Two figures materialized in front of me.
I recognized one of them immediately.
It was Sid Rat. The Lead Designer, Sid Rat.
“Hello, Simon,” Sid said with a smile. “Been some time since we spoke. How are you?”
“Confused?”
“That’s to be expected,” Sid said with a nod. “This can be disconcerting. I apologize.”
“What is going on?”
“It’s a little hard to explain.” Sid looked at the young man next to him. “This place is sort of a parenthesis, an interstice of sorts, in your timestream’s current events.”
“Are you going to Zillerfry me?”
Sid laughed, and then looked at his watch and frowned. He wore a Limited Edition Steffon Carlson Patek Philippe time piece that glimmered with white light when he moved his wrist.
“Rey, we don’t have much time.”
“Understood,” the other man said. “The time juncture?”
Sid nodded and then looked back at me as if remembering I was standing there.
“The explanation of this place is beyond even Professor Ziller,” Sid said, picking up where he left off. “In simple terms, this place is similar to what happens to you when you press your mark, sort of like a pocket dimension of time. Without the personification of causality paying you a visit.”
He gave me a short nod with a subtle smile.
“So, where am I right now? Or is it when?”
“Astute,” Sid answered with a nod of approval. “When is more appropriate.”
“So when am I?”
“Hmm,” Sid said, tapping his chin. “That’s a hard question.”
“You are going to Zillerfry me, aren’t you?”
“Do you mean when are you now in terms of your timestream, or the parallel streams that have been designed to intersect with yours?”
“What?”
“There is also the factoring of which ‘you’ we are discussing,” Sid continued his brain-melting assault. “Are you positing the theory of—”
“Sir?” the young man next to him said. “I think you lost him.”
I nodded silently.
“Sorry,” Sid said, holding up a hand. “Sometimes I get carried away. I forget—the adherence to the concept of linear time is ingrained in most. Thank you, Rey.”
Rey was a tall, young man with a deep intelligence in his eyes. He looked at me with a small degree of pity. He was dressed similar to Sid, wearing a blue blazer over a white shirt and blue jeans. There was a small, silver emblem on the blazer: three interlocked circles—a triquetra.
“Did you want to accelerate the process?” Rey asked. “The box?”
“Oh, yes!” Sid said, turning to face me. “Why didn’t you use the box?”
“What box?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”
“That box,” Sid said, pointing at my jacket pocket. “The one I gave you. I did give it to you, didn’t I?”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the keepsaker Sid had given me.
“This?” I asked. “You were kind of vague when you gave it to me. I don’t even know how to open it.”
“I apologize,” Sid said. “Sometimes I don’t have the luxury of exhaustive explanations. If you’ll excuse me, I’m dealing with a delicate situation…Rey?”
Sid moved off to a corner of the lawn, mumbling something to himself. I caught something about bifurcating timestreams at positional junctions, and then he lost me.
“Got it,” Rey said, glancing at Sid as he approached me. “You’ll have to excuse him; he can come across as distracted at times.”
“You think?” I asked. “Is he okay? He seemed much more put together the last time I saw him. Granted, it was only for a few minutes—I think—but he wasn’t talking to himself.”
“He does that sometimes,” Rey answered with a nod, glancing in Sid’s direction. “How did you know he was talking to himself?”
“Excuse me, what?”
“Oh, you meant ‘talking to himself’ as if he were alone, right?”
“Is there another method of talking to yourself?”
“He’s a Lead Designer,” Rey said with admiration. “He’s talking to ‘himself’ across different timestreams. Different versions of himself.”
“Oh,” I said, because sometimes my mastery of language astounds even me. “That’s almost impossible to wrap my head around. I think I’d prefer an afternoon chat with Professor Ziller at this point. Probably safer for my remaining brain cell.”
I touched my ears repeatedly.
“What are you doing?” Rey asked. “Is something wrong with your ears?”
“I’m checking to see if my brain is leaking out,” I said, glancing at Sid. “Does he do that often?”
“I know he seems a little off at times,” Rey said with a knowing smile. “I can assure you, he’s sharper than he appears.”
“Not exactly filling me with confidence here,” I said. “He gave me a box and neglected to tell me how to open it. Do you know how to open it?”
“We’re going to address that now,” Rey replied. “Try to understand, as a Lead Designer, he monitors countless timestreams at one time. Anyone else would be driven mad; it takes centuries of training.”
“Centuries?” I said, with a new appreciation for Sid’s abilities. “How old is he?”
“That’s not a rabbit hole you want to jump into. Easy answer? Lead Designers count their birthdays in millennia.”
“He doesn’t look a day over a thousand,” I said, glancing at Sid again. “How does he do it without losing his mind?”
“Practice and focus,” Rey said. “Anyway, that’s why he can come across as distracted. His focus is everywhen, literally at times.”
“Are you a designer, too?”
“Not really, I’m a Temporal Realignment and Interdiction Operative—TRIO. You’d understand it more as Time Police,” Rey said. “Before you ask, I don’t know any Doctors, never went to med school, and make all my phone calls on a cell phone, pretty much like yours—not in a blue police box that happens to be bigger on the inside than on the outside.”
“I wasn’t going to ask any of that.”
“Sure you weren’t,” Rey answered. “My job is simple: I make sure the streams aren’t violated. Basically, I watch the streams to prevent splintering or blatant abuse.”
“Blatant abuse of time?” I asked. “Seriously?”
“Yes. In any case, let’s get you working on the TEST.”
“I have to take a test?” I asked. “I’m not ready for a test…wait, what kind of test?”
“Temporal Energy Signature Totem. A TEST
