Möbius Ascendant

Möbius Ascendant

Voluptuous Trinity Trapped in a Temporal Time Loop

by

Donald Mallord

Copyright, April 2025

ℓ∆⚘ T⊗⚯ ʃ∇⚙

____________________

My thanks to Kenjisato for his keen editing skills.

An 'Alien' Encounter -- 11,400 Words

"Tick-tock, Mr. Kindle," Trinity chuckled, breaking classroom decorum. That cheeky, playful teen with dimples always had a way of raising his hackles. The top student in his senior science class was on the verge of graduating from Pointes End High School.

"It's almost three o'clock, and you know what that means!" she grinned, her voice shattering the silence of the exam.

Her truculence nearly sent him into a frenzy as graduation drew near. He sighed in annoyance, realizing she could turn his classroom into chaos in an instant, if she felt the desire to make mischief at his expense. Too late, despite the shushing finger to his lips, she had shattered her classmates' concentration. Trinity resembled a wild, unmanageable kitten, entirely beyond the control of ordinary adult supervision. He was glad that kind of unmanageability would soon be coming to an end.

Pointes End had been a starting point for adventurers heading west during the gold rush. Located at the intersection of the desert and the remnants of civilization, it was the least likely place to become a pivotal site for significant advances in science that would change the course of humanity. The few remaining inhabitants were either descendants of the original settlers, or a small number of newcomers, like Mr. Cory Kindle, who were exhausted and seeking solace away from society.

Mr. Kindle, the silver-haired fellow with an air of aloofness, had arrived in the remote town on foot, having wandered out of the desert some thirty-five years ago, and decided to stay. He blended in rather well, and took on the job of high school science teacher. Time, back then, seemed to have abandoned the small and isolated town on the edge of the desert. Pointes End hadn't altered since--except for the birth of new children, such as the three arguing in front of the sheriff's office as he approached them the month after graduation. Most sensible kids moved away as soon as possible, yet some chose to remain. A few stayed behind to take on vital roles in town: grocery clerk, gas station attendant, and café waitress.

Kindle watched that trio as he sauntered across the square, where they squabbled over something in front of the local police station.

"It was, too, Xynelix," Jared blurted, as Cory Kindle drew closer. Jared's hyper-anxiety was at a tipping point as he argued with Dillon in front of the sheriff's office. It was a twisted tale about a conversation with a stranger in the desert. Kindle heard a bit of it as he approached.

"Hell, no! It wasn't... whatever the hell you said," Dillon shouted back. His arms shot skyward in exasperation, like one of those wacky air dancers at a car lot. "He was saying, Moedix, asshole!"

Cory focused on Trinity's quiet demeanor among the triumvirate; she was the third wheel in the group. He couldn't understand why she spent time with these two dimwits. Yet, that brighter bulb in his former science class always seemed to be with them, as the glue that held the less-than-bright trio together. She could have been a scholar, a great cheerleader, or a fine wife, but she chose to embed herself in obscurity with these two misfits. Rumor had it that they were involved in one of those modern throuple relationships. In the back of his mind, Kindle suspected as much, from the way the two boys clung to Trinity as if she were flypaper. If he were younger, he might have thought about having her himself.

She shook her head as they argued. "Stop it!" she huffed. "He called it Möbius, not some new neologism. No fuckin' wonder the sheriff didn't believe a goddamn word about what we found!"

"And just what did the three of you discover?" Drawing near, he asked, finding amusement in the trio's bickering. It halted the conversation, and a sense of unease settled in. Cory wasn't genuinely interested in the bickering, but thought it might fill a small amount of white space in the Gazette. As the new editor, he needed some filler since not much was happening in town. The news items were stale, always about the same repeating events, but then life in a small isolated town was like that. Wasn't it?

They glanced at each other, almost daring anyone to admit what had led to their ejection from the sheriff's office. Trinity broke the silence.

"Mr. Kindle," the mop-top began, "we found a man..."

"Weren't a man..." Jared hissed, under his breath. It was clear that the scrawny kid in tattered jeans and cowboy boots was rattled.

It was impossible not to grin, even though the former teacher tried his best to suppress it. 'This is going to be a good one,' he mused. 'It must have been well received by the sheriff, much like reporting another alien encounter in the desert.'

"Shut the hell up, Jared," Dillon growled, trying to suppress something that was about to escalate. Dillon's size, a man-child of wrestler proportions and temperament, typically granted him the last word in any discussion--unless Trinity intervened. This trio was known for spotting strange phenomena in the night sky and the desert, where they spent considerable time. Kindle suspected that a marijuana high fueled their claims. Everyone in town had dismissed them as oddballs even before graduation.

"Trinity, why don't you tell me what happened?" he asked, wagging his forefinger at the other two. It felt as though he was back in a classroom, instead of speaking to underemployed high school graduates. The loner didn't miss teaching and was glad to have retired to take on a part-time job at the local newspaper. It was easier and nothing like dealing with rambunctious kids in school, especially these three. Retired alongside a dozen graduates; it seemed a fitting time to exit, as some of them had worn his patience thin. These three were like saddle burrs in his last year of teaching. He reflected on one such incident as he meandered up and down the rows of desks during their final exam.

The reserved science teacher, pausing mid-stride, was absorbed in the quiet concentration of the enigma presented by a recalcitrant, strikingly attractive student. However, her beauty seemed lost on her. She could have been her class's bright, shining star, but Trinity had no interest in academics or popularity; instead, she clung to the shadows as if hiding something. Trinity sat alone near the window, her head bowed low over a page, not of the exam but of a sketch--detailed, intricate, and oddly mechanical.

A chair, or something resembling one, bloomed across the page. Its curved supports arched like helices. Circles and glyphs surrounded the base like anchor points. Beneath it, three-letter clusters--no, symbols--lined the lower edge in neat rows.

"Interesting drawing," he remarked, with a teacherly scowl that was meant to convey, "Get back to work on the exam, Miss Trinity."

"It's three o'clock, tick-tock, Miss Trinity," he urged, stressing the time.

Trinity startled, then composed herself with a practiced, clipped teenage smirk. "Sci-fi. Story I'm writing for English," she said, sliding her arm slightly over the page.

The mind of a scientist caught a glimpse before she concealed it. A series of trigraphs inscribed below in bold hues of blue ink, yet she held one graphite pencil:

Ϟ⊕⚛ ℓ∆⚘ ש∴☌ T⊗⚯ ∑≡⚡

It looked strangely familiar, like he had seen this before, a déjà vu recollection that raised an eyebrow.

"Alien math?" he breathed the words. He felt strangely drawn to a kid lost far out at Pointes End. Indeed, she seemed destined never to leave the small town, lost in time at the desert's edge.

"Something like that," she murmured, but her eyes betrayed something more...

"You believe in time travel, Mr. Kindle?" she blurted out the words, breaking classroom decorum and final exam concentration of her classmates.

"I believe it's time to get back to the exam," he answered, with certainty. He sensed she was about to burst out with another wild concept and drag the class into pandemonium.

"If time travel were real, Mr. Kindle, just imagine what we could accomplish! We could push some code onto a drawing, vanish from here in an instant, and leave this image of ourselves to take our places. And... I would certainly get my ass far away from your boring class; that's for sure!" she snickered, spinning the drawing around and waving it into the air as though it were a means to escape the confines of Pointes End High.

