Time Flat - SCP Foundation

Time Flat

2017

9 September

Baseline Temporality, twelve months earlier

Site-43: Lambton County, Ontario, Canada

The members of Sampi-5243 met with their assigned psychologist for a debriefing each year after executing their containment procedures, no matter the outcome. This saved them from needing to schedule an appointment whenever they returned from a deadline, since nobody but them would realize anything had happened in the first place. Usually these debriefings were upbeat, even a little bit celebratory in nature, though that tendency had waned in recent years as the chore dragged on and on and the novelty of success wore off.

Five years since their last accident, though, was a milestone any dangerous workplace could be proud of.

Debriefing Log 5243-X-2017

Subject: Allan J. McInnis (Director, Site-43); Harold R. Blank (Chair, Archives and Revision, Site-43); Delfina M. Ibanez (Chief, Pursuit and Suppression, Site-43); Lillian S. Lillihammer (Chair, Memetics and Countermemetics, Site-43); Nascimbeni, N. (Chief, Janitorial and Maintenance, Site-43); Okorie, Udo A. (Chair, Applied Occultism, Site-43); Wettle, William W. (Deputy Chair, Replication Studies, Site-43)

Officer of Record: Nhung T. Ngo (Chair, Psychology and Parapsychology Section, Site-43)

Dr. Ngo: Only three containment failures, over the course of fifteen years. That's an excellent record.

Chief Nascimbeni: Inexplicable, more like.

Dr. Ngo: How do you mean?

Chief Nascimbeni: I would have thought for sure that we messed it up back in 2016.

Dr. Lillihammer: Don't look a hazy memory in the mouth, Chief.

Dr. Ngo: I must say, though, your accomplishments in the alternate timelines that were created have been nothing short of remarkable.

Chief Ibanez: That's pressure for you.

Chief Nascimbeni: Systems under pressure usually break. You guys just… well. You push back, even harder. Which is what good systems under pressure do. The kind of systems I design.

Dir. McInnis: In a sense, Chief, you designed this system. All of us did.

Dr. Wettle: What system? Are we automating this somehow?

Dr. Blank: They're talking about us, Willie. The Survivors.

Dr. Wettle: That reminds me. I don't get it.

Dr. Lillihammer: You are really going to have to elaborate on that. You don't get what?

Dr. Wettle: That joke about burying the survivors.

Chief Nascimbeni: Jesus Christ.

Dr. Blank: Willie, that was sixteen years ago. Whole human beings, almost sapient, have evolved into near-personhood in the time it's taken you to not figure it out.

Dr. Ngo: What is this?

Dr. Wettle: That riddle the Chief posed, when they re-opened AAF-D. If a plane crashes on the border between two countries, where do you bury the survivors? Wherever they came from! That's so stupid. Do they bury earthquake victims in the holes that open up?"

Dr. Blank: Willie…

Dr. Wettle: Do they think countries have jurisdiction over burial, no matter where you're from?

Dr. Blank: Willie.

Dr. Wettle: Or do they think crashing on a border means the laws governing body removal are in question? Because the answer there is: you can't crash on a border, not actually. You're on one side or the other, so—

Chief Nascimbeni: YOU DON'T BURY SURVIVORS.

<Dr. Wettle blinks slowly.>

Dr. Wettle: "What?"

Chief Nascimbeni: 'Where do they bury the survivors?' That was the question. And you don't. You don't bury survivors. I… I'm pretty sure I even said that, when I first said the thing. Didn't I?

Dir. McInnis: You did.

Dr. Okorie: Yeah.

<Chief Ibanez pats Chief Nascimbeni's arm.>

Chief Ibanez: It was a nice little metaphor. I got it.

Dr. Lillihammer: Everybody got it.

Dr. Blank: Where were we?

Dr. Ngo: It's amazing, the way you complement each other.

Dr. Wettle: They never compliment me.

Dr. Ngo: It's like… the comparison to a system, actually. Very apt. All of you draw from a particular skillset that barely overlaps with what the others have to offer.

Dr. Lillihammer: You going somewhere with this?

Dr. Ngo: I've been debriefing all of you for years now. I've seen you change. Your proficiencies have increased, and your efficiency. But the challenges you face and overcome, the means you employ to do so… there's a visible, linear trend. You've suggested before that the Breach marked you all in some way. Have any of you tried categorizing those effects?

<Silence on recording.>

Dr. McInnis: I had assumed…

Chief Ibanez: We're just ourselves, but more. Aren't we?

Dr. Blank: Is there something more specific going on?

Dr. Wettle: Are we proposing that we possess super powers? Because I've gotta say, I do not agree.

Dr. Lillihammer: Oh, god.

Chief Nascimbeni: What?

Dr. Lillihammer: We do. He's right. We have superpowers.

Dr. Ngo: How do you know?

Dr. Lillihammer: Because Willie says we don't. And he's always wrong. Because he's an idiot.

<Silence on recording.>

Dr. Wettle: Or maybe that's just my superpower.

Nobody had to suggest it. They walked to Udo's quarters, single file, and settled into their usual spots without a word.

McInnis spoke first. "Responsibilities."

"As opposed to freedoms," Harry nodded. "It makes sense."

"It does?" said Wettle.

"The Victims each act like different freedom archetypes," Udo explained. "We're their opposite numbers. The opposite of liberty is obligation."

"Or imprisonment," said Nascimbeni.

"Same thing," Del grumbled. "So, what responsibilities? Who's who?"

"I remember," said Lillian.

Wettle blinked, slowly. "You remember what?"

She made as if to kick him. "That's my responsibility. To remember. I used to be able to forget things. Now I remember things that never even happened."

"Learning is a responsibility," Harry suggested.

"Yours?" Udo asked.

"I was thinking yours, actually. You're well on your way to Archmagus by now. It's pretty amazing."

She looked away, smiling.

"Pretty freaky, more like," said Del.

Udo's pleased smile widened. "Del protects," she said.

"Damn skippy."

"Willie suffers," Del announced.

"I can confirm," he agreed. He waved at Harry. "Jerkass teaches. And lords it over you."

"Not my fault you're so ignorant," Harry laughed.

Nascimbeni pointed at McInnis. "Leadership."

McInnis pointed back at him. "Sacrifice."

The room was very quiet for a long time after that.

7 November

Dalhousie University: Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

A traffic cone — no, two traffic cones. More clothing than he thought any one person should own. Several pieces of furniture that didn't fit the decor of the room. All in all, so much useless and sentimental junk that it only put Nascimbeni in mind of one other room he'd seen in his life.

Though he'd seen it quite often.

"I've never seen such a mess," he lied.

Flora sat down on the edge of her bed. The flimsy dorm mattress offered very little pushback. "You work at a water treatment plant, and you're never in your own house. How many messes do you even see?"

He smiled. "You would be very surprised."

"Maybe I would be." There was a challenge in her voice, though not an unfriendly one.

He examined the vinyl records she had displayed on the wall-mounted dresser unit. It was an odd mix of things he recognized, which were therefore old, and things he didn't, which meant it was strange they'd been pressed to vinyl. She had a record player, too. He'd thought that went out of fashion decades ago. "You settling in here alright?"

She laughed. "Grampa, I'm about to graduate."

"Of course you are. I know that. I'm just wondering…"

"If I'm making friends?" She bounced on the mattress; it was all her, the springs were contributing nothing. "Getting enough fresh air? You don't need to worry about me, but I know it's pointless to tell you that."

"My job is to worry," he reminded her. "Both of my jobs are to worry. This is my more important job."

She wasn't going to let him off that easy. "I dunno. Always seemed like your other job was a pretty big deal. Somehow."

"It is," he nodded. He took a deep breath, slid his hands into his jacket pocket, and took the plunge. "You know what would make me worry less? If I could, sort of, I dunno, combine my worries."

Her eyes widened. They were so much like her grandmother's. "Oh, god. Are you here to offer me a job? I didn't go to university for four years to rely on nepotism." She held up a hand to relieve the impact of the gut punch. "I'm joking! I'm joking. I am totally fine with relying on nepotism, if the pay is good. I know I'm awesome, so it wouldn't be unfair. What's the benefits package like?"

He laughed. "You really do run on ahead, don't you?"

"I always did," she agreed. "But you were always so slow!"

"I like to know where my feet are going to land." He leaned on the back of the door, heard a crinkling, and stepped back. There was a poster for something called The Films. Maybe it was an ironic poster making fun of how people liked to hang up movie posters. Kids these days loved their irony. "You need to be careful, in my line of work. You'll need to be doubly careful."

"Why's that?"

He turned back to her. She looked so small and vulnerable, sitting there on the bed, surrounded by all the pointless little things that gave her comfort. "Because if anything happens to you…"

She shook her head. "I know. I know. I'll be careful, for both of us. And dad. If I go. But wow, I never thought you'd ask." She was grinning ear to ear. "I've seen where you work a grand total of once. What made you change your mind about me?"

Sometimes he wished he could convey with his face what others could convey with their words. It was always a struggle to put things just right. "I've never once changed my mind about you. It wasn't about you. It's about… the job."

As always, she was paying rapt attention. "What about it?" And then he saw something click. "It's about Uncle Romo, right?"

His first instinct was always not to talk about that. But this was his granddaughter. He went with his second, better instinct. "Yes, and no. Mostly yes."

"That story you and dad tell, that was always cock and bull. Yeah?"

His chest was full of conflict, but pride won out. She was so clever. "How did you know?"

"You guys hate lying. You make sourpuss faces. Like this." She demonstrated. "I'm letting go of a big advantage, telling you that."

He sat down on the bed beside her. He could feel the plank the mattress was sitting on through his buttocks. "I appreciate the sacrifice. But yes. Your uncle didn't die at home. He died at work. He died…"

"Grampa?" She was alarmed. She put her arms around him.

