s2.e8

Going Dark

            “We could’ve won,” Jared proclaimed, still angry about how the game ended. “It was so close. Might’ve even had the most points if all three teams were still standing.”    

            “Let it go, man,” Arthur urged him. “You heard Bailey. All their computers that were keeping track of the scores went down, too.”

            Everyone was waiting within the King Arcade plaza, eating lukewarm pizza as they settled down and waited for their parents to come pick them up. Around them, the last of the very disappointed kids were just finishing up their hand-ins of their gear, while Bailey made the rounds and apologized—all without breaking “character.”

            “Maybe next year,” Jared mocked him snidely. “Ugh. You don’t get it, Arty. You weren’t there. We were in the zone, man. And I was all over the place, on the last of my health, making a comeback. Heck, all of us were really coming together out there.”

            Zach said with a shrug, “But there is next year. We won’t be too old by then.”

            “You okay, Cel?” Sadie asked Celeste, who was munching idly on a pizza crust. “Hey, you did great. I don’t think we would’ve made it to the final round without you.”

            “I lost… my slingshot,” she muttered.

            “You shouldn’t have brought it in the first place!” Jared snapped.

            Sadie glared at him. “Lay off, Jared.”

            “You guys really need to calm down,” Colin told them. “It’s not like you lost. At worst, think of it as a three-way tie. I’m sure that next year, you’ll do even better.”

            “Ah, man… My heart’s still beating fast,” Wessy sighed and stretched out on the ground, where he looked towards the top of the Ferris wheel over the trees separating its part of the park. “Do you really think they can get that crazy guy off there?”

            Jace turned to the wheel once again for a visual update. The cherry picker the park brought in was now fully extended, and a rescue worker was helping Wes into the basket. Not that they’d be leaving soon—if the normal cops waiting at the park entrance didn’t need to chat with him, then the four that already went that way definitely would.

            “Did you guys see that cool ninja guy that was running around, swinging his sword in the air?” one of the hardcore eight-year-olds asked his friends as his group headed out. “Do you think there were other secret mascots hidden about, too?”

            “Colin!” an adult voice called out. “Come on, buddy, we’re going home.”

            They saw Colin’s dad, waiting at the entrance. After Jace got a group shot with Arthur’s camera, Colin said his goodbyes and headed out. Seconds later, Arthur’s dad showed up and he left as well. Celeste looked increasingly upset that her mom was about to arrive and bring her home next, meaning that she’d be leaving without her slingshot.

            But her day became good again once Wright came over with his team, her prized old friend in his hand. He handed it over, and she smiled and cradled it in her arms.

            “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she thanked him.

            “I found it in the grass by the wheel. It was like someone tossed it into the trees or something. I knew it was yours, so… You know. Guess I’m paying you back.”

            “You DTE kids aren’t half bad.”

            “Speaking of school…” Robby spoke up. “Is it cancelled if there’s no power?”

            “If it is, then at least one good thing will come out of this…” Jared grumbled.

            “Cheer up, dude,” Wright said as they headed out. “You guys rocked it.”

            While the sky fell into twilight above them, Sadie and then Celeste were taken away by their parents, and the long day felt like it was finally ending. Jace figured that he would be the last to leave, since his uncle probably needed to chat with a few people.

            By the time Gavin was the last on his team still waiting for a pickup, he walked over from a bench opposite the group’s waiting spot and stared at the four remaining kids for a moment, before sighing and admitting, “You guys… are pretty good.”

            “Um… thanks,” Wessy sat up and replied. “So was your team.”

            “It’s great to have a tight circle of buds, isn’t it? Be… good to each other,” he said rather solemnly before heading off, making them curious of what was on his mind.

            “What’s up with him?” Wessy wondered, but then stopped caring.

            Half an hour later, Jace and Wes became the last guests to leave the park—Wes having grabbed a half-full box of cold pizza without Bailey or the police seeing, or at least caring if they did witness the act. Under a twilight sky, they got to the car, still at the entrance. Warren was waiting in his normal clothes, his legs dangling off the hood.

            “Planning to pay this?” the teenager asked and held up a parking ticket.

            Wes groaned, took out a slice of pizza, bit into it, and then tossed the box in the back of the car before yanking the ticket out of Warren’s hand.

            “I take it you want a ride… somewhere,” Wes said and got into the front seat.

            Warren hopped off the hood, opened the passenger door as Jace quietly slipped through the creaky back door, and replied, “Your house, for a big debrief.”

            He picked up his heavy duffel bag sitting on the seat that contained his ninja gear and sword, and buckled up as Wes got the car started and pulled off the pavement.

            “Well…” Warren took a deep breath once they hit the street. “The game got screwed up, the city lost power, and the cops are back. But at least we’re in one piece.”

            “And the non-time cops didn’t press charges,” Wes added, watching the many lights of the police cruisers and power trucks go by. “The real police are going to be too busy with all this, anyway.” After he was directed by a traffic cop at the first intersection out of the park and got on the road to home, he asked, “Jace? You okay back there?”

            “Y-yeah…” he replied. “No worse than almost getting blasted by a shotgun…”

            “Did you at least have some fun before it all went to hell?”

            “I think so… We might’ve been close to winning. I guess that’s good. Maybe.”

            “Originally, I was out of the park earlier, before it got dark.” Wes looked down the highway at the shadows of Royal Valley’s office towers. “Little scary out there.”

            “Wait. We have to get Millie,” Jace reminded. “We promised her a full update.”

            “Ah, come on… What could she possibly contribute this time…” Wes noticed Warren’s piercing eyes in the rearview, and gave in. “All right, fine. To the Flamingo.”

            “By the way,” Jace said. “Did you mean to drop Celeste’s slingshot?”

            “I…” Wes sighed, “panicked when I saw the cops coming and tossed it off.”

            “She got it back. Wright found it. Then she was so happy that she kissed Wessy.”

            “You better be freaking kidding.”

            “Of course I am! I just thought… you could use a laugh after all that.”

