The television continued to stream clips of the miraculous events that unfolded over the Atntic Ocean and Evelyn continued to watch. This fell in line with the very best glimpses she had seen. The death toll of the monster attack in this timeline was only a handful of Navy pilots.

  Her soul continued to saturate with the illusory energy of the world, which came to her faster than ever. She broke through to level five the moment the transit sphere appeared. Normally four was the highest an Arahant could reasonably reach on an unempowered world. Apparently you just had to drastically alter the fate of an entire world to get the nod of approval from reality.

  Once she secured transport to the world of Maya, her levels would rise further. Leveraging the reputation of Levinia and the acceptance of national leaders, she should reach level eight in under a year. She would have to earn everything beyond that with her own efforts. Which she would. She had to.

  And all of it would begin with the call she was about to receive.

  Her phone’s ringtone announced the start of her new life. The dispy said it was Hector calling. She knew it was not. “Hello, Caroline and Kevin. This is Sage Evelyn.”

  There was a moment of silence. She’d caught them off guard. The conversation went better that way. “The woman who cims she is the new Sage of Foresight.” Caroline’s persuasive abilities worked better in person, so having this initial contact over a phone was ideal.

  “I bet it would be a lot easier to doubt that cim if I didn’t succeed in summoning a rescue force from outside my world.”

  “Bold words, Evie Tricks.”

  Evelyn smiled. “I’ve missed you, Caroline.”

  “You never even met me, Evie.”

  “It’s the other way around, you have never met me. My scope might be limited at the moment, but I have one foot in the future.”

  Caroline sighed. “This is fun and all, but I need to know the truth. Is your insight intact?”

  “So far as I can tell. We’ll have to see once I level up more. How long has it been since the fall of Aes?” Caroline would never stop picking until she had the chance to ask the big question.

  “It’s been forty-seven years.”

  “And how is the war going?”

  “Poorly.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, Levinia never saw a future that sted this long.”

  Caroline sucked in a harsh breath. “Why did she do it? She had to have known. How could she abandon her people like that? Is it really so hopeless?”

  Evelyn smiled. Here they were. Levinia and Caroline each had their unique way of maniputing the people around them. The natural power struggle had dug a deep divide between those two in another life. Evelyn intended her retionship to be better. She needed Caroline to pave her way to power.

  “Levinia saw no good futures, so she tried to create one. The way our insight works, only futures we might personally experience are accessible. She took a leap of faith by choosing to believe a good future could exist in her blind spot.”

  “By committing suicide?”

  “It was far more purposeful than that, Caroline. The Arahant had to withdraw from war. They refused to do such a thing because they felt so confident their seer would protect the home world. She chose to take away their seer to teach them caution. Her chosen party on Aes was composed of all the people most opposed to allying with the Jinn in the futures she saw. The main objectors died with her.”

  “You are ciming it was all calcuted, then.”

  “The fact that Sage Caroline came to collect me on War Barge Kevin is very comforting to me. In most futures, humanity didn’t st ten years. The three major powers kept fighting each other until the disaster progressed too far for anything to be done.”

  “Tell me one thing, Evelyn. Why didn’t Levinia let me know what was happening?”

  “Because you would either stop her or go with her. You were the only one Levinia trusted to manage the world in her absence.”

  “Let me tell you, it was not easy.” Caroline sounded on the verge of tears. That could be real or a calcuted manipution. “Can you at least tell me the future is looking better now?”

  “I can’t see that far ahead yet.”

  “Then I guess we need to get you to Maya.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  A new voice entered the conversation. “Hello, Foresight. This is War Barge Kevin.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Kevin.”

  “We will be picking you up in one hour at your home address. Please say any goodbyes you wish to make before then.”

  “I will.”

  “Kevin out.”

  Evelyn shook her head as the call cut out. Kevin was such a war barge stereotype. The Jinn certainly knew how to identify serious men of service for upload into their ultimate technological weapons. She dialed Hector’s number back, knowing that the hack used by the Jinn was no longer in effect. He’d need time to get to her pce. Plus she would take any excuse to dey what could only be a painful conversation with her parents.

  ***

  Hector’s return to reality came with the familiar crash to the ground as the depletion of cosmic energy caused his externality to colpse. At least his enhanced knees no longer hurt from the impact of his ndings. Soon enough he would advance to level five and not have to worry about the issue.

