They say time moves faster as you get older.  There are all sorts of explanations, ranging from the plausible to the ridiculous, depending on who you ask.  Maybe increasing responsibility makes you busier, trying to fit more into shorter periods of time.  Maybe you just get used to the way the holidays go by, anticipating and remembering so constantly that they all start to blur together.

Maybe it's more psychological that that: maybe it's first times that stand out in your mind, separating one day from the next, and the fewer first times you have, the less noteworthy the passing years become.  Or maybe it's more mathematical: when you're five, a year is a fifth of your life, and it seems to go on forever.  When you're twenty-five, a year is only about four percent of your total experience.

Imagine what it's like to be a hundred, Billy says sometimes.  A year is so short relative to the rest of your life that you can't even measure it without two decimal places.  He's started to talk about math more now that Cestria's gotten interested in the spiritual applications of quantum mechanics.

Tommy thinks it might be simpler than all of that.  He thinks that maybe you wake up one morning and realize that you really are going to die someday... and it's going to matter.  It's going to affect someone.  The only questions are who and how much.

He thinks this because it happened to him four years ago.  He also thinks this because the other explanations don't work for him: he's always been busy, he'll never get used to the holidays even enough to remember which one is next, and he doesn't really notice first times.  So.  Process of elimination.

He ignores the math, because that's Anton's area.  

Sometimes, though, he does look back and try to identify milestones in his life.  Just to see if the realization that he's going to die isn't as important as he thought at the time.  Or to try to find other things, like work or holidays or first times, that stand out enough to slow time down again.

He definitely missed the first time he stumbled downstairs to find Ethan working on the computer, because it seems so normal now that he can't imagine it not happening.  He wasn't paying attention the first time Kat mentioned children, because she's still dancing and he's a pretty laughable excuse for a parent at this point.  He doesn't remember the first time Kira slept over after a gig, or when Hayley started driving Conner around.

He's not sure exactly when he and Anton stopped looking at each other sideways, trying to figure out who was most likely to crack, but oddly, Tommy can call to mind the day he and Trent reconciled.  Odd because it was so ordinary... and so obvious.

"Tell your dad we're on for lunch," he said, just in passing.  After some thing or other, a new and purely theoretical equipment test, probably.

Trent paused by the door and looked back at him.  And for the first time in months, he smiled before he walked out.  "Will do," he said simply.

It shouldn't stand out in his mind the way it does, except that it reminds Tommy of that revelation, that morning wake-up call.  The one he had the day after he graduated, when he realized that he's going to die.  He isn't an invincible teenager anymore.  He's an adult, adults have perspective, and with that perspective comes an understanding of the world that makes it both more interesting and infinitely more dangerous.

What if he dies tomorrow?  Who will notice?  How much will they care?

He's irrationally relieved to know that he won't leave Trent unforgiven--and that Trent finally returned the favor.

Ethan is sitting in the hot seat when he wanders into the command center Saturday morning.  Tommy's not surprised, although he does kind of wonder how they all keep getting into his house.  He thinks he must remember to lock the front door occasionally, if not regularly.

"Morning, Dr. O," Ethan says, without even looking over his shoulder.  "Message for you from the Silver Guardians."

He briefly considers the possibility that Ethan doesn't know what the message is, then decides he must not have woken up all the way yet if he can think that.  "What is it?"

"They want to know if you can contact the ninjas."  Ethan relays this information as though it makes perfect sense, which it might--but not to Tommy.  Not this early in the morning.

"Which ninjas?" he asks at last, when it looks like Ethan isn't going to provide his usual stream of information.  He must be working on something cooler than ninjas.  Tommy hopes that whatever it is isn't unthinkably destructive.

"Oh, the, uh, Ninja Rangers," Ethan answers absently.  "Ranger Commander guy, looking for the leader of the most recent Rangers, trying to get someone who knows something about the ninja academies or whatever.  Might have been looking for Conner."

Unfortunately, that's actually more helpful than most of Ethan's messages.  "Did you get a name?" Tommy asks.  Mornings and optimism seem like they should go together.

"I didn't take the message."  Ethan makes this sound like the craziest idea he's ever heard--still without so much as lifting his head from the screen.  "AV recording on the superphone."

Of course.  He doesn't bother to ask if Ethan heard the message come in or if he checked the phone himself.  He's pretty sure he already knows the answer.

