostea like a virus. Even those who were traveling, or even living, in artificial interstellar vessels were feeling the pressure of having to change their way of life. As said before, most plants require sunlight in order to survive. Though there are forms of life that require less light, or sometimes even none, every utilitarian plant needs it greatly. Over the course of the next couple of days, these plants began to die off, starting with the smallest. Large trees promised to survive for much longer, but they provide us with relatively few resources, so that was little comfort to us. The entire food chain on each planet relies on this plant life to survive as well. Even animals that feed only on meat either feed on animals that feed on planets, or they feed on animals that feed on animals that feed on plants. In the end, the only species that had any hope of adapting were humans, and even we weren’t doing so well. How could we get through this for weeks? If it wasn’t lack of food, it was war. If it wasn’t war, it was darkness-induced insanity. If it wasn’t insanity, it would be something else. With the quantum darkness could come completely unknown threats. What else would this hell in mithgarther have for us that we couldn’t even begin to fathom? Then something we still don’t understand happened. The darkness was abated. In only a few standard days, the quantum darkness that had overcome every star was somehow destroyed. It did not happen all at once, but it did happen shockingly rapidly. Suns blinked back into their full glory several at a time. Not only that, but scientists studying this phenomenon have begun to notice an odd unnatural pattern in which the stars returned. One might even be able to trace a path between them, as if a force were moving in one general direction, swallowing the darkness little by little. We still don’t have all the data analyzed, but we suspect that the metaphor of a Light of Life may be not so abstract a concept as we once believed. When asked about the time discrepancy from the Book of Light prediction and reality, the resurrected Sacred Savior smiled, and said, “I told you it would take weeks to abate the Darkness. But time is relative, you should know that by now. We don’t all perceive it the same way. I wasn’t wrong, you just mistook my words.”

Microstory 684: The Quantum Darkness Begins

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This is a turning point; in the taikon, for the believers, and for Fosteans as a whole. It’s easy to forget that Sotiren Zahir did not write the taikon as prophecy. We do occasionally use that word, but we know that it can be rather misleading. He was not telling us what would happen, he was telling us what needs to happen if we are to survive them. The taikon are tests, our salvation being dependent upon our ability to succeed in them. Which means that it is entirely possible to fail, leading either to the uprising of The Liar, or a complete cessation of the taikon. This particular taikon, in fact, is one where the latter possibility is more likely than it ever has been before. It is designed to test our faith. We have been steadily gaining followers to the Light. Even before the taikon began, our numbers would show a general trend upwards. The Quantum Darkness threatens to damage that trend, and could even go so far as to diminish our numbers to their lowest in recent history. The day after the observation of the very first Daglit, all stars switched off simultaneously, as if mere lightbulbs. Literally every single star in the galaxy simply disappeared from sight. Their power was still warming their respective orbitals, and the people on them, but they could not be detected by the naked eye, or simple telescopes. Plants began to suffer from having no way to conduct photosynthesis, destroying a significant amount of the animal population almost immediately. Humans have plenty of ways to survive this in our advanced technological era, but that was never our problem. We crave the light. You’ll notice that nobody lives in the void between galaxies, and only the sickest few of us live underground, deep underwater, or otherwise cut off from daylight. Every intelligent species in the universe evolved and grew out of the light of a sun, and to lose them all at once was the worst thing we’ve ever experienced. When the Sacred Savior spoke of this in the Book of Light, it’s not that we didn’t believe him that something like this could happen, but we severely overestimated his use of metaphors. We could never dream of the possibility that we would be plunged into actual darkness everywhere. We don’t know how to save ourselves from this terrible new environment. We know only that if we don’t, we shall all surely die, or be as good as dead.

Microstory 683: Remember the Sufferers Part II

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Since this holiday we have created is a new one, we didn’t know how we were meant to observe it. In fact, we didn’t even know what to call it. Highlightseers started to determine the details before the lost man was made to remember, but once Meliton Rete was suddenly cured from EQUA, they discovered that they didn’t need to. He had their collective propositions, all in his head. Literally. At first everybody thought that his suggestions were completely original, but a few tests gave evidence of something completely different. Rete was suffering from quantum amnesia, which meant that his memories were floating around spacetime somewhere. When they were returned to his mind, they somehow brought with them lots of other people’s thoughts as well. Over the centuries, people have thought about, and discussed with each other, their faith. They would consider what each taikon means, what the rest of the Book of Light might have to do with the universe, and just...everything. Anything and everything. All of these notions had the potential to be sent to Rete’s mind, but we believe only the best ones did so. His brain rearranged them in a cohesive vision; an amalgamation of how all Lightseers think things should be. It was Rete who proposed that our new holiday be called Daglit. It was he who recommended how each faction should remember the sufferers. But in reality, this is the general consensus, and Meliton Rete has somehow become the vessel for that. Though we share a history, we’ve all been through different things, and we all have different perspectives. Rete understood not only this maxim, but how each faction would see this day, and how they would recognize those they’ve lost. In less than one day, he wrote an entire book, spelling out the differences and similarities between the practices. We now know what to do, and it starts tomorrow.