            The drive took ten minutes longer than usual what with the traffic conditions, but Wes was still able to find their prior home despite the darkness. Millie was waiting excitedly outside her apartment, bouncing a bit in place with her backpack on. As Wes pulled up, he noticed her dad knocking on doors to check on the elderly residents.

            “This is nuts, huh?” she remarked after she waved to her dad and got in the back next to Jace. “It was just like how Jace said! Right at 6:21, poof! No more lights!”

            “Yeah… real exciting,” Jace grumbled. “Days without TV, movies, games…”

            “Sure, but I get to go through my notes and write more by candlelight. It’s, like, Gothic or something. And I know when it’ll be over, so I won’t even be worried.”

            “Told her all about this, huh?” Wes asked and pulled back onto the road.

            “I thought she should know in advance,” Jace replied.

            “Hey, Old Wes,” Millie said and tapped on his shoulder from the back.

            “I asked you not to call me that…”

            “You got a generator, right? Since you knew this was coming?”

            “Um… no. All my tech is topped up, and I can recharge all of it in my car, so… no. I didn’t bother. I’ll be fine just relying on my ‘sci-fi tablet’ for a while.”

            “Did you at least get pizza for me again?”

            “Yeah, sure. Jace, show her what we got.”

            He tepidly held up the pizza box from King Arcade, and she looked inside to see the three remaining slices of plain cheese.

            “Uh, never mind. Cheese is boring. And Tino-Dino is the trash pizza of the city.”

            “But it’s cheap trash,” Wes replied. “It’s what the park fed us.”

            “Good thing I already ate dinner. How’d that go, anyway? Did a team win this time? Is your life all better now? Oh! Is your mission over?”

            “No, I doubt it, and not a chance.”

            “You know… I think the ‘super cool’ ninja boy should stop keeping everything a secret and, like, tell you a whole bunch of things when we get to the house.”

            Wes looked over at Warren. “That’s the plan. Right?”

            He just shrugged like any other teenager often did and replied, “Maybe.”

            Desert Tree, with its signature tall trees blocking much of the moonlight, was particularly dark. Somewhere nearby, Wes’ younger self was pouting near a candle.

            If Adult Wes could say anything good about Warren, it was that he didn’t try to build suspense, at least when he wasn’t simply withholding information entirely. Shortly after everyone had gathered at the table, the dining room lit by several heavy-duty flashlights aimed up at the ceiling, he answered the big question before Wes even asked.

            “I think we just experienced the reason for the blackout.”

            “Huh?” Millie asked. “Jace said you had no idea why this happened.”

            “I didn’t,” Wes replied. “But… something was different this time.”

            “There was a huge explosion in the sky, just before the power went off,” Jace explained. “But the weird thing is… It was like I was the only kid down there shooting a laser gun who saw it. I thought it was some big firework going off, but then no one else even looked up. There are some things only time travelers can see, apparently.”

            “It was the quartz Warren gave me. It… broke. I managed to get it into the air above the park, it blew up, and then it was like an EMP went off.”

            “EM… P?” Millie asked. “Is that like some science fiction thing?”

            “Electromagnetic pulse,” Warren interjected. “Fries anything electronic.”

            Wes continued, “Yeah—like the one in Goldeneye. It’ll be a big thing in media for a while. And then there’s Broken Arrow, which came out last week… It has a nuke going off at the end that generates one. Totally inaccurate, though—the bomb’s underground, so it wouldn’t do that. More recently in our time, EMPs are theorized to not be quite as destructive as we had hyped. But if there was one, then why are cars still running?”

            Warren mumbled, “Can we go one talk without pop culture trivia time?”

            “Hey, I only mentioned it because all this really screws up my weekend. I didn’t get to see Muppet Treasure Island with my mom until it hit the dollar theaters, and I never even got to see Broken Arrow or Happy Gilmore with my dad or buds in any theater. Had to wait until I could rent them at Blockbuster.”

            “I forgot that Muppet Treasure Island was coming out,” Millie said, disappointed. “Aw… I love the Muppets… This isn’t as awesome as I thought it’d be.”

            “Can we focus?” Warren requested. “Look, I don’t know what all was in that explosion, exactly. My best guess is that it took out the park’s grid, and the rest of the city’s went down as well. I just didn’t expect there to be an explosion in the first place.”

            “Again, I never saw one originally,” Wes said. “No ‘special firework’ in my past.”

            “Maybe it happened, and you never saw it,” Jace suggested.

            “Nah… My adult self would’ve needed to be in the past I knew; there was never an armada of cops and a confused Bailey running around the first time. Trust me, I’d remember—I got stuck in the plaza eating bad pizza and sulking, and arguing with Jared about my team decisions until Mom got me. I would’ve seen the police come in.”

            “This didn’t happen in the original timeline,” Warren said. “Remember what I said about a quartz failure? I read that they affect all possible timelines; there’s no undo button for when they go off. You can go back and forth around the temporal ground zero, leave the quartz at home the next time, and it’ll still happen. You might not even see the explosion on your ‘retry’ visit. But, there’s a major eff-up no matter what.”

            “So… you’re saying I caused the blackout… It was always me…”

            “From another timeline, yeah. This one, it turns out. There’s a lot of temporal interference around this point. I couldn’t travel into today, yesterday, or tomorrow, and I can’t leave right now, either. My quartz can’t get a read on the date and malfunctions. Maybe that’s a localized problem and I could travel if I got out of town first, but… Well, anyway, that’s kind of the reason I was late to help Jace at the park. I didn’t know the time cops would make a move before they actually showed up.”

            “I can’t get my head around this…” Wes looked resentful. “I did it… Fate just played out… I mean, think about it. If fate is real, then it’s a really messed up thing.”

            “Some version of you always did it. I just didn’t expect that you’d be that version.”

            “Then… how many other versions of me are running around through time? And was there an original, original timeline where the blackout never happened? If there was, then there’s no bringing it back. That instance of today is, just… gone forever.”

