Forty-five minutes later, as Laurel finished fluffing up her masses of curly golden hair, she heard a knock on her door and opened it to a grinning Adam. “May I come in?” he asked gallantly.
“Adam, you sure like to live dangerously. Someone could have seen you. Where did you teleport into?”
“Transport, not teleport. We transport ourselves, we teleport apples. And we’ve barely touched on transporting — there’s certainly more interesting places to go than your porch, true?”
Laurel smiled despite herself, despite the total disorientation of the past couple days. “I admit teleporting — um, transporting — would be an easy and ecological way of getting places. As long as nobody was there on the other end to see you. So where are we going today?”
“What is a place where you’ve been before, that you can visualize well enough that you can take us there?”
“Safely? Without people seeing us pop in from the middle of nowhere?” Laurel asked skeptically.
“You have a point there. Maybe we should wait until dark. We have some time to kill — a couple hours, I suspect.” Adam crossed his legs and leaned back. “Tell me about yourself.”
“Well, given that I only remember the last twelve years of my life, there’s not much to talk about. I woke up in the hospital, broke out, and spent a twilight existence working under the table for subsistence wages. I’ve slept in basement apartments, squatted under bridges, lived in homeless shelters. I’ve …” Laurel looked over at Adam, her eyes blinking. “I’ve kept apart from others. I’m not used to talking to people, because I’ve been afraid I would give away something, like my freakish ability to heal. I’ve lived a solitary existence.”
“Most Archetypes live solitary existences. We were created that way, as Archetypes who gather together could be a danger.”
“How? A danger to what?” Laurel leaned forward, as if she could find a clue to herself in Adam’s revelation.
“Remember,” Adam said, steepling his fingers. “The Maker created us as vessels for human patterns. If we die, the humans whose patterns we carry die as well. We’re nearly indestructible, but that small possibility can’t be risked. Conflict could set us up for battle, and battle against other beings like us — strong and swift and almost indestructible — could result in our death and the death of the millions whose patterns we carry. So we are kept apart from each other.”
“Whose patterns do I carry?” Laurel asked.
“That I don’t know. I’m sure the information is in the Archives somewhere …” Adam trailed off, remembering his own unique status as an Archetype who carried no patterns.
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