  He turned around to survey his surroundings. He was exactly where he departed Earth, in the small back yard of his house. He rotated in a slow circle, searching for a sign of his army. His gut began to churn as the minutes passed by. Had he somehow lost the Lord General while traveling through chaos? That didn’t seem possible. It would be like an elderly man with a cane moving too fast for Usain Bolt. So where was the man?

  Hector went to the sliding gss door and knocked, hoping Jen was home. He hadn’t brought keys when he left. His phone charge had died long ago, so he wouldn’t be able to use that.

  The door yanked open to reveal his wife. She stared at him.

  “I’m back.”

  “Did you bring them?”

  “Bring who?”

  “The Lord General, the War Barge Kevin, and Fire Whip Guy.”

  Hector gnced over his shoulder. “They were supposed to be following me, but I have no idea where they are.”

  Jen suddenly seized him in a fierce hug. “They’re on television.”

  “What?”

  She pulled him into the house and pointed to the screen that was broadcasting the sight of a war barge hovering above the ocean, firing ser beams at anything that emerged from the rift. A giant transit sphere was shrinking out of existence.

  “I guess they went straight to the battle instead of coming here.” Hector had no idea how the Lord General figured out where he needed to be. It certainly wasn’t something he could replicate.

  Jasmine charged forward and leaped up, tongue pping at his face. “Hey, girl, did you miss me? Yeah, good to see you too.”

  “Hector, the rift was only open for a few hours before they showed up. People were saying it was a world ending event. Then the freaking Lord General showed up and everything wrapped up in a few minutes.”

  “You know, Jen, this is what I’ve been telling you I was going to do.”

  “While you were sleeping with a girl half your age.”

  He noticed the cord for his phone charger nearby and connected his phone to it. “The good news is that none of this qualifies as a mid-life crisis now that I’ve increased my maximum lifespan.”

  Jen sat down beside him on the couch. “You know, I’ve done some thinking.”

  “Should I be worried?”

  “It’s not bad. Our visions of what marriage looked like were so different. You thought that if you paid all the bills and had sex a couple of times a week everything was perfect. I wanted a partnership where we talked for hours every day. I didn’t really care about the money and you didn’t really care about the talking.”

  Hector forced a smile. “We had the sex, though.”

  “Not towards the end we didn’t.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault, though. Not mine, either. We just weren’t a good match. Just loving someone isn’t enough. The expectations need to be aligned and ours never were.” She squared her shoulders and held out her right hand. After a moment, Hector took it. “Goodbye, Hector. I love you and want the best for you. Wherever that is and whoever it’s with.”

  He squeezed her hand. “I love you, too, Jen. I hope you find someone who can treat you in the way you deserve to be treated.”

  They let go of each other’s hands. “You’re going with them when they leave, aren’t you?”

  “If they’ll have me. I had to bait them into coming to Earth by offering Evelyn. Oh, crap. I need to let her know that I sold her into svery.”

  Jen squeezed her eyes shut for a count of ten while he was turning on his phone. Then she stood. “I’d better give you some privacy. If she starts crying, I’m afraid I might enjoy it.”

  His phone powered on but there was a warning that the battery was extremely low. He found several messages, the most recent of which was from Evelyn. He pyed it and heard her instructions to be at her house as soon as possible if he wanted a ride off Earth.

  He immediately got to work packing a new bag to go. This time it was mostly changes of clothes since he expected Kevin to have plenty of food avaible. He would just have to not think about how it was made. The possibilities in his future seemed endless.

  Hector only got his phone charged to ten percent before he left. He bid goodbye to to Jen, hopped in an Uber, and smiled all the way to Evelyn’s address. He almost knocked on the door of the house, but heard quite a bit of yelling from inside and decided to sit on the curb instead.

  He was there for close to twenty minutes when a vast shadow brought a chill to him. War Barge Kevin hovered above the entire neighborhood. A Jinn shuttle dropped from its rear with a roar of turbines. It slowed just before making contact with the street and shot forward. Hector jumped back towards the front porch in a panic that proved unnecessary when the shuttle arrested its momentum to come to a dramatic stop.

  The side door opened and a Jinn pilot stepped out along with the Sage of Confgration. “Are you coming with us, Hector?”

  “If it’s allowed, sage.”

  “There’s room enough for one more. I’m only surprised that you wish to relocate after all the effort you put into saving this world.”

  “I can always come back ter.”

  “I suppose that is the case. Let’s fetch Foresight.”