“Guys,” I complained. “These aren’t short stories. They’re—well, I have no idea how to classify them. Random musings from people I love who apparently all want to leave Earth behind forever and just haven’t gotten around to telling me about it.”
“Let’s all move to Five Spheres. Sam can help us get to the mythical Cosmos, right? Cross into another dimension? Piece of fucking cake,” I mocked.
Cora giggled, but I didn’t stop.
“And Nanna, boy oh boy. We need to talk, don’t we?” I pointed at my grandmother.
I was working up to a rant. I could feel it coming on, and I really wanted to let it go. Too many days cooped up in the Ayela Arcana Sanctuary were getting to me.
“Maybe ’Time Sleuths' doesn’t have to be a full set of short stories, Sam,” HC soothed. “Maybe it’s more like a set of point-of-view journalism pieces within your already existing novel?”
Nice try, HC, but no dice.
“You mean my NONEXISTENT book that I haven’t written yet? The sequel to Discordant that I can’t wrap my mind around because—because other dimensions!?” I screeched, hands waving.
People vanishing into thin air. Spheres full of Talented and hacked augmented coming out of the woodwork. What. The. Fuck?
Cora slid an arm around my waist, “Okay now is the part of the show when you have a meltdown, and I look after you. Then the rest of this band of misfits gathers around to tell you it’s all going to work out. Right, gang?” she motioned to the rest of the crew.
My Nanna approached. “Sam? Do you wanna talk about it, or is Cora right? Do you need a minute to flip out?”
I closed my eyes, sighing. Truth was, the freak out was mostly because I didn’t wanna know what Nanna needed to say. Could I face another revelation?
I opened my eyes, reminding myself it wasn’t all about me. I looked at my grandmother, really looked.
At how much she’d aged in recent years. The lines of her face.
Shoulders bowed from a burden too long carried.
I decided to put away the Cosmos-shattering stories for a bit and focus on what really mattered. It was time for the woman who’d raised me to lay down her burden and rest.
“Nanna? What happened to Mom and Dad?” I asked gently.
Nanna sighed, sitting on a floor cushion and pulling a blanket into her lap though the morning was warm. Her shoulders fell further, weight of years pressing down on her all at once.
“The truth is, Sam, I don’t know for sure. I only have guesses, and none of them are good. Do you remember their stream site? Their work?”
Of course I did. “Jorie & Jim” was the cute name of their company, and it was a made-up combination of my grandma and grandpa’s names. Marjorie and James. It was . . .
Barely audible words passed my lips, “‘Jorie & Jim’ was a pen name.”
Nanna nodded. “You aren’t the first writer in the family, Sam. You come by it honest, and this little ‘Time Sleuths’ project is exactly that."
"You’re stepping back in time seventeen years ago, picking up the mantle your parents left behind when they were killed, and putting it on your shoulders. They’d be proud, honey, so proud.”
Cora’s voice next to me softly sang, and it wasn’t one of her songs. It was my contest-winning poem.
“Unwritten Dreams”
It started with a poem.
One from long ago.
Of times long forgotten.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Of them I’ll never know.
But recorded in the pages
of lost, unremembered things
are stories of a different kind
and yet unwritten dreams.
Who can tell those tales
Of memories never seen?
Who dares to walk the hallways
Beyond superficial streams?
For in the quietest reverie
Are secret rooms untold.
And what lies waiting for the unwary
Is danger manifold.
Will you take the mantle
Of those who're unafraid?
Or will you hide in cowardice
Like those who’ve been betrayed?
Cora sang my poem emphasizing the words, “Will you take the mantle of those who’re unafraid?”
It was as though I’d written the lines, and now my family was giving them back to me, full of a meaning I hadn’t known was there.
I felt the tears building, but I hadn’t time for them.
“What were Mom and Dad doing on the Resistor, Nanna? Why were they going to Black Moon Lilith seventeen years ago?”
“Do you know what their last stream post was, Sam?” she asked softly.
