Just Before Everywhen

Wick Shorts, Volume 3

Max Thompson

Published by Max Thompson, 2022.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

JUST BEFORE EVERYWHEN

First edition. November 14, 2022.

Copyright © 2022 Max Thompson.

Written by Max Thompson.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Just Before Everywhen (Wick Shorts, #3)

PREFACE

WHEN, THE OLIVE BRANCH

THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING

GEORGE & ISAAC

The Wick Chronicles

- The Emperor of San Francisco

- Ozoo

- Forked

- The Space Between Whens

- The Blessings of Saint Wick

- The Whens of Wick

- The Book of Hyrum

- Jump

- The King of Saint Francis

- Waiting to Inhale

- No Matter the When

PREFACE

JUST BEFORE EVERYWHEN is a short collection of shorts: 3 stories in the Wick universe originally intended for online-reading, serving as a bit of a bridge between No Matter the When and the upcoming The Lost Boys of Everywhen.

The first entry, When, the Olive Branch, is an edit from No Matter the When. It stayed in the book until the final edit, when the decision to remove it was made because it didn’t quite fit with the rest of the book’s contents. I wrote it thinking of how the Blackshears were moving toward an acceptance of freedom in their dealings with time and the events they know should happen in their future, and how changing them might affect that.

The second, The Answer to Everything, makes the jump ten years forward and mostly serves as a way to get to know teenaged Rhys a bit better. It’s first draft material (again, this was all supposed to go online and not to print) with a ending that seems a little abrupt...but it serves as a good jumping point to the next book.

And the last, George & Isaac, is a bit of an info dump. It’s simply a tale of a father and son having a discussion, but I think it shows how George, with his problematic past, has evolved into a compassionate and caring father. It didn’t quite fit into the book, but on some level mattered to me...and gives a little insight into Isaac and his inner struggles.

WHEN, THE OLIVE BRANCH

IF DAVID MUNSON HAD been a fish, his gills would have been three shades of green; as it was, he stood at Union Square’s center, Will on one side to keep him from hitting his knees, and Aisha on the other. An air car zipped past on Powell, heading toward Market Street, the whine of its engine lingering behind for a blink or two. He glanced up and then over his shoulder, and took a deep breath, finally relaxing.

It was his first breath of freedom in five years.

Finn—the elder Finn, now of this When—exited the lab, waving the phone he held in his right hand, and he practically skipped his way over.

“They’re on the way, Dash. Everything else is set. The apartment is nearby, furnished, and stocked. If he doesn’t like the food, I’ll take him shopping.”

“Bank account and ID?” Will asked.

Finn nodded. “If he manages his money well, he’s set. Drew is finalizing proof of identification, and if he chooses to work, there’s a position available with Ozoo. Entry level, but with room to advance.”

“Ozoo,” David repeated.

“Andrew’s tech company,” Finn replied. “Name anything with a computer, or medical equipment, and he’s either invented it or vastly improved upon it. You should see—”

“And not relevant at the moment,” Will said before Finn could ramp up. “We need to get him settled before worrying about work, and ideally he won’t need to.”

David turned a bit, eyes searching the skyline. “I’m not sure what I expected, but not this. Nothing’s changed since the last time I was here.”

“Are you sure about that?” The soft voice came from behind. As he turned away from the lab entry, she smiled, moisture gathering at the corners of her eyes though there were no tears. “I don’t imagine I look the same.”

David spun on the balls of his feet, and his mouth dropped open.

Ever elegant, Aubrey was well into her eighties, her dark hair gone silver, fine lines etching her face. The hands that reached for her brother’s were slim; fingers creased at every joint and knuckle, her skin appearing thin and far more fragile than it truly was. When she had his hands in hers, squeezing gently, Jax stepped up from behind her and acknowledged him with a curt, “David,” but he was too busy searching his sister’s face to look at the former king.

“My god,” David breathed. “Aubrey.”

Hundreds of questions thundered in his brain at once, but instead of speaking, David Munson broke. He burst into tears and sank to his knees, still holding onto her, and only managed to squeak out one thing.

“Jesus Christ, I am so sorry.”

The day began with David chained to a chair in the center of a brightly lit room that smelled of corn chips and root beer. He had several inches of movement but could not stand upright, and if he attempted to run hunched over, the chair would follow. Presuming he could outpace the guards that stood to either side and a foot behind him, just beyond the door were several of the royal guard. He wouldn’t get his nose past the threshold.

He'd expected Red and Jax; it was the Emperor’s presence that caused him to tense. His jaw clenched and legs tightened, yet his hands remained relaxed and he did not grip at the arms of his chair. His head turned so he could see as Red and Will reached for chairs lined against the wall, and he craned his neck to see the guard to his right, who stiffened when Commander Soto, head of the royal guard, loomed in the doorway and ordered the room cleared.

The guard to David’s left twitched, ready to step out, but the guard to the right stood fast. His eyes tracked from the Commander to the King and his pupils widened, but his orders had been to stand fast, and he was not under her command.

The King was another matter.

He stepped up to the guard, uncomfortably close. “Clear the room. From this moment on, the responsibility of his security falls to my guards.”

“A single guard, sir?”

David snorted. “The Emperor is here, Morrison. He’s all they need. I’m not going anywhere, and they won’t do anything to me.”

Jax stepped aside and gestured to the door. “The Emperor is not who you need to worry about,” he said as the guards left and Soto closed the door behind them. “Now, Wick? He’s got teeth.”

He’s not lying. I’ll bite a bitch.

Will and Red dragged a long, narrow table away from the far wall and placed it directly in front of David Munson. They lined the chairs along the side opposite from him, and as Red scooted the last one in he asked, “Are you sure about this, David? Once we let the reporter and her cameraman in, everything you say will be on record. She’s not here to interview you, per se, but she is witness to whatever conversation we have.”

He gave a slight nod. “I won’t embarrass you, Red. Well, no more than the fact that I’m sitting here in jail, chained to a chair.”

Jax nodded toward the door; Will opened it, gesturing for the reporter to come in. “David, this is Emma Wool from PMF News. And from this moment on, we’re being recorded.”

“Floridian witness,” Red added, “but officially from the news outlet.”

David’s impulse was to stand; it was something he could quell in presence of the King of Pacifica, his brother-in-law, but not when a woman entered the room. He made it six inches when he ran out of chain slack, apologizing when he had to sit down.

“We’re not standing on ceremony today,” Jax said. “Will, unlock those. There’s no need to keep him strapped to a chair. It’s not as if he can go anywhere.”

The reporter’s eyes widened and she twitched as if she wanted to step back.

For her benefit, as he unlocked the shackles, Will said to David, “There are guards just outside the door. Security cameras in every corner of the room. One signal from me—”

“I’d be more concerned about what you would do to me, Emperor,” David said. “I have no doubt you could pop me like a little meat balloon before I could get two steps toward the door. I’ll behave.”

Set me down. I want to stare daggers at him.

“You brought the cat,” David mused when I sat on the table directly in front of him. “Should I worry more about him?”

“He won’t bite,” Red said.

Yes, I will.

“Oh hell, yes he will.” David bent until his face was in front of mine. “Hyrum tells me you’re very protective. But you’re also very gentle with him and make him feel safe. I won’t give you a reason to feel as if you need to defend your King and Emperor.”

Good to know.

He held his right hand out, offering me a chance to sniff. “Is it all right if I pet you?”

I rubbed against his hand and allowed him to scratch between my ears.

“Are they going to stand there all day, Wick?” he asked. “Or is this a courtesy standoff? No one sits until the King does, but the King doesn’t sit until the lady does? Or do they want me to have to look up their noses for the rest of the day?”

Jax slid a chair out, while Red held the reporter’s chair. She did not sit until after Jax did, and Will specifically waited until Red was near his.

You should see Jax and Aubrey. They have sitting down to an art. Her ass hits the chair less than a second after his does. They even practiced.

“How often do you hear from Hyrum?” Red asked. “I wasn’t aware he’d been given your video—”

“Letters,” David said. “Once a week, without fail. He doesn’t bother with digital messages, he sends honest-to-god handwritten letters and ends every one with his full name. ‘Love, Hyrum Charles Blackshear.’ If he ever stops doing that it might break my heart.”

“I don’t think your mother is as happy about it,” Jax said. “The name, in any case.”

David gave a light shrug. “It took me aback at first, but damn, Jax. When he explained how happy he was to have a daddy who actually loves him? He could go by Chuckie B and I’d be thrilled for him.”

“Change of heart?” Red asked. “You haven’t always gotten along.”

David gestured to the room. “I’ve been gifted the space and time to reconsider my past actions. I’m finally getting to know him. And the real him, not the infantilized version Dad forced on us. Forced on him.”  He rested his arms on the table. “I know why you’re here, Red. Jax can’t release me. You know he can’t.”

“It’s not entirely up to me,” Jax said. “The Supreme Court has a say in this.”

David shook his head. “It can’t happen. And you know it.”

Red seemed dubious. “You don’t want out.”

“No, I want out. I want to go home to my wife, see my kids, my grandkids. Find a way to make everything up to them. But Jax can’t ask the court for my release because the precedent is unfathomable.”

“You didn’t kill anyone,” Red reminded him.

“Not personally. But I was complicit in the attempt on your life. I was aware of plans to eliminate the Second Minister and I kept quiet. I tried to force Hyrum into my car for no reason other than I thought I could and didn’t believe he would use his powers on me.”

None of those, Red argued, were crimes that invited a life sentence. Not in Pacifica. He allowed that in Florida he would have been executed for his attempt to overthrow the church, which was why he was jailed in Pacifica, to save his life. His sentence had never been formally pronounced, and he had never been given a trial.

“But I agreed to this. And even by Pacifican law, I committed a death penalty offense.”

“Pacifica doesn’t have the death penalty,” Red argued.

“They do when it comes to the King. And I imagine King Eli is still, by law, considered to be the king. I could have given warning that certain members of the Quorum were planning his assassination. Hell, Red, I could have stopped all of it with one phone call. And I didn’t. You know all of this. We’ve discussed all of this.”

“True, but I also know you’re quite repentant.”

“My level of repentance doesn’t matter. Especially not for the reasons you want me out now. I get it, Red, you want to send Dad’s legacy up into flames to give the church a new foundation to build on, but at what cost? The truths of Levi Munson were exposed on his last Thanksgiving broadcast and shored up by his trial. The world already knows. There’s no point.”

“The surface was barely scratched.”

David glanced at the reporter. “Off the record for now? Am I allowed that much?”

If David cared what she thought, her glare would have made him backpedal, but Jax nodded and ordered the camera turned off. The light on top of it winked out, but Will went to the cameraman, double checked, and then set the camera near Red’s feet.

After Will sat, David went on. “Have you asked our sisters what they think? Do they want every single person in Florida to know what he did? Jesus, Red, their husbands didn’t even know until that trial. Ruth? You know what Galen did.”

Red nodded. “He petitioned the Quorum for separation and the right to take another wife. And I denied it. If he wants to leave, he can damn well stand in front of a tribunal and confess that he considers the horrific abuse of a little girl to be the same thing as her willing participation and beg the elders for the right to move on. And were he granted that right, he would still have to support her for the rest of her life.”

“I’m sure that went over well,” David grunted.

“He came around.”

“At what cost? Is she happy? She lives with a man who thinks of her as unworthy. How is that him ‘coming around?’”

Their sister did not live with her unhappy husband; Red made sure that he moved from their family house to a guest home in the back yard, and made sure he continued to support her financially, but he refused to grant a true separation. He made the vows, Red argued; he would adhere to them.

If their fellow church members knew, it was by Galen’s choice.

“I still don’t see the point. Dad’s gone, the church knows who and what he was. Stop picking at scabs, Red. None of us will heal if you keep at it.”

“He killed his own father, David.”

At that, David snorted. “Like that’s a surprise. But don’t do this. Don’t drag our sisters’ pain into public for every sniveling idiot to gossip over. Don’t do that to Hyrum.”

“He’s wholly in favor of it.”

Quietly, “Please don’t do that to Hyrum. There’s not a chance he understands how overwhelming the masses can be. Not when it comes to something like this.” He took a beat, staring at the table instead of his brother. “I miss my family. I’d give almost anything to see my wife and kids again. But I’ll stay here, in solitary, for the rest of my life if you back off and just let Hyrum be happy. Please. I owe him that.”

Will turned to Jax and asked, “Well?”

“He’s telling the truth.”

And now he’s confused.

“Truthfully, I can’t ask for your release,” Jax went on. “I can’t even ask that you be moved into the prison population.”

“I don’t want that anyway.”

Red twitched. “Why? You’d rather stay in a city jail, locked into solitary?”

“I’d rather stay alive,” David said evenly.

Will nodded. “General population requires moving him to a federal prison, where he is far less protected from retribution by friends of Levi Munson. He’s safest here, under the watch of the royal guard.”

“And relatively comfortable,” David added. “I have a bed, not a cot or a slab. I’m treated decently, like a person and not a number. I have access to all the reading material I could ask for, my own TV with some access to the Internet, and Aubrey has generously kept my commissary account funded, so I have decent meals. Snacks, too. Pacifica has incredible candy bars. Until I landed here, I couldn’t have told you what a simple thing like buying your little brother’s favorite candy once a week feels like. How many years now? I still grin like a ten-year-old.”

I’m telling Hyrum that. He’ll giggle.

With a sigh, David told the reporter she could go back on record, ask him anything she wanted. Once the camera was on and recording, she pretended to give weight to what she wanted to say, but truthfully, she only asked what they wanted her to.

“You have the platform now. And you’re aware of what your brother wants to do. Why not grab the chance for freedom for no reason other than exposing your father? If the King deems you worthy of release, surely the court will follow.”

He held onto the notion that the law shouldn’t bend because his sister was the Queen, or because his brother was the First Minister of the Church of Florida. “Look, the only things people need to accept as truth are that my father was evil wrapped in human skin. He enjoyed torture and torment, he abused his kids and his wife, and he sold his followers package after package of lies. My father didn’t just think he was God’s mouthpiece. He thought he was God, literally God, here on Earth, and that he was allowed to fulfill any whim that skipped through his brain. You’re from Florida? What are the language constraints here? How graphic do you want me to be?”

