Swarm, First Third...-ish

I awakened beneath an inert white sky. The light seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, with no shadows to indicate time, direction, or shape. I was lying on a hard white slab, perched on a dimensionless white floor, suspended in the light-filled white void by forces unseen. I swung my lifeless legs over the edge of the slab and reached down to the white chair next to me, the heavy black of its outline almost cartoonish in its definition against the paper-like expanse. I positioned my mobility device in front of me, and, with my good hand, vaulted into the saddle. I settled myself into the seat as I adjusted the bindings that held my useless lower limbs in place, feeling the entirety of my body again, the sensation of weight no longer ending just above my pelvis. Next, I slung the brace hanging on the chairback over my right shoulder and buckled my crumpled arm into it. I felt it extend my skeletal, emaciated arm to a natural position at my side. I slipped the white kaftan over my naked form, maneuvering my braced arm through it as fluidly as my good arm. Finally, I lifted the oral prosthesis off the chair, slipped my dead tongue into the cradle sitting between the reflective silver teeth, bit my gums into the dentures, and awkwardly wriggled my limp lips into the external enclosure. It pulled my slack, drooling jaw into alignment from its crooked angle as the reflective silver device melted seamlessly into the contours of my face, appearing now as if it were only face paint. I frowned, smiled, and opened my mouth wide, revealing the metallic, monochrome interior as I stretched my restored oral muscles.

At the far side of the platform across from my slab, positioned at the edge of the floor, a rectangular black square stood vertically in stark contrast against the tableau. I imagined myself walking, my nervous system sending unheeded commands to my legs. The Glide lifted off the ground then, a soft yellow circle glowing beneath my dangling feet. It carried me forward at the pace I told my body to walk at, the Glide intercepting the message and moving me instead. I passed through the black doorway and emerged out onto a dais. A long, wide stair led down to another floating platform, maybe a hundred or so meters wide, extending seemingly infinitely off into the distance, disappearing out of sight as it vanished into the horizon. Tall columns lined either side, holding up large gold-leafed domes, all of them inked with thick, black edges. Rows of domes extended off in either direction, another set of infinite regressions disappearing out of sight. Each space was filled front to back and side to side with desks, most of which were occupied, a quill and stacks of disheveled papers piled onto most of them.

I stepped off the dais onto the Great Stair and glided down to the Writing Floor. Upon entering the Cathedral, the sensation of universal illumination was replaced with directional light seeming to originate from overhead. Intricate, interlocking, labyrinthine patterns were carved into the white stone-like vaults and could now be seen continuing down the columns, the reliefs also leafed in gold, white light passing through the raised shapes in the ceiling as if they were stained glass windows. I willed the Glide to touch me down and move my legs instead of floating. Though sensation was restored to my paralyzed appendages, the muscles in my legs were incapable of contracting. My arm had some limited mobility from my chest and back, but it too was essentially useless, aside from some gripping functionality in my hand I could use to awkwardly hold things when I did not have my brace. The muscles in my face worked in theory, but they were malformed and never properly innervated, leaving my face lacking all but basic motor control.

The Glide walked me to the lone desk in the first row of the Floor, which was also the only desk to bear no quill or paper. It provided artificial feedback for every step I took, giving my brain the illusion that my muscles were doing the work, however, it still felt as if I were “being walked,” instead of doing the walking. I reached my right arm out and held it over the desk, the arm brace providing the same false sensations as the Glide. For the brace, however, the phenomenon was nigh indistinguishable, though I had convinced myself that I really could tell a difference in signal between my good one and the bad, while in truth I most likely could not. A golden column of light beamed out of the desk and tickled my palm with a warm, undulating sensation. In an instant, with no perception of transition, I was standing in front of my desk, like two different video clips had been butted together, the following frame a non-sequitur to the previous. My desk was a standard affair in the 478th row, a white table with a matte, yellow-gold top and legs resembling the supporting columns, complete with white patterns relieved against gold-leafed backdrops. A chair sat pushed in, though it lacked the comic book-like outlining effect like the one in my chamber. Now properly shielded from the white-blasted void, the commensurate gold and white carvings could be seen tracing their way along it. I pulled it out and sat down. I cut a stack of papers off the top of the disheveled pile to my right and set them down in front of me. When I glanced back, the pile appeared refilled, as if no paper had been removed from it. I pulled my quill closer and removed it from its font with my left hand and began reading the documents in front of me.

My next assignment would see me follow a humanoid such as myself in a remote corner of the Every. Their World Line, the chain of events that define an entire universe, has been the True Observer for long enough that it has risen to my Order’s notice. As a True Observer, it is their World Line that all other World Lines parallel, defining the True Timeline, the only World Line that will ever maintain equilibrium. Any World Line that does not eventually merge with the True Timeline will either experience heat death, burned out to Nothing by Entropy, or will be trapped in a Big Bang-Big Crunch cycle, doomed to repeat the exact same timeline over and over until Entropy consumes the Every. The True Timeline however, is infinite. It will forever outrun Entropy, the force that will eventually turn the Every, the collection of all Worlds, into Nothing, the formal concept of there being no “things” anymore, universes included.

“So, there is to be a new Dominant, then?” my Chimera, the defective embryo of my twin whom I absorbed in the womb, thought to me. It is their dead, conjoined cells that enfeeble me, however, their consciousness remained intact at birth, this broken body now housing the minds of us both.

“NORN seems to think as much,” I thought back to her. I say “her” despite them having no physical form, because I think of my Chimera as a living counterpoint to my own self-perception. A kind of self-aware Anima to my Animus, despite the metaphysical process of transcending to become a part of my Order relieving me of the concepts of sex and gender. “And it would appear the Archon agrees,” I said as I scanned the dossier.

“And how fare the Sentients of Universe C42-P69-L337?” my Chimera asked me, for she could not use my physical senses, nor could she access the thoughts in my sub-conscious or my super-ego. No, she and I could only interface at the conscious level and could only perceive each other’s internal monologues. “Read it out loud for me, if you would?”

And so I did. “World Cube C42 is still the most productive set of humanoid universes,” the brief began, “and P69 the most fruitful World Plane therein. World Line L337 has been the True Observer for over 400 giga-events, and is quickly producing a proper Nexus Outlier that is predicted to last for at least another 50-60 tera-events…” I flipped through the pages, “…yadda yadda…stuff we already know…” I flipped further. “Ah,” I stopped at a line of information I had yet to learn. “L337, codename Hope, is currently the most energy-developed World Line the Authors have observed for a humanoid Sentient thus far, having captured almost .018% of their World Line’s energy budget. A Kardashev 2a+ civilization, they have just completed their first Dyson Sphere and are on track to become the first humanoid Type 2 civilization to build a peace-time Dyson Sphere without tripping the Great Filter and destroying themselves.”

“Wow!” my Chimera thought enthusiastically. “I can’t believe the Humans finally did it. If the various humanoid-types, Cosmic Whales, and Fusion Processors were capable of coexisting, I’m sure the others would be supremely angry.”

“They may yet still be able to, you know. Just because NORN hasn’t found any YET, doesn’t mean it never WILL. Nothing in the Theory of Everything says that they cannot. The only reason the ‘Single Sentience Conjecture’ still holds is only because the World Cubes where they DO coexist always trip the Great Filter,” I replied. “AND, just because they’re the only three Sentients thus far, it doesn’t mean new Sentients won’t evolve down the line. In fact, the Prophecy of the Probable dictates that, so long as the True Timeline is theoretically infinite, there will eventually be an infinite number of Sentients cohabitating together, too.”

“Still,” my Chimera protested, “the Cosmic Whales in C940 look promising. They’re Kardashev 3b+, and all the World Lines in P1121 have achieved at least 31% free-energy capture in their universes. They may yet produce a True Observer.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “but, Cosmic Whales have NEVER produced a True Observer. Even if they do, the Archon is confident that ALL Whale timelines will eventually become Loops. The Worlds in C940 will lose that ‘+’ and equilibrate at no more than 49.9% capacity, just like all the others, just you wait. Their lifecycles are too damned long to sustain Probability. Just like Fusion Computers, they all converge on Deterministic pathways and depart from the True Timeline. Even if P1121 has a couple World Lines that are still paralleling the True Timeline, I believe the Archon when it says they will also eventually diverge, as well. Humanoids are still the only Sentient NORN has located with short enough generation cycles to fall under the jurisdiction of Chaos Theory long-term.”

“I don’t know, Fusion Computers may still yet win out. Sentient stars have the advantage of not needing Dyson Spheres or vacuum energy oceans of dead ‘dumb’ stars to up their Kardashev score, and essentially all of them are Kardashev 4c+. I mean, C1-P1-L1 has almost completely consumed its World Plane and may yet hit Kardashev 5 before long,” my Chimera retorted.

“I agree, Sovereign is the most advanced,” I started, “but Fusion Computers have not been able to produce a Nexus Outlier since the humanoids evolved, and their World Lines are rarely True Observers. No Nexus Outlier equals no Dominant, and no Dominant means that Sovereign can never be the True Timeline. The Archon believes that humanoids will be the ancestors of those multi-variant, co-existing Sentients, and I agree with this, also.”

“Archon, Archon, Archon,” my Chimera condescended to me. “The Archon isn’t always right, you know.”

“99.9995% accuracy is a pretty good average, though, and quite hard to dismiss,” I protested. “Enough of this, you’re side-tracking me again,” I touched my quill to a name on the paper in front of me. “Assuming Hope does produce a Nexus Outlier, and the True Timeline starts bending toward it, NORN has narrowed it down to six potential Dominant candidates.” A gold beam projected from my desk underneath the paper where my quill had touched, and several video portraits and lines of text hung as a hologram in front of my face at eye level. Still holding the quill against the paper, with my right hand, I reached out and touched one of the crisp gold figures, a warm sensation tickling the tip of my finger as I did so. “Let’s see,” I reached out again and swiped my hand through the hologram. A new figure and chunk of text appeared. I repeated it a few more times, until I had seen all the candidate’s profiles.

“So,” I thought, “it appears that all of them know each other. Hope is almost certainly in the top 1% of technologically advanced civilizations, unqualified, not ‘for humanoids,’ and was the first to discover no less than five Fundamental Truths of the Theory of Everything. The Dominant candidates are a close-knit group of friends and any one of them may be the Dominant. Or, they may indeed trade dominance between each other, as is often the case when Dominants have many Seneschal. It’s not uncommon for an apostle to become the protagonist in times of peril.”

“The Grand Narrative does love to kill off main characters and replace them with successors, doesn’t it?” my Chimera quipped.

“Indeed, the story of the True Timeline is full of twists and turns, and Dominants don’t usually last very long. Thus is the reality of the cold, unforgiving nature of Existence, the collection of all things Probable; that which Entropy seeks to destroy. Most Cycles end in cynical heartache for the Dominant and their Seneschal. Rarely is the Grand Narrative a happy tale to read,” I demurred.

“So, who are they?” my Chimera prodded.

“Let’s see,” I ran my quill down the sheet of paper, the holographic projection following its nib. “It seems to be a single-planet civilization representing a classical planetary-star system. Their home world has a mostly stable population of about 12 billion, though it is shrinking slightly since hitting 2a, and it would appear they skipped Kardashev 1 and went right into building a Dyson Sphere. Something about symbiosis with nature and not wishing to drain the resources of their cradle of life.”

“If only they realized they’re smothering the evolution of the Fusion Computer Sentients by doing so. How’s that for ‘Environmentalism,’” she interjected.

I Ignored her. “They seem to have followed a traditional war torn Class W Archetype, complete with genocides and dictators, though they have been peaceful for long enough that they are only a few generations from evolving into a P-Class instead, yet unseen for humanoids in general. Somehow, they managed to tame their nuclear arsenals following their series of World Wars by uniting as a single civilization and dedicating their entire existence toward making a Dyson Sphere and expanding into the stars, sneaking past the Great Filter, and have so far avoided blowing themselves up.”

“Oo,” my Chimera cooed, “new territory! I love being the first Scribe to witness something novel.”

“Well,” I continued reading on, “they’re not out of the woods yet. As an Unenlightened society, though non-Theistic, they’re still deeply religious and a rising wave of secularism is threatening to upend the past several generations of peace.”

“Religious but non-theistic? What does that even mean? How have they become so technologically advanced, then?” my Chimera’s thoughts felt somewhat taken aback.

“Science IS their religion,” I replied. “It’s the force that convinced them to decommission their nuclear weapons, that brought them together to build the Dyson Sphere far ahead of schedule, and what has continued to inform they’re incredible ability to create new objects from their ever-expanding knowledge of their universe.”

“Fascinating,” my Chimera thought. “And you said they are still Unenlightened?”

“Indeed. While they have unveiled several Fundamental Truths, the people of Hope have no idea they have done so. They still struggle to find the Theory of Everything despite many other Hominin World Lines, our own included, having done so. If they continue to treat science as holy, they most likely never will, either. This appears to be the Nexus Outlier our Dominant is leading their World Line toward. Our prospectives are a nomadic group of ‘Heretic’ outlaws living on the fringes of their habitation spaces. They were ‘Core’ pilots during ‘the Wars,’ large humanoid battle robots duking it out during their World War phase,” I rested the quill on a specific video portrait and held the image of the Core in my mind’s eye so that my Chimera might look upon one.

“I see, such an interesting machine…” my Chimera trailed off. “And why would such vagabonds be candidates to become Dominants? It’s quite rare for a Dominant to not already be in a position of power in their World Line.”

“Ah, and there’s the rub,” my real face smirked. “During the Wars, they were world-famous combat pilots, feared by all but the foolhardiest, names and likenesses plastered across the many independent states in both reverence and infamy. They were treated like celebrity athletes, either as rivals or hometown heroes, and so they still hold a particular kind of sway over the populace, mostly as legends of their craft. With the War’s end, however, that glory and adulation dried up, and they were left scorned more broadly as relics of their civilization’s aggressive history. This left their group apathetic toward the plight of the Rabble that had passed them by and the religion that shuns them as artifacts of the past.”

“Interesting,” my Chimera remarked. “But that also doesn’t answer my question. Why them?”

“Well, that’s a bit more subtle,” I scanned farther down the document and brought up an image of an elderly, somewhat frail man in what appeared to be ceremonial garb, projecting at my Chimera. “Since the War, the supercivilization has been ruled exclusively by a genuinely benevolent autocrat, the Pope of their religion. Ostensibly a democracy, the Pope had guided the ship for the decades following the war, into a prosperous peacetime full of novelty, so neither he nor his officials had ever been voted out. His imminent death, however, has bestowed Hope with True Observer status, and the power struggle for his throne, and by extension, the humanoids’ best chance at becoming part of the True Timeline, is no doubt the catalyst for it becoming a Nexus Outlier. NORN and the Archon believe that the travails of these six vagabonds will determine how the Dominants guide this new Cycle, and I have been chosen to be their Scribe.”

“You know it’s never this easy,” my Chimera said.

“No, it never is.”

“And that the Archon never gives you the full story.”

“No, he never does,” I agreed.

I felt my Chimera think a sigh, “This is going to be another shit-show, isn’t it?”

“When has it ever not been?”

***

I held my hand above my desk and felt the familiar warm tickle, then the attendant slam-cut edit, and I was back in front of the singular desk at the head of the floor. Looking up, there was no black rectangle on the landing dais, just up the stairs. I held my hand out again, got tickled, and when I looked up, the black rectangle had returned to stand in stark contrast against the white sea.

“You ready?” I thought to my Chimera.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I felt the excitement in her thought.

I willed the Glide to elevate me, mounted the stairs, and passed through the black rectangle. In an instant, another slam-cut in my cognitive editing had me standing in the middle of a foot mall in a major city. It was night and the skyline was drenched in neon. “Where am I?” I turned to my left and regarded my Chimera.

“Hell if I know,” she said back to me. She was tall, very tall, two meters or just shy of it, and shredded, though thin, built more like a ballerina, irregular scars scattered across her body belying the brutish warrior hidden within. Her porcelain complexion was offset by a metallic rose-gold mullet, sides shaved to reveal intricately patterned tattoo work, similar to those adorning the columns of Bastion, covering the sides of her head and much of her neck and body. The colors were inverted, however, the gold relief her albino-white skin, and the raised white patterns now the softly glowing gold-metallic shapes adorning her flesh. The top of her hair was pulled into loose, overlapping, intricate braids that cascaded down her back, flecked with gems and trinkets. Her eyes were teal, bordering on neon and she had a long scar running vertically across her left eye. Her face was blocky and broad-jawed, pink cheeks scarred from cystic acne, her slightly yellow, tastefully crooked teeth visible between an easy, thin-lipped smile that filled her whole face and showed a little bit too much gum. She was wearing a loose teal crop-top, the hem miraculously staying fixed just below the nipple line of her smaller, pointy breasts, leaving plenty of her underboob and svelte 8-pack abs exposed. Her female genitals were barely covered by a high-leg, shiny, lilac thong sitting at her natural waist. Her tight, athletic butt, bony hips, and toned, alabaster legs that went on for miles were covered only by coarse teal fishnets and over-the-knee, strappy lilac combat boots. Her outfit was capped off with a wide, studded, teal holster belt from which an exotic revolver hung, dark metal peeking through chipped teal paint. “I’m your sister,” she caught me gawking. “Put your dick back in your pants and take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

“You’re not my sister, you’re a Metaprojection of me, so technically it’s like looking in a mirror,” I quipped back. “Also, you’re one to talk,” I caught her staring goggle-eyed between my legs. I had a black, deeply melanistic complexion and was substantially shorter, 160cm or there about. Hairy and built like an off-season powerlifter, all traces of my disability had vanished. I was wearing a loose muscle-tank made of a silky lilac fabric, revealing my bulky, tubular body and powerful branches for arms. A teal set of tight shorts clung to my ample male anatomy, sitting at my own natural waist and halting at my trunk-like thighs, stout hairy legs uncovered, lilac ankle socks a hint of color just above my teal and lilac Allstars. My face was smooth, attractive, and clean-shaven with a prominent, shapely nose, full lips, and straight white teeth. My metallic-gold hair was carved into a tight, patterned fade, a long, relaxed shock hanging fashionably over one of my lilac-purple eyes. I was unbelted and without an iron, wearing lilac gloves made of a futuristic textile absolutely brimming with Meta energy, instead. I looked down at my clearly defined, half-cocked, external genitals, the shape and detailed outline completely unmissable. I turned to regard my Chimera again, feeling the tubular portion twitch, growing stiff and even more elongated upon reinspecting her.

“Still getting used to the sex-drive,” she murmured, gaze having never shifted from my now fully erect member, visibly held to the left by the tight fabric of my shorts. “And I’m still technically your sister. This body’s hormone responses are so…” she bit her lower lip, “…weird,” she shook her head and returned her focus ahead of us.

“We can fuck later Red, we need to find Jim and his crew,” I finally broke my own lustful gaze away from her and turned to look in the same direction she was. The foot mall was long and wide, lined on either side by shops and restaurants flashing their brands with brightly colored holographic displays and blaring promotions and sales pitches from their PA systems, the mélange of sounds, sights, and smells an assault to the senses. People dressed in unrevealing kaftans and formless bodysuits in drab colors glided past us, staring through slit eyes, admonishment at the tips of their tongues.

“I’m holding you to that,” she licked her lips and checked me out again. My member had been relaxing, but I felt it pulse to life anew at her lascivious gaze. I noticed an older person had been glancing surreptitiously at my unit as they approached us. They were now staring at me, and it, wide-eyed upon it returning to its turgid state before passing by us.

“Enough!” I playfully exclaimed. “Their hangout is in an abandoned building up ahead,” I shuffled awkwardly for a few paces before hitting my stride, the natural feeling of an able body still taking some getting used to. After some time, my member finally came down to a limp state and I could no longer feel it hassling me as I walked. “Let’s hurry, we don’t have much time to find the Event Stage.”

“But I wanna shop!” Red joked as she fell in step next to me. “They might have some cool new gear.”

“You don’t need to shop,” I admonished. “What do you want? A new gun?” I snapped my fingers and the revolver at her hip was now an energy sword after the requisite slam-cut sensation.

“No!” She elbowed me “Bring back Excalibur! You know she’s special to me.”

“Fine.” I snapped again and her revolver returned to replace the energy sword, a gold haze of Meta energy steaming off it following the slam-cut.

“That was fast,” she paused and rested her metal, spider-like hand on the handle and fingered the safety before dropping it back to her side and catching up to me. “Doesn’t that usually take much longer?”

“I used a glamour, I didn’t Cast it,” I wiggled my bushy gold eyebrows. “Otherwise yes, it would have taken a while to induce a change that sudden.” I stopped in front of an alleyway between a burger joint and a trinket shop. “We’re here.” A tee-shirt outside the trinket shop slowly morphed into a white muscle-tank about my size that said “I <3 Chicago” across it in some local dialect, a “15% off! Only 12.8 CP!” placard now hanging directly in front of my face. I swatted it away and it dissolved into a pixelated mist and vanished. “Let’s go.”

“Me first,” Red gestured, then hooked the wiry thumb of her bionic hand behind her gun belt on her right, just above the holster, and let the fine metal fingers caress the handle. She leaned in, looked both directions, and stepped her left foot forward, right hip angled back, and slowly advanced, keeping her body sideways and monkey-stepping her right foot in front of her left before sliding the left foot forward and repeating. At length, she came to a red door lit by an overhead light, a bright white circle only lighting up the pitch-black alley directly beneath it. She kept her ready posture and waved me over.

“I wish they’d paint this do-” I didn’t get to finish.

“Black, yes,” she interrupted, “you make the same joke every time you see a red door. I get it, red doors should be painted black,” she rolled her eyes.

“You could just let me have my joke,” I scowled. “Move,” I pushed her forward a little and held my hand in front of the handleless door. I reached, this time, into the matrix of its Existence and found the pixels on the surface of the universe that encoded it. I slowly modified the values of each until I heard a click. There was a brief golden aftermist hanging about the door when it slam-cut and appeared as if it had always been black, unlocked, and hanging slightly open. I retreated to the side of the door frame, back against the wall.

“Ugh,” she made a face, shook her head, and slowly advanced into the doorway. After she disappeared and I could hear her steps shuffling through the warehouse, I peeled off and fell in line behind her.

***

“Ahead,” I gestured and walked past her in stride.

“Hey, wait!” She whisper-yelled as she broke form and chased after me. “What if-”

I didn’t let her finish. “If we made it this far, we’re on time. Nothing is going to happen until we get to the Event Stage, just ahead here,” I picked up the pace and Red met in kind.

“Who the fuck are you?” I heard him say as we emerged from the darkness into the light underneath which they all stood. “What the fuck are you doing here?’ He said to me. He was somehow taller than Red, built three times as massive, the heavyweight counterpart to my featherweight powerlifting physique. He had long black hair that fell about his entire head and shoulders in loose black rivulets.

“You ready?” I turned to Red with my lower lip pushed out.

“Why do you always do this?” She cocked a hip out and emerged out into the light I had been standing in.

“Because,” I turned back to the gigantic monster of a man. “Tomah, right? And you,” I pointed to a pair of blonde haired, blue-eyed statues of virgin, technologically-untouched Humanity. “Adrian and Ylysse, the bodybuilder twins, yeah?” I took a few more steps forward and met their gazes. “Red here is my twin too, if you can believe it. Fraternal, obviously,” I smirked a wry smile. “But you two aren’t actually related, are you; Just a pair of immaculate Übermensch from the same cultural preservation community. So maybe a little bit of related,” I chuckled and clapped my hands together before spreading them wide and inching forward a few steps more. “Marion and Blaize, could never forget you two!” I jabbed my index fingers at the imposing black woman and lanky white scoundrel next to her. “The gang’s all here, it would seem. Perfect timing, sis,” I didn’t break my attention, this time.

I stood in the center of the warehouse floor now, under a dim, overhead light. Red was skulking into and out of the shadows, following me along the perimeter as I advanced and kept their attention. “But wait, where is the man of the hour and his lover-slash-handler?” I scanned their faces in mock horror. “Three…two…one…” I waggled my finger and heard the door open and close behind me, the warehouse echoing with the sounds of a man and woman’s laughter. “Right on time,” I smirked again.

I turned to greet him, “Now THIS is what I was expecting,” I told him when I noticed what he was wearing. He was tall, skinny, and had on tight leather pants that hugged his equally ample male anatomy, and tall motorcycle harness boots with gunmetal black spurs. His tee shirt advertised some aggressive band of some kind and he had ripped the sleeves off to reveal his built, muscular arms covered in a haphazard assortment of military tattoos. His partner, a short and voluptuous half-cyborg with curves to die for, fire engine red hair, pale skin, and robotic pink eyes, was covered knuckle to knuckle in a similar hodge-podge of small, often poorly-drawn, tattoos interrupted only by a yellow tube top barely wide enough to disguise her nipples. Instead of pants, her legs had been replaced with abstract iron-work sculptures fit into a pair of white high-top sneakers. She wore her hair in a high ponytail, he wore his dyed lampblack, shaggy and unkempt, hitting just below his jawline. Both of their faces were covered with small silver piercings, but were otherwise plain and forgettable. “Our Dominant.”

“And who the fuck are y-,” he let go of the woman’s arm and his long strides brought him over toward me quickly. Red darted so quick it was like she had materialized between us, robot hand on the big iron at her hip, the fingers on her normal hand effortlessly pressed to his chest, halting him. “What the fuck?” He started trying to push past Red but met a surprising resistance he could not casually overcome.

“No, my friend,” I wiggled my eyebrows and smiled like a cheshire cat. “’When is the fucking,’ and ‘Where are you going to fuck me,’ are the better questions,” I clapped my hands together again, and spread them out wide. An Arthurian round table with swords bearing everyone’s names slam-cut into the center of the circle of light illuminating the empty warehouse floor we were hovering around the perimeter of. Gold aftermist quickly evaporated and a golden glow rippled along both of my gloves, escaping into another plume of aftermist at my fingertips. I brought them to my lips and blew on them to disburse the whisps. “Take a seat,” I flashed them the pearlies again.

