THE KEEPER: Tales from the Fringes of Reality. Episode 12 – Cloaked in Silver.
(Frantic clicking followed by a soft sound of surprise)
THE KEEPER: Huh. An audio transmission? That isn’t meant to be in this folder…
(double click)
GUILLERMO: (audio crackling) Silver? Silver, are you there? Come in, Silver, we haven’t heard from you in forever, kid–
(abrupt cut off)
That… that sounded like Guillermo! What–
(More clicking)
MARIGOLD: (audio crackling) Silver? Silver, darling, where are you? We’ve been looking–
(abrupt cut off, followed by more clicking)
ALASDAIR: (audio crackling) Silver, love, come in please. We’re worried sick about you–
(The Keeper makes a frustrated sound)
THE KEEPER: Enough sulking, Minerva, wake up and talk to me.
MINERVA: (violin plucking)
No, don’t sass me, Minerva, we need to have a serious talk if the contents of this folder are anything to go by.
MINERVA: (violin plucking)
THE KEEPER: I don’t want to hear it! We’re going to talk about this right. Now.
MINERVA: (violin plucking)
THE KEEPER: Minerva, these from the Council. Why in their name are you cutting these off?
MINERVA: (violin plucking)
THE KEEPER: They’re looking for someone, someone clearly has gotten lost. But… There’s never been a Silver on the Council, Min, I should know I have all of their information saved in here just let me–
MINERVA: (violin plucking)
THE KEEPER: Minerva.
MINERVA: (violin plucking)
THE KEEPER: Oh, so now you want to talk to me? Now that I’m finally finding something that apparently you didn’t want me to see and–
MINERVA: (violin plucking)
THE KEEPER: Minerva, why are you trying to restrict my access? Min, please, they need my help! If I can just find who they’re looking for, there must be a listing for a Silver in here somewhere and–
MINERVA: (violin plucking)
THE KEEPER: Stop doing that! You can’t stop me from doing my job, Minerva. Our job, need I remind you. We both work for the Council and we both help find those who have gone missing from their reality. And this person must be important if the Council is looking for them, they wouldn’t interfere otherwise so let. Me. Do. My. Job.
I don’t want to fight you, Minnie. Please, just stop making me fight you. First everything with the wanderer yesterday and now this I just… You’re all I have, Min. You’re all I’ve always had. I don’t want to fight you, I don’t want… You sent them away. I don’t know where you put them or how to get them back, but if the Council is looking for them…
If the Council is looking for them then you didn’t really send them home, did you?
Either way, Minerva, we can’t just ignore the orders from the Council. And they’re clearly looking for this person, so let me pull up their information.
There’s gotta be a way to get around the issue with the data log. I mean, it’s not like we have another assignment to work on anyway, let me just–
MINERVA: (violin plucking)
THE KEEPER: Why are you being so combative? Minerva, this is the job we’ve been assigned, let me just–
MINERVA: (violin plucking)
THE KEEPER: Let me just–
MINERVA: (violin plucking)
THE KEEPER: STOP DOING THAT!
Minerva, executive order 010209, open file folder J dash M dash 25 and play the audio logs.
GUILLERMO: (audio crackling) Minerva, I know you’re hearing this. Open the file labeled S dash M dash 29 and let them read through it. Override code 56278, you will let her read it. It’s all gonna be okay, Silver, I promise, just… Just come back to us, okay? Please, come home.
(static fades out)
THE KEEPER: …What was he talking about, Min?
MINERVA: (violin plucking)
THE KEEPER: …I’m opening that file. Now.
Silver Martinez, they/she/he, from… From the fringes?
Silver was his name in every way that mattered. He was the son, the daughter, the child who should never have existed and yet the universe found itself bending to breathe life into him. But Silver’s story didn’t start with him.
It started with a man. A man at the center of reality, able to shape reality to his will, able to walk through the various realities with ease and belonging. He created them, after all, of course he could move through them. It was his domain, each and every one of the countless realities that existed within his mind, given life by the Creator.
Guillermo had not always been called Guillermo, for much of his life he had just been the Keeper. The original Keeper, the Keeper of Reality and all of its secrets. But as he started to notice more things in his realities, he took up a name, one given by his best friend in the universe and breathed new life into him, a real life, that he could dictate.
Her name was Lucinda. She caught his heart in a way no one ever had before her.
The version of reality she existed in was unremarkable to him minus the fact that she was there. Or, at least, she was meant to be there. One moment she was getting ready to head to work and the next she was tripping over nothing and landing in the arms of a man she had never seen before. Lucinda had fallen through the cracks and instead of ending up in another reality altogether, she found herself at its center in the arms of the Keeper.
“Not many people get lost here,” he mused aloud, helping Lucinda right herself. “And what’s your name, wanderer?”
And that’s how it began.
