 
Hallow

Renato Carreira

Copyright 2014 Renato Carreira

Smashwords Edition

Discover other titles by this author at:

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Cover by Guilherme Condeixa

http://pipeandbookcovers.wordpress.com/

Table of Contents

0.1

1.1

2.1

3.1

4.1

5.1

6.1

7.1

8.1

About the author
**0.1**

There was a loud popping sound in the corner of the big abandoned warehouse, followed by a sudden gust of wind that seemed to come from no place at all. It blew the dirty rags on the floor for a second and stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Everything remained the same, apart from the moved rags and the woman standing where there was no one the second before.

She kept her arms bent and close to her chest and seemed to be bracing for impact. Feeling no impact, she opened one eye, then the other, and relaxed, lowering her hands. She looked at herself and made sure she was in one piece. Only then she looked around. There was a wall six feet away from her. One minor calculation mistake and she would have materialized inside, exploding in a cloud of brick fragments and guts. She thanked Creation for progress in time travel. They called it 'corporeal resonance', a physical vibration that could be captured across the continuum, indicating, with a variable degree of certainty, the presence and shape of inanimate objects. It was a relatively recent triumph in time travel technology and effectively tripled survivability rates. It was still a risky endeavor, of course, but not as much as in the time of the pioneers, when, together with other significant risks, timenauts travelled with complete acceptance that they would be trapped in the past for the rest of their lives, since the technology that permitted reverse chronological transit was still decades away from existence.

She opened her pouch and took out a small gold medal hanging from a gold chain. The medal was shaped like an eight-pointed star, the symbol of the Divine Mentor. It had been a present from her mother when she graduated her sixth school cycle and, although she didn't consider herself a religious woman, not anymore, at least, she always kept the medal with her for good luck. She put it around her neck. It was completely against regulation, of course, but what Command didn't know wouldn't hurt them. There was some rule about bringing contemporary artifacts on missions and it was perfectly reasonable, but she planned to keep it hidden away and no local-timers would ever see it. Command was a bit too strict with safety rules. Probably because their technicians were always selected among people without any inclination to go on field missions and that left them too much time to worry about anything that could, and too often did, go wrong. If one day the Archbishop himself decided to travel, they wouldn't allow it, unless he took off his ring and chain of office. Which was comforting, in a way. The highest authority of the Church should obey the same rules imposed on lower-ranking members of the hierarchy.

She took out a slate and a stylus and wrote her positive arrival report, following the template.

_Pos Arriv. No malfunc. No disab._ On to target. Drop 1.

To the naked eye, the slate remained black and empty, as it should be. No one would be able to read it without a proper intraocular scanner, which would only be invented five centuries later. She flipped open her marker, used the keyboard to enter the coordinates she had previously memorized and walked in the direction pointed in the screen until the arrow touched the glowing circle. Nothing on the spot but a small pile of rubble. Perfect for a drop site. She looked around, making certain she wasn't being watched, crouched and hid the slate under the rubble. There it would stay for centuries, travelling through time in the conventional manner, until the warehouse collapsed on top of it, until some other building was erected on the same location and collapsed as well, until it got buried under layers of sediment, to be found in her time with the help of locators capable of capturing its electronic signature within a radius of one mile. If someone should find the slate before and take it further than one mile, the message would be lost forever. That was still one of the downsides of time travelling technology. Until someone discovered a way to send inanimate objects on their own through time, timenauts were forced to communicate without any guarantee that their messages would reach the intended destination.

She put the marker and the stylus back in her pouch and looked at her wrist chronometer. The numbers were going down continuously, as they were meant to be. There was plenty of time.

She walked to the open warehouse door and looked at the blue sky of the past, taking one step, then another, and setting off on a final effort to assure her people that their faith in the Divine Mentor was not misplaced.

**1**

Walt Jenkins stopped at the end of the alley and waited for the others to gather around in a more or less orderly circle. There were seven foreign tourists (three couples and a lonely oriental traveler) and four local thrill-seekers (two middle-aged guys and a slightly older woman, apparently on friendly terms with each other; plus an acne-ridden kid with a bright red knit cap and a smartphone that seemed glued to his fingers).

"Right. Welcome to Murder Lane." He raised his arms and directed their attention to the less-than-imposing surroundings. The backs of degraded brick buildings with black iron fire escape stairs going all the way to the top of the seventh floor on each side. Some windows were broken, others were open and letting out a delightful suggestion of food smells and exotic music being played loud enough to reach its continent of origin. Trash cans and dumpsters piled against the walls on the right while, on the left, some poor soul had spent the night on a bed of moist cardboard and was now probably sucking on a carton of cheap wine as first meal of the day. "It was here that on September 24th, 1907, Henry Oswald McCourt, known as The Belt Strangler, murdered his twelfth and final victim, a twenty-two year old prostitute named Olivia Masterson. The murder weapon was, as in his previous murders, a thick brown leather belt, which he tied around the necks of his unfortunate victim and pulled until she choked. On this night, which was to be the final night in this notorious serial-killer's career, McCourt followed Olivia to this alley, where she lived in a derelict house no longer standing, and put an end to her life, while her two sons waited for their mother upstairs." He pointed to an air-conditioner unit and heard the collective gasp of horror. That part of the description always had that effect. "But he wasn't counting on the neighbor watching the scene from a window across the alley." He pointed again, this time at an open window where a woman's head with rollers on her hair briefly appeared before disappearing again, looking vaguely outraged. "The neighbor, one Natasha Kulkina, a factory worker recently arrived from Imperial Russia, screamed and alerted a policeman passing by, constable Horace Nolan, who came running and killed McCourt with two shots on the chest when he refused to raise his arms as ordered."

The kid in the red cap stopped fiddling with his phone to raise one hand in the air. That wasn't a class. When he signed up for the Urban-Mythic Crime Tour, nobody told him that he was allowed to ask questions. Still, Walt humored him.

"Yes?"

"When did you say this happen?"

"1907," he replied.

"Yeah, but what day?"

"We seem to have a true aficionado among us," said Walt, making some of the others laugh briefly. "September 24th."

"Ah."

That ah sounded like a warning that there was more coming, but Walt pretended not to notice.

"Now, if you care to follow me, we'll move on to our next..." The kid's hand was raised again. God damn it. "What?"

"What day was that?"

"I just told you."

"I mean day of the week."

He thought about it for an instant. For some reason, he was starting to feel cornered.

"Wednesday?" He didn't mean to make it sound like a question, but it was too late now.

"Ah."

"What?"

The kid raised his phone and pointed at the screen.

"This calendar app says it was Tuesday."

"I guess you're right. So what?"

"So I think you're full of it."

"What?" Don't let it be one of those days, Walt thought. Please, God. He talked to God on occasion inside his head, but it was never a specific God. Nor did he expect Him to be listening. It was just something he did, hoping slightly nihilistic atheists were allowed to engage in one-sided conversations with divine beings without being considered too absurd.

"You're making it all up," said the kid. The other tourists started giving each other looks. Walt was very close to let the situation slip out of his grip.

"Yeah? You got that from an app also?" he asked, smiling sarcastically. What else could he do?

"Yes, actually." He pointed at the phone again. "It's called a browser. Google gives no results to searches for the Belt Strangler," he said. Oh boy. "Lots of people named Henry Oswald McCourt, but none are serial-killers."

"Really?" Around him, the circle of tourists was moving from incomprehension to the beginning of outrage. Even the foreigners were catching on. Walt walked towards the kid and raised a hand. "Let me see that."

As soon as the phone touched his hand it was flying towards the nearest brick wall. It hit the target with a satisfying crack and fell on the open dumpster below.

The kid stared at him, his eyes wide open and looking absolutely horrified. Walt felt sympathetic. He knew how kids grew attached to their gadgets. The reaction was totally understandable. But there was nothing that could be done. The phone was destroyed and, in his defense, the kid was sabotaging his livelihood.

"What did you just do?" he asked, raising his voice to a high shrill.

"Hmm..." said Walt, looking the kid over and fixing his eyes on a particularly nasty zit. "I see some of us are a bit special. When did you start having difficulties understanding things?"

Three tourists were already heading out of the alley, not wanting to stay for the rest of the show. Their loss. They had already paid for the tour.

"You have to pay phone," said one of the foreigners in broken English. It was a fat blond guy with red cheeks and pale, skinny, hairless eggs coming out of cargo shorts too tight for the girth of his ass.

"I have to pay shit," stated Walt.

The Oriental said something too, not even bothering to say it in a language anyone else could understand.

"You have to pay for it and give these people their money back," said the kid, taking a step forward and pushing his luck. Walt was taller and wider, but that didn't seem to change his mind.

"Yes! Money back!" said Fatface Cargoshorts. "And pay phone."

"No awesome tanga rod," said the Oriental. Or, at least, he said something that sounded exactly like it. One of the couples started going as well, but the remaining clients were getting dangerously restless.

"Is any of it true?" asked a woman.

"Of course it is," said Walt. He almost felt offended by their lack of trust.

"I doubt it. I was checking it online as he spoke. Some of the stories are true, but he gets facts and locations all wrong. Others are completely made up. Like this one or the Twin Killers of North Street."

"The Twin Killers of North Street are real," protested Walt. "I did research."

"Where? The National Archive of Crap You Make Up to Fool People and Get Their Money?"

Walt pointed his index finger right at the kid's face.

"You're out of order, young man!" Somehow, it didn't sound as effective when he said it as it did when he heard someone else say it.

"So? Is it true or not?" asked a woman.

"Sure it's true."

"He's lying," said the kid, determined to destroy his reputation as shock-tour guide who actually looked things up and cared. "He said two Irish twins killed nine sailors in North Street between 1892 and 1894. I checked. North Street didn't even exist back then. It was an empty plot of land."

"You should be shame of you self," said Fatface, growing redder and redder.

"Well?" asked the same woman.

"Well what?"

"He's accusing you of making another story up. Aren't you going to defend yourself?"

Should he bother? He had started those tours three months before and managed to get a steady influx of customers only because he made stories up. If they wanted boring facts, they could take one of the other boring crime tours.

"I'm telling you it happened. This kid knows nothing."

"Where did it happen?" asked a guy. "If North Street didn't exist yet."

"It didn't exist here," Walt said, hoping that would leave everyone satisfied so they could stop the questioning and move on to the next stop in the tour: the site of a gruesome multiple murder which he had also made up from scratch. "But there was a North Street somewhere else where the things I mentioned happened."

"Where?", asked the same guy.

"Paris."

"Paris?"

"I think. Or somewhere in France. But I'm pretty sure it was Paris."

"There's a North Street in Paris?" asked the woman who asked him to defend himself.

"I guess there is."

"Don't you think that's a bit hard to believe?" asked a guy who had kept quiet until then. They were getting more confident. If they all started asking questions, he was done for. He found himself looking towards the end of the alley and mentally tracing an escape plan.

"It's called North Street, but in French," he said.

"You shouldn't be tricking people like this," said the woman from before. "You should give us our money back."

"What a disgrace," said another foreigner in much better English than Fatface's.

"I'll make sure to tell all my friends about this," said another woman. "You won't get anyone else to come on your tours. I have a lot of friends."

"Good for you, lady," said Walt.

"Don't you talk to my wife like that!" said the tall guy with a bald patch standing next to her.

"Like what? I apologize for calling her a lady."

"You piece of..." The guy moved forward, grabbed him by his shirt collar and was still raising his fist when Walt's forehead hit him hard on the nose, making it squirt blood on his wife's screaming face.

Which was unfortunate because that was the exact moment when the police arrived.

*

It was a quiet day at the police station and Walt felt like he had the place almost to himself. There was a hobo sitting on one of the long wooden benches, rambling about some global calamity or other, a hooker who had seen better days sitting on the same bench and, behind them, a shifty-eyed gangster whose legs barely reached the ground, making Walt wonder if there were any dwarf gangs operating in the city that he should worry about.

Apart from him, the only other person being interviewed was a drunk guy with handcuffs on and a cut over his left eyebrow.

"Walter Jenkins," said the policeman sitting on the other side of the desk, reading the computer screen.

"Walt."

"Hmm?"

He was a burly guy with a unibrow and a neck so thick his collar seemed about to burst. He looked at him, then at the screen.

"It says Walter here. Is this a mistake?"

"No, not a mistake. My name is Walter, but I go by Walt."

"Ah. So Walt is what your friends call you. Is that it?"

"Not exactly. Everyone calls me Walt. Not just friends. It's my moniker."

He stared at him, raising his unibrow dramatically.

"Your what?"

Walt started to feel oppressed.

"Look, never mind that," he said. "I'd like to call my lawyer now."

"Why? You're not being prosecuted. This is routine."

It sounded very suspicious and Walt wasn't taking chances.

"Can I go to jail because of routine?"

"Hmm... well... no... Unless... Do you have a record?"

"I'm not sure. Do I?"

"You don't know?"

"That depends. Can I be prosecuted for not knowing?"

"Look. It's perfectly simple." The policeman, Officer James Thompson according to his nametag, said it like it was far from being simple. Truth be told, he didn't look too smart. "Have you ever had trouble with the law?"

"What do you mean?" asked Walt. "Like philosophical objections to the concept? Stuff like that?"

Officer Thompson didn't appreciate that remark. He could be a bit slow in the head, but his hands were big enough to discourage making him angry on purpose.

"No! Are you being funny?"

"I don't think so. You're not laughing."

"That's right," he said. "I'm not. Have you ever been arrested?"

"I'm not sure. Doesn't it say there?" he asked, pointing at the computer screen.

"It's in another database. This computer is not connected to it," he explained. "Long story. Don't force me to go in the other room to look it up."

There was no denying that he looked like someone who didn't enjoy getting up without good reason. Walt decided to make an effort.

"Well," he started. "There was something when I was a kid, but I'm not sure it counts."

"How old were you?" asked Thompson.

"Twelve, thirteen? Not sure."

"A minor. What did you do?"

"Shoplifting."

"Figures. What was it? What did you take?"

It was embarrassing. Perhaps it was embarrassing enough to solicit some sympathy from the policeman.

"I was caught sneaking out of the store with literature stuck down my pants."

"Literature? You were stealing books?"

"More or less. Not exactly books."

Officer Thompson looked even less knowledgeable about different types of literature than Walt. And Walt didn't really care about books. The last time he had read a book, if he made an effort to recall, happened long enough to obscure all recollection of plot, author or even genre. Or maybe his mind was playing tricks on him and he had never read a book in his life. That was also a possibility. Even restaurant menus started boring him when they had more than two pages.

"Well?" Officer Thompson was still waiting for an explanation.

"Literature of a more graphic nature."

"Huh? Picture books? Comics?"

"It was a dirty magazine, okay?" he blurted. "There, I said it."

The policeman's lips formed a vaguely lascivious smile.

"A kid had to learn the ways of the world, somehow," he said. "I remember those days before the internet. We're around the same age, you and me. Now it's all so easy. You turn a computer on and bang! More tits and ass than you can handle." Who could have guessed that a poet was hiding under that gorilla-like physique? "Were you taken to court for that?"

"No. The police came and took me to the station. They called my parents and my father came to take me home after I promised never to do it again."

"Did they allow you to keep the magazine?" There was the sneaky smile again.

"Nah. It was returned to the shop," Walt explained. "But I was too busy taking a beating to think about tits. I had more than enough time for that in the month I spent grounded, though."

Thompson raised his hands in the air.

"There you go, then. Your record is clean."

"Will it stop being clean after today?" Walt asked. Having an immaculate record sounded so proper. It would be a shame to spoil it.

"The guy you headbutted wanted to press charges, but he didn't."

"Did he see I was right, after all? Did he accept his well-deserved punishment?"

"No. You were very lucky."

"Why is that?"

He lifted a piece of paper on his desk and looked at it.

"Joseph Gonzetti is his name. There was a warrant for his arrest."

Walt felt his violent indiscretion acquire undertones of heroism.

"I headbutted a jerk and helped capture a wanted criminal?"

"Yes. Apparently you did."

"Wow."

Who would have known? That was quite a story. Maybe he could use it to advertize his tours. Visit the sites of infamous crimes guided by Walt Jenkins, renowned crime-fighter.

"What did he do? Murder someone? Armed robbery?"

"Software piracy."

How disappointing.

"What?"

"He made copies of commercial computer programs in his house and sold them to people all over the world through discussion forums." International software piracy sounded slightly better than simple software piracy, but it still wasn't impressive enough. He could always replace the word 'software' with 'high-caliber weapons' in his retellings of the story.

"So you have him?"

"In custody, yes."

"Will he go to jail for a long time?"

"I don't know. Doesn't seem likely."

"Too bad. That guy is a bad apple. I knew it from the start."

"That's why you hit him, huh?"

Walt liked the sound of that.

"Yeah. I guess it was."

"And not because he was complaining about your phony crime tour?"

He felt offended. All the hours he spent preparing the tour. It took real work to compile all the facts, move them around and make up believable and juicy stories with occasional bits and pieces of truth peeking from behind the baloney.

"There is nothing phony about Urban-Mythic Crime Tours," he said, feeling very serious about the matter.

"Apart from the fact that you make stuff up and sell it to people like it's the truth?" asked Thompson. Some people simply refused to see things for what they were and always required a lot of convincing.

"Look," said Walt, willing to educate the man. "It's all in the name. Urban-Mythic Crime Tours. The Crime Tours bit is self-explanatory. Urban because it takes place in a city. Get it?"

"I do." He didn't look like someone who got it. Walt continued.

"The rest falls inside the Mythic side of the matter. So what if not everything is factual—"

"Or most of it," offered Thompson, not being very helpful. He would humor him.

"If you insist. Sure. So what if most of it isn't factual? Our society is obsessed with facts and truth. What happened to our common sense of wonder? As a species, we used to be able to let ourselves be amazed by things that weren't exactly true, but which served a purpose, all the same. Like religion." Where did he get all that from? Things of the kind just came naturally to him.

"Wow," said Thompson. "Soon you'll be telling me you did it because the neighbor's dog commanded you. Or the Virgin Mary floating over a potted geranium."

Trying to explain things to certain people was just a waste of breath. Walt gave up.

"Whatever," he said.

"You said things that aren't exactly true may serve a purpose."

At least, it looked like he was paying attention.

"I did."

"What purpose did your tours serve? Getting poor schmucks to give you money?"

Walt thought about it. Yes, that was exactly the purpose they served.

"Look, when can I go? I have things to do," he said.

"And places to go, I bet," said Thompson, openly mocking him. "You can go whenever you want. Try not to headbutt people from now on."

Walt started getting up.

"I'll do that. Thank you, officer."

"As for the tours... it's not exactly legal, but it would be hard to prosecute you on that basis alone. Murky legal waters and all that." That sounded like an expression he had heard somewhere else and was merely repeating like a well-trained parrot.

"So we're done?"

"We're done."

He smiled at the officer, the officer didn't smile back, and Walt walked to the exit. Just when he thought he had reached salvation, a mysterious invisible force stopped him from reaching the door. Looking down, the mystery faded and the force holding him back manifested in all its visibleness. It was a hand. A bony, liver-spotted hand, grabbing his pant leg. Attached to the hand was an arm wrapped inside the dirty cloth of an old tweed jacket. Attached to the arm was an old man. The hobo, looking up at him with scary eyes, wide as saucers, and a gaping mouth where teeth had become a rare commodity. He had kneeled on the floor and seemed willing to be dragged after Walt on his way out of the police station. Both the old hooker and the dwarf gangster stared at the scene, trying to figure out what was going on. Walt couldn't contribute to their enlightenment.

"Hey! What do you want?"

The old man maintained his gaping stare and said nothing, although his lips were moving.

"Looks like you made a new friend there," said the hooker. "Do us a favor and take him with you. He's stinking up the place."

He did smell terribly. That was a fact. The bouquet mixed piss, shit, vomit in equal parts with slight hints of hopelessness and despair.

"Let go," asked Walt, doing his best to sound vehement. He moved his hands to the hobo's fingers, wanting to force them open, but saw how filthy they were and had second thoughts. "A little help here?" he said, looking at Officer Thompson, who had just noticed what was happening and was right in the middle of an effort to pretend he hadn't seen a thing. Walt didn't want to force him to get up, but perhaps he could handle it from his seat, by throwing his stapler at the hobo and knocking him unconscious, for example. He was on the verge of suggesting just that when sound finally came out of the old man's toothless mouth.

"Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarh," he yelled. The drunk handcuffed guy and the policeman interviewing him looked over and the hooker slid away on the bench. The hobo's free hand rose and a thin trembling index finger was pointed right at Walt, with the long blackened nail aimed at the middle of his chest.

"What?" Walt asked, starting to feel somewhat apprehensive.

"It is you!" the hobo said, loudly. "You are him. Finally! You are here!"

"Yeah, I'm here, but I'd like to change that very soon if you'd let me. Now let go."

He took another step towards the door, dragging the man along with him.

Seeing no alternative, Officer Thompson finally decided to get up and deal with the situation. It wouldn't look good if one of his superiors would walk in and saw all that ruckus during his shift.

"Hey!" he said, walking around his desk and approaching the source of the commotion. "Cut it out, pop!"

The old man's finger remained pointed.

"It is you! I knew it!" he was saying, sounding as deranged as he looked. "I finally found you! The location data was right!"

"What was right?" asked the dwarf gangster, sitting far enough to feel secure.

"Don't encourage him!" said the hooker.

"Yeah, don't encourage him!" agreed Walt. "Look, mister, I don't know who you think I am or how many giant roaches you're seeing doing a little dance on my face, but I assure you it's all in your mind. Now let me go and ask someone to bring you a treat. How about a nice bowl of crack?"

Walt dragged him along further, still unable to free his leg from the man's vicious claws.

"I must come with you," he said. "I must come with you and register everything. So they will know the truth! So they will stop denying that which cannot be denied!"

"Sure," Walt said, overcoming his disgust and trying to pull the man's fingers away. "Sure you can come with me. But later, okay? Don't you want a new jacket? Maybe someone can bring you one that you haven't used as toilet paper. A nice, clean jacket with sleeves that can be tied around your back."

"You are found!" the old man continued, deciding he wasn't being disturbing enough and hugging his leg. "Praise Creation! You are found!"

Walt was about to punch him right on the head, when Officer Thompson and the other policeman managed to pull the old man away and restrain him. He started screaming like he was being butchered.

"Just go!" Thompson said.

And Walt didn't wait for him to say it twice.

**1.1**

"Stop here," the woman said, looking at the phone-like apparatus in her hand.

"Are you sure?" asked the driver, turning around to look at her.

"Yes." She looked at the meter and counted the adequate number of replicated bills to prevent any protest about the location she had chosen. "Keep the change," she said.

The man seemed delighted and pocketed the money while she got out. Then, the car pulled away, leaving her alone.

On one side of the road, there was a storage facility for obsolete automobiles. She remembered from her training that they were called 'junkyards'. The variety of models on display was fascinating, but there was no time for sightseeing. She raised her marker and followed the direction it pointed, walking along the road. Soon, she came to a rusty door on a tall concrete wall by the road. The marker pointed inside and she tested the door. It didn't take much effort to open, using only one hand. The tunnel inside was dark, with the only light coming through the open door. She took a flashlight from her pouch, switched it on and looked around. Writing on the walls on each side. Letters large and small, readable or not so much, proclaiming the identity of the author or directing pointless insults. The smell of urine needed no light to be perceived. The stench alone deserved a dedicated anthropological report, but she was no academic.

According to the coordinates, the drop site was straight ahead. She moved with caution but kept her resolve. Soon, the tunnel opened into a wider chamber with light coming in through a hole on the ceiling and illuminating a round area of floor near a corner. The marker pointed that way. She approached and pointed the flashlight to the area around the patch of light. Flattened cardboard, dirty blankets, some equally dirty clothes. A pile of books and newspapers with varying degrees of intactness. Some of them were away from the rest and, judging by the blackened pages and by the pile of ash in which they sat, they had been used as fuel in a fire.

The drop site was near the corner, away from the light. There was nothing on the floor apart from dirt, concrete fragments and torn bits of paper and cardboard. But it had to be there, somewhere. She examined the wall and found it. The slate was hidden in a crevice and she needed to use two fingers to pull it out. It looked worn and scratched, showing signs of intensive use over several years. She read the hidden message.

Target located. Finally. 92% cert. Initiating contact. Drop 3771.

There it was. Could it be true? Most of the pioneers became mentally unstable after years away from their own time and their drops became completely useless, filled with the nonsensical drivel of their demented minds. She didn't know what had lead Command to treat that particular drop as trustworthy, but it was not her job to discuss the orders she received. Although nothing could keep her from recalling it was not the first drop reporting a positive location. Many had been investigated and those had all been attempts of the old-timers to get a trip back. They couldn't believe things still weren't advanced enough to allow it.

She held the flashlight with her teeth, took out her stylus, pointed the eraser at the slate and deleted the message, replacing with:

On location site drop 3771. Agent not present. Await further develop. Drop 2.

She returned the stylus to the pouch, slid the slate back in the crevice and turned around when she heard a noise, dropping the flashlight and bending over to pick it up, cursing her clumsiness. She moved the flashlight in the direction the noise had come from and relaxed when she saw a pair of minute glowing eyes. Just a rat. Much smaller than the ones she was used to.

"That's a big fellow," said a voice.

She almost dropped the flashlight again, but managed to hold on to it while turning around. On the opposite corner, there was an old man sitting down, watching her. He was alone and didn't get up.

"Who are you?" she asked. He was lifting a hand to shield his eyes from the light. His shirt looked like a large plastic bag with holes for his arms and head and, after further examination, she realized that was precisely what it was. His right leg ended mid-thigh, which explained the pair of crutches leaning against the wall, next to him.

"Relax, lady," he said. "I won't hurt you." He jerked his head at the crutches. "Not like I can run after you or anything." He gave a brief laugh that turned into cavernous cough. When it subsided, he asked: "Could you point the flashlight away?"

She pointed it downwards, but close enough to keep the old man's face visible.

"Are you an agent?" she asked.

"Oh boy," said the old man. "You sound just like Terry. I knew you had to be his friend when I saw you reading his diary. And writing on it too."

"Diary?" she repeated.

The man pointed at the crevice on the wall.

"Don't worry. I won't tell him. Not a bad guy, Terry. But when he starts speaking peculiar, it's best to leave him alone. He's always going on about agents too. That and targets, drops and... what does he call that old black box he carries around? His marker, he calls it."

He was talking about the old-timer who had made drop 3771. Command had no record of his name.

"Is that his name? Terry?" she asked.

"He never told me his name!" the old man said. "And I asked plenty of times. Had to call him something if we were going to be roommates. I'm Jack, by the way. What's your name?"

Making up a name would serve no purpose, so she told him the truth.

"Margrit."

"Margaret?" he said.

"Close enough."

"I was married to a Margaret once... I think... Almost positive I was. But it doesn't matter anymore. She's either dead or left me for someone else. That's usually how it went with my love life." He laughed again.

"Where is Terry?" she asked.

"No idea. Haven't seen him since yesterday. He's been talking more about those crazy things of his. Maybe he got picked up by the police again. That happened before. He goes around yelling things at people and they take him away."

"Where to?" she asked.

"The police station. The one downtown. He's also been writing more often on his diary. Say... Am I crazy or is it just a stone slab without any letters on it?"

"You're not crazy," said Margrit.

"Thought so," said Jack. "Don't tell him I looked, ok?"

"Don't worry."

"What are you to him? Family? I see you're also into mock-writing," he pointed out. "Maybe that's in the genes."

"We..." she started, not knowing the best way of putting it. "We're old acquaintances."

He didn't look convinced.

"Sure you are," he said. "I bet you went to school together."

Margrit didn't comment on that.

"I'll go now," she said. "I may come back."

"Anytime," Jack said. "Anytime at all. An acquaintance of Terry's is an acquaintance of mine. I hope he's all right. I liked the old boy's company. If he doesn't come back, I'll have to give his name to that rat over there." He looked to the corner where the rat had been. It could still be heard moving around. "Would you like that, Terry?" he asked. The rat gave no reply. "Oh, well. Hey, before you go, do you have a dime?"

"A dime?" asked Margrit, unfamiliar with the word.

"Yeah. Some money to spare," he explained. "But I'll be honest. I'll use it to buy booze."

She knew about begging. There were a lot of poor people where she came from, but they normally asked for food and clothes, since people had stopped carrying palpable money around.

"How much should I give you?" she asked.

He seemed perplexed.

"That's up to you," he answered. "As much as you think your pal Terry's friend here deserves. I may even share some of the booze with him if he comes back. Though he's not much of a drinker."

Before leaving, she took a bill out and gave it to him. From the look on his face, she saw that it was too much. It was too late to take it back. He thanked her and said something about 'an early Christmas'. She recognized the name of the archaic religious festival, but failed to see how it related to the situation.

**2**

Walt had once been accused of being a misogynist and he thought the accusation was unfair. Sure, it was true that contempt was the feeling he most often felt towards women, but it also applied to men.

If Rosie thought he was a misogynist, she never said it. But it was possible that she didn't know what a misogynist was and couldn't pronounce the word without a long rehearsal. Whatever the case, Walt was pretty sure he treated her better than most of the men that had joined forces to build the train wreck she got used to see as her life.

He was still in bed, lying over the sheets, stark naked, watching her dry herself after a shower and get dressed. Her smile was still the same she had donned when he invited her to spend the weekend at his place because he had a rare weekend off from his very important job with the government. She had asked once or twice what the job was, but he got away with saying it was (a) confidential, and (b) very complicated. She never asked again, settling with occasional meetings when he was free. He envied her, in a way. So oblivious to everything. So completely incapable of identifying bullshit when it presented itself right to her face.