            “Wes, calm down,” Jace said. “I don’t wanna see you freak out about this. If you freak out, I’ll freak out. Warren might even freak out. Millie…” He turned to her and just saw a pair of wide eyes and frantic note-taking. “Well, she’s probably enjoying this. But you’ll definitely scare me. Be the adult with all the plans again. Okay?”

            Wes steadied his breathing, nodded, and replied, “Y-yeah… I’ll try.”

            After a few seconds of silence, Warren leaned back in his chair and said, “Earliest I could come back when I tried is about two days from now, a bit before Downtown Royal Valley gets its power back. So… tomorrow’s kind of a black hole for us.”

            “If you have no idea what’ll happen tomorrow… What if the cops show up?”

            “Could happen,” Warren said with another shrug. “Even with the interference, they appeared at the park and went home again. They must have robust time systems. No use worrying about it. Either hole up, or go to the mall—a public place for a bit.”

            “I’ll actually already be doing that…” Wes explained to Jace. “The mall has a generator. So… we go there instead of school—since it gets cancelled, obviously.”

            “Hey, Warren…” Jace shifted anxiously in his chair. “Don’t you think we should finally tell Wes about what happened on Halloween?”

            “Halloween?” Wes asked. “Did something weird go down back then?”

            “I don’t know if it’s really worth mentioning…” Warren crossed his arms and rather rudely put both feet up on the table. “I didn’t want to tell him about it beforehand and make him worry too much about today—in case he’d figure out the thing with the dates, like you apparently did.”

            “There was a time storm on Halloween,” Jace explained. “A bunch of portals to different times appeared, and I had to get through them, like some sort of big… time maze. I saw Halloweens of the past and future. It was kind of, uh, neat now that I look back. Not that I’d want to do it a second time, though. Warren helped me through it.”

            “Sounds better than my boring old people version of Halloween,” Millie sighed.

            “You didn’t see anything, uh… embarrassing, I hope,” Wes asked Jace.

            He replied, “What? Like you and Colin dressing up as goth kids?”

            “Ah, yeah… Shouldn’t’ve asked…”

            “Spacetime was stressed out on Halloween night,” Warren said. “Like it was being pulled apart by two big events. Seems like those would be your arrival, and the big disaster at the park. Don’t ask me why the universe doesn’t seem to like those events.”

            “What day did you guys show up?” Millie asked.

            “July 18^th,” Wes answered. “We didn’t pick the date.”

            “So… you didn’t have a time machine. How did you get here?” She flipped to a blank page. “I can’t believe I never thought about asking the important questions.”

            “Walked through my pantry door. That’s as much as I know.”

            “Okay. Weird. And then you decided to use this amazing gift to… ‘fix’ your adult life somehow. Your younger self always seems so stupidly happy. What goes wrong?”

            “I’m not going to get into that with you, kid. I’ll just say that he’s ‘stupidly happy’ because he’s carefree and surrounded by his friends. It doesn’t last.”

            Jace shook his head for Millie to see. “You really don’t want to get him started.”

            “So, Jace, that just leaves one thing,” Wes said, gladly changing the subject. “You saw the time eyes. And the tentacles. I’m not going to say ‘I told you so,’ but can you just tell us what happened? You said they grabbed Sadie?”

            “Yeah. I think she only saw them when they grabbed her, but they wanted me.”

            “Wait, what?” Millie stopped writing, and looked genuinely scared. “What are these things? Will they come after me? Why does there have to be scary stuff now?”

            “It’s called the Time Daemon,” Warren cavalierly revealed the name of the nightmare. “With an ‘a’. It’s an advanced AI within some sort of fluid-metal robot. Time cop creation. I think it runs cleanup when they’re done, or maybe just monitors changes in time and makes small fixes with its… wriggly arms.”

            “So… it’s just software?” Wes looked the slightest bit relieved, unlike Jace. “Not some cosmic horror trying to kill us?”

            “I don’t know what it’s trying to do to you, so don’t go trying to make friends with it. But, no. It’s not some elder god out to corrupt your physical self or whatever. And Millie, I wouldn’t worry about it. I think it only looks out for travelers like us. It also still needs to know where and when we are before it comes out of its abyss.”

            She visibly shuddered. “I still don’t know if I’ll sleep tonight…”

            “I think that about it covers it,” Warren said and got to his feet. “Mind if I crash on your couch tonight, since I’m stranded right now? Has to beat Colin’s treehouse.”

            “Uh, sure…” Wes hesitated, and then added, “That thing’s eyes… They formed words and sent me messages before. They told me to leave 1995. So…”

            Warren processed this for a moment and replied, “I’ll… have to think about what that means. Maybe it was just trying to scare you off.”

            “Can I go home now?” Millie asked and shoved her notebooks into her bag. “I suddenly want to be surrounded by boring old people again. They make me feel safe.”

            Wes stood up and asked her rhetorically, “Think you’re in over your head yet?”

            After Wes got his keys, Jace asked Warren, “Wait, you slept in Colin’s treehouse?”

            “Yeah…” He yawned and rubbed his aching neck. “It wasn’t that great.”

            All of them having spent a night in bed without TV, video games, or running fans and air conditioners, the kids had never been so excited about a trip to the Valley Mall. The twins’ dad drove most of the gang over today, in his big SUV that could seat seven passengers. For this outing, Ash had replaced Zach, who had his own plans.

            “Look at this,” her dad exclaimed as they reached the very full parking lot. “I haven’t seen this many people here since it opened in ’81.”

            “It’s one of the few places in town that has backup power,” Ash replied from the front passenger seat. “Everyone probably just wants the air conditioning.”

            “Here and the hospital… I suppose the mall is just as important an institution, huh? Kids, I don’t know when I’ll find a space here. Can you take care of yourselves if I drop you off, and then I’ll come in when I can?”

            “That’s what we always do, Dad,” Arthur replied.

            “Yeah, Mom lets us go wherever while she gets her hair done,” Ash added.

            “Yes. Of course she does…” their pop sighed, stopped, and let everyone out.

