The Acolytes of Crane

8 THEODORE: A LEAF





“Slowly, I felt the weathered wet wood of a dock below my feet, as I was set into time and place, back to my present. I stood slightly off balance from the teleport, and my vision strained. I was now a changed person. On the outside, I looked like the teenager I used to be, but on the inside, I felt a raw new energy, about to be infused into a brand new consciousness, ready to defend Earth.”

I brought my flattened palms to just above my eyes, because the light was deluging my head with aches. My hands were about five inches from my face, and the Dietons, those speckled radiant white pixels that covered my body, rapidly evanesced.

I lowered my arms and looked up toward the sky, toward what must be Sephera. I knew I could not see it if I tried, but I was newly aware of its existence. While I stared upward, I witnessed what could be described as a giant re-run reel of my extraction from time and place by the spaceship Uriel.

It was as if I never had left the scene of the potential murder by Travis. I stood transfixed, watching the past.

Across the river at the mid-height of the cliff, my body double was frozen in space, and there Travis stood at the top, with his hands extended after pushing me. He almost fell from the cliff, following his rash actions. I was the young man across the river that my body double had observed when falling.

It was a weird feeling to observe an attempted murder of your past self. In that moment, I discovered my formidable opponent’s most apparent weakness. Travis had no control over his raging anger. He was so weak, so spent, that he nearly stumbled off the edge of the cliff. A leaf falling on top of him at the critical time could’ve knocked him off for good. I did notice, however, that he rapidly regained his strength after that brief setback. Something I definitely had to take note of for our inevitable rematch in the future.

In a wild rush of adrenaline, confident that Travis had not seen me, the ‘new’ Theodore Crane, I crossed the bridge back over to the other bank downstream, and dashed through the woods. I had to find the gas station, and I worried it could involve revealing my position to enemies, now that I knew more of their secrets. I really needed to call Winston, the cabby, before he gave up waiting for me and returned to Minneapolis.

As I ran through the woods, a miracle happened. The trees’ branches, as well as the brush, bent away from me. It was if a path free of the brush instantly appeared within a certain radius of my mad sprint. I could not explain it. I suspected it must be the Dietons—previously labeled by Lincoln and me as The Intervention.

I found the highway and paralleled it toward the town. The gas station was at the town’s entrance. I ran at full sprint, and a car pulled up next to me, slowing to my speed.

‘Hey! You need a ride?’ the woman asked. She was trying to yell over the passing cars from her station wagon window.

‘No, do you know how much further to the town?’ I asked.

Before she could answer, I ‘heard’ an audio hallucination in my mind: ‘One-point-two-six-miles.’ I knew the audio was from the robot aboard the Uriel. Apparently, there was no sound from the transmission, so the lady didn’t detect any of my private communication.

As if the woman driver observed nothing unusual, she told me the town was about a mile away. I figured it might only take minutes if I ran. I was afraid to tell her my destination, because I had an overwhelming feeling of distrust. Trazuline had told me that there was an evil smothering Earth, and that heightened my sensitivity toward strangers.

I ran. The carbon monoxide from the passing cars in my lungs and the accumulating lactic acid in my leg muscles weakened me, and I slowed to a stop. A familiar cab interrupted my exhausted breathing, and Winston yelled from the window, as traces of cigarette smoke billowed out past the top edge of the frame. ‘What the hell are ya doing? Com’ere, what are you doing?’ he asked again as I moved in closer to him.

‘Sir, I have to tell you, I lied. I only have one house in Ferndale, and my grandparents are going to be worried sick any minute now—if not already.’

‘What! Get your ass in this car now, you have some explaining to do, where the hell are your shoes?’ Winston asked.

Luckily, Winston stayed in town after I left for the cliffs. On the way out of town, I told Winston that I just wanted to continue my tradition of visiting Jason at the cliffs, and that I was willing to do anything to go there. He thought I was nuts, but he told me that I was a clever bastard and a great friend for what I did.

“It was quiet and tense in the car after our initial meeting and there was only room for reflection, with the presence of a daunting vanilla smell.”

I hear the automatic view box open, and one of the guards presses his face against it. He says, “Hey prisoner, what happened next? I mean, what did you think Zane wanted with you?”