"I'm hungry," she said with that high-pitched voice of hers, so much like the chirping of a small bird. Her breasts were hidden by a pink bra and a pink top soon followed. Another reason to admire her, besides her adorable daftness, was the fact that the woman never thought there was such a thing as 'too much pink'. It suited her mood, for sure, but it was surprising that bees didn't start following the gigantic pink blur around.

"Pizza should be almost here," Walt said, pointing at the phone on the nightstand. They had fallen asleep late and it was already lunchtime when they woke up. "I ordered while you were in the shower."

She gave him one of her adorable smiles and jumped on top of him, still pantless.

"My sweet Boogy-boo thinks of everything, doesn't he?"

Boogy-boo. She had a thing with overly sweet nicknames. That one was a recent addition to her vast collection. They annoyed Walt to no end, but at least she got over them quickly and into new ones. They never lingered long enough to make him snap. Boogy-boo was one of the worst.

"Of course. Are you happy with your Walt?" asked Walt, stressing his name as a hint that she should use it. "Did your Walt do good?"

"Yes, he did." She grabbed his face in her hands and kissed him noisily on the lips. "Oh yes, he did."

"Do you think he deserves a reward?"

"Oh! But he already got a big reward last night. More than once." She giggled, sounding almost as young as her mental age.

"It's tuna and mushrooms. Your favorite."

"Ooooh!" Another kiss. She turned her face around and looked at the large mirrored closet next to the wall. Just when things were looking decent, she had to venture again into the only subject he couldn't make her forget, no matter how much he tried and no matter how persuasively creative his lies were. "When will you let me leave some clothes here? I don't like having to pack and unpack every time I come stay with you."

He gave her his usual annoyed face while she sat on the bed with her legs entwined.

"I promise I wouldn't take much space," she insisted.

"I told you already," Walt started, seeing himself reflected on the mirror covering the locked doors of the closet. "I keep my work things in there with my clothes. They're... They're for my eyes only. Those are the rules. I don't make them. You don't want me to be fired, do you?"

"No," she said, looking guilty. It always ended that way. It was amazing how she kept insisting, hoping against all logic that one day it would be different. "Okay, then."

She got up again and picked her jeans from the floor, starting to slide her legs into them. She was almost done when the bell rang.

"The pizza's here," Walt said. "Do you want me to get it?" he asked, without any intention of actually getting out of bed to answer.

"No, I'll get it, Boogy-boo," Rosie replied. "You stay right there, nice and comfy."

She zipped her pants and went out of the room, raising her voice to say:

"Coooming!"

Walt looked out the window. He'd have to rethink the whole Crime Tour thing, but that could wait. First, there was a pizza to be eaten. With maybe some more horizontal fun with Rosie for dessert, before she was finally sent on her way. After all, 'he had some work to finish'.

"Walt?" Rosie asked from the hallway. He ignored her. There was money on the table next to the door. It was perfectly visible on a small bowl of painted clay he had gotten as a souvenir from some place he had forgotten. "Walt?" she called again.

Why couldn't she just look around and see the bowl full of change?

"There's money right there," he hollered, looking at the fluffy, white clouds slowly crawling through the small square of sky he could see. "In that bowl."

"The one we bought in Peru?" asked an unexpected voice.

He startled and pulled a sheet over him.

"I'm naked!" he said. That was a useless remark

"I can see that," Sarah said, dropping her bag on the carpet, still wearing her flight attendant's uniform.

Rosie stood next to her, looking baffled. Even if baffling her was no difficult task.

"Who is this, Boogy-boo?" she asked.

"This is... huh... well..." There was nothing Walt could say to leave them both satisfied with the explanation.

"I am Boogy-boo's wife," said Sarah. "Who are you?"

"Rosie," said Rosie, with an automatic smile and offering her hand. It was a reflex. Whenever someone asked her name, she would react the same way. Even when, as was the case, it was completely out of place. "Nice to meet you."

But Sarah played along. There was that vague, sarcastic smile on her face that Walt disliked so much. The two women shook hands.

"Nice to meet you, Rosie," she said. "Didn't Boogy-boo let you know that I was coming back today?"

"Hmm... No?" Rosie looked towards Walt, waiting for the words that would make everything right again.

"You said you were coming back tomorrow," said Walt, sounding almost outraged with the change of plans.

"Then you should read your emails more often, shouldn't you?" she said. Not getting a reply, she turned to Rosie. "Shouldn't he?"

She shrugged. Then, after looking at Walt and back at Sarah, Rosie said:

"Yeah... guess so." And added, in an unexpected display of brilliance: "Maybe I should leave."

"Maybe you should", said Sarah, still smiling.

Rosie came into the room, picked up the rest of her things and went out again. She looked one last time at Walt and seemed on the verge of saying something really hurtful. But the only thing that came out was:

"Bye."

Walt waved and watched her leave. The door closed soon after. Sarah undid the knot keeping the bright blue scarf around her neck and walked around the bed. Walt expected her to strangle him with it and cringed. Instead, she bent over the nightstand on her side of bed and opened a drawer.

"Where are my things?" she asked.

Walt's eyes betrayed him and moved to the closet doors. Sarah straightened and tried them.

"Locked. Classy. Should I expect all my personal belongings to be locked in here?"

Walt nodded. There was nothing he could do besides coming clean. His carefully laid out plan had served him well for months, but it was over. He was expecting a pizza and, instead, he got the destruction of his marriage. It was no great loss. The thing had been half dead anyway.

"Have you eaten?" he asked. "I'm expecting a pizza."

Sarah looked angry for the first time since her arrival.

"We're through, Walt," she said.

He thought about it for a second.

"Yeah. I guess we are."

"How long has this been going on?"

"Couple of months," he said. Actually, it had been going on for exactly seven months, taking advantage of Sarah's frequent travels abroad. But she didn't need the whole truth.

"I want you to know that it's mutual," she said.

"What is?" asked Walt.

"This." She pointed at the unmade bed. "I've been screwing around with a pilot for months." She looked at the sheet he was pulling up to cover himself. "He's huge."

Walt almost felt offended.

"Are you talking about his personality?"

"I'm not."

"I see."

"You wish."

He almost said 'not really', but decided against it.

"And it's true what they say," Sarah said. "Men with jobs really are better in bed."

Walt didn't know that was a thing they said.

"So, you want to do this the easy way or the hard way?" she asked.

"What's the difference?"

"Well, the easy way goes like this: I have a lawyer draw up some papers, you sign them and we both go our separate ways. I keep the apartment, since I paid for it, anyway. You keep your junk. The hard way is almost the same, but you refuse to sign and we go battle it out in court. You lose because you can't afford a proper lawyer and, in the end, I keep the apartment, you have to sell your junk and hope to get enough money to pay court expenses."

It wasn't a hard decision to make.

"I'll go with the easy way."

"Good." She went out of the room and grabbed her bag. "I'll go stay with Monica. Make sure you're out of here by tomorrow."

Being evicted and forced to look for a place to stay wasn't nice, but, all things considered, it was going surprisingly well.

"And see if you can do something about the crazy old men gathering in front of the building," she added.

Walt tried to find the subtle way in which those words chastised him for his infidelity. He couldn't.

He tried again.

Nothing.

He decided it was intriguing enough to make him leave the bed and put on a t-shirt and a pair of running pants which had never been used for anything more athletic than running downstairs to get the mail.

Sarah had left and, to her credit, she managed not to bang the door on the way out. Walt discarded his original plan to ask her for further clarification and, instead, went to the bedroom window, opening it and looking down.

He saw three bald patches on top of what could, from the third floor, be classified without doubt as 'three crazy old men'. The 'old' part was pretty obvious, judging by the grey hair and beards, but the 'crazy' bit took some observation. Would a 'sane old man' move around in circles in front of a random building's door? And, most importantly, would he do it while wailing and blathering? Sarah's judgment hit the mark. But she had failed to add their disheveled looks to the equation. Even from three stories up, the old suits they were wearing looked filthy. And they probably stank too. Walt felt glad that he wasn't closer, until he remembered what his future ex-wife had said before leaving his soon-to-be former apartment. She expected him to do something about them.

He saw the old men looking towards the door when Sarah came out, giving them a wide berth and walking away with hurried steps, but not before raising her eyes one last time and giving him the look she used when she wanted something done.

Walt waited until Sarah had gone around a corner and was no longer visible before closing the window and deciding he would ignore the problem and expect it to go away on its own. Besides, more people lived in that building. Someone else would see the insane elders picketing in front of the door and deal with them.

He put on his shoes, left the apartment and took the elevator down.

The smell hit him as soon as he pulled the door open. It smelled like they had died weeks before and still hadn't come to terms with the fact. If they were three literal old farts, there would have been an improvement in their stench.

When they saw him coming, they stopped walking around and shut up, staring wide-eyed.

The old men looked pretty fragile, but there were three of them and Walt started having second thoughts. It was all Sarah's fault. He would be torn apart by those three deranged relics and probably eaten, judging by that avid glow he saw in their eyes and by their starved appearances. Maybe she would learn to appreciate him more, then, and regret her intention of divorcing him simply because of a slight infidelity.

"He is found!" said the one dressed in a filthy pinstripe suit. "At last! He is here!"

Walt took a step backward.

The two other old men, one wearing a tuxedo and the other a grey business suit, both equally grimy and torn, moved closer.

"He is here!" said one.

"We must follow him and register everything!" said the other.

Walt kept walking backwards until he felt the building door behind him.

"Settle down, please," he said, doing his best not to anger them. "What's all this about? Who are you?"

"We are those who seek!" said the old man in the business suit.

Walt tried to see something in his toothless, wrinkled expression besides pure insanity. He couldn't.

"Sure you are," he said. "And what do you want from here?"

"We must register and transmit!" said the one in the tuxedo.

"You are here and may not be lost again!" said the one in the pinstripe suit, raising one hand in his direction.

Walt hurried back inside and closed the door, seeing their panicked looks as their faces flattened against the glass panels. They kept moving their mouths and babbling inanely.

There was something familiar in their words and behavior. The hobo in the police station had said pretty much the same things as he held on to his leg. And hadn't he also been wearing some kind of suit?

"Did your friend put you up to this?" he asked, safe inside the glass doors. "How did he know where I lived?"

But they either didn't hear him over their wails or weren't interested in a conversation. That policeman probably had something to do with it. Officer something. Johnson? He kept asking him if he was being funny and probably gave the hobo his address to get even.

He took the elevator back to his apartment, put on proper clothes and got most of his things in a large canvas bag. It was mostly clothes and a couple of minor decorative items which didn't belong to him but would be missed by Sarah when she came back. He closed the apartment door without looking back and took his key with him. He could always pretend later that he had done it out of habit. This time, he took the stairs, avoided the front door and exited through a smaller door leading to the garages. From there, he passed through a door in the back of the building and walked away after making sure there were no old men in dirty suits waiting for him on that side.

*

Zachary Bergson lived on the other side of town, in a two-bedroom apartment next to a children's playground. He had bought it at a bargain price from a sex offender who had been released from jail and wasn't allowed to live that close to children. His main occupation was as a professional blogger, meaning companies would pay him for enthusiastic reviews about their products. His second and third occupations were, respectively, as a hypochondriac and an antisocial drunk. He was also best friends with Walt Jenkins, but only because he didn't have any choice in the matter.

He was nurturing a hangover and trying to fill half a page on the computer screen in front of him with reasons to buy a specific company's brand new curling iron. It wasn't going well. He moved the curling iron in his hands. He had read the instruction booklet. It didn't seem complicated, but he still couldn't even turn the thing on. If he did, what would happen then? Looking around him, in search of inspiration, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Zachary was bald and had been since he was around nineteen. But Chandra had hair. She was his female pseudonym on the beauty and fashion blog he managed, a very profitable area for people who, like himself, were willing to sell their opinions.

It was a relief when he heard the bell ringing. The curling iron was put down and he got up to open, finding Walt on the other side.

Walt didn't wait to be invited in. Zachary's house was like his house. Or like the house he no longer had anymore.

"I need a place to stay," he said, going straight to the point and dispensing with formalities. "Here?"

"Why?" asked Zachary.

"It's a long story," he explained.

Zachary said nothing. Instead, he sat down and crossed his arms and legs, making it abundantly clear that he had all the time in the world. Whatever the story, it couldn't be duller than the efforts of a bald man to find uses for a curling iron.

"Sarah kicked me out."

"Why?

"She came home and I had company."

"Ah. Linda?"

"Who?"

"Wasn't that her name? The skinny brunette who believed you were a former Olympic gymnast."

"Ah, her," said Walt. "Jesus. I didn't even remember her anymore. Do you keep a list or something?"

"So it was another one?" asked Zachary.

"Yeah. Rosie."

"What happened to Linda?"

"She googled me eventually. Don't know why she took so long, really," said Walt. "So, can I stay here?"

"There isn't much space," said Zachary. He didn't fancy the idea of taking a tenant and it was true that the apartment was full of junk everywhere. Things he was sent to review and which he couldn't get rid of afterwards. Walt had helped him selling some of the more sought-after items in the past, but there wasn't much demand for yoghurt makers, salad spinners and dubious medicinal shampoo.

"All right, then," Walt said. "I'll take the spare room."

That wasn't what Zachary intended when he informed him of his lack of space, but Walt had a talent for interpreting other people's words in the way that was most convenient to himself.

He took his bag to the bedroom Zachary kept for guests he made sure he never had (until Walt decided to break his immaculate record). It was also full of junk. There were boxes piled on the floor, on top of the scarce furniture, on the bed, on top of other boxes.

"There isn't much space," said Walt, raising his voice to be heard by Zachary.

"That's what I said."

He came back without his bag.

"I'll manage," he said, looking puzzled by something. "The laundry basket in there..." He pointed back at the room with a thumb.

"Ah. That," said Zachary.

"Was it... well... Was it what it looked like?" asked Walt.

"That depends," said Zachary. "What do you think it looked like?"

"I'd say it looked a lot like a laundry basket full of dildos," said Walt, displaying the full extent of his powers of observation.

"That's exactly what it is. Well done. Except some are vibrators. Dildos don't vibrate."

That wasn't enough to quench Walt's curiosity.

"Can I ask why or will the answer scar me for life?"

"It's very simple," said Zachary. "I reviewed sex toys for a couple of months." The look on Walt's face told Zachary that an urgent clarification was needed. "It's not that!"

"Isn't it?" asked Walt.

"No. I have blogs where I post with a female alias to review women's products. Like dildos. Or this crap," he said, grabbing the curling iron. "It's all made up."

"Ok then," said Walt. "I'll take your word for it. No need to get testy."

"I'm not testy," assured Zachary. "How long will you stay here?"

"I don't know yet," said Walt. That wasn't the answer Zachary was hoping for. "A couple of days... one week... a month... Does it bother you too much?"

"Of course not," lied Zachary. "What are friends for?"

"Exactly."

"How are the tours going?"

"They're not. There was a problem."

"What?"

"I sort of accidentally headbutted an unhappy customer," explained Walt.

"I see," said Zachary. "Why was he unhappy?"

"He questioned the factuality of the tour."

"You mean he figured out you made most of it up?"

"Not on his own, but yeah. That's what happened."

"What now?"

Walt looked around for a place to sit.

"You can start by taking down that website you made for me," he said. "I won't be needing it anymore."

"Okay. That was time well spent," said Zachary. "What will you do for money?"

"I don't know," Walt said. "Care to give me some reviews to make? No dildos."

"You can't write for shit."

"Yeah, that's right." Walt found a large box that seemed sturdy enough to support his weight and sat on it. He waited for an instant to see if the box would give. It didn't and he relaxed. Looking around, he found himself surrounded by piles of boxes of different sizes, some were blank cardboard and others had printed pictures and text. To his right, a stack of machines for converting home movies from VHS into DVD, supporting a smaller pile of yoga videotapes. To his left, a large open box filled to the top with plastic CD cases. Walt picked one and looked at it. There was a bluish-black background with white dots of varying size, likely aspiring to represent the universe. In the foreground, a round blue ball with brown landmasses: Earth. Hovering alarmingly over it and glowing like a sun, a colossal human brain, about half the size of the planet. Below all of that, it said in imposing block letters: ATKINSON ENCYCLOPEDIA OF REVISED HUMAN KNOWLEDGE - Vol. 3 - C. "What is this?" asked Walt.

Zachary moved his eyes from the computer screen, having just thought of the perfect sentence to start his curling iron review and immediately forgetting it when Walt spoke.

"A CD-ROM encyclopedia," he said. "In twenty-two disks, though it would fit easily in a single one. The publisher felt it would make the whole thing look more serious. That box, the one you're sitting on and two more somewhere around here are, pretty much, all the copies ever made."

"And you're reviewing it?" Walt picked up another disk. Vol. 7 - PQ. The cover was the same. The universe. Planet Earth. The disturbing glowing brain-satellite.

"No," said Zachary. "The publisher went bankrupt and his inventory was sold in auction. The guy who bought that wanted to sell it based on 'vintage value'. He asked me to take a look and see what I could do to spread the word around. I said yes and he agreed to send me one full set. Instead, he sent me everything he had. I never heard from him again."

"Then sell it yourself and keep the money," suggested Walt.

"I can't. It's unsellable."

"Why?" Walt put the disk down and stuck his hand inside the box for no reason, burying his arm up to the elbow in REVISED HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. "What's wrong with it?"

"It was compiled by a guy named James Atkinson, an industrialist who made a fortune selling metal ore to weapon factories," explained Zachary. "He spent his entire life working on it. He meant to have it published in paper originally, but it took so long that, when he finished, back in 2001, computers were a big thing and CD-ROM encyclopedias were considered the way of the future. Wikipedia started that same year and gradually ruined it for everyone. When Atkinson's work was finally converted to digital form, in 2008, it was already too late."

"Did he feel like an idiot for devoting his whole life to something that went nowhere?" asked Walt, pulling his arm out of the box and feeling the plastic case edges scratch his skin.

"No. He died in 2003. But he left a lot of money to a foundation named after him who continued the work. Apparently, his children didn't get any."

"What a nice guy."

"Yeah. Real nice. He wanted to enlighten the world. Taking care of his family wasn't grandiose enough."

"Why do you say it's unsellable?" asked Walt. "2008 wasn't that long ago. Most of it will still be valid."

"It's not only that," said Zachary. "Atkinson had some unusual ideas and he wanted to spread them around."

"What kind of unusual ideas?" asked Walt, with growing interest.

"I'll show you."

Zachary got up, approached the CD-ROM box and started going through the cases until he found a specific volume.

"This one will do," he said, before sitting in front of the computer again. Walt approached and looked over his shoulder while he placed the disk in the drive.

"It should load right away, but it's not compatible with newer operating systems so I'll have to run it manually," said Zachary.

Walt's computer knowledge was minute, but he didn't like sounding stupid and said: "Sure."

"I'll give you an example," said Zachary. "Evolution theory, right?" He typed the two words into the search field and, immediately, a page of results came up. There were links to articles with the words 'evolution' and 'theory' in the title, but no exact matches. "See what I mean?"

Walt didn't see what he meant. He nodded and said: "Hmm."

"Let's try this." Zachary typed 'Charles Darwin' into the search field. Lots of articles about people named Charles from various periods of history came up but, again, no exact match. There was also an article about the city of Darwin, in Australia. "Or this." He typed 'contraception' and, this time, there were zero results.

"Well," started Walt, "there may be a few subjects missing, but I'm sure that happens in other encyclopedias as well." He realized he had never used an encyclopedia in his life. "Doesn't it?"

"Not with essential matters like these," considered Zachary.

"You may find them essential, but other people—"

"Wait," Zachary cut in, turning around and looking straight at Walt. "You do think evolution is an essential subject, don't you? You don't believe Adam and Eve are historical figures, right?"

Walt had never spent any time thinking about it. What did it matter if God had created the world and the creatures in it or if mankind evolved from some sort of furry monkey? He failed to see the relevance.

"Of course I do," he said, anyway. "That's not what I meant. In an encyclopedia made by one guy, you'll have to forgive the occasional omission."

"That's also debatable," Zachary said. "The bit about him making it alone. He did write a significant part of it, but lots of the articles about subjects that didn't interest him too much seem plagiarized from Encyclopaedia Britannica. And there is nothing accidental about the omissions. He only excludes things that didn't fit in with his view of the world. That's dishonest."

Walt picked up the CD case and pointed at the cover.

"It does say 'revised'."

"It should say 'occasionally delusional' instead. For instance, did you know that slavery was sometimes voluntary?"

"What?" said Walt, putting the case down again.

"I'll show you." He typed 'slavery' into the search field and opened an article illustrated by an old drawing of two black men with chains on their wrists. "This one is almost exactly like the article in Encyclopaedia Britannica, but he added something." He scrolled down and started to read. "From the time of the first contact between European explorers and African populations, it became relatively common for Africans to travel to the New World willingly, in search of a better life or just for the thrill of discovery." He stopped reading and looked at Walt again. "What do you say to that?"

"Well... I say that Mr. Atkinson had very peculiar notions," said Walt.

"He was batshit crazy."

"That's another way of putting it, yes."

"Also, dinosaurs were hunted to extinction by cavemen, the ancient Egyptians built pyramids as cosmic radars to allow them to sail out of the Mediterranean, through the Atlantic and all the way to America. This discovery would later allow the resurrected Jesus and an assortment of his followers to settle in the New World, while the Chinese travelled to Europe, building the Alps as a colossal wall to defend their settlements in Italy from cannibalistic demon-worshipping Celtic druids moving in from the North."

"The man had an active imagination," said Walt, feeling a need to argue mostly out of stubbornness. "Nothing wrong with that."

"There is something wrong with it if you start believing it," Zachary said. "And even more if you build an agenda to spread it around."

Seeing there was no way he could win, Walt let it go.

"Yeah. I guess," he said.

"And that's why it's unsellable." Zachary closed the encyclopedia and removed the disk, putting it back in the case. Walt was already going through a pile of self-help books, all with photos of sunsets on the cover, when he heard Zachary add: "It's kind of ironic. Lots of people would love an encyclopedia that either ignores subjects they're not comfortable with or replaces the truth with preposterous allegations."

Walt picked a book from the pile and looked at the title printed over the sunset photo. Make Today the Best Day of Your Life - 20 Steps to Personal Fulfillment, Prosperity and Happiness. The author's photo was on the back cover. He was smiling too much for his own good, almost like he was begging for someone less fulfilled, prosper and happy to bash in his perfectly white teeth. He flipped through the pages, not reading any of the words and thinking. There was definitely something there, jumping up and down at the end of his consciousness, demanding to be noticed. Suddenly, there it was.

"There we go," he said.

Zachary was fiddling with the curling iron again and looked at him, puzzled.

"What?" he asked.

**2.1**

Margrit Lorne double-checked the location on her marker's screen. She was in the part of the city known as 'downtown' and both the small screen and the sign above the building's door proclaimed there was a police station in front of her. An actual, working early 21st century police station. She crossed the street and went in.

Inside the lobby, she saw a desk with a police offer in uniform sitting behind, looking at a vintage plastic and glass screen. A female police officer. They were supposedly rarer than the male variety back in that time. For a moment, she almost felt like she was looking at a long-extinct animal, like a tiger or an elephant. The woman felt watched and saw her standing there.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

Margrit approached and forced all traces of amazement out of her mind.

"I'm looking for a man," she said.

"I know the feeling," the policewoman said. She gave Margrit a look she couldn't interpret, apparently waiting for a specific reaction. When she didn't get it, she let it go and continued. "Sorry. That was inappropriate. Do you wish to report a missing person?"

Margrit thought about it for a second.

"The man I'm looking for has been found," she said.

The nametag pinned to her blue shirt informed the world about the officer's name: Jody Walton. She was staring at Margrit in confusion.

"I'm not sure I follow you," she said.

"Where?" asked Margrit.

Officer Walton's expression got very close to turning into one of annoyance.

"Look, we'd better start over, okay?" she said. "How can I help you?"

Margrit was determined to make the most of the second chance she was given.

"I am looking for a man. I was informed you had him here."

"Much better," said Officer Walton. "What's his name?" She moved her fingers to the keyboard, ready to start typing. Margrit realized she didn't know the old-timer's name, but it was too late to go back.

"Calvin... Smith," she improvised.

The policewoman typed it in.

"We have no one by that name. Who informed you he was here?"

"A friend of his," she said.

"And why does this friend say we have him?"

"He says you've taken him before," Margrit explained.

Officer Walton looked at her blankly for a second, then got an idea and typed something else, keeping her eyes on the screen.

"We do have an unidentified elderly male with possible mental issues," she said. "But it's someone who lives on the street."

"That's him," said Margrit.

The policewoman gave her a strange look.

"Don't you think the description I gave you was a bit broad?" she asked.

"I'm almost sure that's him," said Margrit.

"Almost. Okay," said the officer. "What's your relation to him, then?"

"I am... his daughter," she lied.

"Really?" asked Officer Walton, not looking very convinced. "And you let your father live in the street?"

She was right. That wasn't the most likely of stories.

"He has been gone for a long time," she said, doing her best to sound believable. "I've been looking for him for many years and only found him now."

Officer Walton still wasn't buying it, but she wouldn't let herself be too bothered to do something about it.

"Okay, then." She pointed at a row of chairs next to a wall, under some colorful posters. "Give me a moment, please."

Margrit looked at the chairs, then the posters. They were dull things and didn't look very enjoyable to look at.

"Why?" she asked.

Again, the officer looked confused.

"Would you prefer standing up while you wait?" she said, very slowly. "That's also a possibility."

"Ah, while I wait," Margrit said. "Of course." She approached the chairs, feigning interest in a poster with a message saying something about the need to watch out for some type of pocket picker, whatever that was, and sat down. It was only then that she realized how tired her legs felt from walking all the way there from the dark hole where the old-timer took shelter. She hadn't found any taxis or other means of public transportation for the entire journey.

There was a glass door in front of her and she could see herself reflected in it. The outfit she had been given was hideous enough to fit with local-timer fashion, but, still, it could have been much worse. Plaid pants, a navy blue velvet pea coat, white shirt and black leather shoes. Much better, at least, than the ridiculous suits the pioneers were forced to wear, following the advice of archaeologists that didn't know as much about period clothing as they pretended and couldn't be forced to admit it.

She hadn't been sitting long when a large male policeman approached her. She got up and shook the thick hand he was extending.

"Was it you asking about the old homeless man we picked up?"

"Yes. That was me," she replied.

"May I have your name, please?" the officer asked. Officer Thompson, according to his nametag.

"Margrit Lorne," she answered. Basic timenaut training advised not lying to local-timers unless there was need for it. Lies demanded constant attention to prevent going against previous statements and it was safer that way.

"And you're his daughter, Ms. Lorne?" he asked.

"Yes, I am."

"You confirm that his name is..." He lifted a printed piece of paper and read from it. "Calvin Smith?"

"I do," said Margrit.

"Why don't you share a last name?" the officer asked.

Margrit felt like slapping herself hard on the face. One detail she had overlooked. The problem with lies. There it was.

"I use my mother's maiden name," she said, hoping to sound convincing. She read her failure in the officer's face.

But he couldn't be bothered.

"Very well. Follow me, please."

He walked to a door and held it open for her. There was a short corridor on the other side and a flight of stairs at the end of it, at the bottom of which a wooden door with a thin glass rectangle between twin layers of metal mesh. Officer Thompson unlocked it with a set of keys he took out of his pocket and there was another corridor on the other side, with a grey brick wall on the left and a succession of compartments blocked by iron bars on the right. The first one had a man with shaved hair and a tattooed face sitting on a cot.

"He did it again," he said.

"What?" said the officer. "God damn it!" He hurried along the corridor, passing by two empty cells and stopping in front of one where a grey-haired man in a dirty yellow-brown suit could be seen lying on a pool of what looked, and smelled, like vomit. Officer Thompson picked a smaller key and opened the cell door, taking a step inside and stopping. "Mr. Smith, someone's here for you."

The old man groaned, tried to lift his head from the vomit and gave up.

Officer Thompson looked understandably disgusted. He turned to Margrit.

"Second time this happened," he said. "We tried giving him medication to calm his stomach and let him keep his food down, but he wouldn't take it. Is that your father."

The man farted.

"Yes," said Margrit, feeling an urge to move several steps backwards and controlling herself with great cost.

"Is this vomiting thing normal?" the policeman asked.

"Yes," Margrit replied, for the lack of something better to say.

"Can we release him under your responsibility?"

She needed to be alone with the old-timer to debrief him. That would be a convenient way of doing it.

"Yes," she said, for the third time.

"Okay," said Officer Thompson. "Any tips on how we can get him up?"

She looked at the balding grey head and tried her luck.

"Hey, old-timer," she said.

The man lifted his head and looked around for her, settling his unfocused eyes on her face. He managed to get on his knees and did his best to stand up, but he was shaking too much from the effort. Officer Thompson moved in and pulled him by an elbow, while wrinkling his nose away from the stench.

When the old man finally seemed steady enough to stand on his own he pointed at the cell door, making him move that way with hesitant steps. His face kept turned to Margrit, with an almost avid expression, but without saying anything. They were almost at the door to the stairs, when the policeman spoke again.

"Old-Timer," he said. "That's an interesting nickname for your father."

