The titanic cities of St. Louis and East St. Louis were once major centers of business, innovation, culture, and architecture. And while the cities were partially laid waste to by many villains and uncontrolled heroes throughout the early Gifted period (with some of the first Gifts emerging in the city itself), its determined citizenry have begun to rebuild. Within the destruction, scattered about in thin little veins like a creeping fungus, there are dozens of miniature "little cities" wherein the determined citizens of St. Louis do their best to keep the flame of their once-proud hometown burning in perpetuity. Indeed, the few thousand that remain keep working on attracting businesses to the town, studying the Gifted, and making some sort of art out of their home's near-annihilation. Only time and the actions of the ITSDA, who monitor the city closely, will tell if the modern Gifted age is kind to the struggling cities. One can only hope, however, that the people's willpower will see the town through to better days...
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:12, Wed 05 July 2017.

Tapping the mic, Norman checked in, continuing the argument he had begun before he left the van. "I see what you mean. You wouldn't think they'ld still use one that old. But that doesn't mean it's got a troll under it."
The response came clearly through his headset, "Dads, that'un uhs done a hunnert sisty ta years beck. Is as ole as you."
Smiling as he walked onto the bridge, Norman replies, "Sorry, con, didn't get that. I think you're trans mod is on the fritz."
A different voice joined the conversation, monotoning, "Just walk out there and find the target, troll or not," before adding wistfully, "they've locked down most of our big ops, we've got to make the little ones pay off."
Norman's smile faded instantly, and he responded in similar monotone,"Affirmative. Systems?"
Only to hear his verbal sparring partner reply, professionally, "Full audio checks, visual ok in enhanced and secondary ir, only."
"Check, crossing the bridge," said Norman. As he passed it, he glanced at the plaque designating the Eads Bridge a National Historic Landmark. The plaque, itself, had weathered just under three quarters of a century, and showed the age. The letters were corroded, eroded, and somewhat defaced. The few words still legible with a quick glance declared "...First ...eel ...ames ...onge ...bbe ...spans ...cantile ...caisson ..."
Fifteen minutes of disinterested ambling later, about halfway across the bridge, Norman spotted what appeared to be a rag covered body in the center of the roadway. Walking to a point on the walkway just opposite the body, he called out, "you know, when the traffic builds up they probably won't stop for you to finish your nap."
Whatever was in the roadway exploded from the rags and reached Norman in one swift movement. Before Norman had blinked from the sudden motion there was a hard hand about his neck, squeezing. The bloodshot eyes bugged and the woman shrieked, "This is troll bridge! You must pay troll! THAT'S ME!"
Norman sighed past the trolls grip on his throat. "Sorry, babe. My pockets are empty. Besides, you're not what I'm looking for."
With another shriek, the woman began pummeling Norman with her other hand. Passively, Norman allowed her to ram her fist at his stomach, repeatedly. After a bit, she realized he wasn't responding and shrieked in a higher pitch before driving her knee up between Norman's legs. When he still failed to respond, she snarled. Producing a box cutter with an open blade, she slashed it across his face and chest, repeatedly. Finally, Norman responded, "now I'll have to get another t-shirt."
With incredulity, the woman released his throat and stepped back. The rage in her face was slowly being replaced with confusion, and as the confusion began to be evident, it began to give way to fear. Norman was watching, and before she had a chance to run he grabbed her wrist and spoke calmly, "You don't need to run, I just have a few questions."

---

In the surveillance van, the crew was playing cards. They had managed to capture a small amount of audio and video, but their feed had failed. Following protocol, they secured their gear and waited. Just as they finished the sixth hand of their game, there was a knock at the back door of the van. A button was pushed, a green light noted, and a door opened.
As he stepped into the van, Norman removed his cut up t-shirt, and the miniature circuits it contained. "This worked better, I don't think she knew what she was doing when she cut the wire. I'm not sure how much it recorded afterward."
Handing the t-shirt to one of the technicians, he looked at the cards on the table and remarked, "looks like Ted's skimming, again."
One of the technicians said, "Naw, I dealt this 'un."
It didn't take much time to load the t-shirt into the mainframe, and they were in luck. Norman's local drive had caught everything. Run in slow motion and correlated with the other sensors, the input indicated that the woman's strength was average, speed just a little above, but not too far beyond what caffeine could do, and the box cutter was pulled from a pocket in her sleeve, not produced from nowhere.