I hesitate and observe the man, sizing him up, and I say, “Zane confided in me. I was the only person who could derail Travis—they needed me.”

“Zane needed you? That is ridiculous. You really are crazy. A demigod needs a kid—that’s rich. I suppose you think you could beat Odion too.” The guard laughs, and footsteps interrupt our encounter. I scurry to a corner of my cell with my tablet in hand. The view box closes, and I hear an argument outside.

“Were you just talking with a prisoner? If I ever catch you talking to a prisoner again rookie, you are going to be one! Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir. He has quite an interesting story.”

“He’s a prisoner. The only interesting part is the fact that he’s still alive. Don’t let me catch you talking to him again. I mean it.”

“Yes, sir.”

The veteran guard opens the view box and stares at me. I look down, avoiding the possibility of accidentally antagonizing him. He says, “Get back to it, prisoner. I know you are just dying to talk to yourself.”

I know to follow orders immediately. I turn the tablet on and get back to it:

“There was a strange feeling, after playing back all the events aboard Zane’s ship. Everything made sense. I understood the concept of Dietons. In the most simple terms, they were the microscopic minions of Zane and all who were endowed with rolesks. However, they were much more.”

The overwhelming feeling of anxiety from my encounter in the deep space of the multiverse was gone, and merely replaced with the pressing fear of what my grandparents might do to me when I arrived at home.

My hand was annoyingly itchy, and in an eardrum piercing fashion, a voice returned to me:

‘We have implanted you with a communicator. It is a device we will use to stay in touch with you,’ the voice said.

‘Zane?’ I asked.

‘Theodore, don’t speak, you only need to think. We have implanted a nanocom into the Brochas area of your brain that controls speech. We have done this to facilitate our communication. This is Nezatron. I am the robotic being you saw aboard the spaceship Uriel. Since I was constructed from the digital lives that arose from Sephera, I am a Sepheran. I will be the only one monitoring this channel, for the time being. A secondary implant was placed within the palm of your hand. It is called IPU, Inner Processing Unit. It is your own personal computing system. If you need to command forth an important fact, it can be displayed on a hologram from the center of your palm. Think of it like a search engine on your own Internet, but ten times more advanced. I will be the provider of this information. I am precise. Anything, try it out if you don’t believe me,’ he said, taking a moment from talking to observe my reaction.


I sharply drew in my breath as I peered at the palm of my hand. In the middle, there was faint, glowing circle—intense in the center, then gradually fading as it radiated out. It was as if a flashlight was pressed against the backside of my hand, shining through my blood vessels to my palm. I turned my hand over; the back of my hand appeared as it always had.

Excited, I decided to test Nezatron’s proposition. Closing my eyes, in my mind, I conjured forth the thought of a Dieton.

I opened my eyes and gasped.

A tiny hologram flickered just above the palm of my hand. Rotating slowly to exhibit as much visual information as possible, it was a thorough blueprint of a Dieton drawn to a visible scale. Over my nanocom, an audio description of the Dieton played inside my head. I freaked out, and sat on my hand quickly to hide the hologram, hoping that it wasn’t really a solid three-dimensional object that would poke against my butt.

‘Don’t worry about others seeing this hologram. The hologram is encoded to your optic nerve and there are only a handful of humans on Earth that share a similar sight with you. The chance of you encountering one of these humans isn’t a likely outcome. On our end, we will be monitoring your vitals, as well as your location. You will need to think about me to initiate a conversation. Understand, I am not here waiting for you to contact me. I have orders of my own to follow. We altered your mind in the chamber. You are now a supreme enhanced version of yourself. You will need to be careful, because people will notice that you have advanced intellectually—’ he said, and I interrupted.

‘I will be smarter?’ I ask, realizing that I spoke aloud.

‘Did you say something?’ the cabby asked.

‘No, nothing,’ I said.

Nezatron resumed his dialogue. ‘You need to be more careful. Keep your thoughts within you when communicating with us. Your mission is to find four human children of Earth, to follow you to the Uriel to be trained. You and your friends will be transported at the hour of five, Earth time on the final day of your month. That gives you twenty-three days to find and enlist four willing individuals. To end the transmission, simply think it and the window for communication will close. The Dietons are in your favor, Theodore. Know that we are fighting from every angle to protect you. Trust us.’ I could tell he paused. He was waiting for my reaction. I visualized turning off my voice, and the transmission ended.