“Be as graphic as you need,” she said.

David leaned forward. “Levi Munson fucked little kids and didn’t care about the damage he inflicted on them. He fucked women who were not his wife, and I wouldn’t at all be surprised if there were men, too. He made sure his path was clear from anyone who might get in his way, and the body count was significant. He had no moral code, loved no one, and God help anyone who dared to tell him he was wrong.”

“The irony—”

“I know. All of that, and yet he raised his children to believe in God. But he was never of God. He killed his own father to get to the head of the church. That’s all anyone needs to know about him, and the last thing I’ll publicly say about him. The church membership needs to pay attention to the things Red is telling them and embrace the direction he’s heading, because if I learned one thing growing up? Red doesn’t lie. He will always be truthful about the church and his own relationship with the Lord.”

“Will they accept that?” she asked. “Coming from his brother?”

“The brother who turned away when others wanted to kill him? The one who wanted his position in the church? Why would I lie? I hated Red’s grip on the truth when we were kids. Hell, I hated it as we grew. But I damn well appreciate it now.”

“David,” Red sighed.

“No, that’s it. That’s all I’ll say on record. That’s all that matters.”

Oh, she’s pissed. I think she wants to jam that camera up someone’s asterisk.

Jax stood up. “I think we’re done here. He has the right of refusal.”

Reluctantly, she got up, bowing her head. “Your Majesty. Thank you for the time.”

When the door clicked shut, David added, “‘But fuck him for wasting it.’ I’m the him, by the way. Did you get what you wanted?”

Red nodded. “It’s a start.”

“I still think it’s pointless. And that wasn’t a lie, that’s all you’ll get out of me about this. I won’t rip my family apart just to get back at a dead man.”

He really means it, doesn’t he? This isn’t an act.

“Red. How’s Kaley? She writes, but...”

“She’s fine, I promise. Joe and Spencer have taken over house maintenance for her. Your kids are very present in her life.”

“I meant money.” David sounded small. “I don’t think I had enough saved—”

“You don’t think we would leave our sister hungry or homeless, do you? She’s taken care of.” Red chuckled and added, “Dad left bank accounts stuffed with cash, David. Mom didn’t think twice. Before we even brought it up, she asked me to figure it out and make sure your family is well taken care of.”

“He had money.” David sounded both surprised, and not. “Aside from the exorbitant salary.”

“He had money, and we’ll leave it at that.”

“She says she’s forgiven me,” David said softly. “Kaley, I mean. I asked her to move on, file a petition and then find someone, but—”

“For better or for worse?” Jax asked.

David let loose a sad laugh. “That has no place in Floridian marriage vows, Jax. No promises of love, no honor. Definitely not for better or worse. Just...obey him. I want more for her. More for our girls. And Hyrum. Thank God he got away. Thank God he didn’t get in that car with me.”

“You wouldn’t have gotten far,” Will said.

“Still. Does he want to see me?”

Jax had actively discouraged Red from bringing Hyrum to visit David in jail. He’d allowed correspondence, but worried about what it would do to Hyrum to be that close to his brother and not be able to touch him. He worried, too, that David would say something to upset Hyrum, which at minimum could lead to tears and at worst, he’d set something on fire.

“He’s asked,” Jax admitted.

No further explanation was necessary. David sagged under his dashed hopes, but he nodded.

“Just tell me you mean him no harm,” Jax went on.

“I don’t want to hurt Hyrum,” David said. “I do want to apologize. I treated him like hell when we were kids and no better when we became adults. Holy hell, I thought he needed structure. That if someone just disciplined him, he’d be...better. I picked on him, endlessly. I need to apologize.”

That could be done in a letter, or over video, Red pointed out. David swore he had, but he knew Hyrum believed in personal amends. “You have to say sorry,” he said, wistfully smiling. “It doesn’t count if you don’t say it face to face.”

Jax looked at Will. “Chains on or off if Hyrum wants to visit?”

Red looked horrified. “Off!”

With a sigh, David bent to retrieve the chain from the floor, gripped a link in each hand, pinched, and didn’t take his eyes off Jax’s as the links flattened and the chains fell to the floor. “I could leave if I wanted, Jax. Chains, shackles, heavy doors...I could get past them all. But I don’t. I won’t.”

“What the hell,” Red uttered.

“You didn’t think Hyrum was the only one, did you? Hell, for that matter, you. Some little shit tried to throw a knife at you once and you grabbed that sucker in mid-air by the handle as easily as you could have plucked it off the table.”

“How did I not know?” Red wondered out loud.

“Mom. She knew when I was, eh, three? She made it damned clear that I couldn’t let anyone see what I could do, because Dad wouldn’t understand. It was my special thing, only between me, Jesus, and her.” With a chuckle he added, “Imagine my surprise when Hyrum set Dad on fire.”

“Aubrey needs to know this,” Jax mused.

“It’s not impressive,” David said. “Well, Hyrum is impressive. I’m strong, but he’s...he’s got such control. I know he could have cooked me like a human hot dog, but instead he chose to slap me in the face with a bad sunburn.”

He’s a sparky sponge.

“It’s not the degree of impressiveness,” Red said. “She needs to know because it might make a difference in her relationship with our mother. It’s tenuous at best and exists mostly because of Hyrum.”

David’s eyebrows knotted.

“Your mother also has a gift,” Will explained. “She can freeze things with a touch.”

“I’ll be damned,” David uttered.

“When Hyrum exposed her,” Red went on, “he also exposed her truth. She could have stopped Dad in his sleep. Just one hand on his chest, that’s all it would have taken. But she didn’t, instead she chose to—”

“Mom’s not a murderer. She doesn’t have much of a backbone, but she wouldn’t kill anyone, not even him. Hell, if she had some innate ability, and she realized that you and I and Hyrum did? She kept me quiet, Red. She would have kept Hyrum quiet, too, if she could have. Killing Dad wasn’t the answer.”

“There was no easy answer,” Red sighed. “But Aubrey suffered the most, aside from Hyrum. Mom could have stopped it, and that she didn’t is hard to swallow.”

“But—”

“You’re not your sister,” Jax snapped. “You don’t get to diminish the abuse she and Hyrum suffered at Levi’s hands. Aubrey fights against the pain every goddamned day of her life. And Hyrum is so scarred he refuses to even entertain the idea of a woman in his life.”

“He’s certain he would cause a woman nothing but pain,” Red said, sadly.

“You’ve told him that’s not true, right?” David asked.

“He doesn’t believe it. He honestly thinks women love us so much they’ll put up with it, just for us. And he refuses to do that to anyone.”

“Goddamn.” David spoke in a near whisper. “I just assumed he didn’t realize he could have a relationship. His limitations—”

“Hyrum is not limited,” Will said. “He simply has his own path and walks it at his own pace.”

David cocked his head a touch, looking at Will. “He tells me you’re a very good big brother. Did you really get on your hands and knees in a crowded public park to play cars with him? I have a hard time imagining that.”

“Playing with Hyrum is not unusual for any of us.”

“Including Eli,” Red said.

“We didn’t play with him enough,” David mused. “Joe and Spencer tried, but they hit their teens...what the hell was wrong with us?”

“We were kids, David. We didn’t understand.”

His jaw set. “We were taught to not understand. And not by Mom. Jesus, Dad. If Aubrey had stayed—”

Jax stood abruptly. “Will, with me. Leave Wick. We’ll be back in a bit.”

Will dropped me into Jax’s chair and we watched them go, eyes on them until the door clicked shut.

“What’d I say?” David asked.

Red wasn’t sure. “Reacting to a what-if? Had Aubrey stayed, she would never have met the Emperor, then wouldn’t have met Jax. Our baby sister is Queen of the Pacifican United Kingdom, David. Her life now is significantly better than it would have been if she hadn’t run away.”

Did you miss her?

“I felt abandoned when she left. You had one foot out the door as it was, and it was like the only reasonable adult bailed on me. If I’d known why, maybe it wouldn’t have hurt as much.”

“You realize I helped her.”

David nodded. “I figured it out later. For years I honestly thought she had run off with the kid Dad wanted her to marry. I didn’t clue in until her wedding was plastered all over the news. How the hell could I not have known? When I thought about it, I knew she’d been in the news before that. I just didn’t click, that’s my sister. That’s not some random Aubrey who vaguely looks like her. She ran away and became a princess.”

“And it upset you.”

“Upset? Hell, she got away, Red. She wasn’t suffering with some guy who had no business marrying anyone. I sat in front of the TV as she got married and realized she’d gotten the fairy tale ending, and I wept. I felt selfish for all the years I was angry at her for leaving.”

Red set his elbows on his table. “Why try to wrestle the First Minister’s seat from me, David? And why are you now professing all these insights?”

“Because I honestly thought it should have been me. I did everything Dad asked of me, and I did it with the hint of a promise that when it came down to it, he wouldn’t go through with your second anointing. He let me go on thinking it was my damned birthright, and that nothing I did would be held against me because that damned anointing would be my get-into-the-celestial-kingdom ticket. I felt desperate after he died. Without it? I’m doomed, Red.”

“You don’t need to be the prophet to receive a second anointing, David. Or even a member of the Quorum. I could have given you one, had I known.”

At that, David flinched. “Dad said—”

“Dad sold anointings for favors and cash,” Red said. “Ideally, only the worthiest receive them, but anyone I feel truly deserving will be offered one. It would take work on your part, true soul-wrenching repentance, but it was never outside of your reach. It still isn’t. Being complicit in the attempt on my life isn’t the same as killing me. The blood of the Second Minister isn’t on your hands.”

“I didn’t stop anything, though.”

“I know. That doesn’t put forgiveness out of reach.”

“Why did he choose you?” David asked. “He knew I wanted to follow him.”

“He knew I wouldn’t kill him.”

You tried once, though. You were going to slit his throat.

“And he thought I would.”

Red nodded.

“Yet it never crossed my mind.”

“And it did mine,” Red admitted. “If not for fear of failure, I would have killed him. I had the knife in my hand, even.”

“Huh.” David sat back, regarding Red differently. “Not for the job, I imagine. For what? Aubrey? Hyrum? Our other sisters? Mom? The gaslighting? Verbal abuse?”

“Yes.”

“Well, for what it’s worth... I glad you didn’t. Your soul is worth more than that, Red. I don’t think mine is. And this—” he jangled the chains “—is better than I deserve. Don’t push Jax into finding a way out for me. I leave here, I’m dead. It’s that simple. And I’m coward enough to want to live, even if I spend the next eighty years right here.”

You’re gonna have to pee sometime, dude. You should at least want out of the chair.

His eyes flicked in my direction. “You talk a lot, cat.”

So I’m told.

“You have no idea,” Red said. “Put him and Hyrum together, and the conversation can go on for an hour.”

Just a reminder, I’m a biter, if I need to be.

“I bet.”

“It’s a shame Hyrum didn’t get another cat after Lazybones,” Red went on. “I don’t think it occurred to him he could.”

“Could he have? Would Dad have allowed it again?”

Red might have had the answer, but the door popped open and Commander Soto stepped in, turned sharply as she held the door, and announced, “Her Majesty and Prince Hyrum. Remain seated.”

At that, David snorted, though his legs flexed as if he wanted to get up. Red got to his feet anyway and greeted Aubrey with a kiss on her cheek.

Will was a few steps behind. “You’re free to stand, David.”

Without saying anything, the moment David was on his feet Aubrey grabbed him into a giant hug, and Hyrum bounced on his toes, waiting his turn.

Pick me up.

Will scooped me up and held me close as he grabbed another chair for Hyrum.

I think David understands me. Just a gut feeling. Where’s Jax? I think he could tell.

“Jax,” Will said, as if speaking to Red and David, “will return shortly.”

No one sat until Aubrey did, though I wasn’t sure if it was because she was the Queen or because she was their sister. Hyrum held the back of her chair as he often did, and then waited for Will to point to the new chair between her and Red before he sat down. He continued bouncing off his toes and wound his fingers around his t-shirt.

“I won’t hurt you,” David promised. “Relax, Hy.”

“I’m not scared. I’m excited!” He turned to Aubrey and gushed, “We got to hug David! It’s been forever!”

She reached over and rubbed his arm. “It’s been too long.”

Did you hug him the day Hyrum smacked him in the face with his sparky things? I don’t remember.

“David,” Red started, “refuses to consider an appeal for release. He thinks things are better left alone.”

“They are,” David insisted. “Look, you can do backflips to get me out, but I won’t help you expose every horrible family secret. The cost is too high.”

“And if you can secure your freedom without helping?” Aubrey asked.

“No. I got what I deserved, Aubrey. And I’m safer here.”

“What about Kaley? And your children?”

“They’re safer, too. I tried to rip the church apart. Worse, I failed. The people who were counting on me will never let it go.”

Aubrey looked at Will. “Not everyone was caught?”

“Lack of proof,” Will answered.

“We’ll never know the extent of their reach,” Red said. “Members of the Quorum had followers of their own, and even in the absence of those people?”

“They aren’t who I fear the most,” David said. “But that’s not really why. I don’t see the point in dredging everything up. His trial was enough. What he did to Oz was enough. No one thinks he was a man of God, not anymore.”

“But he did so much more,” Red argued.

It was Aubrey David focused on. “Do you really want the world to hear all the ugly details? I can’t even imagine how bad it was for you. But it’s not just you.”

“I don’t care if they know about me,” Hyrum offered.

“What about the girls?” David asked him. “Is it fair to tell their stories, too? Is it fair to Mom to have to explain over and over again why she didn’t leave him? Floridians will understand, but the rest of the world won’t. They’ll tear her apart for having stayed with him. Hy, you have the royal family to protect you from the worst people, but Mom and our other sisters don’t.”

“We can protect them, right?” Hyrum looked past Aubrey to Will. “Can we?”

