‘Kinraetown’ only covered about a half-mile of businesses and buildings which were primarily-owned and operated by ‘Kinrae’. Aside from the trivia books, Lissa brought a small audio recorder and her digital camera, in case, as she said, “We need proof of junk going down.” I brought my device and controller along with the card Tessa gave me when we first officially met. And Allison made sure we had snacks and a packed supper in case we couldn’t find a good place to eat. 

The gateway to the area was marked by a rainbow-mottled “friendship arch” which bore the words spoken by Olivia nine years ago. I looked at it with solemn skepticism. 

The businesses were typical for the area. Watercolor murals of landscapes around the world covered the walls. A small hair shop with a few anime patrons occupied the nearest corner. Beside it was a store which seemed to sell just about everything, especially the oddest things, like rolls of chicken wire. The other stores were similarly-small and sold just about everything you could imagine from any normal store. As we walked along a couple of anime girls welcomed us and asked, “Can we help you get to anywhere?”

I passed the card to one girl with long, indigo locks tied into a ponytail. She read the address and then looked over her shoulder before directing us down the main area and to the left to an off-shoot right after the next major street. None of them seemed to react to the information on the card in any abnormal or suspicious way. Any of them could’ve been Tessa but, after all this time since she’d last shown up, I’d begun to take her at her word that she was leaving me alone. 

A cluster of restaurants ranged from Indian cuisine to a local burger shop. Aside from the exuberant tones of paint everywhere, nothing looked different from any shopping center. In fact, as I thought about it, it fit with the ‘Kinrae’ stated philosophy. They were wildly-curious about humans. It would make sense they would take all the interesting things they saw in our cultures and want to put them together in a single place. 

That theory was also helped by being one that Professor Brandt had talked about exhaustively for nearly an hour, drawn from papers she liked and parts of the book which delighted her. I just rested my head against the wall that day. One of the new places I hadn’t heard about before included shirts which were of the same visual quality as the Kinrae. If I’d seen that some weeks ago then I would’ve been reaching for my wallet. As it was, I just pointed it out to Lissa and she pondered buying a shirt on the way back if they had her size.

I also found myself intrigued by an art shop, though it only sold reproductions of great works from around the world. The more I looked around the more I wondered if this was just for temporary Kinrae travelers to pick up a memento while visiting our universe rather than anything else. I could make the case but there were products like clothes clearly intended for men and women. 

The theory was bolstered by the small hotels crammed between markets. I didn’t take the opportunity to stumble into one of the ‘Kinrae’ leaving a hotel to see if they were as dense as a brick wall. However, the doors in front of the little hotels looked like they were built sturdier than the other doors. 

Allison stopped to buy us a little, fried puffball on a stick which resembled a mix of something oriental and something one would find sold at a fairgrounds. They were tasty. A narrow, two-story bookstore seemed to line its walls with books from every human language put to print. I didn’t notice any English books until about a third of the way back, nor did I notice any which were immediately recognizable. Allison didn’t either (with her face nearly pressed to the glass). I promised her we would come back later for a longer inspection of the books.

Lissa lingered by a toy store, noticing the most unique creations and recreations of toys. She said she was looking for something to take back to Quilla. I pondered over how… human this place all seemed. Maybe Kinrae wasn’t such a bad name for them if they wanted to be so much like us. I had to drag the others along as the shops got ever more interesting. A spice shop. A video store (at least there I recognized many of the titles…if only the Kinrae brought along alternate reality films and DVDs with them). 

Finally, we came to the location which was marked on the card Tessa had given me. Of all places, it was a flower shop with several colorful displays in front. After rechecking the address, I went through the front door. 

It was slightly cooler than outside and humid. I left Allison and Lissa to browse in the front as I made my way towards the back of the store. The cash wrap was empty but there was a space which led even further back into a storage area. I offered a tentative, “Hello?” before noticing a door to my right. It was marked with a handwritten sign that read, “Repairs and Other Services”. The handwritten script seemed familiar but it didn’t match Tessa’s or anyone else’s I knew.