The biggest concern of mine was if a leaf could have knocked Travis off the cliff, then why didn’t Zane command one to magically appear to deliver that blow of fate? Why didn’t Zane, in all his power and wisdom knock him down and crush him, as Travis himself said he would do to me?

I didn’t know how I, a young and immature teenager was going to reel in four innocent people to follow me into the depths of space to train, and to fight? For a cause that I barely even understood.

I had to start somewhere, and I needed to bring in the services of the cerebral Lincoln Royce to do it. The need to deal with the approaching conflict drew nearer.

The ride was tense and quiet, time passed swiftly, and it wasn’t long before we were on the corner of Granada Avenue and Fifth Street, just down from my grandparents’ house. I explained to Winston that I wanted him to drop me off at the corner. I didn’t want to involve him in a messy situation.

He said, ‘Ya know, what you did could have gotten us both in trouble. You put yourself in danger, I am not saying I will not help you out again, but it is going to be difficult to trust you now. You get on, and I will drive on. Best of luck, you sneaky bastard.’

Gulping, I said good-bye and ran up the hill into the cul-de-sac. It was around seven in the evening, and I saw a couple of small bats zinging around the circle.

There were always a couple of bats that flew out to play when the sun went down. I stepped foot on the front deck, my heart pounding.

My stomach was fluttering in and out, as if one of those bats was inside, flapping its wings. When I entered the house, my grandparents were staring, with arms crossed. There was a brief lapse of sound.

‘Theodore Daniel Crane, where have you been?’ Laverne demanded.

‘I went to Taylors Falls—,’ I said, while being cut off.

“What!” my grandpa interrupted, “How the hell did you get up there, and why?”

I explained to them that I wanted to continue the tradition of visiting the cliffs, and that I was willing to take the risks involved.

After I finished speaking, I was near tears. Not because I had lied to them, not because I had sneaked out, but because I had witnessed the hurt on my grandparents’ faces. They had fretted all day, and it showed. Their numerous wrinkles were etched in even further. It was as if one delicate tendril had snapped. They had trusted me unwaveringly, and I could tell, in that momentous one day, it wasn’t ever going to be the same. I felt deeply ashamed. My grandparents loved me too much to show any anger, but they could not hide their profound disappointment.

Marv said, ‘In my days, my dad would’ve spanked me with a wooden rod no thicker than your pinky finger. But Theodore, I forgive you, just remember we love you, and if you need anything, just ask us.’ Firming up his mouth, he turned away.

I felt even worse.

‘I thought of calling the police,’ Laverne said, not looking directly at me, ‘but I figured you were too intelligent for any real trouble, Theodore.’

‘Yes, grandma.’ I hugged her frail body. There was no more that needed to be said.

I was dismissed to my room, and I lay in bed. I glared up at the ceiling, mulling over Zane and King Trazuline.

My room was cool from the air conditioning. Usually I left the door open so the air would circulate, but I had to keep my grandparents from observing me, whilst I used my hologram.

I rose up to close the door, and I changed into my striped pajamas. While I changed, I heard my grandparents talking about me. They said I was distant and irrational. The only thing actually out of reach that I cared about was the Uriel.

I wanted to know more about King Trazuline. I could have waited to find out, but I had an implanted IPU from my benefactors, why wait?

The IPU was incredible. Earth wouldn’t invent such technology for decades—perhaps hundreds of years, in fact. I dwelled upon the thought uneasily. Perhaps Earth should never invent this stuff. I pushed that thought aside, and renewed my vigor. Wide-eyed, I examined it.

I extended my hand outward, and I pulled it back quickly to jet over to my blinds. I wanted to shut them. I was still uncomfortable about the use of the hologram around the possible presence of witnesses.

When I jumped down from my bed, I bounced around in the dark of my room, and I stubbed my toe against the leg of my dresser. I let out a short yelp and scrammed back to my bed. I rubbed my toe until the pain subsided.

