"We get it, Noemi." Landen bowed his head obligingly and tailed 
after Noemi, holding the door open for Ari as he did. 


From a glance, Landen could tell just what Noemi's girlfriend did for 
her day job. The apartment was littered with the same artistic 
detritus that cluttered Ari's home in Chicago, most of them test runs 
instead of failed final products — a Rubik's tesseract on the beaten- 
iron coffee table, a few stress balls strewn about the floor that 
exploded and promptly reformed when Ari walked too close. 
Arguably the whole house looked like an experiment in style, albeit 
one that worked. 


Noemi motioned for them to sit on a transparent couch that looked 
like it'd been carved out of a single lick of glass but felt like it was 
made of cotton candy, and headed off to one of the rooms upstairs. 
A few moments of staring at the rickety ceiling fans later and she 
returned, now properly dressed and holding a bottle of pills and a 
chunky plastic thing that looked like a projector's weird aunt. 


She unceremoniously dropped it into Ari's lap, earning a yelp from 
him as she cleared the table of detritus to reveal an outlet in its 
surface. "Plug it in," she added, uncapping the bottle of pills. 


When the plug was in, Landen ventured to say something: "So, what 
are you-" 


"Following the money," Noemi snapped, downing two of the little 
capsules and dropping on the couch beside Ari. "Hit the switch, 
Perkowitz?" 


Ari obliged and on the wall opposite the couch, a butterfly-shaped 
projection of the Earth began to take shape. The projector emitted a 
high beeping noise like a dial-up modem and Noemi's eyelids 
snapped open, revealing eyes of solid silver. 


Noemi turned to face him with eerie smoothness, and Ari couldn't 
help but shrink back a bit when faced with those unblinking eyes. 
"Pass me the evidence bag." 


He gingerly pressed it into her upturned palm. As it made contact, 
four needle-thin beams of light shot from the head of the queen and 


began converging slowly, each crawling across the map and 
growing brighter as it wandered inexorably towards its home, 
somewhere in- 


"New Mexico?" Landen murmured under his breath. 


Before they could meet at a point, however, Noemi let out a 
strangled yelp and shut her eyes as if she'd just looked out of a 
window and come face-to-face with the Sun: metallic tears began to 
roll down her face as she wiped a surprisingly large sheen of sweat 
off her brow. 


Ari quickly moved over to support her as she sank into the couch, 
the projection and all with it fading out of existence as she did. "You 
alright?" 


"Albuquerque," Noemi blurted, "South side, warehouse by Holly 
Avenue-" 


"Not alright. Not alright, then. Landen, get her the coffee, she needs 
energy." 


"No, dammit, I'm fine." She waved Landen off as he was midway to 
bringing the coffee mug to her face, and busied herself with wiping 
the reflective tears from eyes. Eyelids twitching, she refocussed on 
something in this plane of existence and grunted. "Feedback loop." 


"Wait, hang on- feedback from what?" Landen asked. 


She tapped the chess piece through the bag. "Your lead's owner. 
I'm assuming you know how scrying functions, yes?" 


Ari spoke up. "Part affects the whole. If something's been in contact 
with you or it's important enough to you that it'd be metaphorically 
part of you, Noemi could use it to find you." 


"Reductive, but accurate enough." Noemi began to massage her 
forehead, sinking back into the couch. "The more of 'you' something 
has on it, the easier it is to find you with it. This-" She pointed at the 
bag. "-has so much of its owner on it that it was almost impossible 
not to know where they were. I'm good, but you know how hard it is 
to get city-level accuracy across dimensions?" 


"Well then, that makes this whole thing pretty open-and-shut, 
doesn't it?” Ari said wryly. 


"Unfortunately not." Noemi grimaced. "That's only one explanation 
for why the signal's so strong: the more likely one is that this is 
waffle." 


"Magic Eggos?" Landen asked, a trace of hope in his voice. 


"| wish. No, it's something that magically pretends to be you, throws 
a wizard off your actual 'scent’. Like running through a cologne 
factory to shake off drug dogs." 


"Of course. The one lead we have and it's a double-blind." Ari 
grimaced, folding his arms over his chest and chewing resignedly at 
his lip. 


"That's the most likely possibility at the moment. Somehow | think 
your culprit would be a bit more careful than to leave something as 
damning as this at the scene of a crime, no?" Noemi pursed her lips 
in thought and spent a few moments contemplating a section of the 
wall, before glancing over to Landen and promptly swatting him on 
the shoulder. "Is this really the time to play with your phone?" 


"The lead might've been a double-blind, but it might still be worth 
something." Landen stuffed his phone back into his pocket and 
motioned for them to head out, face drawn and lips a grim line. "We 
need to get back to the branch office- the Skippers have a situation 
in Ohio." 


Five minutes earlier in the hellish backwater of Sandusky, Ohio, 
someone had just finished desecrating a grave. 