“Not as well as they deserve,” Will admitted grudgingly.

“You know he didn’t stop with family,” David said.

“That’s the point,” Red snapped. “Open him up to examination. Let the worms crawl out of the wood. Give people a chance to tell their stories—”

“If we admit completely what he was and hint that we know he likely abused women and children outside of his family, there will be lawsuit after lawsuit against his estate. Mom would lose everything. The church would lose everything. None of it would happen under Florida law, Red. Hell, even from here I could lay the groundwork to prevent that fallout if the legal base was Floridian. But now? Everything would be tried under Pacifica’s laws. Florida law would use the church to protect Mom, but Pacifica favors the victims. And as bad as it sounds, as heartless, Mom is the one we have to protect.”

“Fair point. But exposing him could help the church become more contemporary. We’re stuck two centuries back from the rest of the world.”

“You’re trying to take something personal and turn it into an international incident, Red. It’s not necessary. You have the church and can steer it toward being better. If they listen to what I said earlier, they’ll accept your truth. What more do you need?”

He needs his little brother.

“You have your entire family, even if we are scattered.”

I looked up at Will in time to see his eyebrow twitch.

“Let it go,” David urged.

“If I don’t want to?” Jax asked from the doorway. “If I want that son of a bitch flayed open for the maggots to find?”

“With all due respect, Jax, it’s not your story to tell. It’s not even mine. But it is Aubrey and Hyrum’s, not to mention Ruth, Sarah, and Elle. Our mother. And the fallout would hit them, for no reason other than you despised Levi Munson and want to hurt a man who’s now nothing but dust and memories.”

He’s actually a stone, now. Floating in the Pacific Ocean.

“You’re not supposed to be the voice of reason,” Jax said.

“You expect my father when you see me. That’s fair.”

Hyrum got to his feet. “You’re not Daddy! You’re mean sometimes like him but you never punished anyone.”

“Unfortunately, I probably did.”

Red held his hand up. “That’s not what Hyrum means, David. No, you never punished anyone.”

“Daddy punished me a lot, and it hurt. You never did that.”

David blinked, frowned, then blinked again. “Is that why you told me to bite the pillow?” David asked Hyrum. “Because—”

“Stop,” Aubrey hissed.

David stood abruptly. “I would never do that,” he said to Hyrum. “That was Dad being a monster. But I’ve done mean things, even to you. Now I have a ton of time to think about it all.”

Hyrum latched onto his t-shirt. “You said sorry.”

Softly, “Only in letters, and I know it means more to you in person. I was awful to you when we were kids, Hy. Awful even after I left home. But I am sorry.”

“What about Jesus?”

Tell him the truth, dude. Jax will know if you don’t.

“I promise, I pray every day. But I haven’t asked for His forgiveness. I don’t deserve it yet.”

“But you have to!” Tears rolled down Hyrum’s cheeks. “You have to say sorry. He knows if you mean it. You mean it, right?”

“I mean it,” David said gently. “I’m just not certain I should ask forgiveness yet.”

Hyrum wiped his arm across his face. “You did lots of mean things to me and I forgive you.”

David reached out, leaning forward to kiss Hyrum’s forehead. “That’s because you’re good.”

“Red?” Hyrum cried. “You can tell him it’s okay to tell Jesus sorry. Right?”

“I can tell David that I’m certain he will be forgiven, but he does have to ask.”

“Then ask!”

“Buddy, I don’t know how.”

Ask Red for a blessing. At least that will make Hyrum feel better.

“Hey.” David’s voice was almost a whisper. “Pray with me. Red can guide us, all right? Will you do that? Pray with me?”

Hyrum’s head bobbed as he turned to Red. “Can we? Can David have a blessing?”

Will got up and gestured for Jax to follow him out; I sat on his warm, empty chair and watched as Red laid his hands on David’s head, as Hyrum and Aubrey linked hands with David, and I listened quietly to the low hum of Red’s voice, and then David’s.

I thought when Red lifted his hands that they were done, but he moved to Aubrey to give her a blessing as well, and then to Hyrum, leaving me to wonder who blessed Red.

After the last “amen” they were quiet for a minute, other than Hyrum’s occasional sniff.

Who gives Red blessings?

“The Lord,” David said, so softly that neither Red nor Aubrey were certain he’d spoken.

So God hops down from heaven for a little one on one with the prophet?

“Wick,” Hyrum snickered.

I jumped from the chair to David’s lap. You know what I’m saying.

He rubbed two fingers between my ears. “Little kitties with big ears. I miss having a cat, you know. My kids had a big brute of a cat, inexplicably named Juicy. He liked to lay across my head at night and sometimes I think he wanted to smother me.”

I do that to Will. I don’t want him dead. Just annoyed.

“Maybe someday you can have another cat,” Hyrum said.

“If I could have one as interesting as Wick, I would enjoy that. I hope you’ll keep writing to me about his antics.”

“Maybe Jax will let me see you again and I can bring Wick.”

I can arrange that. I’m obnoxious enough that Will will bring us just to shut me up about it.

Red opened the door to let Jax and Will know he was done. Before he was a foot into the room Hyrum blurted, “Jax can I come back to see David and bring Wick on account of he likes Wick and wants to play with him?”

“Just say yes, sweetheart,” Aubrey suggested. “I think it’s time we began regular visits. If David is safe here, then it’s safe for us to see him. I would presume it’s also safe to bring Kaley.”

David took a step back. “I’m not sure about that. I’m not sure I can see her and then watch her leave.”

Jax ignored him. “What kind of visits are you suggesting?”

“You know exactly what I’m suggesting,” Aubrey said. She looked at Will and added, “Make it happen, William.”

You could make a safe house happen, William.

“What’s a safe house?” Hyrum asked.

Will glanced at David, who didn’t seem to think twice about Hyrum’s question. “Ideally, it’s a place no one else knows about where someone can stay and feel protected. However, we’ve had a bad experience—”

“There are other safe houses.” Aubrey was gentle, but firm. “Even safer centuries.”

David grunted, “What?” while Jax sucked in a deep breath and asked her, “What are you proposing?”

Her eyes twinkled as a mischievous grin formed. “David Munson dies in jail here. His grieving wife leaves Florida, relocating to avoid the pain home causes her. Dad’s followers can’t follow him to Will’s birth When, after all.”

“And neither can Russia,” Red offered.

“What about an anchor?” Jax asked.

“Kaley, I presume,” Aubrey said. “Or we do for him what Jay did for his family for so long. Bring them home every few weeks to reset.”

“You realize he’s here for some serious crimes,” Jax said, though he already knew he would do what she asked, because he also knew who was really in charge.

Hyrum bounced on his toes. “And we could go see him and show him jetpacks and the bouncy place!”

Dude...oh, Bounce. Not bouncy.

“How the hell did we get here?” Jax asked Red. “We wanted to use him for propaganda, and now we’re relocating him into freedom two hundred years from now?”

“What the actual hell?” David blurted.

Will moved closer to him. “You know what Hyrum can do, what you can do, and what your mother and brother can do. I assume you’re open-minded enough to accept that there are people who can do other things as well?”

David nodded.

Without asking, Will set his hand against David’s neck, closed his eyes, and fed a stream of information into David’s mind. He squinted at first, unsure, but instead of panicking and trying to pull away, his eyes went wide and he grinned, and for a moment I thought he was going to start bouncing on his toes along with Hyrum.

Of all the things he could have latched onto, he picked the one I thought would skip right past him. When Will started to let go, David grabbed his hand and held it there. “You’re my nephew? Well, removed a few times, but still.”

“Aubrey is my great, great grandmother, so yes, we’re related. But the point remains, is this something you would want to do? Leave here for my birth When, and live there?”

“He’d still be guarded,” Jax cautioned.

“But he’d also be free,” Aubrey said.

David let go of Will and looked to Red. “You’ve been there. Mom’s been there?”

Red screamed like a little girl, according to Will.

Oh, and you might as well tell them you understand me. Hyrum does and he can hear all this.

David sat down, hard.

“You can talk to Wick?” Hyrum asked.

“I need a minute, buddy,” David said.

While he collected his thoughts, Jax told Will to get the ball rolling. He’d not only need a place to stay, but a source of income, and someone to help him transition into a future sort of life. “A security detail as well,” Jax said just before Will tapped his jump bracelet and disappeared.

“Holy mother of—”

You’ll get used to it.

I jumped from the chair onto his lap again and rubbed against his arm. This is how you redeem yourself, dude. It’s the gift of a do-over that you accept with grace, and take the chance to be a better man.

Hyrum gripped at his t-shirt. “Oh, you’re mad. I’m sorry. We didn’t mean to make you mad.”

“I’m not.” David’s voice wavered a bit. “I’m a little overwhelmed, Hyrum. That’s all.”

“You want me to go with you?”

“Wait, what?”

“I’ve been there and maybe you won’t be scared if I go with you and help you get used to it.”

David was going to say no, I could feel it. But Aubrey reached over to rub his shoulder and said, “We’ll all go. There are a few things there I wouldn’t mind doing.”

With a giggle, Hyrum told David, “There are really big drinks there and she likes the slushie one. Oh! We can show him the castle!”

“The castle,” David repeated.

“Zed is building it now but it’s real there! It’s a school!”

“All right,” Jax sighed. “So. We lose his position in peeling back your father’s layers.”

“That was never what it was really about, though, was it?” Aubrey asked. “David is right. The world already knows.”

Jax gave a bare nod. “Fine. Then what was it about?”

“Unity?” Red guessed. “Restoring balance to...something?”

“Petty bullshit,” Jax said, laughing.

“Peace,” Aubrey said.

“Loving David,” Hyrum said. He had tears in his eyes and clutched at his shirt. “If we love David, we can let Daddy go for real. David isn’t bad like Daddy but I think Daddy wanted him to be.”

“What do you mean, Hy?” David asked.

He stumbled over the words, but his point was clear. Levi created molds for his sons and attempted to shove each of them into one. He wanted Red to follow him and nudged him in all the directions he needed to go in order to one day take the Second Minister’s seat. He raised David to be another Levi; hard, ambitious, and mean enough that taking control of the church would feel natural if Red somehow failed.

“He even made you be a lawyer,” Hyrum reminded David. “He made Joe go to school even when he wanted to be a soldier and he made Spencer be the guy who goes places and tells people that Florida is the best place and they should listen to Daddy. And he made me feel stupid on account of he didn’t know what else he could make me. Daddy wanted you to be mean, just like he wanted me to feel stupid. He didn’t want us to love you.”

“Cowboy,” Red breathed.

“Daddy was loud and wanted everyone to be afraid of him on account of that’s how he could make everyone pay attention to him. He liked being mean. Daddy didn’t care if he was loved.”

“So we quiet down, stop taking about him, and let his memory die out,” Red said.

“I wanted people to know Daddy was a bad man, too, Red, but I think Jesus would be happier if we loved David instead.”

Stubbornly, Jax folded his arms. “Well. I might get to where I like him a little.”

Hyrum kneeled in front of David’s chair, resting his elbows on David’s legs. “I love you, David. And Aubrey and Red do. So does Jesus. He’ll wait for you to be ready to say sorry when you mean it. But like this, okay? Father Dan says sometimes you gotta get on your knees when you talk to Jesus on account of that says you really mean it.”

I felt the air stir a tiny bit, and Will popped back. He was in different clothes and his beard was thicker, which prompted Jax to ask how long he had been gone.

“It took a bit longer than I anticipated,” Will said. “Two weeks. And there’s a change in plans. He’s heading for somewhen more familiar instead going two centuries forward.”

Will had scoured his birth When for a safe and appropriate place for David to land, but even with a security detail—people who lived in that When—he felt less certain about David’s ability to find his footing there.

“I connected with James to ask how easily he had integrated. He believed he would not have fared well without George, and while he offered to help David and his family navigate that When, he believed the better idea would be to not leave him so far in the future. I had to agree.”

“Then?” Jax prompted.

He’d had another idea. Take David to a more familiar setting, where he would live near familiar people, someone who would care for and about him, someone to whom he could make amends.

“Hyrum,” Aubrey murmured.

“Me?” Hyrum asked.

“Both of you,” Will said. “After I left James, I went to see the two of you” —he gestured to Jax and Aubrey— “as well as Oz and Drew. They understand the situation and given their ongoing access to a high level of security, they can provide guards. He would be thirty-five years forward instead of two hundred, which may make acclimating easier.”

“And Hyrum?” Jax asked.

“He’s excited about the possibility. His relationship with David ended under different circumstances, and he misses his brother.”

“But he’s older—”

“He understands how much younger you are,” Will said to David. “He’s aware of the circumstances. The learning curve is yours to embrace, not his. Your sister is there, as is Jax—”

“The rest of my family?”

Y’all might want to sit down for this.

“Y’all,” Will repeated with a sigh. But he sat down, and the others followed. He explained about the war and how Florida ended, though most of his family were tucked away in Kansas when the final bomb went off. Some were not and died then. Others died in the years following. Still, he would not likely see those remaining, other than Hyrum.

“And Bree,” Red said, softly. “I understand she’s close to Jax and Aubrey.”

“And you?” David asked, hopeful.

“They won’t tell me if I’m still alive or not.”

Will opened the bag and let the cat run free. “I am unaware of the extent of what Red was told in the previous When, but I’ll consult with Aubrey on that. If he’s aware, you’ll be able to see him as well.”

“Is everything set, then?” Jax asked Will.

“Everything but his consent.”

“But my wife,” David said. “She’ll understand, but to pick up and leave? Our kids are adults, they have lives here—”

“We can visit,” Hyrum said.

People move all the time. You’ll all get used to it.

“Life here, alone, locked in a room or life there where you’re essentially free and where you can be with Kaley,” Red said. “Your children will cope, David.”

“But to never see them again?”

Aubrey reached out to touch him. “We never said that, sweetheart. It’s not a one-way ticket to isolation. We wouldn’t do that.”

“Please,” Hyrum murmured. “I don’t want you to be in jail for forever.”

