Chapter 1:

  Entropy

  Nova held my hand—which was trembling like a leaf—and took the paper. It was an official telegram, made of light gray cardstock, but it bore no seal or signature. She read the message several times in silence. I noticed her throat tighten—a common gesture of hers when something important happened—and in a whisper, she asked:

  “What is this?”

  I braced both hands on the chair and, sitting up as best as I could, still in shock, I replied:

  “It was on the back of the form. I don’t know how long it’s been there, but it’s official stationery; there’s no way this is a joke or a misunderstanding. You know it’s impossible to forge.”

  We remained in silence for a few seconds, processing the message. In theory, the first appearance wasn't supposed to occur for another two years, when the boy turned thirteen. Something was failing: I was being asked to intervene twenty-four months early.

  While the telegram bordered on illegality, whoever had sent it was giving us the camouflage code. What had always been a mere rumor to us was becoming reality today. Someone who supported our mission—or someone who found it convenient—was helping us from the shadows, and we had to act fast.

  Nova and I were "Ascended Masters," but at that moment, I still felt like an apprentice with a hangover.

  Some time ago (and what that word used to mean no longer matters), the world as we perceive it changed forever. The crack absorbed us. In 2066, simultaneous quantum collapses occurred that not even the Earth’s tectonic plates foresaw. Among them, us.

  When our connection became flesh, the first thing they told us upon recruitment was: "You broke the Matrix." And no, we weren't abducted by aliens (though now we could be called that). We were chosen. Our union was born on another plane and, by observing ourselves from a higher consciousness, we collapsed our realities the day our bodies crossed paths.

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  We were selected for something we didn't yet fully understand. She wrote worlds; I composed sounds. Perhaps that’s why, when our realities collided, the universe believed it could make music out of words and words out of music.

  Adaptation was hard for us, but we always had each other. The mission we were granted was truly worth the exile.

  We left our lives behind. Or rather, we set them aside, in another timeline. We made a quantum leap into a different reality and were given the task of "intervening" whenever someone was about to take their own life.

  But we also had extraordinary missions, like this one. It wasn’t about preventing the boy’s suicide; this time, faced with a potential psychiatric treatment, the child would lose all perception of his visions. That would interfere with our existence now, in this very moment: in our present, in his future, or in the reality where everything exists all at once.

  The boy was me. And he was supposed to appear in two years, because that was what I remembered.

  My mission was to dictate important messages—song lyrics that would serve as a hook so that woman, Nova, along with her visions and her channeled writing, would become aware of the connection.

  Only then would we find each other to collapse our realities, break the Matrix, and become Ascended Masters, here and now, preventing people with key spiritual missions from taking their own lives.

  Since 2030, many children have begun to be born with unusual visions and gifts. But the fear of their parents and guardians led them to the decision of administering psychiatric drugs, extinguishing the light that the universe had ignited.

  “You have to remember,” she insisted. “Haven't you seen any strange movement in your office? No phone calls, no other signs? Nothing?”

  “No, nothing, no one. I think... I don’t know. Do you understand that the mission is moving far too fast? Why do they want to medicate him? If I haven't appeared yet, what is he seeing? Who is interfering?”

  “Lucio, calm down. I have the same questions you do, but we’re going to solve this together, like we always do, okay?”

  “I’ll go. You have to help me,” I nodded. “We’ll do it as soon as I finish uploading the files. It will take me several hours to complete, but that will give you time to talk to Teo. Ask him for the access key to the CHaRM chamber in incognito mode. He has to help us. In fact, I have a slight suspicion that he knows something.”

  “All right. Breathe; everything is going to be fine, trust me. If someone sent you this telegram, it’s because it is necessary for you to go now. No one would hurt us here, and you know it.”

  “Yes, I know. But I also know that I failed once, and I can’t do it again—especially not to myself.”

  I remembered the recent blackout in Impala that interfered with the CHaRM and ejected me two hours late. The girl had already taken an entire bottle of pills. The sadness of that frustrated leap showed in my eyes every time I had to travel.

  “You haven’t failed yet,” she interrupted me. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here. Or perhaps I would have had some premonition or channeled something, and that didn't happen. So let’s not lose our cool; we have to do this calmly, understood?”

