The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 2, 2398

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Heath is pacing around again, this time in the main seating area of The Olimpia. He hasn’t spoken to his wife in four days, and hasn’t seen her in five. Neither she nor Kivi has been responding to their messages, but their devices are still on and active, in Middle of Nowhere, Florida. In fact, they haven’t moved a centimeter since June 30, which suggests all kinds of possible explanations. They could be dead, or stuck in a timeloop or time bubble. They could have lost their belongings, and moved on, or someone might have stolen them, and left them somewhere. Heath is presently considering all of these possibilities, plus some more outlandish ones. He keeps asking Leona and Ramses questions about how time and time travel work so he can add more to the growing list, and enhance his own sense of dread. It’s not healthy, but nothing they say appears to be helping him out of the grim hole that he’s digging for himself.

Leona is operating the controls, hunting for a landing site as close to the unmoving phones as possible. Ramses gets on the intercom to begin an announcement as they approach their destination. “Welcome to the location of Youth Water. It comes from a natural spring in the middle of inland Florida, which dried up centuries before it was permanently settled by Europeans. In the main sequence, this area was well-developed by the time the culture advanced to this point in its history. It boasts one of the first regions to undergo the massive rewilding effort that sought to revitalize the world’s wildlife, and consolidate human populations into ever smaller artificial habitations. But still, the spring was dry, only to be accessed long ago in the past. It is one of the most popular of the immortality waters, because it can help promote life extension in the deveiled humans of history without interfering in later endeavors to assemble the other waters, and possibly achieve complete and total immortality.

“According to the correspondence map, Marie and Kivi’s devices are currently located at the approximate location of this spring, implying that there is something quite interesting there. And I’ve just been informed by my co-pilot that the nearest open area for vertical landing is about four kilometers from this site. We apologize for the hike that will soon be demanded of you, but barring teleportation, or aerial vehicle fast rope, this is the best we can do. Mateo and I will be staying with the Olimpia in case it’s needed at a moment’s notice. The rest of you will make the trek to the target location. Thank you, and please be patient while we execute this latest, delicate maneuver to the ground.”

Mateo and Ramses wait in the clearing while the others go out and attempt to make sense of all of this. A couple of hours later, Angela returns alone. “They’re gone.”

“What do you mean, they’re gone? They’ve gone where?”

Angela catches her breath. “While Leona was looking through the phones they found by the edge of the water, Heath dove in, believing the spring to be the ultimate answer to his question. She went in after him, and they both disappeared. I was feeling a strong pull to follow them. It took everything I had to not get in the water too, because I knew I shouldn’t. They did have their devices on them. Ramses, can you track them?”

He loads up his own device. It takes him longer than they would think. It should be a quick friend location ping. “Umm...it’s complicated.”

“How so?” Mateo asks.

“They’re in the future.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 1, 2398

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Marie continues to watch the water try to escape gravity, but inevitably fall back down. All of the sudden, a hand touches her shoulder, and she breaks out of it to find Kivi next to her. They’re not in the water, though. They’re somewhere else in the middle of the woods. “What happened?”

“You were in there for two minutes. I worked up the nerve to go in after you.”

“Then you dragged me out of the water, through the woods? To what end?”

“I dragged nobody nowhere. You must have teleported us here.”

“I did no such thing!” Marie insists.

“Okay, then the time gods did it. I’m sorry, I don’t know,” she defends.

Marie composes herself. “No, I’m sorry. I think there’s something weird about that water. I was not in there for two minutes. Rather, that’s not what it felt like. And right now I feel agitated, and angry at you for taking me away from it. It’s not fair. I want to go back there. I know that I shouldn’t be so...invested, but there’s something drawing me to it, like an addictive drug.”

“Maybe it’s an actual drug,” Kivi reasons.

“Yeah, and maybe drinking it turns you into an asshole.”

“Are immortals assholes?”

“Ya know, I’m not sure if I’ve ever met anyone who drank all the waters. I know of some people who were, to various degrees, immortal, but for other reasons. Mateo once told me of one guy, though. He was an asshole, but I don’t know if this was why.”

Kivi nods. “We need to figure out where we are.”

“I don’t suppose you brought the tablet with us, or anything from our bag?”

“You got naked, I got naked. I didn’t think anything else should get wet.”

“Take my hand.” Marie tries to jump them back to the spring, and then back to Kansas City. Finally she tries to return to the Springfield airport, where they left the car, but nothing. If she was the one responsible for teleporting them before, she can’t do it again. “Ugh, I wish I had just kept my watch on. That would have been good enough.”

