Darius crouched behind home plate, a piece of plywood that had remained pressed into the dust since he was a young boy when he was first brought to the grandmother's place in the narrow canyon.

Badrik was first to bat. He had his long coat hung on the rail post, and his black dress shirt was rolled up beyond his elbows. Ebony forearms shone in the bright sunlight that were as thick as the bat he held. He bent his knees and took a practice swing. Brock stood out as pitcher. Nova was further out still, her back to the water tower, her white-blond hair bright in the sun.

Badrik had suggested they haul Grandmother’s CD player outside. Darius had told him It was one of her favourite things, to ask him to put the music on while he practiced.

Now, one of the grandmother’s favourite songs was a soft echo off the canyon walls, and Darius thought it was most excellent.

The easy jazz saxophone of “Barefoot Sunday Blues” by Cannonball hummed easy and smooth through the air.

Grandmother used to say, “Put ol’ ‘Cannonball’ on today while you practice, my ponyboy, and make sure it’s just loud enough for me to hear back here at the house.”

Brock was ready to pitch. Darius had them go through all his old equipment from the barn. Brock had his most recent old glove.

“So tell me, there must be other things to this game than simply hitting the ball,” the big man said with his Jamaican lilt. “What are the rules?”

“Oh, there are lots of rules,” Darius said.

“Well, then, let's just give me the one I need to be concerned with right now.”

“Well, in this game, you have to hit the pitch and knock the ball off the water tower.” Brock flicked his glove over his shoulder. “As long as you keep hitting the tower, you stay batting. If you miss three times in a row, we change positions.”

The big man took another practise swing.

“Ok,” he said.

“Why don’t the others come and join us? I know maybe Juro and the master may like to watch, but Doctor Joy could play. Maybe she’d like a break from all the time in the garage?”

“They can’t come here. Only I can…”

Badrik had been looking back at Darius, and a ball whipped by him to smack into Darius’ glove.

“Strike one!” Nova yelled from the outfield.

The big man turned and pointed the end of the bat at Brock. “Hey now, I was not properly prepared.”

“You were standing in the box,” Brock replied.

He looked to Darius. “There is a box?”

“Yes.”

“What box?” The big man looked down at the ground around him. He said to Darius, “There is no box here.” He gestured to the ground. “Now you are making rules up.”

“It’s the batter’s box. It’s a given. You are in position to hit the ball. If you don’t want to hit, you have to take a step back, out of the box, away from the plate.”

The big man took one step straight back.

“You kids are hard on an old man.” He took a few more practice swings while glaring at Brock.

With purpose, he took one step forward and tapped the bat’s end on home plate. “I remember the televisions now. They tap the ground like this.” He readied to swing. “I do learn things from the televisions.”

“Why can’t they come?” Darius asked. This time, the big man held his position, ready to receive the pitch.

“Ah, Darius, you won’t trick me this time. This is what you do in the games, I think. Try to distract the one with the bat. Break his concentration. But I, too, can play at this.”

Darius grinned.

Darius caught the signal from Brock. A fastball. He saw Brock grin. This is going to come across the plate like a laser beam.

He crouched and kept his glove in front of his face. “I’d not try on this one if I were you. It’s gonna come with a pile of heat. You won’t be able to hit it. Probably few people could hit this next pitch. I think Brock is itching to show off.”

“Now. You see, one of my talents is detecting the truth. And now you are telling me the truth. I know this.”

Brock let go with a ball that was harder than Bucky could ever throw.

‘The others can’t come here because I’m the only one who can enter your mind.’ And if it wasn’t enough to startle Darius, to have Badrik’s voice suddenly in his head, the next thing he heard were his own thoughts played back to him like a recording…

‘‘This is going to come across the plate like a laser beam...’’

The thoughts filled his head faster than the thrown ball could travel. In one second, his mind was on the game, and the next second, his head was filled with a flood of words.

Darius was just quick enough to snap out of it and catch the ball before it struck his chest. But he had caught it sloppily, and the ball stung his hand through the leather like a whip. He grimaced, dropped the ball, and stood, shaking his glove off, and rubbing his palms together.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

“Ah. See? I told you I could also play tricks,” Badrik said, looking at him with a smile.

Nova thrust up an arm in the outfield with fingers jutting out in a peace sign. “Strike two!” She turned and started a little dance shuffle that made her look like a duck in a shooting gallery. “I get to bat next; I get to bat next,” she sing-songed.

Darius stepped forward and stood on home plate.

“You’re in my mind? So this…” He flicked his glove around them. “This… this is in my mind? When I was on the pool deck and saw what Bucky had become. Was all that in my mind, too? I had been wondering that. I wondered if the operation had really gone wrong. If maybe I was in a coma or something. Maybe I never woke up from the operation after I first met you. Maybe this is all, I don’t know, brain damage? None of this has been real.”

“Ok, wise man,” he said and pointed out to Nova, suddenly laughing as she was still making her little duck shuffle dance.

“…I get to bat next…” They could hear her still singing.

“Is she part of a coma, your imagination, or is she here? Really here?” Badrik asked.

Darius couldn’t help but shake his head at her comic foolishness.

“Oh. Ya. She’s real. I couldn’t make that up. They are their own people. What Brock said earlier. They are here. We are here.”

“Yes. You, me, Brock, and Nova, we are all really here. The interface that you have been fitted with, and the one in the drone, has allowed for you three to be preserved. We couldn’t have done it any other way. While you are preserved, I can visit you over the footbridge I built to access your mind.”