            They squeezed through coming and going crowds of people and made it into the Grande Court—and were quickly a little overwhelmed. Every table’s chair was occupied by both those with or without food. Fountain sodas were plentiful, and it was no surprise why; to save power, the air conditioning was only just barely running.

            “It’s almost as hot in here as it is out there,” Jared complained loudly.

            “Yeah, but hey, at least we’re at the mall!” Wessy looked on the bright side.

            “Maybe it’s cooler in the arcade,” Arthur suggested.

            “It’s always cooler in the arcade, Arty.”

            Wessy led the way over to the nearby neon-lit entrance of the classic arcade, only to be the first and most disappointed to see that it was locked up tight.

            “H-hey, come on…” he grumbled and half-heartedly pulled at the shutter cage.

            Colin found the nearby notice and read off of it, “Due to power requirements, the arcade will be closed while the mall is running on generators. We apologize for—”

            “Bunch of crap,” Jared grunted. “They should close a few stores instead.”

            “Seriously,” Arthur agreed. “Dad has no idea when the park will reopen. This place could be a lot kids’ only source of video games during all this.”

            “Good old store-browsing not good enough for you?” Ash said with an eye roll.

            “Um, no, sis. We’re guys. If the mall at least had a movie theater…”

            “It would probably just be closed, too,” Jared said, his arms up in resignation.

            “Welp, walking around it is, then,” Wessy declared. “Still beats school.”           

            Ash checked her flower watch. “Sadie and Celeste said they’d meet us at the Claire’s Accessories right about now…” She turned towards the nearby storefront and spotted them approaching amid all the other mall-goers, a pretzel in each of their hands.

            Sadie noticed the others and waved after taking a sip of soda. The rest of the group approached to meet up proper.

            “Zach not with you?” Sadie asked as Celeste chewed on a big bite of pretzel.

            “He said he had his own thing,” Wessy replied. “How long you been here?”

            “Two hours, I guess. It’s crazy. All the stores are full—even the ones that are never full. I think that old lady in the organ store might actually sell something today.”

            “Arcade’s down, though…” Arthur moaned as they walked.

            “Yeah, I saw that. Sucks. But, hey, you gotta see what’s going on outside the JCPenney. Unless you just wanna, you know… shop for cute clothes. Fashion fun!”

            “Nope,” Jared answered for the others.

            “Sadie jokes, but someone is doing just that,” Colin reported, having stopped to look into an outdoor apparel store. “I thought he said he had plans…”

            The others gathered at the entrance and noticed Zach, seeing how a windbreaker would look on him as he pretty much danced with it in front of a store mirror.

            “Yo, Zach!” Jared called out to him. “What are you doing here, man?”

            Zach pushed down on his shades, noticed them, and then returned the jacket to a rack before striding over to meet them, not looking at all ashamed about his deception.

            “Hey, guys. What’s up?” he asked them coolly.

            “You said you were busy, dude,” Jared grumbled.

            “Yeah, I am. My dad gave me fifty bucks and told me to pick out some outdoor gear. Sorry, guys—I really am too busy to hang out. We’re leaving in an hour.”

            “Wait, where are you going?” Wessy asked.

            “Outta town for the weekend. Sudden hiking trip in Tahoe. Dad says local civilization shouldn’t collapse, but if there’s no power anyway, we might as well rough it somewhere with scenery. I dunno. I thought Castle Hill would’ve been good enough.”

            “Lake Tahoe’s nice,” Celeste said. “We go there every summer.”

            “Aw, darn…” Wessy sighed. “My dad was letting me have a sleepover on Saturday. You know it’s not my favorite place for that, but… he’s got a generator.”

            “Um, sorry, Wes,” Colin said. “I wouldn’t be able to make it, either. Already told my dad that we could camp out in the backyard that night.”

            “He’s got the right idea,” Zach said. “This is a sign, Wes. Universe is telling us to spend some time outdoors. Look, I gotta go. See ya when… school reopens, I guess.”

            “Hey,” Jared said to Wessy as they started moving again. “I’ll be there.”

            “I know, Jared… Wouldn’t miss a chance for that rare Dad’s house sleepover.”

            “What’s that supposed to mean? Hey, he’s got HBO and his house is big.”

            “That’s so not fair,” Ash groaned. “You’d think our dad would have a generator.”

            Nearing the mall’s back end, Jared gazed into the KB Toys store as they walked, also full of kids and parents, with the old guy behind the counter trying to keep up.

            “Remember our NERF gun fight?” Jared asked the others. “Bought ‘em and ‘tried’ them out a bit right outside the store? Think the manager still remembers us?”

            After they all saw said manager notice Jared and glare at him from a distance, Sadie replied, “Looks like it. By the way, here’s the big surprise.”

            Around the play area in front of the JCPenney were at least a hundred people of all ages, enjoying cups full of every flavor of ice cream known to man. Amazingly, it seemed that the cups were given out for free by a chipper teenager in Baskin-Robbins wear, working at a table covered in commercial-sized cartons of the stuff.

            “Whoa…” Jared murmured in awe. “All of that… free ice cream.”

            “Yup,” Sadie replied. “My dad told me about this. The other Baskin-Robbins in town gave the one in the mall all their supply since their freezers are down.”

            “But they don’t have room to store all of it,” Celeste finished. “Me and Sadie already got some, but we might as well see if we can get another helping, right?”

            Jace, who would definitely hate to see good ice cream go to waste, licked his lips and looked as excited as the others, when it came to the prospect of no-cost sweet treat.

            “Sadie… I take back everything bad I ever said about you,” Wessy thanked her.

            They got into the long line, with Jace in the back by Jared. Everyone in the group looked thrilled, but Jace couldn’t help but notice that Jared was slightly less so.

            While Ash and Celeste chatted and had their ice cream together back near the JCPenney entrance, Jace found himself joining Jared on one of the benches that had just opened up. Several feet away, out of earshot, were Sadie and Wessy on a bench of their own. It looked like they were joking about something, maybe about the laser tag game.

            After gulping down a spoonful of mint chocolate chip, Jared, watching the two intensely, asked Jace, “Hey, does Wes, like… ever just drive you nuts?”