“Hy—”

“No.” Hyrum sat up a bit straighter, a bit defiant. “You promised Kaley you would be a good husband and you can’t do that here. You have to go on account of it’s your job to be a man and protect her. That’s how you tell Jesus sorry. You do what you promised, David. You promised her and you promised Jesus.”

“Be a man,” David repeated, softly.

“Be a good man,” Hyrum insisted.

David looked to Red. “Now that’s revelation, President Munson. I feel that as certain as I understand the opportunity being given to me.”

“Is your belly burning?” Hyrum asked.

His hand went to his stomach. “Right there, Hy. You are a tool of God, and I think you just fixed something broken in me.”

Beaming, Hyrum squealed, “I’m a tool!”

“When would we leave?” David asked Will.

“You’ll go first. Your wife will follow, after we’ve had time to prepare her for this.”

“How? How can you remotely prepare her for...time travel?”

Aubrey’s eyes flicked toward Hyrum. “She knows what he can do. Has she seen it?”

David shook his head.

“Then we start with the cutest tool in the box. A quick demonstration, an explanation of the things Red does and I do, and then Will can feed information to her. Kaley is bright and relatively open minded.”

“Relatively,” David snorted.

“For someone who grew up under the church’s thumb, yes. She knows there’s more to life than cleaning house and raising kids. She’s pushing your girls to reach for more than the church will give them, David. She’s pushing their husbands. She’ll believe us.”

And there’s nothing like jumping forward to prove it.

There was a soft knock on the door; Aisha stuck her head in and asked, “Is everyone decent?”

“Well, we have clothes on.” David rose from his chair, eyebrows knotting when Hyrum didn’t pop up.

She’s not a woman to him. Just Aisha. I don’t think he’s even noticed she has magnificent boobs.

“Cat,” David sighed.

“Finn is ready,” Aisha said to Will, who did get up when she came in. She held up her arm to show him her jump bracelet. “Date, time, and location are already set. He’ll meet us there and has everything needed.”

David leaned heavily against the table, color draining from his pink skin. “What, right now?”

“Do you have a reason to remain?” Will asked.

“Freedom,” Red reminded him. “And we’ll see you again, I swear.”

“You’re coming?” David asked Aubrey.

“For now, no,” Will answered for her. “It would be best if she and Hyrum visited later. But you’ll see them.”

“Just like that,” he breathed.

“David, if you need time,” Aubrey started.

Hyrum jumped to his feet. “No. He has to go right now. So he can be a good man and say sorry to Jesus.”

He can say sorry in a week, dude.

“No. When you decide it’s time to say sorry then you do it on account of you might have an accident and die and not be able to. What if he doesn’t get to see Jesus after he dies? What if he goes to hell? He won’t see anyone there.”

“Well, there’s Dad,” David snorted.

“Oh. Yeah. Do you want to see him?”

“No, buddy. I mean, I’d like one last chance to take a shot at him, but other than that...”

Hyrum stepped around the table and grabbed David into a hug. “Don’t let Daddy make you want bad things, David. Go be a good husband like you promised. Go be good and say sorry to Jesus and someday you’ll get to heaven. And the real heaven, where everyone goes, not the one where only special people get to see Jesus.”

“Are you sure saying I’m sorry is enough?” David pulled back to look at Hyrum’s face. “I’ve been a bad man, Hy. I might not ever be sorry enough.”

“But we forgive you. If we forgive you, Jesus will even more. He’s not like Daddy, David. He’s not a raging dick.”

“Oh, lord,” Aubrey sighed, though I don’t think they heard it because David howled with laughter.

“You’ll come see me?” David asked.

Hyrum had been limited in his visits to that When; he looked to Will for the answer.

“You’ll see each other frequently,” Will said. “Visits in both directions will be secured.”

I go there a lot. You’ll see me. I can take messages if you want.

David glanced over his shoulder, to the door that led to his room. “I just—”

“Your belongings will be collected and delivered,” Will said.

There was little he wanted. Only the drawings hanging on the wall, things sent by his grandchildren. There were books and photographs, but he especially wanted the letters Hyrum had written him.

“There’s a drawer filled with candy,” he told Hyrum. “You keep that. Share it with the kids, but the big bar? That’s just for you, all right? Be selfish and keep that one for yourself.”

I jumped onto Will’s shoulder and leaned against his ear, trying to speak softly.

He doesn’t believe anything will happen. Even though he saw you disappear.

“I am aware.”

He gave them a few more minutes, waiting as Aubrey promised to explain everything to Kaley and their mother, and when it seemed as if they were rambling on because they were afraid to stop, Will asked Red and Jax to move the table away, and he reached for David’s hand. Aisha held her arm out to him, and before David could flinch away, Will tapped her bracelet, and we winked onto Union Square.

Old Hyrum pumped his fists in the air, bouncing on his toes, and he shouted “David!” loud enough to scare three pigeons and the cat who was about to pounce upon them. He raced across the Square and when David didn’t get up, he slid the last few inches on his knees and came to a stop by throwing his arms around his much younger older brother.

“I missed you!” Hyrum squealed. “Last time I saw you, you were dead!”

“Dead?” He didn’t let go of Hyrum, instead resting his forehead on Hyrum’s shoulder. “Hy, I am so sorry. So very, very sorry.”

“Why? You didn’t die on purpose. You got hurt in the war. But you didn’t die then, you lived for a couple years and I got to see you and you said to me, ‘Hyrum, don’t tell anyone, but I liked you most of all.’” He put his mouth near David’s ear and whispered, “I told Aubrey but I figured that was okay.”

How is Hyrum not in pain? He’s eighty, right? He just slid on the ground like Rhys and the twins do.

Instead of answering me, Will tugged on my tail.

“I was a horrible brother to you, Hyrum. I’m sorry about that. I need you to know—”

With a giggle, Hyrum set his forehead against David’s. “You said sorry before you died. And you said I was the best man you ever knew. Then you cried and I gave you a candy bar and said it was okay on account of you tried to be good and helped end the war.”

David’s head jerked and he looked to Aubrey. “I did what?”

Will reached down to help them up. “Hyrum’s history, Aubrey’s history, is vastly different in this When. Here, the war was somewhat protracted, and in its last years your counterpart provided intelligence to Pacifica.”

“You told us where Levi would be on that last day,” Jax said. “Despite knowing you would be caught in the blast, unable to get far enough away to avoid injury, you provided the exact location that allowed us to finally stop him and end it all.”

“Then he did none of the things—?” David looked pleadingly to Will. “Red’s shuttle. King Eli. None of it?”

Will shook his head.

“Clean start, sweetheart.” Aubrey kissed his cheek, her hand lingering on his shoulder. “Will has told us about you, but I hope you know, the man you were is not the brother we lost. But you could become him.”

“How?” He choked on the word.

“You,” Will said, “are not their David. But neither am I their Emperor. That man died at forty-two. Yet, these are your brother and sister, directly. They are the people you just left behind, and they’re offering you sanctuary.”

With guards.

“Guards,” he sighed. “I’m not going to—”

Will held a hand up. “For your own protection. This is more for your personal security than a limit to your freedom. While we can reasonably assume that your safety has been secured, we cannot guarantee it.”

You won’t even know that they’re there, dude. Look around. I bet you can’t spot Aubrey’s guards.

He wanted to know how many years past the war their David had lived. Before Aubrey answered, Will said, “Your death in your own When will be well timed. Time will note your absence as predicted, I hope, which may ease your transition. If not, if you cannot anchor to this one, you’ll be escorted home every few weeks long enough to recover.”

“Home,” David repeated.

“Someone will escort you through a portal located in the upper level of the royal home,” Will said.

Even I can do that. Though I might make you wiggle through the little one in the closet. How limber are you?

“Kaley,” David said.

“Give Will a week or two,” Aubrey said. “She’ll need time to adjust to the notion of leaving Florida, not to mention entering a new decade.”

“We may not keep this entirely linear,” Will said. “Regardless of how long it takes to prepare her, I’ll bring her through in a week. That gives you time to begin his transition.”

“Why are you doing this?” David asked Will. “I understand why my sister and brother would protect me, regardless. But why you?”

You’re still family.

“Indeed. We’re family. And until all the rips in the fabric that binds this family together are mended, there will be no peace. While I am not particularly troubled with your comfort or state of mind, I am where my great, great grandparents and Hyrum are concerned. In any When.”

Become the David Munson of this When, dude. Deserve this.

“Then you need to know the full truth, Emperor. About my father’s last days. His death. It may change your mind.”

Will scowled. “We are aware of how he died.”

“But not who was responsible. It wasn’t Russia. He was in their pocket, yes, but they didn’t have him killed.”

Will glanced at Finn, who gently guided Hyrum away, whispering in his ear. “Explain,” he said, when Hyrum was several feet away and giggling at whatever old-man Finn had said.

“His trial? It gutted me, Emperor. He got off easy, and while I respected Aubrey’s steel and strength in standing before the court to request he not be executed, I disagreed. It wasn’t just everything he had done to Oz, it was...everything. He stooped to levels I still can’t imagine.”

“You did not kill your father,” Will said.

“Not personally, no. But I gave the order. Well, the suggestion.”

Levi Munson had strategically placed, loyal players all over the world. But those closest, the men he relied upon to keep his hands clean, were Floridian and their faith came first. They acted on his orders in the belief that he was guide by the Lord, even when told to engage in tasks that were clearly illegal and immoral. After all, God had ordered human sacrifice before; surely he still could.

“All it took was the moment Dad uttered the words ‘I am God’ on his last broadcast. After that, I only needed to hint that it was just a matter of time before a man as weak as he was would begin to name names. And wasn’t it a shame that he wasn’t turned over to Florida to face the punishment we all knew God wanted for him. No one, and I stressed that, would blame anyone who saw to it that he came to the justice he deserved.”

“You did not kill your father,” Will repeated.

“But I am responsible.” David’s hands were clasped behind his back, and his head bowed. I couldn’t tell if this was contrition, if he was praying, or hoping Will couldn’t see some gleam of pride in his eyes. His next words were a whisper. “He’s dead because of me. And I’m not particularly sorry.”

No one is, dude. But that was a tad harsh, don’t you think? They hung him by his ankles and slit him open.

“Wick,” he breathed. When he finally looked up, I saw why he had bowed his head. His eyes were filled with tears and pain. “I know. And I should care, but...”

It’s not like anyone was all that upset over it.

There was a song, even. I heard it being sung in the background on a news broadcast.

“A song.”

Ding dong, the dick is dead...

I’m not even kidding, bro.

“You can change your mind about this, Emperor,” he said to Will. He turned to Aubrey and added, “You, too. I can’t hold you to this.”

She set her hand on his cheek again. “Sweetheart, I know you’ve done awful things. I also know you won’t repeat those things here.”

“How can I answer for them?”

Hyrum skipped back over. “Answer for what?”

“Sins,” Aubrey answered for him.

“Oh! I know how.”

“I need to do more than say sorry, Hy.”

Hyrum set his hands on his hips and looked at David like he was a wayward child. “Duh. I’m gonna take you to meet Father Eyeball.”

“Ibata,” Aubrey corrected, gently but amused.

He ignored her. “Father Ibata knows lots of things about Jesus and how to be a good person. And Father Dan is still there and he’ll help you, too. Oh! And I know a rabbi who loves to talk to people but you gotta know, she talks and talks and talks and talks, especially when you’re there to turn her lights on and off and make dinner for her.”

“Hyrum knows half the damned city,” Jax said. “If there’s someone who can help you truly repent, he’ll get you to them.”

“Truly repent,” he murmured, mostly to himself. “If I don’t? If I can’t change my ways?”

They have the death penalty here, you know.

“Wick, they do not.” Will tugged on my tail again.

Hyrum put his arms around David’s waist, setting his head against his older brother’s chest. “We’ll protect you. And I’m older than you so you have to do what I say and I’m gonna tell you to be good.”

“What if I’m not?” David asked him, quietly.

“You will be on account of we love you and that makes everything better.”

“I thought donuts made everything better.”

“We can have donuts, too.”

We left them on Union Square like that, with Hyrum holding onto his younger older brother, promising him happiness and junk food, and we jumped to home, where our Aubrey and Jax waited with Hyrum and Red.

“I don’t think he feels as if he deserves this chance,” Will said.

“He doesn’t,” Jax grumbled. “But if we didn’t give it to him, what would that say about us?”

“That we enjoy the petty bullshit,” Red said. “Just promise me I’ll see him again.”

“We’ll visit,” Aubrey promised.

Just don’t spend three days screaming like a little girl.

“I didn’t,” Red insisted.

Will raised an eyebrow. “You did.”

“I may have invoked the name of the Lord.”

“Said as he spun about, eyes wide. ‘Oh my god’ and ‘Jesus’ on repeat. For three days.”

“Not that you’d exaggerate.”

Stop teasing. Look.

Hyrum had dropped into a squat, and he rested his nose against his hands, fingers woven together. He was about to start rocking on the balls of his feet and Aubrey took a step toward him, stopped when Jax set a hand on her arm. I jumped from Will’s shoulder, using Jax’s comfy chair as a springboard, and landed in front of Hyrum.

They’re not trying to be mean.

“Is David scared, Wick? You saw. Was he scared? Is he okay?”

He was fine. When we left, he was hugging you and talking about donuts.

Hyrum’s voice dropped to a whisper. “But I’m old there, Wick. What if I’m not there for enough years to make sure he’s okay? If Kaley doesn’t go live with him he’s gonna need someone who loves him.”

“Sweety,” Aubrey said, “he has us, too.”

“But you’re even older and we didn’t think about that and David isn’t old.”

I stood on my back legs, set my paws on his knees, and broke one of Will’s cardinal rules.

Your story doesn’t end for a long time, dude. That Hyrum will keep an eye on David as long as he needs one. David will be an old man for a long time before you reach the last chapter in your story.

He sniffed. “I have a story?”

We all do. Yours is a good one.

“What’s yours called?”

Well, it probably would have been The Neverending Story but someone beat me to the title.

“What’s mine?”

