The Trinity

After all was said and done, I was shown the portal to exit the lab. It was not the most impressive thing I had seen that day—It was a door that led to the washing machine at the Hart home.

I experienced the sort of crash once again, and then climbed out of the large machine, following the pair. We were in the laundry room.

“What about your parents?” I asked them.

“Not home,” Braxton replied.

“No, I mean, what are they, a hundred thousand years old?” I asked curiously.

“No, about thirty or so years older than us—I wipe their memories clean and re-program the story every few years—so they don’t wonder why we—and they aren’t aging of course. They think they are in their fifties.”

“So they’re your real parents.” I said.

“Yes—the only people who have lived even longer than us, and they don’t even realize it.” Nanord started.

“Of course they realize it, Nano,” Braxton said. “They’re our parents, for God’s sake.”

“…you know what I mean,” Nanord said, irritated.

“Fifty forever,” I said.

“Not quite as appealing as forever nineteen,” Braxton said, grinning.

“How can they be your real parents? I thought you were like, four thousand years apart?” I asked.

“Indeed,” Braxton began,

“Another story for another day,” Braxton said dully. That bothered me.

“So when am I going to see the rest of your lab?” I asked him. He shut his eyes and silently laughed to himself.

“Not even Nanord has seen more of the lab than you just saw. It is a very private place,” Braxton said.

“How many years did it take to build?” I asked him.

“Contrary to popular belief, I inherited the lab. I did not build it.” He stated matter-of-factly.

“What?” I asked.

“Once again, another story for another day. You better get headed home—you don’t want to worry Mr. and Mrs. Bueller,” he said to me. I nodded, and was shown the door by Nanord.

I got out and climbed down the steps, and stepped into my cart. The sky was dark. I tapped the pre-programmed “HOME” option on the screen, and set the speed to about 60MPH.

I was home within a few minutes. I walked into my home. My parents greeted me and started questioning me about my night. They were watching a film together. I quickly answered their questions, and hurried down the stairs, into my basement. My head was spinning, and I could not comprehend anything that I had discovered in that day. I knew they weren’t lying—the laboratory, the watch.

I didn’t think I was dreaming anymore—I was however, wondering if I had schizophrenia, or a mental disorder of that sort.

I thought I was going to have trouble falling asleep that night, but I must have been exhausted. I fell asleep literally within moments.

The next morning I woke up, assuming everything was a dream. It was the type of dream you forget within minutes. I did not think of Braxton, Nanord, or the laboratory. I refused to let it cross my mind. It was all a dream.

It was a Friday morning, and day school started two hours earlier on Fridays—at 10 AM. It was 9AM. I staggered up the stairs and found the bathroom. I had my daily shower in the dark—where I caught about five more minutes of sleep, hurried and dressed myself, and said Goodbye to my mother, who had quickly made me a hot drink as a breakfast substitute. I thanked her, and she wished me a good day.

I walked outside, and opened the door of my cart. I noticed a small slip of paper on the seat of my cart. I adjusted my eye-glasses, and sort of kicked my hair out of my eyes. I grabbed the slip of paper, it was about the size of the fortune slip found in a fortune cookie.

There was the address. It was the piece of paper Nanord had given me the day before. I stood there dumbfounded, staring at the address. I flipped it over to the other side, and it read: “The Home of Your Allies.”

I didn’t think. I just put the slip of paper in my coat pocket, and quickly sat down in my cart, and shut the door. It was the middle of fall—and slightly cold. I adjusted the heat controls, and used the thumbprint activation in order to start my cart.

I was in deep thought—however, my mind was blank. I absent mindedly found the icon that read “SCHOOL” and tapped it, adjusting the speed to about 60 MPH. I usually enjoyed the view on the way to school, but I wasn’t thinking. I pulled the slip out of my pocket and looked at it.

I soon became very frustrated. I was stuck with the realization that the events that had taken place the day before were in fact reality. A number of questions crossed my mind—the most obvious and generic came first, of course. Why me?

I began thinking deeper. How did they come about? Why is such an organization even necessary? We didn’t live in a war zone. The government wasn’t corrupt—it was just sort of absent. Life was okay—it was boring, up until that point. But it was okay.

I quickly ended up in parking lot of the Cross Academy, and I made my way inside.

I barged into my chemistry classroom, and Evan Hart was not there.

I walked up to the Professor—which was quite out of character for me. I never really liked conversing with Professors, or adults, or really anyone I wasn’t extremely comfortable with. But that was all trivial at this point.