"Take me with you, babe," Jared laughed at her sassy backtalk, interrupting the exam in a gale of laughter. Dillon, the other low-watt bulb, just grinned, jocularly adding, "I'm done with the test, teach!"

"The rest of the exam is on the back of the page, Dillon..." Trinity sighed, without looking his way. "Tick-tock. It's Friday the thirteenth and three o'clock."

Of course, it wasn't. It was just one more of the cryptic remarks she'd blurt out randomly during Kindle's encounters with her over the past year. That's when he noticed her test was completed well ahead of schedule, neat, and as precise as the drawing she had been working on.

Yes, it was well past time to retire; perhaps July was good a time as any, yet here Mr. Cory Kindle was, once more engaged with his three saddle burrs in front of the sheriff's office.

"We found a 'man,'" she repeated, in answer to his original question, emphasizing 'man.' "He was badly hurt and maybe dying, I think," Trinity replied, pursing her lips and looking at the other two standing in front of the sheriff's office.

"Don't tell me you left him out there," Cory blurted out.

"No man's blue," Jared interjected, fixated on the guy not being human.

"Fuck, do you know? Haven't you ever heard of blue babies? They don't get air and turn blue. Same as him, I reckon. Right Trinity?" Dillon nodded, looking for confirmation.

"He was bad off, Mr. Kindle. Burnt, most likely from how he looked, caught up in all that electrical stuff he was in, like a pilot, maybe ejected. He couldn't talk much. Just mumbled a few words, then stopped."

Dillon interjected, "We tried to give him some water, but he just spat it out and started saying..." He glanced at Trinity before carefully choosing his words, "Möbius. Perhaps that's what he meant to say."

"Then why did Jason throw you out of his office?" Kindle asked, curious as to why the sheriff didn't take any action.

He expected the answer from Trinity; however, Dillon replied instead.

"Sheriff asked where he was... And... we had gotten sort of lost in the back canyons for about two hours before we found the stream and made it back up to the ridge top. So, we couldn't exactly say. That and Jared blurted out that he was a blue alien-- kinda pissed the sheriff off, I guess."

"Honest, Mr. Kindle, we're not making this up. We did find a guy. Maybe he's still alive, but no one believes us." Trinity broke eye contact, but that pleading look remained, as she pursed her lips.

Despite past tall tales, that look of genuine sincerity in Trinity's eyes made Cory Kindle believe her. Along with the way, Jared and Dillon appeared out of sorts, as if death had crossed their paths.

It must have also registered with Jason after he had a chance to reconsider it. Every case required investigation, and a man's life hanging in the balance wasn't the time to doubt a trio of misfits. At that point in the conversation, Jason burst out of the door, came down the steps, and muttered as he brushed past, "This better not be another one of your damned lies, or I'll have you all by the balls in jail for wasting county resources since you're adults now."

Jason paused briefly to glance at Trinity's revealing hiking attire, two buttons undone too far to maintain any semblance of modesty. "You too..." he growled, clearly reconsidering his 'by the balls' comment. Shaking his head as he left, he was muttering about Angela, his ex, and how she let the girl run wild.

"Can I ride along?" the newly installed editor of Pointes End Gazette called out, as the sheriff opened his patrol car door.

"Sorry, Cory," he answered, "No room in Hank's chopper."

With that, he was in the patrol car and sped off to the only heliport around for miles.

Kindle pursed his lips and sighed, aware of the absurdity of the misfit's claim. Jason would still do his job to try to locate a missing person in the desert, even if he were an alien.

Friday the Thirteenth of July -- 3:00 PM

The trio stood on the sidewalk, shaken over the event.

"Aren't you two supposed to be at work?" Kindle asked Jared and Dillon.

"Shit! What time is it?" Jared asked.

Dillon replied, "Three," while glancing at his watch.

"No, it's four," Cory countered, checking his Timex.

"Damn, we're late."

Those two spent so much time together that they often spoke the exact words simultaneously. Humorous yet troublesome. Two peas in a pod.

They turned to go, glancing back at Trinity with a nod, and echoed, "Meet up later?"

Agitated, she bit her lower lip and fixed her gaze on Jared. "Sure. And don't go mouthing off," she replied, with a double nod.

"Why don't you and I finish this conversation at the Gazette office?" the newly appointed editor of the Gazette asked, as Trinity seemed hesitant to leave.

She nodded. They crossed the square in silence, the air thick with unspoken words. The former teacher sensed that eliciting responses from her would be challenging. On his mind was that knowing look the other two had exchanged with her as they departed. It was a look that conveyed something significant to the trio, something meant for a trinity-only conversation.

Pulling a notepad from his desk drawer, Kindle motioned for Trinity to sit. Her cat-like curl from classroom days reappeared as she slid into the armchair, her feet tucked beneath her as she leaned her weight on her left side and watched Cory scribble on the pad: date--July thirteenth, 3:00 pm. She hoped it would trigger some memory, but he pushed on unperturbed, while checking his grandfather's Timex watch twice, waiting for an extra second to ensure the second hand was moving.

"I was sure I had told the boys it was already four PM," he muttered. Grandpa's Timex responded just like it should. It always kept an accurate time: 3:00pm, just like the wall clock, as he glanced at it.

"Thirsty?"

"Gotta Coke?"

"Always," Cory smiled. Of course, she knew that from his frequenting the diner where she worked.

"What time is it? You know I have to be at work soon."

"Four o'clock," Kindle replied, without glancing at his Timex.

Trinity gulped down half the can.

At that moment, he realized the trio had truly struggled out of the canyons and made it directly to the sheriff's office. She looked dehydrated and frazzled as he studied her face, catching an enticing glimpse of more than half of her tanned breasts coming into view, shifting beneath the weight of her cutoff overalls. It was mesmerizing. The elderly loner watched her take a more leisurely swig, noting how her fancy watch flashed the time as she did so. Technology had advanced to create a watch that recognized her face. 'Why?' Kindle wondered, 'All anyone needed was a Timex. They always take a beating and keep on ticking...'

Trinity's chronometer might have been high-tech, but hers was an hour off, just like Jared's. Had he not been entranced by a brief display of those tanned orbs, Cory probably would have realized that it also matched his timepiece-- then, three o'clock.

"Do you think he's dead?" Trinity asked, staring at him intently as she set the can down on the corner of the desk.

"It crossed my mind in front of the sheriff's office," he mused. But then seeing the look on her face, he thought it best to try to soften his thoughts on leaving a dying man in the desert.

"Probably not anything you could have done to help, Trinity. Tell me about the crash."

"We weren't there long. Jared got spooked and wanted to go... leave him 'cause he thought there might be other aliens there. Crazy shit, right?"

Smiling, Kindle, made a note.

"Tell me more about what he looked like, such as his uniform, size, and language. It seemed he spoke English, right?"

"He didn't have a uniform, just some skin-tight outfit up to his neck, like one giant stocking thing. It was burnt and torn. It smelled smoky, as though he just fell out of the sky in that chair thing."

The 'chair thing' piqued the former science teacher's curiosity. "An ejection chair, like from a military plane?"