"I've been called worse by my daughters," said the tattooed man in the first cell. He looked bored more than he looked upset for being locked up. His attempt at taking part in the conversation was ignored and they went up the stairs, with Officer Thompson trying to prevent the old man from falling and, at the same time, keeping as much distance as he could.

Back in the lobby, the policeman asked Margrit to wait, exchanged a few words with his colleague behind the reception desk and came back with a clipboard, a pen and a black plastic bag. He handed her the clipboard and the pen.

"Sign this," he said, pointing a line at the bottom of the paper rectangle. Margrit signed and gave it back, receiving the plastic bag in exchange. Officer Thompson turned to the old-timer. "We're letting you go one more time. But if you keep yelling and scaring people like that, you'll get in serious trouble. Do you understand me?

While he spoke, Margrit opened the bag. She recognized one of the objects inside. It was a stylus. The other thing was harder to identify. A thick black box, larger than her hand. She took it out. It had a closed lid. She didn't open it. There was no need.

"My marker," the old man said, moving one hand towards it. Margrit put it inside the bag again and he seemed like he couldn't understand where it had disappeared to.

"What did he say?" asked the officer.

"Nothing," Margrit said. "Old men keep saying things that mean nothing at all."

She pulled him towards the door and they were out of there.

*

The old-timer was sitting on the bench with his legs on top of it, looking somewhat green. He had been sick again on their way to the park and, hopefully, the large trash can right next to the bench could be used in an emergency.

"Are you okay?" Margrit asked.

He looked at her and frowned like it took an effort to remember her face and the reason for her presence.

"I need my marker," he said.

"I'll give to you when you're feeling better," Margrit said. "What's wrong?"

"The food they gave me in there." Mentioning it made him look greener and, for a moment, Margrit feared he wouldn't have time to turn his face to the trash can. She was standing right in front of him. But he managed to hold it in. "I told them mankind lost the ability to digest chlorophyll with the passing of the centuries, but they wouldn't listen and kept feeding me blasted leaves! Primitive fools!" He raised his voice and tried to get up, but the effort was too much and he gave up. "You know how it is..."

"I don't," said Margrit. "Back in my time, we got over that problem. There's shots you can take for everything."

"Really?" he asked, with eyes wide open.

She nodded.

"Have you come to take me home?" he asked.

"No," she said, hoping it wouldn't be necessary to say anything else.

For a moment, the old man seemed on the verge of tears.

"Why not?" he asked.

"You know," she said. "You signed a contract. Things were explained to you before you travelled."

He closed his eyes briefly and looked like he was trying to restrain himself.

"They said it was only a matter of time before someone would invent something that allowed us to be brought back," the old-timer said. "Many of us believed that. All of us."

"And it is," said Margrit. "But it still hasn't happened."

"So you can't go back also?"

"I can," she said, doing her best not to feel sorry for the old-timer. "But in your days, they sent you using a system that's not compatible with what they use today."

"Is someone working on it?" he asked, hopefully.

"Yes," Margrit lied. "I think they are. It shouldn't take long."

"I hope not," said the old man. "I've been stuck here for... I don't even remember anymore. Forty years? Fifty?"

Margrit loved the thrill of being a timenaut, but, if it required never coming back to her own time, she would never do it.

"Closer to sixty," she said. The old-timer went pale and said nothing. "What's your name?"

"You don't know?"

"There was a malfunction in the mission registry," Margrit explained. "The sector containing timenauts' identities fried over thirty years ago."

"Albert," said the old-timer. "My name is Albert Ford."

"Well, Albert, you know why they sent me after you," said Margrit.

"I do," said Albert. "Are you sure there isn't a way of taking me back?" he asked.

"Look, I've already—" she began.

"I know," he cut in. "I signed a contract. But there must be a way. The Archbishop could say a word on my behalf. I was one of his favorites."

Pioneer or not, he was being so pathetic that it was painful to watch.

"Do you really think it would make any difference?" she asked.

The question seemed to trouble him, but it was clear he couldn't say why.

"What do you mean?" he asked her back.

"It's been sixty years since you were sent here," she said. "Even if the Archbishop could help you, and he can't. Do you see where I'm going with this? It's also in the contract that sharing information about future events is strictly forbidden, but you can guess on your own what happened to the Archbishop you were friends with, can't you?"

It seemed to dawn on him only then.

"Oh..." he said.

"Come on, then", she continued. "I've come a long way to talk to you. Why don't you share your findings with me? Is it true what you mentioned in your drops?"

"My drops..." He still seemed a bit taken back by what she had said to him. "Yes, of course. Without any shadow of a doubt."

"The drop mentioned 92% certainty," she reminded him.

"Okay. Almost without any shadow of a doubt," he corrected.

"How can you be so certain?"

"I got a location estimate and went there immediately. But it wasn't accurate and I... well... I admit I got a little carried away and may have started to question local-timers a bit too loudly."

"May have?" Margrit asked.

"I did question them too loudly. I've been looking for too long. The police came and took me away. As I was sitting in the station, my marker started buzzing wildly," he said. Mentioning it made him remember. "Where is it?"

Margrit was still holding the plastic bag. She lifted it slightly.

"Right here," she said.

"Give it to me."

"In a moment. The marker started buzzing. Then what?"

"I checked it while he was walking towards me. And the result was clear. 92%."

"That's probably a mistake," she said.

The old-timer seemed to take offense.

"A timenaut that doesn't trust his marker is no timenaut at all!" he said, raising his voice.

"I trust my marker," Margrit said. "But I don't trust yours. It's old and went too long without tuning. The reading was probably wrong."

"If it hadn't gone so long without tuning, I'm sure the reading would be 100%."

"You can't be sure of that."

"We know the event is near!"

"We don't even know if the event actually happened."

He opened his eyes wider when he spoke again.

"Where is your faith, agent?" he asked.

"Don't need it," Margrit replied. "Faith is for clergymen."

The old-man looked disgusted by her reply.

"Things can't have changed that much in sixty years," he said.

"They have," Margrit assured him. "One of your drops mentioned a contact being initiated. What was that about?"

"I thought the circumstances demanded that—"

"You thought? Our mission is to locate the target. Establishing contact is a chaplain's job."

"I..." He nodded. "You're right, of course. It's been so long that sometimes you start to wonder if it's all in your mind. All those drops and never a reply."

"I'm here. I'm your reply," she said. "It's not all in your mind."

"That's good to know." The old man lowered his feet to the ground and bowed his head. "Can I have my marker back?" he asked.

Margrit gave him the plastic bag.

"Please refrain from further attempts to contact the target," she said.

He nodded.

"What now?" asked the old-timer.

"Albert Ford," Margrit cleared her throat and recited the words she had memorized. "The Church thanks you for your service. Carry on with your duties."

"Are you going back now? He asked.

"No, not yet. There are things I must do before going back."

"Take me with you," he begged, looking up at her face.

"I have already told you current technology still doesn't—"

"Not back," he said. "Take me with you to do what must be done. I can help. I have experience and—"

"No."

"Please."

"No."

He lowered his head again and Margrit thought he was about to start crying. She didn't need to see that. But she was wrong. His laughter surprised her. He looked at her again, acting like he had just thought of the funniest thing in the world.

"You can't outsmart me, girl," he said. "Too old for that. I got you!"

She didn't understand what he was talking about. And she told him so.

"I don't understand what you're talking about."

"How about this?" he said. "You take me along and I'll share my readings with you. Decades of tracking data that will make locating the target a lot simpler. You shouldn't have given me the marker back. A beginner's mistake. Easily forgivable."

Pathetic. Truly pathetic.

"I already downloaded your data while you were busy vomiting," she said.

The corners of his mouth slowly drifted downwards and his eyes became moist.

"No..." he said.

"Sorry," said Margrit.

He buried his face in his hands and started to sob. Margrit had no intention of enduring that sad spectacle. He was sobbing harder when she walked away.

*

What if it's true, she was thinking as she entered the abandoned warehouse once more. What if it's all true? She couldn't pinpoint exactly the moment she had stopped believing. It was somewhere between joining the Timenaut Corps and the death of her father at the hands of heretics when he was only ninety-seven years old, ten years away from retirement age and the cabin he always dreamed of buying in the forest. Before the new heresy had spread enough to become a threat, causing the Archbishop to panic and order an attack on one of their settlements. It was a massacre and served only to gather more converts for their cause and to increase the frequency and violence of their attacks.

She walked to the unremarkable pile of rubble, dug out her slate and removed the stylus from her pouch. The message from the previous drop was promptly erased and she wrote:

Agent debrief. Albert Ford. Target coord. acquired. On to confirm ID. Drop 3.

She buried the slate again and realized she couldn't care less about the truth.

**3**

They were sitting side by side on a flowery sofa, with the large painting of The Last Supper looking at them from the opposite wall. Jesus averted his gaze, like he was appalled by their actions and preferred not to see. On both sides of him, all the apostles seemed to direct judgmental looks at them. Even Judas was doing it.

Walt adjusted the box on the coffee table in front of him. It had originally contained a set of 'professional bottle openers', but the twenty-two disk cases fitted perfectly, like they were meant to be there. The lacquered wood finish on the dark-brown plastic gave it an almost distinguished look, combining well with the label they had made in a print shop.

"She's taking too long," whispered Zachary, sticking a finger inside his shirt collar. "And your suit doesn't let me breathe. I feel an asthma attack coming." Zachary, the blogger, computer wiz and learned man was yielding his place to Zachary, the hypochondriac, another frequent fixture of his personality.

"Just relax," Walt said, trying to reassure him. "It's going well."

They had spent a couple of days visiting churches of different denominations and filtering the ones that fitted the plan. Daily miracle sessions, celebrity ministers with their own TV shows, posters calling for protest gatherings in front of planned parenthood clinics, sex-shops and any place that displayed rainbow flags on the windows. Those were all good indicators that they were on the right track.

Afterwards, they moved to the second phase. Most churches had notice boards and on some of those they found picnic attendance sheets, crayon drawings advertising free puppies or kittens and all sorts of services being offered, from taking care of children or incapacitated seniors to cake baking , landscape gardening and a wide assortment of menial jobs.

It was on one of those boards that they found Mrs. Jade Parker's announcement of a garage sale selling only porcelain bears. There was a photo inserted on the printed word processor invitation template showing a row of porcelain bears in different costumes and poses over a mantelpiece, with adequately affluent surroundings. They copied the address and decided to make a move. Walt decided to make a move, that is, while Zachary insisted he didn't want anything to do with it.

She tried to get rid of them when she opened the door and heard that they were selling something, but Walt mentioned 'the importance of giving children a proper education in a world that surrounds them with the wrong kind of influence' and that got her attention and made her invite them inside.

"Let's go while we still can," Zachary whispered, restless. "She's calling the police."

"No, she isn't," Walt reassured him. "Calm down. You're beginning to sweat and that's my suit you're wearing."

"I didn't want to—" he started, but Walt shushed him.

Mrs. Jade Parker returned from the kitchen, carrying a tray with a teapot, three cups, a plate of cookies, a sugar bowl and a small milk jug, all in flowery porcelain that matched the sofa almost perfectly. She placed the tray on the coffee table, handed them their cups and started serving.

"Sugar? Milk?" she asked.

"I always have mine straight, thank you," said Walt. He hated tea almost as much as he hated flowery patterns. Zachary didn't manage to say anything. He only shook his head briefly, raising the cup to his lips too fast and letting a couple of drops fall on his lap. The hostess didn't notice. She was busy putting two sugar cubes in her cup and pouring some milk. Walt saw Zachary squirm when the scalding tea touched his skin and wondered if it would leave a stain.

"You have a lovely family, Mrs. Parker," he said, nodding at the large framed photograph hanging over the fireplace. It showed Mrs. Jade Parker sitting on the foreground, with a tall, stern-looking man in a blue suit behind her with his hand on her shoulder and three blond kids looking about the same age. Two boys with side parted hair and a girl with braids and shiny braces tainting a winning smile. "And what adorable bears!"

"Thank you," she said, after blowing on the tea. "The bears belonged to my late mother-in-law. That's just a small sample. She collected them for decades. We have boxes full of them in the garage and thought it was time to let them be adopted by someone who could care for them like she did. We're having a sale next weekend, in case you're interested."

"I'll make sure to pay you a visit," lied Walt.

Mrs. Parker sipped the tea. Walt did the same. It burned his lip and smelled vaguely of warm urine, but he didn't allow his revulsion to become apparent.

Zachary felt he should do as they did and lifted the cup to his lips with trembling fingers and placed it on the saucer again without even wetting his lips.

"Now then," said Mrs. Parker, putting her cup on the table and carefully picking a cookie that she placed on the saucer. "What is it that you gentlemen are selling?" She looked at the box containing the CDs and appeared moderately interested.

Walt put his cup on the table, glad for an excuse to do it, and Zachary did the same a couple of seconds later, enough time for the gesture to appear natural.

"Tell me, Mrs. Parker," Walt began, after looking briefly at the shelf containing a small number of books that seemed more like decoration than actual reading material. "Do you own a set of encyclopedias?"

She looked surprised, clearly not knowing what was the correct answer to that question.

"Well... I suppose... I'd have to check..."

"That won't be necessary," said Walt, smiling. "Your words have given me all the information I required to confirm a well known fact."

"What fact would that be?" Her curiosity had been piqued.

"Were you aware that only less than two quarters of families have encyclopedias in the house?" asked Walt.

"No, I wasn't aware," answered Mrs. Parker, still not getting where he was going with that.

"If you don't mind me presuming," Walt went on, "is it safe to say that you also didn't know that the nation's most successful students all come from those two quarters?"

"Really?" She seemed impressed. "So you're saying there is a relation between encyclopedia ownership and academic success?"

"No," said Walt. "I beg your pardon, but that's not what I'm saying.

"It isn't?"

"No. What I'm saying is that there is a relation between academic success in children and teenagers of all ages and the existence of good encyclopedias in their homes.

"I see. Now that I think of it, we do have one. It's in the study upstairs. Red leather covers with embossed golden letters."

"Is it good?" asked Walt.

"To be honest, I wouldn't know. I think they are only removed from the shelf so the maid can dust them," explained Mrs. Parker. "And they were put back immediately after."

Zachary had been watching the dialogue, moving his head from one to the other like someone following a tennis match. He decided he should say or do something to justify his presence there.

"Then they can't be any good," he said. Mrs. Parker looked at him like she had forgotten he was there. Her blue eyelids fluttered for a moment.

"Why is that?" she asked.

Zachary felt his sudden bravery implode, but, luckily, Walt was there to come to his rescue.

"Because a good encyclopedia begs to be opened and isn't easily put down," he said. "Knowledge is truly addictive."

Mrs. Parker seemed impressed.

"I see," she said. "And how does all of that relate to this?" She pointed at the dark plastic box containing immaculately ordered the CDs. It had been Zachary ordering them.

"This," said Walt, "is one of the most advanced and accurate encyclopedias in the market. The Atkinson Encyclopedia of Revised Human Knowledge. Are you familiar with the name James Atkinson?"

"I am not."

"It's not surprising," said Walt. "It is increasingly frequent in our day and age that great minds don't get the recognition they deserve. James Atkinson was one of the most brilliant men of our era. A successful entrepreneur who devoted his life in equal parts to philanthropy and to the pursuit of knowledge. He spent years compiling the full extent of his vast knowledge and making sure it would be made available for the advancement of mankind, putting this noble venture above his own well-being and above the well-being of his own family!"

"Remarkable," said Mrs. Parker. "Truly remarkable."

"Indeed," agreed Walt. Zachary was so impressed by Walt's words that he found himself nodding vigorously despite knowing the real story.

"This is the result of a life of hard work and dedication to the common good," he moved his hand theatrically over the box."A masterpiece that would occupy several volumes presented in twenty-two convenient CD-ROMs, the most advanced information technology available."

A decade ago, added Zachary mentally.

Walt pulled out one CD case and gave it to Mrs. Parker. She looked at the cover with the planet and the glowing brain and it was clear she didn't know what to make of it.

"I must confess I'm no good with computers," she said. "We have one but I never touch it. The electrical typewriter is my machine of choice," she proclaimed, proudly. "I took a course before I got married and was one of the best students in my class."

"Remarkable." Walt managed to say it in a tone that conveyed to anyone who knew him that he found what he had heard absolutely ridiculous. "But computers are very useful machines. Your children will use it, no doubt, as a study tool. Think of the added potential of a convenient digital encyclopedia such as this. Containing in itself all the knowledge they could acquire from the internet and without exposing them to the perils I'm sure you'll be aware of."

There was a sudden look of anger on her face.

"I am aware," she said. "My husband controls their internet hours so they won't have to come in contact with things that would scar them for life. I've heard of some of the things that people put out there. Pornography and such."

"And things more nefarious than pornography, I'm afraid," said Walt, sounding adequately somber.

"Like what?" asked Mrs. Parker. "What could be worse than pornography?"

"Pornography, at least, is easily recognizable for what it is," said Walt. "But there are things that corrupt young minds with the same ferocity and that are commonly seen and forced upon them as science or fact."

"Oh... I see," said Mrs. Parker. "You're right."

"I am, unfortunately. Nowadays, it's becoming harder and harder for a child to leaf through a book in search of knowledge without being bombed with vicious theories and statements that go against the word of God."

"I know what you mean," said Mrs. Parker. "Like that nonsense about human beings descending from apes."

"Exactly. That is a perfect example."

She picked up her forgotten cookie and dipped it in the tea.

"And this encyclopedia of yours is different?" she asked.

"Certainly," said Walt. "James Atkinson was a man of God. That's why it is called 'revised'." And he pointed at the label.

"I see," said Mrs. Parker. She took a bite of the soaked cookie and seemed lost in thought for a moment. Finally, she said: "You know what, you got my attention. It's always a privilege to deal with people who think alike. How many of these encyclopedias can you provide?"

Walt seemed taken aback and, for a second, his pious encyclopedia salesman act faltered.

"What?" he asked. After gathering himself, he turned to Zachary: "How many can we provide?"

Zachary was already thinking about a number and answered almost immediately.

"I'd say around thirty. Give or take."

Mrs. Parker looked like she was making a mental calculation.

"I think that would be ideal," she said. Zachary and Walt waited for her to clarify. She did. "Richard, my husband," and she pointed at the photo hanging over the bears on the mantelpiece, "is a minister of our church. He and some associates are setting up a school in Africa to spread the Word and to educate those poor people. It's the decent thing to do."

"Of course," said Walt, waiting with growing interest to see where that was going.

"It will be paid exclusively by contributions from our congregation and we managed to gather an interesting sum of money," she continued. "Enough to pay for a sturdy building, with classrooms for about two hundred students, and also to provide the necessary teaching implements. The teachers will all be younger voluntaries from the church, and there will be a computer room. I don't remember how many computers Richard mentioned, but it will probably be close to the number you mentioned. Do you see where I'm going with this?"

The greedy glow on Walt's eyes made abundantly clear that he did.

"That sounds very promising," he said.

" It's just an idea," said Mrs. Parker. "It will be my husband's decision, of course, but he's a reasonable man and I'm sure he'll agree with me that our project would be benefit from Mr. Atkinson's remarkable work. Will you speak with him?"

Zachary whimpered audibly. As Mrs. Parker was turning her head in his direction, Walt said: "Of course."

"Very well. I'll go get you his card so you can arrange for an appointment." She got up. "I'll also talk to him later today so he'll be expecting you. I'll be right back."

She left the room, leaving Walt and Zachary alone with the porcelain bears, the disapproving looks of the apostles and the flowery patterns. Zachary grabbed Walt's arm.

"Are you mad?" he whispered. "Why would anyone in their right mind buy thirty sets of this shit? All the computers could share the same set!"

Walt pointed to the room around them.

"Isn't it obvious that we aren't dealing with people in their right mind?"

Mrs. Parker returned and extended Walt a business card. It read 'Rev. Richard Parker, Pastoral Church of the Divine Light and Glory, President' and had his number and business address beneath in smaller type. There wasn't an email.

"I recommend you try calling him around lunchtime," Mrs. Parker said. "He's usually very busy during the rest of the..."

The bell rang, startling Zachary.

"I wonder who it could be at this time? It's still too early for the kids to return from school and I'm not expecting any visitors. Give me just a second, will you?" She left again and they heard her walk to the hall and open the door.

"She called the police!" said Zachary, trying to keep his voice low and failing. "I knew it."

"Why would she call the police? We did nothing wrong," said Walt. "We were only... Oh shit."

"What?" asked Zachary. Walt was looking at the window next to the Last Supper. There was a face there, pressed against the glass, looking in. An old face. With crazed eyes and lacking teeth. He saw Walt and started hitting the window with his fingertips. "Do you know him?"

"Not him exactly, but... It's a long story. I'll tell you later." They heard Mrs. Parker close the door. "Just play along."

The hostess returned and saw the old man looking through the window. Another one joined him. They were both wearing dirty suits.

"What in tarnation...?" she said. She walked to the window and tried to shoo them away. "Go on, then. Go away or I'll call the police." And she pulled the curtains over the window, looking at Walt and Zachary. "The strangest thing. Two old drunkards wanting to come in to see you. Do you know who they are?"

Zachary swallowed a lump in his throat, but Walt managed to deal with it.

"I am really sorry about this, Mrs. Parker," he said. "They're two poor homeless souls I've helped on occasion. But they've gone back to their old drinking ways and I told them I couldn't help them anymore if they didn't sober up. They must have followed me here."

She seemed both horrified and moved at the same time.

"Oh my... I understand. We try to help people as best we can, but some have to help themselves first. When they don't, our efforts will be wasted."

"Exactly," said Walt, with an almost imperceptible sigh of relief. He got up and Zachary did the same. "We thank you for your interest, Mrs. Parker. It will be a pleasure to participate in your husband's effort to educate the youth of Africa. They will become better men with the aid of the Atkinson Encyclopedia of Revised Human Knowledge.

"I'm sure they will," said Mrs. Parker.

"They'll be glad to know slavery was voluntary," said Zachary, all of a sudden, before he could stop himself.

Mrs. Parker looked at him, confused. Walt seemed horrified.

"What?" Mrs. Parker said. She had grown accustomed to seeing Zachary as the silent partner in that duo and that sudden outburst was unforeseen. Behind the curtains, someone knocked on the glass. The old men were still there. Mrs. Parker and Walt turned their heads and the impact of Zachary's words was gone. "Voluntary, you say?"

"Yes," said Zachary. "Once in a while. According to the encyclopedia."

"I didn't know," she said. "You live and you learn."

"Exactly," said Walt. "We'll be going, then. Thank you once again for your time and patience. We'll make sure to schedule an appointment with the reverend." He pocketed the card while Zachary closed the encyclopedia's box. "Is there a back door we could use?" Walt asked, pointing briefly at the curtained window.

"Sure," said Mrs. Parker. "Don't you worry. If they stay there much longer, I'll call the police."

"It will be for their own good," said Walt.

She took them through the house and opened a door in the kitchen that opened to a well-kept backyard. There was a swing and a tree house on top of a short tree in a corner. She pointed at the gate on the prefabricated picket fence.

"Through there," she said. "Just go down that way and you'll eventually reach the main road. I hope you didn't park in front of the house."

"We didn't, luckily," said Walt.

They said their good-byes and Mrs. Parker went back inside as Walt and Zachary exited the yard and started walking down the road to the bus stop. Their car wasn't parked in front of the house out of luck but because they didn't have one. Zachary failed his driving test so many times he had given up and Walt was used to drive Sarah's car and never bothered to buy one for himself.

"That slavery thing was unfortunate," said Zachary, admitting his blunder. "Sorry about that. I was nervous."

"Forget about it," replied Walt. "I don't think she cared too much."

"So, who were those old men, after all? Long stories are well-suited for long walks to the bus station."

"I think I've become a magnet for insane hobos," said Walt, breathing in before starting to tell Zachary about the bizarre encounters in the police station and in front of his former apartment.

**3.1**

The three old men were hiding in the alley around the corner from the building's main entrance. Margrit was close enough to hear them, but they still hadn't realized she was there.

"He has to come out sooner or later," one said.

"I still think he went out through a back door," said another.

"You and your stupid ideas," said the third.

Margrit removed her marker from the pouch, opened it and examined the map on the screen.

"The building has a door to a street on the other side," she said. The three old-timers turned around and stared at her with eyes wide open, tripping on each other while deciding if they should run away. Their attention soon turned to the marker she was holding.

"Is that...?" asked one.

"So small..." said another.

"Yes," Margrit said, snapping it shut and putting it inside her pouch again. "What are you doing here?"

The one wearing the dark suit straightened, dusted the front of his grimy jacket without any real result and said:

"Our readings show that the target is here."

"You all got the same reading?" Margrit asked.

The other two looked embarrassed.

"Well... I dropped my marker in the river years ago," one said.

"Mine was stolen by rowdy youngsters," explained the other.

"I allow these two agents to follow me, given their unfortunate loss of equipment," said the old-timer in the dark suit. "But the discovery should be credited entirely to me."

"That's not fair," said the one who had gotten his marker stolen. The other one nodded in fierce agreement. "We've been helping you out all these years!"

"I'm not saying you didn't help," said the one with the dark suit. "But we can't all be credited and, since I'll be the one making the drop..." He stopped, realizing something for the first time. "Wait a minute. I haven't made the drop yet."

They all stared at Margrit, waiting for an explanation.

"I'm not here because of your drop," she said.

"Another agent got a reading concerning this target?" asked the one who had dropped his marker in the river.

Margrit didn't answer. There were matters to attend to that were far more pressing than enlightening confused old-timers.

"You saw him?" she asked.

"Yes," answered one of the two markerless pioneers.

"Right in front of us," said the other.

"What was the reading?"

"At first, 90%. Immediately after, it dropped to 87%," said the one in the dark suit.

"The reading is not supposed to lower so quickly," she said.

"My marker has been acting up for a decade or so," the old-timer admitted.

"Why did you approach him?" she asked. "Don't you know there are rules against—"

"He was getting away!" said the previous owner of one obsolete item of technology discarded in some black market by very intrigued thieves who couldn't understand what it was supposed to be.

"And you planned to tie him up?" she asked.

They all looked ashamed.

"Creation..." said one, looking appalled.

"Of course not," said another.

"I'm not having this conversation again," Margrit said, more to herself than to anyone else.

"What conversation?" asked one of the old men. She didn't know which because she had moved away to examine the front of the building. She came back and left the question hanging, replacing it with one of her own.

"When did you see him?"

The one wearing the striped dark suit started to think about it. Judging from his expression, he was engaged in complicated mathematic calculations.

"Two days ago. In the morning," he said. "But not too early. Definitely not too early."

"Definitely not," agreed one of the others. The third merely nodded with conviction.

"And you're still waiting for him to come back again? He's probably long gone."

The possibility pained the old-timers.

"We were hoping he wasn't," said the pioneer wearing grey.

"Hope all you want," Margrit said. And she started to walk away.

"Where are you going?" asked the only old-timer in the trio who still had his marker with him.

"I'm going to check if he's home or not."

The old man took a moment to understand what she meant.

"What about the rules?" he asked. "You said—"

"I have to know for sure," she said. "Report me if you want. You can start by informing Command about how your friends lost their markers." And she started towards the door.

*

"Sarah! There's someone here for you!" The woman screamed without a care in the world about Margrit's eardrums. There was open hostility on her face. She went back inside the apartment when the other woman came to the door. Her expression was equally unwelcoming.

"Yes?" she said, looking her up and down.

"I want to speak with the man who lives here," Margrit said.

If it was possible for the woman to look even more displeased to see her, it happened then. From inside, she heard the other one say: "Ha!"

"Another one," the woman said, under her breath. "Look, Walt Jenkins doesn't live here anymore." Walt. Walter Jenkins. The target had a name.

"He doesn't?" That was odd. The old-timers seemed certain he did. Then again, they had been driven mad by decades of temporal isolation. "Did he still live here two days ago?"

The woman seemed surprised.

"I see you're very well informed," she said. "He left. I asked him to. I'm his wife. Although I hope to change that very soon. Did you know he was married?"

She did. Although details about the target's personal life were murky and mostly apocryphal.

"I didn't," she said, playing it safe.

"There you have it," the woman said, like it was a very relevant detail. "I got here two days ago and found him in bed with another woman. Yes, there's another woman. He also cheats on you."

"There are probably lots more," said the woman who had answered the door, raising her voice somewhere inside the apartment.

"What do you want from him?" asked the target's wife.

"I... nothing important," she said, thinking of ways to stop the conversation there and move on with the search.

The other woman's head peeked from a doorway inside the apartment.

"Maybe she's pregnant!" she hollered. "Ask her if she's pregnant."

"Are you pregnant?" asked the wife.

No danger of that. All timenauts, male and female, were sterilized as soon as they passed their final test. To prevent 'accidents' that could result in people fathering their own grandfather.

"I'm not," she said. So far, she was finding it surprisingly easy not to lie at local-timers.

"Figures," the woman said. "We tried for a couple of years. I think the bastard shoots blanks. He really is completely useless."

"You can say that again!" yelled her friend's voice.

"Where does the bastard live now?" Margrit asked.

For some strange reason, the woman seemed to dislike having someone else call him that.

"No idea," she said. "But I'll bet he's staying with Zachary, the poor fool. He's the only person in the world who'll do him favors."

"And where does this Zachary live?" Margrit asked.

The wife pondered for a moment if she should share the information or not. She decided she should.

"Got a pen?" she asked.

Margrit started feeling up her jacket. It was all for show. What would a timenaut need a pen for?