            Jace coughed on his rocky road and just barely kept himself from snorting as well before replying, “Uh, sure.” You have no idea. “You feeling okay? Something up?”

            Jared hesitated, looked like he was about to give a genuine answer, but then just shook his head and sighed. “Believe me. If I was ready to talk about it, I’d tell you first, at this point. Like Wes says, you don’t always have much to say, but it’s like… when you do, it feels like the right thing to say. You’re a good listener. Yeah…”

            The two of them watched as Wessy, laughing along with Sadie, elbow-nudged her side. Jace’s kid-uncle must’ve thought nothing of it, but Jared looked agitated.

            “Ugh…” he groaned and tossed his half-eaten ice cream into a nearby trash can. “I lost my appetite. Jace, don’t tell him this, but Wes is kinda pissing me off lately.”

            “… And you’re sure you just aren’t, like… jealous or something, right?”

            “I told ya, man! It’s not like that. I mean, okay, maybe I am a little, but over the last few months, it’s like I started to notice something with Wes for the first time. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve always stood up for him, and the others, but…” He got frustrated and gave up on what he was trying to say. “Just, never mind. I’m still trying to figure it out. You like helping. Maybe I’ll ask you for advice when… I sort this all out.”

            “H-hey… I’m here when you need me. I’m a walking no judgment zone.”

            Jared forced a small grin and slapped Jace on the back. It didn’t hurt too much.

            The twins’ dad finally showed up, walking through the nearby rear mall entrance. He quickly found Arthur, chilling with Colin by the vending machines, and hurried over.

            “I finally found a parking spot,” he said with a huff. “Where’s your sister?”

            Suddenly, all of the lights shut off. Amid a mass of complaints and disappointed moans under the skylight was also the sound of the air conditioning powering down.

            “Good one, Dad,” Arthur said, his pop looking around in disbelief.

            “Hey, I didn’t do this!” he protested. “Ah… You have to be kidding…”

            “All right, take care,” Wes finished up a call on the home phone as Jace walked in at around five in the afternoon. “Nah, don’t worry about that. The school will reopen Monday. Yeah, just a feeling, but… I’m sure the city’s on it. Okay. Bye.”

            “Please tell me that isn’t Ms. Porter,” Jace huffed and fell into a chair.

            “She called me,” Wes replied after hanging up. “I knew it was a mistake giving her our home number. But that’s just what people used to do to set up… you know, dates.”

            “You’re not going on another one, right?!”

            “No, no. That call was only about the first. Kind of wish the phones weren’t still working, though… How’d it go at the mall? Other than the epic free ice cream.”

            Jace shrugged. “There wasn’t really anything I could’ve changed. Saw Zach, he’s leaving town. Colin’s camping with his dad. Power went off, and Mr. Teller ended up seeing what the problem was after we waited an hour for it to come back. Guess they were waiting for more fuel? But we got tired of waiting and left… just as the lights came back on. Reeeal interesting, huh? Oh, and there’s a sleepover at your dad’s Saturday.”

            “Oh. Yeah… That. You’ve never been over there, have you?”

            “Nah. Anything I should know about it?”

            “No, don’t think so. I remember it being kind of boring. But, hm… There was something about… Lucy. I can’t quite… Ah, never mind. Just go, kill some time.”

            “Hey, where’s Warren?”

            Wes pointed back with his thumb at the window with a view of the backyard. Jace got up and looked out to see Warren swinging a piece of lumber around, which had a hilt of sorts made out of a tightened vice. Even while training or seeking those gains, he refused to take off his long-sleeved dark shirt, and it was now drenched in sweat.

            “He’s been at it for hours,” Wes said and joined Jace in staring out at the teen. “Says he can’t use his real sword when he’s not suited up. Identity concerns, I guess.”

            “You ever wonder what he’s so serious about? He still gets angry sometimes, too. Actually… what even is his mission? Why’s he here and kinda on our side, kinda not?”

            “I never bothered asking. I know he won’t tell us anything. Um, so… I’m going to try and fix a complicated dinner that he’s basically forcing me to make. I don’t want to know what an angsty kid like that will be like if I screw it up, so I’m making it carefully.”

            “What’s that mean?”

            “It means dinner’s a way’s off. Entertain yourself.”

            Wes left for the kitchen, and Jace stared at the remote for a moment, thinking about watching some TV—not that there was much worth watching from about five to seven. Then he realized, once again, that there was no power. So he grabbed the iPad instead, Wes’ fingerprints still fresh on its surface.

            Once he unlocked it, he was hit by an instinct to check and see if his uncle had been texting Ms. Porter, too. The thought only lasted a split second, and it wasn’t as if it were even possible. He just had to trust that Wes would do his best to break it off.

            After flipping through some descriptions for the few movies he had yet to watch, he did a little exploring, wondering about the apps on the tablet he hadn’t checked out. With a bored curiosity, he tapped on a scanner app, just to see what kinds of documents or pictures Wes might have wanted to archive. There were more files than he expected.

            There were a few old photographs, of course—but he must’ve only wanted to test out the scan quality before moving onto a different app specialized for photos; Jace had no doubt that Wes had digitized his mom’s entire snapshot collection already. Tax files, newspaper articles, random notes he must’ve made during his first visit through time, some fake documents that had his “Nick name” on them, and several amateur sketches filled the archives. But one drawing stood out near the bottom.

            The scan date and lower quality placed it as something he had captured on an older iPad, quite some time ago. The drawing itself was probably much older, and looked like something an edgy high-schooler would sketch up.

            It depicted a lanky, rugged man in a long duster that was blowing in the wind, a sword at his side and an eye patch on his face as a ruined city lay beyond the cliff that he was brooding upon. To Jace, it looked like some Mad Max OC nonsense. But the messy handwritten words under the “cool dude” made the whole thing a bit mysterious.

            It read, “Remember, keep Zeff at bay!”