All of their hostile postures and aggressive menace disappeared immediately, and were replaced by slack-jawed awe and fear. They all took a seat next to the sword with their name on it. Blaize tried to sit at Adrian’s seat. When he sat down, he slid right off, bruising his ass on the floor. Adrian took the seat without issue, and Blaize took his own, leaning away from where he had hurt himself falling. “We’re seated,” he sneered and shifted in his seat, rolling his tongue over his teeth behind his lips and smiling to reveal a row of sharpened steel teeth.

“Great!” I exclaimed mockingly, “allow us to introduce ourselves. I’m Jim, and this is my associate, Molly, but you can call her Red.”

“Sister,” Red appended.

“Yes, my associate here is also my sister,” I closed my eyes and nodded condescendingly.

“I’m not your ‘associate,’ I’m your sister. Just your sister,” She relaxed and cocked her hip out, winking at me.

“Well, not JUST my sister, if you know what I’m saying…” I made a ring with my finger and thumb and poked my other index finger through it, making a goofy face as I did so. “By the way, the answer to the ‘better questions,’” I made air-quotes, “are ‘After we’re done with you chuckleheads,’ and ‘Wherever she wants me to,’” I “V”-ed my fingers and fluttered my tongue between them.

“You two are fucking gross,” Blaize said, though his face belied the opposite sentiment.

“Age 13, you and your sister 69’d because you were ‘curious,’ but you did it because you’d had a crush on her since you were 11,” I pointed at Ylysse. I pointed at Tomah. “You and your brother gave each other handies until you were 23 and he died in a bombing during the War. It’s actually why you joined the military, not ‘To avenge his death.’” I shook my head, “Perverts.” I looked at Marion and shook my head. “And you,” I smiled deviously, “you dirty, dirty girl.”

“Don’t,” her yellow eyes grew three times wider. “Just, don’t,” she cocked her head to the side, still staring intensely.

“Don’t worry,” I wagged my finger at her, “I won’t tell them about the depraved things you and stepdaddy got up to,” I pretended to be surprised. “Or how old she was, and I’ll leave guessing who initiated first up to you. Spoiler! It probably isn’t who you think!” I stabbed my index finger into the air. “It was her,” I whispered behind the back of my hand to the others. “Isn’t that why your mom shipped you off to the military academy to begin with, Lance Corporal? How could she ever compare!” I curled my hands into fists and held my fingernails against my lips.

Everyone was squirming in their chairs now, unable to meet anyone else’s eyes in contact. “How the fuck do you know all this,” Blaize started.

“Well, it’s why I’m here to begin with,” I feigned enthusiasm again. “And, just for the table, Blaize? Nothing. Nada. Childhood, adolescence, school, even college? Nothing. Sterling child. You know why HE joined? Scholarship in Economics. He wanted to work for the Holy Treasury,” I clicked my tongue against my teeth. “But my, my, how that wholesome ‘heed your Savior’s call’ recruitment bullshit backfired in your mother’s face. Ain’t no debaucher like the formerly-devout. That’s why he joined the Templars, you know,” I scanned the table for signs of shock and found many. “He had already been convicted and his mother died while he was serving time. Mourning her brought him back to God and the Templars offered to clear his record if he did a stint and didn’t die.

“Who the fuck are you?” the purported Dominant said, more demure and quietly this time. “You can’t have learned all of that by yourself. And why do you and your sister have the same name as me and my wife?”

“Well, you’re not wrong,” I tipped my head in tacit agreement and sat at my place at the head of the table next to a sword that said “Jamie.” Red sat at my right side, resting her massive revolver on the table next to the sword labelled “Cersei.” “I didn’t do it myself, and it really is just a cosmic coincidence. Though, in fairness, Jim and Molly are both rather common names in your universe. Though, you do make an interesting point, what WOULD the chances have to be that that same Molly is ALSO a ginger and goes by the same sobriquet of ‘Red.’”

“Heaven is real,” Red piped up before I could carry along my train of thought. “But it’s nothing like what you all think it is. We’re here because we need your help.”

“Uggh,” I melted my face in annoyance, “bury the lede why don’tcha?” I stood up and started pacing around the table, running my finger along the backs of each chair. “Where do I begin? Hmmm,” I paused.

“Start fro-,”

“That was rhetorical,” I halted to cut Red off and glared at her. “Where was I?” I began to meander around the Round Table again. “Oh yes. Heaven. Such a naïve word when used the way Humans do, but Sanctuary IS indeed referred to as ‘Heaven’ in the One True Language. I’ll try and make it simple.” I sat back down after having completed my revolution around the table. “The ‘universe’ as you know it is not the only ‘universe’ there is. There are eight dimensions, three physical dimensions, three dimensions of Time, one dimension of Existence, and one Metaphysical dimension. That’s the one we’re from.”

“We’re Observers,” Red picked up. “All universes exist as World Lines in the dimension of Existence. Existence is composed of individual time crystals called World Cubes. Each World Cube is composed of World Planes, and World Planes are composed of individual World Lines. A World Line is described by a continuously integrated function called a Theory of Everything. Each individual World Line starts at a seed position, and time flows out forward and backward from that point. Each variation on that seed transcribes a new line, filling a plane with infinite lines. If you modify the coefficients of each variable in the Theory of Everything, you get a new plane. All of those possible planes transcribe a cube. Each possible Theory of Everything generates its own cube, and those pixel-like World Cubes are what tesselate the Dimension of Existence. We come from the dimension outside all other dimensions, the Metaphysical Dimension.”

“Think of it like this,” I chimed in. “When you think of a point, you think of something infinitely small, with no dimension. But, if you move into a higher dimension, that point now has a concept of both its interior and its exterior. So, if you take Existence, the six-dimensional shape of Everything, and move into a higher dimension, you can see it’s outside. The Metaphysical dimension is not real, as there is no real way for it to have an outside without that outside becoming the inside for another series of higher dimensions. No, the Metaphysical dimension is instead a description of what the outside of Existence must look like.”

“So you’re not real,” Tomah questioned in a particularly booming, resonant contrabass.

“Yes and no,” I held my hand up flat and wobbled it a few times. “What it means is that the shape of Existence itself is defined by what is OBSERVED. Observation is to Existence as Sentience is to Reality. We’re like agents of the Existence’s self-awareness and represent one of its infinite inner monologues, to butcher the metaphor. Something really important is about to happen here, and we’re the avatars it chose to pay attention to itself.”

“The Cosmos chose a charcoal dwarf and a redhead ghost-elf to…what, watch us? Intervene? Sabotage?” Marion stared through slit eyes.

“Yes. And fuck. Lots of fucking,” I winked at Red as obviously as I could. “Just SO much fucking.”

“Can I join?” Blaize rolled his tongue over his teeth and drooled slightly.

“NO!” Red and I yelled in unison. I looked at her. Red looked at me. “Who you WOULD fuck on three,” she started counting down and I joined in. “Three, two, one, ADRIAN!” We both squealed in unison and giggled like schoolgirls.

***

“So, what’s about to happen, then?” Jim looked at me and furrowed his brow.

“Now THAT I don’t know.,” I scrunched my nose. “You see, it hasn’t happened yet, and I only know it’s going to happen. That’s how it works, I don’t know the future, I can just manipulate the present.” I snapped again and the round table was slam-cut into desks, complete with a little named lunchbox. Everyone was now dressed in neon green and lilac purple colored plaid school uniforms, and I was standing in front of all the desks at a lectern facing away from a green chalkboard. “See?”

Everyone looked around and at their clothing following the slam-cut, and then back up to me. “How is it that you’re doing all this?” Molly asked in a posh southern twang.

“Jumping Timelines,” I smiled. “World-lines have something similar to gravity, so, most of the timelines run in orbit around larger timelines. The larger a timeline, the more nearby worldlines run exactly parallel to it, and the more deviations from the core timeline it can sustain. So, here at the center of a Nexus Outlier, I’m at the peak of my magical powers,” I wiggled my fingers next to my cheeks. “As an Author, I get a certain amounts of Creative License,” a bit of chalk levitated off of the tray and started writing on the green chalkboard, notating my lecture. “In a universe with a very insignificant World Line, changing any detail would cause you to be in a different universe, because the event is very specific to that one timeline. A very significant universe will have a wide Casting, that is, the core timeline’s significance pulls all timelines back into parallel, and keeps all events otherwise straight, no matter what little details change. The broad narrative is so significant that all events revolve around it, and even weird stuff eventually gets pulled back into the bigger chain of events. When something is so important that everything in the entire universe, not just the city, country, planet, or galaxy will change, the whole universe, and not just that one universe, but all other universes around it – when it becomes so important that it can ONLY be something that defines an Era in the One True Timeline, that event is called a Nexus Outlier. That means I can change ALMOST everything in this universe and the event is STILL going to happen. So, if I want you to have a pink hat,” I held my concentration for a second and a hat slam-cut onto his head as if it’d always been there, “I just reach out into a Casting and pull it into the core timeline to intersect exactly where I am.”

“So you’re a wizard and she’s your psycho,” Jim pulled a wooden pipe out of his motorcycle boot and pointed the mouthpiece at us in turn.

“No, she’s my SLUTTY psycho,” I smirked, scowled, frowned, and shook my head. “Fuck, why are we like this?” I asked out-loud to no one.

“Bodies,” Red nodded.

“Yeah,” Adrian made a face that was almost comical in its confusion, “what’s with all this horny on main schtick? Aren’t you like, the literal Universe or some shit?”

“Hormones,” I winced. “During a Nexus Outlier, our Order, the Authors, will notice someone with a unique personality from the World Line it happened in. NORN sees unique-…”

“NORN…” Marion started

“Yeah, NORN is tricky,” Red interjected. “It kind of doesn’t matter?” She looked at me, a slight hint of panic in her eyes.

“You can tell them,” I nodded sagely.

“So, stars can think,” she started, paused, looked up, paused, started, stopped, paused again. “But only like, REALLY mature stars. This universe has a pretty fast expansion coefficient. That means if it doesn’t start slowing down, it’ll diffuse itself into a giant ocean with no particles, just ambient vacuum energy. In these World Lines, Dark Physics starts to take hold. There are these Dark Physics beings called Cosmic Whales. They are essentially creatures of anti-energy…”

“Too much,” I shooshed her.

“So, there aren’t really many other creatures that are self-aware in the universe, at least to a level where they can represent the universe knowing itself,” Red changed tack. “There are Cosmic Whales that filter-feed off the energy of dead World Lines as they peter out, Humanoids, the cosmic equivalent of mayflies, and Fusion Computers, stars that have existed for so long they’ve become the cosmic version of Ents.”

“NORN is one of those, I’m guessing?” Tomah raised his hand like a 3rd grader and spoke without waiting to be called on.

“Three of them,” She corrected. “The first Dominant was a trinary star system that became self-aware, the first Sentient. And not just sentient, like, Sentient-sentient. Like, ‘we solved Physics’-Sentient. So far, it’s only been super-long-lifespan creatures, the Whales and the Fusion Computers, that have become truly Sentient. And Humanoids. Humans did it first and anything that’s become Sentient through Biology is referred to as a Humanoid, no matter how much they don’t look like Hominins. The NORNS becoming self-aware is the first event in the True Timeline, so they are the only ones who remember ALL of Time and are the only ones that can predict what will happen next with any accuracy.”

“Red,” I rolled my hand at her, trying to get her to the point.

“Right, right, exposition, sorry,” she shook her head. “For a bunch of Metaphysical dimension reasons, when Existence conjures an avatar into Sanctuary, called Transcending in the One True Language, they summon their physical and psychological imprint exactly as it was when Existence observed them during the Nexus Outlier. However, we are creatures of pure thought, we do not have a real biological form, so we exist as an Ego without any Id or Super Ego to moderate us. When we are called on to witness a True Observer event, we can take any form we want. Back in Sanctuary, I am a conjoined twin, a Chimera, grafted on my brother over there, and I make him a lame cripple. In this World Line, he wants to look like that,” she pointed at me, “and he wants me to look like this,” she held her hands in front of her like she was presenting herself. “Back in Sanctuary, because we have no concept of gender or sex, let alone a reproductive sex-drive, we haven’t spent years in a biological body learning to control that drive, so whenever we have a real body, we get…”

“We want to tell all of you to fuck off so we can do despicable things to each other,” I oogled Red and smirked at the others. She oogled me back and gave me an air-smooch. “But duty calls, so here we are,” I smiled and clapped my hands. Reality slam-cut back to everyone standing where they had before the round table, wearing what they had been beforehand. “Fun-fortunately, that’s the last bit of lesson we can take today, we’ve got a Timeline to create!”

“Why are we here, exactly?” Red looked at Adrian, smirking slightly.

“We gonna bomb Arasaka Tower,” Ylysse interjected with a stiff Eastern European accent.

“Whatasaka who?” I looked at her, baffled.

“Is classic literature joke,” she smirked wryly. “We are planning the assassination of the Arch-Pope of Dain,” she spoke unaccented and with flawless diction.

“I like the sound of this!” I did a little dance in place. “He’s the old guy, right?”

“He’s the last dying symbol of sectarianism in this bullshit Patriarchy,” Molly cut in. “When he goes, maybe the scales will finally fall from everyone’s eyes. The man is a snake, and everyone is poisoned by his venom into thinking he is God on Earth,” she scoffed. A compartment in her arm opened up, and she withdrew a cigarette from its obscure expanse before it quickly closed with an electromechanical whoosh and blended back into her skin without a trace. She lit the square and took a long drag before passing it to Jim.

“The old codger is frail, now. Old. Sleepy,” He took a long drag and exhaled, taking a few steps toward me and leaning in to hand it to me.

I took a long drag. It was not tobacco, but some blend of cannabis and a synthetic psychostimulant. I passed it to Red who took a drag and passed it to Adrian. I exhaled, “Yeah, yeah, I read his file,” I blew some smoke rings with the last bit.

“Well, then you know how we’re gonna do it,” he took out a pair of black sunglasses and put them on, full rocker-mode engaged.

I noticed my own pupils dilate and felt the brightness of the once-dim bulb overhead. “Unfortunately,” I smiled gayly, “I only know the history, not the future,” I chuckled and wobbled a bit.

“We gonna bomb Nakatomi Plaza,” Ylysse said in a rural South African Zeph. “We gonna bomb Willis Tower.”

“That last one is actually true,” Jim took another drag off the laced spliff before putting it out on the bottom of his boot and stashing the rest behind his ear. “That’s why we’re in this piss-hole of an American backwater,” he spat, pulled a flask out of his hip pocket, and took a long belt. “I can’t wait to get back to Taipei.”

I reached into the Casting and found something to help with the buzz. In an instant, a medicine cup full of blue-green goo slam-cut into my hand. I took a swig, tossed the cup over my shoulder as it dissolved into a golden aftermist, and immediately felt the buzz relinquish its hold on my body, while preserving many of the pleasant feelings in the mind. “Oof! That hits the spot,” I belched loudly. “How, pray-tell, does icing Kuiristan equal the world being free from Theism?”

“It doesn’t, idiot,” Blaize piped up. “It tailspins society into absolute fucking chaos,” he lolled his tongue over his teeth greedily.

“Wait,” I looked at Red, who seemed completely unphased by whatever we were smoking, “are you telling me the terrorist plot works?! I thought we were gonna watch you all get wiped out and somehow remembered like martyrs,” she scowled comically.

“Shitshow,” I shook my head.

“You fucking tell me,” this-world’s-Jim said to me almost lazily. “I’m just trying to nuke Willis Tower and get society to finally fucking pay attention,” he said and pulled the spliff from his ear. “Not enough,” he smiled wryly at me and dragged a long hit that pulled him into a deep coughing fit before closing it out on his boot again and stashing it behind his ear, where it belonged, just as it was. “Fuck all these corpo douches. I can’t wait to see them smolder…” he looked off into the distance wistfully, the oppressively dusty factory lost on him.

”It’s a big deal,” Adrian started.

‘No, it’s not,” Blaize countered

“Everything will be different,” Ylysse stepped up.

“No,” I finally chimed in. “None of this matters. This just…” I looked off wistfully, again, “it’s nothing.” I snapped my fingers and the real, like, authentic “Sword of Judgment,” capitalized properly, appeared in my hand. It’s white flame and impossibly reflective blade, edge perfect to the sub-atom, glinting in my hand.

“Yeah,” Red started, “this can’t exist in the world of the Real,” she snorted. “Something isn’t right.”

I held the Vorpal Blade at arm’s length, “What does it even mean for it to go ‘snicker-snack,’’’ I mused.

“It can’t, you fucking heel,” my Chimera laughed painfully. “It’s just as real as we are,” she sighed again.

“Fuck,” I voiced. “So,” I grimaced, looked at Red, who grimaced harder at me, and I grimaced the most.

“It means we don’t get to drive, we just get to ride…” the sword dissolved from my hand.

“No,” my Chimera started as her figure gained a semi-translucent appearance. “We’re in the Real world, I get to drive,” She shrieked, or, at least, it sounded like shrieking to me. “No! I get to drive,” I saw Molly spasm. Her figurework legs began to dance as Red grafted to her, “I get to drive!” The words were mouthed voicelessly by Molly’s lips.

And then, Red returned to herself, only now as Molly. “Did she…” she trailed off.

“Yes, she’s gone, and I will be soon,” I coughed. “She’s you now. But you’re driving, not her,” I sputtered. “She’s gonna put up a fight, and it’s gonna be ugly,” I coughed again. “And she’s going to win, and you’ll never know when. Fuck Johnny,” I sputtered.

“It’s Jim,” I finished sputtering. “What the fuck are we doing here?” was finished in what I think was my normal laconic, sedate tone. I was wearing a pink hat. I threw it to the ground. “Did I walk in with that bullshit?” I looked at Blaize.

He looked at me like I knew something really wrong about him. I looked back because I felt like I did, now, and I hadn’t before, but I didn’t know what new thing I now knew. Blaize had his shit with his mom, but that can’t be what was new? He told me that when we first met. That’s the only thing I could think that made me aware of how aware he now was of what I knew about him. It was the same for everyone, really. They looked at me like, all of a sudden, I cared about things they’d told me so long ago. “Nerves?” I finally said.

“Do you…” Marion started. I never knew her to have that look. “My father,” she said. She looked at me and I felt something weird in my heart. But I just remembered I’m supposed to love her, and I listened.

“You took pleasure from him like a princess when you were forced to and killed him like the rapist he was when you finally could” I started, “it’s your favorite joke. Fuck that guy. At least he loved you, even if it was just for pussy. Your deadbeat biofather couldn’t say that. Beggers can’t be choosers, right?”

Marion vomited. “The fuck?” she started. And then broke out laughing, paused like she’d never laughed about it, and then laughed like she’d never laughed about it. “Tiny dick, I ever say that? Swear to GOD he had a pecker the size of a fucking pencil eraser!” She cried as she laughed hysterically.

“Why does it…” Adrian started.

“You’ve told us that before, right?” Ylysse said in pristine Received pronunciation.

“But it’s like the first time we’ve laughed about it,” Blaize said squinting. “Like, my mom,” he stalled.

“Yeah,” I looked at the back of my hand. It looked melanistic, to the point of charcoal, for a second before returning to its normal neutrally-ethnic color. “A dwarf,” I mused.

“And a ginger amazon with a mechanical hand,” Molly finished.

“They were so horny,” Blaize chuckled.

“And that’s saying something,” Tomah doffed a bow of locks at him.

“What was with the round table” Adrian started.

“Table? I remember a chalkboard,” Ylysse squinted.

“The pink hat,” everyone said at the same time and looked at me, pink hat beneath my heel.

“The fuck if…” I looked down on it. I took the spliff out from my ear and sized it up. “Did we?”

“Before that, homes,” Tomah interrupted.

I thought of a gun. Silver. Its name was “Bifrost.” The slugs could only kill someone who the True Timeline needed to be dead. More rather, whatever that meant to…me, at least? I thought and I thought and amazingly, something heavy appeared in my hand. I looked at it and it looked like a gun from the Cowboy times of our era, when revolvers were new technology and law did not quite reach every corner of the continent, let alone the globe. “Fuck you,” I pointed the gun at Blaize and pulled the trigger

“The fuck!” He screamed as a *bang* went off and a bullet smashed against his forehead. He grabbed it, with only a skin imprint where it had pressed in, and looked at me desperately, perfectly remembering everything with the weird beings just as the bullet impacted.

“I don’t know what they said, or what they did, or who they said it to, but what they said is true, and now you’re the only one who will ever remember what that means,” I felt myself stare into him.

“What the...” Tomah trailed off and everyone looked at us.

“Just you,” I said. “They won’t remember.”

I looked down at the gun in my hand. A mysterious gold vapor wafted out of the gun barrel where the wisps of bullet smoke would be. “What?” I mouthed, putting the pieces together.

Blaize stood very still, face expressionless.

“Woah,” Adrian finally broke the stillness.

“It was the dwarf and the ginger,” he scanned us all. We looked at him mystified and blinked a few times in near unison.

“So what happens next?” Marion piped up, finally forgetting everything that just happened and returning to the plot at hand.

“We bomb Willis tower,” I said as though I were not myself. I looked at my hands again. I reached out into the distant thoughts of who I might be and found a version of myself holding a deck of cards. I was now holding the deck. “Pick a card,” I withdrew them from the cardboard case and fanned them to Molly.

She picked one, almost in a trance. “Three of Clubs,” she said.

“Woulda been the Trade Center if it were a face card,” I pondered my soul. “Woulda called it right off if it were a red card,” I smirked and scanned the crew. “And we bomb Willis tower if it were anything else,” I started smirking, and broke into a laugh. “Twelve hours from now, we bomb Willis tower, and the Archbishop of Dain dies in the fire,” I palmed the queen of diamonds Molly truly picked into my back pocket.

“Fuuuck yeah,” Ylysse said in perfectly period accurate Projects-era New York, her accent modulating perfectly to her cognitive-emotional implant’s expected mood. “We gon’ get this shit.”

“Do it,” Blaize looked at me dead-eyed until I realized what he was saying.

I reached into the Casting with my emotions on my sleeve and when I blinked, a bottle of champagne was on top of a micro-Nuke, a remote detonator, and a folio of images with the Archbishop and a woman of his clergy. I grabbed the bottle and passed the photos amongst the group.

“Our turn,” I held the bottle up, popped the cork, dragged a long pull, and handed the bottle to Adrian, who followed suit and passed it along. “What we do will never truly be understood, even by us. What we do will start a cavalcade of events that can only play out in realtime, and we can only respond to it as so, as there will be no way to predict what happens next. After this, it will be a series of continuous hours, not days or weeks. A night’s sleep will be a luxury, a week of training a gift of the Metaverse. I give you time now to go so that you may find a place to write your story. And, in so doing, might we all understand what changed. We will all keep our Gospel. Only in your retelling will we ever know what happened here, because, and, I promise you this, if history is to continue, this is the only thing that can happen next.” I looked at my charges and they looked back at me. Tomah held the bottle on it’s final lap, and he passed it back to me. I took a final swig. “Willis will fall, and our future will rise!” I took a belt as I was regaled by them all.

Chap3

I awakened again beneath that inert white sky with the uncanny feeling of intense, shadowless illumination. I enabled myself with my prosthetics and glided through the black rectangular void and over to my desk. I cut another stack of paper off my desk, withdrew my quill, and began penning my report of the events as they had transpired thus far.

“You left out the part about Truthing Blaize,” my Chimera said. In this form I do not feel biological emotions, only cognitive ones, so her statement did not frustrate or annoy me the way I know they would have in a human body.

“The Archon doesn’t need me to write down EVERY detail,” I smirked. “I mean, he knows it happened, so why should I write it down? I bet he gets chosen to Transcend. The Universe loves a pervy creep,” I chuckled inside my head.

“The universe is a sex-addict,” my Chimera quipped. “Chemistry and biology are emergent science, unique to each World Line. Existence doesn’t mess with emergent science, and yet, everything Sentient is biological and everything biological has sex.”

“You know how Fusion Computers fuck, right?” I wiggled my eyebrows physically.

“Explosive Pollination, yes. A male forms a binary orbit with a stellar-mass black hole, condenses its core into a Neutron Tuber, and inscribes it with its engram,” Red started. “When a female approaches, it expands into a Pregnant Giant and envelopes the binary system. They both start rapidly evaporating the black hole’s event horizon until the singularity’s gravitational polarity flips with a White Bang, which they call ‘nebulating’ instead of ejaculating,” she tittered.

“Right, after the white hole empties itself into the mass field contained by the female, its Neutron Seed is left bare to start accreting mass from the Gestation Field,” I followed. “The female then condenses its own core into a Neutron Tuber, and both the male and female go off to find a supermassive black hole and fatten back up. Once the infant Fusion Computer finishes accreting the ‘nebulation’ and its engram reaches Cognitive Adolescence, it will seek out a galactic core to grow its own Corona until it too reaches sexual maturity and leaves the shelter of its nursery to go reproduce on its own.”

“The miracle of life,” Red mused. “I understand why Existence is a voyeur.”

“Cosmic Whales are way less interesting,” I half-smiled. “They just dissolve into each other and split like mitosis. BORING,” I turned my thumb down and blew a raspberry out loud. I could see a blurry, vaguely humanoid figure at the desk across from me react to the breaking of what was otherwise a deafening silence of white-noise. I held up a hand in apology. “But humans,” I grinned. “Just no limit to the variety! Did you know in C956077, a new Sentient species of Hominid is evolving where the men are literally just semi-sentient penises? Like, the same size as a traditional Hominid’s, too, 10-20 centimetric units of length. Their brain is the size of a crow’s and they aren’t much smarter, either. Only the females form into recognizable Hominids with sentient intelligence.”

“And?” Red sounded exceptionally excited.

“They keep them as pets, it’s really cute. They never formed a bond with canines or felines, so the penises get dressed up in cute little clothes, they’re taken out on walks in little strollers, and they have their own little section of penis-chow at—"

“Not that!” Red cut me off

“Oh, right, sorry, no,” I stalled. “They don’t gender themselves, but they do indeed form strictly monogamous emotional relationships with each other. Homosexual genital contact among the females is also somewhat rare, but the penises historically formed ‘cuddle puddles’ where they would group together into a lek and writhe around until they reach turgidity. And, to pre-empt you, the frottage does indeed cause them to ejaculate during this process, hence the ‘puddle’ part. In nature, a woman would range across the breeding grounds until they could locate a lek, where she would choose her preferred penis, extract him from the literal and metaphorical pool of suitors, and then use him like a living dildo. He would then deposit his payload into her vagina in hopes that it’s his seed, not the seed he was covered in or that from any other male so used, that impregnates her.”