“We have to find help. We can’t just sit here. No one knows where we are.”

“Agreed.”

They get up, and start walking through the trees. They don’t have to go far at all before they see a huge body of water before them. They’re definitely nowhere near the Fountain of Youth anymore. They keep walking, until they get to the beach.

“Do you know where this is?”

Marie squints, and looks around. “It couldn’t be...” She steps into the water, reaches in to get some on her hand, and sticks it in her mouth. She tries to spit it out.

“Ocean water?”

“No. The salinity is much too high for that. It’s the Dead Sea, otherwise known as the source of Energy water.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 30, 2398

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Marie just got back from a hiking trip with her husband, so she’s not having too many problems. Kivi, on the other hand, was literally born less than a week ago, so she doesn’t have a whole lot of experience in the wilderness. “Ow!” She stops walking and instinctively, reaches up to slap herself in the cheek. “That’s blood. I’m bleeding.”

“It’s not only your blood,” Marie tries to tell her, “and it’s just a little.”

“A bug bit me, and you think that it’s totally fine.”

“It’s a hematophage. It only needed a little bit of your blood. We put on that smelly stuff to keep them away.”

“It’s obviously not working.”

“Well, it’s not magic.”

“Why did you say that in a different accent?”

Marie gets going on the trail. “It’s a pop culture reference.”

“You know I won’t get those.”

“I know,” Marie says as she’s getting farther ahead.

“What if it was carrying a disease?”

“It probably wasn’t.”

“Probably?”

“Hurry up! I wanna get there before it gets dark!”

“How do you know where we’re going again?”

“Ramses had a little bit of data from the main sequence in his bag when he came to this reality. Using the AI, he was able to overlay corresponding coordinates to the geography of this world, which we can follow using SatNav.”

“In English?”

“I have a map.”

They continue for another kilometer or so until they hear rushing water. This area is surprisingly remote, while it’s pretty heavily developed in the main sequence. The trek was rough, but they have come to a clearing, where they find a source of water. “Ah, there it is, you were right,” Kivi says with a smile.

Marie zooms in and out of the map. “No, this isn’t right at all.”

“You said we were looking for the Fountain of Youth, and that to me looks like a fountain. I mean, the water isn’t coming out of sculpted horses, but it’s nice enough, I guess.”

“Hold on.” She goes into the overlay code, and checks for errors, to the best of her ability with only a cursory glance. There’s too much data to go over comprehensively right now. “This isn’t gonna do me any good.” She starts to remove her clothes, ultimately keeping her bra and underwear on.

“What if someone else comes?”

Marie looks around. “I see no signs that a single human has ever been in this area ever. It’s pretty well hidden. I’m not worried. Besides, I don’t care.” She wades into the water, which she finds to be lukewarm. It’s not a hot spring, but it’s not freezing either. Perhaps it’s warmed by geothermal energy just a little bit. She walks along the smooth floor, encountering no obstacles or sharp rocks, and approaches the bubbling fountain in the center.” A warmness comes over her, but not physically, just emotionally.

“Can you teleport?” Kivi asks.

“What?” Marie didn’t really hear that. She’s mesmerized by the sight, and can’t think about anything else. It just looks like the work of jets in a hot tub, but there’s something so beautiful and entrancing about it, she can’t look away.

Kivi yells something else from the shore.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 29, 2398

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Heath is pacing around the living room, talking to his wife on the phone. The other four are watching him, worried. It’s hard to tell how the conversation is going, but it’s clear by now that she and Kivi are at least not dead or hurt. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah,” he repeats. “Okay.” He nods, unhappy, but trying to be patient with her. “No, they’ll understand.” He continues immediately, “even Mateo.” He pauses. “All right, we’ll see you when you get back. Be safe.” He pauses one last time. “Love you.” He hangs up, but doesn’t say anything right away.

“Are they okay?” Leona asks him.

“They’re fine.”

“Are they on their way back?” Mateo asks.

“They’re not. They’re in Florida.”

“What? How did they get there?”

“Apparently, Marie wanted to see the plot of land where she grew up,” Heath begins. “In this reality, in these days, it’s an airport. It doesn’t go to very many places, but one of the destinations just so happens to be Orlando, Florida.”

“Okay...does she have a thing for Orlando, errr...?”