I held my hand outward once again, and from my hand appeared the king. It was truly cool miniature hologram of King Trazuline, slowly rotating before my eyes, and audio began to play over my nanocom:

‘King Trazuline is the Multiversal representative for the planet Karshiz. . .’

I remember thinking almost every word that came from Nezatron’s metal mouth was difficult to process. I felt it was just excessively advanced for me at the time. I had an urge to look up the Dacturons, but most of the information was about their society and culture. I wanted to know about the conflict, because the king had explicitly called me for to do battle side by side with him.

I continued my train of thought and Nezatron equally flooded my brain with audio through my nanocom.


“It wasn’t that Zane in his infinite wisdom was betting all his chips on me. He had many chips to gamble, and they were wisely invested throughout the multiverse. We were just a small part in a large plan. I blanked in thought, and fell asleep.”

The morning slipped through my home and eliminated the darkness. On the ceiling, there was a web. A spider was living in the corner of my room, next to my boy-band poster.

I watched the arachnid for about fifteen minutes. The spider didn’t move. I felt like it was watching me. Usually, when I saw insects in my room, I would grab something from my reach and hurl it in the direction of the spider, in hopes of annihilating the poor insect.

I left the spider alone, because it wasn’t harming me. Preoccupied with the incredible revelations of the past twenty-four hours, I thought about Dietons, Omnians, and Dacturons. A new universe that I had never heard of, yet was now to be my future. A future pre-destined by none other than Zane himself. I could have sat and listened to the history of the multiverse for hours as I did the night before.

Odion and Zane were Omnians, and there were only the two of them. They each led at least one army. On the evil Odion’s side were the Dacturons. On the good Zane’s side were the Dietons. There. I had to straighten out in my head who was who, and what I was fighting for.

It was about eight in the morning, and I swung my feet out from underneath my covers, knocking a baseball card album to the floor. I sat up straight on my bed, cocking my neck to rid myself of the cramp.

I walked over to my closet and searched for some clothes with only a tad of fashion in mind. I really wasn’t strategic about the clothes I wore, but it was time to put forth some effort.

If I were going to summon the charisma needed to rally four people—Earthlings really, who had been raised on a planet that, for millennia, believed itself to be the only inception of intelligent life in the universe—to join in the resistance, I would need some style. I had to start in my closet.

While I was thumbing through my clothes, I overheard my grandma through the thin walls discussing my relationship with Lincoln. She was going on about how Lincoln should come over, and that it may help take my mind off Jason.

One thing was for sure. My intentions were shrouded and unclear to my grandparents. I was glad that she made the call, because my mission could only be finished accompanied by meticulous planning. I needed Lincoln to join the cause to save Earth.

I sat down at the kitchen table, and I heard my grandpa clunking down the stairs, clad only in a large light blue terrycloth towel wrapped firmly around his waist. He had just taken a shower. As the sight of his naked torso was relatively rare, I couldn’t help but gaze at him. He had a massive eight-inch long scar in the center of his bare chest where he had heart surgery. He looked like he had battled his entire life by way of sword, with all the scars he collected from surgeries. These grim markings were wicked.

He must have cut himself again shaving because he had tiny toilet paper fragments attached to his face. He had a flattop buzz-cut like an army grunt straight out of boot camp.

‘Well, if it isn’t my little adventurer extraordinaire. I was worried sick about you yesterday. I am glad you are back, Theodore. Your father called earlier today. I am not sure what he wanted. Anyway, I can make you some breakfast,’ he said.

‘No, I already ate, and I think I will probably be leaving soon to go play over at Lincoln’s.’ I was interrupted by a knock on the door. It must be Lincoln.

‘Speak of the devil,’ Marvin said, as he noticed Lincoln at the front door. When my grandpa said, speak of the devil, it really made the wheels turn within my mind, because lately I had been worried about trusting people.

I walked over to the door skittishly like a rabbit avoiding a dog. Just before I touched the handle, my nerves took over. I was panicking. Here I was, about to whisk Lincoln away to reveal the most momentous secret in the universe, and I didn’t have the foggiest clue what to say.

‘Tell him I am in the bathroom and let him in please grandpa?’ I asked.

‘I am in my towel, weirdo!’ he protested, holding his palms outward in front of his bare chest. He grumbled, ‘Alright. I will do it.’