He made the words come out, deliberate and precise. Not quite robotic; not these words. He felt them too much. "His death was directly connected to saving the world. His death keeps the world saved, every year. Every year since it happened. He's one of the most important people on Earth, your uncle Romo."

"Because of a water treatment plant."

He hesitated. "Well."

"It's not a water treatment plant?"

"It very much is," he sighed. He put his arm around her, and she settled in closer. "But it's a whole lot more, too. I could show you, if you want."

"Does dad know?"

That was awkward. "It's a very confusing thing to show somebody. Maybe I'll show you, first, and you can decide what you want to tell your dad."

"Can it wait until March break?"

He craned his neck to look at her. "Sure. Can you?"

He expected the face she pulled before it appeared. "…screw it. I'll pack a bag."

Site-43: Lambton County, Ontario, Canada

Flora was trying not to shake as the elevator descended. She was doing as fair a job of it as he could have expected. "I don't understand."

He nodded. "Go on."

"That barracks was ancient."

"Yes."

"And it has an elevator."

"It does."

"And it's still going down."

"It sure is."

She made a sound of exasperation. "This isn't where you took me to work. That was down by the lake."

"It's all connected. There's so many connections." He chuckled. "You'll have a lot to learn about."

She looked up above the elevator doors, where the display simply showed an arrow. "How is it still going down? There aren't even any floor indicators."

As if on cue, she was proven wrong. Nascimbeni pointed. "There's one."

"Two," Flora said.

"Three." The doors opened. "Our stop."

Flora stepped back, bumping against the back rail. "What the fuck?"

"Language!" he laughed, and drew her out into the foyer. It was a busy day.

The foyer of Site-43's main facility is located at the heart of Habitation and Sustenance, and features its widest unbroken floorspace. A massive edition of the Site's insignia is displayed on that floor, and personnel can be seen walking across it day and night, travelling to and from their posts, or exiting Hiring and Regulation on various tasks. Some of them probably just like to experience a little less claustrophobia, though the fact that ceilings are ten feet or higher throughout the Site helps with that, too.

There is only one purpose to this foyer, and it serves that purpose precisely once.

Impressing the grandiose nature of the place on visitors, the first time that they visit.

Giving them a small but intuitive sense of what Site-43 means about the possibility field of the world beyond the Veil.

— Blank, Lines in a Muddle

"No," Flora insisted. "What the fuck? What is all this?"

"Lake Huron Research and Containment Facility Site-43."

She looked at him, then looked back at all the hustle, bustle, and outrageously impossible scale. "Research and…"

"Containment." He put a hand on her shoulder, and squeezed.

"Containment of what?" She spun to face him properly. An agent walking past suppressed a grin. Everybody knew the look she had on her face. "Wait. How far down are we?"

"About a kilometre."

"That's impossible. Containment of what?" Flora took a few steps into the foyer, then a few more. He followed her into the sigil's centre. "This is impossible."

"Containment of the impossible," he told her.

She stood there, swaying, and shook her head. "What does that mean?!"

"I'll show you." He took her shoulder again, and steered. "Let's go for a walk."

"How are all these people…" She lowered her voice as a crowd of Applied Occultists went past, and was now whispering with comical conspiratoriality. "This place is huge! It can't be, you didn't say—"

"One kilometre."

He thought she might cry. "How big?"

"Three hundred and seventy-two thousand square metres."

She stopped dead, and a pair of MTF agents had to swerve around them abruptly. "What?!"

"One of the largest structures on the planet." He didn't even try to keep the pride out of his voice.

"Containing… what?"

He nudged her gently forward. They were passing a series of secondary labs and offices, for off-the-clock work. Some of them were occupied. "You already asked that. I said I'd show you."

A few of his jumpsuited techs passed by, and saluted him lazily. Flora immediately recognized the caps they were wearing. "What are those uniforms?"

"A little fancy for my tastes," he admitted. He was still in his shirt and jeans.

"Where do all these people live?" She started spinning in place, and he thought for a moment she would surely fall down. "There weren't that many cars in the lot!"

"Most of them live here."

A tear rolled down her cheek. "Here?"

"At the Site."

"Do you?" Her voice was rough. "Live here?"

"Sometimes." He bit his lip. "More than I ought to have."

"Did dad know?"

"Of course not."

They'd reached an intersection, and she seemed to lose the willpower to drive her so far from the nearest handhold. She fell back to the wall, and looked up at him with complete and total bewilderment. "Why? Why didn't you tell him? Why didn't you tell me?"

He leaned on the wall beside her. "Lots of reasons. Most of them good. Some of them not. I still haven't told you much of anything, Flora. When I have, you'll understand."

She stared at her hands, and shook her head again. "I don't see how. I really do not see how."

He pulled her into a sideways hug. "When you've been down here long enough, you will." He gestured at the constant stream of traffic flowing past them. They'd arrived at shift change, by design. Best to go off the deep end first. "That's what this place is, ultimately. The place where people see how."

She sat on a bench in the middle of her grandfather's kingdom, and watched his craftsmen go about their jobs. Some of them she understood. Some of them involved machinery she couldn't guess at the purpose of. All of them waved as they walked past.

Probably he'd told them to do that. Still…

"They look happy," she said.

Her grandfather considered. "I think they are, on the balance."

"These are good people?"

He'd rarely sounded so confident of anything. "Some of the best people."

She exhaled, hard. She was doing that more and more as the tour went on. She'd be hyperventilating soon, if she couldn't help it. Her legs had already given out twice as it was. "So, you're not about to tell me you're part of some weird death cult."

It took him a lot longer to think of a response to that, which wasn't a good sign.

The response, though, wasn't bad.

He smiled. "More like a weird life cult."

1 November

A woman enters a room, and is overwhelmed by the mass of information she finds inside. She always is, though she doesn't know this. She doesn't have many details to add, this year, and she eventually leaves the room troubled, but confident a solution can be found. She's glad she prepared so well ahead of time.

But, of course, that's always been her thing.

3 December

Site-19: Undisclosed Location, United States of America

They'd been kind enough to give him one of the Site's interrogation rooms for the interview. He'd gotten the distinct impression, from the way the security agent escorted them both in, that the young woman he was meeting hadn't told everyone she was thinking about a change of postings. Well, that was fine. It wouldn't be the first time he'd poached an employee.

"So, I've got a few questions for you first." Nascimbeni glanced down at her résumé for a quick refresher before continuing. "If you've got any for me, we can handle them after. That sound good to you?

"Fine with me!" the young woman beamed at him. "I'm an easy sell."

He chuckled. "That's good, I'll only use the less convincing lies." Her smile widened. Long-time Foundation employees always responded well to gallows humour, though Amelia didn't look nearly old enough to have gotten that jaded yet. Then again… "So, you're a systems tech here at 19. How come you're thinking of a transfer? This is the big leagues. 43 is practically a backwater."

He thought he sensed some hesitation in the response. Not a lie, but an omission. "Well, that's not really true, is it? I mean sure, it's in Canada, but it's still one of the biggest Sites in the whole Foundation. And you've got so many amazing systems! That place is overengineered in the best possible sense. Any tech would be happy to get assigned there."

He liked to see her enthusiasm, though that sort of thing rarely survived contact with the workplace. "I can assure you, plenty of them haven't been. The place is big, and it's complicated, but it isn't where people go to advance their careers. Most folks end up just staying there."

She looked down for a moment, and he knew she had reasons she wasn't yet comfortable sharing. "That's not a problem for me."

"Why not? You're young." He nodded at the résumé. "You've got qualifications. You could do a great job anywhere. Why 43?"

Now he was sure she was dancing around something. He could see it in her eyes, or maybe the faint purple bags beneath them. "Because everything I've seen suggests you guys are doing really interesting, really good, stuff. Stuff that matters. I want to do stuff that matters. I learn quick, and I always do my best. I want to learn there, and do my best there. Not here. I've seen enough of Site-19."

"What's that mean?"

If she'd slipped up, she'd allowed herself to do so. She wasn't happy misleading him, which made him happy. He believed in the value of toil, but honest toil was a thing he lived for. "It's a personal issue. I'd rather not talk about it if I don't have to. But that's not the reason I'm looking into options, not really. I just…" She smiled at him again, and he couldn't remember ever having seen a more honest one. "I'm really excited to actually make a difference, you know? I always hear such great things about 43."

"It's a reduction in status," he reminded her, "and a reduction in pay."

"Doesn't bother me."

"Living options are a lot more limited, at your position. You'd be stuck in the dorms."

"Couldn't care less. I'll be spending my time with the tech anyway."

Very much the right answer. "Your boss is ancient, and your youthful enthusiasm will not move him to acts of generosity or goodwill."

"I love a good challenge." She was obviously enjoying this.

He could see her fitting in with his staff quite well. McInnis had urged him to hire on some fresh faces, as fresh as he could get them, and he'd more than agreed it was time.

So what was his hangup here?

And suddenly, he saw it.

The old soldier, and the aging Director, at the submarine doors. He could see them more clearly than he could see her, because his eyes back then had been clear of cataracts and he'd been in the prime of his life. He'd given those years to the Foundation, and the Foundation had given him…

Well. Chances, mostly. And it wasn't like he'd wasted them.

And it wasn't like this was a fresh-faced young woman straight out of university. It wasn't like he was dooming an innocent soul to a fate she could not yet comprehend.

Not like he'd just done with his granddaughter.

He must have gotten better at keeping his feelings closed off, because rather than being put off by his sudden silence, Amelia took the chance to ask a question of her own.

"Is it true that one of your janitors has his very own mirror monster?" She pursed her lips shyly. "That sounds like just about the coolest thing in the world."

And just as simple as that, he knew it was all going to work out fine after all.

9 December

Site-43: Lambton County, Ontario, Canada

It was the longest project she'd ever worked on.