Microstory 682: Remember the Sufferers Part I

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As previously stated, there aren’t very many holiday observances in Fostea. There is one that we could have started long ago, but were essentially forbidden to by the Book of Light. Sacred Savior Sotiren Zahir first proposed a day to reflect on those who have been lost to our cause back when he was first writing the Book. It was his wishes that his followers not actually participate in anything like this until the taikon had begun. When asked why he felt this way, the following was his response.

You can’t legitimately remember something that just happened, or is still in the middle of happening. Doing this would be completely pointless. Everything is still fresh in your mind, and that is when you should be taking action. There’s a reason every culture we’ve encountered in the entire universe—save Earth—mourns their dead for a period of four days. We recognize that all important events are processes, rather than static moments in time. You have to leave a little buffer between when it first began, and when you start thinking about it. Otherwise, you can’t really have any perspective, can you? You have to have both experienced something, and also experienced what came of it to have this perspective. That’s why I don’t want this observance to yet exist. Many have died protecting The Light, but many more will die for the same reason. I’m not saying all suffering will end once the taikon begin, but our greatest obstacles should be over by then. If this is not the case, then may the Light protect us all, for I fear we are destined to meet our end at the hands of The Liar.

Zahir is referring to the final taikon, which is not a prediction, but a consequence. If we have served The Light well, and met the taikon with dignity and truth, we should be protected for eternity. If, however, we have failed, then the Savior worries we will be overcome by darkness, and ruled by a mysterious entity known as The Liar. This is why the taikon are so profoundly important. If we don’t get this right, we will not get another chance, and we will be doomed to a world of nothing but torment and misery. Now is not the time to rest on our laurels, but we must also remember all that we have been through up to this point; all pain that we have conquered; everyone who sought to destroy us. The new holiday has been instituted, and now, we will remember the sufferers.

Microstory 681: A Lost Man Made to Remember

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Few illnesses in the modern day are incurable. Fate—or The Darkness, if you prefer—seemed to think that this was an unfortunate condition, and so it came up with an entirely new class of medical issues. We call them quantum diseases, and they only inflict people who have, to varying degrees, merged themselves with technology. Any standard human can be treated to near a hundred percent health using medical techniques that we’ve had for centuries. It would be hard to find out which was the last disease medical science has cured. We keep encountering new ones, like when we travel to new worlds, but we even make quick work of those. Quantum diseases are different, however, in that they are the blending of biological pathogens, and computer viruses. There is treatment for some of these conditions, but not many have been cured, because no machine built yet is capable of calculating curative scenarios. Even if such technology did exist, the data necessary to rebuild whatever has been lost from any given disease may be long gone. One man, named Meliton Rete recently experienced an extremely rare disorder called episodic quantum amnesia, also known as EQUA. Doctors first discovered EQUA two decades ago when the first case presented itself on a transhuman-run asteroid orbiting Arithmi called Feulon, after its founding family. Data is often corrupted when attempting to transfer a subject’s consciousness into some other substrate, which is something often done on Feulon. Most of the time, this data can be recovered, and the process can be restarted. In other cases, there is not so much a corruption as the data simply disappears without a trace. Now, this sort of thing happens in the natural world all the time. Particles blink in and out of existence periodically, and we still don’t really know how, or why. Since consciousness transference is only practical using quantum computers, however, this phenomenon can sometimes have an effect on consciousness uploading, which is just one danger of such practices. Meliton Rete was faced with this truth while trying to upgrade to a new body. He was left the shell of a man, with no memory of who he was, or what he had been through. Like most quantum diseases, there is no cure for EQUA, because no one knows where the information disappears to. Even if its path could somehow be found, it will have by then lost its cohesion, and become randomly spread across spacetime. As a miracle, nonetheless, this is what happened, on its own. As if by magnets, Meliton’s memories suddenly returned to his original substrate, which he had been stuck with in a care facility for the last several years. He could remember everything that ever happened to him, with even greater accuracy than he ever had before. No one knows how the memories came back to him, or where they had been this whole time. Some believe they were never really gone, but instead skipped through the timestream, returning to their origin as if they had never left. With these memories came his ideas and notions, some of which would help us find the best ways of achieving the next taikon in the list.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 8, 2024

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Things looked quite familiar after Arcadia apported them back to Earth in the past. She sent them off rather late in the day, for a reason they did not yet know. They weren’t given any warning that it was coming, and weren’t even standing in a group when it happened. They looked around, eventually coming across one of those old newspaper stands. It was April 8, 2024 in Makanda, Illinois. There were just a ton of people walking around, an especially large number of people for how small the town appeared to be. A man was stopping people, trying to sell them something, and a few people were actually buying.