The woman's friend brought her a pen and a piece of paper and disappeared from view to keep listening to the conversation.

"Here you go," the target's wife said, after scribbling a couple of lines on the paper and handling it to her. "Something else I can help you with?" the target's wife asked Margrit, with a voice that made clear she felt no inclination to be helpful. However, the unspoken invitation to leave arrived just in time.

"No. Bye." She turned and walked towards the stairs. She had recognized the elevating box on her way in, but wasn't sure how to operate it and decided not to take unnecessary risks.

"Good luck with the hunt," she heard the woman say before she closed the door.

It was almost as if she knew.

**4**

They were in suits again, but, this time, Zachary felt even more uncomfortable. Walt, on the other hand, felt perfectly at ease. He always felt like that when he smelled easy money.

The meeting with Reverend Parker couldn't have gone better. His wife had sweetened him up and Walt didn't need to work too hard to convince her husband that the Atkinson Encyclopedia of Revised Human Knowledge was just the thing the church needed for their African charity work. They shook hands on it and were asked to come back later to sign the supply contract, receive the generous payment and make things official.

Of course, no one had informed them that, after the contract signature, there would be mandatory participation in one of the church's religious services. And there they were, surrounded by congregation members of all sizes, ages and shapes (not much variety in the color department, though), clapping, waving their hands in the air, singing along with the gaudy hymns and yelling hallelujahs like their life depended on it. For all Zachary knew, that could be precisely the case. He kept wondering if his and Walt's life weren't also balancing on the edge of a particularly sharp hallelujah and if he shouldn't take part in the whole Lord-praising euphoria just to make them feel more merciful towards him when they discovered the whole thing was an elaborate scam. No, he was wrong. It wasn't even an elaborate scam. And that made it even more perplexing that someone could have been fooled.

Maybe he should stop feeling nervous and bask in the joy of abundance that Walt so kindly accepted to share with him. Half for himself, for coming up with the plan and doing most of the lip work, and half for Zachary for owning the CD-ROMs in the first place and for providing moral support and acting as his sidekick. Maybe it would all work out according to plan.

And, if he thought about it, there wasn't any real harm being done. The encyclopedia had major flaws, but those were precisely the aspects that appealed to members of the Pastoral Church of Divine Light and Glory. And some kids in Africa would get to go to school and have access to a computer room with an overabundance of outdated CD-ROMs. It was much better than whatever they had before. If they had anything at all.

Then why was he still feeling regret?

Walt nudged him. They were both seated on the stage, with the wives and children of the ministers, standing in front of them, with their jackets off and holding microphones to conduct the celebration and direct the believers' faith towards the right targets. The music had stopped and some of the ministers were looking back. Precisely at them. Jade Parker, sitting between Walt and her husband's empty chair was looking at them as well and smiling broadly.

"A big round of applause to Walter Jenkins and Zachary Bergson, the newest members of our church."

The thunderous applause couldn't stop Zachary from thinking how bad the words 'members of our church' sounded when applied to him and it didn't stop Walt from hearing the small voices in his head, praising his skill in handling the situation and shouting possible applications for the money he had made with almost no effort at all. Reverend Parker was waving at them, inviting them to come to his lectern. Zachary felt his mouth go dry and his back getting covered with cold sweat. Walt felt entirely at ease.

"Go on, then," Jade Parker told him. "Don't be shy."

Walt Jenkins being shy. It had never happened and would probably remain so for the rest of his life. He got up, buttoned his jacket and approached the lectern. Zachary felt Jade Parker's fingertips on his arm. She wanted him to go as well. But she wasn't trying as hard as she did with Walt.

He got up and crossed the stage, feeling his legs getting weak and with the applause making him dizzy.

"Thank you," Walt was saying, already warming up to the place and loving the attention. "Thank you very much." It took a couple more seconds of thanking before the noise had lowered to a level that allowed him to be heard. "First of all, I'd like to thank all of you for this warm embrace with which you have welcomed both me and my associate to your church." More applause.

Reverend Parker, who kept standing next to them, bent over the microphone and said:

"Our pleasure."

That made everyone present laugh. Everyone, except Zachary, who, at that moment, was changing his skin color from a pasty white to an increasingly bright green.

"I would also like to thank Reverend Parker," Walt went on, "and his charming wife, for making our partnership possible. Together, I believe we can build a better tomorrow for the children of Africa. Let Atkinson Encyclopedia of Revised Human Knowledge be responsible for educating the leaders the continent so direly needs to realize the enormous potential of that glorious land, where our ancestors first got down from the trees all those thousands of years ago."

Silence. The silence of hands paused in mid-clapping and of screams of joy strangled by the sudden understanding of the words. Reverend Parker raised an eyebrow while his easy smile started to falter. Zachary felt the wide multipurpose room starting to spin wildly around him. He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

Walt had things perfectly controlled. He put his hand on Reverend Parker's shoulder, smiled at him and turned to the congregation once more.

"Just kidding, folks," he said. The collective sigh of relief was audible. Afterwards, they all started to laugh.

Zachary would like to be a part of the collective relief, but he couldn't. He was too busy falling down and testing how painful it would be to let his head hit the red carpet.

*

When he came to his senses, the world still refused to stop moving. The difference was that it had stopped moving in circles.

"Where am I?" he asked Walt, who was sitting next to him, with his tie undone and shirt collar unbuttoned.

"On our way to a celebration," he replied.

Zachary looked around. They were sharing the back seat of a taxi. The street they were travelling through looked familiar. His house was not far.

"What celebration?" he asked, with his mouth tasting like dirty socks. His head hurt. He touched the side of it with his fingers and found what could be the beginning of a bump. He remembered too well what had happened in the church. "Did they cancel the deal? Will they sue us?"

"Relax," Walt said. "I don't know where you get those crazy ideas from. They offered to take you to the nearest hospital, but I said this happens all the time and you only needed to rest for a bit."

"Never happened to me before," Zachary said.

The taxi went around a corner and they entered his street. After a while, he saw his building pass by. "It was back there," he said, raising his voice so he could be heard by the driver. "You missed it."

He got a look through the rear-view mirror, but Walt waved a hand at him, signaling that Zachary was not to be taken seriously.

"He doesn't understand you," he said. "I don't know what language he was speaking when we got in, but he seemed pretty concerned that you'd barf all over his shiny plastic upholstery.

Whatever language he did speak, he seemed to understand what Walt said and muttered some apparently concerned words while looking briefly over his shoulder.

"Don't worry," replied Walt, like he was fluent. "We've arrived, see? It's right there." And he pointed.

The taxi stopped, the driver got his money and they both got out. Zachary still felt his legs a bit shaky, but the fresh air did wonders. It was getting dark and, looking up, he was greeted by an orange and purple streaked sky.

"How can he drive people around without understanding what his clients say?" asked Walt, genuinely curious, while crossing the street, followed by Zachary.

"No idea," said Zachary, trying to make his head stop spinning. Walt went on.

"He was a nice guy. Helpful. He'd go far if he bothered to learn language." Walt Jenkins in his career orienting persona. "Didn't even kidnap you during the stop I had to make."

"You thought he'd kidnap me?" asked Zachary, alarmed.

"No," Walt said. "Not really, at least. Not with the possible barfing situation."

"Where did you go?"

"To see my accountant and leave our check with him."

"You have an accountant?" Zachary felt perplexed.

"Of course," said Walt. "I take my financial affairs very seriously."

"You said: our check," Zachary remarked.

"True. I did."

"But he's not my accountant. I don't even know him," said Zachary.

"Don't worry," said Walt. "I'm an excellent judge of character. If I trust him, you should too. You'll be very happy with his services."

"I'd be very happy if I never had to wear one of your suits again," said Zachary. "What fabric is this? Why does it itch so much?"

"I'm not sure," he said, walking towards a set of downward stairs under a neon sign, while Zachary tried to keep up. "It was the cheapest they had in the store. I'd let you borrow my good suit, but I'm inside it."

"Where are we going?" Zachary asked.

"You'll see," said Walt. "I thought a small celebration was in order."

Those words sounded like a declaration of impending doom to Zachary. He couldn't really explain why. It was a feeling that originated in his guts and spread to the rest of his body.

The neon sign said 'Harry's' and included an arrow pointing to the bottom of the stairs and the logo of a well-known beer brand. They went down and Walt pushed the door. What awaited on the other side didn't look as menacing as Zachary expected. In fact, it didn't look menacing at all. It was just a bar. A couple of tables and chairs, some high stools near the counter. Glasses hanging upside down on top, assorted bottles lining the wall behind, a jukebox in one corner, a TV screen mounted near the ceiling, showing some racing car event. It was also entirely empty, apart from the two of them and the bald old man with his arms crossed behind the counter, looking up at the TV and not even looking their way as they approached. Surprisingly, it was almost... cozy. For lack of a better word.

Then Walt opened his mouth and said something Zachary could never have expected him to say. There or in any other place.

"Carrot juice, please. With a yellow straw.

The man didn't take his eyes from the TV when he replied.

"We're out of carrot juice." He uncrossed his arms, moved one hand under the counter and pointed at a corner door with the other. A significant buzz was heard. He crossed his arms once again.

Walt and Zachary approached the door, with Zachary's confusion growing as fast as his apprehension. The door was marked 'EMPLOYEES ONLY'. Walt turned the knob and opened it. There was a dim corridor on the other side, with walls painted red and a dark-curtained doorway on the opposing end. Light came from a flickering lamp hanging from the ceiling. Voices reached their ears, over a slow musical background.

"Was that Harry?" Zachary asked.

Walt shook his head.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"I told you," said Walt. "We're going to celebrate a successful deal.

"Will we also meet Harry?" asked Zachary, feeling his nerves taking over his mouth and controlling what came out of it.

"No. There's no Harry. I'm not sure if there ever was."

Walt reached for the curtain, pulled it aside and they passed.

It was like a perfect replica of the bar on the other side of the corridor. There was a closed door instead of the jukebox and there was no TV screen to be seen. Other major differences were that that side of the magic mirror had customers and the person behind the bar was a young woman who appeared to be dressed in her underwear.

"Fun, isn't it?" asked Walt.

"Yes," said Zachary, noting with a brief glimpse that the three men whispering around one table seemed more than slightly threatening. "Fun."

They approached the bar and the disrobed bartender looked at them like they were too puddles of piss that had, somehow, become sentient and decided to spill into a bar and start history's most bizarre joke.

"Hello, Dawn," said Walt.

She looked at him with even higher contempt.

"I'm not Dawn," she said.

"Oh..." said Walt, clearly not feeling as embarrassed as he pretended to be. "What happened to Dawn?"

She shrugged.

"Married. Pregnant. In a nunnery. Dead. Who cares?"

"I see," said Walt. After several seconds of trying desperately not to stare, Zachary was almost entirely sure that the girl wasn't dressed in her underwear, after all. It only looked that way. But her outfit was surely skimpy enough to forgive those who, like himself, were fooled by the first impression. "Can we have two beers?"

She reached under the counter and placed two cans over the polished wood with perfectly synchronous motions. No glasses. No complimentary bowl of peanuts. They didn't even look cold. While looking at the closest can, Zachary noticed the girl had a tattoo on her side. Something in cursive lettering. It said...

"What is your friend looking at?" she asked Walt. Zachary looked away immediately, but his gaze fell on the suspicious-looking men around the table, who, for some reason, were looking back at him. He decided to examine the countertop with great interest, following it with his eyes until the end, where a redheaded woman in a black dress was also looking in his direction.

"Sorry," Walt said. "He's from out of town. Is Ron here?"

While Zachary was doing his best to keep his eyes on a bottle of gin behind her, she moved through a pair of swinging doors behind the bar and came back almost immediately. A tall, skinny, middle-aged man with crooked teeth and his hair dyed black came out, saw Walt, seemed surprised by his presence and immediately buried his surprise under a layer of convincing indifference. He walked around the bar and moved to one of the tables, motioning them to follow. They didn't bother to take their warm beers with them. When they were all sitting around the table, the man looked Zachary in the eyes, forcing him to look away once again. It was becoming a habit. The redhead sitting at the bar didn't bother to pretend she had no interest in what was going on.

"Who is this?" the man asked.

"A friend," explained Walt. "He's okay."

"He's with you, Walt," said the man. "That alone makes me suspect he can't be okay."

Zachary swallowed audibly.

"Listen, Ron, I came to settle things straight," said Walt.

The noise coming from Ron's mouth sounded very much like laughter, but not quite.

"Really?" he said. "You've come to pay what you owe me? With interest?"

"Sure," said Walt. Zachary wished his friend Walt would had a healthier notion of what could be considered a celebration. "And I also want to apologize."

"For what?" Ron placed both his hands flat on the table. Almost like he was trying to prevent them from closing around Walt's neck.

"For not coming sooner," Walt said.

"That's very thoughtful of you," said Ron. "Of course I meant to have someone break your legs as soon as I found out where you live, but... let bygones be bygones, right? All is forgiven. Because you were nice enough to drop by and say you're sorry."

Zachary turned his face and saw the men at the other table. They had gone back to their whispered conversation. There was certainly one among them, or all three, who were versed in the art of breaking people's legs. Maybe they would have a special 'two-for-the-price-of-one' deal. He also noticed the woman at the end of the bar was gone. He didn't see her leave.

"Where is it, then?" asked Ron.

"Not yet, but soon. I need a couple of days," Walt said. Judging by the look on Ron's face, that was very far from being the right answer. He raised an eyebrow. Walt explained. "I don't like owing people," he lied. "I especially don't like owing you." That part was probably true. "I didn't come by before because I didn't have enough to pay even half of what I owed."

"But?" said Ron.

"But I've made a good deal and that changed," he said. "Coming here was the first thing I did. You can ask my friend. I wanted to get rid of this weight on my conscience."

"I worry more about the lack of weight in my wallet," Ron said. He looked at Zachary, who was feeling his legs twitch, almost like they were trying to drag him away from there. "Is this true?"

"Yes," he squeaked.

"You finished this deal and came right over?"

"Yes," Zachary managed.

"Because Walt thought he'd keep his legs intact if he pretended to care?"

Zachary didn't reply. He recognized a trick question when he heard one.

"It's not like that, Ron," Walt protested.

"It isn't? Do you take me for a fool?" asked Ron.

Walt didn't say anything. Apparently, he was also capable of spotting trick questions. Especially trick questions that could result in bones being broken. His bones, to be more precise.

"Tomorrow," Ron said, after a tense pause. "You know what happens if I don't see my money by noon tomorrow."

"I do," said Walt. There was an almost imperceptible gulp. "We'll get going, then."

"Not so fast," said Ron. Walt and Zachary waited to hear what was coming after that. "It would be very stupid to let you leave again without knowing where I can find you, wouldn't it? Just like last time. I was very stupid then. Only stupid people trust someone who doesn't deserve to be trusted."

Walt stuck one hand in the inside pocket of his jacket and took out one of the business cards he had made for something called 'The Atkinson Knowledge Foundation', after he checked that the original Atkinson Foundation had shut down a few years following the death of its founder.

"Here you go," he said, sliding the card over the table, towards Ron. "My address."

Zachary felt something crush his stomach, climb up to his chest and demand access to his vocal chords.

Ron picked the card up and read, straightening his arm and raising his head slightly, compensating for his poor eyesight.

"What the hell is this shit?" he asked, sounding more intrigued than angry. But there was some anger there as well. It seemed to be present in all his words.

"It's our new business. Mine and Zachary's," Walt said. "The reason why I can pay you back."

Ron pocketed the card.

"Hence the stupid suits. I don't care. Just make sure I get my money by noon of tomorrow." He waved them way and they got up. "Back door." He pointed at the door near the end of the counter. "I don't want my regulars getting the wrong idea if they see you leaving with full use of your legs."

They moved towards the door.

"Bye, Ron," said Walt. "Thanks for everything."

"Tomorrow," said Ron.

The door opened into a storage room full of empty crates and a metal door allowed them passage into the back alley. The door could only be opened from inside.

As soon as they were out, Zachary felt he couldn't keep it to himself any longer.

"What's wrong with you?!" he asked, doing his best to keep his voice controlled. "You just gave my address to a mobster as collateral for your debt!"

"You're overreacting," he said, while they walked away from the door. "Ron is not a mobster."

"He does a very convincing impersonation of one."

Walt meant to say something in defense of his dear friend Ron, who had just made repeated offers to have his legs broken, but something prevented him. From the shadows of the dark alley, a darkened human form approached. The light from the nearest lamp illuminated his grizzled and wrinkled head. The apparition startled Walt, who, after a second of fright, decided to take action, jumping at him and pushing him hard against the wall while holding him by the collar of a dirty sweater.

"Leave me alone!" he screamed at the old man, who was even more startled by this sudden outburst. "I don't know what you want from me, but I don't have what you're looking for. Just leave me alone and tell your friends to do the same." He lowered his voice just a fraction. "Did I make myself clear?"

The old man kept his stupefied eyes fixed upon Walt's face.

"I only wanted some change, mister," he managed.

That seemed to surprise Walt.

"What?" he asked, releasing him. The old man took one step backward.

"Some change..." he said. "But it's okay if you don't have something to spare. No need to get upset over it."

"But..." Walt started. "You weren't about to grab me and start yelling that I was found and that you must register I don't know what?"

The old man looked confused. He also looked drunk and filthy, but the other aspect took precedence over these two.

"No," he said.

"So you're just a regular hobo?" Walt asked, tactlessly.

"I guess so," said the old man.

"Ah."

"Can I go?" the old man asked, afraid to continue his journey away from the crazed man who had come out of the bar's back door.

"Sure you can," said Walt, trying to sound normal and harmless. It wasn't easy after that. He stuck a hand in his pocket. "Wait, I'll give you something for your trouble." Finding all his pockets empty, he turned to Zachary. "Do we have something we can spare?" he asked.

"Do we?" repeated Zachary. "Let me check our pockets." He found a couple of coins and placed them on the old man's outstretched hand. He thanked them and hurried out of the alley, looking back once to make sure they weren't following him.

"What the hell was that?" asked Walt.

"I think it was you going insane and attacking a harmless old beggar," said Zachary, managing what, to him, sounded like a very accurate description of the events.

"Not that," said Walt. "Where did he come from? And why wasn't he one of the old men who've been following me around?"

"Maybe they're gone," said Zachary. "Do you miss them?"

"No. But I'd like to know what has been going on. This is very strange. Any theories?"

"None," replied Zachary. "Can't explain it also."

"I can," said a voice, startling them again.

**4.1**

The dot on the screen started blinking faster as she crossed the street and approached the luminous sign. 'Harry's' written with letters formed by a single tube filled with some sort of luminescent material. And stairs going down. According to her marker, the target was somewhere down there.

The data she had downloaded from the old-timer's marker made the tracking easier, but it was still hard to get an exact and instant location with information gathered by an obsolete model. It was lucky the two markers still allowed for a direct connection to be established. There was no signal of the target at the address the woman had given her, the house belonging to the man named Zachary, but the marker caught traces of his presence and, following those traces, she had ended up there.

She put the marker inside her pouch and took out her stylus, twisting a small dial on the grip and hiding it in a jacket pocket. Then, she went down.

The place looked exactly like the old images she had seen of public establishments of the kind, but without any customers. It didn't impress her at all. Even nostalgia bars from her own time that tried to duplicate that vintage look managed to be slightly more appealing in their blatant fakeness. Not that Margrit preferred them. She had never enjoyed spending time in places crowded with complete strangers or with strangers pretending to be her friends and she started enjoying it even less since the beginning of the heretic attacks. It was like people stopped being able to talk about anything else, and she heard enough about the subject at work.

She approached the man behind the bar, sticking one hand in her pocket. The man didn't look at her, keeping his eyes on the screen showing land vehicles chasing each other at high speed.

"Hello," she said.

The man didn't reply. He still didn't look at her.

One thing hadn't changed with time and frequenting public places still worked more or less the same way in her time.

"I'd like a drink," she said.

The man gave her a brief look. He was old, but not too old. In her time, she would have said he was somewhere between 75 and 85 years old, but she couldn't tell with local-timers. Their lives were much shorter and they died of old age when they should be in their most valuable years as experienced workers and leaders.

"What kind of drink?" he asked, looking back at the screen. The vehicle chase was probably very stimulating.

What drink could she ask for that already existed in that time? Not a malt-powermix, for sure. Or a single-lime booster.

"Beer, please," she said.

"We're all out," the man said.

Should she find that strange? Wasn't beer a very common beverage in the early 21st century?

"Ok," she said. "What do you have?"

"Nothing, we were about to close for the night." He grabbed the screen controller on the counter, pointed it, pressed a button and the screen went black. "Good night." He was looking straight at her, this time, with both hands firmly planted over the polished wood.

There was definitely something there that wasn't as it should be. Margrit looked around.

"What's behind that door?" she asked, pointing at the door at the end of the counter.

"That's where we keep the none-of-your-damn-businesses," the man replied. He was starting to feel aggravated. Margrit understood that insisting could have unpleasant consequences. The look on the man's face told her so. She tried to remain calm and as friendly as she was able to appear.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to intrude," she said.

"Just go," said the man, pointing at the exit.

Margrit got closer to the bar and took the stylus out of her pocket.

"Look at this," she said.

The man looked and wasn't impressed.

"Nice. Get out."

"You'll need to watch closely."

"What do I care about your stupid pen?"

"Funny that you ask."

"Why?"

"Well, because..."

There was a brief 'woosh' sound and the man fell on the floor behind the counter. Margrit went to the door and tried it. Locked. She went around the counter and crouched near the unconscious man, placing two fingers on his neck. There was a pulse. The offensive capabilities of the stylus were nowhere as advanced as the technology powering the marker and, sometimes, a stunning setting could be fatal. It was also true that a lethal setting could simply stun a target or not do anything at all, but agents were forced to deal with the flaws until a more effective model was developed, approved by Church authorities and distributed first to selected timenauts for testing purposes and later to everyone else. Killing the man wouldn't have disturbed her too much. It wouldn't be her first accidental casualty. Still, it was preferable to keep a clean record. After all, her performance in the mission would be evaluated upon her return and getting a bonus was something that interested her very much.

While she was crouching, she saw a very conspicuous button under the counter. She decided to press it and heard a promising buzz. She walked around the counter again, opened the unlocked door and walked along the corridor until the curtained doorway, entering an almost exact replica of the room she had been in before. Looking around, she saw a man sitting by himself at one table, three others sitting around another and a half-naked woman standing behind the bar. They were all looking at her, expecting her to do something. Suddenly, she understood.

"I see," she said. "You're doing something illegal, aren't you?"

The three men around the table looked alarmed for a second, before becoming angry and getting up. But it was the man sitting by himself who spoke.

"Do you have a badge to flash?" he asked.

Church agents did have badges. A silver shield attached to a piece of black leather, containing inside her number and the eight-pointed star of the Divine Mentor. And she'd have to admit it was pleasant being able to pull it out and flashing it at criminals on routine busts. But time-jump operations were not routine and had different procedures. One of those procedures demanded that timenauts left their badges behind. It was highly unlikely that the time continuum would collapse if a local-timer would see one of these badges, but it was better not to argue with the bureaucrats that came up with the rules. Margrit had learned early to obey and keep her objections to herself, no matter how preposterous the rules might be.

"No," she replied. "Not right now."

"That's good to know," the man said. The other three were approaching, doing an excellent job of looking menacing, but he raised a hand and made them stop. "Who are you and what do you want?"

"I don't want any trouble," she said. That was always a good way to start. "And I have no interest in whichever criminal activities you're engaged in back here." That left the three men even more agitated. Their eagerness to reach her was almost palpable. The half-naked woman behind the bar disappeared through a back door, expecting the worst. Margrit could sympathize. "There's a man called Walter Jenkins," she said.

"I know there is," said the man with shiny black hair, not moving from his seat. "What about him?"

"He was here recently. A man named Zachary could be with him," she said.

"Hmm-hmm," said the man. "Go on."

"I'm looking for them," she concluded.

"Walt gets that a lot," said the man. "What do you want from them?"

"That probably doesn't concern you, does it?" asked Margrit.

The man thought about it.

"It's like this," he started. "Normally, I wouldn't care. Even if you told me you were out to kill Walt, I'd wish you luck and perhaps even offer you some sort of bonus. But not right now. I need him to stay alive for now. Would you wait a couple of days?"

Margrit didn't understand the reason why she was being asked to wait. Nor did she care much. Besides, even if she did consider attending the man's request, she couldn't wait. The event was probably getting very close and she'd have only one opportunity to document it. One opportunity, as far as she was concerned, of course. Other timenauts would be sent back and get a chance to do the same, but, if she failed, there was nothing awaiting her back in her time besides utter rejection from her peers and, basically, everyone else. One chance to settle the religious schism that was threatening to tear the world apart. She had sworn to give everything she could to the cause and she wouldn't go back on her word simply because an unknown man in a den of iniquity asked her to wait a couple of days.

"No," she said.

"I see," said the man. "Can you think of a reason that would prevent my men from killing you?"

Margrit looked back and saw the three men pulling out handguns. She was almost amused to see people using those preposterous museum pieces until she recalled they intended to use them on her. Museum pieces or not, they were more than capable of bringing about her death. Her stylus couldn't help her. They were too far and it would take too long to get nearer and target one of them. Even if it the stylus did work as it should, the other two would be left with enough time to finish her. She regretted that Command didn't allow timenauts to take back proper weapons. Another random rule.

"I can't think of anything, to be honest," she said. "Unless it would help if I assured you I don't mean to kill this Walt."

"You'll understand your assurance won't do any good, right?" the man asked. He was waiting for the right moment to give the order. When he did, it would be the end of that mission completion bonus she was expecting. And of her life as well. "We've just met. What's your name?"

Another chance to be entirely honest.

"Margrit," she replied.

"Nice to meet you, Margrit," the man said. "I'm Ron." He looked at her jacket. "Velvet. I used to have a jacket just like that. You have good taste."

"Thanks, but I didn't choose it," Margrit said.

"Then the guy who gave it to you had excellent taste," Ron said. "I'd ask you to give him my regards, but I'm not sure that would make sense in our current situation." A pause. Margrit expected the worse, but Ron continued. "My doorman. Is he dead?"

"No. He'll wake up soon enough. With a headache, but otherwise fine."

"Merciful," Ron said. "If you're speaking the truth."

"Why don't you go check for yourself?" she dared. "All of you. I promise I won't budge."

Ron's lips curled into a chilling smile.

"And a sense of humor. What a catch," he said.

Margrit wondered if that counted as a compliment, coming as it was from a man who intended having her killed and, for a brief moment, thought if she should thank him for it.

"I think I'll take your word for it and stay right here," he said.

Margrit said nothing.

"What do you want with Walt?" he asked.

"Not kill him," she said.

"You've already said that."

"Let's say I've come a long way to see him do something," she explained, thinking that was as far as she could go without actually disclosing the real nature of her mission. What would Command say about sharing mission details with local-timers? Almost immediately, she realized they did say something about it. They forbade it completely, under penalty of expulsion of the offending agent and a possible jail sentence of the extended variety.

Ron looked intrigued.

"To see him do what?" he asked. "I know Walt is a resourceful guy, too resourceful for his own good, even. But I wasn't aware of any performing talents that would motivate someone to travel a long way to see him."

The half-naked woman came back and stood nervously behind the counter, looking at both of them.

"I would prefer not saying more than I already said," said Margrit. "Really."

"And I would prefer not to kill you," Ron said. "Really. But you're not making my life any easier."

"Boss," said the woman. Ron ignored her.

"You could let me go," Margrit said, without much hope. "I did already give you my word I don't intend to kill your friend. Or to hurt him, even."

"He's far from being my friend," said Ron. The notion amused him.

"Boss," the woman said again. Ron looked at her for a second, but looked back at Margrit immediately after.

"Your time is up," he said. Margrit thought about her bonus again. She never bothered to prepare herself for the post-mortem loss of money she had already seen as assured. A big mistake.

The men behind her would point their obsolete exploding powder weapons at her, pull the primitive triggers and then... Apparently, that type of gun used to be very noisy. Should she cover her ears?

"Boss!" said the woman, once more.

"Damn it!" yelled Ron. "What is it? Can't you see we're busy here?"

"It's Tanya," the woman said, pointing at the door she had come from.

"What about her?" asked Ron.

"She's dead."

"What? She was here a moment ago. How can she be dead?"

"I don't know," said the woman. "But that's not the strangest part."

Ron's annoyance for being interrupted faded.

"Someone stuck her in the freezer," said the woman, her pale complexion turning even paler. "She's naked. And frozen solid."

For what seemed like an eternity, everyone was silent. Finally, Ron said:

"What?"

The woman opened her mouth, ready to repeat what she had just said, but Ron was faster.

"Are you high?" he asked.

"No," said the woman, almost offended by the question, but not quite.

"She was right there," Ron said, pointing towards the end of the counter. "Minutes ago. When I looked again, while talking to Walt, she was gone. I thought she would be back there doing something."

"Does being frozen solid count as 'doing something'"? asked the woman.

A new pause.

"That's impossible," said Ron.

"Go check if you don't believe me."

He looked at the men with the guns and nodded once towards Margrit. They grunted their agreement before he disappeared through the door behind the counter, emerging moments later, looking dumbstruck.

"Shit," was his only comment.

"So Walter Jenkins was here," said Margrit. It occurred to her that the moment was far from being appropriate for that remark, but it was too late. The words were already out. Ron looked at her, confused. She thought her situation wouldn't become much more hazardous if she explained. "You said you talked to him."

