After asking multiple times over the course of several days, Matthew finally agreed to let me see my father again. He hadn’t been the man I’d expected to meet, which I’d been warned about by Matthew. He’d told me I needed to manage my expectations. Well, now they were successfully managed, but I wanted to know more. More of who he was, how he had gotten involved with the True North Society, more about his other family.

Matthew accompanied me through the non-time portal to the current day ParallEarth station—Sector 7—hidden in the Nevada desert. I didn’t know where the other sectors were being built but suspected they were scattered around the county, or maybe even the world.

We went during the day this time; I wanted to stop in on him while he was awake. There were many more tradesmen working on the station during the day with the urgency of a looming due date.

The desert air was stifling, so much so I could see heatwaves rising from the dirt. Matthew didn’t look comfortable during our trek through the sun, but he didn’t complain. When I took his hand, it was on fire. It seemed the sun serum could only do so much, so we rushed to get out of the direct rays.

When we reached my father’s room, I found my heart racing just as much as the first time I’d been there. I didn’t know what to expect, and as much as I wanted to see him again, I was apprehensive to open the door.

“Are you okay?” Matthew asked, keycard in hand.

“Yes,” I said, swallowing hard, preparing myself for another crazy encounter.

Matthew proceeded to swipe the keycard and hold the door open for me to enter. The lights in the room were on and my father was talking to someone. At first, I was afraid he was simply talking to himself but soon realized there was another person in the room. It took me a moment to place him, then remembered it was the infirmary tech who’d bandaged my hand after the branding ceremony. They were seated at a desk against the wall.

“Hello,” I said as I entered.

The infirmary tech smiled and waved, having heard the door open. “Kelly; in case you didn’t remember,” he said.

“Fiona,” I said, but then felt stupid because he obviously knew my name.

My father spun around at the sound of my voice, noticeably startled. Then he glanced over at Kelly, gauging his reaction. “You can see her?” he asked inquisitively.

“Of course, I can see her,” Kelly said. “Why wouldn’t I be able to?”

“Because she’s dead. Abigail’s been dead for several years. That was why her mother left me.”

Kelly glanced at me, then at Matthew, his jaw tense, silently asking for help.

“You’re right,” Matthew said. “Abigail is dead, and she visited you not too long ago.”

“I remember,” he said. “It was late in the evening. I was awakened from a peaceful dream.”

“But this is not Abigail, though she looks very much like her. This is Fiona, one of our new candidates.” Matthew paused to judge my expression before continuing. “She wants to know more about how you designed ParallEarth. Don’t worry, she’s been cleared for such information.”

“Good; because it’s very sensitive information indeed,” my father exclaimed. “Welcome, Fiona. You do have an uncanny resemblance to my late daughter, God rest her soul.”

“So I’ve been told,” I said.

“Kelly was just helping me with my notes,” he continued. “It’s important to write everything down—every last detail you can recall from spending time in the future. We need to recreate it perfectly. Even some minuscule, mundane detail you think might not be important—it could end up being everything, the thing making greater things possible.”

“That’s good to know,” I said.

“You should write that down.” My father offered me a pen, but no paper. “You can’t trust your memory for long. Soon what you thought was clear becomes jumbled together with other thoughts, memories, ideas until the important information slips away like a cat in the fog.”

“Your fath—Assemblyman Damascus interprets his notes for me to record onto a Word document. Then I copy it onto the main server for easy access.”

“Only for those with clearance,” my father clarified.

“The information is encrypted and password protected. We… umm… wouldn’t want this information falling into the wrong hands.”

“That could be catastrophic!” my father exclaimed, gesturing with the uncapped pen in his hand.

“You visit my—the assemblyman often?” I asked.

“Almost every day for a few hours,” Kelly said. “He still has a lot of information floating around in that brilliant head of his.”

“We need to document everything,” my father reiterated. “Every detail, no matter how minuscule or mundane.”

“You mentioned that already,” Matthew chimed in. He was still standing by the door, one shoulder against the wall.

I took a seat at the foot of the bed. “It seems like the space station is almost done—or at least, well on its way. What’s left to discover?”

“I don’t know, which is exactly the point,” he said. “We don’t even know what we’re missing. We could get one thing wrong and the whole thing could go straight to hell. It might never make it into space. It might not connect with the others. They might fail before the portal opens—which was exactly what was happening if I remember correctly. The station was shutting down. Critical systems were failing. Many lives were lost. It’s up to me to ensure that catastrophe isn’t repeated.”

“Enough of us survived to make the journey worth it,” Matthew said. “But if we learn a little something extra this time around to save even a few of those people, then I’d call that a success.”

“I thought things couldn’t be changed?” I asked.

“The problem is, there are too many holes in our information—which I’m sure is part of some divine or universal design—so we don’t really know what kind of effect we have, what can change, and if we actually did change something or only thought we did.”

“Then it seems you’re doing important work,” I said to my father.

“The most important!” he bellowed, pointing to his notebook full of scribbles and designs.

“If only we could decode it,” Kelly said, sarcastically.

“We’re decoding it together. The answers are in here.”

I had wanted to get into more family questions, but it seemed he was engrossed in his work, and with Kelly there, I didn’t feel comfortable prying. So, I continued to play along, told him it was a pleasure meeting him, and one day I hoped to be able to help him like Kelly did.

He thought about that a moment, then agreed the extra help would be appreciated once I was initiated. Before then, he insisted I didn’t have the clearance.

After leaving, as Matthew and I walked down the hall, I took his hand and sighed.

“He’s not someone you can anticipate,” Matthew said. “I know you want to get some real information out of him. But it’s like his notes—a whole mess of nonsense with nuggets of wisdom and useful information hidden inside. You just have to decode it.”

“And here I thought you were going to tell me to manage my expectations again,” I said with a sly smile.

“There is that,” Matthew laughed.

We made our way back to the Southern California compound by way of the Sector 7 portal. It was still in the middle of the afternoon and I had another training session scheduled with Mallory, so we stopped at a café where I could get a bite to eat first.

“Mind if I watch this time?” Matthew asked as we neared the locker room.

“I’d rather not,” I said. “The sessions are going better, and you just make me more nervous.”

“And things are going well with Mallory?”

“They are; she’s helping me a lot. And today, Zelda should be joining us. We’re becoming a real team.”

Matthew smiled, flashing the boyish grin that had a way of melting my heart every time. “I’m so glad things are finally working out.”

“I hope so.” The Assembly of Seven had yet to determine our fates. All I could do in the meantime was to continue working as hard as I could. I stopped at the door to the locker room, leaned in, and kissed Matthew. “There; that should hold you over until I return,” I said.

“I guess it’ll have to,” he replied, his sweet smile turning into a wry one.

“I’m sure you have plenty of important business to attend to.”

“As a matter of fact, I do. So, feel free to return to the apartment whenever you’re ready and order yourself some dinner.”

“I’ll manage,” I said and proceeded into the locker room, trying to mentally psych myself up for another beating in the gymnasium.