“It’s near something called the Fountain of Youth?” He answers in the form of a question.

Oh, that makes sense, sort of. “Well, it’s not,” Leona contends. “They founded the city of Orlando relatively close to the location of a spring that no longer exists.” She goes on, “my namesake, Juan Ponce de León once looked for it in 1513, and found it to already be dried up. He did find the Compass of Disturbance, though.”

“That sounds bad. Marie never mentioned it, what is it?”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” she assures him. “It just detects temporal anomalies; rifts in the spacetime continuum, invisible portals, the spot where a teleporter disappeared from, etcetera. The spring is hard to find, and even more so now. Juan once described the terrain for me, but his info is almost 900 years out of date. Even then, to get Youth water, you probably have to be there centuries prior.”

“So, what is the point of them going there?” Heath asks.

“They’re probably just doing their best to check it off the list,” Mateo figures.

“Well, they don’t have to do it alone,” Heath decides as he’s looking at the map on his phone. “We can be there in three hours.”

“I don’t think that’s what she wants,” Angela says in a warning tone.

“It could be dangerous,” he argues.

“She can’t get hurt,” Ramses reminds him.

“Kivi can! I know you four don’t remember her, but I’ve known her as long as I’ve known you.”

“We’ve known her longer than that,” Leona volleys. “Both of them are capable and cautious women who have been through more than your wife has had time to tell you. She’s been around the block. The farm where she grew up is an airport. I’m sure the location of the former Youth Spring is a baseball diamond, or something.”

“What the hell is a baseball?”

“Out of all the dumb sports,” Angela replies, “it’s the least dumb.”

Heath has grown weary of being away from his wife so much. He’s noticed that she’s the one who keeps doing the leaving, even though at one point, he was meant to go off on these adventures with Mateo. Once they get past this, things are going to change. Ramses, Leona, and Angela have their new business to think about, which will hopefully resupply the funds that dwindled quite a bit when the majority of the team showed up. The only dangerous outsiders who might care about that both Marie and Angela exist already know about them, and the back-up twin thing they have going on. There is no reason why Marie and Heath can’t now begin the real mission of studying time travel in the Third Rail. Mateo should come too, and Kivi, if she isn’t interested in anything else.

“Are you doing okay?” Angela asks after he takes too long to react.

“I’m fine. I’m just going to go take a bath, and clear my head.”

“Okay.”

If Marie were here, she would be able to stop him from taking the bath, because that’s usually when he takes the time to locate and purchase something that costs them far too much.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 28, 2398

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Kivi has been looking out at the scenery as the car drives down the highway, going the conventional speed, instead of as fast as possible, like Heath likes to drive. Her eyes are wandering now, occasionally looking over at Marie for a split second. Marie notices. “If you have something to say, go ahead,” she says, not aggressively.

“This trip has gotten pretty long,” Kivi points out.

“I can turn up the music, or change it.”

“I’m not bored.”

“There’s a rest stop soon, we can take a break.”

“We’re just...going a lot farther...than you implied when you asked me to accompany you.”

“Oh. We’re going to Springfield.”

Kivi winces. “Now, I don’t know everything that my alternate selves would know, but I know Springfield, and it’s the one that just disappeared one day, and ended up on another planet.”

“It wasn’t one day,” Marie corrects. “It happened over the course of decades, getting smaller and smaller all the time.”

“Oh.”

“And that’s Springfield, Kansas. We’re going to Springfield, Missouri.”

“Why?”

Marie takes a beat. “It’s where I grew up.”

“Oh,” Kivi repeats. “I thought you were a Kansas City girl.”

“I went to a fake finishing school in Kansas City, but my family owned a farm outside of Springfield. That’s where the slaves worked.”

Kivi doesn’t really wanna talk about the fact that Angela-slash-Marie grew up owning human beings. Fortunately, she has a different line of questioning to go down. “What is a fake finishing school?”

“Do you know what a finishing school is?”

“No, I guess I don’t know what that is either.”

“It’s where young ladies would go to learn how to be proper women. Ya know, cleaning, finding a good husband, doing whatever the hell he tells you.”

“What made yours fake?”

“It was a real school,” Marie explains. “They taught us math, science, history; everything the boys were learning. In fact, once historians realized what had really been going on there, they also discovered that it was actually better than most traditional educational institutions in the area at the time.”

“Fascinating.”