"Never seen one, but it wasn't like in the movies. It has lots of wires and glowed for a while when we first got there. Then faded out... kinda like a flashlight with low batteries."

More notes in shorthand glided across the notepad as she spoke.

"Blue skin, really?" he probed.

"Maybe..." she answered hesitantly. "It could have been from the heat or the blue stuff oozing out of the tubes. Maybe it just sprayed on him. I don't know. Dillon tried to give him some water. He was closest; he could say better."

"You mentioned that he spoke before losing consciousness. What did he say? Anything other than 'Möbius'?"

Her eyes widened. Observant, Kindle could see the gears turning in her mind, as if what had been said was something she preferred not to share.

"Not much," she parried, "he coughed a lot and just repeated 'Möbius' a few times."

Her eyes darted from Kindle's as she picked up the Coke and fiddled with it to buy some time. The editor knew there was more to come. It would come when she was ready. Witnessing a tragedy unfold was traumatic; opening up about it would take time. Shock would set in, and Trinity showed signs of it.

"You used to do a lot of drawing during class time," Cory recalled, as she compactly folded herself into the armchair, nearly like a pretzel--or a Möbius strip. He leaned in, pushing a small notepad her way, considering perhaps getting a sketch of what she saw. Trinity smiled for a second, maybe reading his not-so-subtle thoughts about those orbs flowing freely beneath her pair of loosely fitting overalls.

He caught that smirk,'I should be kicking myself. After all, I was her teacher, more than twice her age.' That smirk of hers drifted into a grin.

"Imagination. It's a gift, my mom says." Then, "These two are also," she coyly added, seemingly having read his gaze at those two tanned orbs barely concealed behind the bib of her overalls.

"Your dad still says you're gifted," Cory stammered, trying to recover, in reply.

"Doesn't give a damn you mean... and he's not my father. You saw what he said today."

"Being a sheriff... takes a lot of his time."

"Yeah, the time he should have had for us, Mom and me. He burned that bridge banging that bitch, Blanca."

'I should have known better.' Kindle sighed.

"I intended to get a sketch, Trinity." His attempt went up in smoke at that point. He shouldn't have brought up Jason in the conversation--a mistake. He had realized this too late.

The cooperative mood had soured. Absentmindedly, he played with a strip of news copy, twisting it before pressing the ends together. It was a subconscious effort as he peered at it like he had done this before. It sparked a new approach.

"You ever seen one of these?" the former science teacher asked, holding it up. "A Möbius strip. Looks like it's got two sides, but if you follow the surface, it's just one continuous loop."

Trinity glanced at it, her brow furrowing. "A non-orientable manifold, like Calabi-Yau manifolds with a vanishing Ricci curvature, they're "flat" at a tiny scale, but not close to how it really works," she murmured, lifted the can, and swallowed the last of the Coca-Cola in one gulp.

Kindle's eyebrows raised, as the words tumbled from her lips. Surprised, he dropped the loop, seemingly defying gravity as it took an eternity to flutter to the tabletop. Odd.

"What? You think I don't know shit?" she grinned.

"That wasn't the kind of response I expected," he muttered. And the look on his face must have shown it.

He added, "I was going to go with 'a weird little mind trick,' but sure, let's call it that."

Trinity's eyes flickered, realizing she might've said too much. She shrugged. "I read a lot."

'Yeah, kid, I taught you, and I'm not buying it, but this isn't my alien story from the desert. I've lived long enough to recognize when someone knows more than they're revealing.'

Yet, she studied him intently. Then pursed her lips and unfolded herself like the Möbius strip he had held in his ancient hands, coming undone and fluttering to the desktop.

"Get me a large drawing pad from the bottom drawer, and I'll sketch it for you," she ordered, with a hint of exasperation.

Kindle reached for the drawer, paused momentarily, and looked back at her.'How did she know where the pads were?' crossed his mind.

However, he dismissed it, knowing she had been in the office before. Still, the editor didn't remember her watching him pull one out in the past. At any rate, the more pressing matter was to translate a sketch from her mind onto paper and see if it made sense, given the few details she was willing to share.

It was striking to watch her lean over the Gazette's broad oak desk, her brow furrowed in concentration. That focus set her jaw firmly as her pencil glided across the large drawing pad. She didn't sketch like a casual doodler; there were no idle swirls or hesitant lines. Every equidistant stroke served a purpose, and each contour was refined with precision, as if she were not just imagining the design, but truly recalling it.

The fervor of her work told Kindle it was better not to interrupt, so he leaned back, feigning patience, yet curiosity gnawed at him. Whatever she was drawing held her full attention.

Finally, Trinity sat back, exhaling through her nose. "There," she murmured, more to herself than to him, and spun the notepad around.

He took it, carefully flexing the hefty page; its weight defied the newsprint's light density. The sketch was intricate and precise. A chair--or something reminiscent of one--shimmered at the center of a swirling lattice of interwoven bands. There were no visible seams, apparent hinges, or liquid tubes to gush out. The structure seemed impossible, with helical strands twisting upon themselves in a way that suggested motion even in stillness. It was undoubtedly a Möbius construct.

Tilting the page raised Cory's eyebrows. The longer he stared, the more the drawing seemed to shift, with the perspective warping as his eyes traced the lines. From one angle, the frame appeared solid, almost recliner-like. A slight adjustment in angle made it fluid, as if the whole thing could collapse and re-form at will. Puzzled, he flipped the pad sideways and then back again, unsettled by the optical illusion. Who could draw in two dimensions and make it seem like it held more than three, and with all that shimmering fluidity?

"That's... not what I expected," he admitted, after rubbing his blurred vision. "You said you saw wreckage. But this--this looks whole. Functional."

Trinity's fingers tensed on the desk. "I saw it before."

The silver-haired fox shifted his gaze from the drawing to her face. "Before?"

She hesitated. "I mean, I got a good look before we left the site. Just... pieced it together. I think this is what it would have looked like if it hadn't crashed."

Trinity shifted in her chair, rubbing her graphite-stained palms on her overalls. "It's what we saw," she muttered, yet she wouldn't meet his gaze.

Kindle frowned, as he observed her. He noted how Trinity's fingers pressed against the desk and how her eyes flickered slightly away, a tell he recognized from years of conversing with people who wanted to express less than they understood.

Upon closer inspection, his eyes wandered over the drawing, drawn into the image as though it could suck him into it in an instant. It surpassed any abstract work he had ever encountered. The Möbius strands extended from the core, forming a fluid, adaptive structure that subtly shifted depending on one's perspective as he tilted the drawing. It seemed to defy all sense of appearance. How could a graphite image transform into shimmering hues of color? And why did Cory Kindle have this nagging feeling that he'd seen this before?

Tapping the page, he said, "You didn't just piece this together from a glimpse of some wreckage. This is some highly engineered... whatever it is. This is something you've seen before. Maybe not in the desert, but somewhere. Some sci-fi film? Not another one of those pranks you've got your stepfather chasing?"

Trinity's lips pressed into a line. "It isn't a prank. You wanted to know what we saw? That's it, at least the way it might have been."

Finding himself on edge, he exhaled, letting the silence stretch between them. Then, the editor lifted the notepad again, tilting it so the lamplight caught the shadows in the graphite lines. The design still shifted under his gaze, its structure evading any sense of reality. Deep within the drawing, he spotted a surprise, a triglyph symbol-- ʃ∇⚙.

