Beggar Belief - SCP Foundation

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Features non-consensual sexual acts.

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Beggar Belief

2003

17 November

Site-43: Lambton County, Ontario, Canada

They had a full house today. It struck McInnis as an interesting progressive imbalance, how as the number of their enemies declined the number of indispensable allies increased. They were now meeting in the Chairs and Chiefs boardroom, though not all of the Chairs and Chiefs were present. There was going to be a lot of re-shuffling once the Site was made fully operational again — a concept that just weeks prior had seemed impossibly far fetched, pie in the sky nonsense. But sitting in the same room with Desagondensta, Thilo Zwist, Arik Euler, Lillian Lillihammer, Noé Nascimbeni, Delfina Ibanez, Harry Blank, Melissa Bradbury, Eileen Veiksaar, Nhung Ngo, Udo Okorie, Karen Elstrom, Xinyi Du, Trevor Bremmel, Brenda Corbin, Gedeon Van Rompay and even William Wettle, with a video connection to Ilse Reynders in the ADDC, it was possible to dream big.

The ASC was on the same page. "We're left with one major hurdle, friends. But it's a very high bar."

"One?" Nascimbeni frowned. "I count two."

"They're a single problem." Ibanez was cracking her knuckles. "Gwilherm hasn't reacted to losing the others, which might mean she hasn't even noticed, but it might also mean she just plain doesn't care. Radcliffe will be a different matter. We kill him, she shows up. Simple as that."

"How can you be so sure?" Van Rompay asked.

"They're quantum linked." This from Du, the most qualified to speak on the subject. "It's the only possible explanation. There's some sort of entanglement allowing him to sense what she's up to, and we can operate on the assumption that it works both ways."

"Why?" Okorie met each of their eyes in turn. "That stuff he's always talking about, his fantasy of her marching around and liberating the world? He could just be making it all up."

"You ever meet the guy?" Harry retorted. "He didn't have a creative bone in his body. He read bodybuilding mags in his time off."

"Oh, yeah." Wettle smiled with apparently pleasant reminiscence. "She told me about that."

"Please," Harry groaned.

"She said I was a nice change of pace, and slapped my nip—"

"PLEASE STOP."

"No, go on," Lillihammer encouraged. "I'm going to record this as a kill agent."

"Well…"

The ASC gestured at the new speaker. "Dr. Ngo?"

"We've already done a little work on this. Dr. Wettle, could you describe your sexual relationship with Agent Gwilherm in detail, please?"

Harry gaped at her. "No. Come on, why? No!"

"Uh, well, she was always on t—"

"We're not doing this."

Ngo smiled sympathetically… no, empathetically. "Dr. Blank, I'm sorry, but this is vital data."

"You can't be serious."

"I miss the old you," Veiksaar grumbled. "He wasn't such a prude."

"I'm not a prude! I just don't want to picture Gwilherm slapping Willie's nipples!"

"Per your report," McInnis interrupted, "this information is available any time you wish to retrieve it, Dr. Ngo. While the group is assembled, however, it might be useful for you to explain why you might wish to."

"It's a simple solution, I think. We need to kill two birds with one stone, right?"

"We most certainly do," the ASC agreed. "Or at the very least, if we can only kill one, it needs to be her."

"Well, I've been talking to Dr. Corbin about the nature of their link, and what Dr. Du just said has more or less confirmed my suspicions. Brenda, would you like to explain?"

Corbin kicked her feet up on the table. She wasn't one to stand, or even sit, on ceremony. "Love to. We've been recording everything Radcliffe says from the start, or rather the memeticists have. Scanning for cognitohazards. There's nothing there. "

Lillihammer nodded. "'There's nothing there' is a fair description of the content of those messages, for sure."

"From the perspective of rational science, sure. Luckily, I'm an irrational scientist."

"High five," Okorie cheered.

"I prefer down low." Corbin winked. Okorie blushed.

The theologian continued. "Radcliffe's messages are suffused with what I can only describe as a religious rapture. He's enamoured with Gwilherm like a priest loves their god. Perfect devotion. He's smitten and in awe and more than a little afraid, and he's projecting that out into space."

"Quite literally," Veiksaar added.

The ASC blinked at her. "Meaning?"

"The comms tower is transmitting his messages across the globe."

"How is that possible?" McInnis demanded. "Surely you control the information going through those systems, after the events of last month."

"We would be," Veiksaar said, "if they were travelling through the cables like they're supposed to. But they aren't. We can trace the infosignature of each message moving along the wire, but shutting everything down doesn't stop them. We even tried cutting the cables. They jumped the gap. We'd have to take the whole thing down to so much as delay one of his transmissions."

"So do it," Lillihammer said. "Cut the whole thing down."

"First of all," Veiksaar bristled, "that tower is our link with the rest of the world."

"Second of all," Ngo piled on, "that would interfere with my plan."

"Your plan," Lillihammer snarled, "which incorporates nipple-slapping as a vital component."

Harry was sighing non-stop now. "Can we start using euphemisms, please?"

"I'm afraid we're going to need to get considerably more explicit before this is over," Ngo's apology sounded genuine.

"Because we're gonna have to knock that bitch off the pedestal he put her on." Corbin mimed a fly-swatting.

"Why?" Bremmel asked.

"Because he's the reason she's invincible."

Nascimbeni knitted his brows. "Explain that statement."

"He believes she is, so she is. What he wants her to be, she becomes. That's his power. He's the only one we never figured out."

Euler's forehead was creasing up too. "This is… a guess?"

"It's a fact," Corbin stated with conviction. "Radcliffe's transmissions also carry a strong Akiva wave. Belief energy."

Harry was exploring his wisdom teeth gaps with his tongue. "He's making her what she is?"