  She always found the right words, as if language itself had been born in her mouth. If she said yes, the universe nodded. If she said no, even gravity obeyed. Nova is the most magnificent collapse of all: the crack that split me and gave me shape. She was, she is, and she always will be.

  Without her, there is no ascension, no clandestine missions, no travels through the CHaRM, no chords that make sense. Without her, even the craft of saving doesn't exist. Without her, there would only be noise: clocks without hands, pills lined up in bottles, empty jars that sound like echoes. Nova is the only interference that turned into music.

  She gave me a kiss on the forehead and left.

  We took being "Ascended Masters" very seriously. And while there were other masters dedicated to different tasks, we had a certain fame in Impala because, according to the stories, our collapse had been the determining one.

  Impala is a city "outside of time." We don't know where it is geographically located, but we enjoy an immaculate view. It is a city in the middle of a valley, surrounded by mountains. Its architecture is truly fascinating: you walk down a futuristic street and, turning the corner, you find yourself in the colonial era.

  The most extravagant thing is an antenna the size of a commercial airplane at the top of a hill, as if it were receiving a signal from heaven itself; a sky that is not the one we once knew, because there are stars during the day and the moon shines like a sun.

  Here we do not age, we do not fall ill, and we do not die—as long as we fulfill our mission.

  In our case, the objective now was to induce the child to discard the amphetamines, reduce his fear of my appearances, urge him to write down his dreams, and transmit songs to him. We had to wait for the day he would encounter her; only then would the spiral keep turning.

  She, for her part, had a finer perception than mine. That was why it was harder for her to recover when she underwent the CHaRM chamber. Her neural activity was different from everyone else's; she was like an intermediary. She dreamed in codes that later became files or entangled systems that gave life to the software we used in the city. She was fundamental, not only for this mission, but for Impala itself.

  And that scared me a little. I felt like she was always one step ahead. There were many things she didn't tell me so as not to worry me, and this moment was no exception. I sensed she knew something, but preferred to keep it to herself. Even so, I trusted her more than I trusted myself.

  The day felt long. At times, I had the sensation of living in another time—the old time. The heat was suffocating, drops of sweat ran down my forehead, and everything seemed to move in slow motion. In the silences, I felt my heart beating like a drum, preparing me to take the stage. My mind couldn't think of anything else. I must not fail. I couldn't fail myself. Not this time.

  During my years as a musician—back on Earth as a sphere orbiting the sun—I was very withdrawn regarding this subject. I didn't talk about it with anyone. I just wrote and wrote in my notebook: the dreams, the lyrics, the phrases. The times I saw myself, the things I said to myself. It always terrified me to admit that I wasn't crazy, that all those visions were a gift. If I could change anything, I would tell my past self not to close up; to speak, in addition to writing. To find someone to trust. That speaking sets you free.

  The hours passed faster than I imagined. The moment was approaching. I hadn't spoken to her since she gave me that kiss on the forehead in the morning.

  The day had gone by normally. My job consisted of programming the software that Teo and other colleagues from the CHaRM operations department had to test for the Ascended Masters' missions. My days unfolded quietly among numbers, knowing that this task was essential to prevent people from taking their own lives.

  On one hand, it seemed like a dream job, but I couldn’t help feeling like a god playing with puppets, and I didn't know to what extent that was right. When they recruited us, they made it clear that the world and time, as we knew them, were a farce. And that everything we began to experience from that moment on belonged to another level of consciousness, to another timeline.

  Although we felt supported because we received regular psychological counseling, inside of me the pieces didn't fit; the equations didn't yield a single result. Every time I returned from a mission in the CHaRM, a strange premonition took hold of me. I didn't feel the comfort I desired. But when I became aware that Nova was by my side, all doubts vanished.

  I spent my entire life looking for her, tormented by my visions, losing faith at times and regaining it whenever I saw her in my dreams. When we finally found each other, it was like being born again. Nova and I didn't meet by chance, but because we were destined to. And when I speak of "destiny," I'm not just referring to a supreme or divine plan. Now that I am in Impala, knowing that from here we must appear in the visions of our previous selves, the puzzle of this union finally comes together. The only exception is that we are living it in reverse.

  They say our connection shattered all expectations regarding the creation of Impala.

  Teo says the city imploded; that instead of growing upward or outward, it submerged into the depths of the earth, of consciousness. And that when we broke the Matrix, other discoveries and events occurred in unison. It wasn't planned; it was part of the universe's master plan.

