but we still miss you terribly.
Rest in peace, our sweet, sweet son.
Sato clicked off the flashlight and stood in the dark for several minutes, surprisingly touched by the eulogy. It was impossible to separate these Alterants from the people you knew—hard not to imagine that lying beneath you was the person you’d grown to care for. In many ways, it was the same person. Although he didn’t quite understand how it worked yet, this boy who’d died of who-knew-what was just Tick along a different path. He’d probably been similar in personality, looked the same though much taller, had the same drive to help others—just like Tick had saved Sato’s life twice now.
And even though Sato had been grumpy with George more than once about this mission, in some ways it had helped him appreciate the fact that his friends—who were few in number—were alive and well, not dead like this poor kid. But it also made him sad, imagining another version of Tick dying so young. George said they didn’t quite know why these major Realities still followed the same general pedigrees and lineages despite having such vastly different histories, but there had to be a big reason for it.
It worked geographically, too. Tick’s Alterants had all been born in the same place and buried in the same vicinity. And, as far as Sato knew, Tick’s parents were always named Edgar and Lorena and he always had two sisters, Lisa and Kayla. Strange stuff. Interesting how it all worked. Lately George thought he was on the verge of a breakthrough.
It had something to do with soulikens, a phenomenon the old man was trying desperately to figure out. He rarely talked about it, claiming all his information would get jumbled up and confused if he tried to explain it. Once he could lay it before them piece by piece, in a rational and comprehensible discussion, he’d immediately gather the Realitants to do so—something he’d been promising for months.
Soulikens. All Sato knew was that it had something to do with the electricity that existed within the human body. Actual and real electricity. Words like signals and impulses and imprints were thrown around, but never enough at once to make any sense of it. The Realitants would just have to be patient and wait for George to get it all together inside his thick skull.
But Sato had learned some things on his own, and as he stood in the darkness, enjoying the cool air, the quiet, the peace he always felt in a cemetery, he thought about one of them. Electricity was an essential physical element in making the heart pump. It seemed impossible that the human body could create electricity, but it was true. And the fact that the heart—the most important organ and the symbol of so many things in life—depended so greatly on it meant . . .
Well, he didn’t know what it meant. But it had something to do with soulikens, and something to do with his mission to find dead Alterants of Tick. Except every time Sato tried to put the pieces together, it got jumbled and
confusing. No wonder George was so insistent that he couldn’t talk about it yet.
Sato felt a headache coming on. He reached into his pocket and pushed the little button that signaled he was ready to wink back to HQ.
A nice, long morning nap. That’s exactly what he needed. Folding his arms and shivering at the cold that had seeped through his thick coat and chilled his skin, he waited for Rutger to bring him home.
A minute passed, then two. To his surprise, two people appeared in front of him—one short and fat, the other tall and skinny. He didn’t need to shine the light on them to know who they were, but he did anyway.
Rutger threw up one of his pudgy arms to block the brightness. He held a Barrier Wand in the other. “Point that back at your feet, Sato! I’d like my eyes to last another decade or two!”
Sato didn’t budge, hoping they couldn’t see the big smile that flashed across his face.
Mothball, towering over her best friend and standing like a pile of sticks thrown together at the last minute with glue and draped with loose-fitting clothes, merely squinted. “Master Sato, best be puttin’ down your torch there. ’Less you’re wantin’ to have a nice-sized pair of fists box them sad little ears of yours.”
Sato did as she said, snapping back to the reality of the situation as he did so. Why had they come? Something had to be wrong. A trickle of panic wiped his grin completely away.
“Wait,” he said. “What are you guys doing here? What happened?”