            He wasn’t sure if that was really even supposed to be a Z, but what else could it be? Wes, earlier in life, had totally made up a guy named Zeff. Zeff. Figuring it was worth a laugh and the embarrassing look on his uncle’s face, Jace took the iPad into the kitchen. Wes was trying to make a white sauce of some sort in a saucepan on the gas stove.

            On seeing this, Jace just had to ask, “What is that?”

            “Uh…” Wes groaned and checked the house’s provided old cookbook again. “It’s supposed to be Béchamel sauce. Never made it before. The kid insisted I cook pastitsio—it’s like a Greek lasagna. What kind of teenager has even heard of pastitsio? Hey, can you find the cinnamon? I went to the store and grabbed some earlier.”

            Jace looked over at the sparse spice rack, but instead of helping Wes just yet, he held up the iPad and flipped it around. His uncle noticed what was on the screen and, after a heavy sigh, stopped stirring the sauce.

            “I thooought I deleted that…” Wes groaned.

            “Is this Zeff guy like… a super hero you made up?”

            “Oh…” Wes shook his head and looked disappointed in himself. “It’s worse. In my last year of high school, I kind of went through a… Linkin Park phase? You heard of that band? I got a little… uh, emotional and dark? This was very brief, by the way. Like, one semester brief. It’s a part of my life I don’t like looking back on. I kept thinking of this alter ego of myself, in some dark post-apocalyptic world. Created stories with him, just in my head—I swear, there’s nothing that cringey locked away somewhere.

            “He traveled the broken world on his own. No friends or family; dead, probably. Or maybe they just all betrayed and abandoned him. I don’t remember. He was a badass loner with a sword who was always getting revenge against someone. Despite having no one left to… avenge. Sometimes he had an eyepatch. Yeah. I snapped myself out of that phase and never wanted to go back to the kind of ideation I had back then. But through college, I thought about Zeff sometimes… and how to keep being the exact opposite of him. That’s when I made that particular drawing, by the way—it’s a satirical sorta thing. Making fun of my younger self. Don’t worry about it, I left that all way behind.”

            “Huh… Well, okay. I didn’t think it was that serious.”

            Wes laughed. “It’s not. Most teenagers go through what I did at some point. It’s tough making the transition to adulthood. Heck, maybe our resident ninja’s feeling all of that stuff right now. But it’s something most of us can work through on our own.”

            Jace turned off the tablet screen and asked, “But you don’t, like, force yourself to be happy, or something… right? Because you’d be doing a really good job at hiding it.”

            “I told ya before. What I don’t want to do is slow down or get stuck. That’s when I start… going places I don’t like. Now, forget all of that and help me with dinner.”

            Wes had never seen Warren eat before, but he had to assume he wasn’t always so contemplative when he did so. From the time he began, up to his last bite of seasoned beef, he remained unusually quiet, his eyes seemingly staring off into space as he ate.

            “Well…?” Wes asked. “How was it? Um… not a disaster, right?”

            “Huh? Um…” Warren chugged down the rest of his tea before answering. “I’ve had worse. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a home-cooked meal, so… Uh. Thanks.”

            “Wow. I wasn’t sure you knew that word.”

            “I’m used to being on the move. I have to get out of the house for a bit.”

            “Okay, yeah… I’ll just clean up all the many pots on my own. Hey, Jace, why don’t you show him around the neighborhood? Go bond or something.”

            “Ugh, Unk. Gross,” Jace groaned. “Don’t say it like that…”

            “It’s fine.” Warren looked at Jace. “I wanted to talk with you anyway.”

            Once the table was clear, the two headed out under a sunset sky—Jace actually a little excited about getting a chance to show Warren his neighborhood, despite the fact that he likely already knew it like the back of his hand, having time traveled all over it.

            “Yeah,” Warren said after they reached the end of the house’s block. “I do know Desert Tree. I do a lot of work here, obviously. Keeping you two safe, and on track.”

            “Oh… I figured,” Jace replied with a sigh. “I just thought… It’d be kind of cool to give someone else a tour of it, you know? I’ve been in the neighborhood long enough to know most of what’s changed and what’s the same, across twenty-five years.”

            Warren, walking alongside Jace with his hands stuck in his pockets, shrugged and replied, “You can still show me around, if you want, like we’re a couple of normal kids.”

            “A-all right… Cool.”

            Warren saw more people coming their way down the sidewalk, a young couple this time, and as he had before, he gave them a wide berth by crossing the empty street. Jace followed, not wanting to bother asking why he avoided others so much.

            Warren answered anyway, “I try not to interact with people if I don’t have to, if what’s what you’re wondering. Safer that way.”

            “Oooh… So you’re a… what was it? An introvert?”

            “Huh? Man… no,” Warren grumbled. “I used to love… er, like hanging out with friends around town. Time traveling. That’s all it is. Better to be an observer.”

            “Right, yeah… That’s what me and Wes used to be when we first came here. Before he started with his crazy plans. That have… actually mostly worked so far.”

            “If they ever weren’t going to, I wouldn’t’ve let you know.”

            They stopped before crossing the street to let a power truck go by, and watched it pass by another that was already deployed. In the orange sunset light, a lineman was working on a transformer, just one more that needed fixing to get everything back on.

            “My house is farther down that way,” Jace said, looking at the road.

            “Uh-huh. I remember. We had some fun there on Halloween.”

            They walked around, with Warren keeping pretty quiet despite claiming to be an extrovert in withdrawal. Thinking on the sacrifices he must’ve made, and all the effort he put forth despite his young age, Jace suddenly felt rather sympathetic for him.

            “You still can’t tell us what your big mission is, can you?” he asked.

            “Sorry, no. Look… It’s not some ‘save the world’ type thing. But if I did tell you, you and Wes would just worry and screw things up. It’s like knowing the future, right? As soon as you know, you start changing it? Better just to keep up what we have.”

            “I guess I get that, but there was something else I was thinking about. Where do you normally sleep? I know it can’t usually be Colin’s treehouse. We would’ve noticed.”

