Over those days, the boys were effectively forced to spend their time together. No one knew when Tristans’ next spasm would occur, and they certainly didn’t know what would happen if one of them got left behind.
Fortunately, due to their precautions, Tristan took them all with him for his next teleport, which took them to an industrial park. They were there for all of ten minutes before a second spasm took Tristan and teleported them to a lake, then a potato field, and finally left them in a crowd of people at an outdoors concert.
“Whoa cool,” Zac said, pointing.
The band onstage, two girls and two boys, had a spectacular set of pyrotechnics at work. And some of the other special effects they had going onstage were incredible. And yet, none of it seemed to be all flash and no substance. The music was good, and the effects, such as wings appearing on one of the girls, or the drummer standing up on his seat while the drumsticks took a life of their own, seemed to add to the show, rather than take away from it.
“Hey!” Tristan said. “That’s Ellie, Joan, Brett and Paul.”
“Who?” Isaac asked.
“Cousins of mine,” Tristan explained. “Huh, they’ll never believe me if I told them.”
“Not musically inclined?”
“Musically inclined, yes. Get along? No. Not in a million years.”
Isaac chuckled. Conversation had to cease then, as the crowd was just too loud.
They stayed for the duration of the concert and then the matter of finding food and a place to sleep for the night arose.
“I suppose any money we have is useless?” Taylor asked.
“More than likely. Scavenging,” Tristan nodded. “This is what we must do.”
“You know what the coolest thing about that concert was?” Isaac said. “They were using their powers. Publically.”
“Think anomalies are common knowledge here?” Zac asked. “Or just pass it off as the latest technology?”
“Could be either,” said Tristan, taking on the role of ‘voice of experience’. “Some places do have technology that can do that sort of thing. Other places anomalies are common knowledge. Of course, in some of those places, anomalies are also mistreated, killed, maimed… so on and so forth. But then, there are also worlds where it’s the other way around. I came across one once where humans were considered pets.”
Isaac blinked.
“Pets?”
“Pets.”
“Okay. That’s slightly bizarre.”
“Yes, yes it is.”
The boys managed to swipe some food before it hit the garbage pile, and found a nice dark corner to curl up and go to sleep in.