Why did he think he'd seen this before and knew it meant, 'memory stream corrupted?'

Immersed in the drawing for some time, Kindle finally looked up. Her chair was empty--time for work. A quick glance at his grandfather's ancient Timex watch, and its dark face brightened, then spoke-- "Tick-tock, Thirteenth of July, three o'clock, Cory."

'Something about this isn't right,' the puzzled old loner mused. And Trinity knew it, even if she wouldn't say why.

The Trailhead, Friday, Thirteenth of July -- 3:00 PM

Jared arrived first, soon joined by Dillon. The two sat on the tailgate of Jared's Chevy at the trailhead, just above the source of the water cascading from the upper ridge into the rocky valley below. It was the spot where the two of them had long discussed their aspirations in life. Most of the conversations revolved around finding girls to feel up and perhaps get a bit more... friendly.

As Jared frequently said, "I'm gonna find a witch, spelled with a 'B,' that likes to fuck all day."

"You tried that... Look how that turned out," Dillion smiled.

"Yeah, well, she ain't exactly a compliant bitch is she?" Jared shot back, as the two settled into watching the night sky.

They mulled over the earlier events in town as they waited for Trinity.

Everything changed the day a flash of light erupted from nowhere and plunged into one of the steep ravines. That encounter shifted their life musings, uniting them in a mission far more significant than their desires or needs for a big-titted girl who craved sex all day.

"You laid it on a little too thick, Jared," Dillon spoke in the silence as they awaited Trinity's arrival.

"Me? Trinity changed the fuckin' story on the fly! You know damned well it wasn't a man!"

Dillon was silent for a moment before answering. "Yeah, well, it could have been, until you went stupid and stuck your hand inside that thing and pulled... her out. She looked exactly like how you described your big-boobed dream girl you want to bang someday."

"I don't remember telling you that!"

"Shit if you didn't. It isn't one of those weird dreams again about time loops. I know that for a sure fuck."

"Well, I feel like we've done this before. We've gone through this repeatedly, expecting a different outcome while always getting the same results. The definition of... "

"... the definition of insanity," Dillon joined in, filling out the definition.

"Trinity said we had to get his attention. What better way than to plant the seed of a blue-skinned alien..." Jared smirked.

At that point, Trinity's Harley echoed as it navigated the uneven trail, alternating between spurts of speed and downshifts to maneuver through the narrow entrance at the other end of the arroyo. She drove like a maniac--speeding and timing swerves that would have caused any other rider to face-plant into the walls of a million-year-old canyon; speed didn't faze her at all.

"Well, did he buy into it?" Dillon asked cryptically as Trinity swung up onto the tailgate between them.

"Same as before, a doubt-filled, stubborn man. Yet, there was a glimmer of hope; he suspects something. This time it was a subtle shift--different. He asked for a drawing and seemed more aware of our past encounters. Perhaps this is the nudge that is supposed to come."

"About time," Jared sighed.

As she spoke, he sat staring at Trinity with a dour expression.

"What the fuck?" she nodded, noticing the look, as she shifted on the tailgate. "I thought you would be happy." Her language skills had advanced significantly, but the first vocabulary she had learned seemed always to come to the forefront in passionate discussions and times like this: times of anxiety.

"Dillion just told me he said you were a man... before I pulled you out of that thing. Tell me that isn't true."

Trinity pondered his question for a moment. Peering into that soulful, troubled look, she realized that he wouldn't remember the answer, in the past, or even if things were corrected, and she provided him with a straightforward response.

"Survival is a paramount experience, Jared. When your hand breached the helix fracture in Möbius and touched me, I read your thoughts. I'm sorry if you feel deceived that I seized upon your lust for a big-titted girl to fuck and changed my nature to fit her. Not all species in the universe are dichotomous beings--you know, male and female? It was to enhance my survival. I will always remember your kindness and caring for me until I stabilized. You and Dillon both."

Her tender words accompanied her characteristic double head-nod. Left unspoken was that her species was asexual. That, along with its survival instinct, would have dictated vaporizing both aliens as they neared her craft. Somehow, in that dazed moment, Jared managed to breach the fractured helical tear and touched her. It must have been an act willed by Möbius herself--something far more significant to preserving Time and Space than merely saving another crashed traveler, one desperately seeking an ancient kindred soul lost in an anomalous expanse where disruptions in time are increasing.

"I told you," Dillon gasped, absorbing the details, things he, too, would not remember in the next loop.

"She didn't say she was a 'man!'" Jared shot back, perturbed at that possibility.

"So, we're not going to get some alien disease because we..."

"... fucked, ah, something that wasn't male or female?" Dillon finished the thought.

Jared's Singlewide Trailer, Friday, Thirteenth of July -- 3:00 PM

[A word of caution here: if you find yourself in the desert pulling an unconscious, beautiful girl out of a strange-looking craft, be very, very cautious about taking her home to your parents' gift, a secondhand trailer, parked far off the grid in the desert. And for damned sure, don't assume you can take advantage of her without retribution.]

Stumbling backward, Jared tripped and sprawled onto the jagged desert rocks in that ravine, but managed to balance her unconscious form in his arms. "Smoking, she's gorgeous," Jared sputtered, as his eyes wandered up and down her body. He had pulled her unconscious body from the smoldering craft just before it went dark.

Dillon licked his lips wanting to get a feel of her nude body as well, and added, "Fuck, she's making my dick hard! Let me take her," he huffed, reaching out while leaning down, offering his arms.

"I pulled her out!" Jared sputtered, clutching her tighter and feeling as though possession of her body was his--like that expression 'possession is nine-tenths of the law.'

"So... can you fuckin' carry her to the top of the ravine, asshole?" Dillon asked, knowing that Jared couldn't and would ultimately have to ask for help.

Jared thought about it. It wasn't easy to let go of the first naked woman he had ever held in his arms. But he knew his best buddy, Dillon, was right about his inability to reach the top, while struggling in that upward climb with her. Damn sure, with his powerful physique, Dillon could. So, he compromised. "How about I carry her first and you carry her second?"

Dillion didn't have to think that one over for long. He'd get a chance to lay hands on a naked babe for the first time, too, in that long climb back up the ravine.

Jared carried the voluptuous and unconscious mop-headed girl as far as he could, then, out of breath, slid her jelly-like form into Dillon's muscular arms. Like a sack of grain, Dillon swung her up onto his shoulder. With her rear resting against his cheek, he smiled, and grinning at Jared, he kissed it.

"Sweet," he murmured, climbing the last steep half-mile out of the ravine with her head hanging halfway down his back, swaying back and forth as his weight shifted. The two peas in a pod ascended the final cliff to the plateau above, with her dangling over Dillon's broad shoulders.

Back at Jared's single-wide trailer, he scraped off a pile of debris, and Dillon eased her limp form onto the second-hand couch. Jared's static-filled TV played in the background. It was always on twenty-four-seven to any one of three porn channels... He couldn't afford any more, but his chosen ones provided plenty of company.

"Now what?" Dillon asked, staring at the unconscious beauty sprawled out on the couch like a ripe peach ready to be eaten.