Ron kept looking at her without speaking.

Margrit thought about the bonus once more. Possibly for the last time. She had planned to buy the forest cabin her father had dreamed about. Would her mother miss her? She had never been her favorite daughter, despite having no siblings.

Ron finally broke the silence, after what seemed like an eternity.

"Tell me again you won't kill him. Say it with heart. Your life may depend on it. Wait... It does depend on it."

Margrit did her best.

"I won't kill him." Ron kept his eyes intensely fixed on hers. "I mean it."

They all waited for Ron's retort, quite possibly expecting him to say very different things.

"Go," he said.

At first, no one got what he meant. Understanding came with an enormous burst of relief. For Margrit, at least. The three men pointing ancient weapons at her looked disappointed. The half-naked woman behind the bar still seemed too dumbfounded by the discovery of a dead acquaintance to care too much about Margrit's fate. Her indifference was mirrored by Margrit's in what concerned the matter of the frozen Tanya. For what she could infer from the words she heard, someone had been stuck into some sort of cold preservation locker and, for some reason, that was perplexing. They had been about to kill her where she stood an instant before. It should be expected that they were more accustomed to dealing with death with a lot more casualness. Was the intention of putting a sudden end to her yet to be glorious career as a timenaut entirely put aside? The gun barrels were still pointed at several points of her body, although they had lowered slightly while the men holding them followed the conversation taking place in front of them. But not enough to keep the shots from being fatal.

One of them decided to say something.

"You're letting her go?" he asked.

"Yeah," replied Ron. "I am."

"But she's right here," he stated. "We could just..." He raised his gun a couple of inches and Margrit started having doubts about her longevity again. "She saw things," he added, looking convinced that he had found the argument to convince his boss beyond any doubt.

"What did she see, you idiot?" asked Ron. Judging by the look on the gunman's face, that wasn't the reaction he was waiting for. "She didn't even know there were things to see until you said so."

The man finally lowered his gun.

"She knows about Tanya," said the woman behind the counter.

Ron thought about it for a second.

"True," he said. "But she also knows we were too busy preparing her death to kill someone else. Don't you?" Margrit nodded. "Now go, before I change my mind. And remember: no killing Walt for the next two days. After that, I don't care."

She looked at the three gunmen. Two of them were returning the weapons to their hiding places inside their jackets. The third, the one who had spoken, kept holding his at the end of his lowered arm.

"You sure you thought this through, boss?" he asked, keeping a suspicious eye on Margrit while she walked slowly towards the door.

Ron did a surprisingly good job of restraining his exasperation.

"Do you want to spend the rest of the night hiding two bodies instead of one?" he asked.

The gunman holstered his pistol grudgingly and Ron looked at Margrit and nodded towards the door.

When she let the door close behind her, Ron was saying something with a raised voice. She didn't feel curious enough to go back and listen, focusing instead on her task.

The dark alley was empty and she took the marker out of her pouch, flipped it open and looked at the screen. A persistent blip was still signaling the target's presence, but he was nowhere to be seen. She keyed in the command to refresh tracking and, after triangulating the area with the tracking data compiled by the old-timer, the blip returned to the marker's screen, this time hovering over the map of a different area, with coordinates in a corner and a digital compass needle pointing the direction she should follow to get there.

She looked up and saw few stars on a sky tainted by the city's many lights. Funny how the sky didn't appear to change, no matter what time she was in.

She shook her head, dismissing the absurd thought, put her marker back in the pouch and moved towards the alley's exit.

**5**

The woman was clearly insane. Walt had seen her before, during one of his previous visits to Harry's, before he decided to accept Ron's generosity and take the very beneficial loan he was willing to give him to start a science fiction-themed restaurant that would be a guaranteed hit. Before he used up all the money over the space of five months, not even bothering to learn what was the first step he should take in order to become a restaurant manager. Before his failure to repay made him start looking behind more frequently when he walked around, particularly in that part of the city.

She was some sort of 'professional'. She would sit at the bar, start conversations with the patrons and, occasionally, leave with them. Walt was also approached, but he didn't need long to understand what was behind her eagerness to please. He didn't like paying for it. He also didn't like redheads too much, so she gave up and kept looking.

That night, she was different. After approaching them in the alley, where she was unexplainably hiding in the shadows and watching his bizarre altercation with the hobo, she suggested they went to a place where they could talk, suggesting a nearby square in front of a large department store, already closed at that hour. For some reason, she seemed eager to leave the alley. The square was deserted, with only occasional passersby, and it did, in fact, make for an excellent place to discuss matters that should be kept secret from everyone else. The only problem was that Walt didn't know what they could talk about that was so secretive and, also, he didn't understand how the square, with its lights and convenient location for both drivers and walkers, was more secretive than the dark alley they had come from.

"Much better," the woman had said. If he remembered right, her name was Tanya. She didn't introduce herself again and didn't ask who Zachary was. "We won't be interrupted here."

But what qualified her most as a crazy person were the things coming out of her mouth, after she'd taken them to a darker corner, behind a large tree and some bushes. There just wasn't any way to see it other than as the result of a case of severe and possibly incurable insanity. On several occasions while she was speaking, Walt thought if she could get dangerous and if he could use Zachary as a decoy while he ran away. Zachary wouldn't mind. He'd probably see it as a way of examining her boobs from a closer distance, something which he had been doing almost continuously for the last moments. If Walt noticed, so did Tanya, but she didn't say or do anything about it. Maybe she was enjoying the attention. Or perhaps she was too concentrated in expelling a long string of absurd sentences from her mouth and thought it took precedence over telling Zachary, the randy little geek, to focus on her eyes.

"Why?" asked Walt, when she stopped speaking and it seemed like a good opportunity to finally say something.

"Why what?" Tanya asked, looking intently at a woman with shopping bags passing some feet from them.

"Why are they looking for me?"

"Well," she started, surprising another hungry look from Zachary and, again, not seeming to mind, "they are trying to prevent you from doing something you will do soon."

"What is that?" asked Walt. There was only one thing in his agenda. "Paying my debt to Ron?"

"No," Tanya said. "Something else."

"Then they got the wrong guy," said Walt. "Because I'm not planning to do something else." Zachary stopped his mammalian contemplation and looked at him, arching one eyebrow. Walt looked at him and glared.

An old couple passed between them and the nearest department store wall before Tanya spoke.

"Believe me," she said. "You will do something else. "

"What?" asked Walt.

"I can't say," she replied. "I don't know what." He was almost sure she was lying.

"How can you be so sure of that? How can they?"

A group of young girls passed by them, giggling. For a brief instant, Tanya seemed angry.

"What I'm about to tell you next may perturb you," she said.

Perturb. Walt didn't remember such a fancy vocabulary from their previous conversations. Perhaps she had started to read the dictionary when she wasn't... well... being a professional.

"Go right ahead," he said. Even Zachary started paying attention.

"They are time travelers. From the future."

And there it was. Irrefutable proof of insanity.

"Okay," said Walt, wanting to take several steps backward, but not daring.

"Time travelers?" repeated Zachary. Tanya nodded. "Backwards time travel is a theoretical impossibility. I read it online."

Tanya was pondering a reply, but Walt beat her to it.

"Don't believe everything you read online," he said, giving him a discreet wink, that Zachary didn't understand. "It's perfectly possible for an army of smelly, old hobos from the future to be after me to... what was it?" He looked at Tanya. "Prevent me from doing something by..."

"Killing you," she said.

"Ah. Of course." He looked at his watch. "I'd love to stay and chat, but we have to..."

"I can prove it to you," Tanya said.

"How?" asked Zachary. Walt didn't care and hated him for saying that.

"Not here," she said. "There's an underground automobile storage unit nearby. Follow me there and I'll show you."

Underground automobile storage unit. There it was again.

"We'd love to do that, but we really can't," Walt said. "But I'll give you a call and we can go explore underground automobile storage units together next week. How about that?"

Tanya sighed, looking resigned. She looked one way and the other. Nobody was approaching from either side and, apparently, that made her feel at ease to reach inside her purse and...

Woosh.

She collapsed on the floor. Where her head used to be, Walt saw a hand holding a pen with a glowing tip. He needed time to understand what had happened.

"What just happened?" he asked, deciding it was best if someone explained it to him, saving him the effort to figure it all out by himself.

Attached to the hand, there was an arm with a complete woman attached to it, coming out of the bushes. Short brown hair, big round eyes, the kind of face that looked permanently bothered by something. The tip of the pen was no longer glowing. She lowered it. Zachary crouched near Tanya, trying to think of something to do. He tried holding her wrist up with two fingers.

"I can't find a pulse", he said.

"You're doing it wrong," said the newcomer, putting the pen inside a black pouch attached to her belt. "But she should be stunned."

Zachary got up, holding something that had fallen from Tanya's purse. It was a piece of black material shaped like the letter L. He was turning it in his fingers, looking puzzled. The woman was startled, reached out one hand and took it from him, examining it closely.

Walt was expecting sirens, but he heard nothing. It made no sense to hear sirens so soon, he realized. Immediately after, he started worrying that someone would come and see them with an unconscious woman at their feet behind some bushes. It could hardly look more suspicious than that.

"Oh," said the woman. She was still looking at the thing in her hands. So was Zachary. Walt did the same and saw that it was starting to smoke. He thought about suggesting her to drop it, since it was about to burst into flames, whatever it may be, but something very odd happened next. The L-shaped object vanished.

Smoke started to rise also from the unconscious Tanya. In two blinks of an eye, she was also gone, leaving behind her purse, with the lipstick and can of mace that had rolled from inside, her black dress and her red shoes.

"This!" squealed Zachary. "What was this?"

The woman seemed vaguely surprised.

"I don't know," she said. "Never saw anything like this before. But I was wrong. She is dead."

"Who the hell are you?" Walt asked her, with a slight panic making him raise his voice and realizing immediately after that he shouldn't, because the last thing he wanted was to attract attention to that dark corner of the plaza. Even if three people standing around discarded women's garments didn't seem as incriminating as three people surrounding a corpse.

The woman was raising her hands to the light, as if trying to see if the vanished thing had left any sort of residue on her skin. Judging from her expression, it hadn't.

"Doesn't matter," she replied.

"That's very convenient!" said Walt, raising his voice again. "Are you also here to warn me about old men from the future coming to kill me?"

"What?" That got her attention.

"Take it easy, Walt", said Zachary, trying to calm him down.

"Take it easy? Didn't you see what just happened?" said Walt. "You're not the one who started magically attracting crazy people all of a sudden."

"What did you say?" asked the woman.

"Yes, I'm including you when I say crazy people," said Walt.

"That thing about old men coming to kill you..." she said.

"Yes. What about it?"

"Where did you say they came from?"

"What?" Walt wasn't getting it. Luckily, Zachary was there to lend a hand.

"He said they came from the future," he said.

"Ah," said the mysterious pen stabber. "Who told you that?"

"What's it to you?" asked Walt.

"Just tell me," the woman said. "Please."

"Well..." He looked down. "She did. Tanya."

"I see," she said. "That is... I don't know what to make of it."

"Do you know what to make of the woman you just killed and whose corpse turned to smoke?" asked Zachary.

"No. To be honest, I don't know what to make of her either."

Walt felt dizzy.

"I think I'm having a mental breakdown," he said, considering sitting on the floor, but giving up on the idea, since he didn't want to be closer to what was left of the dead woman.

"Why did you kill her?" asked Zachary.

"Equipment malfunction. I only wanted to stun her," said the woman. "But she was about to kill him." She pointed at Walt. "And you too, probably."

"What?" asked Walt, sounding exasperated.

"That thing she was reaching for was probably a gun," she said.

"Probably?" said Zachary.

"Most likely," she emended.

"What reason could she have to kill us?" asked Zachary.

"I'm not sure, but it's probably related to things I can't talk to you about," she said.

"That's not very helpful," said Zachary.

Walt was still looking down.

"Tanya wouldn't want to kill me," he said. "That is... unless Ron told her to... but I..."

"She wasn't Tanya," the woman said.

Walt looked up at her.

"Sure she was. She used to work at Harry's as a..." There was no need to mention the moral faults of the recently deceased and evaporated. "She used to work there."

"No," the woman insisted. "Did she look like this Tanya you're speaking of?"

"Of course she did," said Walt, not understanding where the conversation was going to, but not wanting to follow that road, anyway. "It was her."

"No. It was someone pretending to be her, using means I didn't know were possible," she said. "The real Tanya is back at the bar."

"She's alive?" asked Walt, opening his eyes wide.

"I wouldn't say that."

"Oh God..." He felt sick. "I don't understand anything anymore."

The woman turned to Zachary.

"You should take him home," she said.

After staring at her for a moment, Zachary put one arm around Walt's shoulders and started to pull him away.

"Come on."

Walt didn't resist. He'd be glad to be far from there. He was used to things making a lot more sense.

"Wait," said the woman. The word threatened to turn Walt's stomach upside down. "Is your name Walter Jenkins?" she asked him.

"Leave me alone!" he blurted.

She nodded.

"I needed confirmation," she said. "See you around."

Not if I can help it, thought Walt while Zachary lead him away.

**5.1**

Margrit Lorne still wasn't impressed. Even if her marker had finished the scan started an hour earlier, when she was hiding in the bushes next to the target, producing a positive identification with 99.9% certainty. Not even the remaining 0.01% would manage to impress her and turn her back into a believer. But she had a job to do and she meant to do it.

She lifted her slate, erased the previous drop and wrote:

99.9% pos ID. Contact unavoidable. Failed target elimination by unknown agent. Awaiting instruc. Drop 4.

She buried it again in the rubble and went back to the corner where she had pitched her thermal tent, sitting down on a brick she had been using to sit down on, disregarding painful protests from her behind.

It was completely dark outside, and the only light in the abandoned warehouse came from her lantern. She'd sleep an hour or two before sunrise, much less than the five hours recommended by Command physicians, but she was never much of a sleeper, anyway. Even when she wasn't on a mission. The combination of tension, anxiety and alertness prevented her from relaxing long enough to fall asleep and the sleeping pad also contributed a great deal. It wasn't much better than sleeping on the rubble. In fact, it was almost like sleeping on the rubble, only with a thin layer of polymer over it. She wondered if the geniuses in Command's Standard Equipment Development Division had ever slept in one of those to know how it felt. It seemed unlikely. Or perhaps they did and couldn't care less.

Two or three hours left before she passed out of exhaustion, the only assured way of getting some sleep while on a mission.

She looked at the marker screen again. The '99.9%' was still flashing. She pressed a button and replaced it with a map of the area. Another button click and the screen filled with a list of data blocks, including the ones she had downloaded from the old-timer's marker, some of which were corrupted and were completely useless. Luckily, the ones that were intact were more than enough to allow a positive tracking. Another button press brought up strings of numbers and letters arranged in columns. Lists of coordinates. The place where she was, the places where she had been recently, the places she could go to from there. The places that didn't exist yet, but would become real in several consecutive futures. Yet another button press and the '99.9%' was back on the screen.

Shit, she thought.

Such an advanced piece of technology and they couldn't fit some form of passing the time in it. How hard could it be? There was that old visual game of arranging falling blocks into rows, making them disappear and preventing them from reaching the top of the screen. The marker had more than enough memory and processing capacity to support that with ease, but did someone think of it? No. Of course not. Because the people developing equipment had never been on a mission and had no practical idea of what was needed. Their knowledge was entirely theoretical.

When she returned, Margrit thought, she would write a letter to the head of the Church's Department of Personnel to suggest it. Other timenauts would certainly support her.

Or maybe she would do nothing of the kind. Because what mattered while on a mission became unimportant when she was out of duty. That was how things were. Nothing to do about it. It would never change.

She closed the marker and stuck it in her pouch.

There was also the matter of the woman to keep her awake. The weapon she almost used to kill the target was similar to the ones available back in her time, with an important difference. Weapons she was familiar with didn't evaporate once their owner was eliminated. But this wasn't as disturbing as seeing the body also turn to smoke. All that and her unexplained intention to eliminate the target suggested she came from the future, but it didn't make sense. Why wasn't she following procedure? How did Command allow her to time-jump while armed? And, most importantly, what interest could she possibly have in getting rid of Walter Jenkins? Unless she wasn't an agent of the Church, but of the heretics. If so, how had they gained access to time travel technology? Should she expect other armed agents to be sent? Should she start following the target around as a bodyguard, to assure he would stay alive until the event?

And when would the event take place, after all? Both her marker and the old-timer's agreed that it would be soon, but when? Saying something would happen soon and not pointing out exactly when was completely useless. Another thing to mention in the letter she would never write to the Department of Personnel.

Feeling drowsy, she decided to take the chance and hope sleep would come earlier that night, getting up from the brick and unrolling the pad inside the tent before laying herself on it and closing the tent flaps.

Or maybe she shouldn't worry too much about the target's death. If that man was really who they had been looking for since the first time-jumps, the purpose of the mission and the belief system that had shaped her world started to look very dubious. A womanizer, lying, dishonest and possibly criminal individual. There was nothing pious about Walter Jenkins. If the people back in her time, the people who believed, who took part in regular cults, who paid the Church's due taxes, met Walter Jenkins, they would feel seriously disappointed and the strength of their beliefs would be severely undermined. She almost felt glad for thinking it was all just superstition before the mission started. There was no way disappointment would get at her also.

But, if someone asked, she was the most diligent believer of them all. Whatever was necessary to keep her job. If she was required to fall on her knees in front of Walter Jenkins and praise his divine graces, she would. Almost without hesitating. Margrit did have pride, but she never let it get in the way of the comfortable life she thought she deserved.

She felt her eyebrows heavy and was almost about to close them when...

A sudden popping sound and an inexplicable wind, blowing against the camouflaged tent cloth. A quick hand took her stylus out of the pouch, while the other reached for the clasp keeping the tent flaps closed, pressing it and opening them.

There was a man outside, short and chubby, trembling and breathing hard. There was a circle of exposed skin shaved on top of his skull and he was wearing pants made from a coarse blue material that were far too large for him. The red shirt was so big that it made him look like he was wearing a dress. A large blue number '26' decorated his back. About the high leather boots, the only thing that could be said was that they weren't more ridiculous than the rest of the ensemble. He was twisting something in his hands. A tan bucket hat, she saw, when she went around him, unnoticed. Sometimes, it was very hard to escape thinking that Command's idea of what would constitute acceptable local-time wear was seriously flawed.

The man saw her and jumped. He then saw the stylus she was pointing at him and, probably because he couldn't think of a more extreme reaction than the previous jump, decided to stand very still.

"Oh," he said.

"Oh what?" asked Margrit.

He cleared his throat, trying to make it lower and more manlike. Without success.

"Agent Margrit Lorne?" he squealed.

"That would depend."

"Hmm?" He looked even more panicky, if that was possible.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Ah, yes. Of course." He cleared his throat again. It wasn't helping. "I'm Brother Maxwell. Chaplain of the Church. Command sent me to establish contact with the target."

"Did they?"

"They... well... yes, they did, actually," he stuttered, most unconvincingly.

"Is there any way you can prove it?" Margrit asked.

The pale little man looked around. It was doubtful that he would find anything in the abandoned warehouse to help him, but he tried anyway.

"I don't... know?" he said, turning it into a bizarre question to which there was no possible answer.

"You'll have to do better than that, Brother..." said Margrit. "Or should I say alleged Brother?"

He was making a real effort to come up with something to answer her request, but, judging by the way his pale complexion started to look green in the points reached by the light of the lantern, his efforts were getting nowhere.

"I know what you can do," said Margrit, deciding to help him out. She liked to think fairness was one of her qualities. "Pray."

"What?" he asked, with his eyes wide open following the tip of the stylus. "Pray?"

"Yes. A chaplain should know how to pray, don't you think? It's not a complicated request."

"What should I—"

"The Lord's Prayer will do fine," she said.

The man swallowed hard, trying to calm down enough to be able to speak without stuttering. Then, he joined his hands, bowed his head with eyes closed and started.

"Our Lord, thou hast given us our Divine Mentor to guide our steps out of misery and unto eternal bounty. Bless our words and deeds, bless your children and unworthy servants, so that we can thrive and bring the light of thine star to the world. Amen."

He looked up, hopefully, while keeping his hands together, waiting for Margrit's judgment. It was convincing enough. Didn't prove a thing, of course. Most heretics had started as children of the Church and would also know the words, but the man had said them with genuine fervor and, although it could also have been out of fear for his life, she decided to follow her intuition. It didn't fail her too often.

"That will do," she said, lowering her stylus.

The man breathed with relief.

"Praise Creation," he said.

"Brother Maxwell, was it?" Margrit asked.

"That's right," said the man.

"So Command is certain?"

"Well, your last drop mentioned a 99.9% certainty," he said. "A 95% certainty calls for personal verification by a member of the clergy. And here I am." He pointed at his ridiculous wardrobe.

"Yes," said Margrit, looking him up and down and wondering if he had any idea of how ridiculous he looked. She hoped she didn't look that bad. "Here you are."

"I also bring information concerning that unknown agent you mentioned," he said.

"Any idea who it could be?" she asked. "Was it someone sent by Command?"

"No," Brother Maxwell replied with a grave expression. "The situation is quite serious."

Margrit thought that, if the situation was that serious, he should get on with the explanation instead of trying to keep it suspenseful.

"Well?" she said, on the verge of losing her patience.

"There has been a disruption in the continuum," explained Brother Maxwell. Margrit understood enough about time travel to know that 'a disruption in the continuum' could mean anything. At the same time, she didn't understand enough about time travel to even dare guess what it could be. "We are still trying to explain it."

"And what did this disruption in the continuum do, exactly?" asked Margrit.

He lifted his hat slightly to scratch his forehead.

"We're assuming it created a parallel reality in which the heretics are dominant and have access to time-jump technology. Also, they seem to have developed it to a point which we haven't reached yet."

"That's a very big assumption," said Margrit.

"It was an unfortunate choice of words," said the chaplain. "Forgive me. Command is almost certain that this is what happened."

"Almost." Margrit repeated the crucial word.

"Yes," said Brother Maxwell. "Until the theory is confirmed, it will remain just that. A theory. You know how the Church is obsessed with proving things."

Margrit knew nothing of the sort. In her opinion, the problem was precisely that they didn't interest themselves enough in proving claims, expecting the faithful to be just that and accept everything they said as undeniable truths.

"This woman who tried to kill the target," said Margrit. "She told him the old-timers had been sent from the future to kill him. Could that be the cause of the disruption?"

"Not likely," said Brother Maxwell, without hesitation. "The Narrative clearly states an annunciation by travellers from the future. That would already be encompassed in the continuum."

"Then I've run out of ideas," Margrit admitted.

"It could be something that hasn't yet happened in this time," said Brother Maxwell.

"It could," said Margrit. She thought of something more disturbing than disruptions in complex temporal perceptions. "So Command already knew about these parallel reality agents? The woman I saw wasn't the first?"

The chaplain looked adequately concerned.

"No, she wasn't," he said. "They have been sent to our native time as well. With dramatic consequences."

That didn't sound comforting at all.

"What happened?" she asked.

"There have been three of them," he explained. "Two exploded themselves in temples during cult. Hundred of casualties and irreparable damage to the buildings."

"And the third?"

"The third..." It looked like an unpleasant matter to remember. "He was sent to the Archbishop's official residence. To murder His Eminence."

Dramatic was, indeed, the right qualifier. Margrit understood the chaplain's concern.

"The Archbishop is...?" Even if she was far from being the most devout believer, the Archbishop was still the highest authority figure of the world she knew and, apart from that, he was her boss.

"No, thank Creation," said Brother Maxwell, looking appalled by the thought. "He was absent at the time. But both the Secretary of State and the Bishop-Regent perished. With several non-lethal casualties in his staff."

"What happened to the killers?" Margrit asked.

"Well... the first two..." The chaplain looked queasy. "There couldn't have been much left of them after the explosions. As for the third, he was shot by Security Staff members and... Something unusual happened. We're still trying to understand it.

"Let me guess," Margrit said. "His body turned to smoke."

The chaplain looked surprised.

"Yes! And not only him—"

"His gun also."

"That's right. Was it the same with the agent you eliminated?"

"It was. How can they do this?"

"Well, like I said, their technology seems to be more advanced than ours. And, apparently, they can also locate targets without need of previous acquisition of tracking data."

There was a large elephant in the room. Margrit decided to point directly at it.

"Isn't it disturbing that a parallel reality where the heresy is dominant has managed greater advancements than our own?" she asked.

Brother Maxwell looked very much like someone who preferred not having heard that.

"We cannot discuss such matters," he said. "That would be heresy in itself."

Margrit rolled her eyes.

"Spare me," she said. "Did you bring a weapon with you?"

"A weapon? I thought the rules—"

"I know about the rules. But the woman I killed had a weapon. And my stylus can hardly be considered a reliable piece of equipment for something other than writing on slates."

"I didn't bring a weapon," he said, uselessly.

Typical, Margrit thought. That was so typical of Command. They were incapable of thinking ahead.

"Do you, at least, have martial training?" she asked, without any real hope.

The chaplain's expression mixed equal amounts of embarrassment and disbelief with a slight hint of something that could be classified as vague amusement.

"Religious seminars aren't the best places to find trained fighters," he said.

Of course he wasn't trained. Margrit should have learned by now that wishful thinking didn't lead her anywhere.

"Well," she said, "I'm sure they sent you for a reason. You must be the man for the job in these difficult circumstances."

"Ah," he said. A sudden sinking of his expression did not hint at something positive.

"Ah what?"

"I'm not... well... I wasn't... so to speak..." he stuttered.

"What?" she repeated.

"The top graduates of my Chapter were taking part in the cult where one of the bombs went off," he said.

"What does that mean? That you're the best of the surviving chaplains?"

"Not entirely," Brother Maxwell admitted, with some dismay. "When I said the top graduates of my Chapter were there, I should have mentioned that the others were all present as well. I had been dispensed because I was at home with a serious flu and..."

"And you're the only chaplain left," Margrit concluded.

"Yes. That's right."

"Perfect."

"But I assure you my determination is unwavering."

"I'm sure it is."

There was a pause during which Margrit cursed her luck internally and tried to come to terms with the fact that the mission was starting to look very much like it couldn't end well.

"Shouldn't we get going? Time is of the essence," said Brother Maxwell.

"Going where?" asked Margrit.

"To find the target so I can perform the identification ritual and make it official. So we can return back home and put an end to the heresy."

"Now?"

"The sooner, the better. Don't you think?"

"It's the middle of the night," she said. The chaplain didn't seem to grasp the concept. She explained. "We're several decades away from alpha wave maximization tablets. He wasn't too happy when I left him earlier, to say the least. He wouldn't enjoy it very much if we dragged him out of bed. We should wait for the morning."

She went back to her camp and sat on her brick, lifting another for the chaplain and dusting it with her hand. To no avail. It was still dirty, but nobody could blame her for not trying.

The chaplain thought for a while and ended up following her and sitting down.

"I suppose you're right," he said. "He should be safe inside his home."

"Not his home," Margrit said. Brother Maxwell didn't look like the most interesting conversationalist in the whole temporal continuum, but he was still preferable to staring at her marker's screen over and over and trying to identify amusing shapes in the strings of numbers. "He is staying with a friend."

"Is he? How curious. The Narrative gives no details about the Divine Mentor's years before the Revelation. I suppose it will be a usual arrangement for this time era."

"Well..." Margrit recalled her visit to the betrayed woman's house, the one where Walter Jenkins no longer lived. "About this guy..."

For a moment, the chaplain didn't seem to understand who she meant. He eventually got there, but not without a certain concern.

"You mean the target?" he asked.

"Yes, the target. He may not be exactly what you're expecting him to be."

"How so?"

Margrit thought of a way of saying it that wouldn't shock him too much.

"I just think that the Narrative describes him in a certain way and that may not have much in common with what he really is. If his identity is confirmed, that is."

"Of course." Brother Maxwell thought about it for a while, in silence. "I'm sorry, but I don't think I grasp what you mean," he admitted.

Margrit was out of euphemisms.

"There is a high probability that we're dealing with a bastard of unfathomable proportions."

The chaplain couldn't have looked more alarmed if she had insulted God Himself. And, in a way, it was possible that she had done just that. It all depended on the point of view.

"Agent Lo-Lorne..." he stuttered. "I understand you are an experienced timenaut and are tired after your effort on this mission, but it is my duty as a clergyman to remind you that you could be talking about the Divine Mentor. Until I perform the confirmation ritual, we can't know." Suddenly, he looked so authoritative and sure of himself that it was impossible not to take him seriously. "Keeping that in mind, I have to ask you to make an effort not to mention the target in such a disrespectful manner."

Margrit thought about her bonus again and wondered if the chaplain was in a position to stop her from getting it.

"Okay," she said, deciding not to risk it.

They didn't speak for a long moment. Eventually, Margrit decided to break the silence with a less sensitive subject.

"Why does it always have to be so complicated?" she asked.

"Hmm?" said the chaplain, awoken from reverie. "What was that?"

"I was wondering why time travelling matters can't be simpler. It's always about disruptions in the temporal continuum, things that happen in the past and alter the future, things that happen in the future and change the past. Not to mention the theoretical possibility of people becoming involved in conceiving their own grandparents."

"That's the way things have to be, I suppose," said Brother Maxwell. "Time is a complex thing."

"I guess it is," said Margrit. "I read somewhere that time travel used to be a common theme for fiction long before it was close to becoming an existing technology."