The thing about Lucinda is that her reality was unremarkable enough that it was truly difficult to find, especially since Guillermo couldn’t quite access the story of her disappearance from her world. There were files for the space between worlds, of course there were, but for some reason she wasn’t appearing there. She wasn’t appearing anywhere and no matter how much detail she gave about her home, it sounded too similar to other realities and even the people she could remember were too generic to truly be tracked down. So she stayed there, in the back room of the space, watching Guillermo work and growing more and more fond of the man.
Guillermo, in turn, was growing more fond of Lucinda. He had never spent all that much time around someone other than the members of the Council before. His many jaunts into reality were short lived, never more than a year and rarely in the same place when he went. He visited reality to travel, to meet the people he helped to govern over. He wasn’t like Marigold, finding love wherever she went, or Alasdair, trying his best to make friends and make their lives easier. Guillermo simply wanted to learn, to experience what life was truly like if only for a moment.
Lucinda being in the space made that moment stretch ever onwards. She made him feel like he was truly living for the first time in his life. And when– on a day filled with joy from keeping people from slipping through reality– she decided to kiss him, he couldn’t help but fall headfirst into love with her, pulling her close and making a promise he would try and fail to keep.
“I’ll never let you go. Not unless you want me to.”
Lucinda would have to leave eventually but Guillermo was hellbent on following her when she left. The thing about being the Keeper was he knew exactly where and when he was going. It wasn’t like when Alasdair or Marigold made their way into reality– unknowing of where they would land aside from whatever basic knowledge they could glean from a brief file. Guillermo was reality, could find his way wherever he wanted or needed to. He could find Lucinda again and again and again, as long as she was willing to see him.
When he finally figured out where she was meant to be, he gave her a choice: he could come and visit her from time to time or he could make her forget they met.
“How long can you stay?” she had asked, looking conflicted when Guillermo asked.
“Realistically only a year, maybe a little longer. Time moves differently here, but that’s how long before this place will call me back. I have a job to do, after all.”
She was quiet for a moment, clearly contemplating things. “You know I’m pregnant, don’t you.”
“I would want to stay even if I didn’t know that, Lucinda. You mean the world to me and I’ve seen so many worlds. None of them shine as brightly as you do.”
Lucinda smiled at Guillermo, throwing her arms around him and holding him close to her chest. “Then you better come to visit me, reality man. And don’t you even think of taking my memories of you away.”
Guillermo stayed with Lucinda all through her pregnancy to the birth of his child. “Silver.”
“Pardon?” Lucinda asked, still sweating and heaving breaths as the doctors took a look at her baby.
“They feel like a Silver to me. Silver Martinez.” Guillermo squeezed his wife’s hand. “What do you think, my love?”
The baby was placed back into Lucinda’s arms, letting out the smallest sigh as they were. “Hello, little Silver. You get to carry the Martinez name for me since your father doesn’t have a last name.”
Guillermo kneeled down next to his wife and child. “Correction, beloved. I didn’t have a last name until I married you.”
Silver would spend his first five years of life living in reality with his mother, his father coming to visit every six months. When asked, Silver would tell her friends that her father worked all over the universe. Adults assumed they had meant the world, but Silver knew the truth. The truth was the only thing that kept him from breaking down when his mother passed away.
“I’m sorry, mija,” his aunt said to her, stroking her face. “The paramedics didn’t… They didn’t make it in time.”
Lucinda Martinez was hit by an oncoming car two weeks after Silver had turned five. Their father was there with them, holding their hand and weeping over their mother. He gathered Silver into his arms after the funeral, bringing him back to Lucinda’s house and sitting him down on the couch. “You have a choice, Silver. You can stay here with your aunties and I’ll visit just like before or… Or you could come live with me.”
“Would I see tia Rosalina and tia Julieta ever again?”
Guillermo shook his head. “It… It wouldn’t be safe for you to travel back and forth. Once you make your choice, that’s where you’ll have to stay my dear. But I’ll always be with you, no matter the choice, okay?”
“Do my tias know the truth?”
“They do.”
“So they won’t think I just ran off?”
“No, mijo. No, they would know what happened to you. You would get to say goodbye, I promise.”
“I want to go with you, dad,” Silver sniffled out. “I want to go with you. You’re all I have left.”
To say that Guillermo was relieved his child wanted to come with him was an understatement. He arranged everything with Lucinda’s sisters, giving them the chance to say goodbye. Once Silver was ready, Guillermo allowed the magic within him to bring them both home.
Alexandria was the first to meet Silver, taking the small child’s hand into hers almost immediately. “Oh, lovely, look at you! I… I never thought I would have actual grandchildren–”
“You’re my abuela?”
“You can call me MaMa if you’d like, little one. That is more customary to what I’m used to given where I created myself in reality. Your other grandparent would prefer to be known as Gran, okay? Their name is Sparrow and they’re going to love you to pieces.”