Norman put into words what the others were thinking, "not awakened, just shizophrenic."
They troupe picked up their hardware and headed for home.

Despite the darkness, the van barreled around the corner and slid to a stop in the damaged lot. If not for the layer of gravel over the concrete and the ablative nature of the tires, the van would have announced its arrival with the shriek of a locked wheelbase. Instead, the quiet of the engine made the van's arrival sound like a quick downpour as the pea-sized detritus scattered by the van's tires bounced on the walls of the buildings and the, somewhat clearer, surfaces between the buildings.
There were six of the buildings around the van; the area it had parked in could be called a courtyard as easily as it could a parking lot. The buildings appeared to be apartments. Centered in the walls facing the van was a diamond-shaped area of glass brick. About two feet from the edge on either side of the diamond were rounded protuberances, each having a rounded door opposite the diamond. A few feet from each door was a window, about four feet off the ground and no more than two feet tall, the windows stretched at least eight feet horizontally, and appeared to have three panes. Another half dozen feet lay between the windows and a garage door on either end of the buildings. Each member of the team got out of the van and headed for a different building, carrying their own equipment. One of the garage doors began to open, and Norman stepped aside as the van did a sharp U-turn before backing into a garage just left of where they had entered the lot.
As he watched the doors slose on his team, Norman sighed. Turning, he entered the building to the left of what he had become to call the driveway. As the door closed, he stripped. Stepping into the shower and turning the cold water on, he rinsed off the dust he had accumulated. He had to maintain as little dust as possible, or some of the gadgets he tested would fail before he had a chance to try them. Besides, the cold meant nothing. Rather than towel off, Norman turned the on the space heater sitting at the bathroom sink. He broiled the water from his body in no time flat, after all, the heat meant nothing. Opening a plastic bag, Norman extracts a black t-shirt and a pair of black jeans. He pulls the tags from the items and puts them on.
Lifting the grate on the heat pump unit, he shoves his hand through the fan. The blades stop moving, unable to knock his arm out of the way. Reaching in with his other hand, he extracts an old fashioned key. Once his hand is removed, the fan resumes its interminable spinning. Norman reaches under the bed and takes out a suitcase. Setting the case on the bed, he inserts the key and calmly turns it. Not deterred by the smell of ozone, Norman removes the shoes, satchel, ray gun and cell phone from the suitcase. Once the shoes are on, and the handgun inside the satchel, the cell phone in his pocket, and the satchel on his shoulder, he leaves the unit and tries to find the evening's entertainment so the techs will know he's off site.
The only unit with lights on is the one to Norman's extreme left. Walking into the unit, he realizes immediately that it's not lit up for the poker game. Only two are present, communications techs wearing obfuscating VR gear, and that meant he didn't have to dissemble. The nature of Norman's work seldom required encrypted communications, and Norman knew his procedure, but the two techs on site weren't cleared to know it. While the VR gear magnetically stimulated neurons so the techs could monitor the machinery without hearing what went on, Norman opened his personal communications box and his headset from it. He walked to the board, plugged in the helmet, and put it on.
Inside, the screen lit up and the ear plugs found his ears. The unfamiliar man on the screen looked up from whatever he was reading, and said, "I understand the monkeys have no tails in Zimboinga."
Norman responded, "The moss is slippery, though there has been no rain, and the pine sings, but there is no wind."
The man on the other end relaxed, visibly, before he went on, saying only, "Who can leap the world's ties and sit with me among the white clouds."
Norman nodded, and a heartbeat later spoke a rushed "acknowledged" before the man went on.
"Security in brevity. Good authority has Namidian activity in your area. ANY contact indicates immediate retreat, do not engage under any circumstances. Obdurate's existence is now level four classified. Are there any questions?"
"Just one, what's obdurate?"
"These days, not much."
"Orders acknowledged."
The helmet went dark and quiet; Norman removed it and replaced it in the box. As soon as the box was locked he left the building, and barely thirty seconds later the techs removed their gear and stowed the VR sets away. As they powered down the equipment and began to turn off the lights, lights began to come on at the opposite side of the building. Norman stepped in and indicated he was leaving, the personnel nodded and continued setting up for the evening.
