Green and blue neon street lights permeated the large windows that were set in half-curtained mode, painting the forlorn face of an aged man in cold colors. His brows furrowed tightly, dark eyes staring down with sorrowful love. A colorless old photo of a smiling young woman placed squarely on the floor before him. He sat there with her in a meditating pose for a long while, looking at each other, disregarding time and space. Slowly, he closed his eyes. He could hear her voice, girlish and sweet as honey, faintly then clear as a whisper in the ear. Once again, he could see. The bright blue sky. The chattering guests. His wife's joyful face was shrouded under a bridal veil. He opened his eyes, and they were all gone. A colorless old photo of her was all he had left. He continued to stare at it, frowning deeper and deeper, the sorrow in his eyes gradually morphed into fury, burning redder and redder. His fists clenched on his knees and shook in rage, soon he could see them turning semi-transparent. Yes. It's working this time. He could feel the familiar tug on his whole body by another dimension. Swiftly, he snatched the photo and kept it in his pocket. It's working. It's working.

He disappeared.

The campus garden in the late evening was always quiet and gloomy. The dim pathway lights by the bushes were more likely for mood than actual lighting. Claudia walked alone, right hand clutching the strap of her cross-body bag tightly as her keen eyes watched out for any suspicious man hiding in the shades. She was tempted to try out the new campus escort service launched in January, but trusted no one other than herself at the end of the day. While she was nearing a turn, a person appeared out of nowhere - "Maddie!" He said -  and she was collected in a bone-crushing embrace before she could even look at the person's face. She released a horrified scream and pushed him away as hard as she could. 

The man looked surprised and almost like he was hurt. Claudia stepped back, only then she could take a good look at this stranger. Unruly brown hair. Tired, but soft looks. Unshaven. Worn out brown leather jacket and a pair of blue jeans. Nothing was out of place, except for the bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper he held in his hands dearly like a treasure, a bizarre little device attached to it showing a dot of green light. But it was exactly this bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper that made her heart sink. "He will come back... he will... and holding a Diet Dr. Pepper," her mother's words echoed in her mind. All of a sudden, she felt like pushing him once more, and harder. She began, "You're -"

"You're not Madeline," he said, confusion and disappointment palpable in his wide eyes.

"She's my mother," Claudia said sternly, "and who are you?" She knew, but she wanted to hear it.

And it was him. The strange name, he spoke it. Viater Lewis. It was the name her mother uttered day and night. The name that her mother chanted blissfully in her dreams, but haunted Claudia's. Now the owner of this name stood there, and he was but a normal man, exhausted and pitiful; she could see the bags were wearing down those once soulful and energetic eyes, and a face that could be beautiful if given a good tidying-up. There were no horns and tails, not even a mole on him that irked her. He was just a good earnest man seeking his mother, and it made her feel stupid.

"You're her daughter? Is she... married?"

"No," Claudia replied softly, "and she's not here."

"Where?"

"In her hometown. You'll need to get a train."

Viater nodded understandingly, then squeezed out a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Alright then. Sorry for... all that." 

He turned and left. Claudia watched his back getting further away and fretted  - she might never see him again. "Wait!" He paused and turned around. "I'll take you to her." 

She led him to the train station and caught the last train. They sat across from each other and kept silent for a while. 

"What's that?" Claudia couldn't help but ask, nodding at the silvery device with a dot of green light attached to his soda bottle.

"Oh, it's a - sort of like a teleportation device and a searcher." Viater took it off the bottle and placed it on his palm; its green light vanished. He pocketed it and went on, "It will take me to the closest person with the same or most similar genetic make-up stored in its database. This stores Madeline's. To operate it, a kind of substance is needed as the - sort of like a key code. You can set it as any kind." 

"Let me guess," Claudia said, "Diet Dr. Pepper."

"Diet Dr. Pepper," He smiled, looking at the bottle in his hand fondly, and took a small sip. "It's your mother's favorite drink."

"I know," she smiled as well.

 As the train came to the first stop, they had grown slightly more comfortable with each other's presence. Viater casually explained his condition of being one of the genetic misfits and was cursed with the ability to leap to another time and space whenever an intense emotion filled him up. He talked about having to hide his power in his world, how he had learned lessons after being swept many times into another period, and how taking medication classes helped him. Claudia listened like a little girl listening to fairy tales.

There was one time that he time-traveled from his original time, and landed here in 1964, meeting Madeline upon a bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper in a bar. He didn't say anything for some moments then.

The train came to another stop. Claudia watched the few other passengers get off. Scanning around, she found that they were the only ones left on the journey. She glanced at the man and asked carefully, "could you tell me about the wedding?"

Viater stared at her, not in a hostile way, but in the realization of her knowing about them being more than friends. He contemplated and eventually simply said, "the weather was nice."

"It was 1970. You disappeared."

"I didn't mean it."

"But you were gone."

"I couldn't control it!"

"What exactly happened?"

"There were bandits," he gritted his teeth, "and one of them stabbed your mother. I got furious."

Claudia fell silent. She waited for him to finish doing his breathing exercise. Then she continued in a low voice, looking away at the window sill. "If you had stayed, you'd know she survived. And she had had a baby. Yours."

"What-"

"I always thought you knew my existence until you appeared."

"Claudia. I didn't know -"

"I was the only one who didn't treat my mother insane when she kept talking about a man with Diet Dr. Pepper would come, appearing out of thin air one day. Even before she died -" Claudia gagged and looked at him with wide, horrified eyes. 

"What do you mean she died!"

"I'm sorry, Mr Lewis, I'm sorry." She covered her face with both hands as hot tears streamed down. Her voice was torn in between violent sobs. "I lied. I'm sorry. She died five years ago. I'm taking you to her graveyard..."

"How?" 

"Sickness," she said, wiping the tears with her palm.

The train came to an abrupt halt. She sprung up and went to the door. "This is the stop," she said. A glass shattered behind her.

When she turned around, there was no man there in the seat, only a broken bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper on the floor. 

"Mr Lewis?" She called, tears falling down her cheeks again. "Mr Lewis?"

There was no one.

"Dad...?"