"Check her vitals?"

"I ain't no nurse, Jared," Dillon shot back. "She's breathing okay, I think. That's a good sign, right?"

"I guess."

The sound of grunts and arousal from the television played in the background, but preoccupied, Jared and Dillon tuned it out. Both were mesmerized by the big-titted girl sprawled on the couch with one leg dangling off it. Still, the faint sounds of the pouty-lipped babe on the TV cooed loud enough to flow through the single-wide's living room. "Do me, baby. Make me scream in ecstasy," the throaty words oozed from a woman with her legs spread wide while motioning to a rigid-cock guy standing by her bed.

On any given night, Jared and Dillon would have been facing the static-filled secondhand television with its porn images, and a box of tissues between them on that couch. But this night, they were preoccupied with the real thing.

The unconscious form on the couch stirred and moaned in response to the words flowing out of the TV, "Do, me..." Her slender hand reached up and touched Jared's leg.

"Damn!" he croaked, "Did you hear that? She wants... me."

"Maybe... maybe she's just incoherent and mumbling like in the hospital movies, ya know?"

Low and in the background, the bimbo on the porn show, moaned throatily, "I need your big dick in me, now, sugar."

While the boys were oblivious to the background voices, the rescued beauty on the couch stirred and moaned, "Now, I need your big cock..." Her unconscious form remained attuned to her surroundings, and in self-protection mode, she absorbed new vocabulary.

It took only a few more faint words of encouragement as the unconscious form on the couch echoed the moans from the television in the background. Jared and Dillon overlooked the mimicry as their rescued girl absorbed the nuances of a new alien language and slowly began to assimilate the words into her vocabulary from the video source.

"Fuck me, now..." she breathed in imitation of the blonde on the television. Her words and the touch of her fingertips brushing against Dillion's legs pushed the boys over their tipping point.

Their first touches upon her silky form were timid. Tempered by the moral guidelines of consensual agreement. But those timid motions soon vanished as she didn't object.

"What are you doing?" Jared asked, as his partner in crime stood up, unzipped his jeans, and slipped out of them, his prick prancing in the air. Not prodigious but firm, and crowned with a purple knob.

"Seeing if she'll suck my dick," Dillion answered, holding his cock in his hand, his breathing coming more firmly.

"What if she wakes up?"

Dillon shrugged at the idea as he knelt in front of her. "She ain't so far," he countered, as if that was an appropriate reply.

Like a ripe peach for the taking, Jared and Dillon felt her up, tongued those rose-tipped nipples, probed her with their fingers, and finally Dillion breached most humans' mores by feeding the unconscious beauty's mouth some dick. The fact that she readily sucked while unconscious, stroked their confidence. Their anxiety eased as her body responded with the appropriate moans cued by the television porn show. It took just a few minutes more before the moral code of acquiescence between willing parties was stripped away and the virgins fucked her in earnest.

"More," she moaned, still absorbing nuances of emotion and vocabulary from the porn site.

For a couple of hours, they took her as often as they could stroke themselves back to turgidity. Until, exhausted from their efforts to bring her out of the ravine and the exuberant sexual acts they performed on her, Jared and Dillon stopped. Exhausted and limp, they lay down next to her on the floor in a pile of porn magazines and fell asleep.

In the quiet early morning hours, the being from another time-and-space continuum regained consciousness. Its newly acquired form adjusted to Earth's atmosphere and its time-space circadian rhythm. She stirred, stretched, and sensed the nuances of her fresh human form. It differed from any other galaxy she had visited, even across time. Her new body was soft and cushiony, having adapted to what it needed to survive in a hostile world. In the minds of her two rescuers, her body was open to exploration with three usable orifices. She would handle that accordingly while focusing on the visuals still playing on the antiquated viewing machine.

She surveyed the visual device and disassembled it using kitchen utensils, modifying the primitive contents to eliminate the static, enhance the visual sharpness, and dividing the screen into sixty-nine quadrants so that as an eye focused on one quadrant, it came to the forefront while sending the others to the back. Still, it wasn't much of an improvement, but at least, then it got sixty-nine porn channels. And she viewed them all as the boys lay sleeping. She focused on surviving.

It didn't take long to realize this new world was organized around porn consisting of dominance by those with probing dicks over those with three orifices. She felt a kinship with those with three and, having stumbled upon other non-related channels, adopted a planetary name: Trinity, derived from three holes in one.

One thing became clear, as she studied the porn figures and those of the two asleep on the floor--tool size. Trinity's knowledge was still superficial. She visually measured the well-endowed porn stars against the flaccid figures of Jared and Dillon as they slumbered. She would fix that so they would not feel inadequate like some of the smaller ones in the videos crying as they were chained, whipped, and begged for forgiveness because of their size. She couldn't let her rescuers suffer that same fate one day.

With scissors and a paring knife in hand, she reshaped their tools by adding new dimensions taken from other body parts, having violated another time travel edict that forbade modifying aliens beyond their natural growth. Trinity felt it was necessary to survive. She had to. There was more at stake in the Time and Space Continuum than something as trivial as her life; there was the ascension of Möbius. Her ascent was of paramount importance for the sake of continued time travel.

Jared awoke first, and groggily staggered to the bathroom to relieve the pressure he felt to pee. Horror struck him first, as he gripped his new tool, which was more than a hand's grasp in girth and as long as his kitchen ladle that Trinity had modeled it after. He spun around and looked into the mirror over the tiny sink. The shriek jarred Dillion up and off the floor. His first glance was at the sleeping beauty lying on the secondhand couch. At the second cry of horror, he ran toward Jared's scream and stopped in the doorway with his eyes popping out and his mouth agape. "Fuck!" was all that came out.

"Fuck me! And look at you!"

Dillon glanced down at his rigid appendage, as Jared pointed to it, finding it looked exactly like Jared's! He fainted dead away. Fortunately for him, Trinity backstopped his fall and lifted him up, tossed him over her shoulder like a sack of grain, and carried him to the cum-stained couch. She kissed his hairy cheek before depositing his naked body on the yellow sofa.

It took the better part of the day for humbled boys to beg forgiveness and plead with Trinity to restore their manhood, albeit a bit larger than the sizes they once were. There remained enough of the tiniest piece of Möbius clinging to her skin to place them in stasis again, reducing their size to something akin to eight inches in length and the girth of a toilet paper tube--something both were happy with.

Three aliens learned that day something that planets never do: if you fuck a rescued time traveler, she is just as apt to fuck you over, too. Planets that had crossed Trinity's path and didn't learn that lesson are no longer in the Time Space Continuum!

Trinity's reflection on that event years ago, in Earth time, brought a wry smile as she sat between the two on Jared's Chevy tailgate. They had come to terms with their mutual fates, and even though they had little to no recall of the never-ending cycle of time loops that spun out from the self-replicating fragment of Möbius that remained from the crash site, they believed in Trinity. They were respectful of her three holes from that first day forward.

"Here, 'alien lovers,' maybe this will cheer you up," Trinity smiled at Jared, digging into her overalls' pocket and retrieving three shimmering pieces.

Dillon smiled, "It had babies?"

Trinity snickered, "I woke up to get ready for my shift and checked the cigar box. It changed shapes, and inside, there were three pieces: one for you, Jared; one for you, Dillon; and I'll add the last one from the crash site.