"I've heard the same," said Brother Maxwell.

"Do you think their vision of time travel was as complicated as the real thing?" she asked.

"I don't know," replied the chaplain. "Not really my area of expertise. But I guess it will be hard to tell even for people who study such things. So little from their cultural output has survived the Calamity."

"That's another thing," Margrit said. "Do you think they ever foresaw the possibility of a Calamity destroying the world as they knew it? Could they have foreseen that civilization would have to be remade almost from scratch?"

"I can't say," said the chaplain. "But, to be honest, I doubt their imagination could reach such a tremendous extent.

Margrit placed her elbows on her knees and propped her head on her hands, looking at the dark world visible through the large gaping hole on the walls of the abandoned warehouse.

"And we can't even try to find out if that's right because it could change the future. We'd go back to our own time and discover that mankind had been replaced by large hyperintelligent snails as the planet's dominant species." Brother Maxwell's shocked gasp made her smile. She probably shouldn't smile, but there was no helping it. Time was, in fact, an overly complex thing.

**6**

Walt Jenkins felt seriously hungover although he didn't remember drinking a thing in the previous night. The symptoms were all there. His head ached like it was about to burst, the light coming through the windows hurt his eyes, making him nag Zachary more than once about the absolute need to close the shutters, to which Zachary responded by saying he couldn't work in the dark. That was nonsense. What could he be working on? And why? He had given up on reviewing that stupid curling iron and the encyclopedia deal would get them enough money to last years. Zachary would then add something telling him off for deciding to sleep on the couch in his living-room/office, after ridding it of the boxes containing refrigerated wine carafes that previously covered it. It was not his fault that the trauma sustained on the previous night had prevented him from having enough strength to reach his spare bedroom.

He was completing a mental list of all the hangover symptoms he felt when the phone rang. Acute hearing sensitivity was another one. Luckily, Zachary got up to answer and it didn't last long.

"It's your accountant," he said.

"Tell him to call later," Walt said.

Zachary carried his message through and waited.

"He says it's important."

"Tell him I'm sick."

"You're not sick."

"Tell him I'll call him back later."

He did and hung up. Walt turned around and tried to sleep some more. He thought it was still too early to ask Zachary how he planned to feed his guest, best friend and fellow entrepreneur.

"What did he want?" he asked, when Zachary sat in front of his computer.

"No idea," he said, without turning around.

"Didn't he say something?"

"He did. He said he'd call back later. Wasn't that what you wanted him to do?"

"Didn't he at least hint at what he wanted?"

"Other than hinting that he wanted to talk to you, no."

"I see," said Walt. He didn't like that one bit. Sure, he didn't feel like talking about money with his accountant (he was an accountant, after all; what else could he want to talk about?), but, now that he had gotten rid of that obligation, he regretted not knowing what could be that important. It was that old impossibility of keeping a cake and eating it at the same time. He never liked that saying. What prevented someone from eating half the cake and keeping the other half? The world needed to be a bit more flexible, he thought. Things would go along much smoother.

Tired of looking at mold patches on the ceiling, he closed his eyes and wondered if he should try to go back to sleep.

But the world, that inflexible and even cruel world, would not have it.

Someone was ringing Zachary's bell. Walt covered his head with a pillow, but it was useless. A perfectly decent morning's sleep ruined beyond all hopes of repair. Zachary got up, mumbling something vaguely obscene and went to the door. Immediately after, Walt heard him say:

"It's your ex-wife.

That sounded so definite. He understood his marriage was over, couldn't say he would miss it that much, but, still, calling Sarah his 'ex-something' didn't sound right, for some reason. He decided her visit was reason enough to make him get up from the sofa. Even if it was entirely unexpected. He wished she would call first. Her last unexpected arrival had unpleasant consequences, still too fresh in his memory. Rosie refused to take his calls. It was likely that she had finally managed to get the entirety of the situation through her tiny brain.

He was buttoning his shirt and slipping his feet into his shoes at the same time, in a remarkable display of coordination, when Sarah walked towards him, picking her way among the boxes and piles of things that cluttered Zachary's apartment.

"Hello, Sarah," he said, doing his best to appear pleasant and show her that he wasn't such a bad guy after all. But, judging from the look on her face, she wasn't in the right mood to exchange pleasantries. "What is it?" he asked, frowning. "Are you absolutely sure it was my fault?"

She moved in a blur, something dark appeared in her hand, coming from somewhere inside a pocket, and there was a sound like a loud buzzing insect suddenly being sucked into a vacuum cleaner. Walt felt something brush the side of his head and he heard something else hit the wall behind him.

Pain. Sarah had just fired at him. And that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was that she was raising the gun to do it again, this time taking her time to improve her aim. What could he possibly have done to upset her that much? While he dove to the floor, something occurred to him. The black thing she was holding didn't look like a gun at all. It looked like the object Tanya had pulled from her purse the previous night. Before that other woman in the bushes pointed a pen at her and she fell to the ground, dead. Before she turned to smoke.

She fired again and he heard the same sound, while rolling behind the sofa. There was no new pain added to the palpitating burn he felt on the side of his head. But she quickly went around the sofa and found him with nothing to hide behind. That was it. He stared at the barrel of the strange gun and didn't see his whole life flash before his eyes. It was better that way. There were some things he wouldn't like to see again.

Sarah pulled the trigger, or whatever device served the same function, and Walt closed his eyes. This time, he only heard a gasp. He opened one eye, then the other and took a second to understand what he was seeing. Zachary was behind her, holding the curling iron in one hand and pulling the tip of its power cable with the other. Somewhere in the middle, there was his ex-wife's neck, with the cable firmly wrapped around it, getting tighter as Zachary pulled with all his strength. Her face was starting to turn red.

But the arm holding the gun was still free and she raised it, trying to guess where Zachary's head was, which was no easy task because he kept moving it from side to side.

"Do something!" he said.

Without thinking, Walt jumped forward, and grabbed the hand holding the gun, trying to pull it away and keep it still. His wife's face stared at him with a kind of desperate fury, turning from red into purple while Zachary pulled the cable even tighter. Her tongue was out and the gasping sounds coming out of her mouth were dreadful. Her skin acquired a darker tone of purple and Walt managed to tear the gun from her fingers as they were growing limp. With a final loud gasp, she dropped to the floor. Zachary followed the body's drop, still holding the curling iron and the power cable and pulling them in opposite directions until he understood it had become useless. He dropped the thing and got up, staring in horror and probably wondering if he could add 'very convenient as an improvised murder weapon' when he finally got around to reviewing it.

They didn't say a thing, looking at the fallen body of someone who looked exactly like Sarah. Maybe it wasn't really her. Just like the Tanya that had tried to kill Walt wasn't the real Tanya. Wasn't that what the strange woman in the bushes had said? It didn't make sense, but neither did bodies turning to smoke without leaving a trace behind. And it was happening again, right in front of them, with the scene looking even more gruesome in broad daylight. The dead woman was lying on her stomach and, thankfully, they couldn't see her face, but, even so, they saw more than enough flesh liquefying at first and turning to smoke immediately after, until there was nothing left but clothes. The whole thing took around three or four seconds to be over and, at the same time the body evaporated, so did the gun, on the floor, where Walt had dropped it as soon as Sarah's possible double had fallen.

Her clothes and shoes were now the only sign of her presence, placed in the exact same position as her body, but empty. The smoke dissipated in an instant, without a smell. There were also two holes, one on the wall and the other on the carpet, next to the sofa, as if to prove them that it really had happened.

Finally, still staring at the clothes on the floor, Zachary spoke.

"Did I just..." He couldn't finish. But there was no need.

"Yes," Walt answered, also unable to look away.

"Oh God..." said Zachary.

Another long moment went on before they managed to look at each other. Walt identified that vague gnawing sensation on the side of his head as pain and lifted his hand to it. He felt a bump starting to form, but, when he looked at his fingers, there was no blood.

"What do we do now?" Zachary asked.

That was a very pertinent question. But what could be the answer?

"I..." Walt realized he didn't know what to say. "I don't know."

"Should we..."

Another unfinished sentence. It was becoming recurrent.

"What?" asked Walt, also wondering what he should do next and feeling open to all suggestions.

"Well... call the police," Zachary finished.

"Are you mad?" asked Walt.

"Huh?"

"You just killed Sarah and you want to call the police?"

"That couldn't be Sarah!" argued Zachary, pointing at the clothes on the floor and stopping when he realized what he was doing. "You heard what the woman said last night..." He waved a hand vaguely towards the empty garments. "The redhead from the bar... She also... The same thing happened to her after she..."

"Died," Walt said, feeling a strange urge to state the obvious, even if it bothered him to great extent.

"Yes," said Zachary. "What matters here is that it wasn't her. I didn't kill Sarah, all right?"

"You killed someone," stated Walt, finally managing to look away and taking a few steps towards the window. He felt the need to open it and breathe some fresh air.

"There is no body left," said Zachary, raising his voice and catching himself halfway. "That is not normal. People don't just turn to smoke when they die. Something about this makes no sense. And that talk about time travellers from the future last night. Has the whole world gone insane?" He looked at Walt and saw him looking out the window, not saying anything. "What?" he asked.

He kept looking outside, silent.

Zachary thought he should be getting some attention from him. The matter was certainly serious enough.

"What is it?" he asked, approaching and looking out the window as well. There was an old man wearing a dirty old suit standing down there, looking up at them.

"I think calling the police might be a good idea," said Walt, without taking his eyes from the hobo. "It's the hobo from the police station."

"He's not moving, though."

"For now," Walt said.

"And he's alone."

Walt turned his head to look at him.

"Are you suggesting we kill him also?"

Zachary was horrified.

"No! I'll go call the police."

He took one step towards the phone when he heard Walt say:

"Shit."

Returning to the window at once, he saw people approaching the old man. There were two of them. One was the woman from the previous night and the other was a fat guy with a ridiculous outfit, including baggy jeans and a sports jersey at least three sizes too long for him. He looked like he was wearing a dress with the number 26 printed on it.

Walt thought of something relevant.

"Is the door closed?" he asked.

Zachary ran back to the door and locked it. He had left it open after letting Sarah in. After letting in someone he thought was Walt's soon-to-be ex-wife, having no reason to doubt her identity, since, for starters, she looked exactly like her.

"Are they doing something?" he asked, running back to the window and hitting his leg on a cardboard box on the way.

"I'm not sure," said Walt. The woman was talking to the old man, who seemed to be refusing something. He removed a box from his jacket pocket and kept pointing at it repeatedly.

"What's happening?" asked Zachary. Walt remained silent.

He was still silent when the woman looked up, seeing them. The hobo and the strange-looking man with her also looked and the five of them stared at each other.

Walt thought if they should move away from the window. They knew for sure he was there, so it would be pointless trying to hide it, but still...

He was still trying to decide when the old man started to wave.

He didn't wave back and went back to Zachary's sofa, sitting down. He really wasn't in a waving mood. And he thought he had good reason.

**6.1**

The old-timer was being stubborn.

"I already told you, Albert," Margrit was saying, trying to reason with him. "This doesn't concern you anymore. Please leave."

He wouldn't have it.

"I'm not sitting quietly while other people steal the credit for all these years I dedicated to the mission," he said.

"It's not about you, agent Ford," said Brother Maxwell. "The purpose was always making sure the true faith crushed the onslaught of the heretics once and for all."

Albert Ford gave him a thorough look. He was not impressed. And this was coming from someone who had been wearing the same replica of local-timer clothes for decades. The reinforced fabric resisted the passing of time, but there was no mistaking the smell of ancient filth.

"Why did they dress you like a clown?" he asked.

Brother Maxwell turned to Margrit.

"What is a clown?"

Margrit shrugged.

"No idea."

"A performer who dresses and acts foolishly for entertainment purposes," explained Albert. "They still exist in this time, but will be outlawed in a few years. More and more people started to be afraid of them."

"Ah," said Brother Maxwell. "And I suppose you didn't mean it as a compliment."

"I didn't," replied Albert.

"Watch it, Albert," Margit warned. "You're speaking with a chaplain." Who could have guessed that Margrit Lorne would be lecturing people about the proper way of dealing with authority figures from the Church's hierarchy?

"So you said." Albert looked unimpressed. "He certainly doesn't look like one." Something occurred to him. "Does this mean the target's identity is confirmed?"

"I still haven't confirmed it," said the chaplain. "If you'd let us get on with our job, I'll be glad to give you an answer. As long as you wait here."

The old-timer started to smile, showing two rows of rotten teeth.

"I knew it!" he said. "I got a 97% reading when I got here." He pointed to the obsolete marker he took out of his pocket.

"That doesn't really mean much, agent Ford," said Brother Maxwell.

"What? Don't even joke about that! I was right. It's him. It was because of me that he was found. Because of my hard work and because of everything I sacrificed!"

"Not exactly," said the chaplain. The old-timer looked at him, outraged, waiting for an explanation. It came soon enough. "Over the years, the Church sent a great number of agents, as you know. Many came before your time-jump." The old man nodded, willing to wait and see where he was going with that. "Many of the surviving pioneers... in fact, most of them, started reporting readings with high percentages of certainty over the last months. Your drops were just as relevant as hundreds of others. Or as irrelevant, if you prefer."

For a moment, Albert couldn't say a thing. Finally, he managed to open his mouth and all that came out was:

"Oh."

Margrit felt sorry for him. He had been a brave timenaut one day, an agent devoted to the cause, before turning into that pathetic wretch. And he showed signs of being more devoted than she had ever been. Not that it was a hard feat to accomplish.

"Besides," the chaplain went on, "you know very well that establishing contact with the target is the job of chaplains and not of field agents."

"I just..." he looked up at the window and saw the two men behind it. "I just wanted to speak with Him and hear some words of comfort." He raised his hand and waved.

Walt Jenkins and his friend looked frightened by the old-timer's gesture.

"Don't expect too much," murmured Margrit.

*

After some persuasion, Albert Ford accepted to keep watch while they went up to the apartment. Margrit convinced him to hide in the alley around the corner and signal any suspicious presences in the vicinity. A brief explanation informed him about the heretic time-jumpers and about their superior technology and ability to look like anyone they wished. This information both alarmed and thrilled the old man, who suddenly seemed to forget all the grief of his newly found irrelevance and was very glad to be given a real assignment.

Even if Margrit's real intention was for him to be out of harm's way. She knew very well that telling him to go hide in an alley simply wouldn't do.

They were going up the stairs and Brother Maxwell started to act strangely. He tripped on steps more than once and had to put trembling hands on the banister to keep him from falling down. How dignified that would be. The chaplain sent back in time to ascertain the identity of someone who, according to all the readings, had great probabilities of being the Divine Mentor, falling on his face and arriving before him with a bloody face. He was also starting to breathe heavily, although they had only climbed two flights of stairs, with one more to go.

"Are you all right?" Margrit asked, making a pause for his sake.

"Yes," he replied. A shaking hand took a white handkerchief from a pocket in his baggy pants and wiped the sweat on his forehead. "I just... Never mind. It's not important."

"If it's something that may prevent us from doing what we came to do and go back home in one piece, I think it's very important," said Margrit.

"It's possible that..." he started. The words seemed to float around in his head, but uttering them was difficult. "I am afraid."

Margrit expected a revelation. That wasn't it. It was pretty obvious that the chaplain was almost shitting himself.

"Of what?"

"Don't get me wrong," Brother Maxwell said. "I don't fear for my life." Margrit raised an eyebrow. "Okay, I do. But that's not important." She raised the other eyebrow as well. He wasn't fooling anyone with that. Not even himself. "Very well, I'm afraid of dying. Of course I am. But there's something else."

"What?" asked Margrit, wishing he would spit it out and be done with it.

"I started to think about..." He pointed upwards with a nod of his head. "Him."

"What about him?"

"You said something before that made me wonder... if he could be a disappointment of some sort."

Margrit couldn't keep herself from smirking.

"Isn't that heresy?"

A sad smile appeared on Brother Maxwell's lips.

"Probably," he said. "Most likely."

Margrit understood how the task ahead of them could seem daunting for a believer. Meeting the founding figure of one's religion wasn't something that happened every day. It would appear even more daunting for a member of the clergy, especially one who seemed as insecure about his capacities as Brother Maxwell.

"Look," she said. "Just try to keep calm and test him. For all we know, the readings could be wrong and he could be as irrelevant to our time as any other local-timer."

"True," said the chaplain, without looking reassured. "But he could also be the man chosen by God to lead us unto eternal bounty. Just like the Lord's Prayer says."

That was also a possibility. Margrit wouldn't deny it.

"I have no comforting words left to offer you," she said.

"I appreciate the effort," said the chaplain. "Shall we get this over with?"

"Let's go," Margrit agreed. "But try to keep your head steadier. You wouldn't want to drop the probe in front of the target, would you?"

For a moment, he looked horrified. But he managed to get over it and even managed a timid smile.

"I'll do my best," he said, almost convincingly.

They went up the last flight of stairs and passed a door to a short hallway.

"Oh no," said the chaplain, looking around at the doors visible from where he stood. "What now? Which one could it be?"

Margrit pointed at one without hesitation.

"That one."

"How can you be sure?"

"His wife gave me his friend's address."

"You have spoken to his wife?" the chaplain asked, preparing to give her his best appalled expression. But then something else even more shocking occurred to him. "You spoke with the Holy Mother?!"

The Holy Mother. According to the Narrative, the Divine Mentor's faithful wife and first among his apostles. An example of motherly affection, spousal devotion and a beacon of female perfection. The model of virtue that women from her time tried to emulate their whole lives. It hadn't even crossed her mind that the disgruntled woman she had spoken with in the target's previous address could be the most revered woman in the dogmas. And hadn't he been unfaithful to her? How did that fit with the perfect couple Scripture mentioned?

"With a possible Holy Mother," she corrected. "It will all depend on the result of your test."

"A probable Holy Mother, then," said the chaplain. "According to the readings."

"Readings fail. You should know that."

"And you should know that faith can give you certainties that logic will never provide on its own."

"Hmm," said Margrit. Was that the same person who had shared his uncertainties with her minutes before? It was too late to debate doctrine, anyway. And she knew it was never advisable to discuss it with a clergyman who had been studying the Narrative most of his life.

They approached the door and she knocked.

Several seconds went by. Nothing happened.

She knocked again. The result was the same.

"We know you're there," she said. "We saw you looking out the window."

They waited some more.

"Go away!" came the voice of Walter Jenkins, potential divine being.

Brother Maxwell placed a hand on Margrit's arm and squeezed. She looked first at the hand, then at him, mouthing "what?".

He seemed taken aback and removed the hand promptly, trying to overcome his agitation.

"Come on, open the door," Margrit said.

"Go away! I've called the cops!" said the target, raising his voice.

"Who did he call?" asked the chaplain.

"Local-timer Security Staff," explained Margrit.

"Oh, I see," said Brother Maxwell. "Perhaps we should go and try a different approach."

"I think he's bluffing," she said.

Brother Maxwell stared at her for a while until he finally understood what she meant.

"You think he's lying? But that will go against—"

"I know," said Margrit. "That's why I say it's not a good idea to take everything in the Narrative literally."

"Heresy," considered Brother Maxwell. But he knew that was hardly the place to discuss theology. Or the time.

"We're here to protect you," she said. "That woman from last night wasn't the only one looking for you. There'll be more. They may be on their way as we speak."

A pause.

"Yeah," said Walter Jenkin's voice from the other side of the door. "You don't say. How do I know you're not trying to kill me as well?" he asked.

"If I was trying to kill you, why would I have saved your life? That makes no sense."

Another pause. This time, they could hear two different muffled voices on the other side of the door, exchanging unintelligible words. Immediately after they went silent, the small dot of light in the door's peephole was blocked by something. Probably by someone's head.

"Who is that?" another voice asked. It belonged to the owner of the apartment. The friend.

"I am Brother Maxwell. I mean you no harm," the chaplain assured.

"Brother?" said the man on the other side of the door.

"Will you open the door or not?" Margrit asked. "There's no time to lose. Your lives are at stake. There might be another murder attempt soon."

A pause, followed by the sound of a lock opening. The door was pulled back and the man called Zachary stood in front of them. A disturbed looking Walter Jenkins was further inside.

"There was one just moments ago," Zachary said, stepping aside and letting them in before locking the door again. The target went through a door and they all followed. The room wasn't big, but it looked even smaller filled with boxes and piles of random objects, with narrow tracks allowing passage between them. Margrit realized, with a certain amount of awe, that she couldn't recognize most of the things around her. There were books. She knew books, of course. They existed in large quantities back in her time and were seen as the best way of archiving information since the Calamity had obliterated most of the planet's optical archives. She could see a primitive screen on a desk. A computer terminal. A type of electrically powered information processing device using a series of metal and silicon circuits to allow treatment of binary data. It could even be connected to the infamous 'internet', the planetwide information network that looked like the best of ideas for a couple of decades until it started being used for reprehensible ends by governments and gave rise to global rebellion, followed by war and culminating in the Calamity.

Brother Maxwell was standing next to her, looking around in amazement.

"Creation," he whispered. "Look at all these things." He saw an object that had been dropped on the floor, near his feet. He bent down and picked it up, turning it around in his fingers, examining it. "Fascinating."

Zachary took it from him and placed it over a table.

"There was one what, moments ago?" asked Margrit, remembering his words when he opened the door.

"A murder attempt," he clarified.

"Oh no," said the chaplain. "We should have come earlier."

"He's still alive and looks well," Margrit said, turning to look at him and pointing Walter Jenkins. "There was no harm done."

She heard something coming from the target. It sounded very much like a whimper. Either the chaplain didn't hear it or he didn't care, because his expression when he focused his gaze upon Walter Jenkins was one of pious admiration.

"I am very pleased to encounter you, Walter Jenkins," he said. He was clearly trying to moderate the reverential tone in his voice, but with only relative success.

"What's going on here?" the target asked, not impressed by the reverence directed at him and even feeling somewhat disturbed by it. "Why are people trying to kill me?" He thought for a second before asking: "Are they even people?"

"They are," said Margrit, sounding almost entirely certain.

"Why do they look like people we know?" asked Zachary.

"We have no explanation for that," said the chaplain.

"Where do they come from?" asked Zachary.

"From the future," said Margrit, looking from one local-timer to the other, mildly curious about their reactions. Walter Jenkins looked annoyed by her answer. His friend kept a neutral face and said:

"Bullshit."

"What?" asked Brother Maxwell, confused.

"A local-timer colloquialism for something that can't possibly be true," Margrit explained. "Do you have a theory that makes more sense?" she asked Zachary. "I'd love to hear it."

He looked thoughtful for an instant and eventually gave up, lowering his eyes to the clothes stretched on the floor behind the sofa.

"What is that?" asked the chaplain.

"That's what's left of her," said Zachary.

"Of the attacker?" Margrit said. "What did you do?"

Zachary lifted the object he had taken from Brother Maxwell's hands.

"We... I... I strangled her," he said. "With this." He stretched the chord hanging from the cylindrical object, before dropping it on the table in disgust.

"Wasn't she armed?" asked Margrit.

"We were lucky," said Walter Jenkins.

"Did she look like someone you knew?" Margrit asked.

Suddenly, Zachary seemed to have lost his voice.

"She looked exactly like Sarah," Walter Jenkins said. "My wife. Ex-wife."

A gasp from Brother Maxwell.

"The Holy Mother?" he said, terrified.

"What?" asked Walter Jenkins.

"Nothing," said Margrit.

"What did he say?" asked Zachary.

"We'll get there. One thing at a time."

"Was that Sarah?" the target asked, pointing at the clothes on the floor.

"No. I don't think so," said Margrit.

"But you're not sure," said Zachary.

Margrit thought being sure of things was severely overrated.

"These people are probably using some sort of transmutation device," she guessed.

"Can you use it as well?" asked Zachary. He still looked doubtful about the veracity of their claims.

"No."

"Why? Aren't you also from the future?"

"We are. But from a different future." She could see confusion take over his entire face. "We come from your future, but they come from our future."

"My head hurts," complained Walter Jenkins, suddenly, before crumpling down on the chair in front of the computer.

"And you must take into account the whole 'parallel reality' factor," said Brother Maxwell to Zachary's benefit. He didn't look too thankful for the added information.

"I'd rather not take that into account," he said.

"Probably for the best," said Margrit.

"Could that mean" Walter Jenkins pointed at the discarded clothes "that Sarah is dead?"

Margrit exchanged a brief glance with the chaplain.

"We can't be sure," he said.

"We don't know how this works," clarified Margrit. "I know the one who tried to kill you last night stole her identity from a woman they found dead in that bar. I can't say if death is a requirement. You should probably prepare yourself for the worst."

Walter Jenkins grew even paler.

"Why is this happening to me?" he asked, apparently forgetting that they were discussing the possible death of someone else. Someone who had been very close to him, in fact.

"We're here to tell you just that," she said. He looked at her, hopefully at first, but immediately looking like he had suddenly decided he preferred not to know, after all. But he had no choice. He would hear it, whether he liked it or not. Margrit almost felt sorry for him, but the feeling lasted no longer than a second. Because what she knew of Walter Jenkins, and she had grown to know quite a lot during her mission, was incompatible with something resembling sympathy. Luckily, the chaplain took over. The moment had come for him to do what he had been trained to do. More or less, at least. Being the only chaplain available at the time probably meant the extent of his competence hadn't been taken into account.

He approached the target, taking something from inside a pouch under his large shirt, a pouch that looked very much like Margrit's own. It was a book. With a purple cover in a material that looked like leather but was actually entirely synthetic. It wasn't too thick, but the words contained in the pages with golden edges were the pillar over which the secular and religious power of the Church had been built. The eight-pointed star decorating the cover was also perfectly identifiable. But not by Walter Jenkins, as he looked at it, completely unaware of the tremendous irony.

Brother Maxwell pulled a chair and sat down in front of the target, holding his copy of the Narrative between them, while both Margrit and Zachary looked.

"Walter Jenkins," he started, adopting a solemn tone of voice. "I have come to ascertain if you are indeed, as our readings have shown, the Divine Mentor, chosen by God among your equals to guide mankind unto a future of eternal bounty."

The target couldn't have looked more befuddled. It was very clear, judging from his face, that he didn't understand what had just been said to him and, no matter how much he tried, couldn't change that pathetic state of affairs. Margrit imagined herself going back to her time and being asked over and over to narrate the glorious moment in which the chaplain had taken the first step of the Revelation. It didn't look that glorious. With the candidate's perplexity, Brother Maxwell's voice quivering halfway through the sentence and the random piles of boxes and things surrounding them inside the crowded room, she would most certainly be forced to polish her tale somewhat. Something she was more than willing to do and feeling up to the task. Finding the target and determining his identity was only part of the job. Making sure it looked as epic as Church officials and common people were expecting was another, and not less important.

"Can you say that again?" asked Walter Jenkins. "I didn't get it."

"I did," said Zachary."And I don't think repeating it will help."

"What is a Divine Mentor?" asked the target.

Brother Maxwell did his best to sound solemn once more.

"The Divine Mentor is a man chosen by God and elevated to divinity," he explained, still holding the Narrative like it could reinforce the veracity and importance of what he was saying, something it clearly wasn't accomplishing with that audience.

"Why?" asked Walter Jenkins.

"Sorry?" said the chaplain, completely surprised by the one word question.

"Why was he elevated to... You know. Why?"

It was somewhat baffling that someone who had, in theory, spent a large part of his life thinking about such matters, didn't have an immediate answer.

"Well," Brother Maxwell looked at the Narrative, almost hoping it to scream out a reply. "God, in His infinite wisdom, saw that it would be good."

"I see," said Walter Jenkins, not looking even mildly convinced. "And why would it be me?"

"That's a very pertinent question." He looked very happy to be able to answer without hesitation. "We come from a society built around the teachings of the Narrative—"

"The what?" asked Zachary. Brother Maxwell turned his head to him and lifted the book. "Oh."

"In the Narrative," he went on, turning to Walter Jenkins again, "we are given a comprehensive description of the Divine Mentor's life after the Revelation." He predicted more questions coming and decided to move ahead of them. "The Revelation is the moment in which the Divine Mentor was visited by heralds who disclosed his divine fate to Him, shortly before the Consecration, the moment in which God manifested and anointed His chosen one as the guiding beacon of mankind."

"Where did the heralds come from?" Walter Jenkins looked like a man well-aware of uttering that sentence for the first and possibly last time in his life.

"The future," answered Margrit, deciding she should. Brother Maxwell looked at her and nodded. No opposition there.

"Ah," said Zachary.

Walter Jenkins looked from the chaplain to Margrit and back to the chaplain.

"I still don't get why you think I'm this Mentor person," he said.

"All will become perfectly clear in a moment," said the chaplain. Walter Jenkins didn't look so convinced. "The absolute truths of the Narrative remained mostly undisputed for centuries, as they should be. But, a century before our time, the vicious seed of heresy started to grow among the more naive and easily influenced of our brothers and sisters. It all started when a small group of dangerous subversives began spreading a lie founded upon the desire to sow anarchy and disorder, to overthrow the Archbishop as our illuminated leader, completely ignoring everything the Church accomplished in the past, in our past, that is, restoring humanity to prosperity and well-being after the destructive Calamity that left our world entirely unrecognizable.

"Calamity?" said Zachary.

Brother Maxwell opened the Narrative and flipped through the gilded pages until he found what he was looking for. He read:

"And the heralds told the Divine Mentor of the great Calamity that had shattered the land and of the comfort the people derived from the divine valor of His word."