The process was about as messy as you could have guessed, 
knowing that the final resting place in question was a room deep 
within the bowels of a Foundation site. By the time the robber in 
question finally prised open the stainless-steel coffin her arms had 
been thoroughly basted in an elbow-deep mix of blood and 
cerebrospinal fluid. Only about half of it was hers — well, she had 
recycled some from her earlier victims to make up for the occasional 


bullet wound she sustained, but at that point it was mostly splitting 
hairs. 


She grunted as she lifted the recently-separated cover off the coffin 
and roughly tossed it to the side, the metal cover smashing against 
the wall of the cool room with a heavy clang. After a quick glance at 
the entrance of the room to make sure nobody was in any state to 
do anything about the noise, she peered into the coffin with a critical 
eye and examined the body. 


The Warrior's body looked like it had been frozen in the moment of 
death, the only sign that time had even passed for it being the fact 
that its cheek had stopped being plasma and started being solid 
matter once more. She nodded mutely as her eyes ran down its 
length, confirming once more that all the necessary parts were still 
intact and in place — when every point in her mental checklist was 
satisfied, she set down the bag of tools slung round her shoulder 
and took out a wicked hacksaw the length of her arm. 


Marking out the cut she needed with the blood that had congealed 
on her finger, she took a deep breath in and began the process of 
disassembling divinity. 


Everyone knew how simple it was to steal from the gods. 


What the Foundation didn't know was how simple it was to steal the 
god itself. 


Next: TBA 


Abstract Naught 


«Previously» 


An impossibility floated in the center of the decrepit room. Agent 
Danyal's eyes were fixed on it, ignoring the rusted paratech and 
concept-modifying devices around him. The sphere was colorless, if 
it could even be considered a sphere. Not white, not black, not 
transparent. It was the silhouette of a nonexistent color. His eyes 
turned to a wooden sign propped against a tangle of circuitry. 


WARNING: DO NOT TOUCH! 
DESCENDED 


Drips of water from the pipes above had stained it, creating a stream 
of red paint that pooled on the floor. Luckily for the investigation it 
was still legible, though the many identical carvings and placards on 
the walls would've been good substitutes. 


He scratched a small itch next to his right eye, his finger passing 
through a translucent doctor's eyepiece that rested on it. 


"So Danyal, any idea on what this is?" Agent Chester strolled into 
the room, eyeing the enigma. His brown hair was tinged with gray 
and his face wrinkled. 


"Working on it." 


The eyepiece focused on the silhouette and Danyal waited. 
Ennoiatheama, he called it. The ability to comprehend conceptual 
details. Normal objects were far too detailed to be understood 
without the risk of seizure, but basic conceptual structures — such 
as the eyepiece — had the absolute minimum information required 
for existence. The eyepiece stared, yet no data was retrieved. He 
hadn't collapsed to the ground, confirming that it was conceptual, 
but there had to be some information. The eyepiece focused again. 
The spherical appearance had to be in the details, even if there was 


Interviewer: Do you know what he meant by that? 


Agent M __ : Yeah, he went on about how everyone he 
ever showed the photo to could hear things. | asked if he 
did too and he said no, then he reaches to take it back. 
This is when the incident occurred. He says, "No, son, 
it's deemed you unworthy, give it here," and | told him in 
no strong words | was leaving with it, even mentioned 
the briefcase of money I'd brought, but he wasn't having 
it. He goes, "I've watched men burn to death because 
they weren't worthy. Give it to me now." He lunges at 
me, knocks over my chair. Real strong for an old guy. 


[Pause for eleven seconds.] 
Interviewer: Please, continue. 


Agent M ~ :!Ididn't... There was no prior intel the guy 
was a skip himself, or he'd have been coming back with 
me too. I'd have followed protocol, called in my team. But 
with the voices in my head, the photo | couldn't let go of, 
and there was fire coming out of his eyes and off his bald 
— | just panicked, okay? I've been doing this for years, 
but | just freaked the hell out! Drew my weapon, fired, 
what, three times, four? 


Interviewer: The record indicates three shots. 


Agent M — :1!don't remember. Anyway, | immediately 
called it in, grabbed the envelope and left the house. | 
was also feeling really hot, even though it was pretty 
cold, March in New England and all. 


Interviewer: Is this when the house ignited? 


Agent M _ : [Pause for five seconds.] Yeah. By the time 
I'm outside, there's smoke coming out the roof. Once my 
team shows up and pries my fingers off the skip, the 
whole thing's in flames. We had to stand way back... | 
couldn't help standing back. | didn't want to be anywhere 
near it. [Pause for three seconds.] Doc, | saw the 


nothing else. No data was retrieved. 
"Well, it... It doesn't have any concepts," Danyal said. 
"Wait, so this is something like CNC?" 