"No, but he's bolstering it. Boosting her signal, with his. She was already deadly when she was here, but she's the Earth-shattering superweapon we've been watching these past months because she's carrying both of their powers at once."

Lillihammer looked pleased. "Under every strong woman's boot, there's a man saying he deserves it."

"And how do you plan to make use of this information?" Ibanez wanted to know.

Ngo looked tired, uncomfortable, but most of all, confident. "We give the man a crisis of faith."

20 November

"It's ready." Ngo was massaging her temples.

McInnis gestured for her to take a seat across from the desk. His desk. He'd found himself stroking the polished surface when nobody was watching. He was no materialist, but allowed a little sentiment to filter in when he felt it could do him no harm. "Are you feeling alright, doctor?"

She looked embarrassed. "I know I'm overreacting. It was just… it was just kind of a lot."

"I understand. Please get some rest."

"With respect sir, I think I need to know how this plays out. You might still need my expertise, and anyway I'm perversely interested to see if it upsets her as much as it upset me."

He chuckled. It was the only laugh he could summon on demand. "Do you know, the old Council used to have people they called 'factotums' whose role was to stand in for them when they couldn't be around?"

She nodded. "Makes sense."

"I think I would like for all of us to adopt something similar. So that we might all go for a collective three-day snooze when this is over."

Ngo had no problem bursting into genuine laughter, and she did so now. "I find myself in perfect agreement with you, sir. Though obviously we're no O5 Council."

"Obviously. Now, as you say we're prepared, I'm going to ask Chief Ibanez on the status of her search for Vector-3."

"Oh, yeah. About that — she thinks she's cracked it. Those alt-universe memories really save the day sometimes, you know?"

He did know.

He shuddered to think how the past few months would have progressed without said memories.

Probably, he decided, they wouldn't have.

A bedrock tunnel. Fluorescent fixtures in the ceiling, cave walls polished smooth, cast concrete panels along the left side. The secret fourth sublevel was the same in this reality as the last, right down to the seven characters scored out of the metal of the single closed door.

As before, she'd had to take mnestics to figure out the requisite elevator commands. As before, she had a flash of Yésica leaping to her doom at Zevala, now compounded with a vision of her earlier trip to find nothing very much at all at the end of a long and winding evidence trail.

This time, however, it was going to be different.

What better hiding place could there possibly be at Site-43?

She unclipped her keycard from her belt, and slid it through the attached reader. The air exchangers hissed as the door swung open.

The lights flickered on to reveal…

Stewart Radcliffe, kneeling on the tiles, large as life and stark naked. His back was arched, palms planted on the floor, head bent back in a bizarre inversion of prayer. Ibanez didn't frequent the S&C communal showers, for a variety of reasons, so this was a sight she had never seen. A volleyball tournament at Ipperwash Beach had given her a good, long look at the man's upper torso, waxed and hairless and full of smooth, healthy ripples, not steroidal but the result of years and years of long, hard work and heavy lifting. Her only point of comparison was Howard Yancy, who was in comparable shape, and with whose shape she'd on several occasions allowed herself to become overfamiliar…

Stop ogling the genocidal maniac wasn't something she'd ever expected to have to tell herself, but she told herself now.

Radcliffe was murmuring. They'd long since muted his internal broadcasts, which had the effect of completely negating their memetic payloads, but he clearly hadn't gotten the memo.

He didn't even notice her presence. That was fine. She placed the portable wireless speaker on the wall, made sure the instant-curing glue would hold, then closed the containment cell door again. She'd post a guard, but it probably wouldn't be necessary. Like the living corpse he'd left behind in baseline, the big man was rooted in place.

She didn't key her radio until she was back on the elevator. "Chief Ibanez calling Director…" She slapped it to her forehead, and tried again. "Calling Administrator McInnis."

"McInnis."

"He's here. We go for prep?"

Another, much deeper voice came over the line. "This is the All-Sections Chief. The homefires are burning at Kettle Point. My friends will be waiting with open arms."

"Hope they won't have occasion to regret their hospitality," she said. "Over."

Kettle Point was a nice place to visit, but she didn't want to die there.

Not that she'd be going.

22 November

It took a long time to evacuate Site-43 via the secret facilities beneath AAF-A. Ibanez had warned her people to be on the lookout for the mad scientist, Wynn Rydderech, but he didn't make an appearance. Lillihammer had suggested he'd been actively holding the bedrock of the Site together, that Gwilherm's initial presence would have blown the entire thing asunder if he hadn't been, and that it was taxing his reality-bending powers to the max to continually negate that explosive fact. But Okorie had seen him, he had even deigned to speed her on her way, so it was strange that he failed to put in an appearance now.

Perhaps, Euler suggested, the memetic resonator was to blame. If Rydderech was the bedrock…

He'd dropped the idea after seeing the look on Zwist's face. The old man had enough weighing on his conscience already.

In the end, a few hundred people made their way through the magical factory and out to the vast, stinking wasteland that had once been Lake Huron. The indigenous peoples living on the rises above would take care of them for as long as it was in their power to do so, gracious hosts on their own native land. It was a curious inversion of power dynamics which made many of McInnis' advisors cynically pleased, Harry most of all; he was already writing the chapter of his apocalypse history detailing the final, decisive settlement of the Ipperwash land claim issue.

All that remained was to make sure there would be future generations to read it, and honour the obligations described therein.

It was past time for the final group to gather at their mustering point and make the trip to Rydderech's sprawling playground. Eileen was handling the announcements manually, and she'd somehow failed to send the last one. Harry was all but alone in the server hall, gathering up the last of his belongings into a knapsack, so Ibanez had radioed him to drop in and see what the holdup was.