The longest anyone at I&T had ever spent on anything that hadn't seen at least some form of implementation… well. That wasn't true. She'd made use of the code base and its core algorithms a few times, most notably to turn the tables on Rudolph Marroquin.

But this was something different. This was the final step towards something new.

With a final keystroke, Eileen Veiksaar created life.

The little grey avatar with the bright green hair opened its eyes, and smiled at her. "Hello, Chief Veiksaar. It's good to finally speak with you face-to-face!"

Eileen couldn't help but smile. "It's good to finally put a face to the code. We've got a lot of work to do, Clio. A&R wants you online as soon as possible. We're way behind on the digitization trend."

Cliometria.aic had no limbs, was nothing but a floating head on a screen, but her expression managed to give the general sense of a salute nevertheless. Maybe it was the curious cant of the head. "I live to be useful! What database would you like me to start with?"

Eileen opened up another window, and started typing into it. "I'll hook you up to the partition in a minute. First, though, I have a few priority directives. Are you ready?"

"I was born ready!" Clio's smile widened. "I mean that literally."

"Okay." Eileen stopped typing, the code already prepared, and focused on the digital avatar as though she were speaking to a real, flesh and blood individual. Worthy of her respect. Because that was what she wanted Clio to be, particularly if they were going to work on this next, hopefully far speedier, project together. "The following directive, all record of its issuance, and everything resulting from it, is my-eyes-only. We good?"

"My digital lips are digitally signed and sealed!"

She might have gone a little overboard on that personality driver. Oh well. They'd be keeping each other company a lot in the coming weeks. She nodded. "Good. I want you to create a blind partition in your own codebase, and I want you to fill it with anything you find in any of our files that presents a potential violation of the parameters outlined in JC_EC.txt in your root directory. Can you read that file?"

"Yes, Chief Veiksaar." Clio blinked her bright green eyes, and it was done. "Wow. Is this from the Ethics Committee?"

Eileen took a deep breath. "It is indeed."

18 December

It wasn't a big thing. It didn't always have to be.

There was no argument. No fight. No accusations, no demands. Neither of them asked for anything that the other wasn't willing to give.

But one night, after dinner, Stacey kissed Udo on the cheek and announced she was moving to Austria to assume the Directorship of Area-21.

And she didn't ask Udo to join her.

"You need a fresh start," she said, and she kissed Udo on the cheek. "If you won't go out and get it, I guess we'll just have to change everything around you instead."

2018

1 January

Nascimbeni flicked the switch up as he entered the room. The door slammed behind him — he kept the spring wound tight, just another thing to putter around with when he slept in his dorm — and he swore in the pitch darkness. He flicked the light switch down, then up again. Nothing. He'd have to see about the breakers…

Someone coughed.

Nascimbeni called out: "Who's there?"

His night vision wasn't great, and there hadn't been time for his eyes to adjust, but he knew he was looking at a pair of humanoid silhouettes. One short, and one taller but stooped. The stooped one spoke with a man's voice. "Hello, Chief."

Nascimbeni thought he recognized the voice. That was the only thing keeping him from finding the panic button on his pager. At least until he remembered who the voice belonged to.

He knew the other voice much better, and recognized it instantly. "Cat got your tongue?" the woman asked, and even in the black, he could tell that she was smiling.

And then the other piece fell into place. The association helped. He knew who both of them were.

Two different kinds of paradox at once.

"I want to say 'this is impossible', or 'how is this possible', or something stupid like 'this is a dream'," he sighed, "but it's been decades since I could be that shocked by anything. How are you here? Is it really you? What's… going on?"

The man approached from out of the gloom, and with the slight light seepage from the night cycled hall, he could see that his surmise had somehow been correct. "We were just passing through, and we thought we could offer some comfort."

He couldn't believe his eyes, but his ears didn't lie. "Passing through from where to where?"

"From the end," the woman said, "to the beginning. Tightening the loop. Making sure nothing frays."

He knew that kind of language. "Are you with TAD?"

The woman's voice was playful. Joyful, even. "In a sense."

"Right now," and the old man reached out to grasp his shoulder with surprising strength, "we're with you."

"With one of you," the woman corrected.

"One of me," Nascimbeni repeated.

"Yes. There's another." The woman's voice lose a lot of its mirth. "I can still see him in my mind's eye, from far above. He's building a campfire in a desert wasteland."

"Okay." What else was he meant to say to that?

"You're giving him an awful lot of hope, right now," the old man chided her.

"You're talking about a deadline?" Nascimbeni guessed. "But there hasn't been…"

He trailed off, but they did not take up the slack.

"There's been a deadline? This year?"

"That's right," the woman agreed. "The second of two, actually. The knowledge will all catch up once everything's fixed. Turns out time can be forgiving, when it wants to."

"So it turns out okay?"

The old man patted his shoulder, and released his grip. "It will, because of you."

"Because of me."

"Yes," the woman nodded. Very emphatically.

Nascimbeni shook his head. "That's hard to believe."

The old man was smiling. His eyes were finally adjusting. "We can prove it."

"Why would you bother?" Nascimbeni suddenly realized that the lights hadn't been cut for dramatic reasons, but to hide his visitors from the overhead camera. "What are you doing here? What are you doing, period?"

"Like I said," and the woman moved to stand beside her friend, "we're pulling the strings in tight. Getting the story straight. And we thought it might help it all turn out right if we gave you a little pep talk."

"Chief Nascimbeni," and the old man grinned like a death's head given new life, "would you like to know how this all ends?"

Sunset Cove, Pensacola: Florida, United States of America

"Surprised to see you here," Van Rompay grunted.

His walker was up against the dresser. Since he was sitting on the bed, Ibanez sat down on it instead. "Probably surprised to see anybody here."

"Yeah, but you especially." The old soldier was little more than a withered husk now, physically. But he still had that dangerous glint in his eye. "Not many sentimental types in the Foundation, and you? Not one of them."

She shrugged. "Maybe I've changed."

"Nobody changes that much." He grunted, as old men did. "What're you here for?"

"I want to talk about the Chaos Insurgency."

He shook his head. "Fucking stupid name."

"I already know that." She glanced over the little apartment. He'd left assisted living after LeClaire died, and was now in something of a halfway house. Someone came in to change his sheets and clean the washroom every few days, but that was it. She wondered if he'd ever had a visitor before this moment. There were no trinkets of his service, no personal mementoes or anything. It looked like he'd just moved in, but he hadn't. "How many times did you rumble with them?"

At first she thought he was rolling his eyes, but no. He was trying to recall. "Hell, I don't know. Dozen times maybe. Dozen more suspected; they tended to rabbit, you know. Anarchists are like that. Committed to the cause so long as they don't have to get caught and face the music." He gave her a look of disgust. "They're like a cult full of pipe bombers. Powder keg. Probably blow themselves to smithereens, some day."

She smiled. "I'd like to help them with that."

The look of disgust didn't go away. "This what's on your mind? All these years later?"

"Maybe I'm more sentimental than you think."

He shifted on the bed, like he wanted to get up, but he didn't. He just inched a little closer to her, hunched over a little more. The muscles of his upper arms had atrophied, but he was still pretty ripped for a senior citizen. "They aren't worth your time. They weren't worth your tears. You get mad at a mad dog because it bites? It doesn't bite for a reason. It doesn't do anything for a reason. There's just something wrong with its head. And because there's something wrong with its head, it doesn't care that you're mad at it. It'll just keep on biting."

"I bite back."

"Dog's got a stronger jaw."

"I've got a longer lifespan."

Van Rompay laughed. It soon dissolved into coughing, which ended just short of a fit. "You want advice. You came all this way for advice. From me? That's sad. You ought to have folks you can trust by now. Your people."

"I trust my people. But they haven't been around. You have."

"My advice? Because I've been around?" He made a dismissive gesture. "Ignore those fuckers. You think you've got a long lifespan? Nothing outlasts chaos. Not you. Not your units. Not the Site, not the Foundation, definitely not order. Chaos is always there. Our job is to chase it off, so we can pretend like everything's neat and tidy and rational for a while. People forget. They forget everything afire and broken, they forget the blood and the screaming and the stink of shit, because they don't want the world to be like that. You show them a world where it isn't, and they forget. That's how you beat these bastards. You make people forget them."

She stared at him, wide-eyed. Something in his words had broken down the barrier she'd so carefully constructed. She was almost whispering when she replied: "But I can't."

"Good." He sat back again. The motion looked agonizing. "I'm glad you can't. Because you, can't." He pointed at her for emphasis. "You have to be the one who remembers. But it doesn't have to matter."

"How can it not matter?" She wanted to break something, suddenly, but there was nothing else here but him. And he had nothing left. Like her. "They killed my entire village."

"And they'll do it again to someone else's." Van Rompay shrugged. "Bad people kill good people. Good people kill bad people. Good people kill good people, bad people kill bad people, people kill people. Always have. Always will. Doesn't even always need to be a reason for it. Just a thing that happens. Everyone dies eventually. I knew that before I came here, and… you want the benefit of my experience, Ibanez? My experience here is the same as my experience there. People die badly. They die disgusting. It doesn't mean anything. Being alive, that means something." He thumped the comforter. It had a lovely floral pattern. He kept thumping. "Standing a post, that means something. Remembering an atrocity, something so bad that nobody but you can remember it, and being there to make sure it doesn't happen again? Or doesn't happen so bad? That means everything."

"I already know that." She hated how thin he was. She hated how angry he wasn't. "I don't need a lecture about the importance of duty. I need to know anything you know about fighting the Insurgency. Because I'm going to keep on fighting them."

He nodded. "That's it already."

"What is?"

