Ecophene : 3

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          Katie wheeled Ned into the living room where Evan was busily tapping away at screens and throwing papers around. Alessa and Charles soon followed, Charles rolled his eyes as he heard Ned complain for the thousandth time, "SHIT! I STILL CAN'T GET INTO THE NZONE GUYS!" They were sympathetic and worried at first, but as time went on, they just got tired of it as neither of them had the answer Ned wanted to hear. "Hey Evan! Do you know what's going on!?"

          Evan looked up with a mild shock, as if he had just recognized the crowd in the room. "Honestly, no. I don't know for sure. As usual, I can only tell you what is most probable. But before I go on any further, can I assume you're all gathered here for a reason? That you're all fully on board with my plans?" He ruffled through his hair trying to make it neater, revealing more of his face.

          Amidst all the fast-paced action going on, they had not noticed it but at this instant, all of them could tell Evan had regained more of his youth once more, shaving about 10 years off of his previous 40-year-old look.

          Charles sat right down and said, "Bring it." Ned pushed his wheelchair closer and folded his arms while Katie held Alessa's hand and grabbed a spot for both of them. Looking straight at Evan through hardened eyes, they nodded in unison.

          Evan finally revealed a smile and said, "Man, this is a great sight... But." as he pointed his finger straight at Alessa, "I didn't include you in my plans, and frankly speaking I'm not sure if its a wise choice to let you know of them."           

          "Hey! She helped us fight them off once before, she can be a great help to us!" Katie interjected.

          But before Evan could respond, Alessa placed her hand over Katie's and said, "It's fine, he's right. I shouldn't be butting my nose into your business. I'll just be in the room if you don't mind. You can tell me at a later time when you're ready to." She stared at Evan and brushed her hair off her white hairband as she stood up and left.

          "You guys need to learn to be careful with who you trust." Evan sighed.

          "Good, because I don't trust you completely either" Ned added.

          "Guys, we need all the help we can get!" Katie said, clearly affected by Alessa's departure.

          "Well. She's not going anywhere. And if she's willing to lend us a hand, I have a way she can help out as well. But let's get down to it, one thing at a time. Ned, you said you can still see the NZone but you can't access it? Like you're locked out? Well, in a sense, that's literally what's happening. Yes, there are times when you can force your brain to override certain neurological restrictions to push your body to its physical limits. But there's always a line that shouldn't be crossed. I presume the shock from the sudden injection of Charles's DNA, heavily affected your brain chemistry and Nedder-Region's stability. Think of it as a self-defense mechanism, you're locked out so that it has time to recover, preventing you from doing something stupid again in the meantime."

          "Stop me from doing something stupid? You're the one who did this to me!" Ned exploded before falling back into his wheelchair, as his body continued to fail him.

          "Yes, and in doing that, everyone is right here, reasonably safe and sound. Would like you like me to go back in time and not do that to you? Let you try and figure things out by yourself?" Evan asked. Ned was stumped and remained silent.

          "This is not all bad for us... While your powers recuperate on its own, you can focus on training other areas - such as in self-defense. If she's willing, maybe Alessa could train you in martial arts so that you actually know how to fight. The same goes for you Katie and Charles."

          "What about you?" Charles asked.

          "I know enough to watch my own back. You actually trained me yourself. Besides I'm more of a tech guy, I know what I'm doing." Evan fired back.

          "Moving on, the plan for us now is to train even more. I'm sure you understand why we need it given the episode we just narrowly got out of. But that's only the start of a path of no return. You're going to have to leave your past lives behind, and here's the plan... I'm not capable of doing this yet, but I'm going to travel to a parallel dimension, grab versions of yourselves without powers and let them replace you in this world and go on with their normal lives. That's the only way we can continue to operate discreetly, without getting in trouble with the authorities or dragging your friends and family into this mess. If all goes well, I'll bring them back to their original dimensions and you can seamlessly slot yourselves back into your old lives - if that's what you want." Evan said

          "But that just... sounds.. wrong." Katie muttered.

          "Ohh boy. Are we going to have another discussion about morality and ethics? Take it from me. The man who has actually travelled through time and space. It feels unfair doesn't it? Stealing someone else's life and putting them in an entirely different universe for our own sake, much less talk about bringing in another version of yourself. For one, There is literally an infinite number of parallel universes out there. Which means given enough time and practice, I could probably bring in versions of yourselves whose life history differed only by whether you chose to get up on the left side or the right side of the bed this morning. It would totally feel the same for them, without the powers of course - and hundreds of them exist. And there is one other truth that may be much harder to take in... Here Charles, can you throw this pen to Katie?" Evan threw a pen on the table to Charles, which he casually flung onto Katie's lap.

          "The other truth is that in brutal honesty, nothing else matters other than our own perception of reality. In many, many parallel dimensions. Charles you just killed Katie. In some other world you may have still been losing control of your powers, let your emotions run crazy or straight up turned insane and that pen went straight through Katie. In thousands of other timelines, you've already killed them at the scrapyard. In millions of other worlds, Ned and Katie you failed, I too failed and we all died at the warehouse at the hands of the Ewing. Sorry for poking at your vulnerable spots, but the point is, Charles, you aren't going to live the rest of your life in guilt that you just killed Katie with a pen in countless parallel worlds. Because in your reality, you didn't. And neither of us will lose sleep tonight in regret of how other versions of ourselves lost our lives because of our decisions."

          The three blinked their eyes repeatedly in confusion as their jaws gradually dropped lower and lower, trying to comprehend the point Evan was trying to illustrate.

          "The decision to travel back in time was a selfish one. In doing so, I certainly wreaked havoc across innumerable timelines too, where I perished along with entire realities in broken time vortexes or created black holes that swallowed entire worlds. But that's just how it is isn't it? We are just all on our own paths trying to do what we think is right, trying to make the world a better place. Our world, the very one we are experiencing. This might be hard to wrap your head around, but just let me do the work and you focus on your own tasks." Evan said.

          "Err... Ok... Why not... We put this on hold and discuss this again, you said you can't still can't travel to alternate dimensions right?" Katie said, her aching from all the visualization.

          "Fine." Evan surrendered as he jumped into a seat, drained from all the explanation.

          "But how are you going to train? Even if we are ok with compromising all the other realities, which we have not decided on, isn't it super dangerous for you to experiment with reality jumping even for our own current reality? Katie continued asking.

          ...

          "I have a teacher of my own... He knows what he's doing" Evan replied, avoiding eye contact.

          "And who is that? Why won't he train us too then?" Charles spoke up.

          "It's complicated, maybe you'll know him in time..." Evan said, still looking to the side.

          "As this goes on, I think we'll know more about the Ewing than we know about you Evan," Ned could not hide the frustration in his voice.

          

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