“So, just us? But what about everyone else? The coach? Everyone in the stands? Our teammates? Are they all gone?”

“Yes. I’m very sorry. Everyone in the blast area. All gone. Except for you three. You have been saved by us, and as Brock surmised, you haven’t been moved to your new table yet.”

“Like, everyone is gone? The entire city?”

Yes. I’m sorry. We could do nothing more. You saw how difficult it was to change things as much as we did. There are laws to follow. Mercury ensures this. None of you had any future there. Your timelines there had ended—no possible future.”

“What about the Grandmother then?”

“We know she’s not here, in your mind.”

“But, out there, back where we came from. Is she ok?”

“That timeline ended for you three. From what I understand of that period we rescued you from, only that harbour city in Japan was attacked. Only one bomb. As far as I know, the other cites are fine. The attack allowed us to rescue you. It allowed us to intervene in the surgery you would not have survived. The evil of the attack allowed us to bring the balance of good. I think the Grandmother, as you call her, is fine still in her timeline.”

“Wait. You said you built the footbridge?”

“Yes. It is a construct.”

“And the others cannot visit us here? Only you can come?”

“Yes. I can walk in a mind. We all have different talents. Juro is much older than me. He is ancient. A master in his own right, but the one we all follow is Master Hiruko, the God of Luck, as some call him. Some refer to us as immortals.”

“And they cannot come over the bridge you made because that comes into my mind?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Well, what is outside the canyon is the same as it has always been for me. The diner, the garage.”

“Consider the divide that the footbridge now spans as the moat around your mental palace. Outside is imagery familiar to you that you also constructed, with our help, the diner, but that is a place that spirits can also touch. Anyone can access it that has the power to do so. Some refer to it as Valhalla, the Astral or Axle Plane. Some creatures from the Lost Realms that are not spirits, demons, ghosts or magical can simply wander over. All beings are not human, Darius, and even the human ones from ancient timelines can wield the power to travel there.”

“Ok. Immortals. Non-humans. We’ll have to get to that, but let’s stick with Doctor Joy. She is one of you, but she is like us? You change?”

“That’s right. She is still delicate. Her time outside of our influence, learning new aspects and the sciences, has made her… inflexible, or at least less flexible than we are. She sees things now the way modern people do. But she will come around.”

“So she is like me. Like us.” He flipped his head to his friends.

“Yes.”

“And you lied to her.”

“I don’t like to call it a lie. I prefer calling it ‘going along with people’s perceptions.’ We are not telling her. She willingly stepped into a Lost Realm and then learned technology as if she were a new being. She was aware of what she was about to do, her sacrifice, before, but not now. We are giving her the time she needs. Some need to become aware at their own speed. Like in any healing, if you push people, you can break them. People are both resilient and fragile. So is your mind. It is a difficult balance.”

“You didn’t want to shock her with what she wasn’t ready for. She’s a baby that doesn’t know she’s in a tree.”

“Yes. She has forgotten her past, but she had to forget to be able to learn. This new machine intelligence is a challenge for us. Juro and Hikuro are too old to learn such things. Myself, I like to think I would have been able to do what Joy has done.”

“Has Joy changed like Bucky changed? What the pool girls, the cleaner turned into…”

“They are our counterparts and our opposites, but we are not like them. Four of them. Four of us. Our presence in your timeline then allowed them in. Our existence allows their existence. Our influence allows their disruption. Those four were taken over, possessed. We never do that. We showed you compassion and let you decide. You are here by your own will and our guidance. You have always been given a choice. Those others, the lives they lead allowed them to be possessed.”

“So what became of them?”

“Oh. They will be around. They will come, wearing the skin of the dead or looking like ghouls or wraiths.”

“But you four. Master Hiruko, Juro, and Doctor Joy. Why are they, why are you here? What are you doing?”

Badrik let the tip of the bat rest on the dirt.

“As Master Hiruko said, a machine has asked for help. And we’ve helped it.”

“What is this machine, exactly?”

“Come on!” Nova called from the backfield. “We playing or what? I bat next. We strike the old man out!” Nova called, and she began to chant, “One more strike! One more strike!”

Darius chucked the ball out to Brock.

Badrik grinned. “She is a peppy one, that one. You will have to watch that. Brock is the opposite. Calm. Thinker.” Badrik took a swing and stepped up to the plate. “You may have to reign her in at times, and you may have to force him into action at times, and both you can trust explicitly.

“Now, Brock, you be nice and give this old man something he can hit,” Badrik called to Brock.

The ball came nice and easy. Badrik swung and connected with a resounding “crack.” Darius stood up and shielded his eyes with his glove. He watched the ball rise into the air but spin-off to the right side of the tower, missing it. They could hear Nova giggling as she jogged over to get the ball.

“You miss! You miss! I get to bat! I get to bat!” she chortled.

“You swung too late. Next time, swing sooner, and you’ll hit it,” Darius said to the big man.

“Ok. I will remember.”

“How does your master, Master Hiruko, intend to help?”

“You are the very best game pieces. Speed and initiative…” He pointed the bat to Nova as she ran up towards them. “Thought and strength,” he said, pointing to Brock. “And finally, you, dexterity and the most important trait of them all, intuition. Pieces at the height of their game who chose to be helpful, kind, thoughtful, and compassionate. Agents of good luck. Something Chaos and his family of darkness, silence, and the fates will try to stop.”