            “When I first came to this era, I found myself a room at the Motel 6 on Kettle. On June 29^th, 1995, someone had left their keycard on top of a vending machine before checking out. So, I’d grab it and have the room to myself for the night. That vending machine kept me fed sometimes, too. When I was ready to sleep after spending what I saw as a full day zig-zagging through time, that was when and where I did it.”

            “Oh. That’s kind of cool. Was it safe back then and there?”

            “For a while. Once the cops started getting too close, I moved my sleeping date to Halloween—that was after I realized it had that whole time storm thing going on. Easy to hide my tracks with all the interference. Days Inn, Halloween. Still home.”

            “Me and Wes stayed there before we moved to The Flamingo. So… you showed up a few weeks before us. But that time quartz lets you go whenever you want, right?”

            “I guess. But… I really only care about ’95 and ’96.”

            “Wait…” Jace stopped and looked around at the local neighborhood, after losing himself in the conversation. “Where are we? This is a strange block…”

            “What?” Warren asked him. “Never been to this corner? This is one of Desert Tree’s dead-end streets. It’s where some of the smaller houses are.”

            They went to the sidewalk past the last intersection, and Jace took in the sight of the little, seemingly forgotten lane. Flanked by trees, the street only had four lamps and a dozen cottages, albeit nice ones. Surprised that there was a part of Desert Tree he hadn’t seen, he looked at the sign. Ironically, it read “Mansion St.” Past the dead-end diamonds at the end, beyond the trees, was the muffled sound of traffic; the highway was nearby.

            “I swear this road isn’t here in 2020. Mom would’ve shown me these cottages.”

            “It isn’t,” Warren confirmed. “The place gets flattened to make room for a third neighborhood entrance. Always seemed this street was an afterthought to begin with.”

            “Oh… That’s too bad. Other kids used to live here,” Jace said, noticing that four of them were on the road by the sidewalk a few houses ahead, playing a game of some kind. On further inspection, he realized he knew several of them. “Hey, is that…”

            Jace walked closer, and though he hesitated to interact with anyone else, Warren followed behind, trying to look nonchalant with his hands stuffed in his pockets. They soon happened upon Wright, just finishing up a game of rummy with a beat-up old card deck. The local kid he was schooling, at least a year younger than him, grumbled angrily before handing over several quarters and stomping off. Willa, who had been watching the game, grinned at the victory as Robby, sitting on the curb, just stared off into space.

            “Geez, Wright, is there anyone you can’t beat?” Willa asked him.

            “Isn’t there anything else you could be doing?” he replied. “Hey, if you wanna be useful, go see if that kid in the corner house is up for a game. I think he likes… what was it, marbles? I could go find my collection for some old school action.”

            “I have Mouse Trap,” Willa offered, adjusting her cat ears again.

            “Like I keep saying, I don’t want to play Mouse Trap, Willa. The stupid green guy never backflips right, and then the cage gets stuck on the way down the pole.”

            “Oh, hi, Jason!” Willa noticed him and waved. “Out walking, huh?”

            “Jace?” Wright got up and turned around—letting Jace see his eyes; unlike Zach, Wright usually holstered his shades once the sun was down. “Well! What brings you all the way out here? Never seen you around our part of town before.”

            Jace replied, “It’s kind of easy to miss. I didn’t know you three were friends.”

            “Friends?” Wright looked at Willa and Robby, and then back at Jace. “I mean, we all grew up on this street and hang out sometimes, but… it’s not really like what you and Wes and the others got.” He got in closer and whispered, “Plus, Willa’s clingy. Not just to me—she’s like that with all the kids on Mansion. Like she’s attention-starved.”

            “Oooh?” Willa looked over at Warren, who winced and averted his gaze. “And who’s this? Jason, did you get a new, older… cooler friend?”

            “He looks like one of those grunge-heads,” Wright commented.

            Following a tch from Warren, Jace replied, “U-um… He’s my… cousin. He’s visiting from… Los Angeles. Yeah, he’s pretty cool. Moody, but… cool. Yeah.”

            “Picked a heck of a time to visit,” Wright said to Warren. “City’s got no power! And who knows when our amusement park will start working again…”

            “Poor Robby,” Willa added and looked over at him. “Me and Wright can do okay without power, but he’s all about TV and computer games. He’s not handling it well.”

            “But I’m making a killing,” Wright said and gave his coin-filled jeans pocket a rattle. “At least when kids agree to make a wager. Not like they got much else to do.”

            A bit concerned about Robby, Jace went over and asked him, “Hey, you okay?”

            “O-oh… Hey, Jason… U-uh… I don’t really know what to talk about, if you’re trying to talk about stuff. I just… I might be freaking out a little… What if the power doesn’t come back before Monday, when a new Deep Space Nine episode comes on? I never miss a first airing, you know… Can’t even get on my computer…”

            “I’m pretty good with computers,” Jace said, since it was just the first thing that came to mind. “So, do you go online at all?”

            “You kidding? I live in sci-fi chat rooms… And the Usenet boards… Ugh!”

            “Hey, Robby,” Wright tried to calm him, “you gotta chill out. It’ll be okay.”

            “No, it won’t! I don’t know what to do with myself! It’s like I’m stuck in a time loop… If I still played D&D, at least I’d have that to kill time…”

            “Hey, don’t go there. That was all you wanted to do in third grade. We did a good thing when we had that intervention and got you to sell it. Remember that?”

            Robby now looked like he was having a mini-panic attack, and he shrunk into his knees as his eyes grew wide and stared up at the unlit street lamps.

            “It’s like I’m on a primitive planet, violating the prime directive…”

            “Robby! C’mon, dude. Keep it together.”

            “There are no lights! When the utilities fell, my arms… sad…”

            “Are you reciting obscure Trek quotes again?” Wright turned to Jace. “You better go. You don’t want to see him like this. He can… get a little obsessive.”

            Instead of running away, Jace got closer and asked Robby, “You know what Star Trek is really about? The starships are cool, sure, but it’s a series about exploration. So, you know what? I think this is a good chance—maybe even a sign—to get out of your, uh… holodeck and explore.” He gestured out to the woods surrounding the street. “The city’s got a lot of parks and good views, and probably a lot of unexplored places, too.”

