"Aliens?" Isaac repeated, trying to hide a smile.
"Shut up and let me tell you before you start laughing Ike." Zac glared. "The aliens are like this omnipotent race. I don't really understand them that well, but they can do things we could never do. And they live for so much longer. What they would do is send members of their race into other races - like us humans - to study us right?"
Isaac and Taylor looked at each other.
"Anyway, there was one named Amarita, well, at least that's the name we called her. Anyway, she caused a whole bunch of trouble to the time line, and people were… were dead or going to die who weren't supposed to. She totally wrecked our lives."
"Well, that wasn't very nice." Taylor said, trying to hide a smile.
"Hey, do you want to know why you can hear Mackie and Zoe and Ike in your head or not?"
Taylor was taken a little a back by Zac's tone. Slowly he nodded his head.
"Then shut up ok?" Zac took a moment to collect himself. "Ok, so the other aliens found out. One of them told us to call him Dustin. Anyway, they had this trial thingy, and they told Amarita… no umm…"
Zac paused, trying to get his words straight.
"The verdict was that they were going to turn back the clock to where everything started and make Amarita completely human with no memory of what happened. And we weren't going to remember any of it either."
"So, what went wrong Zac? Why do you remember?" Isaac asked.
"Well, at first it worked, but I started having these flashes of the previous timeline. Then Dustin told me that I was restoring the previous timeline, because well… ok there's this anomalous gene right? They find it in every single race they encounter. And this gene, it's like, rare, but it can give the person… powers."
It took a moment for this to sink in. Before they could say anything, Zac continued:
"Dustin told me that there are three levels. Level three anomalies have the gene but they can go through their entire lives without it affecting them in anyway. In fact, even if they knew they had the gene it wouldn't matter because they wouldn't be able to do anything with it." Zac paused. "Our parents are Level threes."
"Whoa." Taylor whistled.
"Level two is when the person uses their power all through their lives, subconsciously. And they can't control it if they know about the power. Level one is where they know they have the power and they can control it. I'm Level one, so are you Ike, and Tay, you're a mix of Level one and two."
"So… what's the rest of the story?" Isaac pressed after a glance at Taylor.
"Umm, right, well, it turned out that I had this restoration power and I was unintentionally restoring the first timeline. So, I had to master my power in order to stop the restoration. During that time, I umm, I triggered your powers. See, Dustin triggered mine… well, he triggered my conscious ability to use them anyway, through electricity, and it turned out that I have an affinity with electricity, and with water. So I triggered your powers because… you know that basketball game we had the other day, and I asked you if you were telekinetic Ike?"
"Yes…"
"Well, see, I wanted to find out if you really were. And then Tay, you caught us messing around with our powers, so I triggered yours. And then I finally mastered my restoration power. In fact, I did it so well that the clock was turned back again… to this time line. Dustin told me that you wouldn't remember what had happened and that your powers wouldn't be triggered, so, I didn't think there'd be any problems y'know? 'Cause you guys made me promise in the second time line not to tell you what happened in the first timeline. And far be it for me to break any promise I made to you, even if you don't remember it."
There was silence.