And he suddenly knew what he had to do.
Don’t let go!
It wasn’t just about holding on to each other in the moment. They had to hold on for always. Forever. They had to stick together in the past, present, and future. A triangle in time. Matt, Corey, and Ruby, the three of them together.
Matt traveled through his own time tapestry. He sped through his future, touching down from time to time to gather his army. It didn’t take much. It was a domino effect. Once he got it started it just kept going. If he told one, then he told them all, and he knew they would all come because if they didn’t, they might cease to exist.
Matt traveled back to the Lost City. With the very dregs of his remaining strength, he pulled himself back together. His feet hit solid ground. He felt his lungs expand, his heart pumping blood.
He made it. He was back. Alive. But he was alone. Everyone was gone. There was no Corey or Ruby or any of his family. There was no Jia or Marta. No Brocco or Wiley or Albert, not even Santiago. There was only Captain Vincent. He stood in the center of the torn, ruined city.
“So,” Captain Vincent said. “It’s just us now.”
Matt’s hope vanished. He must have missed something, done something wrong. It hadn’t worked.
Crack!
“Ah! Stupid bushy plants!” Someone stumbled out of the brush in the nearby jungle, cursing the plants. They turned and jogged toward them. “Hi! Sorry if I’m late.” It was Corey. But different. He was slightly older, Matt thought, maybe by a few years. He was taller, a little more gangly, and he had braces. He looked around and frowned at the empty space. “Oh, dang. Am I the first one here? That’s lame. Now I have to wait for everyone.”
“Heaven forbid,” said another voice, “you should have to wait every now and then, as if the rest of us haven’t had to wait for you basically your entire life.” It was Ruby. She appeared out of thin air right next to Corey. She also looked older, even older than the older Corey, like early twenties. She had her hair pulled up in a messy bun. She was wearing stretch pants and a tank top, like she’d just come from yoga class.
Another Ruby appeared behind the first, looking more or less the same as the Ruby Matt knew, only different clothing, her hair in a braid. And then another Ruby came, and another and another, each of them at varying ages and fashions. There was Ruby with blue streaks in her hair and heavy eyeliner, Ruby in jogging clothes, Ruby with a sword at her side, Ruby wearing a suit and glasses, Ruby dressed up fancy like she was going to the prom. All of them were different, and yet they were all Ruby.
More Coreys appeared, too, though most of them after Ruby. His sense of fashion didn’t change much. He almost always wore a T-shirt and jeans and kept his hair long and shaggy. One version of him was even sporting a ponytail.
And then Matt saw himself. He appeared again and again, but instead of any random order, each version of himself seemed to appear in an orderly ascension, each Matt a little older than the last. He watched the evolution of his own life like watching a plant grow in fast motion. He got a little taller (though not as tall as he hoped), a little broader, then older and gray and shorter again.
“Hello,” said one of the older Matts. “Good to see you all again. Always a pleasure. Ah, and Captain Vincent! Look at you! You never change. Exactly the same after all these years. Please, won’t you share your secret? If I could bottle that up, I’d make a fortune!”
Captain Vincent just stared at the bizarre sight, completely stunned.
It had worked. They were all here, a version of themselves each year in the future. It was like a bizarre future family reunion.
“Dude,” said a wiry ponytailed teenage Corey to a middle-aged version who was a little more rotund. “What did you do to me?”
“Don’t judge, dude. You will be this before you know it.”
An older Corey with thinning hair and glasses shook his head. “Don’t worry. It’s only a phase. You’ll get yourself together eventually.”
“Oh, joy, look at all I have to look forward to,” said the youngest Corey, the one Matt knew best.
The earth started to rumble. Matt could feel the ground start to shake.
“Can we get this over with?” said the Ruby in the suit and glasses. She looked sharp and professional. “I have a meeting I can’t miss.”
The teenage Ruby wearing heavy makeup and blue streaks in her hair rolled her eyes. “Seriously, did you forget we’re, like, trying to save ourselves here?”
“We’ll have you back in time,” said an older Matt wearing a hoodie and glasses, his hair a mess. Clearly, hygiene was not his top priority at this point in his life. Matt felt that familiar buzz in his chest as he spoke.
More and more of them came. Twenty, thirty, forty Matts, Coreys, and Rubys. The wind picked up. The rain lashed down. Lightning cracked across the sky like a whip. And still they kept coming, growing older and older, until they were stooped and gray and looked like they were a minute from death. But still more kept coming. Not Matt, Corey, and Ruby, but there were more children, more teenagers,