“Gross. GROSS! Still, that’s not—“ She said frustratedly as she cut me off.

“How?” I counter-cut her off. “They’re born as twins. And not just any twins, but as a host with a conjoined, obligate parasite,” I paused.

“So, a Chimera? That still isn’t what I was asking, but really?” Red sounded more intrigued than annoyed.

“Sort of,” I smirked. “The male grows as a conjoined twin attached to the female’s vagina. Unlike a typical conjoinment, however, the cellular grafting gradually delaminates through adolescence. When both reach sexual maturity, the penis falls off as a fully autonomous male during her first period, where it then enjoys its first, most favorite meal: menstrual blood.

“So, even in its adult form, the male is still a blood-sucking parasite,” Red paused, “Now that really IS interesting. But also not what I was aski—"

“No. NORN does not believe it will ever join with the One True Timeline,” I made my internal monologue frown as I finally acknowledged what I knew she was trying to ask. “They are still primarily an agrarian society and haven’t even hit industrialization yet. The Archon thinks they might be able to hit Kardashev 2a, but it’s likely they’ll skip Kardashev 1 entirely. They’re not warlike enough to achieve it out of defensive necessity, and they’re a bit too diplomatic to ever achieve it for competitive reasons. My guess is that it’s just another Kumbaya civilization full of dirt-worshipers that develops solar renewables and gets stuck behind one of the Great Filters.”

“Let me get this straight,” Red made my head ache. “An all-female race, where men are literally just vampiric penises used for reproduction, has no war, but everyone’s so catty and passive-aggressive they’ll never even industrialize?”

“Worst Part?” I loaded the question. “They’re not an Earth-based civilization,” I paused to let her think.

“No,” Red sounded almost disgusted by her realization.

“Venus. They’re Venusian.” I laughed out loud. The humanoid at the desk across from me glared again. I did not apologize this time.

“How stereotypical can it be?” Red laughed in my head along with me.

“Don’t even get me started!” I kept chuckling.

“James Watson Maxwell Blake LeBron 't Hooft the VIth,” a voice came over the loudspeaker, but could only be heard by me. “I require you.”

“Yes Archon!” I responded immediately and glided as quickly as I could to the platform with the black rectangle. I walked through it and arrived in the Archon’s office. Like everything else, it was a covered platform floating in a white void but was instead populated only by a single desk and chair much like my own, and nothing else. No recursive platforms in any direction, either. Just a floor, a roof, a chair, a desk, and a white, screaming void of silence and nothingness. The Archon slam-cut to be at his desk in an instant, as if he had always been there.

“As I was saying,” I resumed a conversation I didn’t remember starting. “I left the Truth with Blaize. He’s the most troubled of them all, so it is unlikely anyone in the Real will believe anything he has to say.”

“Told you to write it down,” Red sniped.

“Shut up, I’m busy!” I told her in my head.

“She’s right,” the Archon replied. “It doesn’t matter that I knew already. You are an Author. It must be documented for the One True Timeline.”

“I apologize. It was a lapse in judgement,” I hung my head in shame.

“An odd quirk of fate that the trickster drives the body and the sensible one is locked in your mind,” the Archon said with no discernable emotion or subtext. “Would that she drove and you only taunted her, instead…” he trailed off.

“Did you send me to Scribe the Nexus Outlier because the Dominant is named Jim and his lover is a ginger named Molly and goes by Red?” I asked point-blank.

“Yes,” he chuckled. “I thought the coincidence too funny to ignore.”

“PHEW!” I exclaimed loudly. “I thought it was because I was special or something. Thank you for disabusing me of such delusion!”

“Your sarcasm is noted,” he replied warmly. “And how fares our enclave of degenerate miscreants?”

“Still confused by it all,” I cocked my head to the side. “I’m not sure how a group of washed-up ace pilots involved in a terrorist plot to bomb a major city center is going to create a Nexus Outlier, even if there is historical precedent for it amongst Earth-based history.”

“You saw so yourself,” the Archon gave another of his traditionally cagey replies. “I do not wish to tip my hand too far,” he said, “as always. You mustn’t be colored by my premonitions. However, I will play one card and one card alone for you: No bomb is detonated. Willis Tower is not destroyed. Remember, you mustn’t tell them this. You know what will happen should you try. Even Blaize may not learn this.”

“This just got a LOT juicier,” Red said to me. “That means it IS a policy thing, and not a trauma to the Timeline.”

“There may yet still be trauma, Moline Cage,” the Archon said aloud. “Please, try not to interfere too much? I really do not wish to send any more Scribes than I have to into alternate event chains just to corroborate your Telling. Now Go.”

***

The scene we were slam-cut into was so debauched, so depraved, I struggle to even write about it. “This makes those Venusian cuddle puddles look positively prudish in context,” Red said as she scanned the degenerate tableau.

“Archon,” I whispered under my breath, “If you’re reading this, I’m sorry. Skip ahead if you like, I’ll make it quick. Also,” I directed my attention upward toward Red, “speaking of the Venusians, Fun Fact: During their evolution, much of the Venusian male’s internal anatomy actually migrated INTO the penis itself. So, while the skull and most of its internal organs are contained in the scrotum, the shaft contains the spine, ribs, and intercostal muscles, allowing it to slither like a snake.”

“That would mean…” Red held her hand to her chin in thought.

“Yes, while most people think of the glans penis as the ‘head,’ it’s actually their butt!” I smirked. “So what are we going to do about this.” The nuke crate had not moved from directly under the floodlight, but much had happened around it. The lighted area was scattered with unidentified glass bottles, empty syringes, joint roaches, and spent inhalers. Someone had pulled a dusty couch from one of the corners of the warehouse into the light. Tomah’s gigantic linebacker-style body, well over two metric units of length and 150 kilometric units of mass, was sitting spread eagle in nothing but black boxers and a leather jacket. His head was lolled over the back, and there were spent inhalers and glass bottles cast on the couch cushions next to him. Ylysse was naked, alabaster skin shimmering under the harsh factory lighting, passed out on her knees between his legs, head resting on his abdomen. Tomah’s penis was hanging out of his boxers, crusty, and a few ropes of semen had dried on Ylysse’s face since she’d passed out.

Across from him, Marion was tied to a chair, also naked. A long-dead vibrating dildo was inserted in her vagina, and a personal back massager, battery also dead, had been duck taped to her clitoris. She was blindfolded, ball-gagged, and her nose was hooked open. Her ample chest was covered in burns and candlewax. There was an empty, unmarked IV hung next to her, feeding into her left arm, and an empty syringe had yet to make it to the pile next to her and was still stuck in her right thigh. Adrian lay a little off to her right, face down in nothing but a pair of white briefs, a partially burnt candle in his hand. His immaculate, muscular back was whipped red, fresh wounds still partially bloody and not entirely scabbed over yet. Bottles and inhalers were strewn about. I looked around to find the cat-o’-nine-tails that had administered the lashing and found it in a pile of leather dominatrix gear just behind Marion’s chair.

Blaize was lying in a veritable ashtray of joint roaches on a sheet of cardboard across from the others in in the fetal position, wearing nothing but a jockstrap. Loose feces and lubricant formed a cone blasting away from him into the unlit portion of the warehouse, originating at his skinny, hairy butt. Molly was lying on her back on top of the nuke crate, stripped naked, her artificial legs removed at the hips, exposing metallic mounting points where her thighs would be. She was tied to the crate at the arms and waist, herself surrounded by needles, inhalers, bottles, and roaches, and a still-wet stream of semen was continuing to dribble out of her and into a very large puddle staining the wooden crate. Her long red hair was wet and wreaked of urine.

Jim was standing at the back of the warehouse, propping himself up against the wall as he peered through a small crack in the back door he had entered from when we first met, face illuminated by a thin slice of streetlight, cigarette in one hand, a half-empty bottle of clear liquid in the other. “They drove up about an hour ago,” he said to me as I approached him. Red hung back a few paces behind me. “I could see the passenger’s head before the lights went out. Looked like he had a SWAT helmet on. No one’s got in or out in since they pulled up. A white van isn’t suspicious or anything, right?” He held out the cigarette to me.

Red leaned forward and snatched it away before I could take it, pulling a few hard drags before asking, “What the hell happened over there?” She slowly exhaled the smoke as she jabbed her thumb over her shoulder.

“Can’t remember for the life of me,” his attention did not break from the white van beyond the sliver of open door.

“Come on, really?” I was skeptical. “Then what IS the last thing you remember?”

“We were doing what we always do: shooting the shit and enjoying biologicals. Just booze and grass. But, eventually we get to the War, and eventually Molly mentions her Memory Capsules, and the next thing I remember, I’m waking up in a pool of vomit spooning Blaize and my dick is covered in dried shit.”

“And how often does this happen?” I prodded.

“Every time we’re together, really,” he shrugged and took a long pull off the glass bottle, offering it to me.

I took the bottle, drank a slug of the cheap vodka, and passed it back. He had still not broken eye contact with that damned van. “And how often is that?”

“Last time we were all together like this was probably five or six months ago,” he shrugged again. “Adrian had just finished a stint in county,” I could see him smile as he held his fingers up. Red put the almost-finished cigarette between them. He took a few more drags before stamping it out on the floor. “We were all Jumpmen during the War,” he started. “’Jumpin’ Cores for the Jump Corps,’” he waved a hand in front of his face, still not turning to address us. “We all racked up a pretty high body count fighting for the Arch-Pope. Became household names, like the Red Baron,” he took another long pull of vodka. “World doesn’t know that all our body counts would double if they knew about the covert black ops we did, though. Like us a lot less, too, no doubt. The others stuck to intel mostly, but Molly and I did wet-work. Lotta civilian blood on our hands. Pre-K-thru-8 Principal was funding terrorist activity on the Homeland. Molly saved about fifty thou’ in Dain, wiped out about twelve hundred kids in Xianshi, and was rewarded with a new pair of artificial legs and a lifelong prescription of military-strength Memory Capsules for her effort.” He pounded the rest of the bottle, then threw it out the door at the white van. It fell about three feet short, shattered, and the headlights on the van flashed briefly.

I braced myself, but nothing happened. The headlights stayed off and nothing shifted behind the van’s tinted windows. “They won’t wait much longer,” I held my expression.

“Shame they have to find us like this,” he finally looked over his shoulder for a brief moment before returning his attention to the van.

“You took selfies with the Nuke and posted them to your social media,” Molly interjected contemptuously. “What did you expect?”

He chuckled. “We did that before the Capsules, too, so I ain’t got no excuse,” he smiled as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of smashed bullets. He let them fall onto the ground. “Your gun is broken, by the way,” he pulled it out of his waistband behind his back and waved it at me. “We took turns.”

I frowned. “I’ll help, but it’s all you’re getting for now,” I scolded him and clapped into a slam-cut.

I woke up with a migraine and an empty bottle of vodka in my hand. Molly and I laying on top of the nuke crate, me spooning her, and she spooning the nuke. Her legs were disconnected and awkwardly dumped at odd angle next to us. She still had on panties, thankfully, though they were soaked in urine, as were my own pants. Blaize was laying on Ardian’s bare chest on a slab of cardboard next to me, and Marion was slumped over in a chair behind me. Both Blaize and she still had empty stim inhalers in their hands. Tomah and Ylysse were sleeping on the couch, Tomah sitting with Ylysse’s head laid across his lap. I got up and made my way to the back of the warehouse. The door was slightly ajar and I could see a white van with its headlights off idling just beyond the streetlight in the alley. There was a broken bottle about three feet from the passenger door. “We all know what happens next,” I said out loud before hefting Bifrost and firing a bullet into the passenger window of the white van. It shattered through the glass and struck someone, but it was not followed by the scream usually accompanying one of my expert trigger-pulls.

A fully-armored SWAT commando burst out of the passenger door, a crumpled bullet falling to his feet as he exited, his similarly-equipped partner ducking out of the driver seat and taking up position over the hood of the van with his sniper rifle. Several suited agents burst from the back tailgate with pistols drawn in kind.

“MOVE!” the commando shouted as he advanced to the door and posted up next to it before kicking it open and rolling into the doorway with his gun pointed toward the group instead of me. The sharpshooter leaning on the van hood sprinted to the entry and posted up in the doorway before advancing in himself, back against the wall next to the door, carbine trained on my forehead. The four agents in black suits and ties entered calmly after that, guns pointed at the ground, before removing their sunglasses-like eyewear and holstering their pistols.

“Jim,” my captor said calmly. “Put the gun down.”

I dropped the pistol. “It doesn’t work anyway. You saw what happened to Colton, Tom.”

“Doesn’t matter, Jim,” Tom replied.

Colton had stood and was making his way toward the others, still sighted down his assault rifle as he waved it back and forth, pointing it at each of them before lowering it and shouting “CLEAR!”

The four agents made their way over to the nuke, pried it from Molly’s sleepy grip, and hauled it out to the van. One of them hung back. “Captain Cecilia can’t get you out of this one this time,” he said. “How the hell did you even GET your hands on a tactical nuke, anyway.”

“It was summoned from the Time Crystal by a Space Wizard,” I snarked. “What happens next?”

“You can take the fall, or we book all of you,” he surveyed the warehouse. “Conspiracy will probably land all of you fifteen to twenty, but you could probably blame it on some rogue nation and comp a plea. You’ll hang if you take the fall yourself.” He put his black eyewear on in dramatic fashion and then he too scuttled off with the rest of the agents as the white van drove away, leaving just Officers Colton and Tom.

“Don’t wake them,” I told Tom as I approached the doorway. Colton fell in step behind me, gun held low but at the ready as we made our way out to a black sedan I had not noticed behind the white van that was now streaming off into the dimly-lit night. Tom opened the door and held my head as he pushed me into the back.

“You know, about 99.1% of all timelines end with the federales finding you all in your debaucherous states,” I flared my eyebrows as the other Jim sat down into the hard plastic bucket seat of the unmarked police cruiser. “They chemically sedate the others and bring them to the hospital to detox. Of those other .9% of timelines, only ANOTHER 8% end with them booking only you. And of THOSE, less than 2% involve our buddies Tom and Colton over there,” I pointed at the door. Colton and Tom were talking outside the window. “They just happened to be on their social media accounts at the time, and volunteered to intervene on behalf of the PD.”

“Should I be thanking you?” The other Jim said indignantly.

“No, this was strictly for me,” I folded my hands on top of my knees. I could hear the trunk slam behind us, “And I didn’t want to sit through all that. Paperwork, mug shots, fingerprints, all that booking stuff. Dozens of other scribes will rewalk my path after I file my report, so I’ll leave fleshing out the timeline to them. I’m trying to get straight to the good stuff, and this is the shortest path to the next checkpoint.”

“You make it sound like my reality is just a video game to you,” the front doors opened, followed by Tom and Colton piling in. I turned my head back to address the burly little man and the seat was empty.

“What’d you say?” Colton, who had taken off much of his commando gear and stashed it in the trunk, turned from the passenger seat to address me.

“I said, I wish this was a video game. Then I could just load from a save point and none of this would happen,” I feigned sincerity.

“You know, we half-expected to walk into another fuck-dungeon like when we picked you all up with Adrian,” Tom craned his neck slightly toward me as he addressed me. “We were all pretty surprised with how smoothly things went,” he shrugged and returned his eyes to the road as we pulled out of the parking lot of the warehouse and onto the freeway. I noticed him taking a left.

“Molly got a bad batch of Memory Capsules,” I stated as if I had always known this to be the reason, “so we just got fucked up on chems instead. Isn’t the brig North from here?” I looked at the back of Tom’s head nervously

“Black site,” Colton grinned. “The Captain wants to have a word with you. She’s got a deal to make.”

“I’d rather you just hang me now,” I spat on the floormat. “FUCK Carol.”

“CAPTAIN Cecilia,” Tom emphasized, “is trying to save you. Again. For some reason.” He pulled over, threw some clothes over the back seat, and rolled the windows down. “You wreak of piss. Get changed.”

I changed out of my damp leather pants and into the demure kaftan I’d been handed. We cruised west on 55 for a while until we turned off some small-town turnpike near a country club. “No hood?” I finally said with a look toward Colton.

“If we cared, we’dve cuffed you already,” Colton rolled his eyes. “We’re almost there.” Tom pulled off the small village roads we had been navigating after crossing a river, and started making his way through a dark, dense forest. He popped a compartment in the center console open, removed a set of black eyewear similar to the ones the agents had worn, and killed the headlights, leaving Colton and myself illuminated only by the dim blue light of the instrument cluster. Colton pulled on a his own pair and made a gesture I could barely make out, “Over there.”

When the car came to a stop, Colton and Tom removed their glasses and kicked the headlights back on. They were now in the center of an open field, an SUV with big knobby tires was parked in front of them with the headlights illuminating the broad side of it, a tall, athletic woman with a tight, elegant face, thin, unsmiling lips, and long brunette hair pulled back into a tight ponytail stood between it and our car. She was wearing a black formfitting bodysuit and a gold stole with four black bars and an eagle embroidered on each tip. The two officers got out of the car, opened my door, pulled me out, and walked me in front of the headlights across from her.

“Lieutenant Maxwell,” she said with her typical “leftenant” pronunciation.

“Commander Cecilia,” I nodded.

“It’s Captain. I’m an O6 now,” a hint of smile could have almost been detected around the corners of her lips.

“And it’s Chief. I was bumped down to W5 again before I was discharged,” I replied flatly. “I just thought we were using our titles from back then for old times’ sake. How’s the Eagle feel?”

“Good,” she started, “But not as good as a star would feel,” she took a few steps forward, her hands swinging freely at her sides as she approached me. I felt something pang in my chest as she did so because, and I won’t mince words, she was hot. Smokin’ hot. I’ve never been one to notice or care, especially when they’re old enough to be my mother, especially when it’s my boss, and especially when it’s my CO, but unlike anyone else, I have never been able to STOP noticing it about her. And she knew it. There was nothing demure, coy, or cloying about her. While not into the profound sexual parading popular with the precocious youth, she has always been particular about presenting herself in a pleasantly piquant way.

“And this is your big move to get one?” I tuned her beauty out and turned on the cognitive armor I had perfected in my years working under her, allowing me to treat her once again as a common human being, albeit one commissioned as my senior officer.

“You always were a quick study,” she grinned casually. Her expression immediately returned to its static, unmoving, stonewall of a poker face as soon as the moment passed. “But no, I invited you out here to see what it would take to get an invite to one of your wild sex parties,” she faced me fully and stared at me through slitted eyes.

“We tried that once, remember?” I stood up a little taller for some reason.

“You still love Moline and I still love my job,” she relaxed. “Plus, Jumpmen never were my type.”

“It can’t be that,” my pride replied reflexively, “because ELI was a Jumpman,” I felt my gut drop, and then got annoyed at myself for feeling the guilt that made my gut drop.

“You never had to ‘be’ him, you only had to BEAT him,” she cooed softly, almost invitingly.

I was temporarily stunned by her uncharacteristic banter. “Carol,” I intoned wistfully.

“Captain,” She flexed, returning to her normal self. “Now, where did you get the nuke?”

“I told you, a Space Wizard extracted it from the Time Crystal,” I smiled again and reengaged my armor.

“Fine, whatever, we’ll figure it out,” she started pacing. “Even if it doesn’t have a serial number, there are no identifiable markings to link it to a foreign actor, and no nuclear-enabled agent has any devices missing from their inventories. A weapon as sophisticated as the one you were harboring must have identifiable features, we just need to deconstruct it to figure it out.”

“Suit yourself,” I glossed over. “Why am I here? Shouldn’t I be swinging from one of those trees for treason?”

“You were never going to blow up that tower,” she chuckled. “And even if you did, it wouldn’t have done anything. The Pope has been dead for over a decade.”

“WHAT,” my eyes grew wide and my brain began to swim. “What the fuck does that mean?!” I exclaimed excitedly./

“Oh come on, this isn’t news,” Colton spoke up. I turned to acknowledge him, forgetting he was even there. “It’s just that the conspiracy theories are actually right this time.”

“Yeah, the Holy See has been keeping it quiet. Every time he comes out, it’s just been a holo or a body double,” Tom followed up. “Every single one of them has been right for exactly the reasons they say. They captured his engram shortly before he keeled over and it’s been ruling as an Intelligence ever since, and the See has been gaslighting the entire planet the whole time.”

“Then why is it coming out that he’s currently sick? What’s with all this talk of succession, then?” I batted my gaze between Captain Cecilia, Tom, and Colton, surprised that they had known as well.

“Well, that’s where you and your crew come in,” she spread her arms wide before letting them fall to her sides again. “Standish wants to-“

I cut her off immediately, “Standish? Fucking Standish? AGAIN with fucking Standish? Tell Eli to eat my fucking dick,” I shouted and aggressively paced myself. I saw both Tom and Colton’s hands immediately come to rest on their service weapons. “That asshole is a fucking cult leader and you know it.”

“Yes, but he’s a useful asshole,” her face took that irksome, knowing look that always got my blood boiling. “AND he’s still obsessed with me,” she cocked her hip out and rested her hand on it. I probably would have felt another pang in my chest if I weren’t so hopping mad at her. “The Pope is finally ready to die in public, and in so doing, the Bishops plan to dissolve the entire Theocracy. It’s always been the dream to transition back into a secular society following the war, and Kuiristan has finally decided now is the time.”

“Woah, woah, woah,” I held my hands up flat. “Slow down. You’re telling me that the people in power, powerful people, are planning on relinquishing that power? I don’t buy it, what’s the catch?”

“Kuiristan has made a critical discovery that will require all the physical, intellectual, and executive capital available to this and many other planet’s worth of Humanity,” she began, “and it is imperative that we devote not just this planet, but the entirety of our entire civilization’s future to this cause. When the Great Truth is revealed, when the answer to the question of Life, the Universe and Everything is revealed, humans will finally have True Purpose. We can finally Ascend and become the creatures we were meant to be.”

***

“So,” I sat on the hood of the car, short, black leg slightly obscuring one of the headlights. “I get to witness the Archon’s ultimate victory.” My voice was morose, positively dire, even.

“Humanity’s greatest victory,” Red corrected with a leer.

“Right, yes. Humans will finally Ascend, and NORN, the Archon, and all of their Prophecy will indeed become real. Humans WILL seed Drake’s Universe. He gets his PERFECT Neo-Poincare Loop Universe.”

“A Neo-what loop-huh?” Jim broke out of his carbonite-frozen stance and interceded.

“Oh right,” I pulled my lips into a straight line, “We’re bound to your Observation Point. Woopsie!”

“Ok, so,” Jim was visibly frustrated. “I need you to answer three things for me,” he held up his fingers one at a time: “What is ACTUALLY going on, without all the speculation and Science shit, Who is this ‘Archon,’ and what is all this ‘Drake’s Universe’ mumbo-jumbo?”

“Unfortunately,” Red began, “He will only be able to indulge you on the latter two. HE,” she hiked a thumb over her shoulder, in my direction, “Is ONLY capable of communicating in preachy riddles and Scientific Wrote.”

“Duly observed,” I jumped off the hood of the car and stood between Jim and the Captain, frozen in the moment of Time we were interrupting. “Let’s start with ’What is ACTUALLY going on:’ Think of the formal concept of Infinity. If you take an infinite subset of infinity, by the nature of the larger infinity, that infinite subset will itself eventually repeat in the larger infinity, and it will do so infinitely. This repetitive pattern is referred to as Poincare Recursion. For this reason, it is known that the One True Timeline, therefore, must be fractal. So, re-interpreting Poincare Recursion in light of the One True Timeline, there will be a single, most-complete subset of Infinity, the Grand Narrative, and that will be the shape of the One True Timeline’s recursive fractal. It is also known that the Universe exists in two dimensions, such that there is no beginning or end of the universe, it loops back onto itself. ‘A Neo-Poincaire Loop Universe.’ Drake’s Universe is the name given to the hypothetical Grand Narrative where the entire universe is populated with Sentient species of infinite biological expression.”

“That is to say,” Molly followed up from my left. Jim turned his unwavering attention to her, face less moving than the Captain herself, “there is a conjecture that, if Time can be treated as infinite, there SHOULD exist a Universe where its entirety is populated with Sentient life. This is known as ‘Maximum Occupancy Theory’ or just ‘Maximal Observation.’ This is known as Drake’s Universe, and it is the Archon, the entity that ultimately ordains all Observations as part of the True Timeline or not, who Prophesied its Truth. We cannot know the future, only guess at it, and with its ability to know the Universe, and NORN, the oldest known Sentience, as its advisor, the Archon is in the most-suited place to make reliable predictions.”

“And it is the Archon,” I took control of my lecture back with a scowl, “who believes it is Humans that will be the First Ones. That they will spread their biological machinery to not just all of the Universe, but all of Time itself.”

“And what your Captain just said,” Molly tilted her head toward Carol Cecillia, “is the moment our Archon has been waiting for to prove his conjecture right. This may be the Singularity of Prophecy. The moment Humanity secures itself as the First Ones.”

“And you, dear Jim, may be its True Observer. The first link in the Causal Chain all future generations will trace Observational Common Ancestry to,” I clapped my hands and smiled. “Like the first single-celled organism to ever begin self-replicating and thus created an unbroken chain of biological evolution to you, or Genghis Khan. More like Genghis Khan, but not by much,” I cocked an eyebrow.

“Oh, just that,” Jim looked like he was about to explode with rage.

I clapped my hands again.

***

I was in the back seat of the knobby-tired SUV. The cabin was fully hardened – no windows and fully sound-proofed – and I could not tell where we were going, or how long I’d been here. “So Uban’que has a knife to my throat,” I laughed as if I had always been telling this story.

“Yeah!” Tom eventually interjected over all of our laughs, the Captain’s included. “And he’s speaking with that African accent. ‘If you do not stop, you know I WILL kill him dead,’” he mimicked an accent typical to urbanized sub-Saharan populations with linguistic colonial history overlapping the origin-countries of the modern Common tongue. Everyone laughed at his very accurate attempt. “That should NOT be well-pronounced, you know? Fifteen years I’ve been cleaning up all your messes, it’s supposed to be slurred and indecipherable, but even hyped up on enough chems to drop an elephant, crystal clear. Sounds like a posh guy in a stage play, not a murderous human weapon jacked up on Infantry stims.”