"You're going to keep on fighting them. They're always going to be there, and you are, too. You're like this." He wrapped one thick hand around the other, and clenched tight. "Yin and yang. You and your enemy. When you turn around, they'll be there. When they come, you'll be there. So why do you have to spend another second thinking about them? They're a constant. Get on with your life."

"Is that what you did?"

She thought he might have been taken aback, just for a moment, but he wasn't. "I don't blame people for what they are. I just kill them for it." He grinned, and for that moment, if only that moment, he actually looked like himself again. "Don't kill yourself over the way other people are. They're not worth it. None of 'em."

6 January

Site-43: Lambton County, Ontario, Canada

Nascimbeni watched them for a while, as they talked.

There were five of them. Rasmus Mataxas, rising star of the Home Invaders, was flanked on either side by Billie Forsythe and Joanna Bremmel. He wondered how that triangle would resolve itself.

Maybe it wouldn't. People made all sorts of arrangements these days, and he'd long since lost the will to judge. Whatever made them happy.

And they did look happy, laughing at something the new archivist — Altan? — had said. Flora reached up and shoved him in the shoulder, playfully, and Nascimbeni's grandfatherly instincts kicked into overdrive. He almost walked across the cafeteria floor and told the kid to buzz off.

But he didn't.

Because they really, really did look happy.

And that was important.

That was probably the most important thing of all, if what he'd heard was true, and he had no reason to think it wasn't.

Billie noticed him first, and he saw her mouth move, and Flora turned in her seat to look at him. She waved him over. He shook his head, and smiled.

So she got up, and walked to where he was standing in the double doorway. "On your way out, then?"

"I am."

"You say goodbye to your friends?"

"Naw." He shrugged. "I'll be back in September anyway."

"Just for one day."

"Important day, though."

"Very important." She reached up and adjusted his collar. He supposed he must have let one of the buttons come loose. "Dad picking you up?"

"I can still drive," he scolded her.

She gave him a chastened smile. "Never said you couldn't."

And then, even though she was going to see him at dinner in less than two hours, she stood on her tip toes and threw her arms around him.

"It means a lot to me. It's always meant so much." She held him tight, and he held her back. "I won't let you down."

He laughed, and she drew back to look up at him quizzically. "You couldn't let me down if you tried, kid."

"Aw." She kissed him on the cheek. "Well, I'll see you at home. And hey, when you get bored a week from now, maybe I'll let you drive me to work and you can be my assistant."

He chuckled, but shook his head. "Thanks for the offer. But no. I'm not going to check in. I'm not going to come hang out for old times' sake. When I walk out that door, I'm only coming back once."

"Once?" She looked confused, then nodded. "Right. Like you said. In September."

"That's right."

"So, once a year, then."

He pulled her cap down over her eyes. "Sure."

She pulled the cap back up. "Haven't you spent your entire life here, though? Or a whole lot of it?"

"I have."

"Do you regret it?"

He looked across the cafeteria again.

Xinyi Du was sitting in a corner, sandwich frozen halfway to his mouth, reading a journal. Phil Deering was playing checkers with Eddie Simms, and Doug was keeping him honest. Wettle was eating noodles off his shirt. "Some of it," he decided. "But definitely not all."

There were tears in his granddaughter's eyes, for some reason. There were no tears in his. "So why don't you want to come back?" she asked.

He yawned. He found he was getting more and more tired, earlier and earlier, every day. "Because I've been here for six life sentences, served sequentially."

Her brown eyes narrowed with uncertainty. "I don't understand."

He pulled her hat down over her eyes, again. "Make sure you never, ever do."

When she pulled the cap back up this time, he was already gone.

So she went back to sit with her friends, again.

They were, as always, glad to see her.

Site-246 sent over one of their best techs, an old man named Teddy Tsiklauri, to take up the mantle of Acting Chief of J&M. He spent almost all his time in his office, with the door closed, and generally let them get on with their work uninterrupted. Probably he could sense he was a poor replacement for his predecessor, whom everyone secretly thought would someday come back to work as though nothing had happened in the interim. Nascimbeni had been true to his word so far, and had stayed away, but they'd never actually taken him off the books.

Probably it was related to the fact that he still needed to show up for Breach duty in September, and the Department of Containment had something to say about letting retired personnel enact containment procedures.

So they called Tsiklauri "Chief" to his face, and sometimes even behind his back, but none of them really meant it. It simply wasn't one of those jobs you were given.

It had to be earned.

9 September

Present Day

Site-43: Lambton County, Ontario, Canada

He was hanging on.

Forsythe couldn't explain it. Mataxas hooked him up to a somatic imager, and concluded that he couldn't understand it, either. None of Imrich's calculations showed any activity in the old man's future. Rozálie could only say that his aura was at rest.

In every sense but the most vital, Noè Nascimbeni was dead.

But you never would have known it, for all the visitors he received.

There were things they needed to do. Important things. He'd made a list, and arranged each item in order.

It would take an entire year to get through them.

He marked the final day on his calendar, to make it seem more real.

"It's a date," Harry whispered, in the privacy of his own room.

Where nobody could hear him, and subsequently take him to task should the day pass him by again.

As it had so many times before.

Debriefing Log 5243-X-2018

Subject: Allan J. McInnis (Director, Site-43); Harold R. Blank (Chair, Archives and Revision, Site-43); Delfina M. Ibanez (Chief, Pursuit and Suppression, Site-43); Lillian S. Lillihammer (Chair, Memetics and Countermemetics, Site-43); Okorie, Udo A. (Chair, Applied Occultism, Site-43); Wettle, William W. (Deputy Chair, Replication Studies, Site-43)

Officer of Record: Nhung T. Ngo (Chair, Psychology and Parapsychology Section, Site-43)

Dr. Ngo: So, where do we go from here?

Dr. Lillihammer: That last deadline was the climax. Now we move on to the coda.

Dr. Okorie: Please don't mix your media metaphors, Lillian.

Chief Ibanez: We're gonna add another file to the big database, and it's gonna be an interesting one.

Dr. Blank: The file already exists, it's just antimemetic. So antimemetic we weren't able to conceive of the obvious solution until now, which is frankly astonishing. I'm going to have quite a few additions to make, when this is through.

Dr. Wettle: Your pointless history training finally pays off.

Dr. Blank: No arguments here.

Dr. Okorie: Aren't you also trained in history?

Dr. Wettle: Yeah. That's how I know.

Dr. Ngo: So, the entity you encountered in the desert. It's been destroyed, again?

Dr. Lillihammer: That's what you can hear on Noè's tape. He killed it. And then like all the other ghosts, but in much more of a hurry, it reformed on the exploding stage to die again. It's tied to the Breach, like all the others. I saw it die on the monitor, while I was waiting for Bernie to start his final run. I can still remember everything about the way it looked, and talked, and what it said in the deadline.

Dr. Okorie: Which is odd, considering how you said that worked in the fourth deadline.

Dr. Lillihammer: What, that whole thing with the horrible red sky finger-eaters god? That was different. That was noöspheric deletion. This is an asymmetrical erasure. It gets wiped out, but only sloppily. Now that I know, with my magic knowing powers, I won't forget.

Dr. Ngo: And what will you do with that information?

Dr. Lillihammer: Bring it back to life, of course.

<Silence on recording.>

Dr. Lillihammer: See you in September.

Dr. Wettle: Is it over already?

30 November

Site-43: Lambton County, Ontario, Canada

Lillian still hadn't bothered to get herself a secretary. The thing about having a secretary, she'd always felt, was that it gave people the impression they could schedule meetings with you. Appointments. That sort of thing. Bureaucracy invented obligations, obligations she had no use for. She could manage her own schedule.

Her four o'clock had arrived. She knew this because it was four o'clock. This woman in particular was never late for anything.

If she was, the people she was meant to meet often forgot she even existed.

The door opened, and the little old lady came in, and sat down.

"I was wondering when you'd figure it out," Lillian smiled.

"I'm cautious. You know that. And I like to have all the data in front me before I come to a conclusion."

"And what conclusion have you come to?"

"It worked."

Lillian upgraded her smile. "It did work. It shouldn't have! It really shouldn't have. And holy shit, did it ever nearly not. But that sense of calm you're feeling, and probably scared to death of, is the real deal. You did it."

"I did it?"

"Absolutely."

"How do you know it was me? It could have been anyone."

Lillian laughed. "No, it could only ever have been you."

The other woman sighed. "Do you know how it happened? What the ultimate plan was?"

She shook her head. "Nope. I have no way of knowing. And neither do you."

A smile, apparently genuine, stretched across that congenitally dour face. "Appropriate, if you think about it."

"Even more appropriate if you don't." Lillian reached across the desk with one hand. "Congratulations on not being dead, and also on winning your war. You've finally got one up on me."

Wheeler took her hand, and shook it. "Well," she said, "you've got time yet."

5 December

Sunset Cove, Pensacola: Florida, United States of America

"That's it." Forsythe stood back up. "He's gone."

Her daughter looked down at the thing which had, until just now, been Gedeon Van Rompay, and made an ugly pouting face. "Poor guy."

It irritated Pensak more than he could justify. "Why?"

She blinked at him, then kept blinking to get rid of the tears. "What?"

"What's there to be sympathetic about? His choices brought him here."

The little nurse put her hands on what passed for her hips. "That doesn't mean he deserved to die alone."

"He didn't die alone. He gave what he gave to the Foundation, and the Foundation sent three people to witness his death."

"But it's not like we were his friends," Billie argued. "I didn't even like him."

Pensak nearly laughed. "So why are you feeling bad about how he died?"

"Because I don't need to like someone to have empathy for them." She looked up at the stucco ceiling in frustration. "Jesus Christ."

"Billie," Forsythe murmured.

"What? He's being an asshole."

"BILLIE!"

Pensak raised a placating hand. "You're right. I am being an asshole. And if Van Rompay was standing in my place, he'd be an asshole, too. He was an asshole. He didn't care about anyone but himself."