Bicycling out of the courtyard, Norman began to wonder if he had seen any Namidian activity. The troll on the Eads Bridge had been the latest of several comparatively easy investigations. The hirsute homeless man that inspired tales of a werewolf hiding out in Crestwood Mall was probably the easiest. The giant cat outside the Spivey Building was still a question. Had some human woke one morning as a calico eight feet tall at the shoulder, or had some calico been forced to grow to twelve times its normal size? Norman thought it acted to much like a small cat to be anything but a small cat, he hoped whoever built it up wouldn't decide to work on something smaller. After the cat ran away, it took another half hour to wipe out the fist-sized fleas. The worst was the fire-spitter, Norman didn't want to know what ITSDA would do with her. Even when she wasn't spraying her flammable saliva around her tongue was sharp as a razor.
No one bothered Norman as he rode the same set of loops he had every other evening. He always varied the order, so there was no pattern. By the third week, half the illicit businesses on his route had gone belly up. As his impact increased, so did the number of people with a desire to stop him. The night of his 23rd circuit, one of the local toughs stepped in front of his bicycle with a promise to 'break him in half' if he didn't stop 'annoying my clients'. Norman stepped off the bike, walked up to the man and said he was 'welcome to try'.
Twenty minutes later, Norman got back on his bike before turning to the prostrate brawler and saying, "If you think back on this, you'll recognize that I didn't try to lay a finger on you. When you do, you might want to wonder what would happen if I did."
On a Tuesday, he finished the last circuit of his first month in town with bullet holes in his t-shirt. Two in the front that he had noticed, and eight in the back that he hadn't. His detractors escalated at a blistering pace from then on. That Thursday, as he was passing through an alley between two blocks, there was an explosion that shattered the few remaining windows in the two buildings facing the alley. Ten minutes later (he had to pull fresh clothes from inside the bicycle frame), Norman jogged out of the alley carrying the remains of his bike. He finished that circuit on foot.
The following Sunday, his bike repaired, he was almost through the circuit when they tried an RPG. The intense blast and heat set his jeans and t-shirt ablaze, melted the bicycle tires and scorched the paint, and shredded his sneakers. He picked up the bike and walked the rest of the circuit as his clothes burned off. Having had the foresight, and the capability (when they took over the abandoned motel they had turned one of the buildings into a machine shop), he set out Monday on a new bike.
On his previous ride, about halfway through the night, he had come upon a thick cable stretched across the road. Halfway thinking he knew what it was, he got off his bike and picked up the cable. Electric arcs flared, flowing around Norman as he calmly pulled the bicycle under the cable and placed it back in the road behind him. In places, the asphalt was almost liquid from the heat of the man-made lightning. Norman got onto his bike and rode away.
He found the not knowing was the worst. Not knowing when they would abandon their fruitless direct attacks and try something more indirect meant he had appraised the personnel in the compound about the issues, but he couldn't tell them when it would start. Besides, the ITSDA still held some clout, despite recent accusations. In fact, those accusations might make Norman's enemies think twice before assaulting anyone from the compound. Even so, Norman wished he knew who it was wreaking havoc on these cities, hoped he could keep the citizens alive long enough to find out, and prayed some part of it would add meaning to his interminable existence.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:03, Sun 16 July 2017.

Most of the team thought he used the bicycle to be sure he could see his surroundings, or because he liked the feel of being outside. They all knew he was awakened, and able to shrug off most conventional weapons. None of them had the clearance to know the whole truth. Sometime last year, Norman's file had been classified to levels above his own clearance. Since that time, he had been doing everything he could to raise his access level so he could read his own file. Something had to have been added to trigger the increased clearance; he had not been doing anything he hadn't done dozens of times before. Besides, what secret could they be keeping from him about himself? He knew who he was and what he could do.
That was the real reason he used the bicycle. Norman didn't tire. He didn't warm up or sweat. No amount of exertion caused Norman to 'feel the burn'. Most of the team had come in separately through Chicago, then met at a safe house on a bluff overlooking the Ohio River. They had gathered their gear, piled in a couple of vans, and driven to the previously designated rendezvouz point at the defunct motel. Norman had been in The Gulf, trying to contact a group of mermen the locals claimed to have spotted. He walked out into Baytown, and, once he cleared the seawater from his lungs and ears, put on his helmet and got new marching orders.  Before he left, he walked around and said goodbye to the locals he had come to know. Norman had liked Baytown, picking it for his base location on a whim and a vague memory that Gary Busey came from the area. But it wasn't home. Neither was the next stop, although it would be closer. His formative years had been in central Missouri, now they wanted him to locate awakened there.