As he passed the now-unmanned logistics desk, he heard something strange. Like a bicycle wheel spinning without enough grease… no, more like an overclocked cast iron water pump… no, it was that sound his parrot had made when periodically humping the side of her cage. He'd always hated that. As he approached the beaded curtain, he realized he was hearing a human voice. Eileen was throwing the tantrum to end all tantrums in her little warren. Probably the messaging system had collapsed, and that had been the last straw for her. She still hadn't fixed her sleep situation, the stimulants that had kept her going refusing to leave her system. It sounded like she was in physical, emotional, maybe even intellectual pain in there. He pressed through the beads, then pushed back the velvet…

…and a foot was planted on his chest, and it thrust at him, and he was sent flying backward to land on his ass. The voice reached a crescendo, then settled in a satisfied hiss.

And the curtain was flung open.

"Hey, too little," said Eileen. "You're too late."

"Hello, Dr. Blank," said Technician First Class Charles Carter. He was covering his crotch with both hands.

He felt like he ought to have been a little bit angry.

Not because he deserved to be. She'd come on repeatedly too strong, and he'd made it clear that they were no longer in any sense together, and honestly she'd been a trouper to hold it together this long. But it felt like the lizard brain should be lodging an objection right about now, and yet it wasn't.

"Group 39, you are now clear to depart." Eileen's voice on the intercom sounded cheerful, upbeat, refreshed. Relaxed. "Repeat, Group 39, depart now." The audio cut out just as a snippet of Radcliffe cut in, the orphaned word 'Friends!' echoing throughout H&S.

The Site was still a shambles. Well over half of the systems didn't work, there was structural instability all over, countless dorms and offices were uninhabitable. But when this final challenge had been overcome — he refused to think of it as a question of 'if' — the long process of getting resettled would begin.

His feet were already taking him somewhere he wasn't meant to go. He was part of Group 39. He was to accompany his notes, archival, historical and artistic, north to Kettle Point for preservation in case the plan went south. But he knew he could radio in and cancel if he wanted to; as a member of the inner circle, he now had seniority over everyone involved with the evacuation. So before he made the decision, he took a final detour.

As he had on September 8, 2002, he walked to Melissa Bradbury's office.

It was spotless. Untouched. She'd had the unfathomably excellent luck to own one of the few unmolested workspaces in the entire facility. It looked like nobody had set foot in there since she'd evacuated to I&T. She was in the process of stuffing a woolen scarf into an athletic bag when he walked in, knocking on the doorframe to announce his presence.

She looked up, and smiled. "Good evening, dear."

He smiled back at her. "It's not bad."

"You ready to go?" She selected a few books off the nearest shelf, and packed them in the end pocket.

"The last group is leaving now." It wasn't an answer, and by the look on her face, she knew it. "How come you're still packing?"

She smiled sheepishly. "You're going to be angry."

"You're packing because I'm going to be angry?" He mocked up an expression of sorrow. "Melissa, we can work this out, I promise. Don't leave me."

She laughed, pulled the scarf out of the bag, and threw it at him. "Weirdo."

He put the scarf around his neck. "Seriously, though. What am I going to be angry about?"

"I hate camping."

He waited.

And waited. "That's it?"

"That's it. There's bugs out there, Harry. I don't like bugs. And my skin burns easily." She was practically paper-pale. "And I was thinking, you know, there's an awful lot of dorms down here…"

"…and if the plan doesn't work and they butcher us all, a few kilometres won't make that much of a difference…"

She laughed again. "Okay, I guess you're not going to be angry. How come?"

"The truth?"

"Yeah. The truth."

He took off the scarf, walked over to her, and placed it on top of the bag. "Because it's a lot farther to Kettle Point than it is to your dorm room."

Almost seven years of unrealized possibility floated in the space between them.

So he moved into that space, and brushed it aside. He put one hand on the back of her jacket, his jacket, their jacket. She raised an eyebrow. He leaned forward quickly, and she bent back an equal amount, letting him support her weight, trusting him. He looked down at her. She looked up at him, chin squashed against her neck, expression comically curious.

"Are we dancing?" she asked him.

"We've been dancing," he told her, "for too god damn long."

She pursed her lips, laughter in every line.

"What?"

"Dorm room's kinda far, too."

He burst out laughing, and so did she, and since their mouths were now both open anyway…

For good measure, he swept her off her feet.

Stewart Radcliffe was lying in rapture, eyes to God, as he always was. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else even came close. It was her, it was only her, it would be her forever, and she would always be enough. Because she'd told him so, and she couldn't be wrong, because he would never allow it.

"Friends," he whispered, knowing they would hear, would understand, would smile and nod and share in his experience of the truth of all of it. "Friends, the new world is now no world at all, and the old awaits her coming for its matching fall, too long delayed. She sets a foot upon the pier, and looks back at what she has accomplished. Wastes from sea to sea to sea, freedom in its purest form. She tastes the wind, and is the change it blows across the mountaintops to scatter freshly fallen snow. She could stride the rough Atlantic if she chose. Perhaps one day she will. But today she will set sail, bring the future from new to old, fulfilling the circle of civilization. The tides pull death to life again, from one end of the Earth to the other. It is poetry. It is beautiful." As always, his eyes filled with joyful tears. "She is beautiful. Because I love her."

"So full disclosure," a voice replied. No voice, no voice, had ever replied. "I never even knew your wife until I accidentally killed her a few years ago. Why? It's the truth. What? Okay, fine. So yeah. I didn't know her, and then last year on September 9 she came into my room to have sex with me. She grabbed me by the lapels, which was pretty hot — I like an assertive woman. There's this other woman I met in Germany, and then I met her again for the first time in— Why? Fine, whatever. So your wife undressed me and shoved my naked ass on the carpet, and proceeded to produce the metaphorical burns. It isn't? What's the right word, then?"

