Voice of M.S.

He heard a few seconds of scratchy background noise, then a loud clank. Tom had a pencil in his hand, ready to transcribe every word into his diary, but once the message started, he could only listen, fascinated.

A man spoke, his voice quirky and heavy with an American accent. Not like the accentless Silver Head; no, this man's voice sounded much more sophisticated and tight, like a scientist that had worked on so many scientific facts, each word ending with the tone of a high-ranked professor, who was invited to speak to hundreds of people cheering.

Well, one mystery has been solved: M.S. was a man.

When the short message ended, Tom was very perplexed, then rewound it to listen again. Then he quickly fast forwarded through the rest of the voice clip to make sure there were no other messages. For the fourth time, he wrote every single word in his diary.

Say the word related to open sesame when the day arrives. Strike the ground beneath you ten times as hard as you can, with a very specific object. It's a bit of a mire because I can't tell you what the object is. Let's just say your soul is bigger than mine because there are no exceptions to this requirement. Also, the object must not be the opposite of wrong but not correct.

Phew, glad to have that done, Milikins...

Wait? What are you doing? Nah, not the lion shape shifting again.... Oh, rabbit now.

Just keep control... Oh, sorry, I meant to turn the recorder off. Where's that button..? Ah!

There we are—

Silence.

Tom clicked the STOP button, shaking his head at how crazy this M.S. guy seemed. Ever since a message of doom that seemed to be laced throughout the clues and warnings, Tom knew something was really, really off about the man and his whereabouts. He wondered if he'd ever get to meet the M.S. There's a lot of sci-fi around him; that's just what he's interested in.

Tom stared at his own handwriting, re-reading the words and committing them to memory. Something at the back of his mind told him this one was simple, an itch he couldn't quite scratch. The mystery lay in figuring out what the object had to be. Once he knew that, it seemed pretty obvious what he needed to do: hit the ground ten times after saying the word related to open sesame.

Tom decided it really came down to two phrases:

Let's just say your soul is stronger than mine and

The object must be the opposite of wrong but not correct.

Thinking, Tom flipped to a blank page in the diary to see if jotting notes down could whip up his brain functions into a frenzy. Staring at the empty lines on the page made him suddenly remember that he'd never written down the odd words Silver Head had said the day in the neighborhood and when she'd been listing the things she wasn't allowed to mention. Mad at himself for not doing it sooner, Tom squeezed his eyes shut, hoping that every word Silver Head said that day would pop into his head like a neon light. One or two did almost immediately, and after a few minutes he'd remembered the four and wrote them in a list on the left side of the page.

The professor

Teleporter

The Realities

The System

There'd been another weird word he couldn't quite recall. Nothing else came to him, then he realised that his eyes were becoming droopy and his brain nice and ready for an afternoon nap. He wanted to check his email—and needed some fresh, cool air to wake him up. At that point, he remembered his sci-fi friend who works in the store down the street. He threw his diary into his backpack and headed off for the store, telling Lorena he'd be back in a couple of hours.

                                   ~

"Hello, Tom. What are you doing here? " Mr. Wales, their neighbor, asked as Tom unintentionally bumped into him again. He'd spent some time studying his Diary of Mysterious Clues, as well as finishing the last bit of homework for the weekend, and wanted to check his email account, though he'd yet to receive anything since leaving the hint phrases on the penpal site.

"Just wanted to grab a few things from the store and scoot," he said, shrugging while he pretended to be dutiful. Tom wondered why the same thing about bumping into Mr. Wales happened again.

Is time repeating itself? He thought.

"Thought you gonna say something like getting ready for lunch," Mr. Wales laughed hysterically, believing he had cracked a joke that would knock Tom out, but Tom was unable to relate.

"Nah, not really again," Tom said, faking a laughter. It'll be bad if Mr. Wales finds out how dry his jokes were. "Any cool stuff in the store lately?"

Mr. Wales' brow furrowed as he thought, making his entire bushy hair shift like a jittery land mass triggered by an earthquake. "There's new stuff for kids, literally something you might like," he said, trying to hold back a smile.

Tom rolled his eyes. "I'll take my chances."

"Okay, do thank me when you get any cool stuff." He smiled. "See you later."

"Alright, Mr. Wales." He inched towards the store, going for the computer on the counter once he was inside.

"Afternoon, kid." The same old scary man he met earlier greeted him warmly. Tom was kind of surprised, but he just nodded and sat down at a computer as soon as he got to the counter, hoping he'd see Nate. His mind still spun, the clues of M.S. bouncing around in his brain like renegade alphabet soup. He knew several things for sure and also knew what he still needed to figure out. For some reason, on August six, he needed to close his eyes, say the word related to open sesame he didn't know, and hit the ground ten times with an object still to be determined. piece of cake.

After logging into his email website, he hesitated a bit before clicking the INBOX button. He'd checked his email almost every day for weeks, and he was always disappointed to find nothing there. But what are the odds? he thought. Who knew if anyone out there had received anything, much less went searching the internet for others? But Tom felt like he'd explode if he didn't find someone with whom to swap ideas and thoughts.

He clicked the mouse.

The INBOX page only took a few seconds to load, and a subject line written all in capital letters caught his eye the instant it appeared. His breath caught in his throat. He banged his hand on the counter in excitement. His chair wobbled a bit due to the rough reaction. He noticed a few scowls from the customers near the counter as he drew his hand back under the counter, the skin of his face on fire. Once settled, he looked at the screen again, hoping his eyes hadn't been lying to his brain.

But there it was, in black capital letters, bold against the white background.

  FROM: HANA AOKI

MESSAGES FROM M.S.