Norman packed his gear and strapped it to his back, hopped onto his bicycle and rode north. Two days later, he followed the GPS on his cell into 'The New Coral Court' and met the rest of the team. Nobody asked him how long it took to get there, and he didn't volunteer the information. Riding full out without stopping to rest, eat, or anything else, will eat up eight hundred miles faster than most people would imagine.
Norman continued to use the bicycle, because he assumed his 'ride' would be regularly destroyed and rebuilt till the spare parts ran out. They were getting closer to that eventuality. The explosion in the alley had used many of their spares, and there was only so much stock to be machined into new pieces. As he was thinking this, Norman noticed the pair of headlights bearing down on him. Smiling, Norman swerved left. The headlights did, too. Swerving to the right produced the same response. With a grin, Norman began to pump the pedals like a madman. The bike picked up speed, and so did the truck. Now that he could see it, Norman knew they were finally taking him seriously. Whipping the satchel from his shoulder, he threw it towards the opposite edge of the road as he methodically examined the truck. The modified cow-catcher welded to the front of the truck had multiple spikes and seemed to indicate his enemies were serious about causing his demise.
The truck met the bike with an audible crunch, and the sound of screeching metal indicated the bike had, at least partially, become wedged under the front of the truck. Even so, the truck barreled two more blocks before it stopped and two children jumped out and ran off. In the meantime, Norman had retrieved his satchel and begun to run, naked, after the truck. Anyone that had been watching would have seen Norman and the bike flattened against the cow-catcher, and then Norman re-appearing in the roadway just as the truck left the space. As he ran for the drivers, he hoped they were joyriding kids. He didn't want to have an enemy that used children as soldiers, he had never liked any of those that had.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:56, Mon 24 July 2017.

Norman barreled down the street, paying no heed to the debris his feet crunched through. "Hey! Those are my clothes," he shouted at the pair of would be murderers.
Both of the boys stopped, and turned around. Their movements were synchronous, almost as if they had rehearsed them. Stepping off, both with the left foot, they marched toward Norman. Norman watched them come, squinting at the surreal manner in which the two moved. The two had identical tics in their left eye and favored their right foot. As they reached Norman, who had ceased running, the two sneered in identical manners. Compounding their unusual nature, the two spoke in unision with voices of identical pitch and timbre. "This isn't possible. You should be stuck to the front of the truck. Query: why are you free?"
Norman shook his head at the duo, saying, "the only thing I want from you is the name of your employer, and I'm beginning to think you don't have one."
Brushing past the two, Norman walked forward in the road and picked up his shoes. The loud pop that came from behind was no surprise. It seemed to be unusually loud, and when he turned around, Norman realized the two had fired their handguns in unison. Putting down his shoes, Norman walked back to the pair of delinquents. "I think you two need to come with me, and I'll have to ask you to give me your weapons as they only make you a danger to yourselves."
As he reached for the weapons, the two fired again, in unison. Norman calmly walked up to one of the two, grabbed the wrist and handgun and disarmed the boy with a quick flick. Turning, he was stepping toward the other when the boy's handgun fired again. As he disarmed the second boy, the two spoke again, "Query: where do the bullets go?"
Norman shrugged and rummaged in his satchel. Unable to find restraints, he shook his head and began to shove the two boys in front of him towards the truck. In his head, he had already decided the one on the left would be subdued if the two ran, as he thought they would run at the same time and he didn't want to lose any of his own time making a decision at that point. When the two did start to run, Norman chopped the one on the left at the side of the runner's neck. The boy went down. Picking his would-be assailant up, Norman continued to the truck where he deposited the youth, tied up with the clothes he removed from the front of the truck (they had too many holes to wear). Noticing the key in the truck, Norman retrieved his mangled bicycle, threw it in the back of the truck, and drove back towards his base of operations. Still two blocks away, he hoisted the boy over his shoulder, grabbed the bike, and jogged back to what he had begun to call 'the compound'.
After leaving the boy with the rest of the team and explaining the boy's unusual behavior, Norman went to the shop with his bike and began to fix it, despite his almost certainty that there was nothing he could do to make it work, again.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:47, Fri 04 Aug 2017.