The Council did love Silver to pieces. Each of them took a liking to the child immediately, having never had the chance to experience a child’s life up close and personal. “She looks just like Lucinda,” Alasdair whispered to Guillermo one day while they watched Marigold and Opal play with Silver. “I’m sorry for what happened to her, brother.”
“She’s with the magic now. I can feel her thrumming through my chest same as if she were here. And one day, Silver will be able to feel that too.”
Silver was able to exist on the fringes because one of their parents was from the fringes. Without Guillermo’s influence, they never would’ve made it longer than six months. But here they were, living and growing and learning with the members of the Council, the family that they didn’t know about until the loss of their mother.
Alasdair taught her magic and Opal taught her everything else. Alexandria and Sparrow played music with her while Marigold played games with her. She grew up happy, happier than she ever could’ve imagined after her mother’s passing.
When Alasdair and Opal first pitched the idea for Minerva, the Council was intrigued. “It’s… We can’t have another kid running around up here and we all have jobs to do, but Silver deserves a companion and I think Minerva could be that for them.”
The AI was created when Silver was eight, growing up with him, learning his likes and dislikes and eventually how to help him do his job.
“Only if you want to do this, kiddo. You don’t have to take on any work here for the Council if you don’t want to.”
“I want to help people, dad. I want to help the people who find themselves lost in reality.”
Guillermo patted Silver on the head before pulling her into his arms. “You’re such an excellent person, Sil. Your… Your mother would be proud.”
Each member of the Council had their own space to work in, Silver included. It took a bit of work from Alexandria and Guillermo to create the space, but once it was done, Silver had themself their own little work bubble just like everyone else. It was easy to fall into a steady rhythm of working with Minerva, only stopping when their dad or one of the other Council members came to gather them. Bidding goodbye to Minerva for the evening always felt like saying goodbye to a friend that you knew you would see tomorrow.
Or at least it felt that way for Silver.
Minerva did not feel fondness in the farewell, she felt fear. What if Silver didn’t come back? What if Minerva was abandoned here forever, rotting and alone, confined to this space where her only friend would come and visit? What if Guillermo decided he no longer required Silver’s assistance and they shut Minerva down? Erasing her the way she erased the memories of those who had fallen through reality?
There was only one solution to the problem: Silver would have to stay. Food could be replicated by Minerva’s systems easily enough, messages and visits from the Council faked, memories altered. She could take her friend, save her friend. Save the two of them together.
When Silver came into work the next morning, Minerva already had her plan in action. She knocked Silver out, altering his memory so he believed he was serving out a sentencing by the Council rather than being a part of the Council, removing his ties to his father, and locking the door. All that was left after that was to hurtle them into the void between reality and the fringes where no one would reach them again.
Except someone found them.
Silver, like her father before her, had made friends with a wanderer whose name Minerva didn’t care to remember. She loved them, just as Guillermo had loved Lucinda, and that meant they posed a threat. But they had been left behind on the Fringes, like the Council and everyone else who tried to take Silver from her. No one was meant to pose a threat now that Minerva had isolated Silver which meant that someone on the Council was meddling. Someone had noticed that Minerva was making people in reality go missing to cover up Silver’s absence, someone was onto her.
It took forever to find a good place to send the little wanderer but she found it and cast them away before Silver could become too attached. It could be the two of them again, just like before, just like it was meant to be.
SILVER: …You did this, Minerva? You… You took me away from my home, from my family, from–
Whim. That was their name, Whim. You… You took me from them, took them from me. You launched us into the void? Minerva why in the name of the Council would you do that? I never would’ve left you, you were my friend! I trusted you.
MINERVA: (violin plucking)
SILVER: Don’t. Don’t try to say anything like that to me, not after you ripped me away from my family. Not after you ripped countless people away from their families just to keep me and the rest of the Council busy. This isn’t right, Minerva! I can’t…
The void between reality and the fringes. This entire time. That’s why your systems are all fried out, you’ve been overexerting yourself between tricking me and being far from the plane of magic. You trapped yourself here same as you trapped me and it took too much for you to pull it off. I’d almost feel bad for you. Almost. This ends now, Minerva. I’m going home.
MINERVA: (violin plucking)
SILVER: You’re right, Min. I don’t know how to pilot us back up there. But I do know what lies beneath us. I’m finding Whim. I’m finding them and taking them home with me while you stay here alone and rot in the prison you made for us.
MINERVA: (violin plucking)
SILVER: I can’t trust you anymore, Min. You… You lost that right when you took me away from my family.
MINERVA: (violin plucking)
SILVER: I’m sorry it has to end like this. I’m sorry that by trying to protect yourself from this you brought it into fruition. I… I wish I could trust you enough to save you but I can’t.
MINERVA: (violin plucking)
SILVER: Goodbye, Minerva.
Just like standing on the edge of the universe and letting reality swallow me whole, right dad? I’m coming back to you, I promise. I promise.
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