He was hoping reading that verse would be enough to settle their curiosity, but it didn't happen.

"When you say 'calamity', what exactly do you mean?" asked Walter Jenkins.

"Well..." started the chaplain, once again looking for words and finding the process to be very difficult.

"The destruction of civilization as you know it," helped Margrit.

"How?" asked Zachary.

"We can't say," replied Margrit.

"Because telling us about future events could change the future?" asked Zachary, surprising Margrit.

"Exactly. How did you—?"

"That's such a cliché."

She didn't recognize the word, but decided to let it go without clarification.

"And when will it happen?" asked Walter Jenkins, forgetting for a moment that he was being hunted by people wanting to kill him and that there was a possibility that he wouldn't be alive to watch his world being destroyed.

"We can't say that, also," Margrit replied. "But I think there are more pressing matters. Brother Maxwell, you should probably continue your explanation."

"Quite," he agreed. "These heretic rumors were disregarded by the majority, of course, but, still, they left a hint of doubt inside the hearts and minds of the members of our community whose faith was less resolute. The problem was that, from these small beginnings, heresy started to spread, taking more and more people in its clutches, until there were enough of them to organize themselves and start opposing the Church actively. They opposed the teachings of the Narrative, saying it lacked truth, and, instead, valued only empirical knowledge, adopting as their scripture a set of archaic documents containing random facts from the world that existed before the Calamity."

"Our world," said Zachary.

"Precisely," said the chaplain, before moving on. "Religious authorities were forced to act to keep this menace from spreading even further and measures were taken to crush heretic cells, sometimes through the use of violence. Regrettable perhaps, but entirely needed to set an example."

Margrit remembered well what she had been taught as a child about this 'religious cleansing'. They had convinced her that it had been unavoidable. That violence was justifiable, even when directed to people guilty only of following a different set of convictions, even when directed against innocent men, women and children. That everything was kept under control at all times and that the only lives taken were a result of senseless resistance from the heretics. And she had believed all of that without questioning. But the years passed and brought with them a colder and more distanced look at the facts, forcing her to call the cleansing exactly what it had been: a massacre. But she would never share this opinion with anyone else, of course. People who didn't share their opinions were less likely to find themselves in tight spots. And who had ever heard of a timenaut with an opinion that differed from the official version of recent history?

"So," said Zachary, interfering once again. "Religious persecution. It's nice to see that the future kept the best sides of mankind intact."

Brother Maxwell nodded, but Margrit was better equipped to recognize sarcasm when she saw it.

"Did it work?" asked Walter Jenkins, less concerned about the well-being of people who wouldn't even be born before a long time passed.

A shadow covered the chaplain's face as he admitted the truth:

"At first, it looked like it could work, but it soon became clear that it was too late. The heresy had already spread too far. They had cells in regions out of our reach and repression caused them to take arms and fight back, while still tricking naive people to join them."

People that changed sides and changed opinions because of the massacre, Margrit thought. It was completely understandable that the official story left out that particular detail.

"So a new approach was required," Brother Maxwell continued. "To destroy the heresy, we would have to fight them with their own weapons. Proving empirically, beyond any doubt, that the story in the Narrative was entirely true and not just, as they claimed, a myth. The time travel program was started, applying technology that had already been giving its first steps, and turned into the great endeavor of the Church. It would allow us to make sure the Revelation took place, by sending our own people to perform it, and also to document the Consecration and bring back irrefutable evidence."

"How could you know people in your future wouldn't try the same thing? Didn't you risk messing up events?" asked Zachary.

"Forwards time travel is complicated," Margrit said. "No one was sent into the future to check that. The Church made the decision and accepted the risk."

There was silence for a while. When Brother Maxwell was about to continue, Walter Jenkins spoke.

"I see why you're here," he said. "Okay. But why me? I still don't get that part."

"I understand that this possibility of divinity may be shocking and uncomfortable, but I beg you to please try keeping an open mind," said the chaplain.

Zachary snorted at the mention of uncomfortable divinity, but only Margrit seemed to notice.

"I am speaking with people who claim to have come from the future and taking them seriously," said the target. "Doesn't that count as keeping an open mind?"

"I supposed it does," said the chaplain, after pondering longer than a question like that justified. "I am not sufficiently versed in the technical details, but I'm sure Agent Lorne here will be able to enlighten you."

He turned to Margrit and the two local-timers did the same, expecting her to say something relevant. She didn't feel at all like lecturing them on advanced localization techniques. Instead, she pulled her marker out of the pouch, opened it and showed them the screen and the keyboard.

"We use these," she said. "They point the way. They pointed at you."

She closed the marker again and returned it to the pouch. They kept looking at her, expecting her to go on, but she didn't and they eventually gave up.

"So, basically," Walter Jenkins started, threatening to sum up the whole matter, "you've come to inform me that I'm some sort of Future Jesus?"

A popular deity before the Calamity that had been almost entirely forgotten. Margrit didn't know much about the man, but she hoped he made for a more imposing god-figure than Walter Jenkins.

Zachary snorted again. This time, more audibly.

"There is a test that must be performed," said Brother Maxwell, ignoring the question and not having a clue as to what would constitute an acceptable answer.

"What sort of test?" asked the target, starting to feel apprehensive.

The chaplain placed the Narrative on his lap and removed from his pouch a device similar to a marker. It was also black and made from the same material, but it was shorter and narrower. A major difference were the two small black disks attached to the end of wires coming out of the side. Walter Jenkins stared. Margrit wondered if he was trying to find similarities between that and the weapons used against him on two separate occasions.

"What are you going to do with that?" he asked. His look of apprehension wasn't going away. On the contrary, it seemed to be increasing exponentially.

"Don't worry," said Margrit. "It's not painful." Only then it occurred to her that she had no idea if it was painful or not. She had never witnessed the procedure and knew nothing of its intricacies. "Is it?" she asked, turning her look towards the chaplain.

He looked back at her and it was clear to Margrit, and also somewhat alarming, that he too didn't know.

"I...," he started. "I'm sure it isn't."

Walter Jenkins didn't look reassured. And who could blame him?

"You simply attach these two diodes to the subject's temples and initiate a certification sequence," the chaplain said, doing his best to be as informative as he could without going into the details he had forgotten from his training or had never managed to master. He held one diode in each hand and lifted them to Walter Jenkins' head. But the head was promptly moved away.

"You're not attaching that to anything of mine until I'm sure of what he does," he said.

Brother Maxwell seemed taken aback.

"That goes against standard operational procedure," he said. The argument was completely wasted on that particular subject. Walter Jenkins couldn't care less about what was or wasn't standard operational procedure. The chaplain turned his head to Margrit, expecting to receive some help from her.

He probably didn't get what he was hoping for.

"You could try it on yourself first," she said.

"I'm not trying it on myself." There was something very similar to outrage on his face.

"Ah!" Walter Jenkins exclaimed. "You won't try it on yourself. You must have your reasons."

But the chaplain wouldn't admit it.

"I won't try it on myself simply because I have to operate the terminal," he said, visibly glad for having an excuse. "Since I'm the only one capable."

Margrit found the excuse flimsy, to say the least. She couldn't think of a reason preventing Brother Maxwell from operating the terminal with the diodes connected to his own head. But the two local-timers didn't seem to notice the fault in his reasoning.

"Your friend can do it," she said, nodding towards Zachary.

"What? Leave me out of this," said Zachary.

"It's safe," Margrit said. "Almost certainly."

"Come on," Walter Jenkins said. "It will be okay."

"You do it, then."

Margrit was getting tired. They were wasting precious time and it was possible that more heretics were coming to put an end to the target's life. They couldn't afford to have the local-timers bickering like children. She moved forward and took the diodes from the chaplain's hands, sticking them to her temples.

"Go on," she said.

The chaplain hesitated, but a steadier look from the agent was enough to hurry him up. He pressed several keys and looked at the screen, expecting a result. There was a loud beep.

"Oh," he said.

"What?" she asked.

Both Zachary and Walter Jenkins came closer to look at the device. The chaplain seemed insulted by this intrusion and tried to block the screen from view with his hands.

"I may have inputted the wrong sequence," he admitted, visibly embarrassed. Margrit shook her head. And this was the chaplain they sent on the most important assignment of all, she thought. The only one they could have sent, after all.

Brother Maxwell restarted the process. This time, he concluded with a convicted exclamation:

"Ah!"

A short pause and a series of numbers started cascading down the screen until they were replaced by a single line of text.

Identification sequence complete - Positive identification percentage: 6.79%

"There you go," said the chaplain, addressing Walter Jenkins. "No pain whatsoever."

The target looked at Margrit, awaiting a confirmation.

"No pain," she said. The diodes had grown warmer, but nothing that could be considered uncomfortable, even by the most squeamish of subjects. She took the diodes and placed them on Walter Jenkins' temples herself.

"And you're not Future Jesus?" asked Zachary.

"No. Only 6.79% of me is," she said.

"Now I almost want to have a go," he said. "Just for the sake of it."

"Too late," Margrit said. "You've had your chance."

Walter Jenkins sat down again and breathed in deeply.

"Are you ready?" asked Brother Maxwell.

"I am," he said.

The chaplain reset the identification device and inputted the sequence. Margrit and Zachary were both behind him, looking over his shoulder, but, this time, he didn't seem to bother enough to prevent them. The numbers kept moving for a seemingly longer time until they finally stopped, leaving the screen black, with the single line of bright characters in the middle.

Identification sequence complete - Positive identification percentage: 99.99%

"This is..." started Brother Maxwell. He didn't finish.

"Almost perfect," concluded Margrit. "Negligible error margin."

"What does it mean?" asked Zachary, while Walter Jenkins looked at all of them in turn.

"Yes," he said. "What does it mean?"

By the time he finished the sentence, Brother Maxwell was already kneeling in front of him and touching his forehead to the floor.

**7**

Walt Jenkins was trying to get used to his new role as religious guide of future people. If he thought about it, it couldn't really be that hard. Unless they expected him to be nailed to a tree or thrown in a blazing fire. Martyrdom wasn't really his thing.

The strange Brother Maxwell figure was still kneeling in front of him. He didn't know how to react to that, but he guessed he could get used to it if he made an effort. The woman, however, didn't look too impressed, staring at him with a raised eyebrow and not looking too convinced by what had just happened. Zachary, standing next to her, looked just like Zachary. Perhaps with a slight sarcastic smirk on his lips, but it was still him.

"Guide us, oh Divine Mentor," said Brother Maxwell, raising his head from the floor while remaining kneeled, "for yours is the light, the truth and the glory, by God's divine commandment and for the eternal benefit of your flock."

His flock. All of a sudden, he had a flock. Who would have known? It certainly never crossed his mind when he woke up. It proved, without a doubt, that the world was still perfectly capable of surprising him.

"Rise," he said, testing his messianic voice. It sounded too much like his ordinary, everyday voice. He would have to work on it. But it worked. The man from the future got up and stood in front of him, clearly waiting for him to say something else. If he understood correctly, he was some kind of priest from a religion built around him. The Holy Church of Walt Jenkins. Did it even have a name? If it didn't, could he make a suggestion?

"My Church," Walt said. "Does it have a name?"

"It is the only true Church," answered Brother Maxwell. "That is the only name it will ever need."

Oh well. A slight disappointment. Not grandiose, but still adequate, Walt thought.

"Well then," he said, rubbing his hands together. "Now that it's all settled, what happens next?" He would need time to think of a way to turn his now certified divinity into profit, but, until it happened, he would play along.

Brother Maxwell and the woman looked at each other. Zachary kept smirking.

"We have to wait for the Consecration," the future priest said, not too sure of himself.

"How long will it take?" Walt asked.

"I can't say. We can't rush a manifestation of the Almighty."

"You can't possibly be expecting this to really happen," said Zachary, in an interval of all the smirking.

"Why not?" Walt asked.

"You are! You're really expecting the skies to part and God's gigantic holy finger to point directly at you while a thunderous voice says: Him! He's the one!"

Walt thought about it for a second. No, he wasn't expecting that. But what was he expecting? The story seemed absurd and the most reasonable thing to do would be to admit that those two, Maxwell and the woman, were a couple of lunatics sharing a particularly farfetched delusion. But they had provided him with an explanation for all the bizarre things that had been happening to him during the previous days. Bands of old hobos chasing him around. People stealing his acquaintance's faces, trying to murder him and turning to smoke after they failed. He thought about Sarah. Could she be dead? He wished she wasn't, but he wasn't capable of feeling much more than that. Perhaps it was only the shock. Yes, that was probably it. After all, the other explanation would be that he was a terrible person.

"Just do what seems right," said Brother Maxwell. "Let events follow their course."

"What seems right," he repeated. What did seem right? There was something he thought he should take care of. "I have to make a couple of phone calls."

He walked to the table over which Zachary's phone rested, lifted the receiver and dialed a number. He waited. No one was picking up. The phone in the house he had shared with Sarah had caller ID so it was possible his ex-wife was refusing to speak with him. Or she could be dead. A cold stab touched the right side of his torso. Was that what regret felt like? He put the receiver down, lifted it again and dialed another number. This time, someone answered almost immediately. While he listened to the voice on the other side of the line, he looked back and saw the woman looking out the window, Brother Maxwell flipping through the pages of his book and Zachary staring at him, his smirk having disappeared without a trace. He felt the same cold stab on his side again, this time with greater intensity. It wasn't regret, after all, but something else. Something even more unpleasant. He understood the words that were being said, but, somehow, it was like he wasn't there, listening to them. He felt like he was miles away and had nothing to do with that. It was strange thinking that something could be so much more disturbing than discovering that he had been the basis for the founding of a religion in a post-apocalyptic future. He replied with single syllable words, mostly, feeling that the matter demanded a much more heated response. But he couldn't do it. When the conversation was finally over, he put down the receiver and turned around.

"We should go," he said.

"Where?" asked Zachary.

"I don't know." He felt pale. Could a person feel pale? "Somewhere. It doesn't matter. But we should go. I need fresh air."

"Is there a mount somewhere around?" asked Brother Maxwell, lifting his eyes from a page. He decided to add: "Oh Divine Mentor."

The woman, standing near the window, rolled her eyes almost audibly.

"A mount?" said Walt. "You mean a hill?"

"Yes. An elevation of some sort. The designation is not important."

"I'm not sure. The city is pretty flat. Is there a hill somewhere?" he asked Zachary.

"Only hill I can think of is the old cemetery," he said. "It's not much of a hill, but it's definitely higher than the everything else."

"A cemetery," said the woman. "How dramatic."

Everyone ignored her and Walt felt it was well deserved. He looked at Brother Maxwell again.

"Why are you asking about a hill?"

"Perhaps there is somewhere we could go, oh Divine Mentor," he said. "No guarantees, of course, but the Narrative mentions that the chosen one gave a memorable sermon on a mount."

"No. Sorry, but no." It was Zachary. They all turned to him, waiting for clarification. "I think I've been taking this time travelling story as well as anyone could, but that's just ridiculous."

Brother Maxwell seemed offended.

"Watch your tongue," he said. "It's the holy word you're talking about. And you're in presence of the Divine Mentor himself." He gave Walt a look like a puppy expecting a pat on the head. He'd have to get on without it.

"Your holy book says Walt gave a sermon on a mount?" Zachary asked.

"Yes. Shortly after the Revelation," said Brother Maxwell.

"That's the ridiculous part," said Zachary.

"Do not insult the Divine Mentor! Lest the Lord strike you where you stand!" said Brother Maxwell, standing up and raising his voice. He didn't need long to realize how ridiculous he looked and seemed to calm down immediately. "I'm sorry," he said.

"Why is it ridiculous?" asked the woman, looking interested.

"Well, that's in the Christian holy book as well," said Zachary. "It's part of the story of Jesus. He gave a sermon on a mount. Everyone knows about that, even people that aren't into religion. Christians make a big deal of it."

"Hmm," said the woman.

"Merely a coincidence," said Brother Maxwell.

"You can't really think it's a coincidence," Zachary said to him.

"What I think is not important. The only thing that matters is what is written here," and he lifted the book. "And that cannot be questioned. It would be heresy."

"Zachary may be right," Walt said.

Brother Maxwell turned a look of utter terror towards him.

"But..." he started.

"Maybe someone got hold of a copy of the Bible and pinched the Sermon on the Mount story."

"No, Divine Mentor. That can't have happened. No copies of this Bible have survived," Brother Maxwell said. His tone was pleading with him to stop saying things that compromised his own divinity.

"Maybe a survivor of this Calamity you mentioned remembered the story from having heard about it," Walt suggested.

"No, Divine Me-Mentor..." stuttered Brother Maxwell. "That is..."

"Heresy?" said the woman. "Are you accusing the Divine Mentor of heresy? Isn't that an even greater heresy?" She seemed amused by it.

"You know how it is," said Walt, trying to be conciliatory. Could that be his godly nature starting to take over his actions already? "These holy books are all meant to be taken metaphorically, anyway"

Brother Maxwell opened his eyes and his mouth very wide and looked livid. He couldn't even speak. Behind him, the woman suppressed a giggle.

"That's settled then," Walt said. "We're going to the old cemetery."

"What about the people trying to kill you?" asked Zachary.

Walt sighed, recalling his phone call.

"No one will expect us to be there," he said. "The same can't be said about your place."

*

Riding the elevator down from his apartment, Zachary kept looking at Walt. He looked disturbed by something more than killers from the future coming to murder him, and the expectation that he should act like Future Jesus and have a conversation with God predicted in some cheap Bible knock-off.

"Who was that on the phone?" he asked him.

"I'll tell you later," was the answer.

The woman, Margrit, was the first to go out, looking both ways to make sure the coast was clear. It was.

"Which way?" she asked.

Zachary started walking and they followed him. The old cemetery was five blocks away. They could reach it easily on foot.

"What if more of these face-borrowers come after us?" he asked Margrit. "Did you bring your...?"

She reached inside her jacket and showed him her pen, before putting it back again.

"What is that, anyway? It looks very much like a pen," he said.

"It is a pen," she replied.

"Pens don't usually kill people," he reminded her.

"Everything can kill people," she said. "If you use it right."

They were passing in front of an alley and there was a scream. Walt's. An old man in a dirty suit was standing in front of him, blocking his passage. Walt moved back, while the old man watched him, without moving or saying a word.

"Albert?" Margrit said.

"You know him?" asked Walt. "He's one of them! They've been following me around!"

"No," Margrit said. "He's one of ours."

Walt looked confused.

"Then why do they keep following me?"

"To help find you," said the old man, with a surprisingly clear voice for someone who looked like him. "That has always been our goal. It is an honor, Divine Mentor. My mission is accomplished, at last." He looked at Margrit. "I will come with you."

"It's better if you don't," Margrit said.

"I want to be there for the Consecration," the old man insisted. He didn't look like he would be easily persuaded, so Margrit nodded and they kept walking, occasionally looking around to see if someone suspicious was approaching. The strange group they formed looked quite suspicious as well. Even more so with Walt doing his best to put as much distance as possible between him and the old man, who kept trying to get closer. Zachary wondered if Walt kept moving away because he was still afraid, despite Margrit's reassurance, or because the old man smelled ripe. It could be a combination of both factors.

They arrived at the old cemetery without any trouble. The place could barely be considered a hill, but it was true that there was a slight inclination of the grass-covered ground. It was known as 'old cemetery' because there used to be a cemetery there, but it had long been transferred to some other location and all that was left were the remains of an iron bar fence, broken headstone fragments spread all over, and a vague suggestion of the old walking paths.

Since no one knew what to do once they arrived, Zachary started walking to the top of the hill without any effort, followed by the others. Walt Jenkins sat on a larger rock and looked at the city. He was the only one panting after an almost non-existing climb. Was Future Jesus allowed to be in such bad shape? Zachary thought his own resistance to everything resembling physical effort was terrible, but that was just ridiculous.

"Are cities very different in the future?" Zachary asked, looking at Margrit and Brother Maxwell. He had decided not to include Albert, the old hobo, in the question.

"We can't say," said Brother Maxwell.

"We're getting that a lot," said Walt. "What can you say, after all?"

"Only what you are supposed to know, according to the Narrative," Brother Maxwell replied. "We have to think about the integrity of the time continuum. Can't risk causing any disturbances."

"What kind of problems could be caused by a disturbance in the time continuum?" asked Zachary, genuinely curious.

The two time travelers looked at each other for a moment.

"We can't tell you that either," said Margrit.

"What do we do now?" asked Walt. "I'm hungry. We should have brought food. Nice spot for a picnic."

"What's a picnic?" asked Brother Maxwell.

"We can't tell you that," said Zachary, determined to have his petty revenge. "Because of the time continuum."

"It's true that it does work both ways," said Brother Maxwell. "Things you told us could also alter the continuum. Although I don't think it will apply to things we could learn back in our time by consulting the records of old-timer knowledge."

"Something like an encyclopedia, you mean?" said Walt.

The two younger time travelers and the old man all turned their heads to stare at him.

"What did you say?" asked Margrit.

"I said I was hungry, but that was a while ago," answered Walt. "That was the last relevant thing I said."

"What do you know about the encyclopedia?" asked Brother Maxwell, forgetting his deference to the Divine Mentor for a moment.

"Which encyclopedia?" asked Zachary. "There are several."

"There are?!" Brother Maxwell looked alarmed. Next to him, Margrit was furrowing her brow intensely.

"I'm starting to think we're talking about different things here," Zachary concluded. "An encyclopedia for us is a book or set of books containing small articles about different matters in alphabetical order. Without risking the continuum, too much, what is an encyclopedia for you?"

"The heretic holy book," said Brother Maxwell, lowering his voice as if he feared being sucked into a timeless void after having said those words. "They call it encyclopedia."

"They claim it contains a sum of all of mankind's accumulated knowledge from before the Calamity," explained Margrit, who looked more capable of speaking about it without constantly expecting the worst. "They believe God doesn't exist and only knowledge is divine. It all started when they found an almost intact copy of the encyclopedia in an archaeological dig. Almost the entire set of—"

"Stop!" Brother Maxwell again, looking terrified. "You have said too much. Please, Agent Lorne. No more. Think of the time continuum. The consequences could be—"

"Funny," said Walt.

Brother Maxwell turned to him, all reverent again.

"What is funny, oh Divine Mentor?"

"All this talk about encyclopedias. Because we've just sold one the other day. To a group of wackos," he explained.

Zachary felt a sudden urge to justify himself.

"I had a box full of disks containing this encyclopedia compiled by a crazy person," he said, looking at Margrit, finding her to be the most willing listener in the whole group. "Full of inaccuracies and blatant lies. Completely useless. Walt... the Divine Mentor here managed to trick a local religious group into buying all the copies. They wanted to send them to Africa."

There was an audible whimper from Brother Maxwell.

"Africa," he squealed, widening his eyes.

"The heretic encyclopedia was found in Africa," said Margrit. "What was this encyclopedia of yours called?"

"No!" cried Brother Maxwell, putting himself between them with arms raised like he was trying to break a fight. "We've heard enough. Please think about the—"

"Atkinson Encyclopedia of Revised Human Knowledge," said Walt. "It may be useless, but the name has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?"

Brother Maxwell fell to his knees, covering his ears with his hands and moving his head from side to side while saying "nonononono" over and over.

"What's wrong with him?" Walt asked.

Margrit looked somewhat surprised, but it didn't seem likely that she would also fall on her knees and throw a strange denial tantrum.

"It's too late now," she said to Brother Maxwell. "They already said it. We can't unhear it."

"You can't unhear what?" asked Zachary, while Brother Maxwell slowly got back on his feet.

"The heretics," he started. "They are named after their holy book. They call themselves Atkinsonians. We are all doomed."

"What is he talking about?" asked Walt, turning to Margrit.

"Those people trying to kill you," she said. "You two caused it."

"I didn't want to do it," said Zachary, thinking, once again, that an excuse was in order. "It all came from the head of your Future Jesus here."

"How did we cause it?" asked Walt, insisting on keeping Zachary involved.

"This encyclopedia you sold was the basis for the heresy that caused us to travel back in time," Margrit explained. "And you telling us about it caused a disruption in the time continuum responsible for a parallel reality in which heretics are dominant and send their own agents to kill you. It's ironic, really. Things related with time travel often are."

"And now we are all doomed!" screeched Brother Maxwell, pulling his hair.

"How was I supposed to know my actions would have consequences in the future?" asked Walt.

"That's exactly what's wrong with you," said Zachary.

"What do you mean by that? You were in this as well."

"Yeah, but only for the money."

Hearing that made Walt look apprehensive, but it only lasted an instant. Enough for Zachary to notice it.

"We're probably not doomed," said Margrit.

"What?" asked Brother Maxwell, pausing his whaling for a second, but keeping his hands securely attached to whatever hair he had left under his ridiculous bucket hat. "What are you saying?"

"Well, think about it," Margrit went on. "The disruption in the continuum was caused by our knowledge of this information. But it can't change much now. It had already happened. We only know what the cause was."

"You really think so?" asked Brother Maxwell, hopefully.

"I do. Knowing who was responsible might even be useful," she said.

"What do you mean?" He had lowered his hands.

"Should we continue worshipping someone who was secretly responsible for a problem we are desperate to solve?" she asked.

"That's heresy, Agent Lorne."

"The truth usually is, isn't it?" She hesitated, like she had something on the tip of her tongue, but was trying desperately to hold it in. The effort was unsuccessful. "It's unbelievable how you are faced with the fact that the Divine Mentor is a fictional entity built upon a very flawed human" and she looked briefly at Walt, who didn't seem to get she was talking about him, "and insist on denying you have been worshipping a terrible person. No offense."

She said the last words looking at Walt once more and, this time, he got it.

"Hey!" he said. "I only came here because you wanted a sermon!"

Brother Maxwell's face turned red and he screamed, taking a step back from Margrit and pointing at her.

"Anathema! Vile abomination!"

While Zachary was watching the two time travelers arguing, he heard a thud behind him. Three heads turned, leaving the argument suspended, and saw the old man standing over Walt, who was lying on his side with a red stain on his dark hair. The hobo was holding a large lump of broken headstone on his right hand.

"Agent Ford, what have you done?" yelled Brother Maxwell.

"He's one of them!" said Margrit, pulling her strange pen-like weapon from her pocket and pointing it at him. It looked as non-threatening as ever.

"I'm not, Agent Lorne," the old man said. It really is me."

"What?" Said Brother Maxwell, trying hard to understand what had happened. "You killed the Divine Mentor!"

The old man looked down at Walt's still body.

"I think he's not dead," he said, almost looking disappointed. "But that's easily settled."

"Why, Albert?" Margrit asked, without lowering her pen. "You spent most of your life looking. And you finally found him.

"Most of my life?" he repeated. "All of it, you should say. All the years that mattered I spent looking for him. I came as a young man, moved by faith and by a sense of duty. I left my family, my friends, never to see them again. I even had a girl who loved me and whose heart I broke. And now look at me. I don't even remember her name."

"You sacrificed too much to ruin it like this," Margrit pleaded. "Put that stone down and move away. You'll be free to go if you do that. I swear I won't shoot you."

"Why should you shoot me?" he asked. "To save this bastard?" He pointed at Walt with his free hand. Walt moaned and moved his torso an inch, but his eyes remained closed. "You heard what I said, chaplain. I did call him a bastard." He turned a look of defiance towards Brother Maxwell, who had spent the last minutes hiding behind Margrit. "And that's what he is. A bastard who is responsible for putting our time on the verge of an unavoidable religious war. And to think I hesitated when they asked me to do it."

"Who, Albert?" asked Margrit. "Who asked you to do it?"

The old man acquired the look of someone who had said too much, but he seemed to accept it was too late to turn back. The words had been spoken.

"They did," he said. "The heretics."

"The heretics came to you?" asked Brother Maxwell. "And you're not dead?"

"I'm not," replied the old man. "They are not as evil as the Church has told us. One of many lies. They only defend their faith. We can't criticize them for it, can we? We do the same."

"It's not the same thing," Brother Maxwell said. We both defend our beliefs, but we are right and they're not. We defend the true faith while they propagate lies of the foulest kind."

"Spare me, chaplain," said the hobo. "They treated me with more consideration than anyone in the Church. To you, we're only disposable old meat. They said I would be treated fair if I helped them out."

"What did they promise you, Albert?" asked Margrit.

"They came to me, two of them, and asked me at gunpoint to surrender my marker's location data. I resisted, of course, but they took it anyway. I couldn't stop them. Then, their tone changed. They looked kinder and understanding, somehow. They explained things to me about..." He looked at Walt again. "About him. Things I didn't know. They made clear to me that the Divine Mentor is nothing but a big hoax. They said I should work with them. And help them eliminate their target."

"So their tracking technology isn't more advanced than ours," Brother Maxwell said. "They merely gained access to the pioneer timenauts' locations and cheated." He seemed relieved. Zachary thought it was a strange time to feel relieved about technicalities, with a bleeding man on the ground and with a crazed old man ready to bash his brains in.

"And you decided to help them," Margrit said.

The old man nodded.

"I did."

"Even if you started seeing the Divine Mentor as a fraud," Margrit said, while Walt moaned some more, "that wasn't enough to turn you into a murderer."

"It wasn't," the old man agreed. "And I didn't think I could do it. I hoped there would be some way around it. But what they promised me was impossible to refuse."

"What was it?" asked Brother Maxwell.

"To take me back with them."

"That's impossible," said Margrit. "They were lying."

"Maybe they were," said the old man. "But I was willing to risk it. It was much better than the alternative.

