investigators secretly descended into the Vault, where they received the greatest shock of all.

“There was this kid down there, maybe 15 or 16, and he was tinkering with some pretty weird looking machines,” Harkees described. “It was like stepping into a mad scientist’s laboratory. Everywhere were whiteboards filled with scribbles we couldn’t make any sense of until Jan looked at the writing in a mirror. The kid had written everything in reverse mirrored script the same way that Leonardo da Vinci used to do. We were quite simply floored by our discovery. The kid didn’t even take notice of us, which was kind of creepy. He’d just walk around us as if we were chairs or boxes. So we set up our equipment and saw that the readings were off the chart. We’d found the source of the temporal displacements, but we still had questions.”

In the end, the research team wrangled an audience with Bill Gates himself, and that’s when all the pieces finally came together.

“I started what I call the ‘Genius Park Project’ about 16 years ago,” explained Microsoft’s former Chief Technologist, founder and on-again, off-again richest human on Earth. “I was always a big fan of Jurassic Park, so when I heard about a source of intact DNA from Leonardo da Vinci himself, the idea came to me. It was just like the day I was toying around with a Macintosh and the idea of Windows just popped into my head. Anyway, I imagined how wonderful it would be to bring back the greatest minds in history. That’s the promise that drove me, although now I realize that I may have overstepped one or two ethical boundaries. But the technology was just proving itself possible, and the dream was so vibrant and real, well, I just couldn’t stop. I secretly employed a team of top scientists and a willing female host mom to bring my project to fruition. Since then, young Leo has been living in the Park Vault, and I have to say that he’s exceeded my wildest expectations. I guess I didn’t realize that some of the boy’s experiments were having an effect on people above ground. Sorry about that.”

As for the temporal displacements, further study of Leo II’s writings and inventions suggest that the young scientist has invented a working time warp. Microsoft plans to license the technology as soon as they figure out how to eliminate the possibility of paradox copyright infringement. In the meantime, now that his existence is no longer a secret, young Leo has been given a chance to step out of his hidden domain.

“He seems fascinated with girls with quirky smiles,” noted Sue E. Gonzaloger, a special education facilitator hired by Gates to acclimate his ward to the outside world. “And all sorts of codes, too. Go figure.” –Nell Chase

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