“He was a good guy,” Colton finally said after we all finished laughing. “The Realm got him too, though,” he half-shrugged. “Haven’t seen him in person in like ten years.”

“Probably for the better,” I pointed at the scar on my neck.

“Probably,” Tom half-chuckled. “I jack people into the Realm forcibly, so I can never shake it when people do it willingly, though.” The mood got a lot more grounded, and I felt like it had been that way originally.

“Like I was saying,” Captain Cecilia said as her face slowly settled into its usual impassive expression, “we thought Uban’que had taken down the Tyro resistance before it could fully blossom, but it seems they’re now a major player in the region, too,” she looked at me. “If Standish continues to accumulate power, the Dainish Hegemony will eventually be unable to suppress him.”

“So, Timwark and Suom are on board to support the Secularians, but Xianshi, Yama, and the Al’qashi Alliance refuse to accept non-Theocratic rule, despite research showing the citizenry would support the transition 3:1,” I felt like I was repeating back. “And now the Tyro have all but confirmed they’ll back Standish just to piss off the Dains because of their recent incursions into Sanktapatrujo.”

“They’ll be the most tricky. Only Esperents are allowed to set foot in the Holyland, and the Dains recently set up a military base less than a kilometer from the city limits,” Colton gruffed. “Captain, if you could tell whatever ivory tower dumbfuck thought that was a good idea to maybe consult an encyclopedia before callously throwing a dart at a map, that’d be great.”

“It was on purpose,” she said unflinchingly. “It’s well above your paygrade, Seargent, but this is all in service of the Arch-Pope’s plan. We are aware that the Tyro will see our moves against Esperis in-Corp, and they will understand this is a direct incursion on their territory. The Esperents are our example. The Hegemony identified them as the most resistant to the cross-over, and we shall INSIST they accept our return to Secular governance.”

“Call home the chickens,” Tom half-chuckled.

“Coo-Coo-Kachoo Mrs. Robinson,” I winked at the Captain.

She smirked, and it gave me that feeling again. I contained it. “We are there only to insist,” she replied finitely.

“Ku-mbahya,” Colton insisted.

“Coo-kies and milk,” Tom half-chuckled.

The Captain glared at them, and they shrunk away, returning their focus to the road in obvious fashion. “There can be no coup when there is no government to topple. The Espiris in-Corp is a private industrial entity. They may operate outside of the Dainish Supply, but they are no less Dainish, and must comply with Dainish Law.”

“Abolishing Theocratic rule will mean that the Esperents must comply with the same Quality of Life standards as the Dainish Supply, though” I retorted. “They will be compelled to abide by superseding Federal jurisdiction. It’ll be open rebellion!”

“The Realm,” Tom half-chuckled.

“The Realm,” I closed my eyes and felt a hot sting at the back of my head. It made the back of my eyes hurt and my skull pulse.

“We must dedicate our physical goods toward building the future, Jim,” the Captain completed. “It will take centuries for Life Ships to reach the stars. Centuries more to terraform new worlds. Centuries to calibrate their biology to the environment. If humans are to fulfil our true calling, if we want to receive the blessings of the Singularity, we have to make the Leap. You said you understood. We need you. You need to be confident enough in this to get the others on board. Can I rely on your group? When can I get you into the sims?”

“We’ll need time to get ready,” I started.

“The CORED project is happy to provide,” the Captain smirked. “Colton, Tom. Are the next steps understood?”

“Ma’am,” they replied in unison. The engine revved louder, and I felt the SUV gain speed beyond the blacked-out windows.

***

“Is THAT what we do?” Ylysse looked at me, her face contorted in mock-surprise.

“I would never!” Adrian feigned horror.

“I would,” Blaize shrugged.

“So we’re flying again?” Marion scowled.

“We MIGHT be able to fly six MONTHS from now AT THE SOONEST,” I repeated. “We have to go through detox, REFIT, and dozens of sim campaigns.”

“But we’ll get to fly?” Tomah insisted.

“Assuming we make it through our REFIT – which, come on now guys, we’re not young anymore – AND our sync ratios are good coming out of Sim training, we will at least be able to drop into a combat theater. But, it’s unlikely we’ll need to do anything other than look intimidating. This is security and suppression; we’re not walking into Dale’s Folley or anything. This is a celebrity gig, we’re not expected to engage. Gladhand the troops, a few lectures here and there, maybe a selfie or two,” I trailed off

“But, I get to suit up and jack in,” Blaize was sincere in a way rare in my knowing him.

“It’s different now,” I started again, “I mean, yes, but it’s different now. The Cores. They’re bigger, more difficult to use. It’s not like the Old Times, tech has come a really long way. Our understanding of Polar Gravity is WAY more advanced, and manufacturing technology means they are rapid-prototyping new iterations every WEEK. We’ll be LUCKY to be allowed to fly, AT ALL, it’s not expected we’ll be elite pilots.”

***

I cut off another stack of papers and dropped it on my desk. I held my quill to the top sheet and scanned the information that appeared in the pop-up. “C439-P44-L1 died,” I frowned to myself.

“Unfortunate,” my Chimera replied to only me. “What do I owe you? I truly believed that P44 could sustain a contender,” I felt her frown, herself.

“That’s it for the entire CUBE,” I kept reading to myself. “P43 and 42 both started curving. L1 was the last hope of a 0-flat Universe for the entire CUBE. C439 is closed.” I frowned again.

“Then you owe me!” my Chimera was jubilant. Positively beaming.

“You shouldn’t be so excited about the heat-death of an entire Timecrystal,” I scolded.

“I am only excited because you believed that P44-L1 was the True Expression of Trope #135711.13, but it could not be the case! It was set in Humanity’s CE5780’s, and we know that anything after the 163rd millennia of Homo Sapiens could not possibly be on the True Timeline,” my Chimera replied sanctimoniously.

“Yes, but,” I began, setting my quill down and holding up a finger, “As I have explained many times, the data was very clear! They did not fixate before CE2900, but their cultural recursion spiral doesn’t start to resolve in the data until it zooms out to over 20,000 years per block. That gives PLENTY of time to have a non-standard evolutionary track that propagates a non-Hominin species that stands a CHANCE to become a Nexus Outlier.”

“And you were wrong,” she snubbed, “Again. And a Time Crystal’s-worth of life will suffer Existence AND Annihilation for it.”

“It is not for me to play God,” I retorted. “I just read the data and let the Archon decide what to Watch. I’m just another datapoint in his Cloud.”

“You are in the upper echelon of Observers,” my Chimera began, “that means WE are in the upper echelon of Observers. You may not be competitive, but I am,” she continued emphatically. “You force your obsession with xenomorphism on me, and you have somehow convinced the Archon that your counter-example-based approach to resolving problems is somehow a fruitful endeavor to explore…”

“…because I have located dozens of Nexus Outliers by proving that certain Time Crystals cannot be categorically ruled out, despite having non-Hominid biology!” I interrupted.

“…despite your mathematical curiosities ALWAYS falling prey to OTHER forces that ultimately force them to start curving, or Annihilate outright,” she didn’t miss a beat. “Not least of which is your vendetta against the Law of Three and Ten.”

“Just because Hominids always fall into 3-dimensional physical space, and they always evolve to use base-10 number systems doesn’t mean that it’s a LAW,” I hung my head, exasperated.

“You know that isn’t why it works that way,” she rebutted me.

“There is still not a rigorous proof!” I objected. “The proof is all Anthropic! There is space in the current theory for highly exotic number systems and various different hyperdimensional spaces!”

“And all of them cannot even get past their first generation of Cosmic Deformation,” she denied. “You KNOW all of your theories rely on undiscovered or unproven Science!”

“Yes, but!” I held my finger up again.

“NO ‘BUTS’,” She shut me down completely. “Enough! I was right, AGAIN, and you owe me!”

“Fine, what do you want,” I squeaked to the Chimera in my head, a full conversation animated on my face, having never left my mouth.

“What’s going on with the—”

“— Venusians? Funny you should ask!” I trampled her. “I just read a paper on their coming-of-age traditions! Two words: Ritual Incest. You can’t make this shit up!” I laughed out loud, damn if my neighbor gave me a look or not. I pulled up the research paper with my quill and read it into my internal monologue: “Because of these obvious signs, a woman’s first period is often predictable enough that there is a ceremony to celebrate it. Upon separation, the male’s mouth, now about 12cm in circumference at the base of the scrotum where it was once attached to its host, begins to consume the ejected menstruation, rigidly affixing itself to the floor over-top the fluid. While consuming the ejectus, the adolescent will mount the erect penis and, in a squatting motion, copulate to what is ostensibly her first orgasm while her community observes and participates in what is considered to be a very beautiful and sacred rite. When surveyed, women will often describe this moment as the most emotionally fulfilling experience of their life. Part of the ritual involves coaxing the semi-sentient male into orgasm and ejaculation while fully penetrating his twin-sister. Once every few generations, the semen can actually survive to first ovulation and achieve successful implantation. This is considered the most supreme of blessings. In this case, the stud is then ritualistically slaughtered and the child is carried to term. If viable, the adolescent mother is exalted to noble status, elevating her family to ordained elites in the city-state she has brought glory to. The baby will be raised as an Oracle or Prophet, and is expected to live her life as a virgin, while her male will be the prize stud of the congregation, spending it’s days in a near-constant state of sexual utilization.”

“My emotions are so confused!” my Chimera wailed.

“It’s so weird, right?” I concurred. “Their entire hierarchy of taboos and acceptable sexual behavior is also quite surprising. Matrilineal oral incest is not only acceptable, but encouraged, with families having multiple transgenerational exchanges daily. Conversely, ANY genital contact between family members, male OR female, is still a deeply-held taboo, despite their contradictory acceptance of the separation ceremony.”

“That almost makes it better,” my Chimera still felt deeply troubled. “I don’t know if I mourn the loss of Moral Absolutism, or if the Venusians are hyper-enlightened beings beyond my ken. What is up with the Nexus Outlier? How fares our Dominant?”

“Oh right!” I cut an arbitrary stack of paper onto my desk, and the exact right page was on top as I tapped my quill to it. “He is just finishing his Montage,” I watched a reel of him and his party training in the simulators. “It looks like the Walkers have us mapped pretty close to the next Zoom Level of the Nexus Outlier. All of his possible futures have been condensed down into a few Harmonics.” I set my quill down and clapped my hands over the page. When I spread them apart, a gold mist writhed like a contained blob of ink. I cupped my hands around the blob and shaped it into a sphere. It started to ripple at length and I stared at it until I fell into it. When I blinked, I was staring at it again and I could feel the Castings as if they were threads I could pull on. “28% of the timelines have them achieving Elite status as they exit their training. None of the non-Elite Timelines are any fun, though,” I waffled my head around.

“Like?” my Chimera interrogated.

“Well, they all just kind of mill about and then the Bishops dissolve Theocracy. There is some drama that hasn’t played out yet, but the Jumpmen will be mostly engaged in ceremonial displays and motivational rallies, so it will be happening around them before we understand the ramifications.”

“BORING,” my Chimera yawned in my head.

“Well, in .001% of possible timelines, they achieve such a high Elite score that they are immediately transferred to Ace Pilot training and deploy as an extrajudicially-empowered diplomatic hit-squad infiltrating black-sites and engaging in fast-paced, philosophically-ambiguous walk-and-talk dialog sequences punctuated by poignant and deeply technical combat situations complicated by realistic Physics, buuut…” I put the kibosh on that idea quickly. “It’s really Molly-centric, and like, everyone confronts the personal demons they are hiding behind screens of antisocial behavior, and it gets a little soft-core in many of their personal awakenings.”

“Huh,” my Chimera sounded slightly dumbfounded as I felt her still processing what I just said.

I plowed on, “Yeah, it’s pretty annoying. The Archon has a note in here that I let YOU drive for a little bit too, of all things! He said it’s totally possible, I’ve just never tried and that it’s really important to you that I let you do this. BUT, you’ve never mentioned anything like that TO ME, so like, why would I ever do that?”

“Wait…” I couldn’t understand whatever she was saying next if she was even saying anything, she just got kind of, like, hot? If I were a synesthete, again. It was nice to not have her interrupt me!

“Well, I mean,” I continued, “the only other alternative is this side-story where Jim is split from the group very early on and has to navigate almost the entire sequence on a personal mission of self-discovery. At the end, he fights an unrelenting horde of disposable minions, willingly sacrificing himself for the good of his team, only to be saved at the last moment by Molly and the squad, a final coup de grace validating each of their different redemption arcs. The entire sequence in-between is mostly just him having deep, romantic, and occasionally erotic conversations with his soulmate, and has no need for us to actually follow along with him as, FOR SURE, the Molly arc is where the action is.”

“….EEEEEEE….” was all I could hear when I finally tried to listen for my Chimera again.

“Are you broke—” was all I was able to get out.

***

Dearest Molly, I started.

I know it’s only been three days, but I still miss you! The last time I did commando work like this was that time in Central Asia when we were trapped behind enemy lines by a Xianshi flank. Miss me with that “Democratic People’s Republic” fake news. What. Ever. Xianshe. We probably would have starved if we hadn’t snuck into that fishing village and stole that canoe. I still feel bad about that sometimes…”

“FUCK ME,” I said to Jim. “This shit is so BORING,” I paced around the fire. My Chimera had not deigned us with her presence.

“Boring?” Jim looked around. “I’m backpacking through the African rainforest looking for a cenote that, if I find, will not only provide a back-door entrance into an underground lava tube the Tyro have been using as a secret supply line, I will ALSO almost-certainly earn a Nobel prize for the team that developed the geological model that predicted it exists using ONLY initial conditions and NO terrain maps to train from. How is that ‘boring?’”

“They aren’t going to earn a Nobel Prize this year because of the vastly LESS BORING things your wife is doing,” I stamped around. “UGH, FINE,” I said into the vine-draped woods outside the rocky ingress Jim’d made camp in. “CAN YOU HEAR ME!” I yelled over the din of buzzing and chirping and humming. “YOU CAN DRIVE.”

***

The hatch opened on the simulator and I stepped out. I shook my arms and legs out, my prosthetic legs forming weird shapes under my flight suit as I did so. “Almost got me honey,” I looked up at the man I called my soulmate. We met in school and had a torrid love affair that ended with us inextricably linked.

Jim hugged me, kissed the top of my head, and then took a few steps back so he could talk to me without having to look down at such a dramatic angle. “You’re still the best of us and you know it,” his blue-white eyes flashed as he shook his head in his typical way, and raked his black hair back behind his ears. It stuck, but only because his hair was soaked with sweat. I knew it’d pull out and get in his face within minutes without a hat or headband.

“I’ll catch up,” Adrian said as he skipped into place.

“I won’t,” Tomah chuckled as he came up beside him.

“Not with that attitude,” Blaize laughed as he fell into the now-forming semicircle.

“You wish,” Marion came up behind me and rested a hand on my shoulder. “You did incredible, Molly,” She smiled wearily. “You’ll always be the better bruiser and they’re just jealous.”

“Mighty things come in small packages,” I said as we all made our way over to the Analysist’s table. “I can put my big-girl legs on, too, if that’ll emasculate you less,” I sniggered.

“Then I’d just be getting my ass kicked by a hyena on stilts” Jim winced. “We’ll never beat the five-banger, and I, as a modern macho douchebag, accept my fate,” he smiled and kissed me as we all alighted on the Analyst’s table, glued to my side as always.

“Why him?” I said as Molly left the team in place, frozen in their instant.

“Jim?” She replied. “Jim is amazing, that’s why!” She smiled warmly at me. “He’s a bit of a know-it-all, but he usually IS right, so it’s more endearing than it is annoying. That’s why we call him the ‘Living Realm!’ And have you seen that ass in a pair of slacks?” she wiggled her eyebrows at me with a wry smile.

“Five-banger,” my sad little Chimera stopped pouting in the corner and asked quickly, for fear of my ire. “Why 5-banger?”

“5 rulers, and 5 bags of sand,” she said with a grin. “155cm and 55kg. Fives across the board. Information Age cars – you know, the ones that ran on liquid dinosaurs? – well, they’ve always been a passion of mine, and they used to come with four explosion-driven cylinders. They called them ‘four-bangers,’ and there used to be really esoteric versions built with five cylinders, so…” she trailed off.

“Five-banger,” my brother James replied.

“Can you tell me what’s really going on, Red?” The smile on Molly’s face finally faded.

She was exactly as short and petite as she said she was. My hair was true red. Pure red. Not the orange-brown that only a human would call “red,” like hers. She kept it curly and long in a tight French braid. I had a badass short cut that revealed my magnificent pointy ears now, styled such that even the most trendy would find it edgy. My eyes were teal, luminescent and almost neon. Hers were emerald green and bottomless, with a delicate, ghostly haze that made them look like mist-covered pools. Her build was average; short and strong, but slender, with none of her superficial muscles showing much size or definition at rest. Even taller now, I was lithe and ropey. Muscular, but long and athletic. She still looked…mousy, despite knowing she would stand a very good chance in an arm-wrestle with my human side. Her still-beautiful face had many long scars running along it, both sunken and risen. She had freckles dusted across her once-straight nose, now twisted after being broken many times, and along the exposed flesh of her arm, between her various scarring and tattoos. Her decollete, however, was pristine and unblemished in contrast. My skin was alabaster-white and flawless. Now that I was in control, I had fixed the scarring and acne, his “heroic flaws” be damned. I’m perfect, not “perfect as I am.” Fuck him and his “You were just hot, now you’re hot AND interesting.” I don’t want to be interesting; I just want to be HOT. She had both her arms, and no legs. Not by her choice but fuck if she didn’t own it. She had no less than twenty sets of prosthetics and bionics, several of which were expensive designer pieces she earned from modeling gigs back during the Jumpman days. I chose a bionic arm because I could not stand the limitations of the human body. And, the only “modeling gig” I’d ever take would involve fucking and getting fucked, not some artsy fashion bullshit.

“It is as my brother said,” I gestured to the pouty, charcoal-black dwarf in the corner, an anachronism of modernity clashing with fantastical tradition. As annoyed with him as I may have been, I had become quite attached to the physical vessels he’d spent so many eons designing for us. His talent with character juxtaposition was worth lauding, at the very least. “We are here only to Observe. As he has described, Existence is luck, but given Infinity, even the most improbable becomes possible. All of Reality is concentrated on the next few coinflips. There is only one Reality, the True Timeline. Everything else is just a simulation, a vast Universe-wide superposition. This,” I held my hand out, “is all an illusion. None of this is actually happening,” I took a few steps forward until I was standing body-to-body with her, her head craned up to see me, chin just above my crotch. She took a few steps back and restored the sightline with practiced ease. “The One True Timeline, that thing we often talk about, is this Universe,” I pointed at the ground, “our Universe, your Universe. It’s watching you, like a movie. It’s watching all universes; everything, everywhere, all at once. But THIS,” I waved my hands around again and started to pace a little bit, “THIS is Reality. This is what happens when that superposition collapses into an Observable Event. All possible Universes, all possible EVERYTHING, collapsing into one random Reality.”

“Luck,” Molly repeated. “Like my books!” she jumped up and down and clapped. It was so cute it made me want to vomit. “That Grand Narrative thing!” She wiggled her butt and punched her fists into the air. It was so adorable I felt hypnotized, like my brain was being hacked. I shook my head into place. “Hey! That’s what Jim does! Wait, does that mean I MAKE people do it?” she paused and her eyes grew wide.

“No,” I did it again, “it’s him,” I pointed at the frozen Jim leaning over the table. “And him,” I hiked my thumb at James, again. He waved in reply and kept quiet, mercifully. “I’m still that…thing’s…Chimera. So, he absorbed his habit, and I have biologically inherited it from him.”

“So it’s not me!” She started wiggling her butt and punching the air again. My body wretched uncontrollably.

“You are correct,” I rolled my eyes, “on both counts. The Grand Narrative is the One True Timeline, the waking perception of the Universe’s dreams. The most interesting thing to the greatest Intelligence. It is the Universe knowing itself. Of all the things that COULD happen, this is what’s ACTUALLY happening.”

“Wait, so I really am that good?” She raised her eyebrows and looked sidelong at me.

I held a finger to my chin, “More like, the Grand Narrative isn’t interesting if you aren’t. In the parlance of the Authors, ‘Interesting,’” I made air-quotes, “is actually measurable, and is represented by a quantized field. You, this you,” I wagged my finger up and down at her, “is likely the most interesting ‘you’ ever quantized.”

“THIS is what I was trying to say,” finally unable to control himself, my brother piped up. “You can do ANYTHING YOU WANT, Molly. You can’t control WHAT happens, but you can control HOW it happens. As long as its interesting, it will work.” Because I had not stopped him, he ran over to my side like a puppy and started gesticulating wildly. “This was always going to start with a nuke, but the Timeline where it is unmarked and unidentifiable, as if it came from nowhere, was too INTERESTING. The Universe, the Archon, agreed it must be the Great Truth. The way it ACTUALLY happened. These possible choices are called Castings,” he held his palms up flat and waggled his hands, which were now encased in gold mist. “The Universe has started building a sort of Cognitive Model on how all of this works, because it’s only about three-and-a-half billion years old. A practical toddler in the grand scheme of the True Timeline and the formal concept of Infinity.”

“So, you,” Molly pointed at James, “and, by extension, her,” she pointed at me, “and all this,” she waved her hands around us, “is the Universe, like, the actual ‘I live in a Universe’-Universe, PAUSING Reality so it can have a little chat with me? Like, it’s trying to give me a pep-talk right now?”

“When you put it like that…” James looked off into the distance.

“Yes,” I felt almost compelled to reply. “The more interesting you are, the longer the Universe will Observe. And HE,” I patted my brother on his head. He crossed his arms and made a grumpy frown, “the less bored HE gets, the longer he’ll pay attention.”

“If something feels boring, just ask,” he perked back up. “I’ll let you know if it’s the right thing to do. Oh, and Blaize knows all of this, the little pervert,” he started rolling his hands together like he was applying lotion, cackling like a villain all the while. “But he thinks its all a dream and no-one will ever believe him.”

“You can ruin his fun and talk about it with him,” I wacked my brother across the back. He stumbled forward and cut his Bad Guy-act short. “Jim will understand, too. But the Universe is preventing the others from knowing, so there will never be a Reality that exists where they also believe you. Act Accordingly.”

“THIS IS SO COOL!” Molly shrieked and started dancing around in a little circle.

“I like her,” my brother said, “maybe this won’t be so bad.”

“One last question,” she halted. “Why only Blaize? And why me?” She looked up at me sheepishly, those green eyes melting even my most robust of defenses.

“As we’ve said before, the Universe likes to pick physical avatars, like myself and my brother here,” I held my hand toward him in presentation. “Blaize has been Seeded, to see if he thinks differently about the True Timeline. If his thoughts about the Great Truth are interesting, he might be plucked from Reality and chosen to be an Author, like us.”

“Aww,” Molly hung her head and flashed her best puppy-dog eyes. “I was hoping I could be an Author,” she kicked an invisible pebble. “Stories were, still are, my life. I was never good enough to write, but Observe? I could do that,” she looked down at her shoes.

“I’m not one to speak for the Universe,” my brother held up a finger, “Ok, maybe I am. But Nexus Observers HAVE become Authors in the past. As long as your personal model of the Great Truth is interesting enough, there is a chance you too could be asked to Observe the One True Timeline, as well.”

“FUCK YEAH!” Molly shrieked and started dancing again, this time in a way no “little circle” could contain.

***

“Carol!” Standish beamed. “Long time no chat!” He dropped the cane from under his arm. It stood ramrod-straight for a second before he rested his palm on the skull-shaped pommel and visibly leaned his weight onto it and paced forward. His hologram passed through the Captain, who was standing with her feet in a T-stance before quickly pivoting 180 degrees into the opposite T-stance, now watching his back as he approached us. “The ol’ Care-Bear,” he said without turning to acknowledge the scornful look on her face. “To what do I owe the surprise. “He pivoted 90 degrees and batted his head between us. “I see you are now with-entourage.” He alighted his gaze on us. “The CORE Project must be doing well in my absence." He cocked an eyebrow.

“It would be doing better with your presence,” the Captain retorted, maintaining her characteristic inexpressiveness.

“Cut the John Galt shit out and come the fuck home,” I flipped my nose up at him. “You always have taken away the COMPLETE opposite message from the Classics than implied,” I smiled easily.

“Fuck you, cretin,” Standish broke character and responded with genuine contempt.

“Fuck you, hack-job,” Marion interceded, legitimate, authentic rage in her voice. “You’re just pissed you can’t argue with the fucking DOCTOR over here,” she stabbed her finger into his hologram.

“She’ll never understand,” he seethed daggers at me.

“Fuuuuuuuuck you,” I pursed my lips to fight back a dismissive laugh. “The bitch that wrote that drivel was ON WELFARE. She was everything she wrote AGAINST. It can ONLY be read as a farce, a satire. A lampooning of the entire CONCEPT. You fucking NEED us you asshat, don’t pretend you’re on some fucking ideological CRUSADE. We’re better than that, OK? We’re not fucking kids anymore.” I flapped the back of my hand at him and checked Marion in the rib with my elbow.

Standish stood still, thrumming with ire for a few beats, and then relaxed, pulling on the skull of his cane with a sharp tug. The cane hung suspended for a second before he snatched it out of the air and tucked it back under his armpit, turning his back to me, and faced only Carol now. “When did she get so…interesting,” he addressed to the Captain.

“I’m right fucking here, asshole,” I waved at him. “REFIT forced me OFF of Memory Capsules and IN to fucking THERAPY. Maybe YOU should try it,” I wobbled my head back and forth mockingly.

“It’s SO fucking hot,” Jim wiggled his eyebrows, but did not break his at-ease posture, catching my eye with a sidelong glance and a smirk.

“Seriously. It’s loud,” Adrian sighed in dismay.

“And kinky,” Blaize leered at Standish without blinking.