When his cell buzzed, Norman was staring at the mangled spokes from his bicycle's front wheel. Turning from the workbench and crossing to a small table holding the buzzing phone, he murmured "total loss," before picking up the phone on his way to the door. As he opened the door he answered the call saying "on my way."
It was a short jog across the courtyard to the bungalow designated 'containment facilities', and before he had taken a step he had shut off his phone and put it into his pocket. Inside the bungalow, Norman nodded to the technical team, all of them appeared to have assembled, and waited. After a moment, one of the team cleared his throat and said, "oh, right. You have no rank and need not acknowledge the same in others. Fine. We'll use numbers, I'm one."
"The subject you brought in is comatose. She has no visible injuries, evinces neither bacterial nor fungal infection, and shows no indication of being under the influence of any psychoactive substance. She also has none of the telltale markers indicating a gifted. How did you subdue the girl, and why were you forced to do so?"
Norman shrugged, and said, "there were two of them, moving as if they were images in a mirror and speaking with odd patterns that they maintained in concert. They made an attempt on me with a heavily modified motor vehicle while carrying firearms, indicating a fair amount of infrastructure. I brought him in because he's an anomaly, where there's an anomaly there's usually a gifted. Isn't that what we're supposed to be looking for? Besides, I just hit 'em with a knife hand. It couldn't have done anything permanent."
"Great. We've got nothing, here, but a non-responsive Jane Doe."
The rest of the team was busily swiping their tablets, pointedly not looking at Norman. He knew they didn't trust him, and were being civil only to follow their orders. That wasn't his concern. Norman was definite and meticulous, having learned long ago to pay attention to details whether or not he saw their importance. Inflected as a question, he said, "you know, the subject didn't seem feminine to me?"
His answer was given curtly, "quick mr scan showed no genitalia, therefore they aren't male, therefore they're female."
One of the other techs, frowning at his tablet, finally spoke, "that assessment was likely premature, chromosomal pattern is typical of the male. Something strange about it, though."
“Oh, call me three.”
Then another weighed in, "that makes me two. Chemical composition is off, too much silicon... WAY too much silicon."
A light over the metal door at the back of the bungalow began to glow. First it appeared yellow, and after a moment flashed. As it turned green, a small bell sounded. Two of the techs, Three and the one that hadn't spoken, moved to the door and prepared to open the chamber. Before they could do so, Two spoke again, ”don't open it. Deep tissue scans are in, and minute analysis indicates highly complex silicon-based active molecules. One theory has these types of molecular robots providing some of the gifted's abilities.”
“Oh, never mind. The subject doesn't have much of a cerebrum. It shouldn't have been able to perform anything more than basic biological functions.”
One spoke, again, overriding Two's caution, ”without a brain to motivate it, we shouldn't be in danger from the creature. Oh, and neither of us was correct. Deep tissue scans show no secondary sexual characteristics. That is the body of a vegetable with no biological gender.”
This message was last edited by the player at 04:15, Sat 05 Aug 2017.

Norman nodded, and said, "do I get a number? If you're making the official recording I'll need to avoid my name or designation." Holding up his hand before he went on, Norman completed his thought by stating, "not my fault. I've already told too many people too much, next time I overspeak they swore to lock me up."
Two cocked their head sideways, and said, "you know, we're starting to wonder if we couldn't do without you."
With a grimace, he capitulated, "ok, then. My name is Norman. They sent me here for the same reason they sent you. While we do this job, we're out of sight."
"They want me out of sight because the last time I got some press I told the truth. ITSDA thinks it owns the truth, and you have to have permission from them to use it. I've never been good at asking permission, and my gift makes my attitude go from bad to worse."
One responded, "we'll designate you 'A', but you won't have to say it because I already have."
"Right now, we need you to accompany four into the chamber and move the subject to the table next door."
With a shrug, Norman plodded to the isolation chamber, tailed shortly by Four. Four apparently had the timing for this set of tests memorized. Just as he arrived, Norman saw the door begin to open. "You've done this before. How did you manage to capture the other gifted?"
Four began to speak, and Norman realized she would be the easiest of his new acquaintances to identify by the sound of the voice. "You were sent to replace another agent. It might have been a little messy, but he never ran into a gifted he couldn't handle. We called him 'Rock' because he kept us safe and stable."