I ran into the restroom, not because I had to pee. I needed five minutes to do a patented Nezatron character check. I held out my hand to summon my IPU. An investigation on Lincoln was necessary before I made the decision of acquiring his help.

My findings were enlightening and satisfying. Turned out, Lincoln was an outstanding boy. Not only was he extremely advanced from the statistical comparison data Nezatron provided from other teens of his age within the area. He also made sound decisions on numerous occasions when approached with devious plots. One of which was the prospective theft at Big-Mart with Nick White.

I ran out to meet him.

‘Alright, see ya later, grandpa,’ I yelled and then switched to a whisper for Lincoln, ‘Let’s go, let’s go.’

I grabbed Lincoln’s arm in one hand and my banana skateboard with the other. We rushed out toward the cul-de-sac.

Lincoln gave me a puzzled look. ‘Dude, what did you do? My dad has been weird about us hanging out. He wants me to try to hang out with you every day this week,’ he said.

Then I had to draw in my breath, and start explaining everything to him as we walked.

‘Okay Lincoln, here goes. This will probably take the entire walk to your house to explain, but this is it. Yesterday, I took a cab to Taylors Falls. My grandparents don’t know this, but I was going up there to test The Intervention,’ I said.

‘You what? Are you nuts? We decided not to push it any further,’ Lincoln said.

‘I know that we decided that, but it is too late for that now. Be open-minded. Please. My plan at the cliffs was to jump and push The Intervention to do something. I wanted to make it show itself. When I was at the top of the cliff, I was shoved off by Travis.’

‘Whoa!’ Lincoln exclaimed, his eyes bugging out. I sure had his attention.

‘He knew about my amulet, and he has been working with the Dacturons to kill me. When he pushed me off the cliff, things got weird . . .’

‘You lost me, dude, now I know you’re joking,’ Lincoln said dismissively. His glance at me in the next second told me that he was hesitant; he was struggling between his common sense and his complete trust in me.

‘Just wait, just wait...’ I said, almost pleading.

I explained to Lincoln everything that happened, and of course, he looked at me as if I was a maniac. He did exactly the same thing he did when I first told him about the Dietons a few months ago. He probed me, searching for gaps in my alibi.

‘Alright, so this Nezatron dude sounds seriously cool. Correct me if I am wrong, this Nezatron guy is made of these Dietons, billions of them, and he knows everything about anyone and anything because he is constantly recording it through zillions of microscopic Dietons here on Earth.’

‘Yeah, they also use them to control chance.’

‘Really, this is too much. So you are saying there is no fate left, because these aliens control it all? You are equipped with the ability to access this endless information, and you can communicate with people in space, on the ship Uriel,’ Lincoln said, breaking into a rolling laughter again. He sounded like he was going to have an asthma attack, ‘Okay wiz-boy, if you can do this, there is only one way to find out. Please tell me what eleven thousand, three hundred and forty-six times two hundred thirty-seven equals?’


I rose up my hand to look at my palm, and Lincoln looked at me oddly. I said, ‘The answer is two million, six hundred eighty-nine thousand, and two.’

Lincoln was the only kid I knew to carry a calculator. From the back pocket of his stone-washed blue jeans, he whipped-out a calculator and began crunching the numbers to the question he had asked me.

He looked up at me with shock and awe. Then, in a blast of ranting fury, Lincoln absolutely went nuts. He just rambled and rambled about all that happened. Question after question blurted from his lips. He was obsessed. I just sat down on the curb and ate it all up. He gave me a series of questions that he knew I typically struggled with at school, and I answered every single one of them correctly.

‘Okay, so you are thinking about bringing me to the Uriel right, right, right?’ Lincoln asked frantically, digging for an answer.

‘Ummm, actually, no, I don’t know if you can give it all up,” I said, and turned my glance away, ‘for this.’

Lincoln looked at me as if I was a total jerk. ‘Dude, I am the missing Linc. That can be my name, come on, man,’ he said.