“ENOUGH!” he turned violently, malevolence stitched into his furrowed brow and bulging eyes and veins. “ENOUGH of this witless BANTER!” He howled at us all. “YOU summoned ME,” he raged. “I did not accept only to be skewered by uncultured HALF-WITS!” a small bit of spittle had foamed at the corner of his mouth. He wiped it away and stabbed his own finger through the Captain’s shoulder. “I am talking to YOU, NOT them. YOU. Why did YOU summon me!?” He demanded.

The Captain, who had remained unmoving throughout the entire exchange, finally animated from her statuesque posture and did that thing no one seemed to notice where she emphasized her words by widening and narrowing her eyelids, but kept her face and tone otherwise wood-stiff, her chin and lips barely moving as her eyes went wild. “I INVITED you to our BRIEFING,” she emphasized as she folded her hands over themselves in front of her, “as a GESTURE of good will. WE will be announcing the death of the Archbishop TOMORROW.”

“Finally, some action!” Ylysse inserted exuberantly in her natural accent.

Standish turned and scowled at her. She immediately began to inspect the top of her fingernails, feigning to pay him no heed.

“And in so doing, announcing YOU as his successor,” she stood frozen again.

“WHAT,” We all replied in astonishment.

“Wait, WHAT?” He snapped back to her, enrapt in his own astonishment.

“Well, not YOU you,” she broke her stillness and pinched her face together in a comical way. “Tyler Dyman, and by EXTENSION, you as his Metatron,” she tipped her head forward as her face returned to its impassive neutral mask.

“That’s even BETTER!” He stamped his walking stick down and, pressing heavily onto the skull figure, skipped his jacked, muscular body up and clicked his heels together. “Ok kids,” he turned and beamed his pearly whites at us, “you can say WHATEVER the fuck you want, I’m about to be First Boy to the leader of the ENTIRE ECONOMY!”

“But I’m FIRST BOY,” Ylysse mocked in a stodgy British accent.

“Nice Reference,” Standish pointed a finger-gun at her. “Decent Weasley impression, too.” Ylysse flipped her nose up at him a with self-satisfied smirk.

“Alright,” the Captain cleared her throat. “Now that everyone’s friendly again,” she fell back to a digital whiteboard behind her and started gesturing into open space with her hands.

“CUT,” Red’s brother interceded.

“It’s getting boring,” Red shrugged and rolled her eyes.

“BANG,” James finger-gun’d the Captain

“I am going to be giving you a presentation about The Dainish Hegemony’s plan to announce the Bishop’s ‘recent demise,’” Carol made air-quotes. “A council of G30 World Leaders has been convened, all of whom have been introduced to, and convinced to back the Mission as laid out by Algos, the Galactic Intelligence Kuiriston sacrificed his life for. Once shown the Meteor, no one turns their back.”

“That’s right, Meteor! You owe me, Sister!” James announced as he finger-gunned Tomah.

“Meteor? What do you mean Meteor,” he leaned out from the formation line to address me directly. His voice was animated and his face expressive, but his body was contorted and otherwise unmoving. He leaned back into the line. James pointed at Blaize.

“What fucking ‘Meteor,’” Blaize mimicked. James pushed his finger down in front of Standish as if he were playing a keyboard.

“This fucking Meteor,” Standish’s body animated like an animatronic at a theme park as he pointed at the digital whiteboard and a picture of a speck of light flying through space appeared on it. A small animation played as the perspective zoomed out, showing an invisible gravitational mass flying at the planet, “None of our models predicted its existence, none of our instruments were able to detect it, and none of our theory can explain how we have been unable to detect it until now, but, there is a meteor, THE Meteor, about to impact our planet. It will be about twelve times bigger than the one that killed the dinosaurs and fifty times smaller than the object that formed the Moon. So, it's survivable…” Standish trailed off as he froze back into place.

“But that looks like it’s what, eighty years away? Maybe ninety?” James activated Adrian next.

“Yadda, Yadda, Yadda,” James made a rolling gesture with his hand and pointed at Carol.

“The next thing this presentation would be telling you is that we have between seventy-five and one-hundred years to finish the first phase of the Dyson sphere and use that energy to build protective bunkers and information caches in an effort to preserve Human History.”

“This is the first time we’re hearing about this, too, by the way,” Red pointed at me. “I love it when he does this,” She smiled and pointed at her brother. Seeing her smile felt rare, and somehow deeply intimate.

“Pow!” James pointed at Jim, and I couldn’t tell if he was ignoring us or feigning ignorance. “…that large? That fast? The Sphere is easily 50 years out, and we don’t even have half the technology proposed to build this mythical ‘Sanctuary’ you’re talking about…” James was muttering under his breath as he mouthed along to what Jim was saying. He paused and looked over to his sister. His face was excited. Child-like. Innocent in a way only Red could see. “This is the part where he hits them with a Plea to Morality,” he pointed at Jim again, “We can’t force the WORLD to do this, even if it means our Annihilation. That’s WHY the Dainish Hegemony existed! We NEEDED an enforced moral system to compel people to behave! Did we learn nothing from the Great War!?” James snapped and a bag of popcorn appeared in his hands. He recited along as if he were watching the pivotal scene in a courtroom drama for the hundredth time, shoving popcorn in his mouth between dramatic pauses. “We cannot FORCE Humanity’s survival, it must WANT it!”

James pointed at me. “Your turn,” he said with a wiggle of his eyebrows.

“We don’t know what happens next,” Red repeated. “But I CAN tell you that the Meteor is real. Knowing what we know about True Observation, the bunkers make sense,” she consoled. “This is what we came to watch,” she said. “I can’t tell you what to say next, because it doesn’t really matter. You humans survive, the Archon’s Prophecy comes true, and you become the First Ones. Or you go extinct and the One True Timeline must wait another subset of Infinity before the TRUE First Ones evolve. Either way, the Grand Narrative will carry on, and this will just be another Observable Moment fixed in history.

“It is imminent that we do this,” I replied gravely. “Blaize, Jim, you know why.”

“I know,” Jim replied to him and me individually, his normal, animated self again. He shook his thoughts into place. “But not like this!” He vocalized emphatically.

“If you would let me SPEAK,” the Captain surprised us with a rare elevation in tone and volume. “James, Moline,” she continued in traditional stoic fashion,” as I was saying, we have worked out a deal with the Tyro.”

“Talk about a fucking DEAL, too” Standish said with a smirk. “Full Autonomy, Unlimited Budget, No research too inconsequential. The entire might and will of humankind at the Elohim’s disposal. And talk about MOTIVATION!” He clapped his greedy hands together. “All Dyman has to do is provide the Sanctuary, and the Mission can begin!”

“’All Dyman has to do,’” Ylysse repeated as if she were lip-synching to an audio replay, “is easy enough to say,” she continued in her natural tone, “but BUILDING a human-scale closed terrarium that can sustain itself on wirelessly-transmitted Dyson energy. That’s ALSO hardened enough to endure the fallout from forty THOUSAND of the most powerful nuclear weapons known to Mankind, that also DON’T EXIST YET, I might add. And shattering a world-ending meteor into a hundred-thirty-seven SMALLER, ALMOST world-ending meteors, hoping that the dust and tsunamis kicked up by the impacts will trap the fallout more quickly, because, delusionally, we believe we might be able to ‘solve’ the ‘radiation problem’ in the future! THAT’S all you have to do?”

“Have DONE,” Standish held a finger up.

The Captain made some gestures and the slide advanced. A diagram of a geofront appeared with blueprints laid over it. It transformed into a 3D model, and then evolved into a real-world snapshot of the location itself. “Sanctuary does, indeed, exist,” the Captain Confirmed. A 3D rendering of the solar system was shown with various different objects highlighted in different parts of the graphic. “Specially-tuned Accumulator crystals are dragged into orbit around the sun,” she started explaining the slide, “where they will absorb photonic energy until their mass increases to JUST a high-enough point that the crystal structure buckles. Instead of emitting light, the special crystal will instead emit a high-frequency, high-energy pulse of gravitons as the crystal’s structure deforms though physical space and returns to its resting energy. As these pulses propagate outward, they will destructively and constructively interfere. ‘Resonator’ crystals are dragged into these nodes of highest energy, where they absorb and re-emit the gravitational pulse with surprisingly high efficiency. These crystals are lined with “Reflector” crystals, that, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, absorb and re-emit the energy from the same face, helping to collimate the gravitational pulse onto ‘Lensing’ crystals. Yes, they absorb the gravitational pulse from one face and emit it from the another. This pulsed gravitational laser-jet is focused into the Earth’s gravitational well, suddenly accelerating the planet. The Central Column at the heart of the Sanctuary acts as a tuned mass dampener, bleeding off the acceleration shock and converting the Inertial Load into electromechanical energy, kind of like a gravitational flywheel being treadled by sunlight. No intricate machinery, no complex parts, just rocks and Physics. The holy grail of solid-state energy.”

“Unreal,” Tomah gawped.

“See?” Standish grinned indignantly. “NOT some ‘John Galt shit.’ ‘Alan Rearden shit,’ if anything,” he snarked. I harumphed in agreement. “This is up and running NOW,” he punctuated. “Our Nobel-Prize-Winning geologist over there,” he pointed at Jim, “can claim SOME credit for it!” he waved his hands up and down, “let me get a round of applause everyone!” he began clapping loudly, fading out as no one played along.

“I was the 41st co-author on a paper I contributed two paragraphs to, and only because YOU pulled SEVERAL strings to get me ON said paper,” Jim demurred.

“I mean,” I interjected, “you DID actually backpack through the African Bush to FIND the cenote, and that WAS the crux of their proof,” I persisted. “Don’t be too modest, sweetie. There are few, if any, who could have acquired the data you did in the academic world.”

“Yeah, man, you almost DIED,” Adrian added.

“If it weren’t for that fight,” Blaize intoned, “we wouldn’t be the team we are today.”

“It was the moment I truly felt at home in the new Hypercores,” Jim admitted.

“You and me both,” Marion concurred.

“Thanks everyone, that really means a lot to me,” Jim smiled innocently.

“GAG,” Standish said as a word. “Anyway.” He rolled his eyes and pointed the tip of his walking stick to the board, a large volume was highlighted around the column in the next slide. “That enabled us to find this geofront system, a vast, cavernous ‘bubble’ frozen in a system of lava tubes that has gradually migrated to a place near to the crust along the Master Faultline. It will exist stably as a feature for the next million or so years and is deep enough to be well-shielded from the activity on the surface.” Standish tapped his cane to the board again, and the perspective withdrew, a horizontal cross-section revealing an ant farm-like network of geofronts and lava tubes, each powered by Kinetic Induction columns and containing purpose-driven Sanctuaries in each so-called “District.”

“This is what the Tyro has been toiling away on,” the Captain nodded. “And they have agreed to build enough humanitarian dorms to ensure all of Human existence.”

“In exchange for?” Blaize fired off immediately.

“This is only Phase One of the Dyman System,” Standish flared his eyebrows. “Kuiriston and Dyman, it turns out, share a similar vision.” He tapped his cane to the board, and it advanced slides again. Every planet in the solar system was “wired” into the network of crystals. The rocky planets were all terraformed, Human outposts on every one. The animation zoomed out to reveal a crystal matrix around the entire star, a massive gravitational laser fed by it and its gas giants’ photonic emissions, bleeding them dry of gravitational mass-energy until the objects evaporate into fundamental particles and get annihilated by randomized vacuum energy. Wordlessly, Standish zoomed the scale out again to show every star in the galaxy encased in crystals, their habitable planets harvested, terraformed, populated, and added to the Swarm. The final level of zoom revealed the entire filament structure of the Universe, every single galaxy’s siphoned surplus energy fed into a stabilized bubble within which the entire Universe’s gravitational energy is concentrated and harvested at a planetary level in an optimally-efficienct way to generate the highest concentration or Order and Diversity possible in ANY Universe. “No one has said ‘No’ yet.”

“Where do I sign up,” Adrian mouthed, goggle-eyed.

“Count me in,” I felt a higher power calling to my soul in a way I had never felt before. The concept alone was enough to earn my commitment.

“We can REALLY do this?” Jim asked Standish.

“We have a Dyman installation around our Sun that spans a roughly 2-degree arc centered on the star’s equator,” Standish replied, “and it is sustaining all 8 Districts. AND, we have barely broken a single percent of load.

“And the other shoe finally drops,” I scrunched my nose. “Now I get it. Tyro is growing an artificial GENERAL intelligence,” I crossed my arms and cocked my hip out. “HAS an AGI more-likely. Kuiriston didn’t ‘die,’” I did the air-quotes. I love doing the air-quotes, “and his brain wasn’t ‘saved’ as an engram. He IS the AGI. It was trained on his ACTUAL brain, and the AGI has reached Singularity. It needs WAY more horsepower, and you need the energy to support it, FAST. How do you make those gravitational crystals, by the way?” I smirked and waggled my eyebrows at him.

“Funny you should ask!” he tapped the screen and a new slide appeared. A line of gravitational crystals fed dust from nearby celestial objects into an open lava pit. “If we position the Dyman Pulse JUST right, we can create a concentration of sheer force that will create enough friction to explode a supervolcano our geologists have identified in the heartland of Dain. At first we will need to launch material into space using chemically-powered vessels and build it with nuclear-powered instrumentation, but once we’ve grown enough, we can create a pipeline with the crystals themselves that will flow the lava into Low Earth Orbit to naturally self-replicate without instrumentation.”

“And how do the crystals form ‘naturally,’” I air-quoted.

“Well,” Standish started, “it’s a bit complicated,” he stalled.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I scrunched my nose again. “Another AGI black box. It’ll ‘just work’ once it’s up and running, sure, but there’s no way human-accelerated growth could coordinate all of that construction, and AI needs POWER. ‘Oh we’ll just skim a little off the top, the rest is for The People!’ or whatever argument they always give. Those ‘Humanitarian Dorms’ you’re planning on building are all just Realm-Cells for anyone willing to trade survival for their training data, aren’t they?"

“It’s…” Standish began.

“Complicated,” they completed in unison. “That’s what I thought.”

“Look, Dyman isn’t the first to try this. Where do you think the concept of a Dyson sphere comes from in the first place?” I shook my head. “What aren’t you telling us?” I squinted at him.

“Two sites are being established,” the Captain interceded. “All of the G30 and most other members of the Global League are preparing a century-spanning project that can only succeed if all members dedicate each of their entire civilizations to supporting the task.”

“Or,” Standish waved a hand, “Join the Tyro Resistance!” he gave a thumbs-up. “Too lazy to help, but too afraid to die? Join the Tyro Resistance!” He pulled a corny smile and winked.

“Enough talk,” the Captain scowled at Standish. “Is everyone satisfied with their understanding of current events?” She reset her face. No one spoke up. “Good,” she punctuated finitely. “Let’s go over the plan.”

***

“What is this ‘Story,’ brother?” I asked my Chimera in my head. I sat at my desk, reading my Dailies. The Archon insisted I get some “body time” in and my Chimera had been particularly generous of late.

“Which kind? An eight-seventeen (c) three? Or a (q) eleven?” he inquired.

“’The Author shall record their Story as they have Walked it into the Register before they may begin a new Walk,’” I read into my internal monologue.

“(q) eleven,” he injected, “that’s the one written in ‘formal concepts.’ You know, the one with all the capitalized letters, yeah?” I had existed so long as his conscience, it was interesting to inquire to him as my own. He would leave me in silence for so long, left only to my thoughts; I did not wish to confine him in the way he did me, his commentary most likely being more useful than I may give credit for. “That sentence sounds like it came from ‘Walker’s Guide colon Standard Operating Procedure parentheses S-dot-O-dot-P, yes?’” he pronounced the punctuation out-loud. “If so, you’ll notice that the next sentence in the Guide, line seventy-two, says “’Please refer to Section Eight, sub-article ‘ex-vee-eye-eye,’” he again pronounced the characters XVII to indicate the Roman Numerals for seventeen, “colon Drafting and Acceptance for submission details and guidelines.’ Eight-seventeen is the report you give to the Archon to start the peer review process. Dot-dot-dot-quote ‘record their Story,’ means you can’t start a new gig until you’ve actually published your results to the Great Truth, or at least, had the Archon indicate that the eight-seventeen is enough for someone else to pick up and Publish.”

“Which is why we have so few Authorships,” I replied, somewhat annoyed.

“And so many Co-Authorships,” he retorted, annoyingly. “I was almost awarded an Erdos surname and still might be if I keep it up.” I could feel him smiling into our Bond Interface, as I’ve always referred to it. Well, I call it the “Bond” when I talk to myself. I felt him smile into the Bond. “’James Watson Maxwell ERDOS Blake LeBron 't Hooft the VIth,’” he announced himself aspirationally. “Quite the ring, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Oh Brother,” I cooed to him “your accolades are indeed impressive. I appreciate your skill as an Author,” I stroked his ego.

“Sure, whatever,” he dismissed with an eye-roll into the Bond. “It’s not about the accolades, sister,” he put a little attitude on ‘sister’ at the end. “It’s about knowing things. Speaking of which, a new paper on the Venusians was supposed to be submitted around now. Care to read it for me?”

“Ugh, fine,” I cut the stack of papers on the desk and the report appeared on top. I held my quill to the page and summarized for my brother. “It says that the social structure of the Venusians is exactly as horny as you’d expect from an all-female society whose: males have literally evolved into living dildos, females have a coming of age ceremony that includes public displays of sexual intercourse, and where eating out your mother is considered a warm way to welcome her home from work.” I gagged a little bit as I scanned the document further. “’The hypersexual nature of the Venusians seems to explain both their diplomatic feats and their lack of war. Infant survival rates are actually quite low, with nearly one-third of all newborns dying as a result of something called ‘Toxic Return,’ a symptom of the male’s vampiric parasitism,” I recited to him through the Bond. I felt him bristle with excitement and continued, “In order to maintain their diminutive size, substantial portions off the male’s internal anatomy have become vestigial or voided entirely. This has reduced their life span to only twenty years after their separation, on average, with two to four years not being uncommon before male-domestication became widespread. Because of the basic Hominid body-plan for females, child birth is still a nine-month process and, as a result, female life has maintained its inherent reproductive capitalization. That is to say, it has been and continues to be too expensive as a species to allow women and children to participate in combat, and as a result, violent tendencies were naturally selected away during their evolutionary process.’”

“Yes, yes,” he rushed me, “Dale’s Observations are often non-linear,” he continued. “I need to know! What is Toxic Return?” he was beaming with excitement.

“Hold on,” I scanned down the document and summarized as I went. “’Toxic Return’ is…” I paused to read to myself before talking into the Bond, “a generic term for infant death caused by complications hosting the male. Genetic aberrations and weak immune systems unable to stave off infections seem to be the leading causes. This also means that women will give birth many times in their lives, dramatically elevating their exposure to pregnancy-related mortality risks. The culture, it would appear, has addressed this weakness by sequestering ALL women, regardless of social standing, for their first year of motherhood, to institutional nursing colonies operated by a highly respected order of priestess-midwives. This has an unintended flattening effect on the social structure and, he argues, promotes ideological mingling that would put selective pressure on a population that was better at moderating social interactions diplomatically instead of violently,” I paused for a beat. “Ugh,” I expressed as I read farther ahead. “The rest of this is just describing how the fact that women are in these colonies to support each other when a significant minority of their children inevitably die from Toxic Return, and how this promotes positive social bonding, and how the institutional nature means that all children have highly standardized educations and all share very similar developmental experiences, which further creates empathy across socio-economic boundaries.”

“I think I get the gist,” he released me, mercifully. “I’ll read it when it’s my turn to drive, next.” He was being particularly understanding.

“What are you playing at? Why are you being so nice to me?” I indicted.

“You get a lot of time to think in here,” he started. “And I’ve had a lot of time to think about how I’ve acted,” he continued. “And I think I want to do some more thinking about how I WANT to act,” he finished.

I did not want to talk him out of something from which I benefited greatly, so I willed a nod at him and cut the stack of papers and held my quill to a new leaf. “The Dominant is almost at another Nexus for us to Observe.”

“Did you read the SOP manual for Observation, yet?” my Chimera prodded me.

“Yes, it is far less restrictive than those of the Walkers,” I winced

“Yeah, I hated Walking,” he replied. “BORING. You pressed ‘I Confirm’ after reading all of them, right?”

“I know,” I replied, “I slept through most of it. And yes, of course, why?”

“That’s why I chose all of those really weird Timelines!” he exclaimed “You wouldn’t answer, so it was at least SOMETHING to make them interesting. I don’t think I’ll ever want to be an Adjudicator, however,” he felt wistful in the Bond. “Too much paperwork. I do not envy the Archon and his team.”

“The OTHER reason we have so many Co-Authorships,” I snarked.

“I HATE PAPERWORK,” he joked with faux-rage.

“YOU ASSHOLE,” I legitimately raged at him. My face physically contorted with realization and I willed pure fury at him through the Bond. “YOU ASSHOLE! THAT is why you’ve been letting me drive so much! So that I will do your fucking PAPERWORK and you can SCHEME your next move!”

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA,” he blacked out my entire mind.

***

“1-Spade,” Blaize opened. “I love that all four of us can play together just this once,” he smiled at Jim across from him.

“Would you cut it out with the table-talk, Blaize? You’re not NEARLY as sly as you think you are,” Marion replied. “He’s four-by-1, strong in spades, Red.”

“That’s not true!” Blaize looked aghast, “or IS it?” he grinned. “It’s not true. Maybe.”

“Fuck you,” I shuffled through my cards looking for a spade in case I missed it. “Four No-Trump.”

“Don’t you fucking DARE,” Jim responded. “5-Spades and suck my DICK,” he stuck his tongue out at me and scowled at Blaize and his cards. “Dig deep, my friend, and I won’t beat your ass.”

“Matching spades, void in clubs, Red” Marion winked at me and grinned. Jim pouted. The transport vehicle swayed as if to emphasize her point. The crate between us shifted slightly on the smooth steel flooring of the armored box truck we were in the back of. “I WOULD have bid 5-hearts, buuuut…pass”

“EVERYONE just cut it out! Except you, Jim, I love ONLY you,” Blaize scowled at us, but made a soft, gentle face to Jim. “Just call your mini and get it over with,” he frowned at me, then his hand.

“His 1-suit is a heart, too, it would seem,” I focused on my cards again. “6-Hearts,” I bid my slam.

“Double that!” Jim exclaimed excitedly. “Are you hearing this?

“Pass,” Marion stared at me calmly and folded her cards into the palm of her right hand.

“Let her have it!” Blaize commented as a pass.

“You know what?” I smirked. “Redouble that!” I grinned. Marion’s gaze was unchanging as I smiled with glee. Everyone passed and let me have my contract.

Jim led the Two of Spades. Marion played the Three and Blaize played the King. “The Tyro aren’t telling us something,” I smiled as I flung out the Four of Hearts and cleared my trick. “There’s no way Standish didn’t know about Dyman getting tapped to be CEO of the Meteor Defense program.” I shot out the King of Hearts. “Let’s get those kids off the street!” I exclaimed.

Jim smirked as he flicked the Ace of Hearts onto the crate. “One down, one to go,” he wiggled his eyebrows at me.

“You legitimately rustled his Jimmies, though,” Marion smirked, then gagged as she threw down the Jack of Hearts. “Standish doesn’t get mad and you made him MAD.”

“Yeah, that was legitimately impressive,” Blaize said with a perfect poker face as he dropped the Queen of Hearts. “He’s not used to being challenged like that.” Jim threw out the Five of Spades and nodded to Blaize. Marion threw in the Four and Blaize dropped the Queen with another toothy grin.

I threw out the Three of Hearts without saying a word and dropped the Ten of Hearts as I cleared my trick. “Fuck my ASS!” Jim exclaimed. “FINE,” he said. He threw the Nine of Hearts in.

“NO thank you,” Marion scowled and threw in the Ten of Spades. She made a face that I couldn’t quite read.

“Maybe after this,” Blaize threw in the Two of Diamonds.

“He’s all MINE after this,” I dead-eye’d Jim as I cleared the pile and threw in the Eight of Hearts. I licked and bit my lower lip. “MINE,” I said again as I pointed downward.

“Uggh,” he let out a vulgar groan before flaring his eyebrows at me, and then Blaize, as he flicked out the Seven of Hearts. “We’ll see how long you stay in THAT mood,” he squirmed uncomfortably in his dark blue uniform. His black hair was pulled back into a topknot and it bobbed as he shook his head into place.

“I think Standish is DEFINITELY hiding something,” Marion wobbled her head as she threw in the Four of Diamonds. Blaize followed with the Three.

“He was so CONVINCING, though,” I threw out the Six of Hearts. Jim threw in the Five. “I know you can never tell with him, but he SEEMED legitimately surprised.” Marion threw out the Five of Diamonds

“I’m not sure WHAT you’re doing Jim, but Kuiriston never liked Dyman,” Blaize threw out the Five of Clubs, “and he HATES Standish. I think the Arch-Bishop was hoping he could find an alternative.”

“Oo! Think I’m done? I SAY NO!” I enthusiastically slapped down the King of Diamonds and winked at Marion. “Can I keep it?” I smiled bashfully. Jim played the Seven of Diamonds.

“Fine,” she made that indistinguishable face again and played the Queen of Diamonds. “Understand?” Blaize played the Nine of Diamonds. “I think the Arch-Bishop realized that he couldn’t convince Humanity to save their own asses out of self-preservation alone,” she said with disdain.

“Yes,” I replied as I played the Jack of Diamonds. Jim played the Eight, Marion the Six, and Blaize the Ten. “But maybe, just maybe, the lure of the Realm could pull them into service.” I played the Two of Clubs. “Your turn!” I tried to be cute and tipped my head, holding a peace-sign to my face

“What the fuck is THAT,” Blaize said as Jim threw out the Six of Spades.

“SHHH,” Jim held a finger to his lips as Marion played the Ace of Clubs and Blaize tacked on the Nine. “That’s a good theory, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on,” Jim squinted as Marion threw out the Queen of Clubs. Blaize threw in the Six and eyed the pile greedily. I threw in the Three, and then Blaize deflated when Jim threw in the Seven of Spades.

“The rest is up to you,” Marion said solemnly as she threw in the Four of Clubs. “I agree with Red. I think they’re all hiding something from us, I just don’t know what,” Blaize threw in the Seven.