"Commander Wes Collins of the Silver Guardians," the sophisticated voice mail system tells him when he lets it play.  He knows he should recognize the face on the screen, but it doesn't mean much to him right now.

"Red Time Ranger," the voice continues, and that means a lot more.  "I'm looking to get in touch with someone at the Wind Ninja Academy, and I'm told that the leader of the Dino Rangers might be able to do it."

Ethan is right: their field leader probably can.  Conner is better connected at the ninja academies than he is.  And Hayley, for all he knows, has a direct line to the school.  Neither of them is likely to be up this early on a Saturday morning, so he sends them both an e-mail and lets the message wait.

They give out his number to everyone now.  New Rangers, old Rangers, Rangers' alien family and friends, passing tourists who are afraid of losing their comms and getting stranded on Earth with no way to request a shuttle from Aquitar.  Sometimes he thinks he and Kat run a switchboard for some kind of intergalactic waystation.

He doesn't complain, though, because most of his calls end up at Hayley's anyway and she seems perfectly happy to help anyone who asks.  She reminds him of Ernie that way.  Always ready to lend an ear or make a connection with passersby... no matter which planet those passersby happen to come from.

He isn't surprised to see Hayley's car in the driveway when he gets back from the store.  He glances in as he passes, and sure enough, there's Conner's bag in the backseat.  He tries to ignore what's going on with them as much as possible, even though Kat says it's his job to keep track of his team.

They aren't his team anymore, for one thing.  They never were.  It's his fault that Conner, Kira, and Ethan were chosen to stand against Mesagog, and he tried to help them as much as he could.  But Conner became as much of a leader as he could ask for, and most of the time Tommy spent in the field was taken up fighting his own demons.

As a teammate, then, Kat insists.  As a friend.  It's your job to know they're okay, no matter what they're doing.  How can you spend so much time obsessing over Trent and then turn around and say you don't know or care if Conner and Hayley are dating?

He does care.  It just isn't any of his business.  If they want to tell him, they'll tell him.  In the meantime, all he knows is that they live on the same side of town and Conner likes being seen in hot cars.

The front door doesn't open when he tries to go in, which is annoying because his arms are full of groceries and if everyone is here he doesn't understand why the door is locked.  He has to put everything down to look for his keys, which aren't in his pockets and it turns out he left them in the car.  By the time he gets back, Conner has opened the door and is carrying his groceries inside.

"Hey, Dr. O," he calls from the kitchen as Tommy closes the door behind him.  "Where do you want this stuff?  Dude, donuts!  Can I have one?"

"No," Tommy says, just on principle.  "Why was the door locked?"

"I dunno," Conner answers.  He's set the bags on the floor and is no longer paying any attention to them.  Instead he's getting glasses out of Tommy's cupboard and ice out of the freezer, and he looks disturbingly at home in someone else's kitchen.  "It was locked when we got here, so we locked it behind us when we came in."

Huh.  So he does remember to lock it on his way out.  He doesn't ask how they got in, since Hayley has a key.

"Did you get my e-mail?" he asks instead.

Conner snorts.  "Dr. O, no self-respecting person wakes up on a day like this and thinks, 'hey, what a great morning to fire up the computer!'  You're just lucky Hayley stopped by the scrimmage at Flag Hill or I wouldn't be here at all."

Tommy isn't sure "lucky" is the right word.  He starts to put away the groceries while Conner fills two glasses with tapwater and turns to leave.  "We're downstairs," he says over his shoulder.

"Hey," Tommy says, and he doesn't know what made it his responsibility but Conner still has a lot of growing up to do.  "Don't insult your teammates in this house."

Conner turns to look at him without stopping, backing up another couple of steps before he pauses.  It occurs to Tommy idly that this is another milestone he missed: Conner growing into his frame, the power that emanated from him on the soccer field turning to grace and control in the rest of his life.  "What?" he asks, and he looks genuinely startled.

"Don't make fun of Hayley just because she takes her responsibilities seriously," Tommy tells him.  "Everyone has different priorities.  You need to respect that."

"Uh, okay."  Conner is eyeing him oddly.  "First off, I don't make fun of Hayley.  Second, I respected your pink-frosted donuts enough to ask for one instead of laughing at you for them, so I think that shows some tolerance right there.  And third, we've heard this lecture a billion times."

"I guess it wasn't enough if you can still make fun of Hayley for checking her e-mail first thing in the morning," Tommy says.  "She has people that depend on her, you know."