For the first time in over a year, Radcliffe stopped thinking about God and began to think about Janet Gwilherm.

18 November

"Detail the encounter only, please, and omit the literary invention."

"I'm just trying to spice things up with a little delayed release." Wettle leaned back, hands behind his head, blithely risking a fall as he always did. "Ah… there was nothing delayed about my release, let me tell you. She actually got real mad about that. She went to get drugs from the refectory, I think?"

"What?"

"What?"

"Drugs from the refectory?" Nhung repeated. "Drugs come from the pharmacy. And we don't have refectories, we have cafeteria."

"Cafeterias," Wettle corrected her, incorrectly. She considered turning off the recorder. She considered braining him with it.

"No. Wait, did you mean… she got you drugs to accelerate your refractory period?"

He scoffed. "Um, I'm a man? I don't have periods."

"You need to come home," said the voice in her head. "I've made mistakes. I've made terrible, terrible mistakes. And they're your fault."

She stood, one foot on the gangplank, one foot on the deck. A moment of transition. A moment of triumph, the first of many. And now, of all times now, he was changing his tune?

"You hurt me," said Radcliffe. "You always hurt me. You're a bad person, and I love you. I don't want to love you, but you won't let me stop. You need me to keep loving you, but I heard what you did. You did him."

She wondered which him he'd found out about.

"How could you? I don't understand. I gave you everything, and you betrayed me. You were all working against me, weren't you? I was stuck below while you did your dirty business over my head. You were doing it with our friends. Don't try to deny it. I made them talk."

He paused.

"They're gone now."

What. She reached out. She closed her eyes, raised her hands up over her head, and tried to feel them. She knew where they were. She could sense that mass of metal and plastic and fibre and paper and stone, so much stone, no matter where she stood upon her green Earth, because all of it, every inch, was a part of her as well. She found it, but she couldn't find them. She had lost them. She had lost herself.

"I did that," he told her. "I made them gone. It's just you and me now. Come back here, and it can be just you and me forever. I can love you and you can hate me and we can let the rest of them burn."

She lowered her hands, and closed the fingers tight.

"I know the secret. I know how to make it happen. I know the thing you want to know. But you'll have to come here to get it."

Her vision blurred. She couldn't see the ship anymore. She could barely see the ocean.

"I won't say my prayers tonight."

She felt the sensation of weightlessness.

"You'd better hurry."

When she came back to herself, when the rage had subsided enough for her senses to resume reporting, she found she was standing knee-deep in shallow water while ash fell from the sky like snow. The ship, the harbour, the Site, and a sizable proportion of the water were all gone. The latter was rushing back in from the ocean, filling the void she'd deleted through sheer instinct.

Wrathful as the god she was, Janet Gwilherm put the Atlantic at her back and began the journey home.

"She said body builders only look good with their pants on," the voice continued as Radcliffe vibrated with rage. "Because steroids shrink your penis. She said she could tell I'd never used steroids."

"I never really believed in you," he told her as she crossed the Mississippi. "How could I have? Belief is for wonders you can't prove. You were a terror I couldn't escape. Fear doesn't make people believe in things. Fear makes people hate things. For years I thought I loved you. It was only fear, and hate."

"She hasn't got any birthmarks I could tell you about. They always have birthmarks in fiction, so the guy can prove what he did when he's bragging to the other guy. But I can tell you she slapped my face when she orgasmed. She did it both times, so I'm pretty sure it's a whole thing."

"You never believed in me. Why should I build you up? You only ever tore me down. "

"She's got a really flat ass. Flat all around, actually. Like a washboard. I don't think that's a compliment when you say it about a woman."

"You're a coward. You beat me, then ran away. You couldn't face yourself, couldn't bear to see what you really were reflected in my eyes, so you turned your tail and fled. You don't deserve worship. You don't deserve love. Come down here, and tell me to my face that you are sorry, and grovel at my feet, and if you're very, very lucky, I'll give you what you don't deserve. My forgiveness."

18 November

Ngo turned off the second set of tapes. "What do you think?"

"Holy fuck," said Harry.

"That was a lot," Lillian agreed. "How did you…?"

"We've got no end of Radcliffe recordings thanks to his impromptu radio show," Veiksaar explained. "The good doctor told me what she wanted, and I showed her what I could do. We had every phoneme in the book all ready to go, so she sharpened them into a very pointed stick using the psych and review profiles we had on Gwilherm."

"That's honestly quite terrifying." McInnis actually clapped. "Wonderful work. Assuming the other pieces are finished, you have my permission to deploy your pointed stick."

"I'll fire up the tower," Veiksaar grinned.

"I thought she was a goddess," Wettle interrupted. "Your big plan is to poke her eye out?"

Ngo patted him on the shoulder, which was nice. "You did all the poking we needed, big guy."

They did end up going back to Melissa's dorm room, though they didn't stop kissing the entire way. It was an involved process, but they managed. The halls, after all, were empty, and they picked the path with a minimum of rubble to delicately dodge.

Like the office, the room was spotless. Everything was exactly where she'd left it. The bed was neatly made.

They corrected that in short order, then trashed it further at length.

23 November

"Are you afraid of dying?"

Thought she'd be better at pillow talk than that. He reached up to stroke her hair. "No, you're not that heavy."

She leaned down and blew a raspberry on his chest. She was lying on top of him. "Be serious for a moment."

"I am feeling very serious right now." He ran his hands along her back. "If I had access to a jewellery store, you'd see how serious I am."

She rested her chin on her hands and peered at him with those dreamy dark blue eyes. "I ask if you're afraid of dying, and you offhandedly propose marriage."

"Was it offhanded?" He kissed her forehead. "Let me try again. Will you marry me?"

"Nope." She kissed him on the lips. "Try again with jewellery. I'm traditional."

He laughed. "Oh yes, the long tradition of illuminati women who stare at the ceiling and walk into their furniture because they're thinking about how to communicate with light-scattered photobeings."

"Mhmm. Goes back to Newtonian times. His wife had a special ruffly collar made so she never had to lower her chin."

"Newton was never married."

She pressed his lips shut with a finger. "That's what they want you to think."

He talked around it. "I would be the 'they' in any such scenario, Melly. Archives and Revision, yeah?"

"Yes, dear," she smiled. "I'm a big fan of your recent revisions. But you haven't answered my question."

"I think I have, dear," he smiled back. "Let me demonstrate. Pretend I've got the requisite band in hand." He made a ring with his thumb and forefinger. "For the sake of argument, will you marry me?"

"I would do anything for the sake of arguing with you," she agreed. "Yes. I would be honoured to hyphenate with your name."

"Wonderful." He picked up one of her hands, slipped the finger-ring over it, then kissed the knuckles. "Then why on Earth would I be afraid of anything?"

Lake Huron was gone, but the winding creek running off past Indian Lane inexplicably remained. Nascimbeni and Gallo pitched their tents on the warped and wavering farm beside it, and cast their fishing lines into the standing water.

Nothing was biting, because probably nothing was even in there, but that didn't matter. It was ritual more than anything.

Flora was asleep in Gallo's tent. The sun was going down. There was music on the wind, coming from the jamboree across the water. They both liked the distant sound more than they would have enjoyed taking part.

That was one of the many things they had in common.

Once again, without even thinking about it, Nascimbeni put his arm around his son's shoulders. The gesture was again reciprocated, and they fished fruitlessly in silence until the stars came out. After a while, Gallo realized that his father was softly sobbing.

"What happened?" he asked. "What happened to you, dad?"

"I let something go."

"What?"

"It doesn't matter." He looked up at the stars. "That's not true. It does matter. Everything I've ever let go matters."

"Dad—"

"Let me get through this. It's important, and I'm bad at it."

Gallo turned back to his fishing line, barely visible in the moonlight as a thin gossamer strand. "Okay."

"I wasn't there for your mother. I didn't know what was going on with her. She needed more attention than I wanted to give her, so I stayed away, and she died."

"It's more complicated than that."

"Not from my perspective."

"Your perspective—"

"If I'm wrong, correct me after. Let me blurt this out first. It's hard enough as it is."

"Alright."

"I never noticed she was sick. That's on me. I never noticed you were having trouble with Luisa. That's on me, too. Don't interrupt. I'm not saying I own all of your problems. I'm saying you got them honestly."

"Dad," Gallo shook his head. His own voice was cracking now, too.

"I do what comes easy. I don't like to think about… people things. I like to think about things I can hammer back into shape, or twist until they're tight."

"That's just not true. Flora—"

"It is true. I talk to my machines. I don't talk to my family. So I'm talking to you now."

"And you're talking shit."

He blinked in the dark. "What?"

"You're gonna sit there and play the emotionally repressed mechanic angle? With me? That's who I am, dad. That's never been who you are." He slipped his hand from around Nascimbeni's shoulders, set down the fishing rod, and turned to face him cross-legged. "You hid from mom because you loved her too much. You think I don't remember all those Saturdays watching movies at the Golden Princess? You'd buy us tickets for every show, and we'd spend the whole day in the theatre. Your arm around mom. Me with a bag of popcorn as big as my head. And then Sunday night you'd be sitting at your desk, hyperventilating over blueprints because you didn't do a lick of work all weekend. You had two responsibilities, and you didn't have time to be good at both of them, but you wanted to anyway. So you worked and played yourself half to death, gave yourself a heart condition at thirty-eight—"

Nascimbeni dropped his own rod. It skidded away down the slope. As with the tablet before it, he barely noticed."You knew about that?"

"I looked up the labels on your medicine bottles, dad. And I could see the bags under your eyes. And I saw the look on your face whenever you came home late and saw mom flaked out on the couch with a TV dinner, because she tried to stay up for you and couldn't make it. I didn't get it then, but I get it now. I know what it's like to need something you can't have."

It was so dark now that they could only see the glimmering in each others' eyes.

"You didn't leave her because it didn't matter enough. You left her because it mattered too much."

"This place mattered too." By which he meant the Site. His first true love.

"It mattered more. Not to you, but to everyone. I never understood why a water treatment plant was so important that it made you feel guilty spending time with your family. I guess I do now."

"That's just it, though. I was spending time with my family."

Gallo nodded. "Romo."

"Yeah."

"You remember when I beat the shit out of him?"

Nascimbeni found himself chuckling in spite of everything. "You beat the shit out of each other. Almost both got expelled."

"Fucker told me he had two dads, and I didn't have any."

What? It took him a moment regain his composure enough to say it out loud. "What?"

"That's what he said. He said you loved him, and you didn't love me."

"That's… I…"

"So I beat him until he was black and blue, because nobody talked shit about my dad to my face and got away with it."

He didn't know what to say.

"Am I supposed to be all broken up over that shit?" Gallo continued. "Lots of kids have brothers. Doesn't make me worth less than him. I don't care that he got to spend more time with you. I don't care that you and him had more in common. I don't even care if you liked him better."

"I—"

"As in, I don't even need to hear it. Every parent has their favourite."

"I wasn't his parent."

"You might as well have been." He was going to say something else, but suddenly his jaw clicked shut. The eyes in the dark narrowed. "Wasn't?"

Nascimbeni took a breath. "He's…" The breath hadn't been deep enough.

"He's gone?"

"He's gone." The admission came out like a deflating tire.

"I'm sorry, Dad."

"I let him go."

"Why?"

Nascimbeni shrugged. "Because I loved him."

"Same reason you let us go," his son observed.