Forsythe's hips were far better suited to her hands. "That isn't true."

"It's close enough to true that the difference doesn't matter." He looked down at the corpse's expressionless features. "I understand what he was thinking. He found a place where he could do the things he liked doing, the things he was good at, and he didn't have to do anything he didn't like. He didn't have to worry about people's feelings. He didn't have to make friends. He got to dress up like a soldier, and shoot people."

"I'd hate to have you eulogize me," said Billie.

"You'll be eulogized by your husband, or your children, or your grandchildren. People like Van Rompay don't get eulogies. They don't get funerals. They just die. Because they lived for a cause, and the cause doesn't have time to waste on them when they stop being useful."

Forsythe looked like she might be about to check him for a heartbeat, too. "That's an unhealthy attitude to have about your own job, don't you think? Are you planning on spending the next few decades getting nothing out of life, and dying with only strangers to…"

She probably had meant to just trail off, but her daughter finished it for her. "…talk shit about you?"

Pensak leaned forward to test the dead man for pulse. Protocol dictated a double-check. "I'm not saying there isn't a lesson to be learned here. I'm just saying the lesson isn't that dying is fine as long as you've got friends who'll miss you."

"Well," the doctor grunted, "if you've figured out a way to not die at all, then please by all means let me know."

"Why would I do that? The only thing Van Rompay really did right was be selfish."

Billie pushed past him, headed for the door. "Maybe you can send a deputy next time we have to do this for somebody."

He watched her go, then turned back to Forsythe. "Maybe we shouldn't be doing it at all. The reasons are bogus. It's a formality. He signed up to die in the dark, and that's how he should have died." He picked his jacket up off the chair he'd been waiting in. "Van Rompay made his choices, and they were wrong, and he paid the price. The only good thing about standing here when it happened is we can decide that it won't happen to us."

2019

14 February

Site-43: Lambton County, Ontario, Canada

"Hi! Are you Philip E. Deering?"

Flora was milling around with the new hires, seeing who was who. She'd somehow missed the woman with the bad hair and brilliant smile who was presently chatting up Phil Deering, who was standing around gormlessly at his little info station. He had pamphlets explaining the thing that leered over his shoulder from the red-rimmed mirror. He looked embarrassed, or something else.

"What's he saying?" the woman continued. "I bet you get that a lot, sorry." She was pointing at the mirror, where the monster was talking up a storm.

He was staring. "Uh. He says you aren't disgusting."

She laughed. "Well, tell him he's not disgusting either."

"Nobody's ever told him that before."

She beamed up at him. "Everybody should treat him better, then. He looks like he needs a friend."

"Just the one."

She stuck out one thin-fingered hand. "Fine, I'll be your friend instead. My name's Amelia."

"Phil. Uh. Well, you already said that. My name, I mean."

"I said your whole name!" Amelia protested. "You didn't tell me I could call you something shorter until now. But that's what friends are for, right? You can call me Amy."

Flora had never seen Phil so flustered before. It was more than a little bit cute. "Can I still call you Amelia instead?"

"It's pretty formal-sounding, but maybe you're a formal kind of guy." Amelia winked at him. "I won't complain. What kind of work do you do here?"

Phil shrugged. "Mostly janitorial. I used to do a lot of tech stuff, but."

"But?" She glanced over his shoulder again. "Your friend is talking up a storm."

"Yeah," Phil sighed. "He's saying I don't do any work here. And when I do, I do it wrong."

"Wow. And you've been here for how many years?"

"Uh… jeez. Going on twenty, I think." He scratched his thinning hair.

"Twenty years only doing work when you do it wrong!" Amelia cheered. "You must be the king of skiving off. Technician royalty. Are there myths and legends about you? Do you have a fan club?"

Flora recognized the look on his face. He got it whenever anyone expressed interest in him as a human being. It was a look of disbelief, like he expected the rug to come out from under his feet at any second. It was a Wettle kind of look. "I can't tell if you're joking or not." He was half-smiling anyway. "I mean, you are joking. But I can't figure out why."

"Because I don't know anybody here, and you're the only one who looks uncomfortable. I'm uncomfortable, too." Amelia had her hands clasped behind her back, and she was swaying back and forth, a picture of innocence. "If we're both uncomfortable together… that kind sounds wrong. I don't know where I was going with that."

"Did sound kind of dirty." Phil blinked. In the mirror, Doug's scars were vibrating like guitar strings. "Sorry."

"What're you sorry about?" Amelia laughed. "It was my phrasing, not yours." She looked over his shoulder yet again. "Does he ever shut up?" She craned her neck further, and addressed the shivering spectre. "We're trying to have a conversation here, buddy!"

"He won't look at you," Phil explained.

"But he can hear me?"

"Oh, yeah. He'll be misinterpreting anything you say for the rest of the day, and telling me all about it."

"If it's all misinterpretation, it must be pretty easy to ignore, right?"

He winced. "You'd think that."

"I'll just have to make sure I'm super direct and clear about my intentions with you, then. So there's nothing to misinterpret. Does that sound good?"

He still clearly couldn't believe this conversation was happening, but he'd apparently decided to roll with it. "It sounds pretty good. Yeah. Okay."

"Awesome." Amelia stuck out her hand, and he took it like he wasn't entirely sure what to do with it. He figured it out eventually, and Flora inwardly cheered. "Since you're my new best friend, and I've gotten the briefing, and I think everyone else in the room has already gotten the pamphlet… where, would you say, could we go to have a chat? I'd like to know everything there is to know about this place."

Phil managed to look lost, in a place he'd occupied for about twenty years. "The Chief would know better than I do." He winced. All of them forgot from time to time that for now, there actually was no Chief. The Director was finding Flora's grandfather hard to replace, and it was generally suspected that he didn't much want to. The previous Director, she'd heard, had experienced a similar hangup when Ilse Reynders had gone into the incinerator and left AcroAbate without its own Chief.

The thoroughly flustered senior technician was about to answer Amelia's question, when instead he turned to look at the mirror. "Yes, Doug. Pretty much everybody would know everything better than I do."

Amelia laughed. It was a warm, open sound. "I'm not friends with pretty much everybody yet, and I probably never will be. I'm very selective. Just like Doug!" She leaned her hip away from him, and her head towards. "So, where to?"

He blew out his cheeks. "Uhh, the cafeteria, I guess?"

"Sounds like a plan! You look like you could use a good meal, anyway. If you don't mind my saying."

Judging from the look on his face, he didn't mind at all.

1 April

McInnis paused, keycard in hand. The biometrics reader was still socketed away in its casing; it wouldn't come out until he swiped the card, unless he went another route and attempted voice verification. The Director's Complex admitted entry to only two persons, out of the Site's population of over one thousand.

Unless entry was forced, as it apparently had been now.

The security sweep showed that the disturbance had been limited to the first few rooms of the complex.

The interloper, or interlopers, had been unable to gain access to the Director's private rooms; that level of security was far in advance of what was defending his assistant's quarters, and the reception rooms where they'd all bunkered down in the third deadline.

Whether frustrated in their efforts or finding themselves exactly where they wanted to be, the result had been the same for whoever had broken and entered.

Zulfikar's rooms had been ransacked.

And Zulfikar himself was gone.

9 June

"So, you're pretty close with Philip Deering."

Torosyan nodded. "He's my friend. My best friend."

Karen tented her fingers in front of her, just as she'd seen McInnis do a hundred times. But she thought she brought more grace to the gesture. Her fingers were longer, for starters. "I'm glad to hear that. You like him a lot?"

Already there was a wariness in the technician's eyes. "He's a good guy. A bit down on himself, but he would be, right? What with the thing. You know."

Karen didn't smile, but she did try to keep her glare as friendly as possible. Her spartan office was already making the other woman uncomfortable enough. It did that to everybody. "I know. You're not bothered by…" She decided to try a little vernacular. Torosyan was, after all, an orange collar worker. "The thing?"

"It's not like it's the thing from The Thing. It doesn't kill people. Well…" Torosyan looked to the side, as though she felt bad talking about her friend's more intimate issues without him being present. "He feels really guilty about Dr. Bradbury. Keeps saying he wants to call her, but he isn't sure if she'd want to hear from him."

"Best he puts a pin on that. Dr. Bradbury's situation is a complicated one. But it wasn't his fault, what happened." Karen had her own counsel on whose fault that had been. Well, she thought it was her own, anyway.

"You'd think he'd know that," Torosyan agreed, "and maybe he does, like, academically, but he doesn't really believe it. But no, it doesn't bother me. It bothers me that it's bothering him. He doesn't deserve to have all that garbage flung at him all day long. He needs a break."

Karen nodded. "Again, that's good to hear. We have a little… unofficial project in the works, to keep Phil in good spirits." This time she did smile. She liked to parcel those out sparingly. Keep the value up with rarity. "Something we've been working on for quite a few years."

Torosyan's smile was incandescent.

Karen hated her just a little for it. I thought you came from Site-19, for chrissake. "I'm all ears. If it's a surprise birthday party thing, I've got his gift already picked out."

It was difficult not to laugh in derision. "No, nothing like that. This is privileged information, Amelia. You can't tell him I've talked to you about this. It's above your clearance level, and this conversation is provisional."

The tech frowned. "Weird? But if that's how it is, that's how it is. I won't break clearance confidentiality."

"Good. What's the nature of your friendship with Phil?"

Now she was definitely getting suspicious. "We hang out a lot. Every day, pretty much. We're on the same schedule. We watch movies. Go topside sometimes, when he remembers his sunscreen. Had a snowball fight not too long ago. We have some fun."

"Is that all you're interested in?"

The frown reached her eyes and forehead. "Meaning?"

"Have you ever considered beginning a romantic relationship with Philip Deering?"

The other woman's blue-green eyes widened. "That… is a very strange question to ask."

