by TheTimeTrust
Kristofer Schanz went to the communications console in the group's collective living room on the second floor and signaled Dr. Henry Quantos. It rang a few times on the other end, but there was no answer. So he left a text message that read, "Would like to videoconference with you, Doc. Contact me ASAP. --Schanz."
Then, since his teammates all seemed estranged from him for some reason, Chance left the building and jogged down to a small, rented hangar near the airport. He took a key out of his pocket and unlocked the bay doors in order to take a look at the beauty before him, the military-grade, Seafighter Class Hovercraft. This had cost him a pretty penny, a huge chunk out of the profits he had already made by investing in that food company that shot up in value after buying those stocks on a lark, but it was completely worth it. The team would no longer have to travel by conventional means. It would have its own air transportation. And here it was...
...Or was it? A large upswell of panic began to rise in Chance's throat as he realized that the five-million-dollar hovercraft Dr. Quantos had been able to purchase with his money was GONE! This was not good, not good at all. Where had his luck gone lately? So far, this day had been a complete disaster! Was Chance the drug beginning to flush out of his system, no longer activating his latent metagene? He hoped not, but the first thing he needed to do was track the hovercraft down. He had, of course, had the foresight to install hidden tracking devices on the hovercraft for just such an occasion as this, but he needed to get back to Dr. Quantos in order to activate them for a full, worldwide search.
A sprint back to the apartment brought him quickly back to the communications console on the second floor. And there, the shocked face of Dr. Quantos stared at him through the screen.
A few minutes earlier, and several hundred miles away, in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada:
Dr. Henry Quantos was feeling pretty good about life just about now. Although the complete destruction of Malvan-X Corporation at the beginning of the year had originally seemed at first to be the worst possible thing that could happen to him and his career, it actually was a blessing in disguise. For, during the destruction of the Mandelovian headquarters of that international company that he had worked for and helped build up since 1985, he had become acquainted with the group of metas who were collectively known by the less-than-accurate nickname of the Revolutionaries and had, furthermore, secured a job with them due to the great wealth of the little Pete Glover, the luckiest man on Earth. If not for this occurrence, and the computer-enabled ability to work for this team as their scientific consultant while living many miles away in his home city in Canada, he would never have moved into this singles townhouse complex he lived in now, and he would never have met Barbara.
Barbara Townsend was a remarkable woman. A few years younger than him at the age of fifty-five, she was an entrepreneur and business owner, having also raised three children as a single mother after the death of her husband. Her kids were away now, one in law school, another in medical school, and the third a businessman like his mother, and she happened to live just a few doors down from Henry's new place of residence.
The story of how they met began with his getting a dog. He had been visiting an old friend at the local SPCA one day and made a connection with a young German shepherd-collie-black Labrador mix. He ended up walking home with that dog the very next day after having gone home and having had the memory of that dog's soulful, friendly eyes at the forefront of his mind all night.
Not long afterward, Henry was walking his dog and Barbara was walking her cocker spaniel. The dogs seemed very interested in each other, and neither of them could move their dog away from the other, so the owners themselves began to talk with each other. It had been a short conversation at first, but it never left Henry's mind.
Soon, it became almost a ritual for them to mysteriously cross paths at certain times; any excuse was good enough for them to talk with each other. Finally, Henry Quantos, a lifelong bachelor at the age of sixty-three, worked up the nerve to ask this beautiful, red-haired angel named Barbara Townsend out to dinner. She initially turned him down; however, she told him not to be discouraged, and that she might have a different answer for him if he asked again. And so he did a week later. This time she said yes.
After the two had gone on their first date, Barbara confessed that she had a friend of hers in the RCMP do a background check on Henry Quantos, just to make sure everything was on the up-and-up. She was taking no chances after having been burned by past relationships. This first date led to another, and then to another, and another, and then to the state where they found themselves in now: they were falling deeply in love with each other, which only went to show that true love could happen at any age.
Dr. Quantos wore a permanent, satisfied smile on his face ever since meeting Barbara, and as he walked back into his townhouse with his dog, he found that he couldn't stop thinking about her and highly anticipated the next time they would see each other, also hoping that one day soon they could go home together at the end of the day.
"Come on, Mandy, come on, now," Henry said to his dog, whom he named Mandelovia, or Mandy for short. "There's a good girl. Who wants some Kibbles and Bits? Oh yeah, I know you too well, sweetheart."
Mandy, a young dog with a lot of energy, was excitedly licking Henry's face and frantically wagging her tail, when he saw out of the corner of his eye a flashing message on his computer screen. He took Mandy over to the kitchen corner and gave her a bowlful of Kibbles and Bits to keep her occupied for a moment, and then he walked back to his screen.
He read the message: "Would like to videoconference with you, Doc. Contact me ASAP. --Schanz."
"Is this somebody's idea of a sick joke?" Quantos said aloud, a nauseous feeling coming to his stomach as he tried to figure out which of the guys would've done something so tasteless as to give send him a message under the guise of a dead man, a dead old friend of his to whom he had once been mentor. He shook his head at the callousness of it, then began typing out a reply: "Not funny, guys. Very poor taste. --Dr. Q."
Before he could hit SEND, though, he received the flash of an incoming videoconference. Sighing, he clicked a button on the keyboard, and a familiar face lit up the screen.
Dr. Henry Quantos' jaw dropped as he saw who it appeared to be.
"Hi, Doc," said Chance, an uneasy smile on his face. "Listen: The hovercraft appears to have either been stolen or taken by one of the guys for a joyride again. Could you run that tracking system for me, please?"
Dr. Quantos' face remained stuck in its frozen shocked position. He couldn't find any words to say.
"Uh... Doc? You all right? You look like... you look like you've seen a ghost..." Chance smiled as he said this, obviously meaning it as a joke. But it was taken all too seriously by the doctor.
"Ye're not far off, me old son."
Chance almost jumped off his seat at the voice of his little ghost sidekick, Pete. "Oh, it's you, Pete. PLEASE don't do that to me again. You know how much that riles me."
The ghostly Pete seemed to chuckle for a moment, thinking of all those times the ghostly Kristofer Schanz had scared the pants off of him back when their places were reversed, then said, "Payback's a bitch, innit?"
"Look, I don't have time for this right now, Pete," Chance said, not understanding his meaning. "I'm talking to the Doc, here." He turned back to Dr. Quantos. "Sorry, Doc. I haven't seen the little guy since yesterday, but all of a sudden he decides that now is the time to start hovering around me again."
Dr. Quantos still hadn't said a word. Finally, he forced his cracked voice to say, "K-Kristofer? Is that really you?"
"Doc? Of course it's me. Who else would it be?"
"And... and is Pete there as well?"
"Sure. But as usual, I'm the only one who can see him."
"Oh my God," Quantos said under his breath. "Listen, Kristofer -- I'm coming out there. I'm going to find a way to get out there and... well, I'll just get there as soon as I can. Dr. Quantos out."
Chance watched the screen go blank. "Well, that was certainly strange."
"Ye dinna know the half of it!" laughed Pete as he began to disappear again.
Kristofer Schanz was beginning to get fed up. He needed some answers, and he needed them immediately.