"About six weeks ago, he and Bink went to check a warehouse. When they didn't return after the predetermined interval, we lit up the trackers. Bink was still in the warehouse, unconscious. We don't know where Rock is."
Norman said, "I'm sorry, it sounds like you miss him."
Four shook her head, "no. Rock wasn't like that, I think Tag misses him but he won't say. My concern is Bink. He hasn't been the same since we got him back. All of his tests come out clean, but I'm convinced there's something wrong."
"What did you say in the interview that got you sent here?"
With raised eyebrows, Norman followed a question with a question, "did I say it was an interview?"
Four said, "no. But we were briefed before you arrived. I just want to hear your side of it."
"You won't like it."
"My opinion doesn't matter."
"The lady asked if I was afraid of getting hurt, I told her the truth. I won't be hurt, get sick, grow old, or die. I won't even affect any physical object that isn't completely enclosed by my body, and those that are become consigned to oblivion."
The door had almost opened, and Four was nodding, "You mean like Jackson, you're stuck in one time so you're physical state can't be changed."
Norman had started to step through the door, but he stopped and turned to face the agent, "no. They told me about Frank, and tested me the same way they had him. When someone takes a shot at him, the bullets bounce off. Shooting me, the bullets rip through my clothes and vanish."
Reaching to her helmet, Four turned something off and removed the face plate. "I saw that in the official write-up. It doesn't explain why they've kept you out of the public's eye. I've turned off the mike, so can you tell me some truth? Just enough so that I can trust you a little?"
With a sigh, Norman relented, "I'm not stuck in a single instant in time. I've been shifted to a separate plane. I can see time pass and how it affects the world. Sometimes I feel like I can touch it. What you're seeing here is a temporal ghost."
"As much as I like being unaffected by the world, the other side of the coin is my affects on the world are minimal. I keep trying, and I've all the time in the world. Some day, I'll be able to truly help but for now I just slog through, trying to make a difference."

For several weeks, Norman and the field operatives had hunted through the area.  Not one of the leads turned up another gifted. Strangely, it was also rare to meet any civilians. As time went by and the team seemed to be traveling through a desolate wasteland, the tension increased. The only place they ran into locals were the open markets. After a disconcerting incident with Tag (teenage boys and raging hormones, Tag didn't actually cripple any of them) they had taken to sending Norman for their daily bread.
The route to and from the place the locals obtained their foodstuffs was fairly secure, and Norman had become comfortable driving a small van to purchase the team's needs. Usually, the solo trips were the high point of his week. In many cases, they were streets he had visited in his youth. Most of the his memories were as faded as the buildings he passed, yet he still made a connection now and then. Sometimes this lead to a long trip, for which the rest of the team would berate him upon his return, with good reason, the team had only two vans. They didn't want to lose one of them because some goof wanted to relive his childhood by visiting Musial's statue.
Norman didn't mind. His demeanor appeared to be more and more stoic as time passed. He kept roaming and exploring and just being out of the compound. They had found a supply of tubing, and repaired Norman's bicycle, and he was out constantly. For hours he would stand on a street corner, watching while time passed. Norman didn't report any of what he saw from the street corners, and the team didn't ask. They were in the area to locate, catalog, and possibly recruit any gifted they found. Anything else Norman did was his own business, and the team didn't want to know.
Today, Norman had come to the park. Throughout his childhood, a visit to Forest Park had been considered a special treat. Anytime the family loaded a picnic lunch and drove several hours to the city, it became a holiday. It was on one of those trips that Norman had got his first glimpse of The Jewel Box, and today he was back. He had expected the structure to be in a sad state, perhaps deteriorated beyond repair, but it wasn't. As he cast his mind back, Norman saw the signs indicating admission was free till noon. Those were Mondays. His mother would take the children through the flowers inside the glistening building while his father went to the art museum. Later years, his father would take him to the art museum.
Standing in the doorway, Norman felt he could smell the flowers. But they were few. Obviously, the current state of the world made it difficult to get seeds for any but local plants. So Norman stood inside and cast his mind back. He could see the zinnia's and carnations. He could hear the birds sing and the frogs croak. He could feel his mother's hand enclosing his own. Opening his eyes, Norman could see his mother. Then the little boy ghost that seemed to be standing inside him skipped away. Norman watched, agape, as his younger self went gamboling among the plants. It was just as it had been when he was a child.
