Mr. Gray led Lewis and Josie to the time pocket in Yost Park. It was only a few blocks away in the green belt, spiderwebbed with trails. Lewis knew where he was going, generally, having been there before… in the future.

Josie was still trying to wrap her mind around the concept of Lewis’s journal as they entered the park. Instructions from previous iterations of Lewis, refined by the ages—it was all pretty wild.

“So when you put new instructions into the journal, you change the past?” Josie asked as they stepped off the trail.

“Yup,” said Lewis.

“And you’ve done this how many times?” she asked.

Lewis paused. “Well, I’ve never actually amended the journal myself, but possibly hundreds of past versions of me have sent back various instructions.”

Mr. Gray laughed. “More like thousands of you, and that’s just the current journal. You started with individual letters but it soon became unwieldy.”

Josie nodded, soaking it all in. “Okay, but the part that’s bothering me is that as soon you amend the journal, won’t we cease to exist…? Like won’t that replace us with a version that hasn’t ever had to amend the journal because the journal will have always warned Landon not to be Erased and then we won’t have needed to make this change? It will have always been there.”

Lewis opened his mouth, but then closed it again as he contemplated the temporal ramifications of Josie’s spot on logic. “Hey… you’re right,” he said. “Landon won’t have been Erased and we’ll just end up meeting him at his house earlier. We won’t even think about going for the journal because it won’t be needed.”

Mr. Gray began laughing hysterically. The little imp slapped his knee as he cackled.

“What’s so funny?” asked Lewis.

“Oh, nothing,” said Mr. Gray. “Let’s hurry now. We must stay on track. The pocket is just over there, under that root.”

A thick tree root jutted out above the soil forming a hollow beneath. It was just wide enough for Lewis to crawl in with the upper half of his body. He dove in deep for the journal, screeched, then wiggled back out again backwards in a panic.

Mr. Gray cackled again, literally rolling on the ground in his laughter.

“Something’s in there!” cried Lewis.

Earth shifted as a boy’s head emerged from the hole. “Hello!” said the boy.

“Landon, I presume?” asked Josie.

The boy sneezed a puff of dusty dirt into the air. “The one and only,” said Landon. “And you must be Josie. I’ve read all about you.” He held up a tattered leather-bound journal.

“What are you doing in the time pocket?!” asked Lewis.

Landon smirked as he shimmied the rest of the way out from under the root. “Just following your instructions.”

“I don’t understand…” said Lewis. “You were Erased, and we haven’t amended the journal yet.”

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Mr. Gray was absolutely losing his mind with laughter at this point. Josie suspected some sort of trick had been played on them.

“We went to your house,” said Lewis. “Your dad said he didn’t know who you were….”

Landon began laughing as well. “That wasn’t my dad. That was my uncle. He’s staying with us this week and he’s a total jerk. No, I’m fine, look.” He opened the journal to an entry they’d never needed to make. It detailed a plan for Landon to hide himself in the time pocket until retrieved.

“So we never had to write it, because we already did,” Lewis was not amused.

“I brought all the stuff you asked me to bring,” said Landon.

Lewis’s mood shifted from annoyance to bubbling with curiosity.

Landon reached back into the time pocket and pulled out a backpack and a samurai sword. “Some of this wasn’t easy to get my hands on, but I’ve had basically my whole life to prepare.”

Lewis shook his head, smiling at his own ignorance. “What did I ask you to bring?”

“I’m not supposed to tell you,” said Landon. “You do best when operating on pure instinct. But you’ll need these.” He unzipped his backpack, holding it close so that Lewis couldn’t see inside. He retrieved a set of volunteer badges for the Taste of Edmonds festival that was going on that weekend at the civic center. “And you’ll need this,” he said to Josie as he handed her a strange nut, reminiscent of an acorn, with a hole drilled through it. A string was threaded through the hole, turning it into a necklace.

Josie looked at Landon quizzically as she accepted his offering.

“Put it on,” he said, “it stops time from freezing for you, even in your native time stream. Basilisks.”

Josie nodded in acknowledgment.

“It shouldn’t sprout, but if it does, chuck it. As far as you can. And run.”

Josie blinked several times.

“Okay, I gotta go,” said Landon. “You two need to go back to Josie’s house and convince the others to go to the Taste with Clark.”

Lewis grabbed Landon’s arm as he turned to go. “You’ve got to tell us more than that,” he said. “I don’t even know who Clark is.”

“Oh, Clark is the shapeshifter,” said Landon. “I figured you’d know that much since you refer to him by name in the journal.”

“I wasn’t allowed to read ahead,” said Lewis.

Landon nodded slowly in understanding. “Ok, well, be nice to Clark, it’s not his fault the Agares stole him from his universe.” He looked contemplative for a moment. “The Agares are pulling out the big guns for today,” he said, a concerned frown forming in his lips. “They have a Dreadnaught in town. It’s our job to kill it.”

Lewis’s face turned stark white at the mention of the Dreadnaught.

“Yeah…” said Landon. “Basically the It clown on steroids.”

Josie frowned. “I haven’t seen that movie.”

“It’s a fear-inducing empath,” said Lewis. “I’ve only read about them. They can manifest your worst fears.”

“Delightful,” said Josie.

“I’ll prep the kill-zone,” said Landon. “Get the others to the festival, and let’s do this!”

Landon was way too pumped up for the encounter as far as Josie was concerned. “Wait,” she said. “This Dreadnaught thing… the things it shows us, are they real or just in our heads?”

Landon shrugged. “I don’t know, I’ve never met one.” He swung his backpack over his shoulder and strapped his samurai sword to his belt. “Let’s go, Gray,” he said to the Parca. “Be safe out there,” he said to Lewis and Josie. “I’ll see you later when the time is right!”

Josie had no idea what the Dreadnaught might show her. Her biggest fears were more psychological than physical in nature. She hoped the encounter to be brief. She began to steel her mind to the possibilities.

That acorn looking thing is actually a Gobu nut. It grows on the same world that the Basilisks come from. The Basilisks freeze the native time stream, and only then can the Gobu nut grow, feeding off of the ambient energies inside of the Basilisks’ vortex. Once the Gobu nut sprouts it can grow very large very fast, but it takes about a thousand years of frozen time for it to mature, so the risks of this aren’t very high. By wearing the Gobu nut around ones neck on a necklace, the wearer is surrounded by the nut’s aura and protected from the time freezing effect of the Basilisks. It’s a very odd world that these things come from. Time is a real knot over there. The Basilisks were one of the first creatures that the Agares collected. The time freezing effect is fairly unique amongst species throughout the multi-verse, and the Agares often use them to inconspicuously Erase their enemies.

Keep vigilant,

-Mr. Gray