Pushing on the door revealed a small set of steps with fuzzy, brown carpeting. I felt a quick rush of familiarity again. However, the steps looked like countless ones I’d seen before and the carpet appeared like something my uncle may have had in his house a long time ago. That didn’t help the odd feeling. I almost turned around to grab Allison. But the top of the stairs cast a long, warm ray of light down at me and I didn’t feel afraid, so much as confused. 

The room at the top had parts and equipment scattered all over. I thought for a moment I’d stumbled upon Clayton’s secret lab. Turning a corner, I noticed an anime girl hunched over a workbench. She had black goggles on as she worked on what looked like welding. Whenever she touched her instruments to the device before her, a blue light came on. I waited until a pause in her work to say, “I’m looking for Naltra. Tessa sent me.”

The girl turned and flipped her goggles up. Her eyes were vast with detailed patterns of burnt umber. Her hair was a darker shade of blond and tied into a ponytail behind her. She had grease across her chin and wore a black tank top with dark-green pants. 

I was about to take out the card Tessa had given me but the girl raised a hand and told me, “I’m Naltra. Well, it’s a name I like. It’s not a perfect name. Those rarely exist but… it’s a name which suffices.”

I looked for a place to sit down and asked, “Like Kinrae does for your kind?”

Naltra shrugged. “Names are histories and futures. Names can be statements. Names can be things that hold you back or things that propel you forward. I took the name Naltra and I gave it my own meaning. For me, it means ‘one who brings others along’.”

I told her that was nice and she continued, “But you’re not here just about names.….You’re here about the device. The battery.”

I assumed Tessa must’ve filled her in. I told her, “Tessa told me you might be able to fix it.”

Naltra brushed at her hair. “I can tell you there’s nothing to fix. Your device needs a new battery. I’ll get one. But that’s not the problem.”

Raising an eyebrow, I asked her, “How can you know that without looking at the device?”

She held out her hand and I reached into my bag for the device. I gave it and the controller to her. She opened it up and cracked her fingers. She told me, “This will just take a minute…”

I leaned back in my chair and watched as she popped out the battery from the internal component. 

Immediately, I felt a strange fuzziness in my head. The sound in the room became like it was over a faint radio station. Certain things around me felt indistinct. I was alarmed and confused. I yelled out to ask her what she was doing but I couldn’t make out her reply. 

I’d once taken nitrous for a wisdom tooth extraction and it felt like that, only I had no idea why it was happening. As it felt even more like I was going to slip away, the phenomena vanished and Naltra announced, “New battery. All good.”

I staggered up from the chair and away from her. 

“What the hell just happened?” 

I glared at Naltra but she kept her same, calm expression. She showed me the little battery-package she’d replaced and said, “It won’t make much difference though because it’ll drain at the same rate but you may notice less of a delay when using it now.”

I swallowed and told her, “Something strange just happened to me.” I described what I’d experienced and she rested her chin against her hand. After I was done, she replied only, “It’s feedback.”

Naturally, I had to inquire what that meant. She didn’t give me an answer. Instead, she asked me, “Sean…how do you feel right now?”

I frowned and looked at her a moment before offering, “Confused and alarmed.”

She nodded. “Understandable. But what I want to know is....Are you ready to have a discussion about the big questions you’ve been pondering for weeks? If you’re not, then there’s no problem with that. But if you are then you’ll have to make a choice which will change your entire life. Like Allison’s choice to embrace change for the sake of love. What’s your choice, Sean?”

I held my hands up. I was still processing the weirdness of a moment before, weirdness like the world winding down. And now she was offering me…answers? Well, she just said ‘discussion’ but that was something. 

Part of me wanted to say no and go back to Allison and Lissa and finish a day downtown and then head back because her words felt like being trapped at the edge of a cliff. At the same time, this was what I’d been seeking. This was the place I wanted to know. I needed to know.

Was I ready? I had no idea. Maybe I’d never be fully ready but I was tired of not knowing. I took a breath and asked her, “Can my friends join us?”

As soon as I asked that, I heard Allison in the other room exclaim, “Clayton would love this place!” Footsteps followed her. Lissa and Allison came around the corner. Lissa asked, “Did you get it repaired?”