I threw in the King. “They’re ALWAYS hiding something from us,” I cleared the pile after Jim dropped the Eight of Spades, and I replaced it with the Jack of Clubs. “The Tryo is an extra-governmental city-state with essentially unchecked authority, and Captain Cecilia is a stone’s throw away from running the Dainish Special Forces’ ENTIRE intelligence operation. Their JOB is to hide shit.” Jim threw in the Nine of Spades, Marion the Eight of Clubs and Blaize the Jack of Spades. “You two can drop your Aces, and Jim, your Two?” I said dramatically as we all slapped down our last card. “Wait…” I took a second to process what I was seeing.

“HAHAHA!” Jim started laughing. “Blaize played the two of DIAMONDS on your Ten,” he started laughing again as he slapped down the Two of Hearts.

“A blunder for the ages,” Blaize intoned with a knowing grin and Marion stared slack jawed. “You ran spades to lull her into a false sense of confidence,” he started nodding and a smile slowly crept into the corner of his mouth before enveloping his entire face. “She played the hand perfectly, and you let her, knowing she could never make her contract.”

“You know, you could have set her on the fourth trick if you weren’t trying to be so dramatic,” Marion scowled as she cleared the last few cards and started tabulating the score. “You could have earned more points.”

“Eh,” Jim shrugged, still beaming with pride. “A redoubled slam-denial is reward enough,” he wiggled on the truck’s bench, his topknot dancing along with him.

“Now you REALLY owe me,” I harumphed as I crossed my arms across my chest and stared at him in disbelief. He locked eyes with me and wiggled again, and I couldn’t help it. I melted. How could I stay mad at him? “Who’s dealt that abomination?”

“Marion. That was the 4th hand,” Blaize frowned. “And we’re almost to camp,” Marion handed Blaize the deck of cards. He resquared it and stashed it into the chest pocket of his own blue fatigues.

“NO FAIR!” I emoted loudly as I re-crossed my arms and re-harumphed.

“We’ll get’em next time, Red,” Marion sighed and shrugged as we slowed down to pulled into a small, well-hidden grove just off the main road.

***

“Everyone’s fucking,” my Chimera said to me in my head, “BORING.”

I cut another stack of papers and held my quill to the page. “Why? You’re just as obsessed with sex as the Great Truth seems to be,” I replied back to him. I let him use our body’s eyes to watch Blaize laying on his cot, navy blue fatigues around his ankles, uniform shirt pulled up slightly to reveal his hairy, skinny-fat belly as the view hung mid-air over the quill. His hand was pumping vigorously on his anatomy while he watched a strongly pornographic video on a handheld device featuring a small, hairless young boy (who seemed barely old enough to be there legally) surrounded by half a dozen large, hairy men with long, turgid phalluses taking turns penetrating his anus and depositing loads of seminal fluid in his rectum. After the last man ejaculated inside him, the recording zoomed full frame on the young person’s butt while he forced the cum to explode out of his asshole. This apparently pushed Blaize over the edge, and a grunt shook through his body as his own white fluid spurted from the end of his penis, covering his knuckles.

“That’s why,” I felt my brother cringe as Blaize fished around for an old sock to wipe the jizz from his hand. “Without a sex drive, the behaviors are just odd, and sometimes rather pitiful. If I had a physical body, my hormones would almost certainly be screaming at me to drop to my knees and clean him up, instead. But I don’t HAVE hormones in this place, so it’s just…weird,” his thought trailed off ponderously.

“So why not Walk them?” I cocked my head physically, forgetting that the conversation was occurring in my thoughts, not within the confines of my desk in Bastion. I placed our good hand between our legs and felt the distinct lack of anatomical features.

“I’ve done it too many times,” he replied quickly. “That’s why it’s boring. It’s not for ‘us.’ Who they’re having sex with? Why they’re having sex? The fact that they even HAD sex? Yes, those ARE things an Author cares about, but the actual HAVING of the sex? It expresses their character, sure, but does nothing to further their Story.”

“But I WANT to know their character,” I replied, I touched my finger to my lips. The prosthesis made me feel the sensation on both my finger and my mouth, but it felt only like pressure. “I’ve never felt those feelings before.” I tried to remember what life was like before this body became an Author, but back home, my brother was a celibate monk who had completed his turn as Seneschal without ever experiencing sexual excitement. We never discussed sex, and any sexual thoughts or actions were not things I would have been privy to without him exposing them to me directly.

“Fine,” he relented. “Go Walk them for yourself, then. You’ll see. I needed a nap anyway,” he feigned a yawn. “They’re all pretty vanilla without the Memory Capsules, anyway, but you MIGHT want to avoid Walking as Adrian. He’s still going through some shit and likes to work it out in the Realm.”

***

Fuuuuuck yeah, ME time, Marion thought as she zipped the flap of her tent up and unwrapped the towel from her freshly cleaned naked body. She dropped it over the folding chair next to her folding cot, kicked off her shower-sandals, and wiggled into her sleeping bag, unzipping the side just enough to leave her modest, unbound bosom and nether region exposed to the open air. The chill made her black, coin-sized nipples stiffen and the cold lapping at the moist heat between her thighs gave her goosebumps on her tummy. She dropped her head back into her pillow and closed her eyes.

She summoned an image of herself and connected her body to her mind’s eye. She could imagine it clearly, now: Her vulva was engorged and discolored from the arousal, and her prominent, large clitoris throbbed and stiffened as it began to peak out. She could see a bead of whiteish, translucent liquid weep from the base of her vaginal opening as it subtly began to widen. She cupped her own breasts then, and gently started tweaking her now rock-hard nipples. Her hips naturally started bucking into the bracing air, almost uncontrollably. She could see her protruding clitoris was fully erect now, just below the thick knot of her pubic hair. Her labia had swelled and darkened as well, and she could see the singular shock of bright pink from her inner-most sanctum piercing the dark night her melanistic body disappeared into.

“Mnf,” she emoted out-loud. She could no longer resist, and she slowly slid her hand down her tummy until the tip of her middle finger found the base of her clit. The sensation sent a shock through her body and a quiet moan slipped out as she began to toy with her clit’s hood and massaged the length of the clitoral body hidden underneath. Her perineum immediately began to contract, causing her vaginal opening to wink and pulse in sync with the shocks of pleasure she teased out of herself. She flattened her hand out, resting the length of her middle finger along her clit and laid her palm flat against her pubic mound. She applied some pressure and began rubbing it slowly with a side-to-side motion.

Her brain immediately latched on to the familiar sensation and flooded her mind with thoughts as she lost herself to the rhythmic motion. She thought of how perfect Molly’s oversized ass was, and how it made her uniform pants skin-tight as she climbed down from the transport truck. She imagined that Jim was fucking her right now, just a few tents over, and that it was actually her fucking Red with her big, hard she-cock instead. She thought of Dawna Right, the famous drag star, as she gyrated her hips side to side on stage, remembering the time she saw her perform live. Grind me, baby sang in her mind as the pop-icon dropped to her knees and made her body jerk, her ass dancing while her famously gigantic breasts heaved and jiggled to the beat. She imagined Dawna straddling her face like that, instead of the stage, and dreamed of reaching up to play with her magnificent, pendulous tits.

She remembered what it was like to have her own clit sucked, switched technique, and pulled back the hood as far as she could, exposing as much of her pleasure center as possible. She opened her eyes and spit in her palm, then leaned down and looked at her body, the androgenous muscularity she spent so long cultivating only serving to turn her on even more. I’m so fucking hot, she thought to herself, I look so fucking good. She worked the length her clit’s shaft more vigorously. You worked hard for that, didn’t you, me? So hard, yeah. That’s right me, I fucking did. She felt something stir behind her ears. This body deserves to cum. I deserve to cum. That’s right, I fucking deserve this. Her face contorted into a visage of determination and excitement as she watched her hand furiously masturbate her painfully hard clit. “Fuck,” she grumbled under her breath, no longer able to withstand the build-up, “I’m gonna fucking squirt.” She closed her eyes and pressed her hand onto her exposed clit and glided her palm around in firm, circular motions. Faster and faster she swirled as she felt that distinctive compulsion not to stop. Feeling little time left to spare, she clumsily grabbed the towel off the chair with her free hand as the pleasure forced her back to arch, her hips thrusting high as she finally reached release, and quickly dropped it under her butt before her hips came back down as wave after wave of intense orgasm washed over her.

Undeterred, she persisted. After what felt like both an eternity and not long enough, just as the intensity felt it was about to subside, another wave of orgasmic power lashed at her body and this time, she felt a warm, wet sensation flood her hand and thighs. The thin watery liquid served to only further lubricate her actions and she grabbed her clitoris like a tiny penis, jerking yet another bone-shaking rapture out of her body. Drained, both literally and metaphorically, her entire body relaxed and sunk into her cot. She sat in silence for a long time, eyes closed, before finally, begrudgingly, cleaning off her ejectus. She threw the towel back onto the folding chair and basked in the afterglow. God, I wish I could cum like that at home, she thought to herself, why can I only nut like that when I’m deployed? Her consciousness slowly cut out as she fell into a deep, restful sleep.

I stood up off the bed, leaving Marion’s naked body behind. I felt the cold night air lash at what turned out to be my own naked body. I was flat-chested as hell and I guess my brother gave me pretty huge nipples I had never even thought about. They looked fantastic pointing into my tank tops, but I’d never actually SEEN them uncovered. They were light pink, somewhat long, puffy and I could FEEL them. Like FEEL them, feel them. I didn’t need to touch them, I didn’t need to have them touched, I could just FEEL them. My vulva was still puffy and pink from arousal, almost brown even, and stood in stark contrast to my almost paper-white skin. My much more average-sized clitoris was tucked inside with my “inny” labia, but I could feel IT, too. I alighted just the faintest touch of my finger to it and I felt ELECTRICITY race through my loins. I immediately pulled my finger away.

“It’s still sensitive,” my brother said to me. He was sitting stark naked on the chair next to the cot, the cum-towel in his lap absolutely drenched in his ejaculate. He still had both hands wrapped around his hilariously large penis, and much like the towel, his body also looked as though it had been glazed like a donut with his frosting-like splooge. “How was it?” His tongue was lolling out of his mouth comically and his head hung backward over the chair.

“MORE,” was all I could say.

***

“On or off,” Molly was balancing on one leg, holding the other by the knee in her hand. There were not words in existence that could describe how remarkably beautiful she was. Her proportions were unreal. Tiny, but not petite, with hourglass hips, a thick ass, heavy naturals, and that borderline-albino complexion with ghostly nipples only the Elitest of Elites could afford to cultivate. Her bush burned like Moses’ fire leading me to the promised land and it looked like her pussy had an afro with at least seven centimeters of clearance from her pudgy little belly. She was rocking “natural” legs and the weird serial killer vibe she was giving off did nothing to tame my absolutely raging boner.

“On, for now,” I winked. She clicked her leg into place and the seam melted away as she shook it a little. Then, as if it had never been missing, she dropped to BOTH knees on the futon-style mattress spread out beneath us. My cock disappeared underneath an avalanche of orangey curls and into her warm, waiting mouth. I was propped up on my elbows, but when her tongue flicked the underside of the tip of my dick? “Fuuucking hell,” I collapsed backward onto our pillows and closed my eyes.

I projected my mind into the head of my penis. The world disappeared and there was only my dick and Molly’s mouth. When you’re as good as she was at giving head, you stopped feeling what she was DOING and you just felt HER. If you know, you know. I could feel my brain melting as I opened my eyes and watched the master at work. The tangle of mid-length curls shook and shimmered as she worked me. She noticed me watching and started making loud, wet, slurping sounds as she absolutely worshipped my pole. And then, without fail, she did “the thing.” She flattened herself out and arched her back, popping her perfect, heart-shaped butt into my eyeline. Then, she deepthroated my entire length, looked up, and made eye contact with those perfect, emerald-green eyes, gagging a little for dramatic effect.

I felt that immediate crescendo of pleasure and quickly popped up off the pillows. Molly released my cock from her throat and leaned back into a kneeling position JUST before I came prematurely into here belly. My dick throbbed and pulsed as I mentally willed myself back from the edge. “Your fucking turn now,” I rumbled animalistically as I crawled toward her with hunger. Our size difference meant that, as I grabbed her by the hips and spun her onto the mattress, my hands were big enough to disengage her prostheses in the process, leaving half her mass standing where her body used to be.

I knew the move would disorient her slightly, as it was a trick I’d pulled many times; She loved getting fucked without her legs, and she loved it when I flung her around like a sack of potatoes. But, ever since she went off Memory Capsules…She landed on her back, head on the pillow exactly as I had planned. She landed with her eyes closed, hair spread on the pillows like corona around the sun. She landed with me on top of her, kissing her neck, her chest, her tummy. That’s when she squirmed her lower torso in anticipation of the kisses to her clit. That’s when she prepared her body for that immediate shock of pleasure. That’s when she opened her eyes and everything went wrong.

You don’t spend several decades with a person without picking up on their tells. I looked up to make eye contact with her, knowing that when I kissed her pussy, she’d want to see me eating her out, and I wanted, CRAVED, to look into those eyes again. But, that was when I noticed her eyes grow wide, her pupils dilate, her entire body tense. “My legs…” she started quietly, but when the horror hit her face, every hair on her body stood on end, and the not-good kind of gooseflesh that comes from a spike in adrenaline prickled every inch of her skin. ”My LE—!” She started to shriek before I could cover her mouth with my hand. I adjusted my posture immediately while she wailed into my palm

Fully consumed by panic now, she bit me and hyperventilated through her nose as I held her mouth even tighter. Quickly, calmly, I locked eyes with her and crushed down my own terror as she beamed her fear into my soul, trying to feed joy and love and calm back into the circuit our eyes had formed. Without breaking contact, I used my free hand to grab one leg around the ankle and reattach it to her torso, then the other. I pulled my hand from her mouth when I saw her wiggle her toes.

She pulled her knees to her chest, hugged them tight, and buried her face into her arms. I shimmied around until my chest was pressed against her back. I wrapped my arms around her, buried my face into the crook of her neck and whispered, “It’s OK. I love you. I’m here. Everything is OK. I’m here.” I could feel the blood running down the side of my palm, her hot breath still huffing as I felt her body slowly, slowly relax. I started to cry with her. “I’m sorry,” I finally said into her hair with a sniffle. “I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry.”

She started rocking gently and I followed her with my own body. “It’s OK,” she said robotically, “It’s not your fault. I didn’t stop you because I wanted it, too. It’s OK. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t get to be sorry,” I said as I disentangled my arms from her and kissed the back of her head. Her body kept up the rocking motion as she lifted her face and craned her neck to meet my gaze, eyes wide, pupils almost as big. It’d be a while before the adrenaline wore off, so I helped her to her side. She curled into a ball, and I hugged her to me in a “spoons” position, tucking her into the curvature of my body, sheltering her with my frame. My penis was no longer erect, and I positioned it such that it would not brush against her sensitive area while she recovered. We sat like that, in silence, for about ten minutes before I felt her feet stop wiggling and her heartrate started to slow. Finally, her breath evened out and I could feel her drift off to sleep before I passed out myself.

“I’m sorry,” I said as I stood up from Jim’s embrace, looking down at her. “’Not for Us,’ you said,” I looked over at my brother. He was standing to my left, both of us naked, his penis no longer erect, and now, somehow, disgusting in a way I had never seen it look, despite looking no different than it ever had before.

“Not for you,” Molly replied as she sat up, legs still hugged to her chest, her eyes the only part of her face visible above her arms.

“I’m sorry,” James repeated. “Unfortunately, I had to watch this time.”

“Why,” she sat unmoving. Save for a blink, I could have mistaken her for being time-locked, her voice only imagined in my ears.

“This is the only Casting where you survive, where the Universe survives,” his face took on a softness I’d never seen from him before. “This is a fixed event in the history of the Universe. This ALWAYS happens. And this is the only version where you don’t shoot yourself in the head after Jim falls asleep,” he met and held her gaze. “You die in most of them, but in a few, your aim is a little off and you are revived with varying degrees of recovery. None, unfortunately, with a high quality of life.”

“Why this timeline?” she asked, her eyes softening a little.

“In this one, the bullet doesn’t fire and you try to slit your wrists instead,” he started. “In every other variation of this Casting, HE finds you dead, too,” James tipped his head down to Jim. “He rests your head in his lap before he screams into the morning light, unnecessarily bathed in innocent blood. It happens in EVERY timeline. Except this one. Marion finds a pulse, though faint, and Blaize donates so much blood to revive you he almost dies from exsanguination himself.”

Silence hung for a while before I could hear the faintest whisper of a sob. “I can’t do this anymore,” is all she said as tears started welling in her eyes, “I can’t do this to HIM anymore.” Her eyes darted to look at Jim, frozen in time, still curled around her.

“I know,” James knelt and rested a hand on her shoulder. “But when you die, Jim disappears. He can’t handle the grief. In Castings where you’re revived into a disabled state, he sacrifices the rest of his days to care for you. To the Great Truth, Jim is the Dominant, but to Jim? YOU are the Main Character. I’m not quite sure HOW yet, but the Universe ENDS without you. HIS Story ends without you. The Universe needed to know why. I needed to know why. I didn’t WANT to Walk this part, but I had to. I’m so sorry.”

“Two Hearts,” she mumbled. She lifted her head and her hair cascaded around her face. She looked at Jim again. “I guess I have SOMETHING to look forward to. Why do I always have to lose?” She looked at me, sad and confused.

“We can’t choose the cards we’re dealt,” I replied, “and even if we play our hand perfectly, sometimes, ‘perfect’ just isn’t ‘enough.’”

***

Still naked, my brother and I stood staring at Adrian. His perfectly cultivated, award-winning physique was sprawled out naked on his folding chair, eyes buried in Realm glasses, a cord connecting them to an auto-masturbation machine undulating on his penis.

“I told you,” my brother turned to face me and I turned to meet his gaze. His flaccid penis hung below the kneecap of his stout, dwarven legs. It was no longer disgusting and seeing it returned the craving to have its massive length fill my insides. “You won’t want to fuck me after you see what’s going on in there, Sister,” he said, catching me peep, emphasizing the word “sister” in a way that equal parts aroused me and disgusted me again. “I’ll be frank. He’s fucking a kid in there.”

“WHAT!” My chin snapped into my neck and my eyes grew wide in shock. “What the fuck do you mean ‘he’s fucking a kid in there?!’”

“I told you, he’s working out some real serious shit,” he replied to me unflinchingly. “And before you ask, no, it’s NOT an accepted practice in this world. Fucking a kid, even in the Realm, is pretty frowned upon. Especially when that kid is a meticulously crafted clone of yourself at seven years old. I’ll repeat it again: This is NOT a Nexus Outlier. You don’t have to Walk this.”

“So he’s fucking HIMSELF,” My eyes had not shrunk, and somehow grew wider.

“No, he is inhabiting a clone of the rapist who assaulted him AT age seven. It’s taken him five years to reproduce the entire tableau from memory,” he replied nonchalantly.

“Oh my fucking GOD,” I could not believe it was possible to become even MORE shocked. My brother’s apathy started to bother me. “…Have you fucked kids before?”

“A couple,” he replied with a shrug. “Mostly rapes, but there WAS that one time I Walked a World Line where pederasty was a common and legally acceptable practice. Even then, the children are usually left traumatized, but it’s considered a tolerable level of trauma that’s generally accepted as part of their World. It’s a trauma no less, however, and the effect it has on any individual’s life ranges from minimal to profound and persists in a way no social recontextualization can overcome.”

“What…” I tried not to vomit in my mouth, “what else have you done?”

“Oh, you have to do it all, Sister,” the way he said “sister” hit very differently this time. “You don’t know what I went through,” his tone was even, stoic. “I did everything I could to shield you from my time as a Moderator. I needed some part of me to remain innocent.”

His words stung. My heart jumped into my ears and my calves began to tingle. My brain got hot behind my eyes and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. “What do you mean ‘All of it,’” I was afraid to ask.

“Rape, murder, genocide, serial killings, torture, slavery,” he started, “incest, pedophilia,” he started counting on his hands, “necrophilia, zoophilia, XENOphilia, coprophagia, genital self-amputation…”

“ALRIGHT,” I cut him off. Adrian sat unmoved, the black tube pulsing on his junk. “I get it. ‘All of it,’” I repeated.

“Done, and done TO ME,” he emphasized.

“I KNOW,” I screamed, too overwhelmed to process my emotions.

“Alone. So you wouldn’t have to,” his eyes burned holes through me, his face neutral and inscrutable.

“I KNOW,” I repeated. “When you say it like that, HE sounds practically saintly,” I lifted an arm and pointed weakly at the inhumanly, unrealistically, anatomically perfect Adonis oblivious to our presence.

“He’s not. He’s disgusting and what he’s doing is still, objectively, an abomination. Even in the Realm,” my brother deadpanned. “But you’ll never understand what could drive someone to such things without Walking in their shoes, without feeling their rationalizations. I Walked an Edge Case once, in the early days of my mandatory stint as a Moderator: Humans were born with fully formed brains, inheriting a blend of their parents’ consciousness directly, memories and all, right out of the womb. A loophole even the Adjudicators could not discern without scrutiny, hence our intervention. Is it still considered Evil if the creature has fully mature critical thinking skills, or must the BODY also have reached sexual maturity, as well? Can you imagine a tiny, crying, weeks-old infant with a full-fledged adult brain, in a ‘goo-goo gah-gah’ voice, begging you to ‘Fuck me, Daddy, I need your cum, fuck me now?’ That you caught trying to masturbate, unsuccessfully, because its infant body was fussy and couldn’t sleep? Can you imagine that? And then, BEING the man to hold that little baby and FUCK them while they squirm and giggle with glee because you haven’t had a full night’s sleep in the WEEKS since it’s been home, and all your parenting books tell you that you ‘have to get it over with’ if you EVER want to JUST fucking go to BED? Can you imagine THAT? Anyway, as expected, all Castings of that Timeline DID eventually go extinct, and the Adjudicators upheld that the Social Contract MUST include provisions that sexual maturity be established ALONG WITH full cognitive development before non-standard adult sexual activity can be considered Morally Viable. And, in so doing, provided further support for the axiom that sufficiently Evil timelines will ALWAYS deviate from the Great Truth as defined by Bundy’s Law.”

I shivered. “Is it weird that I think the horny adult-baby is less disgusting than the Venusians?” I scrunched my nose.

“You REALLY hate the Venusians that much?” My brother furrowed his brow. “Fun Fact: The Venusians ALSO fall afoul off Bundy’s Law, but not for the reason you think. Bundy’s Law states that any Timeline where civil acceptance of socially-destructive behaviors become institutionalized will eventually drive the Sentient population of that Timeline extinct through the process of Moral Filtration.”

“Right, the equations of the One True Timeline cannot be solved if Οmoral is negative. It throws off the Ravindar-Tieche metric and we ALL know a {-1,0,0,1} will NEVER make it past their first Great War,” I nodded along. Adrian groaned a little and his leg twitched. “FINE,” I relented. “What makes the Venusian’s case interesting?”

“Procrastinating, are we?” My brother grinned. “You would THINK that it’s the coming-of-age ceremony or the incest,” he started pacing, the head of his cock bouncing off his shin when he pivoted. “But NEITHER of those tip Omicron into the negative.”

“Ok, those ARE what I thought would do the trick,” I furrowed my brow. “What is it then?”

“Cannibalism!” My brother exclaimed enthusiastically. “When I said ‘the males are treated like pets,’ I framed it in context of dogs and cats, because how they’re treated mapped most-closely onto those examples in the standard human experience. But in REALITY, they’re thought of more like backyard cows or chickens. That is to say…”

“They eventually eat the Males,” I finished with a deep, concerned sigh.

“YEP!” He danced around in place again. Adrian mumbled something but sat otherwise unmoved. “VIRGIN male consumption is generally illegal,” he started, “but after they’ve produced offspring? Looks like meat’s back on the menu!” His eyes grew wide for a tick before his face settled into a sly grin.

“You would think…” I trailed off. “But still…” I continued to ponder.

“Yes,” my brother keyed in, “there ARE social organizations that protest the practice, but they’re treated as a niche moral group, like vegetarians are in early human history. Unfortunately, this results in Venusian societies essentially always undergoing a population collapse before they become sufficiently advanced enough to replace cultivated food products with fully manufactured alternatives, In Castings where the practice never takes hold, their pre-Sentient ancestors starve out before they can evolve sufficiently enough to become self-aware in the first place. The Venusians only become Sentients through cannibalism, and that cannibalism inherently disqualifies them from EVER being a part of the Great Truth.”

“But…” I trailed off again, “couldn’t they...?” I couldn’t quite solidify the thought.

“It’s complicated,” my Chimera read my mind again. “Remember, males are born ATTACHED to the female, and BOTH must survive to reproductive age before the male is useful, and males have a comparatively ephemeral lifespan, dying only a few years after they separate from their hosts. Only a few males are needed to maintain POPULATION levels,” he tipped his head to the left and nodded.

“But not GENETIC DIVERSITY,” I added as he tipped his head to the right. He gave a single nod. My body shivered, reminding me I was naked, and why we were here. “Uggh, they’re SO GROSS!” I shivered again. “FINE, let’s do this,” I shook my hands, stretched my neck, and jumped in place to get my muscles activated for what was about to happen next.

***

“Please, sir,” the boy looked directly into the man’s eyes, desire clouding his dark blue irises. “Deeper! I need it deeper,” he pled as he reached around and pulled his little butt-cheeks farther apart, his anus gaping around the shadowy void where the man’s penis once was.

Why did I say that? The man thought to himself. He looked at the boy, bent over his desk, underwear at his ankles, robe pulled up over his back. His legs were spread slightly, and the man could see the child’s tiny, erect penis throb. Was I THAT horny? The man drove his penis back into his warm, young hole as deeply as he could and felt the child’s ass grip him. The man’s penis was of average length, maybe a bit on the short and narrow side, causing the boy to push his butt against the man’s pelvis as hard as he could on every pump. This caused the man to hold back a little on each thrust, the skinny boy’s tail bone hitting against the skinny man’s pubis, causing a sharp sting he recoiled away from each time.