"Same reason." He drew the words out regretfully.

He looked up at the stars again, then at the distant party lights, then finally back at his son's silhouette against the crazy landscape.

"But this time, I was right."

24 November

She descended on Camp Ipperwash like a hurricane, smashing through the barracks block and through the elevator shaft and through the bedrock and dormitories and into the secret chamber where she'd left her secret weapon. She waved her hand and the wall was gone, and there he was, naked on the floor, sobbing and weeping and wailing.

"You!" she screamed.

He blinked away the tears, and straightened his spine. The cracking made her stomach churn. "You came back?"

"You fucking imbecile." She slapped him. "You unbelievable waste of agency. I knew I should have listened to the voice inside my head. The one that isn't you."

He pressed a hand to the red spot on his cheek, like it was a treasured keepsake. "I've been waiting so long for you."

"That's it? That's all? You've been waiting, so you decided to burn it all down?" She kicked him in the chest, and pressed hard until he fell over onto his back. She planted one bare foot on his groin, and pressed even harder. "You're weak. You were always so fucking weak."

"You betrayed me," he whispered through choked tears.

"I betrayed you? What about the others? What do you call that?"

"You're my wife." It was part statement, part plea.

"No. I'm my own. You're my husband, and it's an honour you never deserved." The absurdity of the scene sent a sudden wave of clarity washing over her, and she laughed out loud. "What are we even talking about? Our Halloween costumes are fighting each other. We're the same, you and I. We're supposed to be the same."

"You let another man touch you."

She stood to her full height, still pressing him into the floor like some beast she'd slain. "Nobody touches me. I've brought down entire continents that tried."

"You made love to someone else."

"What the hell are you talking about?" She rolled him over onto his stomach, and walked on his back. "Are you jealous? That's what this is? You're stopping the plan dead because you're jealous?"

"He knew all the details," Radcliffe grunted as she stomped his lungs flat.

"Listen to me." She stepped off, knelt down, lifted his bearded face up to face her. "I need you. You loathsome, worthless lump. I need you."

His eyes were full of hurt and rage. "You let him take you while you left me down here. How does that make any sense? We're supposed to be setting people free, but you left us trapped."

"They were going to figure it out!" she shouted. "The others! The ones you fucking killed! They would have figured out what was so goddamn special, they would have figured out how to make everything right again, and then set it in stone, but no. You killed them. All of them. How did you even do that?"

"I didn't kill anyone," he protested.

"They're gone, Stewart. Are you going to tell me the ants figured out how to turn the magnifying glass around? After a whole fucking year?"

He blinked away more tears. Had she ever known a weaker man? "You're trying to confuse me."

"You're already confused! You know what, fine." She stood up, dragging him back to his knees with his chin and just one finger. "You won't see reason. I'm going to fix you."

"I'm seeing the truth now." There was a new, hard edge to the words.

She shook out her joints, then held her hand out to his forehead. "I talked to LeClair about this, before Wirth fried her brain. I can change you."

"Change me?"

"So you won't have any doubts. So you'll do your job."

His beard was a soaking mess, water and blood. She'd burst a few blood vessels in his lip at some point. She wasn't sure when. "You're going to take it all away?"

"You're damn right I am. You're too fucking stupid to be making your own decisions. You always were. I just didn't want to risk this unless I had to. You really set me back, Mr. Gwilherm."

"You're going to take my mind away." The fear and sorrow were gone. Nothing had taken their place.

"What little there is," she agreed.

"You're going to take my freedom."

She ignored that. She couldn't be bothered. "We had a perfect plan, and you screwed it all up. We're left with compromise."

"We don't compromise on freedom." He didn't stand, but he did straighten.

"We don't…?" She shook her head in amazement. "Are you serious? The others were stealing people's bodies, brainwashing them, and making art installations out of their living flesh! Are you really that naïve?" She let the power course through her fingers. This wasn't going to be something simple, like bringing down a cathedral or shooting a satellite out of the sky. This would require finesse. She was almost looking forward to the exercise, then getting back to her long walk.

"I believed in the plan!" he wailed. "Why didn't the rest of you?"

"We don't know what the plan is! We've got one fragment each, and there's still something missing. We could have figured it out, but no. You had to go and get lonely, like the big damn baby you are."

"I had faith that we'd figure it out."

His eyes were downcast. She forced them back up. "Well, now you won't need faith."

"Faith is my freedom. You can't take that away."

"Movement is mine, but you forced me to trudge back here anyway. Close your eyes. This won't take long."

He kept his eyes open. "You can't do this."

"We're done negotiating."

"You can't do this. You don't know how."

She slapped him again, with her free hand, and a tooth shook loose. "You're about to not know anything," she snarled.

His formerly bovine gaze was now sharply defiant. "I don't believe you can do it."

She felt suddenly lightheaded, as though she'd risen to too high an altitude too quickly. Her ears actually popped. "What's…"

"I don't believe," he repeated.

Her stomach churned. Her muscles ached. Her mind filled with the sick, hot nausea of overtiredness, and she struggled to keep her hand aloft. "What the fuck are you doing?!"

"I don't believe in you," he whispered.

"You…"

"You're just a bully. A cruel, stupid bully. Which means I am too."

"Give it back." Her voice sounded small and weak, like his.

"We're not enough." He crawled forward on his knees, pressing his forehead to the tips of her shaking fingers. "All of us together wasn't enough. We're broken."

"Give it BACK!" she screamed, and the effort nearly bowled her over.

"Maybe they'll figure it out when we're gone."

"Do you know what they call me out there?!" She pressed her fingers into his hair until the tips bent upward. "They call me GOD!"

"You're not a god."

"I am."

"You're not a god."

"I AM!"

"You're nothing."

"YOU'RE NOTHING!"