"It's still in your watch?" Dillon asked, remembering a fragment of time when they watched, fascinated, as the first piece they recovered merged with her watch.

"No. It's evolving. It replaced my watch, absorbed it. I feel the synergy evolving. It's an amazing feeling. It's starting... I feel Möbius' consciousness now. It won't be long before she ascends." The well-bosomed teen spoke of the tiny fragment as if it were a living creature, capable of self-regeneration; an entity rather than something mechanical. In truth, that is precisely what she was: alive.

Trinity held the newly created Möbius element above what was once her timepiece. It glowed and emitted a sparkling light beam, reaching upward to touch the element in her outstretched hand. It floated up, seeming to dissolve and flow down the beam into the new entity, which displayed the timestamp: July thirteenth, three o'clock. It had generated another fragment of the one she had left still evolving on the table in Cory Kindle's office--a piece she hoped would connect with Kindle to heal the time loop fracture on this wayward, unexplored planet in an unstable time continuum, and its unusual species.

"Do you think Jared and I will feel the same effects?" Dillon whispered in awe.

Trinity smiled in response, saying, "I'm sure."

Silently, she recognized that it had happened before. Dillon couldn't retain the memory as each loop would wipe out the prior one. Destined to repeat itself endlessly, unless Möbius ascended.

It was a positive aspect since it had occurred several times, even though Dillon and Jared were unaware of it without a piece of Möbius. As the first fragment evolved within her watch, Trinity recalled past events while the gravitational fields emitted by Möbius expanded. Holding an evolving, self-creating piece of Möbius helped retain memory fragments within time loops. This marked the beginning of Jared and Dillon's understanding of the construct of the space-time continuum--a quantum leap for mankind. The pace of recall was much faster for Trinity; she had been through this many times before. Much later in their lives, Jared and Dillon would gain worldwide recognition for this discovery in the desert near Pointes End.

"So, how long and what's next?" Jared asked, staring in fascination as the small piece of Möbius glowed and vibrated in his hand.

"Hopefully, in the next loop, Kindle will recall enough conversations to recognize the disparities and understand that the town is engulfed in the Möbius energy field. She... needs some added help to restart."

Jared and Dillon looked at one another, surprised to hear Trinity say this had happened before. Still, given what they knew about their rescue of Trinity in the desert, they didn't doubt her.

Pointes End Gazette Office, Friday, July 13th, 3:00 PM

Kindle watched as Trinity bent over the Gazette's broad oak desk in a spartan, worn-down office at the heart of Pointes End. Her brow furrowed in concentration beneath the jaundiced light of a flickering desk lamp. The scene felt familiar right then--a moment repeated with subtle variations, yet it throbbed with something inexplicable each time. She didn't sketch like a casual doodler--no idle swirls or hesitant lines here. Every stroke carried purpose as if she weren't imagining the design but channeling a memory from another time.

Her two sidekicks, Jared and Dillon, the quiet kid with the sun-bleached mop of hair, shifted in their seats, their silence a tacit acknowledgment of the unspoken urgency. Trinity's focus was absolute, which began to resonate in Kindle's troubled recollections of a phenomenon that defied linear time as she held the infant in her lap and sketched. The Möbius crash had irrevocably changed Pointes End; that night, a blue, helical structure descended at the desert's far edge--its fragments pulsing with an eerie, almost organic light. In the aftermath, Trinity and her newfound friends collected a small piece of that mystery, not only as physical debris, but as a catalyst for restarting broken memory loops.

Finally, Trinity sat back and exhaled, her voice soft and measured, "There," she murmured more to herself than to Kindle, and spun the notepad around. The sketch detailed a curving, interwoven construct--a shimmering image, or perhaps something more, with a design that defied expectation. In her drawing, at the center of a swirling lattice of interwoven bands, a void shaped like a small person replaced what one might expect to be a seat--a suggestion of special containment rather than a platform to sit upon.

Kindle took the page carefully, his gaze lingering on the intricate lines. "This..." he began slowly, "isn't what I expected. You said you saw wreckage at the crash site. But this--this looks intact. Functional, even."

Trinity's fingers tightened on the desk. "I saw it before," she replied, her tone guarded. It was that cryptic phrase again--one that hinted at experiences before the crash, perhaps from one of those loops that haunted her memories.

"Before?" Kindle prodded quietly, leaning forward, the creak of the old chair punctuating his words.

She hesitated, eyes flickering away momentarily as if searching for the right words to describe something indescribable. "I got a good look before we left the site. I... pieced it together. It's what it might have looked like if the Möbius hadn't shattered in your time vortex."

Jared shifted in his chair, his voice low. "It's what we saw that night. The blue stranger... the shifting structure. Everything repeated, almost like the night wouldn't let us forget."

His comment resonated with an odd mix of awe and resignation.

Kindle studied Trinity's face--the determined set of her jaw, the subtle angst behind her eyes.

"You didn't just fabricate this," he insisted. "This is engineered, Trinity. It's something you've seen before, maybe not just in the desert, but somewhere deeper within these loops."

Her gaze dropped to the notepad before slowly lifting to his. "It isn't a prank, Mr. Kindle. You wanted to know what happened? That's how I remember it." A tremor in her voice betrayed a mix of hope that he would act and a desire for his action to shift the loops and restart the time continuum.

Somewhere in a faint fragment of memory, Trinity knew that Kindle held a singular key to restoring the time loops. Without his recall, she understood that her return home was doomed to be trapped in the Helix loops created by Möbius, that fickle creature prone to wandering off the trail on its own--this time with catastrophic results.

Kindle sighed and rested a hand on the thick paper, tilting it so the lamplight caught the shadows in the graphite lines. The design seemed to shift under his eyes; from one perspective, it appeared solid and seat-like, but with a slight change of angle, it became fluid and ephemeral, more like a personal confinement space--as if the drawing was caught between two realities. It was no mere sketch, but a glimpse into the heart of Möbius, whose fragments were slowly reassembling in the timestream.

A memory stirred in Kindle--subtle details of the prior crash, the malfunctioning watches that ran an hour slow, and the whispered repetitions of conversations with town folks that seeped out of vague recollections as being looped through repeatedly.

"Something about this isn't right," he murmured, half to himself. "And you, Trinity--you know it's more than just a machine falling from the sky."

Trinity's eyes darted away, her fingers brushing the edge of the notepad. In that fleeting motion lay the hint of other worlds, of futures not yet written. Trinity hadn't broken through to him. He still referred to Möbius as a machine falling from the sky. She wasn't that at all.

"I think... I think a traveler told me once how it worked," she replied, hesitantly, and as if on cue, Jared's restless whisper merged with the present folding loop. "He said it could multiply--its essence, folding into a helical form that could bend time and space."

Jared's words hung in the air, merging with the soft, constant hum of the office fan overhead.

Kindle's skepticism wavered in the wake of these hints. He looked again at the shifting design--the eternal, perplexing loop of the Möbius pattern. He couldn't shake the feeling that he had witnessed this conversation previously. He was piecing together fragments of hidden loops from multiple discussions in the past and present.

Meanwhile, outside, Pointes End continued its cycle of mysteries, nights repeating with minute variances, like clockwork glitches in the fabric of reality.