"Well, yeah."  Conner rolls his eyes like Tommy's the one who doesn't get it.  "Which I'm guessing is why she brought her text-y thing with her to the scrimmage, which is where she got your e-mail, which is why we left early to come over here.

"You're welcome, by the way," he adds.  "You could have just told Commander Wes there to try the Astro Rangers.  One of them's an academy sensei."

Tommy has the uncomfortable feeling that he just screwed up several times over.  So much so that Conner doesn't even understand what he was really saying, which is probably a good thing.  "Uh, right," he agrees awkwardly.  Then he frowns.  "Really?"

Conner raises his eyebrows.  "Sensei Simione?  C'mon, Dr. O, you're ruining my image of you as the guy in the know."

And Conner's over it.  Just like that.  He's not totally sure what Tommy was talking about but he takes it on faith that he didn't mean any harm.  Good will assumed, no bad will intended.

Sometimes Tommy thinks he's the least forgiving guy on his team.

He hears people say that it's the things you don't like in yourself that irritate you most in other people.  Whether it's things you do, things you once did, or things you've thought about doing... if you have any doubts about their rightness, you get mad at other people instead of trying to fix yourself.  Or, if you think you have fixed yourself, you become irrationally self-righteous about other people failing to do the same.

It's Kat who points this out to him the most.  He thinks she's trying to tell him something.  He doesn't mind.  In fact, sometimes he wishes she would be a little more straightforward about it.  If she would just tell him what to do--

He would do everything except do it, she says.  She always says that.  She thinks he's stubborn; he's not really sure why.  He's a flexible guy, and he's totally willing to change.  He changes jobs every year.  He changed his major three times.  He spent the first two years of graduate study getting used to being a married man, and the last two following Anton around the world.  He can obviously handle new things.

That's not even counting all the aliens, advanced technology, and extraplanetary cultures he's had to get used to over the years.  They tend to take those things for granted.  They're just a part of life, not really a choice at all, so Kat probably wouldn't let him count them as indicators of adaptability.

Kira and Trent show up together too.  Tommy's not sure who called them.  He assumes they weren't planning to hang out at his house for the fun of it, though with the way things are going lately, maybe he shouldn't rule it out.

They find their way downstairs while Hayley's talking to Wes Collins on what Ethan's taken to calling the "superphone."  Ethan, in fact, is hanging over her shoulder, and Conner's enjoying the chance to lounge in the hot seat.  Not that distance stops him from contributing--if "making obnoxious comments" counts as contributing, which Tommy's not so sure about.

Wes has someone with him on the other end, too.  Eric Myers, whom Tommy does recognize from the mission to the moon and secretly hoped he would never have to deal with again.  The two of them run the Silver Guardians, now: Eric is the strength and Wes is the smile, as far as he can tell, and he tries not to know much about what they're up to at any given time.

Willful ignorance has occasionally turned out to be a mistake, but overall, not being constantly horrified makes up for the infrequent moments of panic when he looks up and notices that they're on the verge of destroying the entire planet.  Or even just the west coast of North America.  If it's not them, it's their teammates from the future, and really, the less Tommy knows about what they're doing, the easier his life is.

This, he can tell, is going to be one of those moments of panic.  He knows because Wes has been talking to Hayley for five whole minutes and she hasn't solved his problem yet.  He knows because Hayley just asked Wes if he had any way to contact his teammates, and anything that requires reinforcements from the future has to be bad.  He knows because Conner is actually paying attention, because Trent has his arm around Kira, and because Ethan is letting Wes answer Hayley's question without filling the brief silence with a constant stream of speculation.

He knows, too, that Wes is lying when he finally says, "No."

The advantage of being tall is that he can see over both Hayley and Ethan, and he sees Eric glance at Wes out of the corner of his eye.  Eric is surprisingly bad at keeping secrets.  He makes up for it by being so angry, abrasive, and irritating that no one dares to ask him anything.

Tommy's heard that he's engaged.  He feels sorry for the fiancee.

"Wes," Hayley says, with a gentleness that makes her the perfect contact person--and why didn't the Power choose her, anyway?  She would have made a great leader.  "This is exactly the sort of thing that Time Force should be handling."

"I agree."  Wes manages to look baffled and patient at the same time.  "They've been tracking those crystals for years.  Now that we finally have a lead on the last one, I don't know why they aren't here."

