Armand Baltazar - Diego and the Rangers of the Vastlantic

“ We did it,” Santiago said, “by seeing it and only it. There can be no other thoughts or feelings. Your total focus must be on the thing that you make.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Diego said, except it had made sense as it had been happening. “How is that possible?”

“First things first,” Santiago said. “Tell me this: Did you notice anything different about that engine as you were working?”

Diego was surprised to realize that he had. “You replaced the titanium mounts with destabilized aluminum alloy.”

“And why would I have done that?”

“Um . . . because it is lighter and more powerful,” Diego said. “So it will stay flexible under increased pressure without becoming brittle.” That made sense; Diego had heard his dad talk about things like alloy properties, but it wasn’t like he’d ever studied them.

“And that means . . . ?” Santiago probed.

“It means that I can make a near ninety-degree full-throttle turn while absorbing the violent vibrations that would normally tear the motor out.” Diego shook his head. “How do I . . . know all this? I’ve never even worked on a gravity board. I don’t—”

“But you do,” Santiago said. He put his arm around Diego. “You saw it, Diego, just like I knew you would. Because you are my son.”

“Dad, that doesn’t make sense.”

“But it does. There’s a reason why I can build the things I build, why I can see how to bring together the technologies of the different times in a way that very few can. I have a gift.”

“You’re really smart.”

“No, it’s more than that. I have a . . . power.”

“What, like a superpower?”

“Not exactly. But it is, was, unique to me.”

“Were you born with it?”

“No, it manifested in me after I came to this world. I was sixteen the first time I used it successfully; I was volunteering to help build a well for the Natives living in the western territories. The design I came up with, everyone claimed it was impossible. The Steam-Time engineers said it was a miracle or maybe witchcraft, but an old Algonquin shaman there called it something else . . . the Maker’s Sight.”

“A shaman,” Diego said, trying to fit all this into the nuts-and-bolts image he’d always had of his father. “The Maker’s Sight? And you’re the only one who has it?”

“Maybe not the only one. The shaman said that she’d seen this kind of thing before, but she wouldn’t speak of it further, except to warn me to keep the power secret. And I have, until today.”

“You knew I had it,” Diego said. “Didn’t you?”

“Yes, but not until today. Your mother and I always suspected that you might inherit the Sight, but we were never quite sure.”

Diego peered up at his father. “Why today?”

“I can’t say. But this morning at breakfast I saw these flashes of light in my mind that tingled and burned. They reminded me of how I experienced the Sight, but they weren’t quite the same. In between each flash, I saw the gravity board. I suspected that the power had come alive in you, but I couldn’t be sure until we came down here. When you first gazed at the unfinished gravity board, I could feel the Maker’s Sight in you . . . around you, coming off you in waves.”

“So are you saying that it, like, runs in our family?”

“Yes, but it begins with me. Or, more precisely, with the Time Collision. Before that, I was just a normal boy. The Sight is just another way that the world was made new.”

“And it lets you build things.”

“It shows me a series of images that allow me to make or fix anything. Like what you just experienced, but to use it at the level I do requires supreme concentration, and it takes years to master. I am not certain that this is what the power is for, or even the only way to use it, but this is what I have chosen to do with it. In the world after the Collision, building and fixing things seemed like the best way for me to help the world.”

“So,” Diego said, “what am I supposed to do with it?”

“I’m not sure. It may be the same, or it may have a different purpose that is unique to you. You will figure that out as your Sight grows.”

Diego looked back at the board. If he could assemble the parts needed to construct the gravity board, what else could he make? “What’s the best thing you’ve used the Sight for?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. I never really thought of it like that.”

“Come on,” Diego said. “Did you ever enhance the fighter planes, like with better engines or weapons? Or, like, what about robots that could seek out the Aeternum to defeat them once and for all?” Diego remembered the picture of his uncle Arden and his parents. “Then maybe Uncle Arden wouldn’t have died in the Battle of Dusable Harbor—”

“No,” Santiago said. He’d stiffened, his gaze lost in the table. “During the Dark Years, my first instinct was to build machines to match the violence around us, and to save lives. I saw so many terrible things in the Chronos War: Mid-Time towns gouged apart by Steam-Time cannon fire while their armies were laid waste by Mid-Time missiles, so much violence brought on by people’s hatred of each other’s time culture. But the thing was, there were so few humans left, a superior weapon might have ended the conflict, but it also would have caused unforgivable destruction, and I didn’t think humanity could survive it.

“I realized that to survive in this world, what we really needed was each other. Mid Timers and Elders needed the Steam Timers. And as much as they hated to admit it, Steam Timers needed us, too. The Steam Timers had technology that still worked, the Elders had their advanced science and medicine, and the Mid Timers could bridge the gap.

“Now, years later, this world faces an enemy more dangerous than we ever faced during the Chronos War. We can beat the Aeternum, but not through the creation of superior weapons. It must be through our prosperity and by making a stronger world. Does that make sense?”

“Sort of,” Diego said. “But just making the world more prosperous won’t stop the Aeternum, will it? Not like a better fighter plane. Why not show them how powerful you are? Then they would fear you.”

Santiago sighed. “In my experience, fear never leads to freedom. This was proved true all too often in the world before the Time Collision. Making the world more prosperous will rally the people to stand against those who’d take their future away from them.”

“Could you build defenses then? Instead of weapons. You know, like shields, or . . .”

“Diego, that’s not the point. I understand where you’re coming from, son, but the power has to be used carefully,” Santiago said. “There are those who would use it toward selfish ends, and still others who would fear what we can do and want to destroy us because of it.”

“Destroy us?” Diego repeated. “Who would want to do that? You mean like the True Believers?” The True Believers were Steam Timers who had become time supremacists. They wanted to form a society free of Mid-Time and Elder influence.

“Perhaps,” Santiago said. “By combining their technology with that of the Mid Timers and Elders, I do what they are sworn to stop. And we know how ruthless they can be.”

“There’s more of them around town now, too,” Diego said. “There are even Believer gangs at school these days.”

“Yes,” Santiago said. “That is why, for now, you must keep this power secret, as I have. For our safety, for our family’s safety.”

“But for how long?”

“Until the world evolves. We are still a civilization healing from a traumatic wound. Much of the hatred comes from people’s fears. They want to hold on to what little is left of what they know rather than embrace what they could learn.”