‘Bacon and Donuts and Bikes and Things.’

Come on, let’s go to the bakery and do some research. You can tell me things you want your other self to know about David, and I’ll tell him later when I visit Lux.

With another sniff, he nodded, and picked me up as he stood. And as we headed out, he uttered the three little words that made Jax extremely proud.

“Okay. You’re buying.”

THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING

TOLD TO DRESS CASUAL, the family sat in neat rows to the side of the stage set up outside city hall, a mass of subdued shades of gray and blue slacks with white dress shirts unbuttoned at the collars. Aubrey sat with all the dignity of a Queen waiting to proudly hear her King’s speech, wearing a white and red sleeveless dress, and Aisha sat next to Aubrey’s right in baby blue. To Aubrey’s left was Hyrum, who took the notion of casual seriously; he dressed in neon pink jeans, a neon orange t-shirt, neon green high-top sneakers, and an outrageously purple belt.

No one blinked. He’d carefully trimmed his beard and combed his newly dyed hair neatly, proud that there were no bright blue spots shining on his forehead near his hairline, “on account of last time, I got spots, and they stayed for days and days.” Aubrey sighed “Good lord” under her breath as he entered the elevator, but he was happy and that was all that mattered.

I perched on Rhys’s lap and looked past Marco, who sat, elbows digging into his knees and his chin resting on fists, in a chair at the end of the row, and scanned the growing audience, waiting for fingers to point in Hyrum’s direction, waiting for the snickering and laughter of disapproval, but it never came. Hyrum was well known in San Francisco; his penchant for blindingly bright colors was known. No one here cared, which was a relief because I didn’t feel like biting anyone.

Next to Marco was a powered-down, human-shaped drone. Rhys and Hyrum had dressed it in jeans and a t-shirt, reasoning that its data ports and seals needed protection from the sun. It was an older model that Drew often allowed Rhys to experiment with, and seemed perfect for the day’s events.

It had humanoid shape, all familiar parts in familiar places—no fingers extruding from shoulders, no feet where ears should be—but it was clearly mechanical and would not invite fear and pity should something go wrong.

Will stood in front of the family with Drew nearby, his focus on the younger members. There was already a healthy amount of bored squirming occurring, and he intended to squash anything overt before it happened. “Best behavior,” he reminded them, speaking over the music pounding around us. “No poking or prodding of siblings or cousins, no whining, no crying. No display of gifts, all right? What do we do if we feel one bubbling?”

“Tuck our hands under our legs,” they answered in rote, a quiet rumble of young voices.

“Fingers will suffice,” he said. “This won’t last long. Jax will give a short speech, then he’ll bring Finn over. After that, there will be a demonstration of the transporter, and this will be over.”

“Other than the mingling,” Drew said. “People will have a lot of questions, and we need to answer them.”

Will pointed to a tent that had been erected to the far right of the stage, where a uniformed guard waited at the entry. “Head in there after we’re done. There are drinks and snacks, and as soon as Zed and Sophia are free, they’ll come in to take you home.”

“Where do I go?” Hyrum’s hands went to the front of his shirt, but he didn’t twist the fabric with his fingers. “Do I have to answer questions or do I go get snacks?”

Will understood what he truly wanted to know: for this, am I a grownup or one of the kids?

“I would appreciate it if you and Rhys remained outside to mingle with guests. It is your choice, however. If you’re uncomfortable, head into the tent.”

He sat up a bit straighter. “I can talk to people. And I won’t do any sparky things.”

Hyrum had considerable control over his gifts. If he felt threatened, he had the ability to shoot fists full of electricity at his aggressor; if necessary, he could whip a rope of hot light around someone’s neck. Conversely, he could soak up electricity or he could funnel it in any direction. At sixteen, he’d set his own father’s hair on fire with a quick air-punch of his fist, though he was also quick to remind anyone who knew that he’d put it out quickly, and there was little physical damage to Levi Munson.

His promise to avoid any sparky demonstrations was for Oz and Drew’s children, who had not yet mastered full control of their gifts, and for Zed’s son Jonathan, whose gift came and went, and he never knew when it would poke its head.

Alex leaned forward, looking from side to side. “Where are you sitting, Dad?”

He wasn’t. Will’s role in the day’s events was reminiscent of his days as Jax’s right hand. His job was to watch and to guard; his place was to Jax’s right and a few steps behind, scanning the crowd for anyone focusing on the family and not whomever was speaking. He didn’t need to guard the King; there were dozens of royal guards doing that. Some were in the crowd, dressed in street wear, several were in uniform and obvious to onlookers, and more were positioned on rooftops surrounding the venue, weapons trained and ready.

As the music faded, Will took his place near the podium. There was a modicum of expected fanfare, with an introduction given by Kyler Burrow, a representative to the King’s council and a minor member of Ozoo’s board. He offered all of the political bullet points: today’s demonstration was a boon for Pacifica, leader of the free world. It represented a vibrant change in free trade, leaps forward in the dynamics of transportation, and he stopped just short of delivering the King’s speech for him.

This was a crowd filled with scientists, entrepreneurs, stock traders, and politicians. They had a bare notion of what to expect: a major leap forward in mass transit, in the deliverance of goods, without specifics regarding the exact nature of those promises. They’d stared at the massive metal gates erected on the stage and at the far end of the crowd seating, kept from too-close examination by armed guards. There was a buzz of speculation that quieted as Jax made his way across the stage, and several people leaned forward, as if listening harder to the things he was about to impart.

Jax took a beat before speaking. His hands went to the top of the podium and he scanned the crowd in much the same way as Will had. There were no nerves; he’d spoken to larger crowds hundreds of times, and for this he was merely introducing Finnegan Blackshear, who was not as practiced at public speaking and who looked like he might pass out on stage.

“Thank you, Mr. Burrow,” he began. “This is, as you’ve pointed out, an important day for Pacifica, and for the world. What we’re about to unveil has been sought after for centuries, and with particular intensity over the last decade. Owed largely to the work of Finnegan Blackshear and Richard Van Hoff, they would be the first to agree that today, we stand on the shoulders of giants.”

Abruptly, Hyrum stood, his hands going to his chest as he blurted, “You can’t do that, Jax!”

Rhys tugged at Hyrum’s shirt, to get him to sit down, but he wasn’t having any of it.

“That’s just not nice.” Hyrum stomped over to his brother-in-law, tilting his head back to get a better look at Jax. “It doesn’t matter if they’re giants, Jax. You can’t stand on people. It’s mean and if you do it, I’ll have words to say.”

If they laugh, I’m growling at them.

An amused murmur rolled through the audience, but there was no overt laughter.

“Promise,” Hyrum said.

Jax placed his hands on either side of Hyrum’s head and bent to kiss his forehead. “You’re absolutely right. We won’t stand on anyone, I promise. I didn’t mean it like that. I only meant that there have been people who worked really hard on this, and we benefitted from that.”

With a heavy sigh, Hyrum asked, “Well, why didn’t you say that, then?”

“I thought I was being clever.”

“Oh. Okay. But just so you know, standing on people isn’t clever.”

“I get that now.” He gave Hyrum a gentle nudge, sending him back to his seat before resuming his speech. “Hyrum is absolutely correct. Standing on others is unkind, both literally and figuratively. While we would not usurp their hard work and data, we have most definitely been the beneficiaries of it, especially the collective works of Blackshear and Van Hoff.”

I jumped from Rhys’s lap to Hyrum’s and stood on my back legs to touch my tongue to his chin.

“He’s not mad, is he?” Hyrum whispered. “My tummy hurts now.”

He’s not mad. You made him think about what he was saying. It’s all right.

Rhys reached over and took Hyrum’s hand. We both knew what he was doing—exactly what he’d been told not to, using one of his gifts—but Hyrum didn’t mind that his nephew and best friend was trying to calm him before he became too distressed. I didn’t think Will minded, either, since it only looked like he was holding Hyrum’s hand and not using his innate empathic abilities.

Look. Alex is sitting on her fingers. Is she cold, or—?

Alex had ready control of her gift, yet the edges of her seat were tinged with frost. Charlie noticed and then set his hand on the back of her seat to warm her; within seconds it faded and Alex relaxed.

Everyone is a little nervous today. It’s okay.

While Finn spoke, Marcus slipped his fingers between his legs and the chair. The younger children were unfazed; it was the teenagers, those who understood what this meant and the costs if anything went wrong, that were worried. They knew how often Finn used the transporter; they knew Will had used a portable version for over a decade. It was tried and tested, but this was the inaugural reveal to the public, and they wanted everything to go right.

When Finn gestured for Rhys to get the drone ready, I stepped across a line of laps to get to it. Rhys flipped the switch on the remote control several times, to no avail.

“Battery,” he groaned softly. “Fuck.”

Hyrum asked where it was, and when Rhys whispered that it was just below his neck on the spine, he reached under the drone’s shirt and felt for it. There was a tiny whine that ended in a tinier pop, and its eyes fluttered open.

“Don’t tell Will I did a sparky thing,” Hyrum whispered to Rhys. “I’ll tell him later when he can yell at me without kids around.”

He won’t yell at you.

“But I promised.”

“Dad won’t mind. It’s fine.” Rhys maneuvered the drone the few steps needed to the gate, and then turned him around. He looked to Finn and said, “He’s ready.”

“Transponder tag in place?”

Rhys nodded.

“All right, then.” Finn’s fingers danced across the keyboard he’d placed on the podium. A sharp tone cut through the air as the drone was washed in bright light, and before one could blink twice, he was gone.

Over the chorus of confused voices, Finn told everyone to turn around, and standing in the rear gate was the drone, happily in one piece.

The crowd lost their fricking minds.

All right, they didn’t exactly lose their minds. But it got loud and people jumped to their feet, with questions fired at Finn in volumes that made it impossible to understand what they asked of him. He repeated the taps on his keyboard and the drone moved back to the stage, no worse for the wear.

When the murmuring and shouting abated, one question surfaced: “Trapdoor? How do we know it’s real? Magicians have illusions, we all know that.”

Finn lifted one shoulder. “Give it a whirl? Take a trip and see for yourself.”

“Oh, hell no.”

Hyrum stepped forward, bouncing on his toes. “I’ll do it! Oh! Rhys and me and Wick can all go together!”

Hyrum scooped me up and bounded for the gate, leaving any potential protests behind him. I felt a bit squished against Hyrum’s chest, but not as uncomfortable as Rhys when he brushed against the side of the gate and was rewarded with a static shock that almost sizzled.

They’re still going to say it’s a trick, that we planned this.

“Maybe, but—” Rhys started, interrupted by the whine “—we can fix that.” When we appeared in the rear gate, before anyone could gather a coherent thought, he bent down and asked a woman in the last row for her purse, then gestured for Finn to bring us back.

The murmuring ratcheted upwards. Rhys ran to the edge of the stage and yelled for Isaac to toss him his jacket, and then carefully—in full view—wrapped it around the purse. He set it on the gate platform carefully, it vanished, and he grinned when the purse’s owner held up the transported jacket like a prize.

Hyrum leaned toward Rhys. “We’re gonna have to answer a lot of questions now. I hope you don’t have to pee.”

“As far as I know,” Rhys explained to an overeager young reporter, ignoring the camera drone that hovered uncomfortably close to his face, “there aren’t plans to use this as a wide scale human transportation system. Initially it’ll be used to move materials and goods, anything that can’t, you know, go boom.”

“So it’s dangerous.”

“I wouldn’t have demonstrated if it were dangerous. But people deserve to see it in action for a while before trusting it, I think.”

“Has the King tried it?”

“Not as far as I know. And you gotta know, Hyrum and I are probably going to get chewed out later for jumping up and doing it. Grandpa has volunteers who have tested it, and I know I wasn’t supposed to today.”

“Then why did you?”

“Because I’ve watched my grandfather work on it my entire life. It’s been decades in the making, and I trust both the transporter and my grandpa. If he had any doubts, he would have yelled at me to stop, and I would have.”

“Your own parents didn’t try to stop you.”

“They trust him, too.”

“Yet you’re going to be in trouble.”

“Eh. Maybe not trouble, exactly, but they’re definitely going to have something to say about not clearing it with them first.”

From a few feet away, where he was speaking to another reporter, Hyrum agreed. “Aubrey is going to have words to say.”

“How many words, Hy?” Rhys asked.

“All of them. But maybe not any on the bad word list.”

Worst case, they sigh and remind you that you should have asked first. No one is upset.

“That’s right, Wick. You’ll get spoken to, as well.”

“Well, that’s the key, then, isn’t it?” junior reporter asked. “If it was problematic, Wick never would have been allowed near it. We can’t have anything happening to him.”

Damn straight.

“Are you suggesting we’re a bit protective of Wick?” Rhys fired back, amused.

“I’m not suggesting anything. How old is he, anyway? He’s been around as long as I can remember.”

Tread carefully.

“All my life,” Rhys said.

There was a cat before me named Major. He looked a lot like me.

Rhys tagged onto that. “I mean, he’s probably older than twenty. Maybe even thirty. But before that my dad had a cat named Major who was damn near Wick’s twin. People seem to think they’re the same cat.”

“People have noted the same cat, supposedly, since the King was a little boy.”

Hint that there’s another one. Seven.

“Cats have lineage,” Rhys said. “I mean, I don’t know for sure they’ve all been related but I wouldn’t doubt it.”

Just don’t ask to see my nuts. They’re gone.

That made Hyrum giggle. “Jax isn’t gonna be happy that we’re talking about Wick and not the transporter.”

I’m far more interesting.

“Everyone else is asking about the transporter,” the reporter said. “Right now, I’m the only one who gets to see Wick. He didn’t seem to be afraid of anything going on. Is he always like that?”

“He’s pretty chill,” Rhys said. “Heck, when I got my dog, Thor, I think everyone expected him to be afraid, but he rubbed against Thor and jumped on him right from the start.”

“I’ve seen Wick riding on Thor. Just kind of sauntering across Union Square.”