"They didn't leave any way for you to alert them?" Hayley insists.  "You've been working with them for most of that time, haven't you?"

"They show up from time to time," Wes agrees.  "Less now that we've isolated all the fragments.  If we've really found a whole crystal, though, I don't know why they haven't picked it up in the future."

"What if you haven't found it?" Ethan interrupts.  "What if they know this isn't really it?  Maybe it's something else, and they're just sitting there in the future letting us get all worried and stuff, and then a few years from now the real one will turn up and they'll pop back and be all like, 'hey, we got it, no worries.'"

"If it's not the crystal," Eric snaps, "it's an unknown temporal distortion coming from a place that doesn't officially exist, and I don't know about you, but I happen to think that's dangerous."

"I'm sure Time Force would agree," Hayley says.

"If we could contact them," Wes adds, before Eric can jump in again.  "Which we can't."

"You can't?" Hayley asks.  "Or the Silver Guardians can't?"

Wes looks her straight in the eye and lies to her.  Tommy can't say how he knows, since Wes has a much better poker face than his partner.  But he knows he doesn't believe it when Wes says, "I have no way of contacting any agent of Time Force."

"All right," Hayley says.  Whether she takes him at his word or not, she's clearly going to let it go.  "Then we'll have to do this the hard way."

Hayley knows everyone.  Not just Rangers, but everyone who's worked for, with, or against the Rangers over the years.  Everyone the Rangers have helped or reformed or brought home.  Everyone they've married.  Everyone they've given birth to.

It's still shocking to him that the last category exists, let alone grows yearly.

It doesn't surprise him at all that the first person she calls picks up on a webcam, joining her videoconference with Wes without batting an eye.  It doesn't surprise him that the person looks vaguely familiar, that he's wearing a piece of alien technology around his neck, or that he doesn't look excited about the uniforms.  Rangers and law enforcement don't always work well together.

"Wait, why are we going?" Kira asks.  The question may be the first logical thing he's heard anyone say since Cam agreed to take Rangers, and Rangers only--Hayley included, though he didn't even seem to notice the exception--to a place where they could scan his academy without actually visiting it.

"Because it's a ninja academy!" Ethan exclaims.  "You want to miss that?"

"We're not even going to see it," she points out.  "They're just going to wave their magical electronic things in its general direction and try to decide whether there's a time-distorting crystal somewhere on the grounds.  Big deal."

"And if there is a time-distorting crystal on the grounds?" Trent asks.  "You think they're just going to walk away?"

"I think Cam's not going to let us anywhere near his secret academy," she says.  "That's what I think.  And I remember what happened the last time I went wandering around the woods looking for secret energy sources."

"Uh..."  Ethan frowns.  "Which time?"

Conner claps him on the shoulder. "Not helping, dude."

"You can't seriously tell me you'd rather follow a bunch of guys with gadgets through the mountains than scrimmage," Kira says, putting her hands on her hips and glaring over at him.  Even when he's sitting, she can't look down at him.

Conner just shrugs.  "My ride's going," he says, and that's it.  No smart remarks about hot women with gadgets, hot women in general, hot cars, the potential coolness of sneaking around ninja territory, or even--

He's starting to think like Conner.  Hell must be freezing over.

In the end, it turns out to be easier than that.  Because Cam meets them in Blue Bay Harbor and Tommy's sense of weird goes off the second he gets close enough to shake the man's hand.  He looks at the necklace, and at first he thinks it's just because it's so obviously alien, but no one else seems to notice.

By the time he realizes nobody is going to say anything, Wes has already recapped the situation in person and they're trying to decide who will travel with whom.    "Hey," Tommy says, because that's what you say in a situation like this.  "Has your necklace done any time traveling?"

The only one who doesn't look at him like he's crazy is Cam, who answers the question as though he hears it all the time.  "Yeah," he says.  "It jumped forward a few decades when I went back in time and got it from my mom.  Why?"

Tommy can't stop staring at it.  "Can I see it?"

This makes Cam hesitate.  "I don't like to take it off," he says at last.  Tommy doesn't think this is the whole truth, but he can't really blame him.  He's not sure he would hand over something like that to the first guy who asked for it either.  Ranger or not.

It's enough to make Wes take out one of his gadgets, though, and he waves it in Cam's direction.  "Huh," he says.  If that's supposed to mean anything to them, it doesn't, except maybe to Eric, who crowds closer to look over his shoulder.