Naltra gestured to my friends with a hand, saying, “Here they are.” That was rather convenient. Allison said that they’d asked about me downstairs and a nice shopkeeper told them where to go. Seeing Lissa and Allison made the anxiety wane but also made my choice feel ever closer. I could tell Naltra to shove off. I could go. But that felt like running away. That felt like hiding when my parents' anger was at its peak. Tessa said I needed to face that. I needed to make my choice. 

Allison glanced around with eyebrows raised and offered, “Ummm…did someone say something bad? Or break wind?” Naltra couldn’t resist a snicker and a sigh before saying, “What’s going on, Allison, is that Sean here is facing a choice. He can follow me and learn more about us than he ever dreamed or he can go back with you and return to a class where he learns what the Kinrae assume about us. That’s the choice and no matter what choice he makes, his life will never be the same.”

With wide eyes, Allison asked, “You’re not gonna brainwash him, are you? Or wipe his memory and turn him into a girl?! Or feed him to manhood-eating serpents?!”

Naltra flashed a skeptical look before shaking her head and saying, “None of those things. He will simply have a talk with someone who can answer his questions. But he needs to make the choice that he wants to have that talk, that he’s ready to face certain truths. Once something is learned, you can’t go back to a state before you learned it. Learning is always a challenge but he may find that amazing and beautiful things follow knowledge and change.”

Allison and Lissa both asked if they could go with me but Naltra told them, “It’s his choice and it’s what he will learn. Of course, he will be free to share it with those he trusts as he sees fit but it will have the most meaning for him and the most consequences.”

Allison commented, “You anime girls have cryptic Zen master nailed down pat.”

Naltra let loose a sudden giggle at this. “My apologies. We have our ways.”

With a frown, Allison shook a finger and admonished, “Make sure you don’t fry or hurt my cutie!” Lissa nodded and even had her camera out. Naltra bowed her head. 

It was decision time for me. I felt prickly and hot despite the coolness of the room. I could easily say no. I could easily go back down those stairs and convince myself I didn’t need to know. I could drop the class and I could just live with Allison and my friends all the same. But I didn’t.

I took a deep breath and told Naltra, “I want to know. I choose to know. I choose whatever comes.” Then I held my breath.

Naltra smiled and tapped me on the head. Nothing happened from that. I looked around. Nothing had changed. I looked back to her. She smiled and said, “Follow me then.”

And so I did. I followed her to a back room. It looked like a normal apartment with eclectic furnishings taken from the shops around the area. Something about it all looked vaguely familiar. I had a sense of what was going to be in each subsequent room before we got to it. So strange.

Eventually, she came to a door at the end of a hall. I knew it was a bedroom but I had no idea how I knew that. How could I possibly know that when I’d never been here before?

Naltra set her hand on the knob and said, “You still have a chance to back out, if you’re unwilling. Usually, my bedroom is more packed but this is good because it’ll allow you some privacy while you talk.”

I took a few breaths, ignored the bewildering implications of her words, and told her, “No going back.”

She opened the door. I had been in this room before. The walls were nice with vivid, lavender details and ornamentation. There were windows, a few open. I could hear cars passing on one of the nearby streets and even faintly hear the train line from far off. It had the usual things you would expect in a bedroom but a space had been cleared out for an egg-shaped object sitting to one side with several power sources plugged into it. It was the size of a single bed. 

I had been in this room before; I knew that immediately. But it was a dream. Had my dream been of a part of this universe and not another? I puzzled as Naltra approached the egg-thing and tapped along a portion of the side. She remarked, “Brace yourself…things are about to get rather weird.”

I could tell already as it seemed like the beeping of her button presses, at first sounding normal, were suddenly in stereo. I could hear them far away and next to me at the same time. With a pressurized hiss, the top of the egg-thing slid off and I felt a flash of hot light on my eyes.

Then, indeed, things got weird as the sensations of myself standing grew fainter and I found myself lying down somewhere soft and fancy. It undulated like a waterbed. Naltra was leaning over me and doing something. Had I passed out? The light was so bright that everything felt bleary.

When she seemed to be done, she told me, “Take my hand.” I clutched to her carefully and let her lift me up. My clothes were different. I was wearing something in the palest shade of lavender. The idea I’d passed out and she’d changed my clothes seemed ridiculous. I heard a gasp from across the room that sounded familiar as I struggled to my feet, but I couldn’t see that far. 

I coughed and groaned. Softly, Naltra told me, “I’m going to spray something in your eyes to help your vision. Just relax.” I felt a sudden mist. I couldn't resist blinking. With each blink, the room cleared a little more. I looked across the way and immediately thought I was standing before a mirror. There I was in my travel clothes with my bag and everything. But I couldn’t see Naltra beside me. And the other me was blinking and holding his mouth open in shock. I wasn’t doing that. How could…

I gasped but the other me didn’t. 

Naltra chuckled and said, “Here, sit on the bed and I’ll leave you two to chat.” I kept my eyes locked on my doppelganger. A dozen wild theories whirled through my head culled from all sorts of magazines. If I had any actual strength in me then I would’ve run right then and there through that door and grabbed hold of Allison and Lissa and sprinted until we were far away from this place. But my legs could barely move. The me across the room approached the bed. I tried to scoot back.

I panted and told Naltra, “No no…don’t leave me. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t…have come. I’ll scream if he tries to eat me!”

With a grunt, Naltra gave a sudden chuckle and repeated, “Eat you? Hey, Sean, wanna eat yourself? Wow...I never knew that would be something I’d say...” She gave a glance to the other me at the question and he gave no reaction but a frown. I was way beyond just frowning. My legs were getting some strength back but not enough to run. 

Sighing, Naltra stepped away and resealed the egg thing. She clapped her hands and said, “Alright….Sean sitting on the bed…You’re still recovering but you’ll probably be ready to answer questions in the next few minutes. But, for now, I want you to tell me who you are, why you’re here, and as much as you can about your life for this other fellow.”

I clenched my mouth. I sure as shit was not going to give my life away to some replica they were…trying to replace me with. I had to get to the girls but my legs. I’d never be able to outrun them. I tried to speak slowly and maybe buy myself some time by not being direct with my answers. 

“My name…is Sean Kurtz. I’m…here because my device was having a long…delay between turning off the anime girl illusion and when I returned to normal, human form. I live in a campus house with…three others. I’m taking a number of college classes, including one with Professor Brandt where we’re supposed to study the Kinrae….and I’m just here on a trip to learn about the Kinrae for the class…”

Naltra slapped her face and dragged her fingers across it, muttering, “Every time. Definitely a Kinrae thing. Alright, you can stop acting like you’re drugged up to the gills, Sean, because you’re making other Sean get the wrong idea. How about you tell me instead why you were inside that little capsule over there?”

I had no idea why I was inside the damn thing. You must’ve put me there! That’s what I wanted to say but then I realized I had a memory of willingly getting inside it and going to sleep. A vivid memory. 

I muttered, “What the hell…” as Naltra cracked a smile and said, “There we go. How about…what are the group of beings which the people of this world call the Kinrae?”

Well, that was easy….wait…wait waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait…WHAT?! How the hell did I know that? But it was sitting right there. A real, palpable memory. Inside my head, all about…oh…oooooh….ohhhhhhhhh crap. Oh crap. 

“Oh, crap…” I had to say it aloud. 

Naltra gave the other me a tap on the shoulder and said, “Alright, it looks like the old memory is up and running. And I’m willing to bet there will be a ton of questions.”

I was frozen there, as was the other me. Naltra tossed a wave and exited through the door, turning back to say over her shoulder, “You can come find me once your brains have been mutually-melted by all you have to share. I can only tell you that it’ll get easier. But this is the tough part. Later.”

And we were left alone. Running for my life still felt like a valid option. Other Sean fussed with his hands and said, “I’m tempted to just run out that door and not look back.”

Echoing me or just on the same wavelength? I told him, “Same here. Uhh…things are really fuzzy right now but very slowly coming back into focus.”