As he set the drawing aside, Kindle recalled that inexplicable moment earlier--the instant his watch had been an hour ahead of Jared's, only for it to realign moments later. Small anomalies were adding up, whispering that Möbius' influence was seeping into every corner of life in Pointes End.

"Where's the baby?" Kindle asked, looking at Trinity's empty lap.

Dillon and Jared looked at one another, puzzled. "What baby?" they chimed in unison.

Trinity shrugged. Time vortex loops were never perceived in the same way by two individuals accustomed to such journeys. She was unsure of what Kindle had asked.

"Perhaps you are seeing something more intimate in another time loop, Mr. Kindle."

"Perhaps..." Kindle mused, as he studied the drawing more intently. "Here... another triglyph symbol--T⊗⚯. Something about being stranded on an outer loop. What kind of message is that, and to whom?"

Trinity shrugged in response, waiting for Kindle to achieve a breakthrough. He had found a second triglyph, which was enough of a start to give Trinity hope that he would make the leap forward.

"Some things," he finally said, his voice low and measured, "are meant to repeat until we understand them." He looked at the trinity of misfits for confirmation.

"They are." The trio spoke in unison--one voice, a singular expression.

Trinity's timepiece and Cory Kindle's matched: Tick-tock, as a sense of quiet settled over the Gazette's office while Kindle appeared on the verge of piecing together the Möbius puzzle. Dillon's and Jared's chronometers synchronized, echoing the convergences in unison.

Trinity nodded as if to reaffirm their words. Yet, a deeper, unreadable expression lingered--a shared secret held back by those who had glimpsed too much of time's hidden architecture. In that silent acknowledgment, the weight of the recurring loop pressed in on them all, promising that the mystery of Möbius was far from over.

Pointes End Sheriff's Office, Friday, July 13th, 3:00 PM

"What did you find, Jason?"

His question to the sheriff was more than just a reporter's query; it stemmed from an extended conversation with Jason's stepdaughter, Trinity. The kid was genuinely concerned about the crash victim in the desert--alien or not, if you believed Jared's version. If the misfit trio were verified and the victim survived, they would be considered good Samaritans. Even if he didn't survive, they would be recognized as having tried to save him. More trouble would be piled upon them if the search turned up empty.

"We circled the area three times," the sheriff huffed, "making every pass from a different angle and altitude. Not a damned thing in sight. We covered more than three times the area that those dimwits said they had traversed. I've a good mind to lock them up and teach them a lesson." Exhausted and bothered by a nagging sense that time was on hold, he set down his radio and fiddled with it.

"This damned thing didn't work out there either. Some kind of interference. But then you would know that, right, Professor, being a science guy and all?"

"Temporal vortex..." Cory muttered without thinking about it, as he listened to the static overwhelming the sheriff's radio unit. No clear channel anywhere on the thing.

"What?" Jason asked, puzzled by his statement. Jason had focused on the static from the radio, while Kindle concentrated on its source.

Kindle realized that what he said didn't make sense to Jason. 'Where the hell did temporal vortex come from?' His brow furrowed as his lips pursed in thought. 'Too much conversation with Trinity,' he surmised.

Speaking louder, to get above the white noise, Kindle said, "My grandpa's Timex is temporarily affected, too." He rephrased his answer, looking at his grandfather's ancient chronometer. It still showed July, Friday the Thirteenth, three o'clock."

"We've been in the air all afternoon," Jason replied, at his amused revelation, "so, it's not fuckin' three... o'clock..." he shot back, looking at his military-style watch. "Damnit! Mine reads the same. What the fuck?"

"Jason, I believe the kids. Trinity isn't one to sketch out some outlandish tale."

Yet, it seemed to him that he had just had a long conversation about some wild drawing in the Gazette office that defied logic, comprehension, and depth perception. One with a coded triglyph embedded within it. Was that not far-fetched enough? Moreover, it looked familiar, as though the silver-haired old man had seen it somewhere in his past explorations.

"She described some military ejection seat... Think it's one of ours?" Cory posited the notion of a downed military aircraft. The idea was spun without providing details of Trinity's sketch. That would have been far too much to reveal to Jason in his current mood and perhaps a final nail in his coffin of disbelief.

"I've already reported this up channels... Seems the military is interested in it, too. So, maybe it's theirs. At any rate, a team is headed this way. It's going to be a long damned night."

"Did you do a fly-by of the cave?" Kindle asked, as an afterthought.

"No, that's... off the grid," Jason answered, dropping his weary bulk into a rickety wooden chair.

"Kids said they were disoriented for two hours before finding the stream and following it up to the spring's source. The cave area is close. Maybe..."

"Seems to me, you should have been Trinity's father. She at least talks to you, Cory."

"Me hitched to your ex, Jason?" the loaner teased. "Wouldn't that have been something?"

"Yeah... it would have saved me a ton of alimony and child support for a kid that's not even mine. Fuckin' judges."

Both chuckled, with Kindle smiling and remarking, "In which universe would I have spawned a kid like Trinity?"

There wasn't time to ponder the last point as Jason remarked, "I'll pass that on to the military when they show up. They got their own transport. As it is, Hank will be billing the county, and that will go round in endless circles, you know, like a Möbius Loop."

Pointes End at the Diner, Friday, July 13th, 3:00 PM

Kindle watched Trinity laboring over a large sketch pad in a corner booth at the diner. Her shift was moments away, but as she looked up, she nodded for him to take his usual seat across from her.

"The military is on its way here," she nodded twice, as he stretched his legs beneath the table.

"Your stepdad told you that?" Cory asked, nodding twice. It would have been a good sign that, perhaps, they had a chance to get beyond the anger over his sexual liaison with 'that bitch' Blanca. The opportunity to save a life might have balanced their relationship.

"No," she answered tersely.

"Then?" Kindle tried to fathom how she would know since he'd just left Jason.

"It's... part of this time loop's Möbius fold. Don't you feel it, yet? Time is ticking, Mr. Kindle. It's Friday the thirteenth, three o'clock."

"Sure, and the aliens, are they still listening in, too?" Cory joked.

Trinity pursed her lips and slid the drawing across the table. "I've added the last events to the loops. Can you see them, Mr. Kindle?"

"Is that more of your sci-fi story for English?" he quipped, taking up the drawing, noticeably heavier than before, when she had sketched it in the Gazette office and he had poured over it, having found another triglyph.

It was striking to study the drawing again, created from scratch as before. There were no idle swirls or hesitant lines, just as before. Every stroke served a purpose, and each contour was refined with precision, as if she were not merely imagining the design, but truly recalling it.

The retired school teacher, who had wandered into town some thirty years ago from the desert, took it. Carefully flexing the hefty page, its weight defied the sketchpad's light density; he poured over the shimmering page of some complex mechanical engineering miracle. The sketch was intricate and precise. A cocoon--or something reminiscent of one--shimmered at the center of a swirling lattice of interwoven bands. It held a sense of a birthing place as he fingered the drawing. There were no visible seams. The structure seemed impossible, with helical strands twisting upon themselves in a way that suggested motion even in stillness. It was undoubtedly a familiar Möbius construct holding an embryonic figure.

"Show me the first message, Mr. Kindle," she prodded, as Cory attempted to make sense of the drawing again.