            Robby looked up at him inquisitively. “But… it’s safe in my room…”

            “Yeah. I used to spend a lot of time in my room, too. It’s great, sometimes. But who knows what you’re missing when you stay cooped up. Entire episodes of… nature and stuff. You should go out and see what you can find. Pretend like you’re on an alien world. Even just Desert Tree has a lot to see. Park can probably give you an old map.”

            Robby thought about what he had just been told, before standing up and turning to head home. “Dad keeps wanting to go hiking with me… M-maybe I’ll ask…”

            Wright smirked. “There you go again, Jace. Wonder when it’ll be my turn.”

            “Well… What problems do you think you have?”

            “Dude, I was kidding,” he said with a laugh and walked away. “I don’t have any.”

            Jace looked around and spotted Willa again, bothering a different group of kids trying to play hopscotch at the other side of the street. They looked pretty tired of her.

            “You guys got room for one more, right?” she asked them. “C’mon. Let me in.”

            Warren stepped up to Jace broodily and questioned, “Why do you do that?”

            “What? Helping my uncle’s classmates?”

            “And anyone else who ‘gets in your way…’ What do you get out of it?”

            Watching as Wright spotted another potential sucker and headed over, Jace shrugged and replied, “I didn’t really do much of it in my time… But when Wes started trying to ‘fix’ his life, but didn’t care so much about others’… It made me want to try.”

            “Hm…” Warren crossed his arms. “Guess I’ll let you know if you ever go too far. But you’re definitely not as self-centered as he is.” They stared at each other for a moment. “All right, let’s head back. That’s enough… ‘bonding’ for today.”

            During the following sunset, Wes made the last turn to the observation spot up on Castle Hill as Jace was finishing up a movie on the iPad, just about the only source of entertainment they both had to share over the past few days.

            “If it’s over, stow it in the glove box,” Wes said, looking over to see end credits.

            “I’m out of movies…” Jace replied and turned the tablet off. “Except for the R-rated ones you won’t let me watch on my own, I’ve finally seen every movie on here.”

            “Don’t worry. Most of ‘em were modern. We still got a lot of classics to rent.”

            Wes pulled into the only available parking spot—the overlook had gotten popular, understandably—and the sight of the purples and oranges sweeping over the city filled up the windshield. It made for perhaps a once in a lifetime snapshot, with no city lights to compete with what nature provided.

            Wes popped open a cold bottle of Mexican Coke that he had picked up from a powered gas station on the outskirts of Royal Valley, joined his nephew on the hood of their wagon, and while keeping an eye on his watch, enjoyed the local cinematography.

            “I wonder why Warren didn’t care about seeing this…” Jace questioned.

            Wes shrugged. “Guess he had other places to be. The way he left first thing in the morning, it was like he didn’t like our company or something.”

            “Maybe he’s just not used to being with other people yet…”

            “Could be.” Wes took a sip, and counted the other onlookers. “They don’t even know what they’re about to see. I came here on my first visit, by the way—same crowd and everything. Their reactions are a total ‘wait for it’ moment.”

            “What if the power doesn’t come back on?”

            “Then we really screwed something up down the line. Also, remember, it’s just downtown…” After another sip, he sighed a long one. “I still can’t believe that I caused all this in the first place. Even while… this me was growing up, I did this. It’s crazy.”

            “Welp, it’s what you were already used to, it happened, and now it’s over. Just means history gets to happen again like it did before.”

            “Yeah… I guess that’s one way of looking at it. If it didn’t happen, we’d all be dealing with a totally different universe here. Smart kid keeps getting smarter…”

            At 7:03, the office towers and other buildings in the city core suddenly lit up and glowed like bright candles, eliciting gasps and some cheers from those on the overlook.

            “And there it is…” Wes said and leaned back against the windshield. “Doesn’t mean much for us commoners yet, but at least the essential services are back online.”

            Jace looked around at the others on the overlook again, and this time noticed that Robby and his dad were in a jeep a few cars away. Robby spotted Jace right back at the same moment, waved, said something to his dad, and then walked over.

            “Is that Robby?” Wes asked, and when he noticed that the kid was on his way, he took his shades off his shirt collar and fumbled about until he got them on to hide his eyes. “More of your doing, Jace? I don’t think he was here last time…”

            “I just told him to get out more,” he whispered back as Robby got near them.

            “Hey, Jason,” he greeted him happily. “Nice view, huh? And the way the lights came on all of a sudden! I can’t believe I got to see that.”

            “Hi. You doing okay?”

            “Yup! You were right—there’s a lotta stuff to see out in the world. I’ve just been hanging out with my dad all day, seeing the sights, and… it’s been great. So… thanks.”

            “… Amazing…” Jace murmured once Robby left. “Sometimes, all I do is make a few suggestions, and I end up solving problems… Hey, Wes—what are we going to do now? Wasn’t the laser tag game kind of the big mission that everything was leading to?”

            “Well, yeah. I got a few other things we could improve for Wessy, but from here out, until the portal reopens, we just kinda… chill, like we did when we first arrived. Figure out how best to say goodbye to the others; depart without doing damage. And… I’m sure we’ll have to let Warren boss us around a little more. But, I have to admit that he scares me sometimes. Kid’s got some anger problems, even for someone his age.”

            “And this sleepover tomorrow…”

            “Like I said, it should be fine, nothing to worry about. You might have to see some ‘dad issues’ first hand, but hey, you’ll be in a house with power. You, me, Jared, and Arthur, just hanging out… A small, uneventful sleepover. That’s all it’ll be.”

            “Whenever you keep telling me how easy something will be, the more I worry.”

            Wes laughed and leaned back again to finish watching the sunset. And while Jace did enjoy the moment and the view it provided, he also couldn’t get his mind off of one little thing, that shouldn’t have perturbed as much as it did over the past couple of days.

            His uncle, at one point in his life—if not more, used to have revenge fantasies.