“Thor respects Wick. Wick plays with him and sneaks treats to him. A ride seems like a fair trade. I’m not even sure he can feel Wick on his back.”

“How old is Thor?”

“Eleven,” Rhys answered. “And yeah, he’s getting up there. I really wish dogs his size lived as long as cats, but right now he’s super healthy and has a ton of energy.”

“That’s why we didn’t bring him,” Hyrum offered. “Lots and lots of energy. Most of it is in his tongue. He licks a lot. He would want to lick your hand if he was here.”

I’m going to pant in a minute. Don’t be alarmed. I just want to give you an out before this kid asks more personal questions.

“You’re very talkative, Wick,” reporter kid said. “Is he always this talkative?”

“Sir Meows-a-lot,” Rhys said. “Opinions about everything.” He had more to add but I did as I said, and started panting.

Hyrum heard my warning, but still gasped. “Rhys! He needs water! We gotta take him into the tent. He might be too hot!”

“If he needs water, so do we,” Rhys agreed. “Sorry to cut this short, but like you said, Wick first.”

Oz and Drew were asked only cursory questions about the transporter before reporters settled in on curiosities regarding the royal grandchildren and how well they behaved during Jax’s speech and the subsequent demonstrations. Jax and Aubrey experienced much the same, though they were questioned about Hyrum and how confidently he confronted the King. Will and Aisha fielded questions from non-news audience members, who were mostly curious about whether or not being transported hurt, but Finn was bombarded with questions specific to the transporter and how it worked.

He and Richard related the tales of the earliest days, when they tested the equipment with bowling balls, which inevitably inverted at the destination.

Only one reporter locked onto the obvious: “Is this the device used during the last war with Florida? Is it how we blanketed the country with EMF explosives? They inverted on landing. Neatly, uniformly, but still, they inverted.”

Will wandered over from the small mob he had been addressing. “Indeed. My father graciously allowed us to experiment with his early devices.”

“But...why?”

“We sought non-lethal methods to stop Florida, and its use seemed obvious. Without the early Blackshear Van Hoff transporter, so many more people would have died for no reason other than we would have found ourselves resorting to more traditional burn runs and plasma bombs.”

“People did die,” the reporter pointed out.

“Sixty-two,” Will confirmed. “That is opposed to the estimated five hundred thousand had we engaged in typical warfare.”

“Note,” Richard Van Hoff said, “that Pacifica has not been confronted since then. Political blustering, yes, but there have been no further attacks against its people.”

Later, at dinner, Richard wondered if he should have kept his mouth shut. “I’m not one to extend new ideas in how to kill people. And I may have done just that.”

Jax didn’t think so. “Clearly, they were already aware we’d done something unusual to deploy those bombs. And you’re not wrong. Russia, especially, is acutely wary of how we did that and hasn’t risked being the target again.”

“But now they know, and they might.”

“They might think they can try. They might even get their hands on a transporter and attempt to reverse engineer it. But we all know that will fail spectacularly.”

“Someone will replicate our work, eventually,” Finn said.

“But will they be able to figure out the little details?” Jax wondered. “You built this on the foundation of your development of the portal tunnel, something none of them will ever know about.”

“The quantum accelerator we used won’t exist for over a hundred years,” Richard reminded him. “It will take them at least that long.”

“Don’t forget about the cookie ingredients,” Hyrum offered. “They’re not gonna know for a long time that if you want your cookies to trade places, you gotta use enough flour in both pans.”

“Matter exchange,” Will explained. A decade earlier, that was Hyrum’s example for understanding that Finn was attempting to exchange an equal amount of matter on both ends of transporting. You can’t have cookies on both sides if you don’t use enough flour in both. I’m not sure anyone else would have understood that, but Finn and Richard both nodded.

Rhys sat on the living room floor, where Oz’s youngest son was on his knees, clipping tiny flowers into Rhys’s hair. “I’d still like to study the programming for that. I just want to see how it came together.”

He’d watched its progress his entire life, but that wasn’t enough. Rhys had his father’s and his grandfather’s intelligence, hopped up on sugar and steroids, and could look beyond all the coding and math to see the result of those years of work. Finn had kept the actual code from him because it wasn’t final and he didn’t want to put into Rhys’s nearly eidetic memory something incomplete.

It worked, though, and had functioned well for half a decade at least. Tweaks were inevitable, but he now considered it complete, and finally gave Rhys permission to study the notes, the code, the math, and the construction plans.

“You share with no one,” Will reminded him. “You can discuss this with your grandfather, Richard, Andrew, your mother, and myself, but—”

“I know. Nothing specific to anyone who doesn’t already know more than ‘push button, make go.’”

“You may use my office and the closed computer system there,” Will said. “However.”

“Yeah, I know, don’t try to build one of my own. Can I look at the jump bracelet code, too? It’s kind of the same thing.”

Will nodded.

Aisha stuck her pointy finger in Rhys’s direction. “School comes first. Don’t get so lost in it that you forget you still have classes and homework.”

Every adult turned to look at Finn.

“Hey. Not nice.”

“You spend fucktons of time on Mars, Grandpa,” Rhys said. “Sooner or later, you’re going to miss the pretty red planet and skip right to Venus or something, and probably crash-land.”

“I’m thinking.”

“You get lost mentally,” Will said. “And that’s fine. It’s how you work. But Rhys has other things to get done, and whether he admits it or not, he tends to hyper-fixate almost as much as you do.”

Before they could pile on further, Richard spoke up. “What’s the plan, Rhys? Following in your grandfather’s footsteps or have you set out on your own path?”

He wasn’t sure. “Right now, I’m mostly interested in cybernetics, but there’s a lot of what Grandpa does that I want to learn more about. And then there’s a bunch of stuff Drew’s doing with nanotech that I’d like to play with. So who knows, really.”

“The answer was, ‘engineering, Richard, so I can take over your work when you retire.’ God, I’m ready to retire.”

“Alex,” Rhys said. “Or Charlie. Or both. I’d place bets that they’ll both wander in that direction. Only Charlie will take apart everything you love just to see what makes it tick, and there’s only a fifty-fifty chance he can get it back together.”

“Says the kid who took apart Dad’s computer,” Charlie said. “And a giant monitor. And a vacuum cleaner. And—”

“I get it, cripes, but most of that was you.”

“Maybe Eli will want to go into engineering,” Alex offered. “And he’s your grandson, so...”

In other Whens, Eli—Oz and Drew’s firstborn, not the old king—did not become an engineer. He became a physician, hoping to save the life of Will’s mother, Jo. All the other kids had open futures, but Eli would be nudged, however gently, onto the same path his other-when predecessors had traveled; if he didn’t, Will might never be born.

In all the previous Whens we knew about, Will died at 42. Eli became close to his mother, Jo, and when her relationship with Finn fell apart, she left for an era in which she was certain she could live out her natural lifespan without overlapping her birth When by too many years. She needed an anchor, though, and Eli was the only one she was close enough to; he was a newly minted adult and decided to reside in multiple Whens, staying long enough with her to assure her health, then coming home long enough to assure his own.

The future had plans for him. It was there he met Harper, who would become his wife and then mother to Finn. They lived their lives with one foot here, one foot there, though they kept Finn in his birth When with little knowledge of the portals. Oz and Drew visited their grandson in his future When, but he was largely clueless about how they arrived. The royal house remained within the family, and it was there they visited their son and grandson; Finn was clueless until well into adulthood.

Finn was the one who decided to tackle the enormous task of addressing the meteor that had been discovered before his birth, one predicted to impact Earth in his seventies. His life became research and development; he discovered a way to move through time, and created not only a ship to traverse the years, but the portal tunnel that ran underneath San Francisco. While searching for a way to push the meteor away from the planet, he enlisted the aid of a team to help, and volunteers to escort others from a When that might end to others where they could live out their lives.

Out of the multiple-billion people on the planet, they were able to move fewer than 25,000. There was time to help more, but until the meteor was too close to deny, the masses did not believe he could deliver on his promises. As far as they knew, time travel was still the stuff of science fiction; few trusted him. Even when it was made known that he sent his own teenaged son two hundred years into the past, they didn’t believe.

In an unknown number of timelines, as the meteor was so close its proximity invited danger, those people died wishing they’d listened. Finn and Jo waited until the last minute to leave, after everyone on their teams had left, and were willing to drag more people with them, but no one came.

The world ended over and over, When after When, until this one.

Will, the Emperor, did not die at 42.

The misery of losing him did not break his parents apart.

Without that, there was the possibility that Eli, Finn’s father, would never leave.

They wanted a way to push him toward the When where Harper was born, to facilitate that relationship, without expressly telling him why.

Finn saved the world, and the cost might be that he would not exist in the future.

Rhys pondered that while sitting on the living room floor with his family surrounding him, and realized it meant he would also never be born. There would be no Finn, no Will, no siblings, and none of the rest would ever know who was missing.

“Have you ever considered what happens if you’re not born the next time around?” Rhys was stretched out on the sofa in Will’s office workspace, computer balanced on his chest, while Finn sat in the chair with his own laptop. Will was on the other side of the room, watching data scroll by on the giant monitor. “Without you, the world ends.”

“Everything they need to know is contained in the Old Mint,” Finn reminded him.

“But you won’t be there to point that out. And you won’t be there to open it.”

Drew would. His future-self created the time lock that made using the Old Mint as a multi-When data storage facility possible, and he would live long enough to assure its creation.

“Yeah, but without you, there’s no Dad, and he’s the one who made sure Drew was interested in all of this in the first place.”

“The next timeline is protected,” Will said. “Our Andrew has all the required knowledge to pass along. And I should, unless something happens, still be here to help.”

“But you might not be born next time around.”

Will gave a light shrug. “I’m here now. I will do whatever I can. That’s enough.”

“Then the world ends in a couple of future timelines.”

“No telling,” Finn said without looking up. “Someone else might pick up the work.”

“But you won’t exist.”

“I won’t know that. It won’t matter to me.”

“But...”

“You were unaware before you were born, Rhys,” Will said. “It will be no different.”

He knew that but it didn’t make him feel any better about the possibility of non-existence. This was a discussion that could have gone on for an hour with no progress made, but something on his screen caught his eye and diverted his attention.

“What’s this? ‘Tiny bits, flexstrip, r-two-condensed, electroconduct to transponder.’ It’s embedded in the transporter code.”

“Ah.” Finn stretched to see Rhys’s screen. “I left a trail of notes in there. That’s a new one to remind myself to cross reference to your dad’s jump bracelet.”

“Tiny bits?” Will asked.

“Its components are micro-sized,” Finn said, as if of course it made sense. “It’s not a full-sized system.”

“And you want to use flexstrips instead of a heavier metal.”

“They’re metal,” Finn said. “Just thinner and easier to work with. You’d be able to encase all the working parts and just attach a band to it.”

“So it would look more like a watch?” Rhys asked.

“Less like a chunky medical bracelet.” Finn pointed at Will’s wrist. “His looks like jewelry, yes, but it’s noticeable. If it looked more like a watch, it’d be less conspicuous.”

“Yeah, but no one wears a watch, Grandpa. That’s noticeable, too.”

Make it look like one of those athletic monitors. Those look like a hybrid between a watch and jewelry, and I see people with them all the time.

“The few who have inquired have assumed that’s what I have, Wick,” Will said. “I have not denied that.”

Rhys snorted. “Because you coded it to show your health stats. No one cares if you run ten miles a day.”

“Your mother does,” Will said, chuckling.

“Gross.”

“Your mother,” Finn said, “doesn’t care if I sloth off and eat like an eight-year-old. It’s wonderful. I get to be flabby, and she’s still a happy woman.”

“I’m leaving if you don’t stop.” Rhys sat up, setting the computer aside. “All right, Dad. How did you turn into such a fitness fiend when you grew up with him?”

“My mother. She turned a blind eye to his habits because she had to. For me? She treated food as fuel, and allowed me to enter the martial arts and encouraged me to work hard at it.”

“She allowed it because he needed to be able to defend himself,” Finn said. “He was an odd little duck with a target on his back. I had no idea he would excel at it, but she seemed to.”

She knew who he would become.

Like, from the moment she knew she was pregnant.

“How?” Rhys asked.

“I am uncertain.”

Jo is brilliant and knows history inside out. She’d seen photos of the Emperor and she knew that Finn was Eli the younger’s son. She saw the resemblances... Her brain made all the connections.

“Or perhaps simply mother’s intuition,” Will said.

“I bet she snooped in the Old Mint.” The notion amused Rhys. “Why didn’t you? You’d have had more information when you were young. Maybe you could have figured out the whole mind-reading thing and hooked up with mom when you were still a teenager.”

“What about Jay?” Will countered.

“But you didn’t know about him.”

“This version of me didn’t. The next does. However...as much as I wish our roles had been played out a bit differently, I wouldn’t choose to do anything that prevents Jay’s birth. I believe that, overall, things happened as they should have.”

“So maybe leave yourself some notes in the Old Mint and get the girl sooner,” Finn said.

Will smiled, softly. “I’ve taken care of that. I hope.”

If he had more to say, it was stopped by the intercom announcing a visitor with an appointment. He excused himself; he and Drew were scheduled to meet with a potential new engineer for Ozoo and it could not be delayed.

“Nice way of saying ‘last minute job interview,’” Rhys said.

Finn gestured to the computer. “You’re missing school to memorize code, son. Don’t skip the embedded notes. Some of them are important, some are for my own amusement, but they’re all important.”

Lunch codes stuck in there somewhere?

“Lunch codes?” Rhys asked.

He has a file on all the places Will was willing to eat when he was little. Mister food-is-fuel was picky as hell and Finn kept a list of things he could order that Will wouldn’t turn his nose up at if given.

“That file is stuck in the portal data, I think,” Finn said. “If I recall correctly, he was particularly fond of chicken fingers and garlic bread.”

Mac and cheese, too.

“Needless to say, your grandmother didn’t leave lunch and dinner up to me very often. But I kept the file for those days I had him on my own.”

With a timed alarm so you wouldn’t forget to feed him.

