The Acolytes of Crane (Theodore Crane, #1)(36)

‘Alright, so this Nezatron dude sounds seriously cool. Correct me if I am wrong, this Nezatron guy is made of these Dietons, billions of them, and he knows everything about anyone and anything because he is constantly recording it through zillions of microscopic Dietons here on Earth.’

‘Yeah, they also use them to control chance.’

‘Really, this is too much. So you are saying there is no fate left, because these aliens control it all? You are equipped with the ability to access this endless information, and you can communicate with people in space, on the ship Uriel,’ Lincoln said, breaking into a rolling laughter again. He sounded like he was going to have an asthma attack, ‘Okay wiz-boy, if you can do this, there is only one way to find out. Please tell me what eleven thousand, three hundred and forty-six times two hundred thirty-seven equals?’


I rose up my hand to look at my palm, and Lincoln looked at me oddly. I said, ‘The answer is two million, six hundred eighty-nine thousand, and two.’

Lincoln was the only kid I knew to carry a calculator. From the back pocket of his stone-washed blue jeans, he whipped-out a calculator and began crunching the numbers to the question he had asked me.

He looked up at me with shock and awe. Then, in a blast of ranting fury, Lincoln absolutely went nuts. He just rambled and rambled about all that happened. Question after question blurted from his lips. He was obsessed. I just sat down on the curb and ate it all up. He gave me a series of questions that he knew I typically struggled with at school, and I answered every single one of them correctly.

‘Okay, so you are thinking about bringing me to the Uriel right, right, right?’ Lincoln asked frantically, digging for an answer.

‘Ummm, actually, no, I don’t know if you can give it all up,” I said, and turned my glance away, ‘for this.’

Lincoln looked at me as if I was a total jerk. ‘Dude, I am the missing Linc. That can be my name, come on, man,’ he said.

I burst out laughing, more out of astonishment than mirth at his joke. A wave of relief washed over me. ‘Okay, I am joking. You were the first person to come to mind, but I didn’t realize that you would come along this easy. That brings us one closer to reaching my goal. Don’t think anyone else will come along as easy as you did. This is going to take serious work from both of us. Can I trust you with figuring out a plan?’ I asked. I gazed at him in the eyes, still not believing he was so eager to jump on board. I half expected him to brush me off, stating he was joking too.

He didn’t. He explained that he would like to spend the night at home contemplating and formulating. I agreed.

We hung out longer, and then we parted ways. Feeling giddy, I knew he had a lot to think about, and so did I. I went home; as I walked, I felt the pressure of eyes on my back. I turned, while looking, and there was nothing there. With every step I took, I felt as if a footstep behind me mirrored my actions.

My nerves were shot. I wasn’t far from home, so I ran urgently, until I stepped on the driveway, and then I walked, looking over my shoulder. I arrived on time for dinner. We were having my grandmother’s best dish: sweet red peppers, jammed up to the brim with goodies.

‘Hi Theodore, how was hanging with your friend?’ my grandmother asked.

‘It was fun,’ I answered short and to the point, because the food stole my attention.

The stuffed peppers were juicy. Meat and rice tumbled over the cut top edge, and steam introduced a smell of delightful aromatic peppers into the room. It was lathered with a slowly simmered marinara and caused me to salivate upon seeing it.

I was like a zombie as I plowed through the meal. I would not even try to hear the conversation my grandparents were having over my drooling and lip smacking. The provolone cheese she melted over the peppers was caramelized. The first bite of pepper tantalized my seduced taste buds and gave way to reveal a bundle of meaty delight. I sat down, and my grandfather spoke:

‘So, you got your stuffed pepper eyes, I see. You look like a starving stegosaurus when your grandma makes these, let’s eat,’ my grandpa said, while he ripped into the culinary masterpiece.

I overflowed my stomach with four of the peppers. I waged war on that meal. I must have worked up a serious appetite running home. The human garbage disposal struck again. I retired into my room, knowing that I needed rest for what was in store, but I just had two subjects that I needed closure on: splices and time travel. Splices, I needed to know about, because King Trazuline had said something about different time versions of Travis colluding together. I held out my hand, and initiated the thought:

‘Precisely one million years previous to the current moment, time travel was limited to the concept of velocity based transversal time dilation . . .’

Nezatron carried on about the existence of time travel and its history for hours, before I grew tired. I found enough information to last me.

Zane had used a million years of endless research to develop a method of time travel. He located and stretched wormholes with Dietons, to facilitate time travel. That was the only way they could be certain that each pair of wormholes would be opened simultaneously. They merged the technology founded in teleportation with their discovery of the wormholes in creating The Chamber of Rafal.

Nezatron explained to me that my twin in time—my splice—was pulled from the time continuum and replaced with my present self. I was extracted and immediately deleted, then replaced. I was satisfied with just that explanation. Everything else was beyond my scope of comprehension.