And then he was.

Gwilherm visibly shrank as the last vestiges of her husband disappeared into the air recyclers. The particulate counter would later report a brief Akiva fluctuation, then nothing special at all.

On the security feed, a few frames captured the twinge of regret passing over Gwilherm's features as she turned away, before Delfina Ibanez came through the door two feet off the ground and planted her boot an entire nose's length into the other woman's face.

In seconds, she had choked to death on her own blood.

Three hours later, the human norm, she began to decompose.

25 November

McInnis was just finishing the paperwork when his office door swung open. This was his last day behind the desk; starting tomorrow, it would belong to William Wettle. The man who entered was curly-haired and handsome, though a little unkempt and frazzled, wearing an unfamiliar black and red labcoat and a very grave expression. "Good afternoon, Doctor…?

"Are you familiar with Protocol 4000-Eshu?"

McInnis blinked. The man was telling him, without telling him, that there was something very wrong with his name. A communications-based anomaly. That was interesting.

"What might I do for you, doctor?"

"I thought I might do something for you, actually. You've had a rather rough go in this neck of the woods, if you get my drift."

The Administrator felt his face contorting with the effort to get the next few sentences right. It was possible to get himself in very serious trouble with just one misplaced word. "You speak of woods. You are referring to the sylvan trickster haven?" He'd done it right. He'd named the thing without losing his own name. He despised semiohazards.

The other man laughed. "No, sorry. The woods of which I spoke were metaphorical. But you're correct that naming me would be a mistake."

McInnis watched for any sign of prevarication on that score, and found none. He could trust the strange doctor on the subject of his own appellation, at the very least. "Well then. Since you're unlikely to be referring to Lambton County, I suspect your scope is rather larger. I was wondering if we'd ever get a visit from your people; we've badly felt the lack of a temporal consult these past months."

This hunch, unlike the other, was apparently correct. The man visibly relaxed, knowing that his meaning was clear. "It took a lot of hard work and sacrifice to get here, I can assure you. This timeline is all but inaccessible from its timeplane of origin."

"And why is that?"

"The nature of its separation, no doubt." The TAD agent shrugged. "It wasn't a typical branching."

"The concept of a typical timeline branch fills me with dread."

The other man chuckled unconvincingly. "You see as many as I have, you learn not to worry. One gets a feel for similarities. Patterns. Which way the sides of the cube have rotated away from their starting positions. There's a lot to be learned from that, though obviously the differences are much more instructive."

"You don't mind if I run your credentials?" McInnis asked.

The other man smiled. "Of course not." He passed over a white card with a pair of concentric circles imprinted on it.

McInnis inserted it into his jury-rigged 43NET terminal. "Mm. They don't match our records."

"As they shouldn't," the man agreed. "Mine are up to date, while yours are rather behind."

"This says you're based out of Site-15."

"Not for a long while."

"I take it you don't originate from this reality, then."

"No. I do not."

McInnis pushed the terminal away. "I regret to inform you that the individual to whom these credentials more properly belong has been reported deceased."

The other man nodded. "I had feared as much, but thank you for the confirmation. Have you seen any survivors from Site-15?"

"I have not," McInnis admitted. "There may not have been any. What happened there was… thorough."

"Well, I wouldn't have had much use for my other self anyway. The question, sir, is this: do you have a use for me?"

McInnis considered. "That depends on what you're here to offer."

"Counsel on the nature of your reality."

"And in return?"

"This isn't a transaction. We serve the same cause."

"The Foundation in this timeline has essentially been destroyed. I'm heading a sort of… second iteration."

"I wasn't referring to the Foundation, writ small. I was referring to the Coalition."

McInnis felt his eyes widen by millimetres. "Do you represent them?"

The other man nodded. "I'm authorized to develop my own impressions of your situation, and convey them as part of a potential membership review."

"You most certainly have my attention."

"I am presently under the impression that your timeline is unstable, derived as it is from an unprecedented and very messy temporal event."

"Of course."

"I am also unconvinced that your goals and methods fully align with the Coalition's. You have deviated significantly from the modus operandi you inherited from your former Overseers."

"And I intend further deviations. The way we once operated was shaped by decades of practice developed in service of a wide variety of goals, not all of them remotely noble. This is a chance to begin from scratch, from first principles."

"Admittedly the Foundation has little claim to be principled, considering some of its methods, but still. Your membership in the Multi-Foundation Coalition is at risk here."

"We haven't heard a word from them since the initial event took place. So far as I was concerned, we had either been rendered inaccessible or abandoned. I'm not sure what purpose is served by swooping in once we've begun putting the pieces back together, and telling us we're not playing by the rules. Those rules were made for a different game." He remembered Mukami's harangue on the topic of that particular turn of phrase, and chose not to examine it further. Yet.

"On a multiversal scale," the TAD man told him, "what happened here was essentially without significance."

McInnis steepled his fingers on the blotter. "I weigh my actions on a human scale."

"Then let's address that level of gravity, shall we? Your timeline is distinguished from all others on record to an exceedingly high degree over the past year. That's good. That means it's more likely to survive as an independent entity. That means the people who haven't already died have a chance of not winking out of existence."

"That would be my preference," McInnis nodded.

"Then you need to continue to distinguish yourselves. Make meaningful alterations to this world. The honest multiverse, if I might slight your timeline a little, doesn't need to worry about things like that. Their niches in the frame are built-in. You're piggybacking. You need to make a niche of your own, or the spin will fling you off into multiversal space, where you will either be lost or obliviated."

"Are you now counselling me to further deviate from existing protocol? That's a startling turn."

The other man leaned back again. "I judged your resolve. I judge it strong. I've seen your people, and they're also strong. I think you have a real opportunity to create something lasting here, and as a representative of the multiversal collective, I'd like to see that happen. We're stronger the more of us there are."