"Either way," said Margrit, "your new friends are gone."

The old man seemed taken aback.

"Dead?"

"Possibly. But definitely gone." Zachary noticed Margrit was skirting around the matter. They didn't know for a fact that the two face-borrowers were dead. They only saw them turn to smoke and disappear. "Drop the stone, Albert. They can't help you."

The old man thought for a moment.

"Maybe," he said. "Or maybe not. Someone might still know about it. Someone might still uphold their end of the bargain. It's worth taking a chance."

"If you do it, I'll kill you," said Margrit. It didn't look like an empty threat.

The old man shrugged.

"Do what you must," he said. "If I must spend the rest of my days in this time, putting an end to them will be a great favor you'll be doing me."

He raised the hand holding the headstone fragment above his head and bent over Walt's squirming body. He started to lower it, there was a sudden 'woosh' and the old man fell to the ground, letting the stone roll from his dead fingers, down the grassy hill. Brother Maxwell approached Walt, followed by the others. He examined his head, lifting it and making him groan in protest.

"The bleeding looks like it has stopped," he said. "It's very swollen, but it doesn't seem life-threatening.

Walt said something that sounded like 'grrhmorm' without opening his eyes.

"Can you hear me?" asked Zachary. His left eyelid tried to open, but failed. "Can you hear me, Walt?"

Another effort and it was the opposite eyelid that managed to open halfway. He blinked and started to shake his head, stopping almost immediately. Zachary helped him up and he sat on the grass.

"Shit!" Walt said. He lifted one hand to the injured part of his head and touched it gingerly with his fingertips, examining them and seeing some blood. "It hurts like hell. What happened?"

"The old man hit you in the head with a rock," Zachary explained.

"What?" He managed to turn his head slowly and saw him lying behind him, one arm outstretched and the headstone fragment three feet away. "Is he...?"

"He is," Margrit said.

"I thought he was on your side," Walt said.

"So did I," said Margrit. "I was wrong."

"Can you stand up, oh Divine Mentor?" asked Brother Maxwell, not daring to touch him.

"I don't know. Help me up."

Zachary and Margrit helped him up and let go, leaving him to stand on his own. He wobbled.

"The world doesn't stop spinning," Walt said.

"Maybe you should sit down again," said Brother Maxwell.

"No," said Margrit. "We should leave as soon as possible." She pointed at the corpse. "He won't turn to smoke. We'll have a hard time explaining him if someone comes and sees us here."

"She's right," Walt said. "But we can't—"

He said nothing more. One step was all he could manage before he collapsed again.

7.1

When Walter Jenkins came around, he was back in Zachary's house. They had dragged him away from the hill without any sermon, to Brother Maxwell's slight confusion. A taxi was hailed and they got him into the back seat in an intermittent state of consciousness, which forced Zachary to exchange some words with the driver in order to convince him that his friend drank too much, even at such an early hour. Luckily, he didn't notice the bloody and swollen head.

Lying on the sofa, Walt opened his eyes again and stared at the ceiling.

"Oh, no," he said, sitting upright with a painful grimace. He saw them looking at him and repeated: "No."

"Calm down," said Zachary. "You're safe. We're in my place."

"No!" he said. "You shouldn't have."

"We shouldn't have what?" Zachary asked.

"You shouldn't have brought me back here. That was a terrible mistake."

"Don't worry," said Brother Maxwell."Agent Ford... the old man who tried to kill you, said only two heretics had been sent."

"We don't know if there were only two," said Margrit, ruining the 'the worst is behind us' mood. "But saying there were more would be guessing."

She saw Walter Jenkins giving Zachary a look she didn't like. It was a look that made it abundantly clear that she was a long way from having all the information about what was going on.

"What?" she said.

Zachary kept looking at the Divine Mentor. He also didn't get what was wrong. Not being the only one not knowing was far from reassuring, Margrit thought.

There were steps walking down the hallway outside. Clearly audible steps of more than one person. Of more than one heavyset person. A heavy hand banged three times on the door. Walter Jenkins' expression became pained. And it wasn't entirely because of his injured head.

"Crap," said Zachary, with understanding finally dawning on his face. That made two.

"What is happening?" asked the chaplain. "Who is that? Is there a third heretic, after all?"

Margrit looked from one of the local-timers to the other, without answering. They were both looking increasingly terrified and seemed unwilling to provide her with an explanation. She removed the stylus from her pouch and stuck it in an outside jacket pocket, before walking to the door and looking through the peephole. She saw a face she recognized. Judging by the way the heretic agents worked, that wasn't good.

"Who is it?" she asked, while she kept looking.

The man looked surprised to hear her voice.

"Open up," he ordered.

"Just a moment," she said, making him raise an eyebrow.

Margrit came back to the others and said:

"It's that man from the bar."

"Ron," said Walter Jenkins.

"Who?" asked Brother Maxwell.

"Didn't you pay him?" asked Zachary.

"I didn't," said Walter Jenkins.

"Can't you pay him now?" asked Zachary.

"No."

"Why?" asked an alarmed Zachary.

"Because my accountant lost the money."

"What?" said Zachary. "How?"

"Never get an accountant with a gambling problem," explained Walter Jenkins.

"You knew he had a gambling problem and you gave him our money?!" asked Zachary, raising his voice.

"Technically, it wasn't our money. It belonged to those church people."

"Who gave it to us in exchange for the encyclopedias," Zachary pointed out. "Making it our money."

"Technically, yes."

"So there is nothing left?"

"Nothing."

"I can't believe it."

Ron knocked on the door again, even harder.

"If it makes you feel better," said Walter Jenkins, "he lost all of it and still has a load of debts to pay."

"I couldn't care less about your accountant!" said Zachary, looking very cross.

Ron knocked again.

"Open up or we'll break the door down," he said, sounding like someone who meant just that.

"Don't open," said Walter Jenkins to Margrit, who was the one standing closer to the door. Brother Maxwell looked around, probably in search of a place to hide.

"But you heard him," she said.

The next knock sounded more like a kick. Margrit returned to the door and opened it just as a burly man was raising his foot to kick again. It was one of the armed men she had seen on the night she went to the bar. She also recognized the one standing next to him. The third one was nowhere to be seen.

"You again," said Ron, looking mildly annoyed.

"Me again," said Margrit, stepping aside and letting them in. One of the two henchmen closed the door and stood in front of it with his arms crossed. Ron and the other henchman followed her to the room where the others were waiting. Walter Jenkins looked livid, Zachary wasn't much better and Brother Maxwell had an expression of complete incomprehension that made him look very stupid.

"So you didn't kill him after all," Ron said, nodding towards Walter Jenkins, who was still sitting on the sofa, not daring to move.

"I told you I wouldn't," she said, seeing one of the henchmen move around the apartment to make sure there was nobody else.

"I'm starting to think that's a shame," said Ron. He was looking around, trying to understand the reason for the strange decoration of random piled objects. "What the hell is all this, Walt?"

Walter Jenkins didn't say anything. Instead, he looked at Zachary, hoping he would explain.

"I do reviews. For the internet. People send me their things and I..."

The henchman came back, holding a bright pink cylinder made from a rubbery material. He was smirking when he offered it to Ron.

"I'm not touching that," he said. The henchmen put it on a table and rubbed the hand that had touched the object against the front of his coat. Ron looked at Zachary. "I'm not judging. Please don't give me any details."

Zachary kept his mouth shut.

"Who is that?" Ron asked, looking at Brother Maxwell.

"That's..." Walter Jenkins started, thinking of something to say. "Max."

"And what's Max doing here?" Ron asked. "And her?" He pointed at Margrit. "Are you having a party?" His eyes moved to the pink rubber cylinder.

"I am a chaplain of the Church," Brother Maxwell sputtered, without bothering to remember his own recommendations about sharing too many details with local-timers. "I'm here to accompany the Consecration of the Divine Mentor."

"Huh?" said Ron. He turned to his henchman, who shrugged. Then, he turned to Walter Jenkins. "What's that all about?"

"Look, Ron," Walter Jenkins started, ignoring the question, "I know you deserve an explanation."

Ron rubbed his eyes with the tips of his thumb and index finger.

"We're off to a bad start, I see," he said.

"Why do you say that?" asked Walter Jenkins, doing his best to look deferential and calm. It wasn't easy, given the circumstances.

"It's the words you picked," said Ron. "I didn't like them one bit. You said I deserve an explanation. I think I don't. I don't give a fuck about explanations. What I need is my money. The money you borrowed from me and didn't paid back in due time."

Margrit saw the henchman put one hand in his pocket. She feared the pocket wouldn't be empty. Just like hers wasn't.

"Since you didn't go to me, I came to you," Ron went on. "And here we are."

"Ron..." Walter Jenkins began, getting up from the sofa with considerable effort and an unpleasant succession of grimaces.

"I'd pick my words very carefully if I were you, Walt," Ron said.

"I lost all the money I had," Walter Jenkins said. One quick look at Ron's face was more than enough to let everyone know that those were not the right words to pick.

"You what?" asked Ron. He looked almost amused, in the murderous sense of the word.

"I lost it," Walter Jenkins repeated. "Not me. It was my accountant. I wanted to pay you. I had no reason to go to Harry's if I didn't, right?" He was starting to speak faster and, as he did, he sounded less and less sincere.

"Right," said Ron. His smirk was gone and he remained still. It would be less threatening if he yelled and waved his hands around. If he kicked and called names. That stillness was almost impossible to bear and it made Walter Jenkins feel more nervous.

"But I'll work something out," he said, speaking even faster than before. "I swear. Give me a couple of months, tops. No, one month. One month and you'll have your money. I swear to God."

The Divine Mentor using the Creator's name to make a promise he knew he couldn't keep. What would Brother Maxwell think of that? Margrit didn't dare move her eyes away from Ron and the henchman to look at the chaplain.

"Don't worry, Walt," Ron said. He signaled the henchman without looking over his shoulder. "It's all good."

The henchman standing guard turned around, opened the door, looked outside and came back inside, locking the door again. He gave a nod to his colleague, who took a small black pistol from his pocket and quickly screwed in a tube of the same color to the nozzle. Margrit's hand got closer to her pocket, feeling the stylus inside, over the navy blue velvet of her pea coat.

"Ron, wait a minute," Walter Jenkins pleaded, staring in horror as the henchman took one step forward and pointed the gun at him.

"I've waited long enough," Ron said.

Margrit's fingers went inside the pocket and, when they came out, the stylus was in her hand. She pointed it right at the henchman, who didn't even notice. His employer did. At first, he seemed worried, but that expression was soon replaced by one of mere puzzlement.

"What the hell...?" he said, looking at the object Margrit was pointing at the gunman, who only then turned to Margrit. His head turned first and the pistol immediately after.

"Put it down," Margrit said, trying to sound authoritative. Hesitation crossed the henchman's eyes, but he didn't obey. Ron calmly placed one hand on his outstretched arm.

"Point that at him," he said, stretching his chin towards Walter Jenkins.

"But..." the man said. "Okay."

He turned the gun back to Walter Jenkins and Margrit was deciding what she'd do next when Ron moved, too quick for someone who, until then, had remained so still. Margrit pressed a button on her stylus. There was a click, followed by nothing at all. Ron's right hand formed a fist and hit Margrit straight in the jaw while, at the same time, his left grabbed the stylus and pulled it out of her grasp. Margrit stumbled back and tried to keep her balance. Swift points of light danced in front of her eyes.

"Now," said Ron. "Do it."

And the henchman pulled the trigger.

8

Suddenly, Walt was alone, cringing with his arms over his face, turning sideways and lifting one leg, expecting an impact that never came.

His first reaction was to look at himself, checking if he was in one piece. He was. No holes. No red stains spreading anywhere. No pain.

Then, he looked around. Zachary's living room was empty. Well, to be honest, it couldn't be further from emptyness with all the piles of things cluttering most of the space and leaving only narrow paths between them. But it was empty of people, apart from himself. He was glad it was so, because some of the people that had been present just a moment before had come to put an end to his life. But it was also a very perplexing state of affairs. It couldn't be helped.

His eyes fell upon the window. Had it been raining? The sky was clear when they went out, but weather could change from one moment to the other. He approached the window and looked out. The sun was still shining, like it did, sometimes, when it rained. There could be a rainbow somewhere and he looked for it. Nothing. No rainbow. At least, not on that side of the building, the side facing the sea.

That was also very strange.

The weather could change rapidly, but the scenery normally didn't. He was pretty sure of that, even in his current state of increasing confusion. Zachary's building couldn't be near the sea. The city itself was miles away from the shore. And he had looked out that window thousands of times. It would be impossible not having noticed the beach before. And where had the street gone?

An alarming possibility occurred to him.

"Shit," he said, still looking out the window, watching the rain pelting the gentle waves on the other end of the short sandy beach. "I'm dead."

"No, you're not," said a voice.

He turned around, expecting to see Ron and everyone else. Including the guy pointing a gun at him and pressing the trigger.

Instead, he saw someone he wasn't expecting to see there or ever again.

"Officer Thompson?" he asked.

The policeman shook his head.

"Wrong again," he said.

"Then who—" But he wasn't allowed to finish posing his question.

"You've been a terrible person all your life, Walt Jenkins," said, the man, who still looked and sounded exactly like Thompson, the policeman he had talked to when he was taken to the police station following the great Crime Tour debacle.

He understood the words perfectly, but, somehow, he didn't get their meaning immediately.

"What?" he asked.

"Haven't you?" Thompson asked.

"Haven't I what?" He still thought being dead would provide a good explanation for what was happening to him. He sure looked like he was about to die only short minutes before. The most troubling thing, in a wide ocean of troubling things that surrounded him, as wide as the ocean he could see from the window, was that he had spent his whole adult life, which now seemed to come to an end, not believing in an afterlife. People were born, lived, died, and that was it. That was what he had always thought. And now he was standing in some kind of purgatory shaped just like Zachary's apartment but by the seaside, hearing a man he had seen once in very specific circumstances asking him questions he was having trouble to answer. That was very disturbing indeed.

He noticed the curling iron with the long power cable, the one Zachary had used to strangle the Sarah lookalike sent from a future parallel reality to prevent him from becoming a kind of Future Jesus, like Zachary had put it. Somehow, what has happening to him now wasn't much stranger than what happened to him in the previous day, he thought.

Officer Thompson was still waiting for an answer.

"I'm sorry," Walt said. "Could you please repeat the question?"

"There's no need. It was a rhetorical question, so to speak. You have been a terrible person."

"Well, that's debatable," Walt argued. He thought if arguing was his best choice.

"Is it?" Officer Thompson didn't look convinced.

"Who are you?" Walt asked, deciding to direct the conversation towards a matter he found more pressing than his moral standing.

"Not Officer James Thompson," the man said. "Who, by the way, even if he's not the brightest of the bunch, is a very decent man. Hardworking, in his own way. A loving husband and father."

Walt heard a wave crash against the sand and turned his head to look through the window once more. The beach was gone, replaced by a snowy landscape, where the only element breaking the continuous white cover was a scrawny black tree.

"Did you...?" he started to ask, turning around and stopping mid-sentence while pointing outside. The policeman was gone. He looked around, trying to understand if he was alone again, and soon discovered he wasn't.

Sitting on the sofa, he saw the teenager from his last Crime Tour, fiddling with his phone. It looked very much like the one he had thrown against a brick wall, breaking it.

"I did," he said, without lifting his eyes from the screen. "Don't worry. You don't have to put a coat on. It's like a screen saver."

"Hmm?" said Walt.

"Computer talk," said the kid. "I thought everyone understood computer talk these days."

Walt let that go without discussion and tried to steer the conversation into relevant terrain once more.

"Where am I?" he asked.

The kid looked up.

"In your friend Zachary's living room," he said. "It doubles as his office. Where he does his product reviews. He's also a much better person than you, by the way."

"And why am I here?"

The kid looked back at the phone.

"You should know," he said. "You came here after your wife caught you with another woman and Zachary let you stay with him, even though you take advantage of him so frequently and seldom give something back in your mostly one-sided friendship. Did you know Rosie Blackstone was adopted and is a very gifted singer?"

"No. I didn't."

"And you never cared."

Walt looked at the kid sitting on the sofa and saw him put the phone down, reach the curling iron on the table and throw it at him. It took him by surprise, but he managed to catch it after fumbling at first. When he looked at the sofa again, the kid was gone.

"She's not dead either," said a different voice, coming from behind him.

He turned around and dropped the curling iron, in shock. Jade Parker was standing near the window, looking outside.

"Who?" he asked.

"Sarah," she replied, turning to him. The scenery outside the window had changed again. It looked like a vineyard going up a gentle hill.

"She isn't?" Walt said. "Good." He felt some relief, but it was hard going beyond that when he wasn't sure if he was living or not.

"She still cares about you, strangely enough," Jade Parker said. "Someone with your friend Zachary's face visited her, asking about you. She said she didn't know where you were, but thought something was not right. And she almost felt like she should try to find you, but ended up deciding against it."

"Why am I here?" Walt asked again. "Not in Zachary's apartment. Here." And he pointed at the vineyard outside.

"Your friends from the future explained everything to you," Jade Parker said. "You should have paid attention."

He swallowed hard. And he finally got it.

"You're... Really?"

Jade Parker nodded.

"Why me?" he asked. It was the first time that Divine Mentor business really upset him. Perhaps because, in all truth, despite the time travelling stories, the crazy old men, the murder attempts and the people stealing faces and turning to smoke after being zapped by pens, he had never really believed before that.

"Excellent question." Jade Parker walked past him. When Walt turned to follow her with his eyes, she had been replaced by Zachary. He walked around the sofa and stopped next to the computer, moving his fingers over the keyboard and pressing random keys. "I don't have an answer."

"I don't understand," Walt said, unable to think of something better to stay. He added: "Didn't you choose me?"

Zachary smiled.

"Far from it," he answered. "It was taken out of my hands, I'm afraid."

"Is that even possible?"

Another smile.

"It surprised me as well," Zachary said. "Choosing someone and having him deliver a message didn't work so well in the past. And I tried it much more often than you realized. Sometimes, the messenger was completely ignored. I had too many of these total failures." He looked out the window, admiring a sweet mountain landscape with a wooden cabin and smoke rising from the chimney. "But then you decided to start meddling with time and spreading this Divine Mentor story. No idea where it came from. I guess it 's understandable that their minds became a little muddled after almost causing the destruction of their own world. Their contraptions started pointing at you and I decided to follow the lead and give it another go. One last time." He looked at Walt again. "By the way," he said, "in case you're wondering, those markers picking you... Entirely arbitrary. Don't feel too special."

Walt felt he needed to sit down and did so, settling on the sofa.

"What happens now?" he asked, placing his head on the palms of his hands.

"Now... you get on with your life. And try to be less of a bastard," a new voice said. Walt looked up and saw Sarah. "If you can do that, it will be a huge triumph."

"I'm not sure I can," Walt admitted.

"Try. Maybe you'll get the hang of it."

"What about those people in the future who started worshipping me?"

"They don't worship you," Sarah said. "They worship a version of you that only exists in their imagination. It's up to them. Don't concern yourself with it."

"Okay," said Walt, getting up again. "I will try. No promises, though."

"That's good enough," said Sarah. "Close your eyes."

"Why?" Walt was afraid of what he would see when he opened them again.

"There used to be a time when you'd be struck by lightning simply for not obeying me quickly enough," Sarah said, with a deep sigh. "How things change. Just do it."

Walt closed his eyes.

"What now?"

His answer came as a sob. He opened his eyes and his worst fear materialized. He was standing in front of Ron and his henchman again. Zachary and the time travelers were staring at him in amazement. But things were very different from what he remembered. None of them seemed to have moved from the positions they occupied previously, but similarities stopped there.

For starters, Ron was crying like a child, his whole body shaking with pitiful spasms. Next to him, the henchman kept the pistol lowered and looked ahead, straight at Walt, with wide, moist eyes. The other henchman, the one guarding the door, now seemed to press his back against the wood in an effort to prevent him from losing his balance and tumbling down. Zachary, Margrit and Brother Maxwell didn't look like they understood what was happening more than he did.

"What did you do?" asked Ron, surprised and trying to control his sobbing. There was almost nothing left of the hardened ruffian he knew. And it was somewhat troubling to see that Ron didn't seem too bothered about it, as tears kept rolling down his cheeks in front of several witnesses.

"I didn't..." Walt started, but he decided to return the question. "What did I do?"

"You were right there," said Ron, somewhat calmer. "Then the gun went off, there was a bright light and you were gone. In your place, there was..." That next bit looked hard to put in words. He managed to do it with some effort. "My grandmother. I haven't seen her in over forty years. She raised me when my father took off and my mother started drinking. She... she asked me why I was ruining my life..."

"No," said the henchman.

They all looked at him.

"No what?" asked Ron.

"That was my brother Tommy," he said. "I pulled the trigger and there was a bright light. Just like you said. But, when I could see again, it was my brother Tommy standing there in his place" he nodded at Walt. "Just like he was before he got sick when I was nine. Asked why I was pointing a gun at him."

Ron turned his head and looked at the second henchman, standing in front of the door.

"My mother," he said.

His boss looked at Walt. There was incomprehension on his face, but also some fear.

"What the hell is going on?" he said, not directing the question at anyone in particular. "Who did you see?" he asked, turning to Zachary, Margrit and Brother Maxwell, who, until then, had observed the scene without speaking.

"I didn't see anyone," replied Zachary.

Margrit shook her head. Brother Maxwell was too worried to react in any way.

Ron looked at Walt for a long moment, without saying a word. He had stopped sobbing, but the tears were still visible on his cheeks. They looked terribly out of place on his face.

Finally, he spoke.

"Don't ever show your face in Harry's again," he said. "You're barred for life."

"What?" said Walt.

"You heard me. I don't want to see you ever again," he clarified. "If I ever see your face again, I'll..." He seemed to think it over and a pained look transformed his expression. "Stay away from me. Got it?"

Walt nodded.

"Got it," he said.

"Excellent," said Ron. "We're going," he added, for Walt's benefit, but also as an order to his henchmen.

"What about the—?" Walt started.

On his way to the door, Ron raised one hand and shut him up. They left.

Walt walked to the sofa and crashed on it. All of a sudden, he felt so tired.

"Was this it?" asked Brother Maxwell, very anxious. "Was this the Consecration?" He sounded disappointed. "Did you see the Lord?"

Walt rubbed his eyes with both index fingers.

"I'm not sure what I saw," he said. He thought about it for a second. "Yes, I guess I did see... someone, at least."

Brother Maxwell was too avid to say something coherent. So he didn't say anything.

"What did he look like?" Zachary asked. "Or was it a she?"

"If you really want to know," Walt said, "there was a moment when he looked like you."

"What?" his friend asked. Judging by his face, he was busy deciding if that was a terrible joke or a very alarming truth.

"Well, we're done here," Margrit said, turning to a very impressed Brother Maxwell. "Let's get going."

"Not so fast," said Walt. Brother Maxwell looked like he expected bolts of lightning to come out of Walt's eyes, reducing him to ash where he stood. Nothing of the sort happened. "The situation with Ron may be solved, but you can't go anywhere while there's still people coming from the future to kill me."

"They won't try to kill you anymore," said Margrit. "It's too late. What had to happen, happened. In a way, at least..."

"Can't they go further into the past and try to kill him before it happened?" asked Zachary, looking very much like he was paying attention.

"Yes," said Margrit. "But the well-being of your past selves shouldn't concern you. They may try coming after us, though. And prevent us from going back with the confirmation we were sent to obtain."

Walt thought for no longer than half a second.

"You're right," he said. "You should probably go. Get far away from me. Nice meeting you and all that." He hiked a thumb over his shoulder to point at the door.

Margrit seemed more than happy to do as Walt said, but Brother Maxwell had something else to add before he went.

"Divine Mentor," he started, with his head slightly bowed, "am I allowed to pose a question?"

Walt looked almost godly when he replied, but only for an instant, until he started enjoying the pose too much and lost all grandeur.

"You may," he said.

Brother Maxwell walked a couple of steps away and stood in a corner of the room without too many boxes cluttering it. Walt saw his expectant face and approached. He lowered his head slightly while the shorter man whispered something to him.

He straightened his back and looked at his face, looking mildly surprised and possibly also somewhat confused.

Then, he lowered his head again and whispered back.

Brother Maxwell stared at him for a long while, thinking hard. Eventually, he nodded and moved towards the door, waiting there for Margrit to follow.

"Give my regards to the future," Walt said to her.

Margrit came closer and, for a brief, preposterous moment, Walt thought she would kiss him. Instead, she raised both her hands to her neck and removed a necklace, a golden star hanging from a golden chain, which she placed on his palm. Afterwards, she turned her back and walked to the door.

"Good-bye, Divine Mentor."

The words weren't reverential coming from her mouth like they had been when it was Brother Maxwell uttering them. They sounded more like an insult. Walt looked at the necklace, not understanding why she had given it to him, and pocketed it. A parting gift. Nothing more than that. No reason to think about it.

The door opened, the two time travelers left and Walt and Zachary were left in something resembling the normality they had been craving.

"What did he ask?" said Zachary.

"He asked if I really was chosen by God," Walt replied.

Zachary stared at him, trying to read in his face something that his voice didn't say.

"Were you?"

"Of course," he said, walking to the phone, lifting the receiver and taking a piece of paper from his pocket. He dialed the number on the paper.

"Are you calling Sarah?" Zachary asked.

"No," he answered. "I'm calling that Reverend Parker. I'm sure he'll love to hear how God came to me in a vision. I think I found my new career."

He waited for someone to pick up and started to talk while Zachary walked to the window and looked out. He saw no face-borrowers, no deranged old men, no strange people from the future.

Walt asked to speak with Reverend Parker, waited for the call to be transferred and started engaging in friendly religious banter. Zachary sat in front of his computer. An idea had just come to him. It wasn't an idea he thought he should be proud of, but that wouldn't stop him from seeing what could come out of it. He didn't consider himself a dishonest man, like a certain friend who happened to be using his phone at that precise moment, but he wasn't free from occasionally doing things he wasn't proud of for personal gain. He opened a desk drawer, looked under a pile of papers and extracted a book he hadn't opened in years. He didn't even remember if he had ever opened it. It had been left in the apartment by the previous occupant. He placed the book on the desk and rubbed the fake green leather of the cover with his hand, feeling gold paint peeling off from the embossed golden cross. It would come in very handy for what he intended.

Afterwards, he opened his word processor and typed two short lines of text while Walt congratulated Reverend Parked on some success related to his African endeavor. When he finished, he read it over and lifted one corner of his lips in something resembling a smile.

The Narrative

Book I
Chapter 1, Verse 1

It was better than reviewing curling irons, at least.
8.1

Margrit Lorne poured the last drops of concentrated benzine from the black bottle and dropped it over the pile containing the rest of her disposable gear. The fumes touched her eyes and made her take a couple of steps back. One more step, to be sure, and she scratched her flint lighter. The spark started a small flame. She locked it in place and threw the lighter at the pile. Flames engulfed the thermal tent, the uncomfortable sleeping pad, what had been left of her field rations. It would take only a few minutes to reduce everything to unrecognizable black ash.

When the flames seemed high enough, she turned around, took out her stylus and approached the pile of rubble where her slate was hidden, exposing it and clearing the text of her previous drop.

"You didn't give them the whole truth," said Brother Maxwell. Margrit looked at him, awaiting clarification. "When you said the well-being of their past selves shouldn't concern them. If their past selves are killed, the reality in which they exist will be gone."

"I didn't say there wasn't any danger," Margrit said, while she scribbled on the slate. "I said they shouldn't concern themselves with it. And they shouldn't. What good would it do? There's nothing they can do to prevent it."

She placed the slate on the ground again. It read:

Mission complete. Success. Request immediate extract. Agent+chaplain. Drop 5. Final.

She covered it again, taking special care that the small pile of rubble looked inconspicuous enough. After all, it was supposed to remain undisturbed for centuries.

"The Church will have to do something to prevent it," Brother Maxwell said.

"Yes, the Church," said Margrit. "Not me, though. I'm done. I think I deserved my bonus."

Brother Maxwell said nothing.

Shortly after, an unnatural wind started blowing inside the abandoned warehouse, making the flames dance. It was time.

They both stood still, crossing their arms in front of their chest, with each hand reaching for the shoulder on the opposing side.

"Do you believe, Agent Lorne?" the chaplain asked.

"I tried," she answered. "I can't. Do you?"

He hesitated.

"I don't have a choice," he said.

The wind picked up and there were popping sounds all around them.

"What did you ask him?" said Margrit, raising her voice to be heard.

Brother Maxwell looked anxious by the upcoming extraction, but he answered, all the same.

"I asked him if you were right. If he was just a man. Flawed like all men are." After a pause, the chaplain added: "I didn't use the word 'bastard'."

"What did he say?" Margrit asked, genuinely curious.

Brother Maxwell raised his voice to reply: "He said—"

There was one final pop, louder than all the others, and the warehouse was empty, with an inexplicable wind calming down as suddenly as it had started, leaving the rubble untouched, while a lonely fire nourished a pillar of smoke that passed by a hole on the roof to reach the cloudy sky.
About the Author

Renato Carreira was born. He writes. Often with a computer. Rarely with a pen or pencil. It used to be the other way around, but things change, sometimes with astounding results. This is not the case. He wrote several things in Portuguese. Things made of bits and bytes and also things made of paper. He would like to live in a mansion somewhere and do this for a living, but he can't, so he doesn't.