“My father sent me there on purpose. He was one of the few men who knew it to be fake, and he wanted me to have an education. Of course, there were ways for me to do that. It’s not like there were no women in regular schools. He needed to maintain the family reputation, though, so this was perfect, since it had to be kept secret.”

Kivi nods, and stays silent for the next minute or so. “Are we going to the farm to see if you can teleport in the area?”

“Oh, God no. It’s not special at all. In fact, maps were different back then, and it was in a different reality, but I do believe that the location of our farm is now the nearest airport.”

“I see. This is just for nostalgia.”

“I don’t know what this is for,” Marie answers honestly. “I just felt compelled to get in the car, and go this direction.”

“And I’m here, because...”

“Because if I go alone, the others are gonna freak out, and try to come save me.”

“You want to be alone, so I’m the next best thing?”

Marie throws the car into autolaning mode. It’s not full autonomy, but it can stay between two lane markings, and not run into the car ahead. If it does notice itself approaching another car too quickly, it will come off the gas, and beep at the driver. Now she can look directly at Kivi without drifting into the ditch. “Not at all. I brought you, because I trust you. You know what it’s like to suddenly come into existence, and learn that you’re a copy of someone else.”

“No one knows who the original Kivi is.”

“Your father wasn’t born to the Third Rail. Do you think you’re the original?”

“No, of course not.” That was a little mean, but Kivi’s fine. “I can see the connection between us.”

“Like I said, I don’t know why I decided to go this way. I just woke up today, and felt like it was the most logical next step. I asked you to come, because I didn’t want to be alone. I just didn’t want to have to explain myself to the others. I think you’re better at understanding that I can’t quite explain it.”

“That’s probably true. My whole life is a question mark.”

“I’m glad you’re here. I don’t know what we’ll to find, or how close we’ll be able to get without plane tickets, but either way, it’s an experience that will always be just between the too of us.”

“I like that.”

Marie returns to the steering wheel. She could let the car drive itself until it’s time to exit, but right now she feels the need to exercise control over everything possible.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 27, 2398

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The new lab facility that the Honeycutts purportedly gave to Leona and Ramses isn’t gigantic. It’s about thirty meters wide, and twenty deep. It’s three stories tall, with a basement. It’s designed very simply, as a concrete block held together by steel beams. They never got around to laying a parking lot, but there’s a little warehouse in the back. It’s down a hill, so it’s actually on the same level as the basement, and they can drive right into it. Since they probably won’t require that kind of storage, it should be good enough. It’s not quite located in the suburbs, but it’s not in the center of the city either. This should make for a relatively quiet, but accessible, area.

They ended up never giving Winona the list of equipment they would need to set up a working lab for the both of them. Instead, they kept the list to themselves, and added up the cost to procure all of it. They also included the cost of construction and labor to make the place look less like a parking garage, and more like a legitimate place of business. Then they doubled that number, and gave that to Winona. She seemed neither surprised nor perturbed about it, and wrote them a check right then and there. Now they wish they had asked for triple. They set up a new bank account, separate from the Walton one they’ve all been accessing, and the credit cards. It’s good to not keep all of one’s eggs in one basket. It will still be a joint fund for the whole team, which is why they asked for extra.

It’s only been three days, and the place is already starting to look real. They just finished installing the interior walls, according to a design that the artificial intelligence that Ramses took from the Constant came up with according to his direction. Next, crews will lay tile on the second floor, and cork and high pile carpeting on the top floor. Winona probably expected them to use the whole building for their labs, but that shouldn’t be necessary, so they have other plans for the other two levels. The top floor will have to wait until later, but today is for the ground level. They’ve not done much with it yet, but they want to show the space to a couple of their friends, so they have called Angela and Heath in. Marie is taking some time for herself at a spa day. Mateo and Kivi could be here, but they’re doing some father-daughter activities, and this doesn’t really have anything to do with them.

“What do you think of this one?” Leona asks.

“It’s coming along nicely,” Angela says with a nod of approval. She’s being polite, because it really isn’t anything yet. “It’s not quite as done as the top floor.”

“Well, this one is special,” Ramses says cryptically.

“What makes it special?”

“It’s for you,” he says.

“Me?”

Heath steps in. “My wife is done with her job. After the procedure, she’s reprioritized her life, and she’s decided to just...be.”

“Okay...that means it’s my prerogative to quit?” Angela wants to be relieved, but she can’t know that yet. “Or do you want me to keep going?”