He grimaced and took a sideways step towards me, asking, “Are you some kind of pod person?”

I asked him back, “Are you?”

We both disputed it vehemently and while we did….the rest of it returned. Like a flippin’ migraine right to my skull. I winced and Sean asked what was wrong. I told him, softly, “Alright. I’m not a pod person, I'll tell you that. I’m actually a former anime girl and I chose to be inside that dreaming capsule. You see…I’ve been dreaming, for as long as I can remember, that I was you.”

More questions inevitably followed like a stream. I could sympathize with Tessa a little bit. A *little* bit. I knew…if I could trust my own brain…what was going on and I had to say it. 

But trust was the problem. I could say whatever but I had no idea if it was real. I was also beginning to doubt if anything around me was real. I needed something. 

Allison.

Before we discussed anything else, we had to talk about Allison. The other Sean seemed to bristle at first but then he smiled as I talked about the camping trip Allison had told me. Had told him. Then I mentioned the park and dark memories of family. I recounted depths of moments that not even Allison had heard. The times I’d wanted it all to end in the worst ways possible. He clenched up tightly. He listened to every deep memory. 

It would’ve been enough to trust Allison changing genders but here I was sitting with his body and face and every true moment just brought the fear deeper that his memory had been compromised and transmitted an echo back to me that I had doubly met the same fate.

Then, he touched my hand. And I have no idea what happened. Well…actually, I did have an idea because I had all those memories and I would tell other Sean that when a convenient moment came. But the Sean me was bewildered as to why it was happening. Still, serenity washed over us. Like with Allison in her room, we came to an understanding.

We were Kinrae. We were kin. We were the same. This wasn’t nefarious. This wasn’t an invasion. We had the same mind. We’d experienced the same things. We’d lived a shared life. And now it was time for me to share what was inside me with Sean.

I let him ask the questions.

“Who are you?”

“My original name is long gone. I’m one of the anime girls. Was. My life has been overwritten by yours. I am now you in every imaginable way.”

“Why?”

Oh…one of those big, canvas-crawling questions to look at. I’d have to start somewhere. It didn’t help that my brain felt, though brains don’t actually feel, like a leg released from sitting to ripple with pins and needles. Only those jabs were little bits of recollection stabbing at my thoughts.

“Toughie but I’ll try. The beings you knew as the Kinrae, until Tessa upset that cart, have an interesting history…”

Crud, I’d given him too much for his curiosity. He immediately interjected, “The name. Do you know what it really is?”

Yuuuup….he’d asked it. And there it was in my head. The name. That name. I clutched him by the hand and cautioned him, “Yes but before you say more…you don’t want to know. Not yet. Seriously, you really really don’t want to know it. Not without some cushioning first. The deep end of the pool, if I tell you without context. Will you let me do that? Believe me, you’ll appreciate it later.”

He looked into my eyes with a familiar expression of unease. I could easily imagine myself in his position. I was in his position until a few minutes ago. With a sigh, he told me to, “Go ahead…”

I began, “The beings-you-formerly-knew-as-the-Kinrae are incredibly varied. But you could say, for Professor Brandt’s neat and tidy categories, that ‘nomads’ is what fits best. There is no home base that we return to. There’s just the last comfortable place to stay. We travel. We search, looking for rare and wonderful things. There are those of us who settle down and those who make choices to give up the life they had before.” I tapped a hand to my chest. Despite knowing the informational memories were isolated from memories of the person I was before; I felt a vague notion that there should’ve been breasts on my chest. Those phantom feelings were supposed to pass as my Sean-ness took over. 

His eyes widened as he asked, “You gave up being an…anime girl…for me? To become me? Why?”

I couldn’t offer him anything so far as my own personal reasons. Those memories had been overwritten along with my previous identity. I told him that and added, “I can talk about reasons in general. But each place I can start takes me further back in explaining. But there is a fundamental essence within reality which translates best in human English as the letters ‘Ae’.”

I had to massage my temple a bit because this part would be hard to put into words. 