"That's the crystal," he says bluntly.

Cam snorts.  "I don't think so."

"How come we didn't--"  Wes breaks off, taking a step backward, and then another.  He forces Eric to move with him or get out of the way, and Eric watches him go like he's waiting for him to bump into a tree or something.

Four steps away, Wes stops again and turns the gadget toward Eric.  "Gone," he says.  Stepping forward once, he turns the screen back toward him and smiles.  "Look at that.  Maybe that explains why Time Force can't see it."

"This is all very interesting," Kira says. "Only not, because we have no idea what you're talking about."

"Who invited you, anyway?" Eric wants to know.

"You can't see it unless you're right on top of it," Hayley guesses, possibly heading off an argument.  Possibly just delaying it.  Tommy thinks Kira could probably take Eric.  Don't mess with short people; that's what his teammates have taught him over the years.

"Nope."  Wes looked strangely pleased about it.  "It's bonded to your morpher somehow.  That's your morpher, right?"

Cam, on the other hand, looks wary even as he nods.

"Noticed anything weird about it lately?" Wes continues.  "Strange energy, extra power, anything like that?"

Now Cam glances at Hayley.  "Its Power was drained last year," he says.  "Lately it's started to... work again."

"Really?"  Hayley looks like she wants to take it away from him herself, and she sounds almost accusing when she adds, "You didn't tell me."

"It's kind of unpredictable."  Cam looks uncomfortable.  "The amulet's been... weird.  Even before it took on--well."  He doesn't manage to make the fact that he just decided not to tell them something look anything other than obvious.  "It was exposed to Power again recently.  That probably had something to do with it."

"I can't tell when it happened."  Wes doesn't seem to be listening anymore, and he looks like he's talking mostly to Eric.  "Maybe it was always like that.  The crystal could have traveled hundreds of years."

"Or maybe someone hid it there," Eric says darkly.  "Recently.  If his morpher masks it, they might be planning to come back for it later."

"If his morpher masks the crystal," Ethan says, "how'd you guys pick it up at all?"

"A better question," Eric says, folding his arms, "is how Tommy here knew what it was."

Whether he likes it or not, he's suddenly the center of attention.  "There was an accident," he mutters.  "A long time ago.  I've been sensitive to time ever since."

"What, like an allergy?" Conner demands.  "You're allergic to time?"

"Dude, that makes no sense."  Ethan elbows him.  "Time is everywhere.  You can't be allergic to it."

Wes surprises him by saying, "Jen's the same way.  She can sense time holes, ships... even weird stuff like people's ages.  Genetic mutation."

"Ironically," Eric says under his breath.

"Time holes," Tommy says.  "Yeah.  Time loops, too.  Not ages."

Wes just shrugs, though his offhanded comment isn't reassuring.  "Maybe that comes later."

Cam keeps his morpher, of course.  That was never really in question.  He doesn't have to show them where the academy is, either, which probably makes him happy.  He's too busy glaring at Eric to show it, though.

Tommy knows the feeling.

They say you get more tolerant as you get older.  The things that used to bother you don't seem so important anymore, so you're easier to get along with.  Tommy hasn't found that to be true of any of the old people he knows, but Kat says that's probably a generational conflict, not a personality issue.

All Tommy knows is that, whatever else can be said about growing up or growing old, you definitely find yourself getting less curious.  You start to recognize that there are things you just don't need to know, and there are even more things that you don't want to know.  You begin to hope that someone else will save the world, at least once or twice, so that you can have a day off to do more important things.

So when someone else offers, say, to figure out why and how a whole trizerium crystal bonded to and hid itself inside an ancient amulet morpher, and whether that's going to mean the end of the timeline as you know it, you say, "Okay."  You say, "Great."  You might even say, if you're feeling particularly generous, "Good luck with that."

Then you go home, and you take your team with you, and you get to work on those more important things.  Like asking Ethan how he figured out where the spare key is.  Like watching Conner and Hayley closely enough to determine, once and for all, that they're either dating or conducting experiments on the dissolution of personal space.  Like letting Trent draw him and Kira while they try, for the third time, to hook up her synthesizer to the entertainment system.

Like enjoying, for the first time, the fact that his kids--that his friends seem to have nothing better to do than to hang out at his house on a Saturday afternoon.