Chronological markers: this scene fits in as a deleted scene from The Umbrella Academy, season 3, episode 6, around 24:50 (when Klaus visits Reginald at his office again, while Diego and Lila are discovering Hotel Oblivion).

Suggested soundtrack: Sia feat. Labyrinth - Oblivion

April 05 2019, 12:15pm

Since last night, everything has been chaos. And barely metaphorically so, given that collapses have started occurring here and there in The City. As Five had mentioned when he first brought it up, the Kugelblitz is starting to absorb not only organic entities but also inanimate objects, Earth itself, and beyond.

As Klaus and I walk toward Rainshade Square, I shove my hands into my pockets, probably a bit too quietly. The sidewalks are littered with items dropped by people when they vanished: handbags that have since been looted, newspapers, pairs of glasses. Cars have been abandoned and haven't yet been moved by the remaining people. A few rare passersbys hurry along. And my heart aches.

Granny was taken last night. Chris left the theater in a rush to check if his siblings were still at Hargreeves Mansion. We didn't have the means to do the same: our Hargreeves are always too scattered to locate easily. We can only hope they're safe at this moment.

"It's a stroke of luck you're finally not working today", Klaus whispers, trying to break some of the silence: both mine and that of the avenue, which is usually bustling with life in the late morning.
"I should have been working", I sigh in response. "You know what happened."

Rodrigo wasn't as lucky as we were. This morning, I found the hardware shop empty and locked, as was his small apartment upstairs. I feel weighed down and stunned, but at the same time, more determined than ever. Klaus quickens his pace to catch up with me. Even though my legs are much shorter than his, I have always walked more efficiently: maybe because ~I~ walk in a straight line. And now, I'm focused on our destination.

"Oh yeah, it's awful", he says with a detachment that's only a symptom of his hangover. "Still, it saves me from sneaking through the Mansion's pipes again, since you're here to teleport me."

No wetsuit suit for him today: instead, he zigzags beside me on the deserted sidewalk in a teal-blue fringed leather jacket. He's shirtless underneath, and I know why: he wants to see the gao yord on his stomach to bolster his courage. Just like that faint scar on his sternum, now a permanent reminder that death does not want him.

I saw his smile last night as he looked at that scar in the mirror, before changing to head to the theater. A kind of pride in what he was and could do, something I'd rarely seen in him.

He wants to find answers at Hargreeves Mansion, I'm now willing to help him. And I have chosen to reconnect with something I haven't done in a long time: using his distraction to investigate in my own - invisible and silent - way, what Reginald Hargreeves is, and how he's connected to the reset of the universe's machinery.

I haven't been able to talk to Diego about the alien nature of his father. Chet confirmed that Lila and Diego were still there in the morning and hadn't been kugelblitzed, but I couldn't find him anywhere. He's likely still with Lila in the White Buffalo suite. Disturbing them was the last thing I wanted to do.

No matter. I'm sure I can learn a lot from the objects in Reginald Hargreeves's office, especially since Klaus told me something interesting enough to stick in his notoriously unreliable memory: on the wall of that room, where the old man now lives almost cloistered by his children, hangs a painting... of a white buffalo.

"Do what you have to, with him", I tell him as we slow our pace at the corner of Rigel Street, where the windows of the hallway leading to his father's office are located. "I'll do my own little search in the meantime."
He chuckles with glee.
"I can't believe it, Rinny. You're going stealth mode again, like in the badass days of bars and waffles, crests and spikes."

The days of squats, dumpsters, and the fire escape behind Granny's building. We pause for a moment against the storefront of an abandoned and looted grocery store, and I take the liberty of tempering his nostalgia.

"I'm not proud to be doing this", I tell him to be clear. "But I want more information before confronting him."

Klaus doesn't care: he squeals in excitement, though I can also see that he's nervous about what we're about to do, and what we might discover. I look up at the windows, visualizing it as clearly as I can to secure our jump.

"Don't let him fool you with sweets this time", I say, trying to sound calm, because he needs me to be. "And don't get sidetracked talking too much."
"Yes. Yes. Direct and to the point."

I sigh and nod. And as he returns my anticipatory smile, I grab his turquoise fringed sleeve and squeeze his forearm.

*Crack!*

Our arrival on the black-and-white checkered floor makes him stagger, and he sways against a glass wall sconce that crashes to the floor in a shattering of fragments.

"Damn it, Klaus..."

Our 'discreet arrival' is a failure. I pull him to prevent him from teetering the other way, and he manages to stabilize himself. I'm not sure he'll ever get used to teleportation. Silence returns, and our eyes meet one last time. I don't want to be seen. So, in one more split second, he can no longer see me and he feels my hand release his arm.

He looks around, momentarily forgetting which door to knock on, but he finally chooses correctly, as it opens to the confused mustache of a defensive Reginald Hargreeves, a fireplace poker in hand.

"You again!", he exclaims, straightening as he quickly realizes he faces no threat. Klaus puts his hands on his heart as if touched, and Hargreeves hisses: "To what do I owe the intrusion?"

He steps back, and Klaus steps inside, feigning nonchalance. Too slowly for my taste, so I slip past him - invisible - to the left side of the room filled with various objects, reeking of Earl Grey tea and mustache wax. I vaguely hear him explaining that - since it's the end of the world for the third time - he might as well get to know his old man, to which Hargreeves protests that he is not. But I focus on my mission and slide along the glass display cases where his monocled father keeps a plethora of artifacts.

There's a jumble of items from many cultures, likely brought back from a series of trips. Reginald Hargreeves is clearly an amateur anthropologist, which I already knew in our version of 2019, from the gallery where I spoke with Pogo. He's interested in human cultures from everywhere. Despite all the harm he's done to his own children, paradoxically, he is fascinated by humans, and undoubtedly has been for a very long time.

I look up. Behind Klaus, who is awkwardly explaining how he died in the White Buffalo suite, there is indeed an oil painting of the animal, resting above photos of Hargreeves in his plane or boat. With white, albino fur: an extraordinary animal, depicted in the grasses of the great plains. It's highly unlikely this is a coincidence: it might be a gift from Iggy. And Klaus continues to speak, flailing erratically.

"Have you ever felt like there's something you're supposed to be doing - something important - but no one's telling you what it is, and you're scared that you're gonna miss out or... or... or mess it up, because you're always screwing things up, and you're really fuckin' tired of it..."

I roll my eyes as I circle the room. If Klaus intended to be concise and effective, it's a failure, but Hargreeves seems to be paying attention, and I take advantage of it to slip into the adjoining bathroom, the door ajar.

Small green and white tiles, a lampshade yellowed by age, a small cabinet full of shaving supplies... The sink is made of retro ceramic, the shower is a walk-in, and... I stop. On the floor, between a towel rack and a bidet, lies a metallic mat with a honeycomb pattern, which I recognize. The same object Iggy used to take a steam bath on, at the Hotel Obsidian. To moisten his reptilian skin.

Suddenly, I can hear the word 'mausoleum', and I look up. My chest tightens because I know the effort Klaus is making to speak about this out loud today, to get answers from someone who is only 'almost his father'.

For a long time, his mind simply bypassed those events, repressing them to avoid suffering. Yet, it all resurfaced as anxiety, nightmares, and haunting memories that terrified him as much as the ghosts at night. Dr. Milligan concluded that he was suffering from chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, to which she attributed his addictions, not believing in the existence of ghosts. But she was right about the complexity of what consumed him, which he has managed to overcome admirably in the past three years, I believe.

It's hard to express how proud I am of him, of what he's doing right now, despite his clumsiness. Klaus, today, is breaking a whole cycle of traumas and abuses. Claiming his right to know who he is and why he suffered what he did. I remain deeply concerned about how Hargreeves will use this. But as I bend over what I now recognize as an alien-tech artifact, I promise myself to keep supporting him through that.

My fingers brush the metallic honeycomb pattern. Yes. No one listened to Diego, but he was right: Klaus and the Hargreeves - from all Academies, in all timelines - were adopted and raised by an alien from a distant and extinct world.

And suddenly, everything makes sense.

I had always found that Hargreeves had a caricatured approach to psychology and education, excessive to the point of abuse due to his inability to grasp the subtleties of emotion, or anticipate - or even perceive - his children's suffering. So 'clumsy' as to become harmful. A torturer without real intent to harm, compromising his own plans. A bewildering combination, and for a reason: what he is doesn't make sense on this Earth.

Hargreeves has just invited Klaus to lie on his couch to spill everything he has to say about himself. He will listen, or at least give the impression that he is. But to me, there is no doubt that he already has all the answers.

His monocle likely allows him to see beyond things. He's a brilliant businessman, mastering a technology that has birthed magnificent or terrible wonders. Like Grace, whose semi-maternal attentions never quite managed to become affection. Like the psykronium cube that saved Chris, just as Hargreeves likely biotechnologically saved Luther, and maybe Pogo. An anthropologist whose passion for humanity on this foreign land is paradoxically devastating. An explorer whose life of travel is told by every object in this office, owning an incredible ship in the garage of which Klaus once infiltrated me: the one going by the name of Minerva.

Yes, everything makes sense. And I know who he is. Like Iggy, he is a castaway from Makȟá Zuȟéča, exiled from a fallen planet due to his people's relentless pursuit of progress, which he likely still chases.

The Wayfarer.

The one who knows what lies in the corridor behind the pachinko, and who has promised to his people the reset of the universe, and the restauration of the fertile lands they lost.

I slowly step out of the bathroom, as Klaus - on the couch - is telling Hargreeves how the other version of him - in our original timeline - pushed him to conjure his first ghost. Harshly. By placing into his young hands a box, with the lifeless body of the kitten he had been feeding in Hargreeves Mansion's inner garden. Most of what he's recounting now, I didn't know. But painfully, I try to focus on what I came here for.

I approach the desk and look at the objects on it. The globe, the numerous papers and files. Above, suspended among several framed diplomas and medals - including an Olympic one - are two old certificates, attesting to Reginald Hargreeves's role as co-founder of the Omega company, and historical majority shareholder of the Japanese giant Seiko.

I've known since the 60s that Hargreeves was a precursor of the conquest of space, and who knows what other human achievements. I now understand that he had a major influence on the technological and technical advances of this world. But there's more.

I swallow with slight difficulty, even though I am no longer surprised. But if I needed one more confirmation, it lies in another nearby frame. A newspaper clipping, recounting the inauguration of the Hotel Obsidian in 1920, where Reginald Hargreeves features prominently. Like Iggy, he is old. Very old. Far older than his borrowed human skin suggests. And I turn to look at him.

He isn't even listening to Klaus, who is now babbling about the afterlife that looks like a perfume commercial, lying on the couch when he refused to do so for Dr. Milligan. About the soup he saw, just before 'coming back'.

What I notice most is that Hargreeves is doodling absentmindedly in a thick notebook, filled with numerous pages. A recurring, geometric pattern that seems to obsess him, just like me. I shiver. Under my invisible eyes, he is redrawing the Sigil he showed me in '63, the one I now bear on my arm.

"I said I came back", Klaus says in the face of his unresponsiveness. "Are you even listening to me?"

Hargreeves doesn't lift his monocle from his drawing, not realizing I am only a few centimeters away from him, near the crackling warmth of his fireplace.

"I'm hanging on every word", he lies, "This is ~fascinating~".

He stands up, abandoning his notebook on the table to cross the room, and my pulse quickens: I seize my chance. I know the information contained in Reginald Hargreeves's writings is precious, enough for Klaus's loss of one of his notebooks to have somehow led to 'the first apocalypse of 2019'.

Well-hidden in my invisibility, I crouch near the coffee table behind him, and skim the previous pages of the notebook, my eyes quickly scanning his handwritten notes for information. The Sigil's pattern is drawn repeatedly, compulsively. Other data is repeated as well.

"Everything is fascinating since you weaned me off those damned pills", he adds, as my eyes land on a page where the Sigil is accompanied by annotations describing its elements.

I sense I have little time as Hargreeves stands over his desk, opening a rectangular wooden box. In a hurry, my eyes dart across the page, picking out words.

'Forces / Gravity / Trajectories'
'Matter-Energy / Space-Time / Planes'
'Lives and Souls / Psyche / Perception'

Terms and symbols are linked by lines, connections organized like the parts of a printed circuit board. I know what I am looking at: it is a description of the components of a machine. The universe-machine, as likely understood by the Cosmologist Iggy mentioned. What makes it function. The Sigil's elements are nothing but slots, to be filled with these modules. But I freeze as Hargreeves turns to Klaus, making me hold my breath in my invisibility.

"I'd like to return the favor. Help you to understand who you really are. Would you like that?"

Components, yes, surrounded by a frame drawn in golden ink. Suddenly, they appear to me as plugins placed on a motherboard. The motherboard of a machine with a name.

OBLIVION.
The conclusion, the final erasure. Enabling renewal.
Everywhere else, this name is simply represented by the letter Ω. Omega, written in golden ink as well, connecting the plugins inscribed in black.

And I shiver, as Hargreeves moves towards Klaus, as if he is about to hug him, something I know Klaus will never resist. There is nothing he wants more than that. He accepts it with a heart-breaking smile.

"Then get over here, boy!"

But my mind races, for that's not all. Red-lettered annotations are scribbled on the side of the Oblivion machine diagram, like points not to overlook or forget. Like warnings.

'CAUTION: Protection system / Safety.'
'No activation possible without processor.'
'Use universal flexible modules if available!'
'REALITY PARAMETER SETTINGS'

This last annotation is even underlined twice.

I am unable to think now, stunned, trying to photograph this page in my mind, knowing I will not have access to it again soon. I finally turn my trembling hands intangible. And suddenly, through the blur of my distressed thoughts, I hear:

"Part one of your healing. Experimentation".

*GZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ*

I startle, horrified.

In front of me, Klaus collapses to the floor.

The Wayfarer. The one who is 'so much nicer' than his father and who carries with him the secret of Oblivion... has just electrocuted him.

And as I turn back visible and shaking, he concludes:

"It's fascinating."

Notes:

This was an important chapter, perhaps one of the most significant since I began this story. Because it allows a better understanding of the Oblivion machine and its connection to its plugins, taken from among the 43 children born from the Marigolds, all possessing powers related to the universe's machinery and its functioning.

The show remains very vague about Oblivion's operation. It was essential for me to elaborate on it, as it is actually the main arc of this story and of The Umbrella Academy: the tale of setting a machine in motion, whose components, unfortunately, are human.

For a long time, Rin feared that the term Omega was connected to the notion of an end. She could not have known that it was literally the symbolization of Oblivion. But possibly… you had guessed it since Season 1.

Any comments will make my day!