“I never experienced this year,” Mateo noted.

“Oh, that’s right,” Leona said. “That was when you went far into the future. Yeah, you gave us quite a scare. Worst two years of my life, waiting for you.”

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Mateo said. “I’m here now!”

“Great.”

The salesman approached them. “You guys have your glasses?” he asked.

“What glasses?” Serif asked.

“Your eclipse glasses,” he clarified. “I got as many as you need. Five bucks...four each if everyone in your party wants one.”

They all looked to Leona, who nodded. “That’s a good deal.”

“Does anyone have human money?” Darko joked.

“Wait, where’s Lincoln?” Serif asked. They hadn’t noticed him missing until now.

“No, just four bucks, remember?” the man said, not understanding, and a little nervous about the human money joke.

“He’s taking care of Dar’cy,” Marcy told them. “Arcadia wanted it this way, I don’t know why.” She took out a twenty dollar bill and handed it to the man, who handed her five pairs of glasses.

“I see.”

“Wait,” Leona ordered as the man was trying to walk off and find new customers. “I need to test them first.” Ever the thorough one, she tested each of the pair of glasses, looking up at the sun to make sure they wouldn’t make them go blind. “All right, you’re good,” she said once she was done. The man was happy to be done with them.

“I don’t know why we did that,” Darko said. “She didn’t bring us here to watch whatever eclipse this is. We’re here to help someone.”

“If it can make you go blind, maybe we’re supposed to stop that from happening to someone important.” Mateo suggested.

“Anyone remember a celebrity who went blind in 2024?” Darko asked.

“Don’t look at me,” Serif said. “I didn’t exist.”

“What?”

Leona was looking at Mario’s special watch. “One minute to totality.”

“Do celestial events have any effect on time travelers?” Marcy asked. She then had to ignore a passerby who had heard what she said.

“I don’t think so,” Darko said.

“That’s not possible,” Leona pointed out. “Maybe a solar flare could do something, maybe.”

“Hey, you never know,” Darko returned. “We still don’t understand why citrus explodes when exposed to the timestream.”

“Okay, everybody look around,” Mateo stepped in. “Look for a horse that’s about to kick someone in the head, or a disease that all the children have.”

They spread out a little bit, but walked in the same general direction, looking for anything suspicious, stopping only to witness the eclipse for a few minutes. It held his interest for a few seconds before Mateo got bored with it. He found it more compelling to watch everyone in town staring at the sky with their weird glasses, all at once, like the most unsettling flash mob flash ever. One woman had no interest in it either. She was weaving through the crowd, holding a baby, and making sure that no one was following her. He was going to alert the rest of the group, but they were too fascinated by a moon, so he just decided to investigate himself. Presumably just as bored, Darko noticed this and came along.

The woman ducked into an alley with such earnest that they could now hear her heavy, fearful breaths. As Mateo and Darko were about to turn the corner, they noticed a man coming from the opposite direction, about to do the same.

He stopped when he saw them. “Who the hell are you?” he asked in a tone.

“I don’t know,” Mateo said.

“What, you have amnesia?”

“And if I do?”

He shook it off, because he didn’t really care. “Catalina!” he called up to the woman.

She turned around at the sound of her name, which instantly doubled her fear. She held her baby closer to her chest, trying to look for a way out.

“Looks like she don’t wanna see you,” Darko told him.

“Looks like it’s none of your business,” the man spat back. “He wants you back in Kansas City,” he said to Catalina. “You took his baby, that’s not okay.”

“It’s not his!” she argued.

“He’d like his own doctors to test that,” the predator said.

“He doesn’t control KC anymore,” Catalina argued. “And he sure as shit don’t control me.”

“I think you need to go.” Mateo placed his hand on the predator’s shoulder, knowing it was a bad idea.

The predator backhanded him in the face, knocking him to the ground.

Darko made no attempt to help Mateo up, instead remaining stoic and collected. “You definitely need to go,” he echoed.

“You don’t wanna mess with me.”

Darko raised his voice a little, “no, sir, you don’t want to mess with me. You need to go. Now.”

“Catalina, who are these guys?”

“You don’t wanna find out,” she answered with confidence. She was a pretty good actor, quickly catching onto the fact that they were there to help.

“Do you know who I work for?” the predator asked, giving Darko his full attention now.

“I don’t really give a shit. Anyone who threatens Catalina’s safety, or her baby’s, will have to face me.”

