“Xendo, stop, this is ridiculous!” Blinda countered, getting frustrated. Xendo didn’t care. Anything to distract from cleaning was worth joking about. 

“Hey! You never know! Let’s search the ED.” Xendo jumped up from the table and tapped his technoband. The small metal bracelet produced a blue holoscreen. Xendo selected the icons for Earth’s Database and spread his personal display wider in the air. The search engine was ready for entry. 

“Did she have any favorite kid names?” Xendo asked. 

“I’m telling you, you won’t find anything,” Blinda stated adamantly. 

“C’mon, let me have fun with this,” Xendo grunted. 

“Ugh, fine,” Blinda relented. “She liked Regan, try Regan Harlow, I guess.” 

Xendo typed the name on the holoscreen. “No results, what else?” 

They entered all of Ava’s favorite names. They even tried them with Daniel’s surname, Nockby. All the options had zero results. 

“That’s everything she’s ever mentioned.” Blinda was stumped. “I mean, I once told her that I liked the name Philo. Ava really loved my Greek food. It was—” 

“Philo?” Xendo interrupted curtly. “What a stupid name.” 

“Shut up, I think it means ‘loving.’ It’s sweet,” Blinda argued. 

“Loving?” Xendo blurted, shoving a finger near his mouth to fake barf. 

“I also like Phyllo dough. It’s a play on words,” Blinda added. 

“For the love of Earth, Mom!” Xendo rolled his eyes at how lame she was. 

“Hey!” Blinda punched him again. “It made her laugh! I just mentioned it casually when I made her dinner one night. But yeah, she’d never remember any of that.” 

“Yeah,” Xendo scoffed, ”I’m trying to forget it now!” 

“Okay, Mister! We’re done with all this kid nonsense, right?” Blinda lifted the first finished pod. “Help me carry these downstairs!” 

“Is all this cleaning really necessary before I move out?” Xendo complained. “Primary Advancement isn’t until tomorrow. School is just a ten-minute walk and one quick skytube from here.” 

“Now that you’re fourteen, you’ll be boarding full-time. I’m putting you to work while I still can. Let’s go,” his mother concluded as she carried the storage containers to the basement. 

Xendo sighed. His distraction didn’t stall long enough. While sitting alone at the kitchen counter, Xendo stared back at the empty database page. He typed “Philo Nockby” into the search engine looking for results in the early 2000s. The holoscreen remained blank, still nothing. That stupid name was as pointless as the others. Xendo stood up to leave. As he reached to turn off the display, the screen flashed briefly. A single information page lined up on the holoscreen. Xendo couldn’t believe his eyes. 

“Mom! Mom! I got something!” Xendo belted out to her. “Mom! Come here!” 

“What?” Blinda yelled from the basement, not hearing him. 

Xendo raised his voice to bellow even louder, “You were right! Ava had a kid named Philo!” 

Xendo heard the clang of a metallic storage pod crashing to the floor beneath him, then the cantankerous sounds of his mother tripping up the stairs. 

“No way! It’s not possible,” she huffed, out of breath when she reentered the kitchen. Xendo pointed to the ED holoscreen. Blinda shook her head, “No freakin’ way! I bet it’s Daniel’s fault!” 

Xendo watched his mother rub her temples in stress. 

“Well?” Blinda urged, “Click on it, already!”

“Oh, right!” Xendo chuckled. He touched the first link with his index finger and it opened up an ancient file from May 8, 2019. 

“It’s from an obsolete video sharing website from the digital era. Here, let’s look,” Xendo muttered softly while trying to convert the archaic data to be watchable on their modern holoscreen. 

An antiquated red and white web page opened and a video popped up in front of them. The video title on the bottom read Philo Nockby’s Personal Essay Notes (First Draft). It had zero views and showed a thumbnail of a small teenage boy with olive-brown skin, wavy, dark hair, and hazel eyes. Xendo touched the red play button. The boy started talking nervously in a strange, slow accent from the past. Xendo was immediately mesmerized the same way he had been with the woman back in the 2005 mission photo. With each passing second of the four-and-half-minute footage, Xendo and Blinda’s jaws dropped millimeter by millimeter. The video finished playing. This mysterious teen just ruined their perception of reality, and yet, the mother and son couldn’t stop smiling. 

“Ava would be so proud,” Blinda murmured, wiping tears off her cheeks. 

Xendo felt an indescribable urge to understand this boy who shouldn’t even exist.