"And you really don't remember living with Jordan?" Katherine asked quietly. Johan shook his head.
"I still can't believe it…I feel bad for him. Do we really have to keep him the dark?" She sounded almost sad."Katherine we already have enough to deal with without Jordan." JB said through gritted teeth. Johan zoned as the others talked about Damaged Time and Lindbergh. I don't get it. I'm back with my family so why aren't I happy? Why do I feel so…lonely? He was shocked by this revolution. How can I be lonely? I'm with the people I care about.
"Noooo!" JB groaned looking down at the Elucidator.
"I'll take care of it." He muttered. Johan snapped back to attention. How much had he miss? JB disappeared then almost instantly he heard him growl in the next room. Johan looked around the corner to see him pull Jordan out from under the china cabinet.
"How much did you hear?" He growled.
"Elucidators. Lindbergh…Time travel. And…There are bunk beds in my room" Jordan babbled.
"Bunk beds? Really?" Katherine said walking behind JB.
"Didn't our sons always have bunk beds?" Dad squinted. Johan sighed with his temper becoming short. This was more infuriating than clients that gave the most explicit details ever when they wanted him to get an item. And when Johan tried to shut them up they got mad. That was how he lost some clients before.
"This is the last thing we should be worrying about!" He said. JB nodded,
"He's right." Then he grabbed Jordan's arm and directed him to the stairs. "I know this is a difficult time for you, Jordan, but remember, you're sick. You're going back to sleep, and later you'll just remember that you were delirious, and-".
"Don't do that to my son," Mom said ripping JB's hand off of Jordan. She crossed her arms and stared down JB.
"You may think you're in charge here, because you're then only one who's an adult right now, and you know more about time travel than the rest of us. But this is still our house-my, uh, husband's and mine – and there are house rules. It's not fair for you to lie to Jordan like that and make him think he's just imagining things. I won't allow it!" Mom sounded furious.
"Yeah. What she said." Dad crossed his arms too.
"Nobody messes with the Skidmore family." Katherine giggled. Johan couldn't help but huff, getting all the attention.
"It's not fair to Jordan?! Was it fair for Katherine and the other kids to be taken to the future to be adopted? Was it fair for me to live two years there? Time was never fair! It never was! Life's not fair! So forgive for saying that I'm with JB on this. I don't even think you two should be in on this." He said sounding like his bounty hunter self. Everyone gave him blank stare. Katherine looked like he just confessed to murder.
"Besides he probably heard so much we might as well tell him everything." Katherine said carefully.
"JB, maybe some of the damage can't be contained. Maybe it's not even damaged." Angela said softly. Johan thought it was best to keep his mouth shut for a while.
"Sometimes when your troops complain against you, it's not because they're being insubordinate, It's because you're wrong." Chip said then leaned in close like he was sharing a big secret. "Ruler to ruler, I'll tell you, sometimes you have to give people some of what they're asking for, lest they seize power for themselves." He forgot he was still talking medieval in this time. Johan really had to concentrate on not rolling his eyes and grabbing his forehand. When he was working for who really irked him, he would normally try to remember just the important parts. JB let out a dramatic sigh.
"Okay, okay. Jordan can come back into the kitchen with us. But there are some questions I'm not answering for anybody." JB said. Johan avoided everyone's gaze as they walked back in by looking at the kitchen table. Instead of four like he remembered, there was five chairs. He looked back to see JB glaring at Jordan.
"How did you know I was in the dining room? I didn't make any noise." Jordan asked. Mom and Dad had the same confused looked on their faces. Johan traded glances with Chip, Katherine, and Angela.
"That's something you should know about time travel. People from the future can see pretty much anything we do. Anytime." Katherine explained.
"That's creepy," Mom said hunching up her shoulders and started shivering. "Why isn't that illegal?"
"It typically is in connection with the recent past." JB said in a soothing tone. "But-"
"I'm confused." Dad complained in a whinny voice. "JB wasn't in the future. He was standing right here with the rest of us. I didn't hear Jordan make any noise. How did JB know he was out of his room?"
"His Elucidator told him. That thing that looks like a cell phone. He got a message from the future." Katherine answered. That's when Johan thought of something important,
"Wait! You're personal Elucidator works now?" JB scrunched his face together.
"Um yea. Mostly anyway." He looked at the Elucidator in his hand. "Why wouldn't it be?"
"I thought everything would still be in Damaged Time and only the Alpha Elucidator would work." Johan shared. Mom, Dad, and Jordan had blank looks on their faces again.
"Maybe we can limit the explanations to only the information that Jordan – and for that matter, Linda and Michael – absolutely need." JB muttered gesturing towards them. "They're not going to travel through time ever again, so they won't need to know about Elucidators."
"But it sounds like Elucidators and time travel shaped our lives – and our family." Mom argued in a steely voice. "Don't we need to know about them to understand our past? What's? The saying? 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it'?". That sounded like adult Mom alright. JB moved back to the island standing right next to him.
"Are your parents always this pesky?" JB whispered just loud enough for him to hear. Johan looked at the group for a second.
"Yea." He whispered back.
"You can't expect them not to have questions." Chip sounded trying to be a peacemaker between the two sides. "I mean, even I'm confused, and I've been to other centuries! That separate dimensions with Johan and Jordan – how did that work? They were both in the same dimension back in the nineteen thirties, right?" You forgot my future dimension too. JB sighed and leaned heavily against the counter.
"Let's just say for simplicity sake that Johan is thirteen, like he should be. Johan and Jordan, like typical identical twins, were born in the same dimension. There was only one dimension when they were born, more than eighty years ago. Time split when they were kidnapped from history and-"
"No, no, no, no, no." Jordan interrupted. "I don't know about that Johan kid, but I was not born more than eighty years ago. I'm thirteen! I'm not like them." He gestured wildly at their kid parents. "I've never been any older than this! I've never been kidnapped, and I wasn't ever in 'history', and, and…I don't have an identical twin!" Johan stayed silent and waited for more, but when nothing came, he took the floor.
"Are you done with your little tantrum?" He asked. Mom dropped her mouth in shock.
"Johan Skidmore! Don't talk to your brother that way!" She scowled. He raised an eye as if saying What? What could you do?
"It's wired, in some ways you're the same but in other ways you're a completely different person." Katherine said scanning him.
"And you haven't changed a bit! Thank goodness." He muttered the last part.
"In your dimension, us kids and Katherine were sent to the future and adopted…Were we happy?" Chip asked cautiously. Johan thought back to the afternoon when he watched two year old Katherine playing with her adopted parents. She was smiling and giggling.
"As far as I could tell, yea." He sighed.