The predator took out a knife, which Darko reacted to immediately. He made quick work of knocking it out of his hand, and then proceeded to use his fighting skills against him. The predator was a decent fighter himself, but in the end, it was no real competition. When it was over, the predator was unconscious on the ground, half of his face lying in a puddle of mud.

“Darko,” Marcy said simply. The whole group had arrived, having finished enjoying the eclipse.

“I had to, Marcy. He was a threat.”

She breathed in deeply and found her center. “I understand.”

“Who are you people?” Catalina asked.

“Are you running from him?” Darko asked.

“Not him, exactly. He’s just a lieutenant. It’s his boss I’m afraid of. He thinks my baby is his.”

“Is it?”

“Maybe.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mateo said. “We have to protect her; from anyone, and everyone.”

“Of course. I know a guy, but first, we need to find a safe place to hole up.”

Leona used the internet, and her intuition, to find them a barn on the edge of town where no one would look for any of them. Serif and Marcy were then sent off to gather something from whatever store they could find it in. They returned a couple hours later with a ticket dispenser.

“What’s this for?” Mateo asked.

“This is April 8, 2024, right?”

“Right,” Leona confirmed.

“Why do you not know what the date is?” Catalina asked, confused.

Darko set up the dispenser and took the first three numbers out quickly, letting them drop to the floor. He handed the fourth to Mateo, and let the next three drop before handing the eighth to Mateo as well. He kept doing this until Mateo was holding the 4, 8, 20, and 24. “Just be happy it’s not 2099, or something, or that we didn’t need more than one dispenser.”

“What exactly is happening?” Serif asked, just as confused as Catalina.

Darko set the tickets on a workbench in order. “Everybody find a place to sit and wait. We’re at the DMV, this might take awhile.”

“What?”

They did as they were told, sitting in relative silence for the next couple hours. Suddenly, a man appeared from the shadows and stood on the other side of the workbench. “Number one!” he called out. “Who’s got number one!”

“I do,” Darko said, jumping up. “Jesus Christ, step out of character for a second.”

“Darko Matic, it’s been awhile.”

“I need two new identities. One is an infant.”

The man looked at Catalina, and her child.

“Under whose authorization?”

“Under mine.”

“Darko, you know the rules. I’m salmon, I can’t just give anyone I wish new papers.”

“This is a Kingmaker situation,” Darko explained.

“But, you’re not...”

“I am. Today I am.”

“Well, who is she? Rather, who is she gonna be?”

“I don’t know, that’s not my job. But she needs to disappear, and you need to help us with that.”

The man weighed his options. “All right. But if the powers that be come down on me, I’m callin’ you in.”

“Fair enough.”

“Approach the counter, please, ma’am,” he requested.

Still anxious, but starting to feel grateful, Catalina did as she was asked.

“I have a few questions. Firstly, what would you like your new name to be?”

As they were working new identities, Mateo spoke to his brother privately.

“Who is this guy?”

“The Forger. He sets up new identities for other salmon when they travel to new times and places. He’ll do it for choosers too, which is how we met, but only if he’s allowed.

“I could have used him from time to time,” Mateo said.

“Matic!” the Forger called out. “Is she staying in this time period?”

“That’s up to her!” Darko responded.

“Is he good?” Mateo then asked. “Will she be safe?”

“Perfectly. His IDs are the real thing. He doesn’t have to use a dead baby’s social security number, or anything. His papers literally rewrite history, very powerful stuff. He worked on Operation Second Wind.”

Catalina walked up to them holding a packet. “Wow, that was quick. In the movies, it takes, like, twenty-four hours.”

“But you’re good?”

“Yeah, they look great. I wanted to thank you for everything you did for me. I don’t know why you’re helping me, but I greatly appreciate it. How could I repay you?”

“Just take care of your child, and stay out of trouble.”

“I will. Specifically,” she opened her passport, “Tasha Rutherford will.”

“Rutherford?” Mateo asked.

“Yeah, it was the name of a guy who helped my older brother out of a jam a couple years back. I owe him everything, so I figured this was the best way to honor him since I can never actually see him again.”

“What, was he a lawyer, or something?”

“Yeah. Well, he was in law school at the time, but he did end up passing the bar. Thank you so much again. Sabine and I should be getting out of town.”

“Of course,” Darko said. “Be careful. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, except have fun.”

She smiled and left the barn.

“Lincoln Rutherford?” Mateo asked rhetorically. “That’s why he’s not here. Arcadia didn’t want her recognizing him.”

Marcy walked up, looking at the barn doors with them. “That was Tasha Rutherford.”

“Indeed,” Darko confirmed. “You know of her? Does she cure cancer?”

“No,” Marcy said with a laugh. “Her granddaughter does. Marcy Rutherford. I think I was named after her.”

“I think, maybe...” Leona began, trying to do the math in her head, “...she was named after you.”

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