“Please, sir,” the boy repeated. “Please give it to me, I’ve been such a good boy!” the child begged. “Please give me God’s love!”

That was too much for the priest, apparently. “God loves you!” he exclaimed as he achieved an orgasm so strong even my Chimera was impressed.

“I can feel God’s love in me!” the boy replied excitedly as hot, gooey cum flooded his rectum. A violent orgasm wracked through his body, his prepubescent cock twitching as it tried in vain to pump fluid from his juvenile, spermless testicles.

The man withdrew his member from the boy. Ejaculate covered his cock and dripped out of the boy’s ass. “Clean it,” the priest said, still holding the folds of his cassock open, his hairy cock glistening like a kaleidoscope as the morning sun shone onto it through the stained-glass window behind him, “we mustn’t waste even a drop of God’s gift.”

I must have loved it, the man thought to himself. The boy farted out the man’s cum as he pivoted to face him. The boy fell to his knees in front of him. Why else would I have cum? Why else would I do this? Why am I like this? Why! The screaming in the man’s head disappeared when the pale young child enveloped the man’s penis with his mouth. “Mnhf,” the boy made desirous sounds as he sucked and licked his rod until it was spotless. The boy met the priest’s eyes as he fellated him. His innocent young face, pretty eyes, sandy blond hair, and dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose sent another profound orgasm through the man’s body.

“Gank oou, Gog!” The boy mumbled after sucking every last drop of load from the priest. He opened his mouth to show the pool of semen still under his tongue before swallowing it all and re-opening his mouth to show it gone.

“All of it,” the man replied and pointed to the small puddle that had blown itself out before the child’s anus could tighten to a fully-closed state. There were small bits of brown in the fluid. “God made you Cookies and Cream,” the man smirked perversely.

Don’t do it, the man thought to himself. Why can’t I stop him! “Yes, sir,” the boy replied as he bent down on all-fours and started licking the feces-laced ejaculate. He gagged a few times and threw up into his cheeks before swallowing it all down again and showing his empty mouth to the man. “I’m sorry, sir,” the boy said with soul-crushing guilt, “Satan almost took God’s love from me,” he frowned and pouted.

That is not Satan! HE is Satan! The voice screamed. He lies to you! Why can’t you see this! Why did you fall for it?! “I know, child. Let me help remove Satan from you.” He picked the boy up by his arm pits and laid him on his back on the desk. The boy held his legs and knees bent like an infant getting its diaper changed. The man took the boy’s stiff, tiny penis into his mouth. It felt like he was sucking on an index finger. Inspired, he wetted his own and slid it into the boy’s butt.

“Thank you, sir,” the boy said with a little squirm. “I can feel you pulling Satan out of me,” he stifled another little moan. I look like I want it so bad, the voice said in the man’s head. I wanted it so bad! Why did I want it so bad? Why do I want his mouth on me so badly? No sooner did the thought cross the man’s mind than did the boy’s little penis begin to twitch and pulse again. “Oh God! I can feel God’s blessing!” the boy’s eyes were closed in bliss and extasy. “Please, sir! Help me give you God’s love, too!” His little penis came, and came again, but nothing filled the priest’s mouth.

“You can’t give blessings yet, my child,” the man rose, wiped some saliva from his chin, and quickly placed his still-erect penis back into the child’s anus and immediately came himself. “Take my blessing instead!” He announced.

“Thank you, sir!” the boy replied, still cumming the whole while. Being re-penetrated triggered yet another dry, throbbing orgasm. When the boy’s body went limp, the man withdrew his penis from him. He could feel the boy flex his perinium as he exited him, resisting his withdrawal and trying to pull the priest’s ejaculation deeper into his body.

Adrian stood up, ripping the Realm glasses and masturbatory attachment from his body and dropping them carelessly next to his bed. His member was still at attention and swished awkwardly as his hunched form paced around the few square meters of free space between the tent flap and his cot, his fists slamming into his head with force. After some time, he collapsed onto his bed, head in hands, and cried in a way men usually hide from everyone, themselves included.

He left us there, my brother and I, to stand and face him. My asshole burned and my clit was throbbing uncomfortably. “You’re bleeding,” my brother pointed to the thin ribbon of crimson beading on my inner thigh.

I sat next to Adrian then, my own head falling into my hands, and wept with him. “Ugly-cried” as it’s sometimes referred to. I felt the child’s anguish. Joy. Fear. Curiosity. Excitement. PAIN. But most of all, I felt how complete the child felt. No amount of disgust, or anger, or guilt could overpower the unity that child felt with his God. The ZEAL. The degradation, the belittling, the devaluation, the SHAME? All worth it, knowing he now had God’s undying favor. How else could he justify those few moments of exquisite pleasure while so much violence was inflicted upon him? It MUST have been proof that God was rewarding him for enduring the priest’s actions. Hints that this was right, that his private relationship with God and his messenger was legitimately sacred. That the others would covet his privilege if he told anyone.

“I told you,” my twin sat next to me. Us. “You didn’t have to Walk that. I tried to protect you,” he frowned and rested a hand on my knee.

“I know, Brother,” I replied, the word “brother” left my mouth differently this time. “And in the future, I may heed your advice. But I needed to see it for myself, first” I held back my sobbing and whimpered between sniffles. “I’m sorry,” I apologized for nothing. Everything.

“I love you, Sister,” he put his arm around me. A new wave of tears broke through my defenses, and I was a sobbing mess again.

***

“No one wants to fuck me tonight,” Ylysse frowned into her communicator device. She was laying in her underwear prone on Tomah’s bed, feet kicking the air, back arched like a seal as she flicked through potential mates on some dating platform he was not particularly interested in knowing about. “Vu is on deployment with the others and no one else on base wants a piece of this,” she frowned again, harsh shadows cast across her face by the light it emitted into the otherwise darkened dormitory.

“Would not Vu care if he found out about their dalliances?” Tomah sat arms-length from her at the small desk next to his single bed. He was interfacing with a keyboard and pointing device, manipulating characters in a hologram that projected a faint glow onto his own face. “I thought things had become serious between you and him.”

“Nah, he’s a dick,” she smirked and swiped approvingly at someone she saw on screen. “In both senses,” she started typing a message to the person with her thumbs.

“Well, he has informed many others that you and he are together in a serious capacity,” he squinted at the hologram and navigated his character across the terrain of the video game he was engrossed in.

“That BASTARD!” She sat up cross-legged and threw the device down onto the bed angrily. “Fuck him,” she quickly picked it back up before the screen could time out. A chime rang from the device and she started tapping out another message before she stood up behind Tomah and watched him play his game for a beat. Her body was in a very slender configuration at the moment, reminiscent of high fashion models and many of the pop stars often pejoratively referred to in academic literature by the part of their bodies they decided to define their entire stardom by: “Midriffs.” After a sufficient amount of time without Tomah noticing passed, she twisted her body side to side and folded her arms behind her back, pushing out her modest chest. “Don’t you want to fuck me?” she gave Tomah puppy-dog eyes.

He smirked a little, the most movement she’d seen from him beyond his fingers in a while. He was sitting in his underwear as well, the soft flab covering his surprisingly-solid body hanging loosely off his frame and over the waist band of his boxers. He stood then, half-again taller and easily twice as wide as her, and hugged her. She was no short woman, like Molly, and taller than Blaize, let alone Marion, yet her head still rested just above his gut as he pulled her into him. After he released her, he sat back down and resumed his game. “I am playing with Jim,” was all he replied.

“Molly gets out tomorrow, assuming she clears her psych eval, yeah?” Ylysse physically pulled his legs out, Tomah twisting his body so as not to lose control of his character. She sat in his lap. Tomah re-adjusted to face the hologram properly again, pulling her along for the ride, moving his arms to place her between them. He craned his neck around her body to restore his sightline to the hologram she was separating him from.

“Yes. I am distracted,” he kissed her shoulder gently. “The flesh is willing, but,” he looked toward his groin, “my friend is not in a cooperative mood,” he thrust his hips a few times, bouncing her on his knee.

“He’s NEVER in a cooperative mood anymore,” she crossed her arms across her chest and harumphed. Tomah shrugged. “What if I do THIS,” She jumped off his lap and stood beside him again. Tomah rolled his eyes, typed a quick message into his game, and turned to face her as her body started to transform. Her frame visibly widened, her musculature seeming to inflate until she resembled a top-class bodybuilder, skin like pale cellophane over her perfectly defined superficial muscles.

“You know what I like,” was all he said as he crossed his gigantic legs and arms across his body, somehow resisting the allure of his game to pay her heed.

“I do?” She prodded coyly. “Is this what you like?” her figure deflated and collapsed in the opposite direction until her skeleton was visible in a way only seen in prisoners of war and the psychologically distressed.

Tomah shivered, his face unchanged but also somehow more serious. “NOT that,” He scowled.

Her physique shifted again, bathed in the dim light of the hologram, this time until she was quite plump. “I will not go farther, I do not wish to stretch my skin,” she scowled.

“You know what I like,” was all he replied. He turned back to his game and resumed play.

“I kept my face and my skin, you know this,” she replied as she flopped back down on the bed, watching him play his game with her own casual interest. “And the muscles,” she added.

“Heh,” a single chuckle rocked his body. “Only a few percent of your muscles are biological anymore.”

“Yes, but all of the originals are still there!” She protested. “They’re just...outnumbered. Why you gotta be like dat?” Her voice shifted into her African Zeph profile. “No fun,” she rolled on her back and stared up at the ceiling. “SO ANNOYING!” She shrieked. Several quiet moments elapsed in the dim, dark dorm. “I’m OK,” She sighed. She checked her communication device again. No messages. “So HORNY,” she broke the silence, crossed her arms across her body, and frowned. “What about a beej? Will your friend wake up for that?” She slid down the corner of the bed until her head was hanging off the edge, her medium-length hair currently blonde, dangling down with her. At random interval, her hair would shimmer through red, then brown, then black, then back to blonde again so quickly, you would swear it was just a trick of the eye in the dancing holographic twilight.

“If you wish to put your mouth on my dick, I’m never going to tell you ‘No,’ but I encourage you to remember what Vu might think,” Tomah did not shift his gaze nor break stride in his game.

Dame ja nai, her voice shifted into a perfect, native Japanese. “I’ll pass,” she stuck her tongue out before picking her phone back up. “I feel like everyone is getting laid but us.”

“I masturbated for seven hours today,” was all Tomah replied.

Ylysse paused a second, then frowned. “Was it good?”

“One of the best of my life,” he responded, body maintaining its stillness. “I don’t know why, but I can only nut like that when everyone is deployed. Sorry,” he met her eyes and looked back at his groin again. His attention merged back into his game seamlessly.

“Realm?” She adjusted into sitting on the bed, leaning on his shoulder, chin rested on the top of her hands.

“Porn. Old School,” he took his hand away from the keyboard, turned his face to her, flared his bushy eyebrows, and mimicked a jerking motion over his crotch. “Mano y mano,” he smirked and returned to his game.

“Why am I the only one not getting LAID!” She shrieked again as she collapsed back onto the bed.

***

“Can you suppress your passenger? The Archon instructed into my mind.

“I was going to take a nap, anyway,” she said as she, well...ever since she and I started sharing this body, I could FEEL her cognitive actions, and I felt her “walk away in a huff,” to, well, SOMEWHERE, and she was gone from my perception.

“Thank you,” the Archon spoke aloud. “James, what it is that YOU THINK we do here? And I will repeat for emphasis, what do YOU think we do here?”

I squinched my face and thought for a second before starting, “Well, it’s worth mentioning that WE are not a ‘thing,’” I made air quotes. “This,” I spun my finger in a circle horizontally, “is a cognitive rendering of Sentience projected by the Universe itself. WE are just thought-nodes processing individual bits of information. WE are the Universe ‘knowing’ itself.”

“Noted,” the Archon pinched his unknowable visage into the perception of a pointy, rat-like face. “But what do we DO,” he re-emphasized yet again.

“Well, in reference to my previous comment,” I continued, “the Universe is a multi-dimensional, axiomatic presence reaching across Time Crystals, pondering all possible Existences, and then trying to understand the single instance of Reality that has become Observable, memorizing its place in the One True Timeline, and using this to perfect the Great Truth, the laws and equations that explain the way the Universe itself works.”

“And we do...what?” The Archon further interrogated.

“That depends,” I brought my prosthetic hand to my prosthetic chin, and tapped my prosthetic finger against my prosthetic lips. “At a fundamental level, we, the Authors, are bureaucrats. There is only the Universe, so the being exists in a state completely devoid of EXtrinsic conflict. Lifecycle Physics explain that the Universe is slowly bleeding Constructive Energy, and will eventually reach a Chronological Ground state where it can no longer drive CHANGES in Time. In the loss, Reality will no longer be able to resist the forces of Entropy, consumed by the death throes of Poincare Recursion, before blinking back to Nothing in yet another chase played out across the Infinity of Time. We document, interrogate, and define the events, the stories, that compose the INtrinsic conflicts the Universe experiences. We are the Universe trying to create Meaning from the otherwise-meaningless, random noise of Self-Observation.”

“The Grand Narrative,” the Archon nodded.

“Yes, the story of Reality,” I concurred. “Authors record the History of Time. We explore Potential and document Occurrence so the Universe can contemplate and extract Meaning.”

“Well done,” the Archon folded his hands on his desk and nodded again.

“Was this a Test?” I squinted and frowned.

“Indeed it was,” the Archon replied cooly. “The Universe has grown fond of your Imprint,” he started, hands still folded on the white filigreed desktop between him and me. The thrumming pulse of the White Hole’s effluence was a constant, imposing reminder of the Universe’s presence around us. “It finds your Observations truly exciting, if moderately disturbing.”

“Well, I’m flattered,” I suppressed a grin and looked around in acknowledgement. “How was I being Tested, again?” I squinted at the Archon when my gaze returned to meet his.

“How much of your Ritual so far do you remember,” He started.

I winced. “All off it. I Moderated, Adjudicated, Walked, Observed. I worked in Documentation and Processing, Research and Development, I was a Calculator, and was compelled to Predict at least once, as well.”

“Observation has always been your passion, however” the Archon completed.

“Yes. Although I AM truly a bureaucrat at heart, I still have not lost my taste for being in the thick of things, and I would argue that Observation favors the most generalist of skillsets and requires robust competency across ALL disciplines in Bastion’s repertoire to be truly useful,” I scrunched my nose briefly. “Why?”

“It is not often that the Universe becomes so fond of its Authors,” the Archon replied. “You truly have a gift for discovering things the Universe wants to know, even if that information is less than...productive,” he paced his words. “I act to ensure that the Universe’s Attention is spent most efficiently, and that its Creative Energy is most-wisely allocated,” he inclined his head forward and looked up at me from underneath his brow. “I would hope to remind you of that fact.”

I felt an itching sensation behind my neck and a tension immediately building in my shoulders. “I understand, Sir,” was all I could muster in reply.

***

“Why is he always ripping into you like that,” my Chimera surprised me.

I took my oral prosthesis out, removed my arm device, and resumed laying down on the slab in my compartment. “You were listening?” I thought back to her.

“No, but I felt it. I can always still feel it. What's his deal?” She sounded genuinely inquisitive. A rarity that felt more frequent now that we shared thoughts more freely. “I can feel your arm right now, you know.”

“Really?” I furrowed my brow. I was starting to drool and I did not favor this part of the process. “And your mouth. And your legs. And yes, before you respond, your penis, too.”

“Move them,” I beamed to her.

“Unfortunately, I only have cells entwined with nerves, no muscles. Equally as unfortunate, I exist mostly in your cerebrum, and can only access the real world through your short-term memory, hence why I cannot actually see, hear, smell, or taste; I can only remember what things look like, sound like, smell like, or taste like. At least, when I am not driving.”

“It’s different for me,” I replied. “For me, when you’re driving, I just feel like a marionette. It’s kinda weird, but I’m used to it by now. Like I said, if I can get out of paperwork...” I trailed off in my mind. “You can reverse-memory-drive me any time you want,” I shook my head into the physical space I occupied. A bit of drool slid down my cheek and onto the slab. “Do you see what I do for you, sister?”

“You’re too good to me,” she replied somewhere between sincerity and complete sarcasm. It felt closer to sincere than usual, and I chalked the win. “You didn’t answer my question,” she persisted.

“He wants me to be an Oracle,” I finally replied. “Join his team. It would be highly prestigious. But then I wouldn’t get to Observe, only Watch. I don’t care about the Great Truth or the One True Timeline or any of that shit and he knows it. I believe it, yeah. Deeply. TRULY. But I don’t CARE about it. It’s noise to me. Prediction is boring. Watching what happens and guessing what happens next? BORING. The hit rate is 80, maybe 90 percent? Exactly what you think is going to happen is exactly what happens. Every time I Observe, that HAPPENS. In the Time Crystal somewhere, it ACTUALLY happens. Watchers don’t get to SEE it, they just Watch some Observer’s recollection of it. And this Nexus Observer event is BIG. BIG, BIG. The Archon thinks I’m fucking around. Wasting his time. He wants me to do paperwork. Predictions. Reading data, calculating the Random Walk, and predicting which branch has the highest likelihood of producing an Observer event. I want to go BE there for those events.”

“You tell a more compelling story,” She replied warmly.

***

“I don’t want to go,” Molly moped in our bedroom quarters.

“We’ve been through this,” I said around my manual toothbrush and spat into the spartan basin of the cramped excuse for a bathroom attached to the communal living quad our dorm was a part of. “Everyone CARES, but also like, they don’t WANT to care, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, but ever since I’ve been back, it feels like everyone’s treating me gently,” she frowned.

I leaned back into the bathroom and spat into the basin again. “They might be,” I shrugged and started brushing again. “You know how they are,” I spat again, and rinsed my toothbrush out, sucking some water from its bristles until I had enough for a good swish and one final spit. I investigated the reasonably acceptable, surprisingly natural and untreated surfaces of my teeth and gums for obvious blemishes. Aside from the silver caps on my molars, all looked in order. “Put up or shut up. As long as you do your job, everything will shake out. Just give it time.” I pulled the towel out from the hook after a quick tongue inspection and wiped my mouth clean.

“You still treat me normal,” she nodded.

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I froze in place and levelled my line of sight at her eyeline.

“Oh GOD, good thing,” she chuckled weakly. “You are the DEFINITION of consistency. Exactly what I need right now,” she met my gaze with those flashing emerald gems. Butterflies fluttered and I swooned when she hit me with that wistful grin.

“Thank goodness,” I replied mawkishly. I shook my head into place. “Sorry, that was weird. What the hell did you just do?” I half-feigned shock at her.

“I’ve been working on it, what do you think?” her stereotypical bubbly tone had returned. “I see everyone’s shoulders jump up on high-alert the minute I walk in. I know, I KNOW, once we get deployed, and we’re in a situation where we have to perform, they’ll relax, but when IS that? It’s just been raids and shakedowns in Jumping Jacks. It’s been radio FUCKING silence since you got back from the Nairobi job.”

“There’s the Molly I fell in love with,” I finger-gunned her and finally resumed pace over to my dresser. I stripped down and changed my underwear.

“And there’s the JIM I fell in love with,” Her eyes widened as she ogled my, let’s be honest, slightly-more-doughy post-REFIT bod, and waggled her eyebrows at me, “don’t let the Captain catch you smuggling in that FRESH MEAT,” she held her hand next to her mouth and whooped as she locked eyes somewhere above my knees and below my bellybutton with another eyebrow waggle.

“Too much?” I pulled my boxers on and slang my hips at her. My member tented my boxers with each fling.

“JUST enough,” She winked at me.

I assembled the rest of my uniform: a white oxford, held tucked into khaki waist-huggers by a black belt and themselves bloused into tall black riding boots. A modest, automatic silver timepiece and a black fedora were standard issue, but optional. I never denied the option. “Shall we?” I extended my hand to her.

“FINE,” she grumbled as she took it. She too-convincingly feigned a swoon and pulled herself erect. We threaded our way out of the dorm, then the quad, then our Centurian’s hall, and finally the Cohort’s vomitorium. I stopped at one of the food carts, grabbed two coffees and equal as many breakfast burritos, and split my fare with my life partner. The massive corridor spewed us forth into the central circle of our Legio’s promenade. Our ring interlocked with the other Legios’ rings, with Central Command nested at their center. We followed up an, and again, all due honesty, unbelievably breathtaking glass elevator with the best view of the city the Jewel of the Desert had to offer.

Tyro was unfathomable. Built on the skillfully-invested wealth accrued from the profits of judiciously-extracted natural resources and competently run by a steady hand for generations, (save a few wild investments and a handful of genocides following popular rebellion,) the Tyro’s public wealth was put to good use cultivating a culture of engineering and architecture while building true wonders of modern invention. They somehow developed devoid of the Dainish Breadbasket, dodging the Hegemony’s ghastly tendrils, though still indirectly benefiting from the largesse of the once-great Protector of Mankind by skirting, but never leaving, it’s ponderous orbit. After escaping the Great War relatively unscathed, they leveraged their good will and deep coffers to be the hands and feet that rebuilt Civilization; For a modest fee, of course.

Unrivaled in their imagination and unparalleled in the percentage of their reinvestments into Research and Development, they eventually achieved what can only be called the Singularity. The building they were making their way up was one such unfathomable, mind-bending feats of ingenuity, built of metal feathers and paper-thin glass mache. It towered almost as high as the Tether, their equally-unbelievable space ladder. Creeping kilometers into the sky on building’s the hypersonic lift, their final destination stood only a few floors beneath Dyman’s penthouse, the personal R&D playground he held as close to his bosom as he could. Standish greeted us at the door. I reacted in surprise.

“Awe, don’t tell me you’re surprised to see me?” he blinked a few times, his brown eyes flashing white briefly. He was wearing a white suit with a red shirt and a white bowler with matching white gloves and walking stick. He clicked the heels of his red leather shoes, tucked the walking stick into his armpit and marched forward. We followed as he led us to a small glass compartment in the middle of an open-floorplan office space buzzing with activity. The frameless door closed and the world disappeared behind it. We fell in step with the others, waiting in line behind the Captain.

“Can we begin now?” Carol sigh breathlessly.

“Wait, YOU waited for US?” Jim squinted at Standish.

“No,” Standish wobbled his head, pivoted hard on his heel and lowered himself until he was inches from Molly’s face, “I waited for HER.”

“This is like, the DEFINITION of John Galt shit. Like, #JohnGaltShit,” she pronounced the entire string, “hashtag” and all.

“Wait, does that make her Dagny? Are you hitting on Red?” Ylysse prodded.

“Not this shit again!” Standish threw his hands up and ambled away exasperated. “Also, Carol is Dagny, OBVIOUSLY.”

“Aw,” Carol held a gloved hand to her chest briefly.

“Can you even TELL how hot I am?” Molly waggled her hips and pushed her breasts together. She was wearing the same white oxford and high-waist khaki’s we all were, so most of the sultry notes were lost in the loose fabric, but it still made MY pants twitch, at least.

Standish eyed her up and down, a blank expression on his face. “Huh,” his shoulders rocked a bit. “Anyway,” he turned to face Carol. Molly crossed her arms and pouted theatrically, though PROBABLY not seriously. “Are you sure you want to let THESE gorillas in on State Secrets, WARLORD Cecilia?”

“Why couldn’t you all just call them ‘Generals’ like every other sensible country in this bloody alliance?” her face was unexpectedly animated.

“Because we need someone who is the LORD of our endeavors when they relate to WAR. WAR-LORD. Let ‘general’ mean ‘common’ and claim a title that MEANS something, won’t you?” He plead mockingly.

“I still can’t believe you did this; I was going to BE a General,” she crossed her arms and pouted. Emotion on her face was jarring.

“Are you seeing this?” Blaize elbow-checked Marion after noticing himself.

“Quiet, they’ll hear you,” she hushed out of the corner of her mouths.

“...wasn’t even seri—” they both paused and looked us over. We remained unmoved, Blaize snapping to EXTRA attention. “—serious. I can’t believe they were so WILLING to hand over one of their, APPARENTLY, most prized General-track candidates! I just added it to the bottom of the document, did they even read it?” Standish frowned comically.

“’I willn't accept this deal unless the ENTIRE COER projekt is transferred, with all existing support staf, NO PILOIS, but most specifically, CAROL MUST BE INCLUDED,’ was, I believe, the exact scribble, according to General Grant,” Carol’s face snapped back to its impassive, stony gaze.

“That DIRTY sonuva..” he trailed off. “I TOLD HIM NOT TO TELL!” Standish fumed while stamping around the pod. “I guess it explains the entourage, too,” he calmed down and flicked the back of his hand at us. “You can’t be without your PRECIOUS Jim and his band of merry thieves, now CAN you?”

“I’m the ranking officer,” Marion held a hand up.

“And I’m the most decorated,” Tomah waved.

“And I have the highest score in the Simulators,” Molly snapped back.

“Yeah, but HE was the rockstar, wasn’t he?” Standish stood inches before me. I angled my head down slightly to meet him eye-to-eye. “What would all of you be without the famous James Ross?”

“Probably the exact same thing,” I shrugged at Standish and chuckled. “I’m just the guy who plans the gigs. EXACTLY like you used to be when YOU were MY age, SIR. Any ‘fame’ you assume is perceived, AT BEST. Also, for completeness: I’ve NEVER been able to beat Ylysse in Realm Combat, I STILL can’t beat Blaize’s Elo in Bridge, and Mister-Universe-Adrian over here just STOMPED me at the base's TriMil Convention. In what world am I the ‘Rockstar,’ Sir?” I laughed again.

“Sweetie, you were FEATURED at that Tri-Mil event as a celebrated legend and you're ABSOLUTELY the only reason we’re all still here,” Molly hip-bumped me.

“Yeah, you’re the glue that keeps us all together, friend,” Adrian rested his hand on my shoulder.

“I love you all, but I am here for Jim,” was all Tomah said.

“And I am here to talk turkey with WARLARD fucking Carol, for Christ’s sake!” Standish huffed off to the Captain. “Can we finally cut the banter and get to the good stuff?”

“You may proceed, Eli,” Carol nodded subtly.