“We want you to quit,” Heath begins, “but we think you should keep doing what you’re doing.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Did Marie ever tell you how she and Heath manage to afford everything they have on the salary that you are all too well aware of now?” Leona asks her. “Teaching doesn’t pay that much, so where did the money come from in only four years?”

“Well, she implied that she had another job before this one,” Angela says, presuming now that it’s not the whole story.

Ramses chuckles, and hands her a pair of virtual reality goggles. “Put these on.”

Angela puts them on, and looks around at the start of a virtual world.

“That’s called Angaros. It’s a kind of game.”

Angela lifts the goggles up to leave them on her forehead. “That’s the name of the environment I was going to build once I was promoted to World-Builder in the afterlife simulation. I spent my free time drawing up plans.”

“What was the purpose of this world?” Leona asks encouragingly.

“Well, I was hoping to make it a sanctuary for Level Fours, particularly the ones who finally finished serving their sentences in Hock. They would be given amenities normally reserved for higher levels. I even wanted to start a program that helped to commute certain people’s sentences.”

Heath smiles affectionately. “She did that. She built that world. Of course, it’s not quite as sophisticated as anything you would have made in that other place, but it works. It helps people.”

“You just said it was a game,” Angela argues.

“It’s a game for convicts,” Heath clarifies. “It’s halfway between a prison and a halfway house. Inmates journey through this virtual world, and learn how to make good choices, as well as function in society after what they’ve been through. It’s fun, though; it is fun, so the prisoners don’t feel like they’re just taking a class. They actually want to play. They apply for session times. It’s estimated that her program alone has lowered recidivism by 24%...around the country.”

“Wow. Why didn’t she say anything about this before?” Angela asks.

“She sold it. She sold it for around four million dollars. She could have gotten a lot more, because remember inflation is much higher here than in your day. She had some stipulations, like the fact that her name couldn’t be made public, or that users would never have to pay or perform labor in order to qualify for the program.”

Angela is four years removed from her alternate self, but these sound like things that she would do, in the exact ways that she would do them. She understood the purpose of placing certain people in hock. Just because you die, doesn’t mean you automatically become a good person. But she also hated how the Limiteds were treated, sometimes as if they had never been released from prison at all. “I’m glad she did that.”

“She tried to retire,” Heath continues, “but didn’t care for it. I think she’s ready for it now, but we all thought maybe you would want to take up the mantle?”

“I don’t want to go back to that place,” Angela says sadly.

“You won’t have to. That’s what this space is for. We think you could start your own company, and do whatever you want with it. The whole floor is all yours.”

“You’re so good at the coding, and you have access to my new AI,” Ramses says. “Perhaps you could become a competitor, and just blow them out of the water.”

Angela nods and looks around again. “Can I think about it?”

“Of course,” Leona says. “Take all the time you need.”

Angela separates from the group, and starts dreaming up plans.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 26, 2398

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Mateo and Kivi yawn at the same time, the fourth in a series of yawns that started ten minutes ago. Everyone knows that yawning is contagious—though no one is a hundred percent sure why—but this is getting ridiculous. They both laugh, because that is also contagious. “Boredom is a sign of an unstimulated mind,” Kivi muses.

He looks at her differently. “That’s just the definition of boredom.”

“Oh. I thought it made me sound smart.”

“Are you not?”

“No, I’m cognizant of my alternate selves, but I don’t know the things they do. I should say that I’m cognizant of their existence. I don’t know anything about them. Are most of them smart?”

“A few of them are lawyers, but I don’t think we have any scientists in the family.”

She nods. “So, you’re my father, eh?”

“Leona’s theory is that your mother and I conceived you in an old timeline in the main sequence. Due to what you are, you managed to survive, and keep coming back in later timelines, including ones where Eseosie and I never met, or I didn’t even exist.”

“Now we’re in a reality where neither of you exists. I don’t know who my parents are supposed to be.”

“Let’s just say it’s me.”

“I think I would like that, if you’re okay with it.”

“You’re not the only daughter I have out there that I never took care of. You got a half brother too. He and his full sister do their own things, and I don’t know anything about them, though I’ve heard they’re incredibly powerful. Like..Meliora Rutherford-level powerful.”

She nods and yawns. He yawns. They sit in silence for another few minutes.

“I don’t even think I know how to ride a bike.”

“Are you sure?” he asks. “You know how to speak English, and tie your shoes?”

“Yeah. Maybe I do.”

As dense as he is, he should’ve realized right away that she was asking him to teach her. Marie does have a bike that she stores above their parking space in the underground garage. “I could teach you.”

