Several things happened then, none of them anywhere near Kyle or Jason. The first and most important of which, concerns a place removed from the rigors of time and space. In this place, a withered hand bearing a sundered desolation of a parched landscape, each individual skin-cell a bas-relief, gently releases a pen rolling from its grasp. The hand's owner sighs, a gnarled rasp replete with phlegmy rattles. This woman, ancient and resigned, knows her role in what is to come, as she's known for most of her life. She stares then, at a wide crystal display, and closes her eyes in thought.
"So..." she says, "it has begun. The old man finally flexing his new muscles."
Another voice behind her, "Yup. Recon we oughta watch this'un. Ain't go wrong, if we watch't, Sal."
The old woman nods, eyes still closed in thoughtful repose. She knew none of this, not a single second for the next several days, would be even remotely easy. History, and time too, were fickle and malleable as hot clay. The tumult surrounding Kyle, so intensely electric, no remote viewport or computer-aided chaos probability engine from any where or when, proved adequate for clarifying the situation. Kyle's entire timeline, and that of his lineage, proved just as entropic—pandemonium made flesh. She understood only what the branch-predictors estimated, and her own personal interactions with the man Kyle could become: something was wrong in Tammond Dale.
She slowed her breathing and tapped into the Duality with her mind's eye. Immediately statistics and implicit definitions hovered languidly, superimposed over every object throughout history. These numbers listed approximate age, molecular structure, historical significance, and any myriad of possible measures of impact. The Duality knew. If she were to ask how many times a particular man solved a Rubik's Cube, a holographic index detailing each incidence, moves used, time taken, personal variance, and other datum, would rotate in her mind, awaiting her curiosity. The Duality always knew.
Except when it came to Kyle. Any attempt to concentrate on Kyle met with only one response: blackness. It took centuries to procure even that reaction, as previously the Duality would begin to sizzle as chaos rendered it to oblivion. The shutdown was equivalent to an overload, a frightful concept for a quantum computer which spanned every universe, and utilized the spin and orientation of every atom, quark, and gluon in creation. Which made the current situation exceptionally dangerous.
Kyle's life was easily tracked and analyzed until he moved to Tammond Dale. His father mysteriously enjoyed a slightly exaggerated chaos envelope, but still predictable. The Duality knew of Tammond Dale, and the terror that resided there. But Kyle's arrival muddied the picture, and the minute Kyle read the Welcome to Tammond Dale sign, every indicator halted and crashed. Even though Sal and her friends were beyond time itself, Kyle yanked himself and everything he touched beyond even their ability to predict. They could only watch as events unfolded, and that disturbs them greatly.
"Jack," she says. "We've known, for millennia, of Kyle's abilities. We knew this would happen. The best we can do is ensure nothing goes awry." She stares at the man, waiting until he replies with a tired nod, bunching his face into a frown. "I know. That thing in town... it has some idea. We just have to help Kyle win, for all our sakes."
"That bad, huh?" he asks, eyebrow raised. "Whut doya propose, Sal? You got more'n that head o your'n, than the Duality can rightly say; can't predict us either, and you don't talk much."
"I can't tell you, Jack," she says, glancing sadly at the giant tome where she previously jotted notes with an antique caligraphy quill. "I only know my part. I guide him as my memory says I should, but beyond that?" She shrugs. "This is beyond all of us. But he's awakened, and that helps."
Jack allows himself a curt nod. That it does. They couldn't interfere directly, or risk unraveling history, but the ambiguity surrounding Kyle introduced wiggle-room. Only one reality meant anything to the residents of The End: Kyle must prevail. The future, their future depended on it.
Deep in the bowels of Tammond Dale, from craggy cliff to snow-covered field, all the way to Old Town, an angry growl rumbles. It felt reality tear. It felt the sign reform on the outskirts of the blasted landscape, crumbling facades lost in the past.
It knows its enemy, then. A dreadful, final certainty seeps into the land; the newcomer is no mere interloper, and must be destroyed. It wouldn't scare this new family away. Oh, no. There were much better ways to neutralize threats.
Oh, yes. Much better.
An imperceptible cackle ricochets through the valley, then. Though nobody can hear, everyone feels the hollow chill in their spine, and shudders. Kyle, most of all.