Frequently lost in his work, Finn sometimes needed the alarm. Rhys understood that and didn’t question why; I always thought that Will would have reminded him, because a hungry kid is a loud kid. Still, he’d seen his grandfather so lost in thought that he could easily see how he might forget there was a kid in the room to begin with, and if that kid was also lost in what he was doing, there would be no stopping for lunch.

I made a mental note as Rhys went back to reading the transporter code: if no one moves in an hour, jump on someone to remind them that their stomachs are growling, and the cat wants to eat.

It was necessary.

Five hours later, with one too-short lunch break, Rhys acquiesced to his father’s insistence that he stop for the day. He needed to go home, find something to do with his brother and sister, or get Isaac to go out and wander around Union Square, but he needed fresh air and movement.

There was no argument.

Mostly because he’d already memorized it.

Flakes of glaze dropped from the donut to the table as Rhys held it between his fingers, showing it to Isaac, Hyrum, and Charlie. He’d taken a bite and had bits of sugar on his lips, which he licked off without any thought to it. I waited at the edge of the table, because the rule was that if the kitty behaves, the kitty gets a bite when everyone else is done eating.

Hyrum had already set a bite aside for me, but I still needed to sit still and not walk between them, lest I cover their food with my fur.

“To the transporter, this isn’t any different than we are,” he mused. “It’s all molecules, arranged in a particular order.”

“Your point?” Charlie asked.

“The transporter can move you, me, or the donut from point A to point B. But what if there was nothing to move? What if there were just a collection of molecules stored in a tank, and instead of moving them from A to B, it just, you know, created a donut?”

“Food replicator,” Isaac said. “You’ve been watching that old sci-fi stuff again, haven’t you?”

“Maybe. Well, yeah. We watched something with Drew last night. But so far, no one has been able to do it.”

“Bioprinting,” Charlie offered. “They make organic material all the time.”

“But they need the blueprint plus a DNA sample from the person needing the biomaterial. But a true replicator would just take neutral material and create whatever food you wanted.”

“Fine,” Isaac said. “So where do you get the neutral material from? You need some kind of base, right?”

“There’s the rub.” He lowered the donut and set it on a napkin. “We can bioprint and we can three-D print. We have the know-how, basically, but it’s the starting point we lack.”

“And you think the transporter is the answer?” Isaac asked.

“I think it’s a piece of the puzzle. Instead of printing food and limiting the scope of what we can create—maybe move molecules around until we have...this.”

“Same difference,” Charlie said.

“But it’s not. If you print a toy car, you have to use powdered metal bits, basically. It’s the same thing you started with, just reshaped. But if you have neutral molecular matter that you can manipulate, you can create anything edible, in whatever form you want. Donuts. Pizza. Tequila.”

“Tequila burns,” Hyrum said. “Can we make cinnamon whiskey instead? I like that.”

“Anything you want, that’s the point.”

“All right.” Charlie picked a piece of off his donut and set it in front of me. “The question now is, do you tell Grandpa or Drew your ideas? Or do you sit on it until you can create the thing yourself?”

“It would take years,” Rhys said. “The longer I wait to start, the longer it would be before we could do it. Think of the potential of this. How many people could be fed in remote places where it’s hard to get supplies on a regular basis. Or during drought and the like. Can’t grow crops? Well, you can replicate them. No one would ever have to be hungry again.”

People don’t have to go hungry in Pacifica. There’s enough for everyone who wants it.

“In Pacifica, sure,” Rhys agreed. “But Pacifica isn’t the world and it sucks but people go hungry in other places.”

“Places that have zero love for us,” Charlie said. “Feed the enemy?”

“Have compassion. Feed humanity.”

Clothe them, house them...if you can replicate food, you can replicate anything. Without printers.

Rhys debated who he wanted to talk to first. Normally, he would go to his parents. Absent them, his grandfather. Charlie urged him to bring his ideas to Drew, who had all of Ozoo at his fingertips—he had the means, the scientists, the engineers, and the money to pour into research. Alex thought he should start with their father, who could then help him, either practically or with advice.

Instead, he asked for an appointment with the King, his uncle.

“It’s just a start of an idea,” Rhys said, standing in front of Jax’s office desk. “But it’s doable, I know it is. But I don’t know exactly how, and I don’t think it’s the kind of thing that should wait until I figure it out. I mean, like, follow the breadcrumbs. If no one ever has to worry about food again? Or shelter? World peace. Seriously.”

Without explanation, Jax rose from his chair and gestured for Rhys to follow him. They moved to the center of the room; Jax placed his hand on Rhys’s shoulder and with a tap to his bracelet, we jumped.

The level of quiet in the room we jumped to was startling. There was one overhead light on; Jax kept a firm hand on Rhys, and said loudly, “Lights,” then let go as the tiny, embedded bulbs in the ceiling popped on in sections. He didn’t say anything after that, letting Rhys soak in the enormity of the space where we stood smack in the center.

I think he expected Rhys to immediately bombard him with questions about where we were, and what we were looking at. Initially, it seemed to be just an empty room, but on a second glance, each wall had translucent panels with wide, deep nooks that were difficult to discern without backlighting. There was a subtle but distinct electronic sound emanating from behind the panels, so soft I might have been the only one who could hear it. I sniffed, taking in the scent of grilled steak, pineapple, and cake.

Instead of gawking, Rhys simply asked, “Where is everyone?”

“Other than security guards, there are very few people working here. We’ve suspended work on it. For now.” He nudged Rhys toward the closest wall, and pressed a flat button on the panel. It lit up, a soft, glowing blue, and the nook lights popped on as well. At the base of the nook was another panel, oblong and dark, with a round disk in its center. Jax pressed another spot on the panel, and then told Rhys to ask it for anything edible.

“Chocolate cake?”

“Ask it, not me. Here.” He took his finger off the panel, and nodded for Rhys to mimic him.

Rhys set a finger on it, gently, and then said, “Chocolate cake.”

A bright light emanated from the top of the nook. There was a hum, a second, less bright light, and a few seconds later a plated slice of cake, complete with fork, appeared.

“Go ahead,” Jax said. “Try it. I promise, it’s edible.”

Rhys stabbed at the cake with the fork and broke off a piece, then tentatively put it in his mouth. “Not bad,” he said after he swallowed. “Better than mom’s, but not as good as Aunt Aubrey’s.”

“And that’s the correct answer,” Jax said, amused. “You can ask this for anything, and it will create what you want from carefully selected recipes. All of it will taste good, and will fill you up.”

“But?” Rhys ventured.

“But.” Jax took the fork and cut a bit off for himself. “It’s nutritionally null. It’s filler. You can eat until you’re so full you want to throw up, but if this is your only source of food, you’ll starve.”

Rhys pressed the button again. “Ice water,” he said, not surprised when it delivered a small glass filled with ice and water, condensation forming on the glass. He took a sip and said, “Yeah. Has a little metallic taste to it. Will it function like water in the body?”

Jax shook his head. “It won’t be readily absorbed. But this is what you’re talking about. Food replication and delivery. We’ve been battling this thing for longer than you’ve been alive, but we were never able to reach that magic point of it being worth the effort.”

“What about the—” he stopped at the sound of a door creaking open. The security guard entering also stopped, squinted, and reached for his sidearm before Jax could speak.

“Stand down,” he said when the laser pistol was out of its holster. “I’m just showing my nephew a few things.”

The guard’s eyes went wide. “Your Majesty.” The gun went back into the holster far quicker than it came out. “I wasn’t told you would be here today.”

“Last minute visit. I apologize.”

“Challenge.”

The corners of Jax’s mouth twitched up and I could hear “good boy” in his head. “Robin’s egg blue,” Jax said. “You are allowed to approach. See for yourself, I am who you think I am.”

Nervously, the guard crossed the expanse of the room. “I didn’t doubt you, sir, but...”

“Rules are rules. Rhys is interested in the technology behind the replicating system, and I hoped to give him a short tour of the facility. Are any of the engineers on hand today?”

“No food engineers,” he replied. “But Doctor Van Hoff is in the main office today. When I did my check-in a few minutes ago, he was swearing at something on the head unit.”

“Richard?” Rhys asked.

“Infrastructure design,” Jax said. “And if anyone can answer your questions, it’s him.”

The office was almost as big as Will’s workspace, with one wall consumed by display monitors. Richard Van Hoff—Drew’s father—stood in front of a middle display, arms crossed, and his scowl suggested he was either unhappy or confused. Or both. He also seemed unsurprised that Jax had arrived with a teenager in tow.

“Don’t bitch about me being here,” he said before Jax had a chance to say hello. “The transporter is basically done and I need something else to focus on. So I’m looking at old notes, and damn. This is a clusterfuck, Jax.”

“A functional clusterfuck. They’ll smooth it out if we ever get close to the end of the race.”

“Race.” Richard snorted. “With this, you’re mostly hopping on one leg while trying to maneuver your way down a pot-holed track. Look at this.” He pointed at Rhys and then the monitor. “You tell me. This is the formula for baked salmon. Why doesn’t it work?”

Head cocked slightly to the right, Rhys studied the data in front of him. He scrolled back and forth a few times, double checking, his scowl matching Richard’s before he was finished.

“There’s the structure of the fish,” he said, “and an approximation of the protein. Everything is there for the plate it’s served on and the utensils it comes with. But all the little bits are missing. Where’s the molecular structure of the skin? The proteins beyond how they’re formed? What about the minerals leeched from the bones?”

Richard nodded. “Computer, display data for cherries.”

Rhys’ mouth dropped open. “You can talk to it?”

“You can talk to your home system,” Richard said. “Just set the parameters and—”

“That function is disabled,” Jax said. “It’s a security risk. We have a closed system, for the most part, and highly monitored Internet.”

“It’s monitored?” Rhys asked.

Ask Oz and Drew about that. See how well it goes over when you search for videos on licking ice cream cones.

“Melting ice cream cones,” Jax said with a bit of a sigh. “In any case, yes, you are monitored. Personal texts are only seen if certain keywords are used. Videos are viewed.”

“Damn.”

Richard pointed at the monitor. “Stop watching porn. And look at this. What’s missing?”

“The complete molecular structures of fructose. It’s got stuff that mimics sugar, but it’s not, not really.” He turned to Jax. “The replicator works, it’s just missing part of the data. Like, whoever was doing the input stopped before they finished.”

“You can tell that with just a glance.” It was less a question and more Jax musing over it.

“You were aware,” Richard said.

“I was aware it was unfinished. I was aware the food it produced is edible but not complete. I was also aware when the team head dropped dead from an aneurysm and the rest of them could not finish what they started. I am also aware that we’ve been unable to vet someone properly before hiring a new team. This is highly classified and as yet, we haven’t found the right people to withstand the scrutiny before they even know what they might work on.”

“Outsource it,” Rhys said. “Make Drew do the hiring. Ozoo has government contracts, right? They’ve got the clearance.”

“And Rhys does not,” Richard said to Jax.

Half an hour ago, Jax explained, all of this was a germinating idea in Rhys’s head. Bringing him to the facility was an impulse, a wish to show him he was on the right track. “And I don’t think he’s wrong about dropping all of this on Ozoo. It’s worth considering.”

“Will and Drew know about this,” Richard said. “Have they ever asked to be involved?”

“Not in so many words. But you know your son, Richard. Tell me he would reject the offer.”

“He won’t sacrifice his work in nanotechnology for this. But if he can expand? Sell him the facility, and he’ll bite.”

“Hell of an investment. I can’t just give it to him, it’s not mine to give.”

“Ozoo has an operating budget of over four trillion dollars, as of last year. They can invest a few billion of it on this.”

“Nepotism,” Jax said.

“So offer it out to bids,” Rhys said. “Undeclared government research, with the provision that Pacifica gets the goods when complete. Make it fair and it won’t matter.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Jax said. “But I understand your intention.”

Richard turned the monitor off. “All right, kid, tell me what your long-term intention was with your replication idea.”

“Feed everyone,” he answered, sounding as if it were obvious. “And if food works, it can be tooled to replicate anything. Anywhere. It’s basically the answer to everything. Eventually miniaturize it, and put it on Elysium. And deep space vessels.”

I don’t think he noticed when Richard and Jax locked eyes.

“Tell me what else you’ve got brewing in there,” Richard eventually said, tapping the back of Rhys’s head with his pointy finger. “What other big ideas?”

He took a beat. “Well, you know the transporter? What if it could send something besides matter? What about data?”

“Data.”

“Yeah, like...voice data. We’ve got like a hundred deep-space ships out there and we can’t talk to them in real time, or even at all for the ones that left fifty years ago...but if we used transporters to send voice data, maybe bouncing off communication arrays that we place throughout the galaxy? We could figure out a way to send small ships, maybe wrapped in quantum bubbles so we don’t have to deal with time dilation, bounce them from point to point using transporter tech, and they can drop buoys along the way, until they reach the ships at the furthest points. And then beyond. And if the buoys have miniature trans tech, they can send voice data back. We’d be able to talk to those ships in real time.”

“Time dilation,” Richard reminded him.

“Yeah, well, the quantum bubble is one of the things we send data for. Newer ships have it, it’s just the older ones and they left here with enough stuff to make the modifications. They’re space cities, basically. We can even beef up the drives so that they can increase distances at hyper speeds. They could theoretically come home.”

“Even if that was not possible,” Richard mused, “we could still communicate and send goods.”

Quietly, Jax added, “We could transport replicators to them.”

“I mean, I know you’re probably already working on stuff like that, but it has kinda popped around in my head.”

If the government was working on it—and Jax didn’t deny that—they hadn’t figured out the little details yet. His quiet musing over it said what he didn’t: Rhys had given them an idea, and they both wanted to run with it.

“You needed a project, Richard?” he finally said. “We’ll hand this one over to Ozoo. You and Finn, if you’re willing, can take that one.”

“We still need to test transporting material goods to Elysium. But yes, if that works as well as I think, the next step would be testing the transporters in space at wider margins. A communications array is ideal.”

“Grandpa did it already, in the future,” Rhys said. “Sending and transporting stuff into space, I mean. He created the gates that transported the meteor between them.”