I flicked open my pad, pulling up Jorie & Jim, scrolling past silly articles. Capers of being a parent and vacation advice for travelers to Wyoming. It was a hodge podge of topics, a little of this, a little of that. So much domesticity it seemed like a fluff site, not something you’d need a pseudonym for.
Every now and then there were comedy shorts with titles like, “How An Augment Eats” with funny anime images satirizing someone who couldn’t control their metal hand doing training exercises. Or “Drive By Augment” when a cybernetic grabbed a rushing hover train and ripped the door off.
Comedy.
I didn’t remember my parents being so funny, but maybe I’d inherited it from them? Why were those augment stories interspersed through so much domestic jim jam?
We didn’t have any cybernetic family, and I didn’t remember my parents having friends with metal limbs, so why the fascination?
The last posted article was something else entirely. There was very little written on the page. Possibly another comedy piece that got cut short?
“The Day Of The Augments Has Come.”
“Fear not, populace at large! The world may seem like a crisis is at hand, but there are those among us with train-stopping powers, with food-spilling skills, with technology beyond belief! When humanity needs them most, the augmented shall come forth and save the day! Long have they hidden in the shadows, ostracized and feared. But no more! The time is upon us, and the countdown has begun.”
Ice crept down my spine. The exact subtitle I’d given “Time Sleuths” was written on my parent’s stream site years ago. I kept reading.
“When the long-awaited time draws nigh and humanity’s need is greatest, the cybernetics will rise to the occasion. Welcome them, greet them, and look to them for the answ”
My insides clenched, vision swimming.
“Nanna!”
It wasn’t a wail, and it wasn’t a groan. It was raw horror.
“Did they? Did the starliner? Is this the moment?” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I couldn’t say, “Did they die while they were writing this story?”
“I don’t know, Sam. I don’t have answers,” she said wearily. "For nearly two decades, all I’ve had are questions, but your grandpa was convinced they died on the Resistor because they were chasing a story about the augmented. He found a large cybernetic gathering on Black Moon Lilith and suspected that’s where your parents were headed. The ‘why’ he couldn’t quite figure out, so he interpreted based on that little scrap you’ve just read,” Nanna finished.
“He assumed Mom and Dad knew something about the augments. Maybe they’d met a cybernetic like Peydran who could control tech with his mind, and they were trying to write about it in comedy and hide it in plain sight?” I guessed.
My head swung to Pitch and Bitsy, “Do you know anything about my parents? Did you pull me into this world to try and re-create their work?” I snapped.
Pitch’s hands went up, his face genuinely grieved. I believed him.
“No, Sam,” Bitsy said comfortingly. “I’m horrified you lost your family in a starliner explosion that never, never should’ve happened.”
Cora squeezed my hand, “No one here did this, Sam. It’s another layer of mysteries we don’t have answers for, but the question is: does it change things for you? Do you want to walk away?”
“Are you kidding me?!” I challenged, ire rising. “If anything, I’m even more determined now. My grandpa thought my parents were killed—possibly a whole starliner of people were murdered—because of the augments. Then I wrote that goddamned poem!”
I quoted my own work in a mocking tone.
“Will you take the mantle
Of those who're unafraid?
Or will you hide in cowardice
Like those who’ve been betrayed?”
“If my mom and dad were story chasers two decades ago, then I’m not gonna hide like a coward. I’ll pick up their mantle and wear it proudly. And believe me, if the day comes when someone needs to pay for crimes committed against my family, then I will stand up and demand an accounting."
"Because I didn’t just write that poem ‘Unwritten Dreams;’ I wrote another one. And if anything in my life has ever been prophecy, then let it be these words:”
“Moral of the story
True as can be:
You’ll eat poo.
If you fuck with me.”
Every head in the room nodded agreement.
Nanna smiled, rested her head against the wall, and murmured, “I knew you’d set the world ablaze, Sam. You don’t really need us to write your story for you after all."