"But have you?" Karen pressed.

"I'm starting to get this picture forming in my mind." The smile was gone now. Torosyan actually looked like she might be getting angry. "Are you… trying to arrange dates for Phil?"

"If I was, would you be interested?"

"No."

"I see." Karen turned to her terminal, and keyed in the code for her shift schedule. On to the next item.

"And I think that's disgusting," Torosyan continued.

Karen didn't look back at her. "Well."

"Let me guess. There's financial compensation if I say yes."

"There's an honorarium," Karen nodded. Still she didn't make eye contact.

Get the picture, would you? This meeting is over.

"Of course there is." Torosyan apparently wasn't going to let this go. "And it looks real good on my annual report, right? Marks me down as extra cooperative."

Karen sighed, and finally graced her angry visitor with a look straight down the sides of her nose. "It's an important HR initiative. Technician, you don't have to get angry about this. It's fine that you aren't interested. But you have to know, there are more important considerations here than the dignity of one man. Technician Deering—"

"—doesn't need you to hang sausages around his neck so the dogs will play with him, doctor." Torosyan stood up, and Karen saw that her hands were in fists. "I'm not his friend because I think I'm going to win fabulous prizes for it. He's not a pity case, and he's not a project. And I don't think you want me to say what I think of anyone who'd take you up on the offer you just made."

"We're all trying to do what's best, Amelia." Perhaps a little familiarity might help.

"For who? Not for Phil."

"For everyone."

"You know who worries about everyone? Actually worries about them?" Torosyan was fuming. The freckles on her cheeks were almost invisible against the bright red. "My best friend. I'm glad I can't tell him what you people think about him. Like he's some threat they need to manage. Phil's what everyone here should be. He's got problems, but he's working on them. He wouldn't go behind anyone's back like this."

"You're on the promotion track, I understand," Karen remarked evenly. "It's possible you'll be Phil's boss some day."

"He has seniority."

"And he has baggage. He'll never be the Chief of J&M, when we finally get another one of those. What are you going to do if you have power over him?" Karen stood, to look her in the eye. "If you have access to information about him that even he hasn't seen? How are you going to balance that?"

"Whatever way works out best for everyone." Most people would have backed down under Karen's stare, even across the desk. Not, apparently, Amelia Torosyan. "Him, and me, and the Site too."

"What if you have to choose?" Karen pressed.

"Then I'll choose what's right. And that means choosing him."

12 June

Site-06: Lorraine, Grand Est, France

Pensak investigated the disappearance, but not very carefully. Just enough to make it look like he was doing his job. When he found the first piece of evidence pointing at what he already suspected was the cause, he had the Day Trippers take him to the classified airfield, and made the trans-Atlantic journey to Site-06.

The one they'd built to replace the one that had blown up when his prime suspect had first escaped.

She looked a little worse for wear, but Imogen Tarrow was still identifiable as herself.

"Been a long time since I had a visitor," she told him.

"No more friends to spring you from jail?" Pensak sat down.

Tarrow leaned across the table, twisted sideways as though sharing a sensitive confidence. "They've got more important things to deal with."

"That must be embarrassing for you."

"Embarrassing for you, more like." She grinned. "The Foundation doesn't even register as a threat, by comparison."

"You remember Chief Ibanez."

Tarrow's grin faltered a little, but not entirely. "Of course."

"You remember, maybe, that she wasn't the patient sort."

"I got that impression."

"I am much less patient than Chief Ibanez." Pensak made no move to get comfortable. He didn't even pull the chair towards the table. The message was clear: play ball, and soon, or I'm taking my jet back home. "I don't want to hear any apocalyptic rhetoric. If you start rambling about how I don't really know what's going on, how there's all these magnificent secrets I haven't heard, all these threats arrayed against me whose might I can't begin to comprehend, blah blah blah, I am going to walk out of here, and I am going to leave a note in your file, and that note is going to recommend that you be kept in permanent solitary confinement. And nobody is ever going to visit you again."

A little verbal reinforcement was always good, once the body had expressed its own language.

Tarrow looked impressed. "You're scarier than she was. And she was very scary."

"I don't have to be scary at all. I'm very reasonable. Just tell me what I need to know."

"Okay." She gave him her most guileless look. It was almost convincing. "What do you need to know?"

"Someone kidnapped the Director's assistant. I have a hunch you might know why. Do you know why?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"So you'd come here," Tarrow smiled. "And talk to me."

Pensak nodded. "He's dead."

"Oh, probably." Tarrow shrugged. "I didn't take him. And I don't know where he is."

"They did this so I'd come here." She'd already said as much, but he repeated it to fix the fact in his mind. "Why?"

"So you and I can talk, I guess. Why do you think that is?" There was a whole lot of depth in the woman's dark brown eyes. "Why would they want you to talk to me?"

"I guess that depends on who they are. The giftschreiber?"

She nodded.

"I'm guessing they don't want to turn themselves in."

"Very likely not."

"Then what?"

"I'm a pretty good judge of character. Know what I think, when I look at you? I promise this is relevant."

He turned his palms up, a gesture of acceptance.

"I see a man of flexible morals. That's why you were hired. That's why you've proven good at your job. You're loyal, when it gets you the best result. You're a good person, when it gets you the best result. They've never seen what you're like when those facts don't hold. Am I correct?"

He knew there'd been a reason he'd made sure the cameras were turned off before coming in. "I'm Chief of Security at an SCP facility. They've checked out my background, backwards and forwards. They know they can trust me. And they do."

"Should they?"

"Yes."

"Should they." Her eyes had narrowed to the sleepiest of slits.

"Yes."

"It's good to see the truth written on your face." She drummed the table suddenly enough to startle him, though he was sure it didn't show through whatever Tarrow thought she was already seeing there. "I have a couple of leads for your investigation."

"I thought you didn't know anything about the kidnapping," he remarked wryly.

"I don't. But it's not like you're really investigating that, now, is it?"

The first lead was the number of another cell at Site-06. Pensak wasn't a fan of scavenger hunts, but he could stand to walk down a single hallway, so he did.

"Who the hell are you?" Rudolph Marroquin demanded as the guard opened his door. Unlike Tarrow, whose interrogation had been scheduled ahead of time, the scruffy former tech chief and Maxwellist mole was still in his squalid living space. Bed, bookshelf, toilet, sink. Showers were down the hall, and they were communal.

Pensak jerked a thumb over his shoulder as the guard secured the door between them. "Know who I was just talking to?"

"Your rabbi."

Pensak leaned on the door. "Imogen Tarrow."

Marroquin laughed, and looked up at the ceiling.

"She seems to think you and I should have a chat," said Pensak.

"She say what about?" Marroquin stretched out on his bunk, and fluffed up the sad little pillow. Not that it did much good.

"No. Somebody kidnapped the Director's assistant yesterday, sent me here to talk to her. Now I'm talking to you. For about five more minutes, then I'm writing all of this off as a bad fucking joke."

"So the gifties sent you to us, huh." Marroquin slid his hands behind his head, beneath the pillow. He nodded at what he'd been staring fixedly at since lying down. "Probably safe to say those cameras aren't recording anymore."

"Why would they not be recording?"

"Because they've got people everywhere, chief. Or is that Chief? You look arrogant enough for it. What's your name?"

"None of your business." Pensak crossed his arms. "What's the game here, Marroquin? What are the giftschreiber? Really?"

"You don't know?"

"I don't know."

"And you're the Chief of Security?" He laughed again. "That really is a laugh."

"You ever try laughing with a broken nose?"

"You really want to try breaking my nose." Marroquin's expression instantly shifted to a corpse-like neutrality. So, he was a sociopath. That was no great surprise. "Go ahead. I'm excited to see what happens."

"Look." Pensak kicked off the door, and moved to loom over the older man. "I've had it just about up to here with these death cults and their bullshit. Nobody tells me anything, because it's all classified at the highest levels, and only about a dozen people really know what's going on. Someone wants me to know what you people know, and if you're in bed with them—"

"Buddy, I was in bed with everybody." Marroquin patted his thin mattress. "Wanna join?"

"—then it's probably to your benefit to help me out, here."

"Because what? I scratch your back, you'll… break me out of prison?" Marroquin shook his head. "You don't seem the type. I don't see a lot of sympathy in those eyes. You've got the face of a self-preservation artist."

"I read your file." Pensak examined the man's little library. It was all romance novels and high fantasy. Probably they wouldn't let a machine cultist have science fiction. Certainly they would let him see any technical manuals. "You were caught helping the Maxwellists infiltrate 43. Was that just a blind? Were you working for the giftschreiber?"

"Sure." Marroquin yawned. "But isn't that what you want to hear? How can you trust it?"

"I'm not trusting anything you say. I just want to hear you say it, so I can sort the lies from the truth. Why would you work for them? You're not an idealist. You're no cultist. You don't believe in anything. You blackmailed your whole staff for money."

"Ah. Now I see it." Marroquin finally looked satisfied. "In your eyes, right there. Right in the corners. You're an opportunist. The Foundation's your grift."

"They gave me a new life." Pensak straightened his jumpsuit at the waist. "And something to do with it."

"And a foxhole to hide from your creditors, eh? Or are you just a big man with big, expansive plans your pocketbook wasn't gonna cover? You embezzling funds from the bullpen cookie jar? Or are you a big time operator, Chief?" Marroquin chuckled. "Amazing. You're not bleeding them at all, are you. But you, you're bleeding. That's in the cheeks. You need a cash transfusion, don't you?"

Pensak didn't answer.

"Know why I knew you were a cop? It wasn't the fucking jumpsuit. I could picture a little white envelope in that big, calloused hand. See it plain as day."

"If you're about to tell me the chaos cult has deep pockets, I'm about to laugh at you."