“Would you? I would love that!” She’s excited.

“Yeah, I haven’t done it in...” He looks at his watch. “Oh, a few thousand years, give or take a few timelines.”

“It’ll be fun. We certainly don’t have anything better to do, do we?”

“No laboratories to set up, no couples trips to go on, no job to do.”

They go downstairs and retrieve the bicycle. He walks it down the hill to the park for her, where a father is already teaching his own daughter to ride. She’s at a typical age. Hopefully people won’t judge Kivi. Not everyone is born with the same privileges, weird temporal condition or otherwise. She gets on the bike, and tries to pedal. They quickly learn that she was right about not knowing how. He never had a younger sibling, and as he was saying before, didn’t ever get the chance to raise his children. It’s nice, even though she’s an adult, that they can share this one experience. Perhaps there will be more down the line. She might not know how to catch a ball, or talk to a crush either.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 25, 2398

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Marie and Heath don’t spend long in Gothenburg. It’s as boring as it looks when you search the web for it. They see no signs that there’s anything special about the area, or that a secret time travel pitstop facility has been buried underneath. They didn’t even erect a sign that designates it as the center of the country, like they did for Lebanon, Kansas in the main sequence.

They’re in Belle Fourche, South Dakota now, which doesn’t mean much in any reality, but especially not here, what with the different national borders. That’s fine, they heard that there were some lovely hiking trails around these parts, and being out in nature is precisely what they both need right now.  They’re not talking, though, which neither of them believes is healthy, but they don’t know what to say. Should they talk about the abortion? Should they pretend it didn’t happen? Should they fight? Should they reaffirm their love? It’s just so awkward that the moderately treacherous terrain is the only thing keeping their minds occupied.

She stops to catch her breath. “Okay, can you tell me what you’re feeling?”

“I’m a little tired, but I’m okay to keep going. Did you want to make camp right here?” Heath proposes.

“I don’t mean about the backpacking, I mean about what happened.”

“We’ve been talking,” he sincerely believes.

“Yeah, but...”

“Do you want to tell me what you’re feeling?”

“That’s all I’ve been doing, telling you about my mixed feelings. You haven’t been giving me your opinion.”

“It was your choice.”

“I didn’t ask you what I should do, it’s done. I’m asking how you feel about it now!”

“Why is this turning into a fight?”

She sighs. “I don’t know, I don’t want it to.”

He steps closer, but doesn’t touch her. She still doesn’t want to be touched yet. “I’m proud of you, Marie, for making that decision. I know it wasn’t easy. And I know how easy it is for me, never having to do the same. You want to know how I feel...I’m sad. I miss the baby that never was. You know how my mind wanders, it’s why I keep buying fancy things, like The Olimpia.”

“Yeah.”

“I knew what you were going to do, even while I was fighting against it. I knew you would go through with it, because you had to. My brain, however, was insistent that it go over a hypothetical life that I had with that child. It chose a boy for me, and named him Ferris, after my great grandmother. I taught him about the world, and you taught him about cyberspace. He became a teacher, like me, and lived only a few miles away from us with his family. I don’t resent you for preventing this fantasy, so I don’t want you to think that that’s what I’m saying. It’s just been—” He’s struggling to continue.

“It’s okay, you can say that this has been hard on you. You have a right to that.”

“It has been hard. I feel like I knew him, and lost him. And when I think about the fact that I didn’t lose anything, it just makes it worse.”

She takes his hand. “I’m sorry you’re going through that.”

Heath shakes his head, and looks away.

“I mean it. This did happen to you, in a different way, but you’re not this removed observer. I’m sorry you couldn’t be there too. That probably hasn’t made it any easier.”

He nods, but says nothing more.

“Let’s keep going,” Marie suggests.

She lets go of his hand, and begins to head farther up the hill, but she loses her footing, and slips off the edge. They’re not on a cliff, but she tumbles down pretty far, and she can’t stop herself. She only does stop when a partially buried rock gets in her way. It cuts open her hand, and breaks at least a few bones. She’s holding her now limp wrist with her other hand, and trying to breathe through the pain as Heath runs down as fast as he can. He’s aware that he could fall down too if he’s not careful. By the time he gets all the way down to her, the pain is still there, and so is the blood, but her hand is otherwise totally fine. She’s able to move it.

“What the...?”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you, I can heal now. It’s a temporary consolation prize.”