“Huh.”
“What’s the matter?”
He broke from Hannah’s grasp. “Wait here. I want to check something.”
Theo shook his head. “Uh-uh. We’ve split up enough already.”
“Fine. Then come with me.”
“David, are you sure this is a good idea?” Hannah asked. “Mia really needs water.”
“I know what Mia needs. If this is what I think it is, she’ll benefit most of all.”
Hannah and Theo traded a dim expression as they followed David up the slope. Whatever the boy was looking at was invisible to them. All he would tell them, as he led the charge, was that something interesting came up this hill two days ago and never came down.
By the time they joined David at the crest, they could see exactly what he was talking about. The recent past had met up with the present. And quite a present it was.
The luxury van glistened in the sunlight, resting serenely near the edge of a cliff. Aside from the dirt and grass on the tires, the vehicle looked as pristine as a showroom special. Through the tinted windows lay six plush bucket seats. A metal emblem on the rear door heralded the van as a Royal Seeker. It was painted in shiny silver.
Hannah held her mystified gaze on the abandoned vehicle.
“Huh.”
—
Zack ambled back and forth in the leafy shade, clucking his tongue to a forcibly cheery tune. If pressed to name the song in his head, he could only peg it as a number from The Little Mermaid. The one the crab sings.
Soon he spotted the dry chagrin of Amanda and Mia and became smirkingly contrite.
“Sorry. That used to drive my girlfriend nuts too.”
“Sit down. You’re making us nervous.”
He rejoined them at the tree, rapidly drumming his thighs as he scanned the grassy distance.
“You never mentioned a girlfriend before,” Mia said.
“She was an ex,” Zack clarified. “We broke up two years ago but we still lived together.”
“That’s a strange arrangement,” Amanda mused.
Zack rolled his shoulders in a sullen shrug. “It was a good apartment.”
Sensing the end of his effusiveness, Amanda dropped the topic and ate another peppermint. Zack had noticed her popping them like crazy over the past fifteen minutes, ever since Hannah and the others crossed into worrisome tardiness.
As she reached for the last candy, an odd new thought occurred to him.
“Wait. Don’t eat that.”
She paused. “Huh?”
“Hold that mint. And hand me the box, please.”
Confused, she passed him the little square tin of Breezers she’d purchased from the motel vending machine. Zack brandished the container like a stage magician.
“Now, what do you think would happen if I reversed this?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you think I could refill this box with mints of the past?”
Amanda stared at him blankly as she pondered his premise. “I don’t like the idea of half-digested candies suddenly disappearing from my insides.”
“I’m pretty sure that won’t happen.”
Zack placed the tin on the ground and concentrated until it gleamed with light. He opened the lid to a fresh new heap of white candies.
Mia’s mouth went slack. “Wow.”
“Wow,” Amanda said.
“Wow indeed.” Zack looked to Amanda. “Do you feel any less minty?”
“No. I feel exactly the same. I can still taste the last one I ate.”
“Yeah. These are doubles. Holy crap. I made copies.” He laughed. “David’s going to blow a synapse.”
For all his awe, Zack suspected his feat was pitifully mundane to the civilized natives of Earth. He was right. The process of tooping had been a part of modern culture for decades. Using any rejuvenator, a container could be reversed to create temporal duplicates of its former contents, whether they were mints or apples or shiny gold nuggets.
Unfortunately for wealth seekers, tooping was an inherently flawed process, one that always resulted in inferior copies. Precious metals became rusted and worthless. Gems turned cloudy and cracked. Most tooped foods were inedible, though certain grains and vegetables were able to survive the process with a tolerable loss of quality. There were over a thousand toop-friendly recipes that had been discovered through years of experimentation—pastas, breads, and rice dishes that were easily saved by fresh seasonings.
Though tooping was prohibited by federal law, the authorities could only do so much to stop it in the kitchen. In the end, nobody craved shoddy cloned sustenance. It was just the fiscal reality. The middle class had leftovers. The lower class had do-overs.
In the grassy wilds, Zack received a quick education on the limits of tooping. The moment he sampled a re-created mint, his face contorted in comical disgust. Mia and Amanda covered their laughs.
“What’s wrong?”
He spat his candy into the dirt. “It’s awful. Like eating a dust bunny.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“I’m serious. Try one.”