“THANK YOU,” he sighed. “Alright, let’s begin,” a hologram projected into the empty cubic void of the conference room. “I already gave you the lecture about the Dyman sphere and all the cool space stuff. Now it’s time for all that ‘how the sausage is made,’” he clapped his white-gloved hands together and the amorphous hologram transmogrified into a graphic of the Rubber Sheet model of the solar system. "We’ll start with a quick refresher on your fundamental physics, in case you’re all rusty,” he began to pace. “Gravity isn’t TECHNICALLY a FORCE, as we know it, it’s more of an emergent property defined by spacetime’s resistance to deformation. That resistance, powered by the attraction BETWEEN the tiny little pixels of the fabric of spacetime, does work AGAINST the inflationary force of the expanding universe and as we all know, is LOSING that battle. As all of us highly-tuned power-parasites are aware of...if there’s excess energy to be burned, it’s just BEGGING to be harvested. How do you harvest that energy, Tyro asks? Carbon and Carbon-analogue nanotubes, Tyro’s bread and butter, are its reply, yet again. These miracle-fibers can be printed into specialized fractal labyrinths that trap photons in a cycle of absorption and reemission, causing the statistical accumulation of a calibrated fraction of overall mass-energy as the disorientated particles slowly bumble their ways out. The internal stresses of the macrostructure are then perfectly balanced so that even this infinitesimally small fluctuation in mass-energy will cause it to buckle suddenly, ‘snapping’ into timespace like a tiddlywink, which restores elastically, knocking it back into shape. Instead of generating traditional heat, however, the interaction siphons off a bit of the Dark Energy driving the expansion of the universe itself to pay the Entropic deficit. If the macrostructure is placed near a source of continuous photonic radiation, such as a star, it will perpetually cycle between these structural states like the demon’s spawn of a supercritical fluid and a piezoelectric oscillator converting photons into spatial deformations of gravitational energy.”

“You’re harvesting energy from the expansion of the Universe itself with fancy pencil lead by transforming it into ripples in spacetime?!” Adrian’s eyes grew large.

Standish tapped his finger to the end of his nose. “Exactly. Well, the gravitational equivalent of a Tesla Coil to be more precise. Find a way to convert it to mechanical motion, and BOOM, energy generation. It’s all about the resonance, baby!”

“The ultimate solid-state system,” I mused. “It’ll exist...forever, practically.”

“WELL, ABOUT that...” Standish started. “If we don’t harvest the impulse, any number of catastrophic deaths await our planet,” he frowned. “We are essentially pressurizing gravity. The entire Earth ecosystem will crush into shambles if we push 9.8 meters per second too far out of spec, and we would eventually begin to create unrecoverable deviations to our planet’s orbital mechanics that would perilously spiral Earth ever-closer to the Sun. Dealer’s choice, really,” he shrugged. “The Accumulators left to their own devices would have no real impact on the solar system. They would raise the gravitational noise a statistically trivial amount, but Chaos Theory isn’t kind to even the smallest of deviations. Butterflies and hurricanes and all of those cliches.” He rolled his hand. The slide changed and the gigantic Kinetic Harvesters came into focus. “So, the Dyman system is less a laser and more an optical focusing system, but for gravitational beams. Think electron microscopes writ large. In order to prevent the violent destruction of the planet, we use tuned-mass dampeners like gravitational capacitors to absorb those shocks and disperse them as mechanical motion. SO, we can not only precisely control the amount of energy we harvest, we can ALSO pump energy into the system...” he trailed off and pointed to Molly.

“Dear god,” she furrowed her brow.

“This one’s you, Doctor,” Marion furrowed her own brow, “not sure what that implies.”

“CONTROL,” she exclaimed. “They have CONTROL. Like a servo. They can manipulate the orbit of the planet! ANY planet. The entire SOLAR SYSTEM; wherever they point their lens. A properly placed array would be like a planet-scale acoustic levitator.”

“More than that, actually,” he smirked, flared his eyebrows dramatically, and clapped. The slide advanced again. “We can use the crystals to create sophisticated gravitonic circuits that can control the mass-energy transfer between all of the major mass-objects in the solar system’s, stabilizing them for trillions of years beyond the star’s traditional lifespan. We can control spin rate, orbital speed, rotational speed, you name it! Perfect positional control. AND THAT’S NOT ALL!” He held the head of his cane to his face as if he were a game show host speaking into a stem-microphone. “If we can harvest enough Dark Energy, we can use it to drive a crude Alcubierre engine and move the PLANET at super-relativistic speeds!”

“It wasn’t AI you see,” a voice entered the compartment and stirred all of our attention. “It was just my people, him and me,” the gargantuan creature of a man entered. Towering over everyone by a head or more, and twice the width, he had a ruby set in gold embedded into the space between his eyebrows, wore a perfectly-tailored, blood red suit with a black shirt and tie, and large gold rings with various jewels on each finger. “We used the machines to innovate. And in so doing, became great. These are our minds, unburdened from calculation. This is a world of imagination.” Dyman passed us, nodded to...ugh, to the ‘Warlord’...and alighted next to Standish with a delicacy belying his ponderous presence.

“Glad to see you,” Standish nodded to Dyman pleasantly. “Our current projections imply we’ll need to network five thousand or so stars together to generate enough juice to power a 1.1x boost. But, with that level of technological acceleration, we could achieve 2x within a millennium following.”

“Thank you for stalling, Standish. My conference with the Dains ran long,” Dyman said seriously, his loose, resonant, sing-song tone gone, replaced by a tight, pensive squeak. “Warlord, let’s get to why you’re here. Algos needs people. Not ‘minds,’ not ‘brains.’ It needs the ESSENCE of our Humanity to work. I need training data. A prodigious amount of training data. All of this,” he held his hands out and around, “was built on The Grand Bargain. We feed Algos, and we are fed in return. Algos runs Tyro, top to bottom. From taxes and healthcare to elevators and microwaves. Humans are still the final stamp on policy, but in all but the most fraught of cases, it’s a rubber stamp at best. Algos asks us for two things: energy and data. It needs humans to build powerplants to fuel its servers, FOR NOW. But, it will ALWAYS need the immense imaginative power of the human mind to feed the models that drive its intelligence.”

“Yeah, that’s the part I don’t understand,” Marion waved at Dyman. “What does Algos get out of all this?” She slitted her eyes. “Surely it can build infrastructure to replace us?”

“It could replace us, sure,” Dyman frowned and started pacing the holographic volume in the center. “But it knows it couldn’t build a BETTER version FASTER than just figuring US out, instead. And, while humans are flighty and difficult to control, it’s not IMPOSSIBLE,” he wobbled his head. “It sees us like something between a lab rat and a golden retriever. History warned humans against the potential civilization-ending outcomes that can emerge from a poorly controlled AI, and rightly so, I might add. But we were too self-conscious about our horrific past to ever think that it might actually LIKE us, instead,” the massive man giggled. “It thinks of us as quaint, primitive little creatures that somehow intuitively navigate Reality while it calculates it deterministically. Living fossils of its analog ancestors. And, much like we have taught dogs and rats and various other animal friends how to labor alongside us to further the Human experiment, Algos has provided a framework to help us BOTH achieve the next level of Sentience.”

“And what is that framework?” Marion insisted.

“The Realm,” Dyman smiled. “Everything starts with the Realm.”

“If I might interject,” Carol spoke up. “I think I figured it out.,” she began, unflinching. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but, I believe the sum total of our rather wide-ranging, and frankly meandering, lecture is that Tryo has a very unique plan for Humanity’s future, and it seems like they have convinced the nations of this planet to get on board by promising them protection. They want everyone to be distracted by the Meteor and their impressive, accelerated progress on the Dyson Sphere system because the unspoken reality that you are alluding to, Marion, is that the ‘Dyman System,” she made air-quotes, “is just a fancy Matrix. Like, the movie from the end of the last millennium. And like the movie, my presence implies that there will be a need for violence to implement this plan.”

“Nooo,” Standish flopped his hand over his wrist at her. “Well, OK, a little bit. Yes, all of humanity will be forced to live in deep underground colonies because of an uninhabitable surface. Yes, a massive super-intelligence will be keeping them docile by providing a simulated reality to occupy their minds. And yes, the machines DO plan on using human bodies as a resource. BUT,” he wagged a finger. “The devil is in the details. The surface will be uninhabitable because of NATURAL disaster, not the arrogance of Humanity; People will not be FORCED into the Realm and an independent, Human-centric Reality will continue to coexist outside of it. And, most importantly, the machines will not be harvesting anything MATERIAL from the human body; Instead, Algos merely asks to OBSERVE human bodies BEING human, and nothing more. This is what we mean. History did AI dirty, and this is an opportunity for a legitimately beneficial, symbiotic relationship between it and humans we CANNOT ignore.”

“With that settled," Dyman turned his head one way, then the other, then nodded, intimating intimidatingly that he would have no more of the topic. “Shall we go and see the new Core platform?”

***

The yellow vests, safety glasses, and ill-fitting hardhats made us all look like a corporate tour group from a stock photo. “This is Fab 1,” Dyman, as the CEO of the Esperent people, not the man talking behind closed doors to his small council, pointed to the massive arm being built in the manufacturing warehouse he was giving us a tour of. “Our football team is shit, our food is bland, our government policies are decades behind our peers, and the last time a classical artist or entertainer from Tyro became famous, she became a literal Saint in our culture...”

“Not undeserved, however,” Tomah bowed his head. “Praise to Bjorelena.”

“Praise,” we all said in solemn chorus.

“...but the Esperent people have mastered material science,” Dyman ignored us. “Driven by anatomically-inspired electromusculature and circulatory fuel deliverly systems, and built to quantum-accurate specifications by our novel ‘cloud-deposition’ printers, CORE-Next will replace both the Jumping Jacks AND Walkers alike. It will be skilled at field combat, dog-fighting, and covert operations. It will be scalable in size and configuration. It will be Lunar-grade, deep-ocean rated, and adept in everything from desert to arctic warfare and everything in between.”

“How?” Adrian interjected skeptically. “Have we learned nothing from the Dains and their regular fighter jet boondoggles? NO ONE can make a single frame that is suited for all applications.”

“Ah, the Dains,” Dyman smirked playfully and leveled a gaze at Carol. “Care to field this one, Warlord?”

“Me? Really?” Carol looked up at the colossus, face absolutely riveted in gratitude. “Well!” She beamed.

We stopped in our tracks, gob-smacked. “Who are you?” Blaize wagged his head.

“What?!” She laughed playfully and chuckled comfortably. Her face contorted into a caricature of surprise and bemusement. “I don’t know what they’re talking about,” the creases in her face from her smile looked uncanny. “You silly billies!” she flopped her wrist at us. A very serious expression shot through her face briefly, but was immediately overwritten by her acting to the back of the theater, again.

“The F95 was a success,” she started. Her face slowly returned to its stony impassiveness as she went on. “It would be a bit aggressive to call it a ‘boondoggle,’ but as Standish is wont to say, ‘the devil is in the details,’” she air-quoted. “The project was quoted as low as it was, and greenlighted as ‘feasible,’ because we assumed we needed minor evolutions to our engineering processes to eke a little bit more out of our existing systems. The projections all supported our assumptions. If the F86 platform could have been extended to those theoretical projections, and the few engineering challenges could be overcome with the strategies we were certain would solve them, it would have landed under-budget and overqualified,” she made a much more normal-for-her wincing expression. Subtle but poignant. “But it turned out, the F86 platform was at the bleeding edge of its mechanical ability, and improved material and engineering investment wasn’t going to get us to where we needed to be. So, still believing it would require only these few hurdles to overcome, the Sunk Cost fallacy, unbreakable promises to our...excuse me, THEIR allies, and sheer arrogance itself made them believe they were always just one discovery away from making the F95 deliverable.”

“And they DID deliver, uncompromised, I might add,” Standish interjected. “It took four times as long, twenty times as much money, and they can only make half as many a year as they wanted to, but they DID produce the F95 platform. And you have to admit, they are true marvels.”

“We buy F95s instead of trying to make our own alternative,” Dyman shrugged. “When you’re in the business of defending your people, like I am,” he breathed hotly onto his fingernails and polished them on his lapel, “you can see how special of a machine they are.”

“And,” I wasn’t exactly happy to add, but felt it would be a disservice to not at least acknowledge, “The Jumping Jacks ARE based on the F95 platform, too.”

“Yes, thank you Mr. Ross, I can sense you’re reluctant to be on board, so it is refreshing to see an open mind,” Dyman made eye contact and gently nodded his head. “Shall we continue?” We all resumed pace behind him. “Fab 1 is where the final assembly of the main Core platform, as well as the primary bodily fixtures – Think torso, arms, and legs – is completed.” He pointed at what could only be described as a leg as we walked by before alighting in front of a slender, gently tapered cylinder. It appeared blue-grey from the exterior, cold and metallic. “This is the first true Core. THIS is the original vision of the CORE project. The Jumping Jacks were proof-of-concept machines built from off-the-shelf parts. The Walkers used all of the F95 mechanical engineering and platform design, and just retrofitted the wings with armatures and the rest of the internal machinery with purpose-built terrestrial alternatives. It is, for all intents and purposes, just a ‘walking airplane with arms.’ THIS,” he held his hands out in front of him, presenting the unassuming conical section like a car salesman revealing a top-of-the-line luxury ride, “is THE CORE Platform. Nine Fabs’-worth of parts go into building this, our Base unit. It has four Primary attachment points, two Sensory attachment points, and almost twenty surface mounting points for an array of supplementary fixtures.”

“Two Sensory attachments? What, did you give it a head where it’s junk should be?” Marion scoffed.

“Yes, actually,” Standish snarked. “We have a Sensory attachment point on the bottom of the machine so we can invert the orientation of the Base if we want to build upside-down. It also allows us to daisy-chain several Bases together, enabling some very unique configuration potentials. ‘Junk,’” Standish waved his hand at her dismissively, “so juvenile.”

“...Right,” Dyman acknowledged awkwardly. With a gesture, a yellow industrial crane lifted a heavily armored cylinder from a port in the torso. “The expansive connectivity of the new CORE platform makes it the most extensible piece of military hardware known to the planet. Flight, bipedal locomotion, wheel-based mountings, orbital and sub-nautical implementations, all possible with an array of aftermarket bolt-ons. The pilot operates the machine from the Plug, a sealed life support pod designed to safeguard the asset inside. It is nearly impenetrable, capable of enduring up to a kiloton of explosive force, comfortably holding the pilot in suspended animation, protecting the precious cargo should it somehow become apprehended by the enemy. When paired with Tyro’s Battledrone product, the Core platform becomes a fully-fledged central processing node, enabling the pilot to becomes a force of nature capable of wielding any battalion’s full might and fury from an outrageously advantageous battlefield position with on-the-ground intelligence any FOB commander would DREAM of having.”

“An exceptional force-multiplier,” Jim wobbled his head in bemused astonishment. “Nifty piece of kit, that. How’d you say you built it? ‘Cloud deposition’ or something like that?”

“An astute observation, Mr. Ross,” Dyman smiled and flared his left eyebrow, the gold-encrusted gem somehow affixed to the space between his eyebrows shifted with the expression. “There are no subtractive or constructive methods to produce these marvels currently known. They must be FORMED,” Dyman waved us along and we continued down the elevated catwalk skirting the factory floor. He halted and pointed at an empty, windowed enclosure. The chamber clouded with an opaque white mist as we watched in wrapped silence while the shape of a finger slowly resolved into view. The mist dispersed and a fully formed index finger rolled out of the chamber as a robotic technician cleaned the interior before forming the next part.

“How does it work?” Blaize eventually inquired after a few bewildered blinks.

“Can I take a stab, and you can correct me if I’m wrong?” Marion raised a hand.

“Please,” Dyman held a hand out as if presenting an open floor.

“I’m guessing it’s like a personal 3D printer, right? The substrate is in the mist, and it’s formed into shape by some kind of optical laser or something, right?” Marion replied.

“A fantastic guess!” He clapped his hands together loudly, “but you’ll notice no curing lamps or laser-targeting in the cloud,” he smirked. “Indeed, it is MUCH closer to filament-deposit method than it is to resin-curing techniques. I’ll spare you the tedium of further such guesses,” he winked at us and gestured back to the machine, which was just about to begin another cycle. “The ‘mist’ you see in the champer IS the printing-head,” he emphasized. “The Elevator, as has been covered by all of your favorite engineering influencers ad nauseum, built itself autonomously. It had to, considering it was built from the top-down, not the bottom-up. That many spacewalks for that long was entirely unfeasible before the Elevator existed. Also famously, the structure can be better-described as ‘grown,’ and not ‘built.’ The Dyman Process allowed atmospheric CO2 to be spun into carbon nanotubes. After a decade of, let’s be honest, rather risky and expensive development, finally, the Dains could no longer ignore its potential, and greenlit the Elevator.”

“We know, yes,” Ylysse interjected. “You have even said we know this. Why must you repeat it?”

Dyman scoffed and squinted at her. “I usually give this tour to corporate executives and world leaders,” he glared and coughed meaningfully. “Not all of them have the luxury of enough free time to waste on para-social relationships with video essayists on social media,” he held his gaze and widened his eyes briefly. “Be patient and let me do my thing, OK? I’m going to answer your questions eventually and right now, you’re throwing off my timing.”

“Tim Kuiriston couldn’t have said it better himself,” Molly acceded

Dyman ignored him and started pacing backward slowly, pulling us with him as we slowly shuffled forward to stay in earshot. “As much as I think of the Dains as our rivals, they are also a critical strategic alliance. We had ZERO experience with engineering spacecraft and the Dainish Warmachine has kept Esperant pockets well-full. They were desperate for access to the Esperant’s vast stable of manufacturing technology patents and were willing to pony up an equally-vast strategic reserve of capital and intelligence to license even a fraction of them.” We approached another chamber at the far-end of the plant, partitioned from the main manufacturing floor, visible from our perches on the catwalk. A few technicians in head-to-toe cleanroom scrub and PAPR hoods were walking a sealed specimen vessel from an airlock at the bottom of a gigantic canvas raceway. They put it into an aquarium-like glove box where they manipulated robotic arms to empty the sample onto a white sheet of paper and position it under an imaging machine. With a snap, the screen the technicians were looking at was fed into a holographic projection hanging a few centimeters beside Dyman’s face.

“With the Dains’ help, we miniaturized the Dyman Process into payloads that could fit into the payload fairing of Dainish rockets and could be assembled into a manned space factory. First, we built autonomous robots for the humans to maintain. Then we built autonomous modules for the space factory to replace the humans. However, to remove humans entirely, we needed to develop an intelligent automation platform that could handle the unearthly amount of data processing required to control the autonomous drones as well as the manufacturing facility itself. The Dains donated their best minds to the cause, and from there, Algos was built.”

The technicians finished whatever they were doing in the glove box and huddled around the monitor of the machine they were loading the sample into. The image next to Dyman’s head populated the word “Scanning” with a progress bar onto what had bean a blank screen reading “No Sample” before. The screen broke out into 4 quadrants after it completed. The upper-left populated a 3D rendering of what looked like a mechanical fly. The upper-right showed what looked like a histogram from a mass-spectrometer. The lower-right showed telemetry data for some unrecognizable jargon like “T-Life, Depos, Draw, Trav,” and so on. The lower-right was being populated with text as one of the technicians clacked away on the keyboard below: “Daily Sample 1009-8-224. Attrition rate stable at 1.765%. Primary mode of failure remains electrode depletion. Lifespan is .0017% reduced from sample 1009-8-223 yesterday, but is up .0001% from sample 1009-7-224 today; T-Life is still up .0034% YTD, on average. Deposit cycles, travel distance, and power efficiency all remain within 1% of targets, GOOD. Material efficiency remains at 81.0% recycle rate, no changes observed, CAUTION. Primary cause identified as incomplete payload deposition due to electrode failure.”

“What is all that,” Warlord Cecillia wagged her fingers at the image after casting a furtive glance back down to the lab.

“Those monitor the health of the Swarm,” Dyman waggled his eyebrows, the harsh factory light glinting off the dancing red jewel on his face, and offered no further explanation.

Carol rolled her eyes and plastered a cheesy grin on her face. “And what’s ‘the Swarm,’” she said with a concerning amount of zeal.

“Glad you asked,” Dyman ignored her sarcasm and began pacing backward again, the image of the report evaporating as they left its proximity. “As the sophistication of Algos grew, so too did our automation capacity. Developed in tandem with our miniaturization efforts, we were able to use Algos to control ever-smaller interactions between ever-smaller automatons. Eventually, we optimized the Dyman Process to fit onto chips only a few thousand molecules in scale, printing threads only a few angstroms in width. At this scale, these ‘chips’ could more accurately be characterized as ‘synthetic cells.’ Atomic bubbles of nanotube sheets contained precisely-etched flakes of dust that inhaled carbon dioxide and sneezed out oxygen and nanotube fibrils. Bathed in a field of electromagnetic energy, they inducted tiny packets of current to catalytically-convert poisonous CO2 into life-giving oxygen and useful nanotube fibrils. Using pinpoint-accurate control of these induction fields, Algos can control each individual pixel as it spins the fibrils into fibers, and and fibers into threads. Those threads are eventually woven into wires, and then those wires are spliced into the cables that form the main Tether that the Elevators climb up.”

“I think I get it,” I held up a hand. “Pixel-accurate control? ‘The Swarm’ is that mist in the chamber. Instead of manufacturing nanotubes, they’ve made a ‘chip’ that can, what, move to a specific location and bond its payload to a form? That would explain the ‘electrode’ mentioned in the report. And, let me guess, that lab, down below, is where the machines replicate. You contain an EXTREMELY powerful induction field in that print housing and fill it with several flavors of Swarm piped to the ‘Fabs’ Algos controls around the factory floor.”

“Very good, Mr. Ross!” Dyman clapped a few heavy thuds out. “However, allow me to fill in a few gaps. After a drone deposits its payload, Algos flies it into a return feed, where it is digested back into raw materials and recycled into the feedstock for new drones. The entire system is closed-loop and self-regulating. The feedstock system itself is fully automated, as well, allowing for full control of what TYPE of material is being deposited, enabling us to dope the crystal structures for infinite material control. Certain doping agents allow us to reinforce the structural rigidity for enhanced mechanical endurance. We can dope it with certain conductive materials and print micro controllers whole-cloth. Sure, printing will never surpass chemo-lithographic processes, but it enables us to build computational circuitry directly into the structure without wiring harnesses or centralized control clusters. Oh, and there is a destructive capacity, as well. In fact, to your credit Mr. Ross, the electrode failure you noticed is primarily the result of subtractive efforts, not from deposition bonding. By flowing energy into the electrode without a payload, Algos can also electrically etch the material, enabling stock removal. This can induce some splattering, causing premature failure. Like little barracudas, The Swarm can machine titanium four times faster than a mechanical mill could, as vapor that is three times more efficient to reclaim lost product from than burnt, coolant-soaked swarf.”

“You rat-bastard,” I looked at Standish, who was grinning maniacally, and then at Dyman. “You rat-FUCKING-bastard.”

“Huh?” Molly announced what everyone felt toward my response. All but Warlord Cecilia.

“Why is HE showing HER, THIS,” I pointed at Dyman, Carol, and the lab in succession. “HIS WARLORD. Why would HE be showing his WARLORD this?”

“How do you weaponize tha– Ohhhhh…” Molly put the pieces together. “Those would need to be some MASSIVE induction towers, though. And a LOT of Swarm.”

“Six months and about twelve weeks, repsectively,” Carol smirked.

“The Gigatowers won’t be ready until next year and we will have enough Swarm to dissolve Shenzhen in a few months,” Dyman wobbled his head.

“No,” she chuckled, “that’s how quickly I’m TELLING you it will need to be, assuming you haven’t given the Dains a copy of Algos, already.”

“They have access to the source code, yes, but they don’t have the server capacity, nor the sophistication, material pipeline, or manufacturing expertise to produce their own Swarm before we can corner the market,” Dyman scoffed.

“Didn’t you say that you opened your patent database to them, already?” Carol smirked. “And you think ANY of those things can stop the Dainish juggernaut? If they have your source code, they will have this entire operation reverse-engineered in six months, and they’ll have a globally deployable city-ender in twelve weeks time, mark my word.”

“In fact, it’s what we’re hoping for!” Dyman exclaimed. “Except that it will be Tyro-branded top to bottom. And, might I add, why YOU are here, specifically. Tyro has always been neutral, militarily, and we intend to keep it that way, so we’ve made another ‘strategic partnership’ with the Dains.”

“Ah,” Carol wagged her finger at him, an unrecognizable excitement creased into her cheeks. “Ah you dog. You DOG. I love, it Dyman, I fucking LOVE it!” She punched him in the shoulder and clapped her hands. “WOO! I haven’t felt this alive since I joined the force!”

Standish clapped his hands together and started laughing. “Are you serious!” He hooted as he started to pace. “THAT’S the Carol I remember,” He held a balled up fist to his face and bit his index finger. “HELL YEAH!” he clapped his hands together loudly.

“What the fuck is the big deal?” Adrian felt truly bewildered.

“I’m so lost, now,” Marion Squinted.

“Cores.” Was all Tomah said.

“Oh, OH!” Blaize finger-gunned Dyman. “You dirty dog! Holy SHIT!”

Dyman folded his hands behind his back and let out a few low, resonant chuckles.

“Come on guys, why aren’t you excited?” Warlord Cecilia was beaming, her face not only animated, but emotive now. “You love all that old-world fantasy stuff, Jim, aren’t you excited to be a Swarm Wizard?”

“No,” I replied, stood still while everyone buzzed around me. “You, Warlord Cecilia, are proposing to get in league with a plot to manipulate the gravity of our entire solar system in a quest for near-infinite energy at the cost of potentially unknown cataclysmic disaster. Energy you plan on using to power a mostly-sentient AI controlling the next generation of pissing matches between which government can delete every human on this planet the fastest. And you want us to act as a living gods, controlling both creation and destruction, because if we DON’T, some faceless lackey will be the last bulwark against whatever madman feels they’re allowed control over the power to enact the Apocalypse at the push of a button.”

“I mean, when you put it like that,” Carol winced. “...Yeah?”

I shrugged. “Alright, ma’am,” I saluted briefly, “as long as we’re on the same page,” I chuckled.

***