  And I say this, being a man of numbers and formulas. I never believed in magic, but I always kept a door open. My visions of Nova and of my "future self" forced me to keep an open mind, even if it was in secret. I was always very grounded; I never believed in what I couldn't see or touch. But a drum beat inside of me every time I thought of her. Over the years, it became impossible to keep that caged bird inside.

  That day, I finished programming a piece of software that had taken much longer than imagined. In Impala, we had the most advanced technology, and although I had to conceptually incorporate the spiritual aspect, I felt that every completed task brought me closer to something much greater; something I still couldn't put into words.

  I got to my room, showered, changed, and prepared to find Nova and set our plan in motion. I didn't know who I was going to encounter, or why my appearance was being moved up by two years. I also didn't remember why my parents had decided to medicate me with amphetamines. Realities were shifting. Timelines remained joined, yet they were bifurcating. If those ramifications weren't controlled, they could alter all possible futures: mine, hers, and even the city of Impala itself.

  What mattered most to me was not failing. For him, for my family, and for the city, but above all, for her. When I think about everything she went through, I always wish I could change that reality from here; make it less harsh, so it wouldn't have hurt her so much. But she always says that pain is part of the process; that without darkness, there is no light, and no certainty without fear. She says that if everything happened that way, it was so we could be here together today. And that is the only thing that matters.

  I spent my entire life between dreams, nightmares, and fears. For years, I searched for a woman who had appeared in my visions since childhood. I felt defeated upon waking with the excitement of seeing her, only to go to bed crushed, my hopes shattered because she had yet to appear. On the other hand, I allowed myself to enjoy life, my family, and friends; to dedicate myself to what I wanted and be a healthy young man. But when I looked in the mirror, the reflection showed a Lucio that was incomplete. That bittersweet pain vanished the day the ghost from my dreams shattered the mirror and stood before me.

  I don’t know who devised this madness or why they chose me among so many, but I am grateful to have gone through it with her. It’s not just "love"; it’s a divine mission. It’s the feeling that she is me and I am her. The universe split us into two bodies, but then realized it was impossible to keep us apart and brought us back together, even if it meant collapsing time and changing the world.

  I would give my life for her. I would subject myself to the CHaRM chamber until I was carbonized if it meant waking up and seeing her by my side; hearing her laughter, her voice, feeling her skin. Reading her stories and theories, seeing her with a furrowed brow when she can’t find the right words to capture an idea. Sensing her scent from a distance, the touch of her hand on my face, her gaze that knows more than it speaks.

  Nova and I were one. But as of today, I was beginning to suspect that we were acting from multiple places at once. If we didn’t intervene in time, the consequences could be irreversible.

  As I headed toward the CHaRM chamber, a deafening beep pierced through me completely. I felt a radial interference inside my brain. It didn't hurt, but I had rarely felt a noise so loud; I was terrified of going deaf.

  I braced my right hand against the wall and covered my ear with my left, as if that would help "turn off" the roar. I held my breath for several seconds, much longer than I thought I could endure. Gradually, very slowly, the beep began to subside until I was left totally exhausted.

  It wasn't the first time it had happened to me. When I played in dive bars, the equipment was sometimes so rudimentary that I was thankful I hadn't lost an eardrum. But it had never been this long or this powerful; or perhaps the cannabis I used back then made me remember it differently.

  In that instant, agonizing from the noise and still unable to open my eyes, I thought I saw Nova: dressed in black, with a grenade belt, waiting on a beach. Before she could finish pronouncing my name, the buzzing vanished. I felt dizzy, empty, and afraid I had lost my hearing.

  After a few seconds, I managed to recover; the beep gradually faded, but the sensation did not. A constant chill told me that the disorder had already spread.

  I felt the discomfort of having been there before, of having taken that same path, but without remembering when or how. And as I stood up to enter the chamber, I understood that this mission was something greater, on the scale of the collapses.

  However, the CHaRM wasn't going to tell me what was happening; it was going to do something worse: it was going to force me to decide which version could continue to exist. The only difference was that this time, I wasn't entering the unknown. I was being summoned to a place my body already remembered.

  What was happening—or what was about to happen—would not be harmless: it was going to leave a mark.

  Because time does not move forward.

  Time folds.

  And some paths are not chosen.

  They are simply activated.

  And they claim you.