"When we're aligned towards a common purpose."

A slight incline of the head. "On that topic, there is one piece of information I require from you, if I might be so bold. Do you know why all of this is happening?"

McInnis considered. He gave his best guess.

"Ah," the other man smiled. "Very good. Yes, I think you're certainly on the right track. Continue to pursue that line of thinking, painful though it is, and I think it will work out for the best. For everyone. Eyes on the big picture, you know? Apotheosis is a tricky business, but we can navigate it using the same conceptual toolkit we use for all of our other conceptual conundrums."

He wasn't entirely sure he knew what most of that meant. The man was certainly eager, and perhaps earnest, but at the moment he was talking over McInnis' head. He had the unsettling feeling that this was entirely purposeful, which erased his final doubts that this fellow was who he said he was. DTA agents were typically long-suffering but practical. TAD agents were almost universally daft, in that special way reserved for geniuses floating out into the noospheric ocean.

"To answer your unasked question," the man continued, "some day, perhaps, the Coalition will change their tune. But they'll need someone to show them the way. A leader."

"I'm a poor choice for the role I've already stumbled into. Leading a multiversal alliance for change may be beyond my capabilities."

"If there's one thing I've learned across all these timelines, it's that hardship makes everything possible. When the heat is on, you can forge yourself into all manner of useful tools."

McInnis paused. "I am assembling a tool set as we speak, in point of fact. I'd find it rather helpful to have someone of your expertise among them."

The other man looked suddenly uncertain. "I don't know how much longer I can stick around. The window of opportunity may be closing, and I've learned pretty much all I need."

"An advisory position, then." McInnis pulled the terminal back into typing distance. "I have just the thing."

26 November

"The Earth, our home, has been levelled. A Foundation is needed now more than ever."

Harry nodded cheerfully. "Make sure to include that in the press release."

McInnis rolled his eyes. "Every regional command has fallen. Every major facility has gone dark. Every Overseer is dead. There will be survivors out there, and we will need to bring them back into the fold. Because we are the shepherds of this organization now — there is no higher authority, and no other contingency plan."

They were all there with him again, sitting around the table. A panel of the wisest, most resourceful, most passionate and trustworthy individuals he had ever known. The play-gods were all dead. The next chapter was finally beginning.

"I thought this was a Chairs and Chiefs meeting," Veiksaar said, "but that doesn't explain half the people here." Melissa wasn't a Chair of anything yet, though she was expected to replace Anastasios Mataxas for R&E; the shock of the last big memetic shakeup had been too much for his aged heart. Bremmel's Section had never been formed in this timeline. Lillian was still under Euler's purview, and Euler wasn't here for no reason which had yet been adequately explained. Reynders was joining them via video conference, and as far as Harry knew her full security clearance had never been restored.

"I have asked you here," McInnis explained, "because I will have need of sound counsel going forward, and promises from each of you that I shall have unfettered access to it. You are each invaluable to the success of this endeavour, and I wish to formalize our arrangement. You are, I must now stress, the fifteen most vital members of my staff. With the monumental tasks ahead of us, thirteen would simply not be enough."

For a moment, Harry thought his head had exploded.

McInnis kept speaking. "Those of you who are Section heads, I will require you to name deputies to act in your stead whenever you are absent in order to preserve the security of your identities. They will need to be informed of the true nature of this arrangement, of course, and will therefore act as your proxies in this room whenever required."

"You can't do this." Nascimbeni pushed back his chair and stood up in one rough motion. "You don't have the authority."

"Wait," said Harry. His mind was whirling. Melissa was sitting ramrod-straight in her chair, eyes even glassier than usual. Lillian looked thunderstruck. Sokolsky was grinning.

"I have every authority," McInnis replied coolly. "Every single kind."

"Wait," said Harry again.

"What's going on?" Zwist looked bewildered.

"I'm not even a doctor yet!" Udo wailed.

"Sir." Elstrom stood as well. "If we're going through with this, a formal declaration is required by the code of conduct."

"Thank you," Harry growled. Melissa stared at him, mouth open.

"Quite so, thank you Karen. I knew I chose my Governor well." McInnis joined them at his feet. "I stand before you as Administrator. My predecessor, the Founder, knew the duty of guiding this vast organization was too difficult and complex for any one being to bear alone. He therefore chose a council of surrogates to manage its affairs in certain key arenas; I am now nominating you as their successors. Friends, barring any irreconcilable objections, I wish to elevate each of you to the post of Overseer and inaugurate the first O5 Council of the New Foundation. Will you serve?"

Harry took the roll call, and entered it into the minutes.

The O5 Council

O5-1: All Sections Chief (Chair)

O5-2: Harold Blank (Archivist)

O5-3: Karen Elstrom (Governor)

O5-4: Trevor Bremmel (Practician)

O5-5: Melissa Bradbury (Liaison)

O5-6: Eileen Veiksaar (Operator)

O5-7: Delfina Ibanez (Combatant)

O5-8: Lillian Lillihammer (Advisor)

O5-9: Ilse Reynders (Oracle)

O5-10: Noè Nascimbeni (Humanist)

O5-11: Udo Okorie (Thaumiel)

O5-12: Thilo Zwist (Everyman)

O5-13: Nhung Ngo (Mediator)

O5-14: Brenda Corbin (Theologian)

O5-15: Daniil Sokolsky (Contrarian)

He also recorded the first responses to the Administrator's request. Daniil Sokolsky responded in the affirmative the instant the question was posed. Thilo Zwist required an extensive explanation of precisely what was being asked of him. Harry and Melissa shared a long, meaningful look before agreeing in tandem.

Lillian Lillihammer waited until she knew which role she'd been given before agreeing.

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