"No paradoxical concepts in this. This has no concepts at all. If my 
parts are working right, though." 


"_..But it still exists." 
"Hm." 


They both stood, thinking about the situation. If a concept was 
necessary for existence, things that were conceptually null shouldn't 
physically or informationally be in reality. Based on the basking 
shark incidents the most that should be present would be a thin 
outline, a sign of what was lacking in reality. Yet there was no 
outline. It was a colorless nothing. 


"So, how dangerous could this be?" 


"No idea." He noticed a thin informational glow around the nothing's 
edges. He focused, but it was too small to rationalize. Too small to 
rationalize without being centimeters away from the nothing. "The 
Associates didn't like it." 


"Crazed cultists have picky tastes. Could just be the opposite of their 
ideal conceptual purity." Chester grabbed the rusted end of a broken 
lever, once used to open a now busted power box. "Danyal?" 


Danyal looked away from the nothing. "What?" 

Chester pointed to the lever, then to the nothing. "Shall 1?" 
"Throw it in?" 

"Mhmm." 

They both looked back at the signs. "Too risky," Danyal replied. 


"Alright." He dropped the lever. "I'll look through this area and you 


can continue working in the main room. Testing and existential 
debates come later." 


Danyal nodded. 


The steel panels where Chester's sideburns should've been opened 
up and released a myriad of communication devices, small enough 
to fit in the skull with room to spare. "Agent Chester Romero 
reporting, Floor -1, Room 4..." 


Danyal walked into a hallway and Chester's conversation faded out. 
He was preoccupied with the informational glow. If it was part of the 
nothing it would've appeared in the data on it, so it had to be caused 
by the nothing. He'd been taught that this was impossible, and that 
anything within a universe had to be conceptual. Was it wrong? If 
vacuums can exist in nature, can an ontological vacuum exist? A 
hole in the real? 


The hallway almost felt stuffier than the room he'd left; perhaps the 
dim lighting and close walls were to blame. An unusual breeze blew 
by him and into that room. Something metallic rattled in the distance. 
He briefly adjusted his black suit and tie. As stylish as the uniform 
was, UIU investigations rarely left it unscathed. Danyal had the 
feeling that this would be one of those times. There was another 
metallic rattling. 


"Agent Danyal Vahid," his intercom announced. "Report to Room 1, 
Floor- oh hey. Over." 


Agent Valarie Dell, wearing an androgynous uniform with short red- 
dyed hair, waved from a bend in the hallway. Next to their feet was a 
bullet-ridden autoturret, leftover from the UIU raid on the building. 
They idly flicked their hand. The turret rattled and spun, the machine 
gun barrel clacking against the wall. 


"What is it?" Danyal asked. 


"Something's come up in the main room. They think you're qualified 
for it." 


"Aren't there other metaphysics researchers here?" 


"They're all smooching with that giant machine on Floor -4 and 
nobody wants to interrupt their fun," Val said, smirking. 


Danyal sighed. 


Both of them began walking down the hallway and toward the main 
room. The air gradually became fresher. 


"Am | just a backup metaphysics researcher now?" 


"What, you didn't get the memo? You're the new Metaphysics 
Department head researcher, all agent duties gone! All you'll do now 
is just stick your head in concepts and say what happens." 


Danyal continued to blankly stare ahead, and it became clear that 
he was preoccupied. Val went quiet. The informational glow, the 
sole clue to the nothing puzzle, kept dancing around every possible 
explanation. The only certainty was the involvement of the 
Associates of Apotheosis. It was impossible that a conceptual 
abnormality could exist in this building without their involvement. 


The two passed through a broken doorway and entered the main 
chamber of Floor -1, the first basement of the former Apotheosis 
HQ. 


Rows of lights hung from the ceiling and illuminated the scuffed 
floor. Officers patrolled the area, rummaging through compartments 
hidden in walls, filled with illegal paratech, and pulling off fake 
concrete panels in search of more. A priest lined up a portable 
projector, preparing to exorcise the demon locking a vault. However, 
the center of attention was a large steel contraption that ran along 
the northern wall, resembling a particle accelerator that had been 
shrunken then partially lodged in the floor. Multiple computers jutted 
out of the sides, one of which had a police android's finger wires 
embedded in it — slowly breaking encryptions and cracking 
passwords. In the middle of the device was the all too familiar 
symbol of the Associates of Apotheosis — a dot in the middle of a 
line in a circle on the face of a cube — some metaphor for 
conceptual ascension. A golem stood nearby and waited for orders. 


"Sooo, are you curious at all about why | called you?" 


"Oh," His eyes snapped back to reality. "What is it?" 
"| was over with some of the cops inspecting the machine and..." 


The exorcist's chants filled the background like the ambient chatter 
of a radio. 


"...and we saw this small dot that seemed to have no color." 
Danyal froze. "Translucent, black, or?" 
"Nothing that looked like color."