He tilted it at a skewed angle and caught a glimpse of the shimmering glyph floating in space. "Here, this one-- T⊗⚯. It was the first embedded symbol I spotted. It says, 'Stranded on outer spiral.'" He studied that for several moments, then glanced up to meet Trinity's gaze.

"Alien math, Mr. Kindle. Tick-tock, Mr. Kindle, the military is coming at three o'clock. Read the rest."

Kindle blinked, as the lattice work swirled around the sketch, as he found another, a third, and more quickly, the triglyphs seemed to jump from the image and align themselves in a language that began to make more and more sense, a call for help:

ℓ∆⚘ ℓ∆⚘ T⊗⚯ ς∞☍ Ϟ⊕⚛ ⟡∉⚛ ʃ∇⚙ ∑≡⚡

ℓ∆⚘ -- Time fracture sustained

T⊗⚯ -- Stranded outer spiral

ς∞☍ -- Observer contact imminent

Ϟ⊕⚛ -- Initiate first contact

⟡∉⚛ -- Barrier field collapsing

ʃ∇⚙ -- Memory stream corrupted

∑≡⚡ -- Request temporal sync

Mr. Cory Kindle, a man marooned at the threshold, where courageous pioneers first ventured westward into a new world, experienced π⇌⚕: the process of healing as the fragmented element of Möbius in his old Timex reshaped his memories. He had initiated ∑≡⚡: marking the restoration of the temporal sync lost during his crash in the canyons thirty Earth years prior. His last message requesting help had brought a fellow time traveler who delivered the crucial component necessary to rebuild his Möbius and to rekindle his memory of those events. It had taken over thirty years by Earth measures; it was incalculable within the context of looped time travel since time had lost its meaning altogether. Möbius, the fickle creature she is, formed a temporal time loop and held Pointes End in suspension until help arrived.

The ancient time traveler examined the drawing and adjusted its orientation to view the military's imminent arrival timeline. The shimmering image of Cory Kimble, an old silver-haired science teacher, a father in another time and universe, understood what that would lead to on a primitive planet.

With a wry smile, as the images assembled into clear meanings, he glanced up, aware that his damaged memories had resynchronized while his skin tone flashed iridescent violet. The Earth form of one Cory Kindle shimmered, stretched, then morphed into its natural encephalopod shape.

"Then, my son, I think we should release the tether on the child, Möbius, let her ascend, then you and I slip back into the correct timestream. Let the Earthlings figure out the remains at the crash site. Maybe come back again? What do you think?" he asked, with an Earthly smirk.

Trinity shook his head and smiled, "Not in my lifetime, Father. Enter your codes, please. I'm looking forward to finding civilization again." Like his father, Trinity morphed as the words floated into the air. Tentacle in tentacle, they watched as the multi-dimensional Möbius time transport shifted, becoming an interdimensional gateway opening with the lost time travelers' codes.

Trinity glanced over at the stunned-looking figures, Jared and Dillion, as they sat at the counter, watching their first view of time travel about to begin. She winked and giggled, "Beware of a big-titted babe bearing a Timex watch and a Möbius-labeled device. She'll will want to fuck with you."

Möbius, the self-procreating infant, crawled out from beneath the table, raising all nine tentacles toward Kindle. He lifted her onto the table. Responsible for all time-travel links, Möbius stepped into the dimensional gateway, as it extended and hovered over the table. She motioned for Kindle and Trinity to join her within the cocoon.

Jason and Dillon watched Kindle and the big-titted girl, with the dazzling smile, shift shapes, curl into that Möbius form, and disappear into the Daily Gazette newspaper as it settled back on the table.

"Fuck me!" Jared murmured, his mouth agape.

"Not in my lifetime," Dillon smirked, as he thought about the nights and days they spent humping the shape-shifting time traveler they knew as Trinity--neither man nor woman.

Both approached the table and read the headline, "Two Local Boys Discover Time Travel." Their photos were prominently featured, showcasing big grins as they held up glowing Möbius time chronometers.

Pointes End, Friday, July 13th, 3:01 PM

The diner's door chime sounded as a buxom blonde in stylish men-in-black attire pushed through. She wore aviator glasses and removed them with a flourish while walking into the dim diner. In one hand, she held a copy of the weekly Gazette and, in the other, a small computer tablet emblazoned with a Military Möbius emblem on the front. From the determined look on her face, as her eyes roamed the place, she was a woman on a mission.

"Fuck me!" Jared murmured, his mouth agape as he looked at the laptop.

"Me, too!" Dillon echoed. His eyes were wide, as if he had seen her before--a mirror image of Trinity--with bigger...

"The government would like a word with you boys," she announced, fixing her iridescent green eyes on the pair of misfits.

"Tick," said Jared, looking wide-eyed at Dillon.

"Tock," echoed Dillion as they both glanced down at their Möbius Timex pieces and shifted, folded, and bent into Möbius dimensional vortexes, leaving the stunned babe in black with her mouth gasping like a fish out of water.

Pointes End, Friday, July 13th, 3:02 PM

Disbelief eased on the Fed's dimpled face as the vision of the time travelers faded from memory. She looked around the empty diner and spotted Blanca, according to her name tag, the solitary waitress behind the counter.

"What will ya have, dimples?" Blanca asked. "You look just like you came from the canyons... How about I fix you up with a tall Coca-Cola and a spaceman burger...

"Name's Trinity, Miss Blanca, and that sounds great." She squeezed her bodacious bottom into the swivel bar chair at the counter, and added, "Say, I'm lookin' to find these two boys in the paper. Got any idea where I can find them and a girl that hangs out with them?"

Blanca smiled, "Those boys are probably in the canyons looking for that spaceman they claim crashed yesterday in the canyons. And a girl? Well, there ain't no girl I know who'd hang with them. No, they're loners and kinda lost in time, you know?"

"Uh-huh," Miss Trinity double nodded and made a few notes on her laptop: date-- July 13th, 3:15pm. She typed, "Subjects not in town. According to the source, no girl in the picture either. Still pending analysis of the crash site... otherwise it's just a routine day in Pointes End." Pursing her lips, her brow wrinkled in thought, she said, "Might not be a bad place to settle down in."

Sipping her Coke, the Fed turned to the Gazette want ads. It offered several job positions: a science teacher, a grocery store clerk, a gas station attendant, and an afternoon café waitress position--no experience needed for the last three. She noted that the teacher spot might be of interest.

"What's the crime rate here?" she asked.

Blanca smiled, "Outside of some bed hopping, there ain't any."

Trinity smiled at that. "Bed hopping ain't so bad," she answered with a wink, and took another sip of cola.

Outside, Pointes End resumed daily life; the citizens went about their everyday activities, and everyone's watches clicked forward as their time continuum shifted without further anomalies.

An absurd tale, you say? Uh-huh. What time is on your watch right now, given that you've spent the last hour suspending your disbelief in time travel and reading this tale? Is your chronometer the same one you strapped on this morning, or has some piece of Möbius found its way into it? Hum? Tick-tock.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you for reading this tale. I hope you found it entertaining and will consider clicking on one of the five stars that reflects your feelings about how well it was told.

I would also greatly appreciate a comment. I thrive on those.

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