Releasing his mother's hand, Norman left. Pedaling furiously, he returned to the compound. Inside, he went directly to his cubicle, saying nothing to anyone. Norman had always believed there was more to his abilities than meets the eye, now he had to figure out what to do with it.

None of the techs were what Norman would call 'close', but at least Jan listened when he spoke. Which meant when Norman needed to involve them, it was Jan he asked. "I think I can get us better data on what happened to Rock. We'll need to make a full recording at the last place he was seen, it'll be best if we're all involved. Let me know when you think we can do that."
Jan walked away without responding, so Norman assumed he would need to do something more formal. He was in the process of filling out the official requests for field operations when his beeper went off. Checking the terminal assigned to him showed a scheduled reconnaissance operation; Norman assumed the date was set. To his surprise, it was set for that afternoon. Fortunately, there were no real preparations for Norman; all he had to do was show up in the garage.
When he did, the first person to speak to him was Bink. After reassuring all of them that the evidence he intended to locate was not something he thought they had missed, the group drove off. The compound was locked down, magnetic and sonic fields keyed to remote alarms coupled with automatically targeted machine gun emplacements should have been plenty. Unless someone could simultaneously hack the electronics of the targeting sensors and the sensor fields, no one was going to steal anything.
The two vans arrived at the warehouse with several hours of daylight to spare. Fanning out from the vans, the technicians erected the recording equipment quickly and efficiently. While they did so, Norman walked a circuit around the perimeter of the warehouse before coming inside and roaming through the interior. There was little to see. Whatever goods had been formerly stored here prior to being shipped north or south along the river, or east and west along I-70, were long gone. There was a service office hanging in the northwest corner, two stories from the ground attached to the roof. Everything else was cracked concrete, rusted i-bars, and debris. Fortunately, the warehouse was far enough from the river the annual floods did not reach it. When the infrastructure had gone south and the ACOE stopped managing the river level, the Mississippi had returned to its age-old flood cycle.
As Norman began to wonder about the ramifications of this, Tag approached. The technician was obviously distressed, and nervous beyond what the situation should have suggested. Norman re-assured him that they were just going to capture some images. Tag indicated they were all ready, and Norman nodded before walking to the center of the warehouse.
Norman began by calling attention to himself, "Ok, I think we're ready." Worrying his chin with his hand, probably to stall while he collected his thoughts, Norman explained, "I've never done this before. At least, not consciously. I'm going to try to reach through the time stream and re-create the events that occurred when we lost track of the other agent. As soon as everyone can verify that they're recording, I'll begin."
Waiting in the center of the warehouse, Norman heard each of the team confirm they had begun to record. Lowering his head, Norman began to fade.
At first, it might have seemed Norman was delusional. Nothing changed, and no one moved. Then a crumpled piece of semi-transparent paper rolled across the floor, subject to a breeze that, if it hadn't stopped, was far away in another direction. A pair of phantom cardinals fluttered in through one window and out another, fighting as if their lives depended on it. Finally, there were children coming through the windows, but not exactly children. They appeared the same as the two 'boys' that had attacked Norman with the truck, and they all appeared to be the same. All of them scatterer to the shadows by the walls, but one. Walking in the center of the warehouse, the ghostly figure began to fill out. It approached to within several feet of where Norman stood, motionless, and the juxtaposition made clear what was happening. While the new arrival appeared solid, Norman stood motionless and ghostly.
Nothing happened for a few minutes, then the boy turned his head to look at the warehouse doors. Rock burst through the door and rolled into a shooter's crouch. Tag spun through following Rock and positioned himself to the right of the door. Behind a camera in a corner of the warehouse, Tag gasped. Rock came forward moving toward his right and Tag came behind him. the two approached the boy in the center of the warehouse as if approaching a sharp-horned bull. "Explain yourself," growled Rock.
Tag had stepped to his own left, widening the gap between himself and Rock. Both kept their weapons on the boy, neither spoke. Finally, the boy said, "query: assuming the language of apes contains only words for which fruits are good, which are bad, and how to open a coconut, what of those words would you use to explain yourself to them?"
Rock stepped forward, slowly stalking the boy, "wouldn't waste time with it. Teach the ape to speak English, then tell 'im."
The boy nodded, and said, "Challenge acceptable. You will be taught."
Then he walked up to Rock and touched the hand Rock had on the stock of the rifle. The hand that jerked three times as Rock fired the burst which tore open the boy's chest. The burst that the boy compensated for perfectly, using the momentum imparted to spin his hand to Rock's. Tag lowered his weapon, and stepped towards Rock. He started to speak to Rock, "are you ok, what the hell are these guys?"
Rock stayed still, his body quivered in the position he had taken before firing. As the Tag from the past stood with Rock, talking over the boy's corpse, trying to get a response from his partner, another of the boys calmly walked from the shadows. He did not sneak as he approached Tag from behind, and when he calmly layed his hand on the bare skin at the back of Tag's neck, the only sound was a plaintive "no" from a corner of the warehouse.
While the, now silently rigid, Tag stood where he stopped. Rock picked up the boy's corpse. He and the other identical boys, all in step, left the warehouse. As the last pair of boys went through the door, the sunset was beginning. The warehouse was empty save for a handful of technician's and their recording gear. It was Tag, himself, who broke the silence. "Right! Show's over! Let's get this stuff back to the compound and figure out what's going on."
Bink asked, "where's Norman?"
But nobody answered, and Jan reminded him, "Norman's on his own, it couldn't be any other way, really."

It was supposed to be Cornell, if only because it had been, once. This time around was a bit more chaotic. The majority of the student base was outside the four year window they formerly populated. Faculty was minimal, and usually did double-duty in another capacity to support the elderly infrastructure. There were, at this point, no plans for matriculation and no schedules for the beginning or ending of quarters, semesters, or academic years. What they had retained was the idea that anyone could learn anything there.
That's why they had scrounged every piece of magnetic media in the place, installed each in a custom device designed to read it, and smashed together the enormous bit of software that re-organized and cataloged it. Today, standing in front of the output wall (with three types of display screens, eight sets of speakers, a dozen
oscilloscopic displays, and four distinct versions of hologrammatic devices) Sharpe was gesticulating like an umpire waving in the final run of a world series, "it had been scrubbed, we watched it, and he WASN'T there."
On one of the screens behind him, a video plays an endless loop. It shows an automobile zip into an intersection and smash into the right side of another vehicle. Obdurate appears, without clothes, on the hood of the wrecked car. He looks around, then hops off the vehicle and runs out of the frame.
This message was last updated by the player at 07:55, Sun 06 Jan 2019.

'No matter what Gehrig said, Bob thought, 'the Iron Horse was NOT the luckiest man on the face of the earth.'
As he sat before the mirror and endured the laborious process of becoming a clown, he smiled. 'Even this isn't so bad, as long as the stuff isn't permanent I can take it.'
Twenty-two minutes later, his striped costume and toy horn at hand, he headed for the stage. Bob was confident that nothing could damage his good mood. Unfortunately, Bob was wrong.
"HOLY SHIT!!!"
It was indicative of the shock he had undergone that even as the director grabbed his arm and asked what he was doing Bob still hadn't processed what a faux pas he had made. "Dangit, Bob. This is a children's show, you can't even say things like that when you're CLOSE to the stage."
Bob shook his grease paint covered head, "I'm sorry. I thought... there was... oh, my."
The director shook his own head, "never mind, this clinches it, anyway. They didn't write the clown any lines, so you mustn't speak. We're naming it Clarabelle, so that's what you respond to."
Bob nodded, and let the director lead him to the front of the cameras. If this hadn't been a rehearsal, there would've been children in the stands. Bob's little lapse would have filled several young mouths with soap. After doing his bit three or four times, to get down the timing of his honks and refine his pantomime, Bob returned to his dressing room to freshen his make up.
Inside, he looked everywhere, including in the wardrobe and under the couch. Shrugging, he began to work on his makeup. Smith opened the door and walked in, without knocking, and Bob paused in his makeup to see what he wanted. Of course, one had to be polite to the star of the show no matter how many times he used the "this show ain't big enough for two Bob's" joke.
"Hey, Bob. I know I've pulled some, but this is on the level. There's some naked guy running around backstage."
Bob nodded. "I know, I saw him. There was a poof, and then he appeared, looked around, and ran past me to the dressing room."
"Don't be cheeky, I'm on the level."
Bob still had work to do on his makeup, and was running late. "I can't help you, I have to get ready."
"Your Buffalo Bob, just go throw a lasso on him."
The star slammed the door on his way out.