“Is Evan Hart here today?” I asked him.

“No, he withdrew from the course. The Cross Academy, actually—his mother said he is moving on to independent studies.” He said to me.

“Thank you,” I said to Professor Bradley. I left the room.

I got back into my cart, and pulled the slip of paper out once again. I started my cart, and typed the address in. I saved it as an icon on the screen, and for the name I typed in “The Home of My Allies,” just like it read on the back of the slip. I adjusted the speed to 90.

It took a very short amount of time to arrive, but it felt extremely long.

I jumped out of my cart, and basically ran up the stairs. I didn’t even knock—I walked into the home, and hurried down the stairs into the den. Nanord was sitting on the sofa tapping away on the computer tablet.

“Nanord,” I said to him.

He looked up, his eyes widened, and to no surprise he burst out into another childish laughing fit.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I had to convince myself I wasn’t insane.” I said.

He just continued laughing. The door that was three or four yards behind the sofa opened, and out walked Braxton.

“Greetings, Arnon.” He said. His appearance indicated that he had just woken up.

“I need answers, first off, why’d you withdraw from Cross?” I asked Nanord.

“The only reason I was going to that place was because we were waiting for the third,” Nanord said in a slightly irritated tone.

“Do you really think I need public education? I have two thousand years on everyone in that building.”

“Good point,” I said.

“Okay, that’s not terribly important,” I said.

“What else do you need an answer for?” Braxton asked me.

“What is the point of all this? What do we need a Trinity for? Why do you guys need to live this long?”

“Because of the West Woods,” Nanord and Braxton explained simultaneously.

“The West Woods?” The West Woods was the village just west of Oakleaf, about a hundred miles away from where we resided, in the heart of Oakleaf. The West Woods was basically a joke to most Oaklefts—while our board was hollow and superficial—like most villages, theirs definitely tried to deviate from that. Every year you would see ads about new bills being passed in the West Woods, however, nothing ever came of any of them. Try as they might, they never really did deviate.

I laughed.

“Are you kidding? The West Woods. What about the West Woods?” I asked, half laughing.

“It’s part of the prophecy, the texts are all in my laboratory,” Braxton began. “Essentially, the Trinity is necessary to protect all of Oakleaf. A group of three who are far more experienced than the average civilian, who know Oakleaf, and who are strong enough to protect it—we will form an army. It won’t be now—it may not be for the next several hundred years. But it will happen.”

“We’re not kidding, Arnon,” Nanord said to me.

“Also, why me? And why that god damned name? My name is Caine Bueller, for Christ’s sake,” I said. I was getting extremely irritated—It was uncharacteristic of me to be that expressive to someone I wasn’t completely comfortable with.

“Caine Bueller is the name your parents gave to you,” Braxton started explaining, quietly,
“But Arnon is the name Fate gave to you. You are an eternal, elite being—well, you will be--hopefully. You are above everyone you know, besides us. Everyone. Why is that a problem?”

“Because I’m sixteen, I just got my cart-op card last year, and I want to get out of the Cross Academy, and figure my life out. I don’t want Fate to figure it out for me. I have parents—I have friends,”

“Never seen you talk to them,” Nanord said obnoxiously.

“They don’t go to Cross—I didn’t go to Cross last year. I hate that place. My parents transferred me there cause they were worried that my old friends were bad influences—maybe they would’ve thought twice if I could’ve told them that by attending Cross Academy I would befriend thousand-year-old men in the form of teenagers, who plan on declaring war against the god-damned West Woods, for good God’s sake,” My voice was shaking. I was definitely yelling. They were laughing.

“So what you’re saying is, you’re sixteen, and you want to stay sixteen?” Braxton asked me.

“Yes,” I said in a nasty tone.

“Assuming you prove valuable, you will be sixteen forever!” He said, and then the two of them burst into more laughter.

Then I started laughing.

“As for your other question, why you, well, that’s not a question for us. That’s a question for fate.”

I had nothing to say.

Braxton pulled something out of his pocket—it was an old fashioned pipe. He began to smoke it, and then Nanord pulled out his.

“Here,” Nanord said to me, handing me my own pipe. It was a white, glass long pipe—very old fashioned. I hadn’t seen anything like it in person—only in film clips and things of that nature.

“Is this mine?” I asked. They both nodded.

I spent the rest of the evening with the Trinity, laughing, talking, and smoking. The time may have been spent with two men who were thousands of years old, but that may have been the most youthful evening of my life.