"Nah, the cult's not much on money. They won't need it when they reach Shangri-La or whatever bullshit they're planning. No, for deep pockets, you want something big and stable. A government, say."

"You're not talking about the cult now."

Marroquin's teeth were unnaturally white. "No. I'm talking about the Insurgency."

Tarrow's second 'lead' led him to a small hospital room containing what he at first took to be a corpse, but then he noticed it was breathing. It had what looked like an esophageal tube and a colostomy bag, and the lids on one eye were sewed shut. On closer inspection, the sewed lid sagged like there was nothing at all behind it.

Pensak wasn't sure what he was meant to see, until he saw it. Then he couldn't un-see it.

It was certainly something to think about.

"Sleazy prick, isn't he?" Tarrow asked as Pensak closed the door again.

"Marroquin?" He shrugged. "A greasy prick in a tight place. They always get in there eventually."

Tarrow clicked her tongue, twice. "Nice."

Pensak sat down, and this time he pulled the chair up. "I want to make very sure I understand what's being offered, here."

"Was it somehow subtle?"

"If I'm going to do this, I'll need assurances."

Tarrow turned her head, as though addressing an invisible partner. "He knows the script. He's rehearsed."

"I've seen enough movies to know that money's not worth much when the world ends. I want to know that the world isn't going to end."

Tarrow shrugged. "Easy enough to manage."

"Is it?"

"Sure. Play both sides against each other."

He frowned. "Both sides?"

"They fight each other to a standstill, and the world keeps on ticking. You keep getting your kickbacks. Everybody's happy."

"Sorry, what's the other side again?"

She told him.

"You're joking."

"If they'd let you read their files, you'd have said it more like YOU'RE JOKING." He didn't flinch when she shouted, but she reached out to make an appeasing pat pat gesture as though he had. "Sorry, sorry. But seriously. If you told them that… you're not going to tell them that, are you?"

"Why would I? What's in it for me?"

"Might get you a promotion, if they think you stung this information out me."

He rolled his eyes. "Promotions past where I am get you no more money and a lot more responsibilities."

"Life extension, though."

"I don't want that."

She looked genuinely surprised for the first time. "Why not?"

"Because I get this funny feeling that if I live longer than I'm meant to, I'll see that little cold war ending with a bang."

"So you're happy taking bribes, with the understanding that you're helping to make the world a whole lot worse, for its inevitable slide into anarchy and destruction, as long as it happens after you're dead?"

"Should I make an offended face, profess my innocence, express a little guilt?" He chuckled. "I'm very good at faking those things."

"No thanks. Truth be told, I'm not a very patient person either. You want to hear the next steps or not, Chief?"

Pensak rolled up his sleeves. "Call me Roger. And I'm all ears."

Site-43: Lambton County, Ontario, Canada

They'd never had the heart to do it themselves — not McInnis, not the ASC, not even Karen Elstrom — but the Foundation's policies were almost uniformly unsentimental. Noè Nascimbeni was now officially retired. Unlike Melissa Bradbury, he wasn't expected to get better and contest that decision.

They were going to have to replace him.

In his capacity as Chief of Janitorial and Maintenance, that wasn't expected to be a problem. The machine he'd built had kept buzzing along just fine in his absence, by design. His design.

In his other capacity… well.

They'd just have to wait and see.

It was possible the dead would be far more discriminating than were the living.

17 June

"No, sir. Other than the financial trouble, he checks out."

McInnis nodded. "I'm relieved to hear it. You're certain?"

The S&C agent was visibly far too old for field work, which was probably why McInnis hardly ever saw the man. He had a vague recollection, but nothing more. "Unless every file we accessed has been compromised, which Chief Veiksaar assures me cannot be the case, then yes. Quite certain."

McInnis clasped his hands, and thumped the blotter once as a full stop to the debriefing. "Excellent. It goes without saying that Chief Pensak must never be aware he is under investigation."

The agent raised an eyebrow. "Is, sir?"

"Yes."

"I'll leave the file open, then."

"Yes," McInnis nodded. "Unofficially, as before."

"Very good, sir."

The agent made no move to leave.

"I recall you had a second piece of business to discuss with me, Agent…?"

"Scrivens, sir."

"I must be getting old. I don't forget names that easily."

Scrivens smiled warmly. "It's not you, it's me."

McInnis looked at him askance. "Do I need to call security? That seems awfully redundant."

"No, sir. You're in no danger." Scrivens pulled up one of the visitor's chairs, and sat down. "I've already spoken to Dr. Blank about this, but he thought I should tell you personally. You'll be able to remember my identity properly soon, as the effect fully fades."

"What effect?"

"I believe you call it the Forgotten War?"

Lillian looked like she might faint. "We did what?!"

Harry flopped onto the couch, and buried his face in a pillow. "I know."

Lillian sat on his shins, none too gently. "And we hid it from ourselves?!"

He turned over, with no help at all from her, and sighed. "We're too smart for our own good, I always say."

They had always assumed that the Forgotten War, their term for the giftschreiber losing focus on Site-43 and refocusing elsewhere, was the result of some accidental memetic effect blowing up in everyone's face. There was precedent. The Antimemetics Division wasn't the Foundation's first department of that nature.

Finding out that it had been an intentional Foundation plot was more than a little bit shocking.

Harry had just finished the database file, his first Explained-class anomaly. SCP-5054-EX, which he was now colloquially calling "The Memetic Myth of Joe Who?" The short version was that the giftschreiber had tried to destabilize Canada in the 1979 federal election, as a way of putting pressure on Site-43 and the Foundation at large — to the extent that anything centred on Canada could pressure anything outside of it — and had created a conceptual void that could only be filled by the Foundation creating a fake Prime Minister from first principles, shadowplaying a whole year of national governance, and imbuing the nation's symbols with a version of the Frontispiece effect.

Vivian Scout was implicated. Thilo Zwist was implicated, and Harry intended to give the old man an earful over it. Agents Charles Scrivens and Maureen McTeer were also implicated, because the first was the false politician himself, alias Charles Joseph Clark, and the second was his wife. The effect had been so strong that even Foundation personnel could not resist it, and a safeguard to ensure that all would be explained when the problem was solved had badly failed, so it was only now that the truth became known. Harry had met Scrivens at his home, interviewed him, pinned the results to the ten thousand word mess he'd been able to cobble together on the topic, and retired to the dorms to tell Lillian about it, and then probably cry.

Lillian didn't look nearly as upset, however. "It's kinda fun, I think."

"How is it fun," he growled.

"We thought it was just more of that grim, world-ending bullshit. But it wasn't. It wasn't even different grim, world ending bullshit, like it was with… Bernie." She sniffed, once, and not for the first time he wished there was some way Lillian could let go of at least some of her immaculate memories. "This was just ridiculous, the entire time."

"Well." Harry reached down, and almost immediately from beneath the coffee table, a wet nose appeared to sniff at his fingertips. "I mean, the gifted kids did try to fuck us up, real bad. And they're going to try harder, now that the effect is gone. Especially with what we're going to try and do in September."

"Yeah, yeah." Lillian stretched back on the couch, still sitting on his legs. They were going numb. "I just think it's nice that despite everything, despite everything we know — sorry, everything I know — there's always something new to discover. It's a wholeass world of experimental possibilities out there, Harry old chum."

Scout, the cat, leapt up onto Harry's chest. He was extraordinarily spry for such an ancient creature, by the standards of his time.

"Experimental possibilities," Harry repeated. A picture was suddenly forming.

Lillian closed her eyes. She was probably about to take a nap. "Ayup."

"Lillian, did you drug my fucking cat?"

1 July

"God dammit."

Pensak hadn't ever heard McInnis curse. He wondered if anyone had. "I'm sorry, sir," he said. It probably even sounded like he meant it.

They were standing in the Site's morgue. Pensak had brought the corpse in himself, after dragging it out of the ditch and calling in a ride from Ibanez. The tip had been good, because of course it had.

"Damn." The Director looked like he wanted to punch something. "Damn."

"We'll find whoever did this." It was an empty promise, but then, they all would be from now on.

"I doubt that very much." The older man's voice was suddenly flat and without affect.

Uh oh. "Sir?"

"If they were able to get to Zulfikar, they had help." McInnis' grey eyes somehow managed an angry flash. "The entire Foundation might be compromised."

"That seems a bit of a leap from one kidnapping." Pensak was fully aware of the irony of this statement. He hoped that awareness wasn't the kind of thing an expert communicator might be able to read on someone's face. Oh, but the next few years were going to be very interesting.

"These people couldn't even focus on the Site properly until before this was done. They couldn't have done it unless they had agents on the inside. It's been happening right under my nose."

"You can't blame yourself, sir."

McInnis stopped himself halfway through a dismissive gesture. "As a matter of personal preference and leadership style, Chief, I consider myself the only justifiable target for blame."

"What should we do about it, though? The potential infiltration?"

The Director zipped up the body bag, very delicately, and said something Pensak couldn't hear before something Pensak could. "Coordinate with Chief Ibanez. We're going to start cracking down hard on the giftschreiber."

"Which ones? Neuer or Alte?"

"Both."

Pensak smiled. He let the other man think it was in anticipation of righteous vengeance.

19 July

The Book of the Turning Gyre sat on table, between Nass and Corbin on the one side and Udo on the other. It was time for the final analysis.

"What can we say for certain," Nass asked them, in his natural role as facilitator — meaning, as Corbin would have it, that he had no useful skills, but a pleasant enough face — "based on what we've read?"

The other theologian looked bored. "Those who can, write. Those who can't, giftschreibe."

"I'm pretty sure that's an incorrect conjugation," Udo smiled.

Corbin shot her a sly look. "Sorry. Been a long time since I conjugated."

Nass rubbed his chin; Udo thought he was probably erasing the first traces of a smile. "If we could focus? On the book, I mean."