I burst out laughing, more out of astonishment than mirth at his joke. A wave of relief washed over me. ‘Okay, I am joking. You were the first person to come to mind, but I didn’t realize that you would come along this easy. That brings us one closer to reaching my goal. Don’t think anyone else will come along as easy as you did. This is going to take serious work from both of us. Can I trust you with figuring out a plan?’ I asked. I gazed at him in the eyes, still not believing he was so eager to jump on board. I half expected him to brush me off, stating he was joking too.

He didn’t. He explained that he would like to spend the night at home contemplating and formulating. I agreed.

We hung out longer, and then we parted ways. Feeling giddy, I knew he had a lot to think about, and so did I. I went home; as I walked, I felt the pressure of eyes on my back. I turned, while looking, and there was nothing there. With every step I took, I felt as if a footstep behind me mirrored my actions.

My nerves were shot. I wasn’t far from home, so I ran urgently, until I stepped on the driveway, and then I walked, looking over my shoulder. I arrived on time for dinner. We were having my grandmother’s best dish: sweet red peppers, jammed up to the brim with goodies.

‘Hi Theodore, how was hanging with your friend?’ my grandmother asked.

‘It was fun,’ I answered short and to the point, because the food stole my attention.

The stuffed peppers were juicy. Meat and rice tumbled over the cut top edge, and steam introduced a smell of delightful aromatic peppers into the room. It was lathered with a slowly simmered marinara and caused me to salivate upon seeing it.

I was like a zombie as I plowed through the meal. I would not even try to hear the conversation my grandparents were having over my drooling and lip smacking. The provolone cheese she melted over the peppers was caramelized. The first bite of pepper tantalized my seduced taste buds and gave way to reveal a bundle of meaty delight. I sat down, and my grandfather spoke:

‘So, you got your stuffed pepper eyes, I see. You look like a starving stegosaurus when your grandma makes these, let’s eat,’ my grandpa said, while he ripped into the culinary masterpiece.

I overflowed my stomach with four of the peppers. I waged war on that meal. I must have worked up a serious appetite running home. The human garbage disposal struck again. I retired into my room, knowing that I needed rest for what was in store, but I just had two subjects that I needed closure on: splices and time travel. Splices, I needed to know about, because King Trazuline had said something about different time versions of Travis colluding together. I held out my hand, and initiated the thought:

‘Precisely one million years previous to the current moment, time travel was limited to the concept of velocity based transversal time dilation . . .’

Nezatron carried on about the existence of time travel and its history for hours, before I grew tired. I found enough information to last me.

Zane had used a million years of endless research to develop a method of time travel. He located and stretched wormholes with Dietons, to facilitate time travel. That was the only way they could be certain that each pair of wormholes would be opened simultaneously. They merged the technology founded in teleportation with their discovery of the wormholes in creating The Chamber of Rafal.

Nezatron explained to me that my twin in time—my splice—was pulled from the time continuum and replaced with my present self. I was extracted and immediately deleted, then replaced. I was satisfied with just that explanation. Everything else was beyond my scope of comprehension.

I could not help but be disturbed by how easy it was to tear someone from his or her life, and remove them from existence. Before I drifted into a deep sleep that night, I had one last realization: I had to exercise caution on both sides—good or evil. I had no desire for deletion.

I lay in bed. I heard the sound of my grandpa’s television. Its dialogue of witty repartee reverberated within the air-vents leading up to my room. As I heard familiar lines from a movie I had seen long ago, I had to see what he was watching, so I ran downstairs.

“My grandpa was really pleased to see me, despite the late bedtime. He beckoned to an empty worn sofa and begged me to stay up a bit. I politely protested, I, but when I sat down, there was no way I was going to leave. The intriguing scenes of that black-and-white Moroccan movie had me. I spent the rest of my night enjoying a classic with the company of a wise man.”

As I gaze at my tablet, my head aches from hours of listening to my voice as it slowly became hoarse. I cannot help feeling useless. What am I doing? I remind myself that what I am doing is important, and the best parts are yet to come. Why stop?

I drink, swishing some of the water around, letting it slide down my throat rather than gulping it—I savor it. There is nothing wrong with gargling a bit of water. My lips make contact with the rim of the cup—cracked, scaly, and blistered, they press against it.

I swallow what insignificant amount of water remains after a good gargle and swish. I sigh as I lick my just-moistened lips, and trudge on through my bad storytelling.