"See! He's clearly more intelligent than most second-millennium dioka! He has that twisted heart-shaped genetic mark; he has to be trioka!” Xendo pleaded as he paused the video in Superintendent Nova Pearl’s office. 

“And he said his parents were named Dan and Ava,” Blinda chimed in. “Nova, you have to see it. The resemblance is eerie.”

Superintendent Pearl did not budge. The tall, solemn woman held power in every room she entered. Throughout the full duration of the video clip she never spoke a word or changed her unconvinced, quizzical expression. Ten minutes ago, she was awoken from slumber by loud knocks on her office door. She didn’t have time to do anything but wrap herself in a magenta robe and fuzzy pink slippers. Mercifully, the door-knockers were just Xendo and Blinda. They had been trying to contact her all throughout her hectic day. Pearl’s complaints about the inconvenience of this midnight meeting vanished when Xendo started playing the video clip. Superintendent Pearl would not be going back to sleep now, that was for certain.

“I don’t know what possessed them to be so sloppy and conceive a child while on a mission, but here we are.” Blinda sighed, trying to figure out what they should do. 

If Superintendent Pearl was startled by any of this shocking information, she didn’t show it. Xendo and Blinda stared at her with an unbreakable intensity, hungry for her help. Pearl gazed into the holoscreen and into Philo’s eyes—his familiar eyes. She felt herself searching for answers to questions she abandoned long ago. Superintendent Pearl broke her concentration by standing up from behind her grand oak desk. She glided around to come closer to her two unexpected guests. 

“If that young man is, in fact, the biological son of Daniel Nockby and Ava Harlow, and if he is, in fact, trioka, what are you proposing we do?” she stated in a firm whisper. 

Xendo opened his mouth, but Blinda held up her hand to silence him. 

“You should use SIYT’s time portal to go back and retrieve him,” Blinda urged with the most serious face Xendo had ever seen his mother make. Pearl chortled in shock as Blinda went on. “He obviously doesn’t belong to an era over 1,000 years ago. He should attend classes here, finally use his brain to achieve more!” 

“Everybody always torments us with rumors of what happened,” Xendo butted in. “They say Jerome Quaker is the one at fault for making the mission fail.” 

“There’s no proof of that, honey.” Blinda looked at her son, worried. 

“It’s what everyone whispers around me,” Xendo expressed. “So, what if Philo knows information we don’t?”