Those gates required use of an embedded digital transponder. The transporter did not, and no one yet trusted it with the ranges required in space, especially with biological materials.

Before leaving for home, Rhys wandered off to find the restroom, leaving Jax and Richard to talk.

“He reframed the questions we’ve asked a hundred times, Jax. But he sees the bigger picture, even if he hasn’t yet formed an idea of how to accomplish those things.”

“And we thought Will and Drew were smart.”

“Protect that boy,” Richard said. “At all costs. His mind...”

Jax nodded.

“He’s right, you know. But not necessarily in the way he thinks. The answer to everything isn’t the replicators. It’s a fifteen-year-old who undoubtedly has not washed his hands after using the facilities.”

They probably should have told him that. Because with that brain...things happen.

GEORGE & ISAAC

“WHEN YOU WERE A LITTLE boy, just before you turned four, Rhys saved my life.”

George Denton sat across a table from Isaac at Sof y Z’s, basket of warm tortilla chips between them. Isaac pressed one between his fingers, cracking it, squeezing out a considerable amount of oil that coated his fingertips. He’d heard variations of the story before, snippets to explain the gap of time when his father was not in his life; he knew he’d lived with Rhys and his family for months on end, and knew his father had been injured, but he’d never been certain of the reasons and now wanted to know.

“How?” he pressed. “We were three years old. What happened that a toddler could do anything to actually save a life?”

George held his hands out, palms up, and he flicked his middle fingers toward his wrists, mimicking Rhys. “This. He stopped time. If he hadn’t? I would have been dead within seconds. Odie likely would have died as well.”

He didn’t gloss over the details this time. George and James waited outside a Market Street restaurant for Jay, James’s son, mentally preparing to drop the news that they were separating. George wanted to tell him there was no one to blame; they’d grown apart, had little in common, but Isaac knew his former stepfather well and stopped him. “Odie’s a ho. We all know that. You can only take so much.”

George didn’t argue. He’d tolerated James’s wandering eye—and other assorted body parts—for nearly two decades, but this time James met someone and fell in love. If it had been another man, George knew he could fight back and win; he also recognized that women were forbidden candy to James, and he didn’t feel as if he could compete.

“Yeah, that lasted maybe five years. So. Ho.”

“Fine. But we waited outside the restaurant for Jay, and wondered if we should just go inside and get a table. It was a popular place, and we thought we could save Jay some time by getting one early.”

They went back and forth for several minutes. James wanted to go in; George was afraid that if they weren’t standing where he expected, Jay might presume they were also late, and just stand there. James pointed out that Jay was a resourceful kid and would either text or call them if he was unsure. They were early; Jay might be a few minutes late, but they could easily wait for him seated comfortably at a table in an air-conditioned room.

George almost agreed. He recalled his mouth opening to tell James he might be right, when the building exploded, sending chunks of the structure flying, destroying trees, and bringing down upon George and James an industrial lamppost that fractured into massive bits, pinning them underneath.

George bore the brunt of it. The weight of it slamming him to the ground tore his body in half, and had it been moved even a tiny bit, he would have bled out in the time it took to blink. With the mass of concrete in place, he had enough time to speed through his last wishes to Jay when he arrived, and gave instructions to Will—who arrived at Jay’s urging—but just barely. He knew he was on his last breath when the world suddenly stopped.

His next memory was waking in a hospital bed almost two hundred years in the future. He was given the short version—Rhys had stopped time for all but a few select people, freezing George and James in a sliver of time that allowed the Emperor, William Blackshear, to jump them forward into critical care surgical tanks, and Rhys kept them frozen long enough for the nanobot-filled surgical gel to cover George’s gaping wounds.

His upper and lower torsos were held together by only a strand of fractured spine; he should not have survived. Without Rhys, his death would have been pronounced on the green bicycle lane on Market Street, the cause of death listed as exsanguination. Instead, he spent months under anesthesia in a future-forward acrylic tank filled with thick, nanobot infused surgical gel, floating as the microscopic robots went to work repairing and restoring tissue and bone.

“The entire time I was in that tank, you lived with him. Will and Aisha cared for you and would have kept you if not for Jay.”

“If you’d died,” Isaac guessed.

George nodded. “Jay was my choice of guardian, but during a stretch out of the tank, Will admitted that he wanted you if the worst happened. I’m still not sure he believes I made the right choice.”

“I’d have been happy either way. Except for the whole part about you dying.”

“And if it happened now?” George pressed. “Have you considered who you’d want to live with?”

Isaac gave a half shrug. “Dunno. Still either, I guess. It’d probably be easier on Jay if I lived with Will and Aisha, though. I mean, with the baby and all.”

“They can care for you and the baby, Isaac.”

“I meant space wise. I love that kid but I don’t want to share a room with him. But do me a favor and don’t die. No one wants that.”

He wasn’t planning on it, but wanted something in place, something Isaac was all right with. “I’m leaving for Elysium soon and I’ll be on the station for several weeks. Things can go wrong. Andrew nearly died there.”

“Years ago,” Isaac said. “Kids live there now, Dad. They wouldn’t let families on the station if it were all that dangerous. It’s not like you’ll be floating around outside the way Drew did, right?”

He would not attempt a spacewalk, as Drew had, but George’s work necessitated frequent travel from the station to pods tethered miles away. Drew had been left stranded when the hopper he’d ridden in exploded. There hadn’t been a similar accident since, but it was at the forefront of George’s mind, and the risk was always there.

“This is a just-in-case question, Isaac. Just give me your gut reaction. Will and Aisha, or Jay?”

It took a few seconds for his gut to kick in. “Will and Aisha. I mean, Jay would obviously let me live with him, but I’m used to staying with Rhys and I’ve got their routine down pat. If I picked Jay, he’d feel like he needed to move to get a bigger apartment, which would upset Aubrey because god forbid anyone leave the royal house unless it’s in a body bag.”

He was not mean; it amused him. The Queen was protective and wanted her family close. All of them. She refused to consider what would happen when there were great-grandchildren to think about; the building was not yet bulging at the seams, there was still room to expand, and she wanted them to stay.

“You’d be sucked into the vortex,” George teased. “Move in and she’ll never want you to leave.”

“Damn, what a major hardship, being so wanted that you get to live in the most protected residence in Pacifica. I’d probably never want to move away.”

That could present issues in his adult life, George pointed out. Future relationships might push him toward the door; future jobs might take him out of the city.

“A job might,” Isaac agreed. “I don’t think I’m the relationship type. I’m betting I’ll have total say in where I live and work.”

To his credit, George did not laugh. “You’re fifteen. Give it time.”

Isaac didn’t think so. He told his father to look around; there were probably a couple of men he was attracted to, even if he had no intention of doing anything about it. “I look around, and...nothing. I’ve never met someone and thought I wanted anything more than friendship. Zero interest in anything physical. Like, not even with myself most of the time. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but that’s how I am.”

These were waters George wanted to tread carefully, but he was quick to respond. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Isaac. You could be anything from a late bloomer to asexual, or anything in between. Who you are is not wrong.”

“Pretty sure I’ve bloomed.” Isaac chuckled. “I mean, I get the whole flirting thing and I enjoy that. I get that kissing is probably really nice and I’d try that. But that’s kind of it. The rest doesn’t appeal to me.”

“Still nothing wrong.”

“Then what am I? Because I can’t figure it out. Like, when did you figure out you were gay? Did you have to think about it, or was it like, damn that guy’s super-hot and I want to su—”

George held up a hand to stop him. “I knew when I was very young. But flip that over. James was never sure, well into his thirties. He always thought he had to pick, and never could.”

“But at least he had a compass. He had feelings.”

“Feelings.”

“Fuck-me feelings,” Isaac said. “He knew he wanted sex. I’m pretty sure I don’t.”

“Then don’t. But also don’t close yourself off to other people because of it. It’s perfectly fine to be disinterested now, yet meet someone later who makes you reconsider. It’s also just as valid to have those feelings wax and wane, or to enjoy all the romance without the sex. It’s just another way to be.”

Isaac snatched up another chip, mangling it as well. “Is that why you never date? Waning when you used to wax?”

There were a dozen reasons why. Part of it was owed to being a single father and wanting to always be available. He’d considered it as Isaac grew into adolescence, but at some point decided that he was done putting up with someone else’s issues.

“By days lived, I’m over eighty years old, Isaac. I’m tired.”

“You’re not even sixty.”

He was given back the years he’d spent in this When, dropped here when the future world was about to end. He’d been in preschool with Will, yet when Will arrived in Pacifica for good, he’d already lived here for over twenty years. “They saved the world, and then rolled back time for people who’d been apart from their families for decades. So yes, I’ve been alive for eighty years.”

He could easily live another hundred, and Isaac was aware. “Please don’t be alone all that time.”

“Says the boy who just said he thought he would be alone.”

“That’s different. I don’t get horny. You do.”

“Isaac. I said I didn’t want to date. That doesn’t preclude sex.”

It took several beats for that to register. “Ew. All right, circle back. If Elysium goes boom, and they want me, I’ll stay with Will and Aisha. Eli will probably want the cats to live with him. At least they’ve decided Wick is okay and not there to eat them.”

The old King loved Isaac’s cats and was always the one to watch them when George and Isaac were away. There had been three of them at one time, but kidney disease had taken the oldest, and the other two were bonded. Everyone worried what would happen to the last one alive; that’s when the introductions to me began, hoping that when the worst happened, I would be liked enough to act as a salve.

They did not like Thor, however, so Isaac was right presuming they would live with the old King in his downstairs apartment.

“Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that anytime soon,” George said. “I’ve still got things to atone for and dying now would leave too many of them undone in this world, regardless of the When.”

Isaac was aware of some of the things George had done, but not the biggest of them. I hoped he wouldn’t share, because those were things Isaac might not be able to forgive.

The teenager skipped right over that part. “Who decided to call time periods ‘Whens’? I’ve never understood that.”

George knew, because he’d felt the same and asked Will.

It was created out of confusion, trying to determine which period of time was being discussed.

“Where did that happen?”

“San Francisco.”

“No, I mean, when?”

“Not this When, that When.”

As simple as that, Finn stumbled upon the way those who left his birth When to live in other times talked about it, and cemented that terminology into his son, Will, who extended it to the rest of the Blackshears.

It was comfortable and not awkward, not until Will used the phrase “Other When” to describe his own father.

That was just weird.

He knew it, too. Didn’t care.

“Are they ever going to tell the rest of the world about portals and time travel?” Isaac asked.

George doubted it. “Not until time progresses back to the point where Finn has again invented the portal, and even then, few people believed him. He gave us well over two decades’ notice, offering to escort people back in time when they were ready, and only twenty to twenty-five thousand people took him up on it.”

“You believed him.”

“The moment I heard the announcement, I knew it was true.”

He’d known Will as a small child; he was terrified of the little boy with the sad eyes, but a single encounter on the playground, when Will read George’s mind, convinced him of the otherness of the family. He also knew Will was brilliant and his parents were working on a solution to the meteor discovered a hundred years earlier, and then twenty years later determined to be on trajectory to collide with earth. If they had Will’s brain, and even a chance of thwarting that rock, then surely they had the ability to do exactly as they promised: move people to the past to protect them.

“So they took you to Las Vegas and just left you there?”

They’d taken George and his brother Isaac to San Francisco. Both had all the paperwork necessary to survive two hundred years in the past, as well as enough cash to live on for a few years. Newly graduated with a masters degree in Cybernetics, George easily found work and in the twenty years before 17-year-old Will popped up, he’d made a name for himself.

“One of the things we’d sworn to before leaving home was to stay away from Will. We knew he would arrive as the Emperor, connected to the royal family, but unless he reached out, we were to go nowhere near him. Given that I had my own reasons to avoid him, when his name bubbled up in the news, I transferred to the Vegas office, just to avoid running into him.”

Logically, he knew that 17-year-old Will wouldn’t recognize George in his 30s and might not have recognized him even if they were still the same age, but it wasn’t a risk he was willing to take.

“You hated him, right?”

“That’s an understatement.”

Also, that was one of the things Isaac didn’t need to know more about. At 7, George had actively tried to kill Will, and until they reconnected in Will’s 40s, George still held hope that one day the Emperor would spontaneously combust.

He was not a rational person, and knew it.

He was also working on that.

“And that’s the guy you want me to live with if you die,” Isaac said, chuckling. “Will? Sure, hate the guy, but I’m totally giving him my kid if I croak.”

“Well. When you say it like that...”

“I’m glad you don’t hate him anymore. My life here would suck without Rhys and his brother and sister.”

“You have other friends.”

“Not like them. Definitely not as smart or as interesting.”

“He’s definitely my most interesting student,” George said. “He challenges everything and soaks up the data like a sponge. I honestly wish I had more time to spend on the things he’d like to explore, just to craft a more advanced class for students like him.”

That was the downside to two jobs. George had responsibilities other than teaching cybernetics to teenagers, and one of those responsibilities required him to travel to Elysium to oversee expanded security protocols and testing of rescue equipment.

In a few years, he’d be able use a transporter to get there. Work all day, come home at night, and never have to wait for the official shuttle to take him there.

The world had just gotten a preview of that, and the excitement was palpable.

Isaac got up, and then picked me up from the spot on the edge of the table I’d been waiting quietly. “Okay, I need to get him home. Watching us eat was probably torture for him and I didn’t know what was safe to give him.”

“I admit, I’m surprised you brought him.”

“He climbed my leg and arm, grabbed onto my shoulder, and wouldn’t let go. I don’t think I had much choice. Aisha finally just said to take him. It was easier than arguing with him.”

I hadn’t gone for the food.

I went because there was sadness leeching from Isaac, and I wanted a chance at finding out why. Now I had an idea, but I wasn’t sure it was the only reason.

Still, it was a piece of the puzzle.

I’d hide it under the sofa with the rest of the puzzle pieces I’d stolen over the years.

If anyone wanted them back, cripes, just move the damn thing and vacuum.