“To us, the Ae is the inspiration of all existence. It’s why there are universes. It’s why there is life in those universes. It is most concentrated in what you would call ‘humanity’, especially on this world. You and Allison share it when you smile at each other and you and Lissa share it when you laugh about movies. Lissa shares it with Quilla when she kindles ideas of salt wars and joyful smiles. It’s what we shared when you touched me, and we chose to trust one another. It is growth and love and change in its most fundamental building blocks and it’s so much more. I could spend hours trying to piece together the memories I have of it with you but I just had to establish that…”

He seemed to struggle a bit but he smiled at my description and offered, “I wish I had more of that sort of thing in my life before.” Remembering those times, I wished the same. 

That settled, I continued, “And, as I said, the Ae is strong with humans…or the Kinrae, as we call them. So much so that we look to you as our superiors. But there are others yet. Spirits who no longer need a physical form. We wonder and dream about them. Like us but reaching into true perfection. We haven’t gotten to that point yet but many of us want to learn…we want to experience being the Kinrae in the hopes it might take us closer to communion with that dream.”

He frowned and I apologized, “It’s a lot to take in. But we love to learn and change. We move between many forms. And we have a reason for that. Tessa was right when she said that we’ve been here for a long time. A very long time.”

Arching his eyebrows, he asked, “How long?”

I plopped my head firmly against the pillow and offered, “As long as human civilization has existed on this world.” Yeah, that brought his jaw down. It was daunting for me too. I amended that it wasn’t all the time. Although some of us settled and tried to learn human nature. I was leaving some bits off because it verged too close to the name. I’d get to it eventually, but I was still softening the blow.

He cupped his mouth and asked, “So what does all this mean? I don’t understand how this leads to me.”

I asked for his device and controller as a prop as I explained, “It’s about choice like I said with the Ae. These devices contain and collect potential. We save the memories of ourselves to share with you and we also collect your memories, so we may learn from them. You were connected to me because, like Tessa said, you’re interesting. That means you genuinely might be a good fit for our nomadic little troop. You have the potential to become one of us…and even surpass us some day and we want you to have that chance. But you’re not the only one. There are many like you. And we can’t just openly invite you. We’re far too afraid of the consequences to your culture and world if significant numbers of people suddenly vanished. So, there are those of us who volunteer to walk-in where Kinrae step out to be among their kin.”

Sean leaned back. I would’ve too. It was an intimidating notion and it did add a questionable aspect. He immediately asked the question I would, “And what if I don’t want to go?”

I scooted up as well as I could and told me, “Actually, you’re not ready for that yet, even if you wanted to. We have unfinished business with our parents. Your parents. And I’m here to help you in whatever way I can to get you through it. If we can make it then maybe…just maybe the next step comes. But…if even then you choose not to go, I leave. I return with a copy of your essence so we may all learn from it. I would go without complaint.” I didn’t tell him how much I would miss Allison and Lissa and Quilla too (and even Linnea). I fought all my tears welling up inside. 

I chose to live this life, but it wasn’t mine. It was an unsettling feeling. I was so sure as I stood beside Allison that nothing could ever separate us but being one of two Seans meant that one of us couldn’t stay.

We both touched on the same, smile-inducing thought, “Allison wouldn’t mind having both of us. I can only imagine what notions this might give her.” We both chuckled.

I filled in that the devices facilitated the choice that Allison made to not be tied to a single gender and that it could offer the same for both of us if we so wished. It could remake either of us as it had remade me more than once. And I also told him, “It’s not a faulty battery. I can’t be sure how long I dreamed with you, but I know the device linked me to you and used extra energy to keep the connection strong.”

And I had gone round about long enough. He seemed to know what I was avoiding. He offered a smile, “Whatever their name is…can it really be that bad?”

I flashed him a look and said, “I said our kind have been around in human history for all this time and we’ve tried to leave a positive mark. But it doesn’t always work out how we wish. The challenge of human nature, the corruption of time, and so much else.”

There was really no other way to go than to say it. I shut my eyes a little to brace myself as I finally told him, “Take all that into account and a name translated as ‘demons’ can change so very much in meaning.”