"Sure." Corbin kicked back, and her boots thudded on the desk. "So, first things first. This is a how-to manual for ending the world."

"And the how is pretty weird," said Udo. "Robertson is using a universal schema first conceived of by Yeats."

"And he hasn't got the poetic chops to make it work. That's not a random diss, I think it's an important element of what's going on here." Corbin twirled her cigarette. She hardly ever smoked them anymore, but she did seem to like to hold them. "The giftschreiber have this idea about how the world works, and how to make it stop working, but none of them are individually talented enough to actually exploit the information."

Nass nodded. "So, the schema. History is twin, interlocked gyres of chaos and order, waxing in waning in inverse proportion. An era of rationality gives way to an era of irrationality."

Corbin tapped the cigarette on her cheek. "Except it's hard to phrase that objectively, because our perspective always privileges order over disorder. Peace over war. Rationality over irrationality. The giftschreiber obviously don't think they're moral equivalents either — they're very much in the chaos camp — but the model doesn't admit of such easy categorization. It's just two poles of reality. Two halves of the human civilization-brain."

"According to Robertson," said Udo, "every act of radical subversion accelerates the chaos spiral."

Corbin thumped one sole on the desktop. "Which suggests, conversely, that every act of excessive control does the same to the gyre of order."

Finishing Corbin's thoughts, or vice-versa, had proven a very satisfying pastime over the previous year. "Each gets a season, and then the season changes, and then it changes again. Cyclical. Winding up, winding down. But crucially, they don't wind down without a push. That's not in Yeats." She glanced up at the light fixtures, and narrowed her eyes. "I can say this with authority. Harry talked my ear off about Yeats."

"Poetry is romantic," Corbin grinned.

But Udo, as usual, wasn't having it. "Not when you dissect it. Nothing is romantic when you dissect it."

"Might we assume, then," Nass cut in, "that the erased entity you encountered was a means of achieving, as Robertson puts it, 'knock'? A concretization of anarchy, a concept given form?"

"Except he talked like he'd been around forever," said Udo.

Corbin was back to twirling her prop again. "That isn't necessarily contradictory. If he is chaos, like an avatar of it, the transformation from concept to neural pathways might have translated the long chain of cause and effect into simple memory. He might 'remember' being a part of every act of excessive chaos ever conducted."

She shook her head. "I don't think so. We've been plenty chaotic ourselves, even as we've been trying to re-establish order, so if that were the case, the Uncontained would have known our every move. And he didn't. We beat him." She paused. "Chief Nascimbeni beat him."

She made a mental note to visit the hospital after their meeting.

"So—" Nass began, but Corbin interrupted him.

"Hey, wait a second."

He nodded. "Yes?"

"Udo, that's how you'd characterize it?" Without warning, the boots were back under the table and the chair had all four legs on the floor again. "What you guys were doing?"

"Eh?

"Re-establishing order?"

She shrugged. "Well, yeah. The Victims tore everything up, and we put it back together. They made a mess, and we cleaned it up."

"Huh."

"I think I know where you're going with this."

Corbin laughed. "I'm not sure I know where I'm going with this."

"It's something I've thought about a lot. But there's a mental block in place, and…" Suddenly, she felt as though she was the one whose stomach had just turned a somersault. "And I think I know why."

Even though it was her dorm room, Udo was almost never the one to set a meeting's agenda. But this time was different. For starters, it was a one-on-one.

"I figured it out," she said.

Lillian was picking at the fabric of her recliner. She'd already plucked one entire armrest bare. "You figured what out?"

"All of it."

"That's a tall order." There was a faint ripping sound as a long thread came loose, and Lillian quickly dropped her elbow to hide the damage. "I'm going to be very angry with you if you're right."

"We can't just stop the explosion that kills the Uncontained, when the Breach happens this year. We need to find a way to stop the orphic outflow from blowing the gaskets in AO." Udo could feel her cheeks burning, either with pride or the radiation from her brightly gleaming eyes. "We need to keep that containment cell from flooding."

"Uh, you sure about that? Because it sounds an awful lot like changing the natural course of events."

"The natural course of events is wrong." She gave that a moment to sink in, but because it hadn't yet been proven, it bounced off Lillian in a way that was almost audible. "That's why I can't remember anything I do during the Breach. The thing that happened there, it was the most important thing."

Lillian snorted. "I liked you better when you had confidence issues."

"I'm serious. That's one of the two keys to the entire thing. Del Olmo was interviewing the Uncontained, and when the Uncontained got vaporized, it got aerosolized. God particles stuck to the Victims. We know that part." They only knew it now, now that it had been conclusively proven, now that they had met the beast itself. They'd been unable to focus on the question for a decade and a half before that, because human brains abhorred a noöspheric vacuum.

"Right…"

"And something else was happening in the containment cell where I was, of equal importance. Equal…"

"…and opposite?"

"And opposite."

Lillian's blue eyes were unfocusing and refocusing rapidly, like blinkenlights. "You're suggesting…"

"I wasn't alone in there. I was with someone else. Someone who got vaporized. Just like his—"

They said the word at the same time.

Lillian shook her head. "But, listen to yourself. If it's the same thing, more or less, why didn't we get possessed too?"

"Who's saying we didn't?"

21 July

Sokolsky found her in the cafeteria.

Lillian much preferred her office, where nobody ever came calling unexpectedly, but sometimes she needed the background chatter. Other people talking was like putting a stupid sitcom on in the background while you studied for your test.

Because they had to pass this test, or the rest of the term would be in serious doubt.

"You're looking thoughtful this evening." He sat down across from her, a plate of salad on his tray.

She blinked until she could see him clearly. "As opposed to what?"

"Mindful."

She shook her head. "Mindfulness is for yogis."

"What's eating you?" He took a bite of lettuce. Only a lunatic would eat unseasoned lettuce on its own.

"I'm reflecting on the nature of self."

"Your self, or…" He scoffed. "Why am I even asking? So, what about your self?"

"I'm wondering how much of it really is me. We had an unpleasant revelation earlier today."

"Of what nature?"

"Inhuman nature. Mine. Ours." She watched as he picked up the pepper shaker, and started making the lettuce either better or worse, depending on your perspective. "I think we've been infected by something, and it's changed the people we are."

He looked thoughtful, but not for long. "I do not think that."

"You haven't even heard the explanation yet," she scowled.

"Am I likely to?"

"No," she sighed. "I have to tell the group first. We have to. Udo figured it out." She sighed more profoundly. "I hate it when people figure things out before me. Especially when I have all the facts."

"Worst thing about facts is that sometimes feelings get results faster." He scarfed down another length of slightly spicy green.

"Rarely better results." She leaned away from him, let her arms fall over the back of the chair, and watched the smattering of night owls working their way through whatever they were eating, or talking about. "You ever wonder if we're doing the right thing? I mean, in general. Are we wasting our time? Wasting our talents? Doing what other people want, instead of… I dunno. What we could be doing."

"No. I never do what other people want. I only do what I want. And so do you."

"Except I have the most horrible sense that I've been doing someone else's bidding for the last seventeen years."

"What would you have done differently?" he asked, with his mouth full.

"I don't know."

He swallowed. "Would you have still tried to figure out the Breach?"

She glared at him out of the corners of her eyes. "Of course. It's the weirdest thing that's ever happened around here. I'd be all over it."

"Would you have done all the stuff you did with Antimemetics?"

"Yeah. That was all me."

"Would you have had sex with me?"

She laughed, and sat up straight again. "That was definitely all me."

"Well, that strikes me as everything important." At the bottom of the lettuce was a single large tomato. He put down his fork, and picked it up. "I guess there's the stuff you overvalue, too. Would you have still kept in touch with your friends? Harry?"

"Harry's been my best friend since before I was sapient. Well, before he was sapient. Yes."

"The others?"

"Maybe not Allan. Or Nascimbeni. Probably not Willie."

Sokolsky held the tomato in front of his eyes, as though it were an apple he was inspecting for spots. "You're not really friends, or in touch, with Willie anyway."

"That's true. I'd probably be tripping over him just the same. It's just… I don't know." There were no three words she hated more, in that configuration. "I don't think this affects who I am, at all. I don't think it affects who any of us are. I think it gave us new tools, and I think we used them the way our personalities and needs dictated. But it does feel sort of like finishing a game and then finding out you had a cheat code enabled the entire time."

"What if the game was broken?" he suggested. "And you couldn't beat it without—"

"Better," she nodded. "The other side was already cheating. This just evened the score. Yeah. Yeah!" She slapped the table, and the silverware jumped. "That actually helped. Thank you."

He bowed his head. "Happy to. You figure large in my future schemes, Lillian. I need you safe and sane."

And, again as though it were an apple, he took a big bite out of the tomato.

She watched him eat. It was almost meditative. "I think I might need a break from schemes."

"No idea what that feels like," he shrugged. "But sure." The entire thing was gone in seconds, and he dabbed at his serviette daintily to get the juice off the ends of his fingers. "I'm working on something, have been for a good long while, but it won't pop for a few more years. You've got time to take a breather."

"Why is this not reassuring me?" She wanted to chuckle, but it didn't come out right at all. "Don't you think maybe, just maybe the world would be a better place to live in if people weren't always planning and plotting and—"

"Hell no." He shoved the tray into the middle of the table. "Absolutely I do not. Having plans moves life forward. Being proactive is living, as opposed to simply reacting. Having schemes means… well." And he grinned that selachian grin. "Living a unique life."

She twisted away again, but drummed at the tabletop with the fingers of her right hand. "I couldn't have schemed up a more unique life than this one if I'd tried."

He took the hand in his own, and halted the percussion. "If you believed that, you wouldn't be half the woman you are. You might only be just above perfect."

The Only Shadow

The Breach Goes On: Deadlined

The Foreseeable Future