Mid-Dew, flying through the movierain, I’d ask around to others in the Drop. We were all surfing together—12 of them and me, Lucky #13.

Looking back at earlier entries, I don’t mention much how deep we were rolling, but I can assure you: technically, I was the tip of the spear, but they were all integral in our pursuit.

I’d yell out, “Throw out anecdotes about Kitty,” and wait for the Crew to respond.

“What about that time she made us all visit her favorite conversation she witnessed between two people in the park?” offered Jacob.

“How will we time the precise version of that?” added Rachael.

“Eh, it’s worth a shot,” I chimed. “Maybe it’ll inspire some ideas.”

At will, I could summon any version of Earth. Think of the possibilities, echoed repeatedly along my inner monologue. And yet, all I could do was leverage the gravity of a super massive black hole to find my friend.

“Keep the suggestions coming!” I addressed the rest of the Crew. “Locating a loved one, blindly amidst this multitude of worlds is more art than science. Your stories are helping to light a path. It’s not about where Kitty is right now; it’s where she’s going to be. The more stories, the more we can atune to her frequency…”

“Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Bill! We get it,” Gabriel interjected. “Think like Kitty. Find Kitty.”

“Mahalo, Gabe,” I said.

But, yeah, that was the general gist of our collective technique. Resonating with another’s frequency is the first step toward entanglement.

Hopefully, Kitty was listening too. The caveat with this method was that she would have to serendipitously think of us, as well.

“Or what about when she made us have to free all those lost souls?” Edward said. “Talk about biting off more than you can chew.”

***

As we precipitated through the possible worlds, my mind would wander in the Dew. I thought back to the first time I had to retrieve Kitty from otherwise oblivion.

She had been marooned on that ’80s Earth. For Kitty to manifest as first a baby on this planet, and then grow up for me to find her, the Thunderbird Order had to plant reverse breadcrumbs—pivotal moments in the history leading directly to Kitty’s birth. Ostensibly, a cacophony of seemingly unrelated events led to the precise DNA signature in Kitty’s would-be fetus to channel her into her ’80s Earth mother’s womb. The creation of life originated as juxtaposed particles made harmonious by the time-traversing Will of Thunderbirds.

And I picked up the trail that led me to her. The only difference now, on our current pursuit of our lost friend, was that we had to create the path in front of us we were following. The notes weren’t laid in front of us; we had to compose them.

We first tried Jacob’s suggestion, revisiting that romantic conversation the couple held in the park. But that soon went debunked, soon after we arrived on the grassy knoll behind their park bench, descending ever so quietly.

“Kitty, sure, she could return to a version of this moment,” I whispered to the Crew, looking on at the couple. “There’s no telling which version she’d take though, or at what time. No. We need to find a spontaneous moment, perhaps from a familiar place. And we’d need to time it right.”

That latter statement would later be proven wrong… by Kitty. She found an elegant solution to synchronizing our space-time whereabouts. Firstly, though, we had to arrive at a place she had recently been, would soon attend or ideally would be there when we arrive.

We decided to visit our favorite breakfast spot—the place we’d inevitably pour into after a 24-hour turn of leaping through the multiverse. In fact, the breakfast spot was usually the place from which we’d often ignite adventurous missions. Appropriately so, the place was called “Bookends.”

It was an exceptional establishment upon which you could key into potential excitement. We’d listen in to other tables’ tall tales from the night before. If it sounded interesting, we’d rewind the clock to the previous evening and link up with those young go-getters. It’s all about who you know, and we had just met them the morning after, before meeting them the prior evening.

Now we were looking for Kitty. We overheard a table, one day, speaking of seeing a girl recently that resembled Kitty’s description. The older gentleman at the table remarked that he had seen a woman leap out of thin air and a flash into the parking lot outside, and then walk in here to Bookends, not a moment later. She sat right at that booth (he pointed over to a cozy spot by the window), just yesterday morning.

Others in the establishment, after we politely interviewed them through light conversation, thought they had seen her check into the inn up the road, walking back from breakfast. We hightailed it to the hotel, and descended upon her room in a hurry. We thought maybe we could catch her, before she leapt again. In the room, we found only a note, which read: