Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Rhadamanthus is the jewel of the Orbital Ring, a state of the art facility hundreds of billions of dollars in the making. The bill, footed jointly by Coalition governments' taxpayers and Aoidos' abundant patrons, has proved a worthwhile investment. Technology advances at a more rapid pace in Rhadamanthus than anywhere else along the Orbital Ring, let alone on Earth. While the world below struggled with flatscreens and transportation, Rhadamanthus was prototyping hologram projectors and experimenting with teleportation. Yet for all its innovation, some things had not changed. While Earth was overrun with cell towers and smartphones, most people in Elysium lacked even a flip phone, with Aoidos continuing to distribute pagers. Rhadamanthus has progressed along a different vector than the world below, and for good reason. It is held in the air by something that numerous organizations and governments on Earth covet: the Conduit itself. 

Thus Rhadamanthus, in its position as most valuable and most vulnerable, is governed by the most restrictive security policies in existence. Every communication is considered at risk for interception, all storage is considered at risk of intrusion. Aoidos keeps a firm grip on the distribution of personal devices, requiring the acceptance of pages and pages of legalese for the appropriate clearance to get them. Most prefer to use public options- terminals, landlines- rather than go through the trouble. Everyone is highly aware that any additional signals could interfere with the ones used by the Trinity Processor to control their defense systems, a risk very few are willing to take. The station faces enough threats as it is, and each one is meticulously tracked and evaluated, from the ramblings on social media sites buoyed by trending tags to the tides of demands presented to the Coalition. And those that escalate to violence are soundly neutralized. 

Normally, those threats stay outside. A bit of rumbling, rarely some rocking. Get too close to the walls and the roar of battle is often audible, though not loud enough to reach much further. Rhadamanthus, and thus its sparkling city of Elysium nestled beneath its dome, is ultimately safer than anywhere on Earth, thanks to the tireless efforts of the Trinity Processor and its Artifices harnessing the Conduit's power. For now all the circuits and wires operate at near perfect efficiency, carrying all required communications across and through and around Rhadamanthus, a system so well-designed by both man and machine that it hasn't experienced an outage since that fateful day of the Aegis test, nearly five years ago. 

For now. 

It is Tuesday morning in Rhadamanthus, and Kallian Antiqua is bracing himself for another day. He was up too late last night talking to both of his parents- though not at the same time, of course- and now coffee is his only hope of survival. The machine takes its sweet time brewing the bitter drink, and Kallian goes over the conversations in his head, building a list of tasks for the day. He did himself no favors being late, not just because he has less time, but because now he is stuck with the office swill. Normally he stops at the cafe in the lobby below, but the line was far too long for him to lose more time. By the time the pot finishes brewing, he has filled two pages with notes on all the tasks he has today, and he nearly overfills his cup while reviewing it. He forces himself to drink enough to allow some room for his usual cream and sugar, wincing at the taste. It's only slightly improved when he sticks a lid on it to take back to his desk. 

When he gets to his office, there is a girl in a blue dress waiting near his door. He can't remember her name until he spots it on her security badge- Abby. Her face is taut with worry, in stark contrast to the beaming smile on her ID, and she skirts around why she's here until Kallian asks her to be frank. 

"Something's weird with some of the computers," she says. "There's a part of the screen that doesn't work."

"Again?" This is not the first time someone in his department has raised such an issue. There was another last week, and twice the week before that as well. It's been happening intermittently since August, maybe late July. The technicians always say not to worry about it, that there's just been a run of defective screens of late. Kallian's raised issues about it, but nobody thinks it's worth investigating further. Screens are cheap, after all. If it was one of those hologram projectors, then they'd be worried. 

She nods. "We already called tech support to look, but they just said it's that hardware glitch again. All the diagnostics look fine, but sometimes it's slow for no reason. They said it's nothing, but..."

But the systems are flawless, supposedly. There are no flukes on Rhadamanthus, none that shouldn't trigger thorough investigation. For the technicians to be so dismissive makes him suspect that his team is not alone in experiencing this issue, and that worries him more than anything. He's used to the trials and tribulations of hardware failures- bad connectors, broken plugs, to say nothing of the aforementioned screens- but system slowness is another thing. Even if the explanation is mundane, it should still be given, at a level of detail certainly more specific than "nothing" at least. 

Kallian thinks back to his long discussions with his father last night, of all the preparations to do before the anniversary. It is still over a month away, and yet key details are still in flux. The last thing he needs is for something to go wrong in the meantime, something to prove that this station hasn't learned from its mistakes. It has been almost five years since there has been an outage of any kind in any Aoidos system, and Kallian does not want that record to run out right before his father and all his fellow heads of state from all the nations of the Coalition arrive and discover this place isn't the paradise Aoidos claims it to be. 

He takes a long sip from his coffee, already used to its disappointing taste. It is not even midmorning and his day has already gone awry. At this rate, his afternoon will be neverending. "All right," Kallian says. "Let's have a look."

It is Tuesday morning in Rhadamanthus, and Shulk is the last in the classroom to receive his calculator this year. This is typical, due to his last name being at the end of the alphabet, but today it is a nuisance. He has a mountain of things to do after school, and being last to get his calculator means less time to work on his homework, which means more time having to work on it at home. By the time it's his turn, the bell is already ringing, and Shulk swears his teacher purposefully checks the serial number multiple times as she logs it. She takes so long that he nearly yanks it out of her hand, eager to be on his way, but she stops him before he can run off. "No funny business on this one," she says. "New models this year anyway."

Shulk could already tell- this one feels different in his hands. He slides off the cover and runs his fingers over the buttons- sin, cos, tan, e^x, log- but only presses one of them: on. He gets a slight static shock as the UI appears, looking only slightly different from what he remembers on the old one. A good sign. "Sorry," he says. "I won't." They both know he is lying, but Shulk races out of the room to meet his friends before she can say anything else. The rest of his day passes too slowly, with lunch being the only period where he's not agonizing over his after school to-do list, and that's only because Fiora is there to commiserate. 

By the time he's walking home with Reyn and Fiora, Shulk keeps the calculator in his hands to fidget with, sliding the cover in its groove as he listens to his friends chat. His thoughts are more on the device than the conversation, musing about how much effort it will take to get games on it this year. New model or not, it still had a USB port, and it was unlikely there had been many updates to the software. Most UI changes were purely artificial, just a fresh coat of paint if anything. 

The biggest challenge would be keeping it a secret better than he had in the spring. Installing unauthorized software on an Aoidos device was a serious offense, but one he'd gotten away with for the small price of explaining how he did it. Not that he had been entirely truthful- that would have gotten him, and others, into far greater trouble- but they'd believed him and let him off with a warning. If he'd been cheating, there would have been real consequences, but it wasn't like he was the first to try to play games on his calculator. Shulk still remembers being in elementary school and hearing the older students compare high scores on his walks home. 

Fiora finally pulls him out of his thoughts, annoyed by his disinterest in their discussion. She gives him an earful that he offers a few halfhearted apologies for. She's mostly forgiven him by the time they reach their apartment building, just in time for them to check the mail. Fiora and Shulk both have letters waiting for them, the ones they'd spent all day expecting. Shulk nearly opens his, almost unable to resist, but a glare from Fiora stops him. They wave to Reyn as they head back outside and across the street. 

At each of four points marking the compass rose grid lines of Elysium, there is a tree, and an associated green space. Each is called Outlook Park, designated by which direction it signifies. Shulk and Fiora live near the western one, and have been visiting it all their lives. They find their favorite bench near the hyacinth bushes and sit, staring at the envelopes in their hands. Shulk reads his full name over and over again. It's strange, seeing it in this font, running his fingers over the official seal of Aoidos on the back. 

Ever since he was small and first saw the stars outside Rhadamanthus, Shulk has dreamed of working for Aoidos. It is the most coveted employer in the world, with every position only filled by the best and the brightest. Often those best and brightest are sourced from its own university, located in Elysium and itself only admitting the best and the brightest. The high standards make for a competitive evaluation process, further complicated by the fact that both Orbital Ring residents and those still on Earth may apply. There's no evidence of bias either; Shulk has seen plenty of older students mope after being rejected. But that never stops the rumors. 

"You go first," Fiora says. "We already know you're getting in."

"Not for sure," Shulk says. 

Fiora sighs. "Shulk. Of course you're getting in. Even if you weren't a genius, with who your dad is-"

"That doesn't matter," Shulk says. "If it did, you'd be getting in easy too."

"Maybe you're right," she says. "Just open it."

Shulk breaks the seal and pulls out the letter. It doesn't take him long to find the decision. "I got in," he says, grinning at her. 

"Told you," Fiora says. "My turn." She opens her envelope and scans the page inside. Her face falls. 

Shulk waits, not sure what to say, but she stays silent as her eyes slide down the rest of the page. "Did you... not get in?"

"No," Fiora says. She falls back against the bench and lets the paper fall into her lap. She groans as she stares up at the dome. "What am I going to do? I don't have any family down there after my parents died. Do you think one of the other stations would take me?"

"I think it's worth applying," Shulk says. "It's not too late. And even if it was..." He looks up at the dome too. "Maybe going down there won't be so bad. It's been peaceful lately."

Neither of them speak for a few moments, listening to the sounds of the city. There's a faint hum of cars and bustle, and the faint stir of the wind pushed by the fans hidden up above to make the park feel more realistic. No rumbles, no rocking, no roaring from outside the dome. For a few moments, they almost feel like they're on Earth. Not that they have very many reference points for what that feels like. School field trips down the Beanstalk are exceptionally rare, and have been almost nonexistent since the Aegis test. Shulk finds the projected sun making its way toward the edge of the dome. It's not quite bright enough not to look at, like the real one is on Earth. 

"It's been nice," Fiora says. "I hope every day can be like this, always. But tomorrow we'll probably hear about some new threat."

"You're probably right." Every year, ahead of the anniversary, several rebel factions post ultimatums to Aoidos and the Coalition. Surrender the Conduit, or else. The threats varied in their severity, but none of them were ever enough to knock the Orbital Ring out of the sky. The Artifices would assemble, often able to predict the enemies' formation so precisely that battles ended before they really began. Fighter jets sent plummeting back to Earth before hitting escape velocity. Warheads knocked off course and sent spinning out over the poles. The Artifices were merciless to threats against the Orbital Ring and the Beanstalk. Everything else is outside their concern. It was why nobody, in any station in the Orbital Ring, wanted to leave. Yet not everyone could stay. 

Shulk stands, startling a blackbird out of the nearby tree. It's that funny one with the blue eyes he always sees in the park. "I need to start on my homework."

Fiora tucks her letter back into her envelope and follows him back across the street into the apartment building. Reyn is waiting for them in the lobby still, and watches their faces closely. Shulk gives his news, prompting Reyn to jump into celebrating, but once Fiora delivers hers, he visibly deflates. "And here I was gonna suggest we all go out for ice cream to celebrate," he says.

"We can still go," Fiora says. "I don't mind."

"Not today though," Shulk says. "Mountain of work today."

"Mean Ms. Mustard at it again?" Reyn says. "Tomorrow, then."

Reyn tries to cheer Fiora up in the elevator, but his jokes mostly land flat, with Fiora sullen and silent until the doors open for the third floor. "You won't forget to eat?" she says, just as Shulk makes to leave. He lives lower on a lower floor than both of them, although his father could easily afford something much higher up with a better view. Fiora and Reyn both live higher up, and Reyn's father was only a security officer. But Shulk's father had lived in his apartment since he first starting working in Elysium, before Shulk was even born, and furthermore, he didn't want to waste any more time getting home than he had to. Not that he ever came home to begin with. 

"I won't," Shulk says. 

"I can bring something down for you-"

"Don't worry about it," he says. "Dickson will probably be over anyway. See you tomorrow."

Fiora still looks worried as the elevator doors shut, but she gives a friendly wave. Shulk makes his way to his door and does, in fact, find Dickson inside, doing dishes in the kitchen. "Did you let these sit over the weekend, boy?" he asks, holding up a plate with a mustard glob crusted on its edge. 

"Sorry," Shulk says. "He not coming home tonight?"

Dickson shakes his head. "He's giving a lecture to some interns, and then he's got some presentation with a Coalition legislature. You know how he is."

Shulk does. He has all his life. His father is Professor Klaus himself, senior researcher on the Conduit, tutor to the Trinity Processor AIs, one of the longest tenured employees of Aoidos in Rhadamanthus, and general workaholic. Klaus' schedule has rarely overlapped with Shulk's, and over the past year, Shulk's hardly seen him at all. He hadn't even bothered to be home for Shulk's birthday back in the summer, though he had left a card and a cupcake on the table the morning of. Shulk had passed it off to Reyn since it wasn't even a flavor he liked. "Thanks," Shulk says now. "I'll be in my room."

"Not so fast, kid," Dickson says. "Might want to check the table before you get lost in your homework."

Shulk grins and checks, edging past Dickson at the sink to reach the nook designated as dining room. "You found one." On the table is a part that Shulk has been asking after for quite some time: a quad core processor. 

"Found, he says, like I didn't have to fudge a stack of paperwork for nobody to miss that." Dickson grumbles, but fondly enough that Shulk knows not to take offense. Every bit of machinery in Rhadamanthus is catalogued, down to individual blades in cooling fans. Dickson's job in engineering allows him access to plenty of computer parts, but it takes a great deal of work to ensure that no one will miss them. Complicating the issue is how rarely parts break down severely enough to be replaced; repair is always the preferred method, with the supply chain issues plaguing the surface, since it's nearly impossible to arrange for anything to be brought to space, even without all the bureacratic forms and authorizations. It's a miracle Dickson has been able to bring any computer parts to Shulk at all, so Shulk makes sure to thank him, and Dickson, being Dickson, shrugs it off. "As long as you're not using it to get into trouble," he says with a wink. 

"No, of course not," Shulk says, grinning. "I'll be in my room."

"Have fun," Dickson says. "By the way, Klaus sends his congratulations on your acceptance."

Shulk pauses, surprised. "He heard already?"

"Word always gets around about which Elysium kids get in," Dickson says. "Especially when they don't. Galea was particularly snappish today."

Shulk stills at that. His father works closely with Fiora's aunt, to their mutual discomfort. Growing up, Shulk  had to endure complaints about his father secondhand from Fiora, because Galea thinks Klaus is an arrogant prick and Shulk finds it hard to defend him, since he can't exactly disagree. Every spat ends with Fiora hastily reassuring Shulk with "but you're great, Shulk, really, nothing like him at all," and Shulk nods and pretends everything is good between them. Because it is, but it made enduring his father's complaints about Galea, when he used to hear those, even more frustrating. If anything, Klaus' extended absences has made this part of Shulk's life easier. 

Sometimes Shulk finds Fiora's brother, Dunban, in the physical therapy rooms and asks for advice. Dunban just shakes his head at the whole thing. "Aunt Galea is welcome to her opinions, and Fiora is welcome to share those with you," he would say. "It's certainly not my place to intervene." Shulk doesn't agree with this either, but then again, Dunban has enough problems to deal with. On his way out of the clinic Shulk can't help but flex his right hand from flat to fist slowly then more quickly, wondering at all the tendons and nerves and bones that work together to allow this simple action, one that Dunban struggles with every day. Dunban's status provides invaluable research opportunity to the biomedical teams that is then passed on to engineering and development, but the circumstances...

"All right, Shulk?"

Dickson's voice breaks Shulk out of his thoughts. "All set," he says. "Thank you for doing the dishes. I keep forgetting."

"As long as you don't forget about the burgers in the fridge." Dickson smirks at Shulk's surprise. "Knew you weren't listening. I'll see you later, kid."

Dickson heads out the door, and Shulk wavers for a moment, torn between heading straight to his room and having dinner before he forgets. It's not really a tough decision, though. Shulk doesn't bother shutting the door to his room before he reaches his desk and adds the processor to the array of components already there. He's amassed quite a collection over the years, enough for an entire computer, the very one he used to load games onto his calculator last year. Dickson has provided everything, from the screen to the case, and helped Shulk build it as each piece arrived. Shulk lifts the side panel and disconnects the existing processor- a dual core filched from when the accounting department upgraded four years ago- and slides in the new one. He presses the on button, satisfied at the smooth hum resulting from all the parts starting up, then unzips his backpack to pull out his calculator. It shocks him again- strange- as he sets it down on the desk. After he's fetched a USB cord out of his drawer, the boot sequence is done, but he hesitates as his hands hover over the keyboard to log in. Homework first. 

He saves his math homework for last, flying through everything else first. The math takes him longer than he expects- they're finally past the first few weeks of review and getting into new material- and everything on the calculator works as expected. The UI isn't much different, outside of the updated font, and a few operations have swapped buttons. The graphs look a bit sharper. Nothing groundbreaking. He falls into a rhythm, tapping the keys, tapping his pencil, scribbling, crossing out, circling final answers. Humming that song with the chanting and the brass fanfare that his dad really hates. He rushes through the last few problems, figuring he's already gotten enough of them right, then logs into his computer and plugs in the calculator. 

A few moments later, an information box pops up: no driver found. Shulk sighs. Of all the possible obstacles the new model could present, this is the most predictable and the most frustrating. Even if all the internal software is the same, he has to be able to get to it first. Shulk checks the time and debates staying up to try and tackle this project tonight. He has to write the new driver himself, just like everything else, because he can't risk connecting the computer to the Aoidos network. Besides the fact that unauthorized devices are a serious offense alone, there's also the fact that he's been using it to meddle with authorized devices, and then there's the fact that it's made of filched parts, which would cause trouble for Dickson. Sometimes Shulk thinks it was more trouble than it was worth, building his own machine without having to go through Aoidos' rigorous process, but then again, he did use some of his experience working on this project in his admission submission. He's more surprised nobody asked any questions about that part; he'd been more worried about possibly getting in trouble there than whether he'd gotten accepted at all. 

As much as Shulk loves Rhadamanthus, there is an obvious problem with it: it is isolated, and ensures that everyone inside is isolated. For their own protection, supposedly, to keep them safe, in theory. In practice, it was boring. In the absence of electronic communication, they were meant to talk, face-to-face, foster community, all those feel-good things that took up a lot of time and energy. The sort of thing that wore introverts out, who made up the bulk of the scientists living in every station of the Orbital Ring, and yet, many of them had adapted. Some had even flourished. 

And then there were the people like Shulk and his father, who did not. 

It worried him more than he liked, that he was so similar to Klaus in this respect. His father worked long hours, picked up extra whenever he could. Shulk spent his free time working on his little computer project more often than not. Sure, he made time for his friends, but not as much as they made for him. Fiora and Reyn claimed they understood, but he still feels guilty. He's considered building them something, something small, maybe that could be used to communicate. He's heard of the glassy wedge phones that people on Earth use, and then there's his father's pager. Klaus hated the thing and had a bad habit of leaving it out- at first. After Shulk had caught hold of it and tried, unsuccessfully, to pull it apart, he'd been more careful with it. But not after complaining about his son's habit to Dickson, who'd then approached Shulk about what he could get ahold of from engineering. 

Shulk was grateful to have Dickson in his life. He can't understand why Dickson was friends with his father- he knows they're old colleagues but has never gotten more details than that- but was equally glad they stayed close. Without Dickson, Shulk would have never made it so far on this project as he has. 

Shulk glances at the time again, considering the driver issue. Probably not worth it tonight. He decides to play with the function list instead. The programming capabilities of the graphing calculators were assigned were frankly impressive considering the hardware involved. Shulk remembers the first thing he wrote on it- simple conditional statements, nothing fancy- and how it had wowed him. He can't put anything complex on the calculator without using his computer, but he can at least see if there are any new features on the new models that could be useful. 

However, when Shulk accesses the function list, he's surprised to find one is already there. He knows he didn't have to use this feature on his homework, so he can't have forgotten about it. And the calculators are new, and supposed to be subjected to a factory reset every year anyway. Moreover, this one has a strange name. Shulk names his methods according to what they do, formatted like commands. GetSurfaceArea, for example. This one is formatted like a guide. If it did hold instructions on something relevant to using the calculator, he would understand that, but it's not. And putting an instruction manual inside a function list seems unbelievably inefficient. Shulk shifts in his seat as he considers another possibility: that it could be a question instead. 

The method is called HowToReadFacets. 

No, it can't have been him. The name is too vague. He's been so specific with his conventions, opting to separate based on variables and put off refactoring for another day. He doubts very much that he would choose to combine functions like this; even if he could simplify them like this, he'd still want to specify the subject, clarify what the facets are for. 

Maybe this was left from a prior student. No- they're new, brand new, supposedly. Unless they were used elsewhere, before Rhadamanthus. Unlikely, but there's still the factory-reset process, unless this unit is defective somehow? That could explain all the static shocks. Shulk considers disassembling the calculator, even flips it over and runs a finger over the screw holding the backplate, but curiosity gets the better of him to investigate the software rather than the hardware first. He checks the function's definition. Two constants and a variable to the power of 2. Shulk frowns. The presence of the constants is confusing, particularly since they were the same number, except one was negative. So why bother with them? 

He's about to delete the function when it occurs to him that the graph of x squared is a parabola. He switches to the graph function and plugs the values into the table, then views the resulting graph. A smile. A crude one that stretches to infinity, but clear just the same. 

How to read face. 

Shulk considers the extra two letters. Perhaps a file extension improperly excluded? S is common enough in file extensions, being the first letter of script, among other things. He returns to the programming function, deciding to check the function again. But a new problem arises, or more specifically, a new function. There it is at the bottom of the list. 

GetOperatorName. 

It takes one input. Shulk hesitates for less time than is probably wise, but there's a mystery here, and he needs to investigate it. Even if it's against his better judgment. He enters the command with his own name and reads the result. 

Hello Shulk.

Shulk exhales a laugh. As expected. This one is easier to dismiss, just a basic example function, the classic blueprint used across so many computing languages to demonstrate the syntax of inputs and outputs. Sure the method name is atypical, even strange, but maybe that's part of the appeal. One of those ways to make a machine more approachable by pretending it can greet you. That knowing your name was equivalent to knowing you as a person. That's all. 

Except now in the function list there's another addition: GetDeviceName. 

No inputs. Shulk almost checks the definition of it, but hesitates. If there's a bug in the calculator, he can always just reset it, right? What's the harm in running it? So he does, and the function prints out a single line. 

My name is Alvis. 

Chapter Text

It is Wednesday morning in Rhadamanthus and Kallian Antiqua is only slightly less tired than he was yesterday. Which isn't saying much, but at least it's an improvement. He's hoping the day will go more smoothly than yesterday. Abby got her new monitor, the system slowness didn't rear its ugly head again, and he only worked an extra hour or two past end of business. 

He plugs in his laptop and signs in, then waits for his desktop to appear. As his other monitors light up, he notices something strange on his laptop screen: a squat rectangle near the bottom that stays dark. He presses the key for the system menu, watches the list of items appear in a neat window partially obscured by the dark rectangle. He taps the screen a few times, watches the surface flutter. But nothing happens. 

Just his luck, when he had to deal with this same nonsense yesterday. He picks up his phone to call help desk, further annoyed when the automated voice- courtesy of some Face Unit in the call center, no doubt- cheerfully informs him that there are fifteen callers ahead of him. Typical morning rush. He hopes most of them are password issues that the reset process will filter out quickly. 

But no, his bad luck continues. He sits on the phone for so long that his laptop goes back into sleep mode. His other monitors turn dark, and his laptop screen reverts to its Aoidos emblem background. Kallian watches the animation idly, then frowns. 

The entire screen is lit. No rectangular area of darkness. 

He logs back in, but there it is again, blocking out part of his system menu when he presses the appropriate key. He toggles it on and off, then locks the laptop again. The Aoidos emblem appears without issue, the whole screen clear as day. 

Peculiar. 

The phone clicks and another automated voice chirps in his ear. "How may I help you today?"

"I need a technician," Kallian tells it. "A human one."

Shulk is regretting going to school. He should have claimed he was sick. He shouldn't have brought the calculator. He should have claimed he lost it and gotten a new one. 

He has done none of those things. He is at school, he does have the calculator, and he is using it for an assignment. It is that rare day when they are working in pairs, and today his partner is Melia, one of the few students who works as fast as he does. Normally he would keep pace with her easily, but she isn't preoccupied with the idea that her calculator might be sentient, like he is. Probably. He would ask, but he knows how it would sound. He's also exhausted, having stayed up too late fiddling with the calculator, waiting for it to produce another function. He nearly disassembled it, but balked at the thought of having to reassemble it before school the next day. And then he had a hard time sleeping, his mind racing with so many possible explanations that he didn't remember falling asleep. His alarm this morning sounded particularly harsh. 

The most likely explanation? A misplaced Face Unit. Aoidos' dominance in the artificial intelligence sphere is well-known; their expertise on the matter is most evident in the Trinity Processor's very existence, but in no way limited to that. Face Units were endemic across Rhadamanthus, filling roles that could be easily automated, each taught by an algorithm tailored to their duty. Nobody worked as a cashier in Elysium- that was all Face Units, as was the majority of the technical support call center. While everyone loved complaining about their skill at the latter- part of the reason Dickson could get away with nicking computer parts was because they were so easy to fool- only teenagers complained about the former. Those had been coveted starter jobs, being useful more for the experience rather than the money, of course. 

How a Face Unit fit on the calculator was another matter, but Shulk had pulled off some neat tricks developing his games, so it's not impossible. And it certainly wouldn't be impossible for someone related to the original architect of the Face Units, since Shulk's math teacher was none other than Professor Egil's younger sister. While Vanea did help out with research projects still, to his knowledge, teaching had become her primary occupation. It would be just like her to test him like this, maybe intending to catch him in the act after last year. 

He's trying to figure out how to delicately ask his teacher whether she had put spyware on his calculator when Melia finally loses patience enough to comment on his lagging pace on their assignment. "You seem out of sorts today, Shulk."

"Sorry." He looks back at his worksheet and realizes he has no idea which problem they're on. He glances at hers, which is about halfway filled. His is still mostly blank. "Melia, has your calculator done anything strange?"

"Such as?"

"Well..." How to explain? He doubts she would believe him if he told the full truth; Melia isn't the sort to suffer fools and his story isn't very plausible. "They're supposed to be brand new, but mine had some data on it."

Melia looks up from her paper to study his face. "How odd. What sort of data?"

"Functions, mostly." After a moment, he adds, "Fairly basic ones."

"Leftover test data, perhaps," she says. "Perhaps worth mentioning to the teacher, but a reset would clear it out anyway, like they do before our exams."

Shulk nods, but that's exactly what he doesn't want to do. If there is something on his calculator, he wants to figure out what it is. But he won't be able to do that without updating the device driver. And to do that, he might have to disassemble the calculator, which might require disconnecting the battery pack and thus clear the memory anyway, erasing any chance he has of figuring out what's going on. 

Melia is probably right, though. The face graph could be to check the rendering, and the "hello world!" function to check the font. How it could generate them one by one is beyond him, however, and that's not even getting into the fact that it gave him a name.

When the bell rings, Melia is nearly done while his paper is still mostly blank. Groans from the rest of the room indicate that he isn't alone in not finishing. Shulk busies himself with packing his bag, expecting Melia to head off alone as she usually does, but instead she is hovering nearby. Right when Shulk means to ask her about it, she turns to leave, and his question dies on his lips. He isn't even sure what he wanted to say. 

He barely knows what he wants to ask his teacher when he approaches her desk, floundering for something to say. She notices him before he has a sentence formulated. "Something wrong, Shulk?"

"Ah..." He falters, seeing how open her face is. No hint that she suspects anything. If he asked, she would just advise him to reset it, no doubt. "Sorry. Never mind."

Yet it still bothers him through lunch, even as Reyn and Fiora attempt to involve him in their conversations. They mostly talk about what they worked on this morning, however, which keeps his thoughts on his calculator and away from eating. Fiora notices him sliding his food around. "Aren't you hungry?" she asks. 

Shulk nearly tells her that he had a big breakfast, but then remembers that he only grabbed a granola bar on his way out of the apartment this morning. And he didn't have dinner last night either; the hamburgers had gone forgotten in the fridge. "Rough morning, I suppose," he says. 

Fiora scoffs, pointing out that he doesn't even like mushrooms as she lifts his pizza slice from his tray and swaps it for her spare slice of plain cheese. She glares at him until he eats it, slowly, bite by bite, relenting when he finishes. "I bet dear old dad didn't even leave you anything last night."

"Dickson brought me hamburgers," Shulk says. 

"Did you eat them?" When Shulk chooses to take a sheepish sip from his water bottle rather than answer. Fiora rolls her eyes. "You're hopeless. We're still meeting after school, right? Have to make sure you're eating somehow."

"Wasn't the plan just to have ice cream?"

Fiora shrugs. "Better than nothing."

In the afternoon, he tries to focus on his lessons, but his mind keeps straying back to the calculator. Through language and civics, it haunts him, until science closes out the day and gives him a reason to use it again. He goes through the problems without needing to use anything more than the basic commands, but curiosity gets the better of him as the bell rings. He checks on HowToReadFacets. 

The definition has changed. Still the same two constants, but now with an inverted parabola instead. A frowning face. 

"Shulk."

Melia's voice catches him by surprise. Shulk fumbles to slide the calculator back into its cover before she can see what he was doing. "Melia. Can I help you?"

Her eyes follow the calculator into his bag. "I was wondering if you had any after school plans."

"Ah..." Lunch comes back to him. "Yeah, actually, I have. Fiora and Reyn and I are going for ice cream."

"Might I join you?"

"Oh, ah..." 

"Course she can." Reyn slaps a hand on Shulk's shoulder, forcing him to turn around. Fiora is there too, a smile on her face that confirms her approval. "We're celebrating, after all."

"Ah." Melia dons a small smile. "It's that time of year."

"Yeah, I got mine yesterday," Shulk says. "Did you apply too, Melia?"

Melia nods. "I did. I was also accepted."

"All the more reason to celebrate," Fiora says, beaming. "Let's go."

Melia doesn't say much on their way into town, nor when they arrive at the ice cream shop, despite numerous attempts from Fiora and Reyn to pull her into conversation. Even Shulk is more talkative than her, nearly able to relax thanks to his friends' banter. Then the jukebox starts playing "I've Just Seen a Face" by the Beatles as he reaches the Face Unit cashier, and he's thinking about the calculator again. 

At the booth, they eat in silence for a few minutes, simply enjoying their ice cream. Shulk has plain vanilla, Reyn chose chocolate, Fiora opted for strawberry, and Melia takes small, neat bites from her butter pecan. The chatter around the shop reaches a lull as the jukebox is between songs. A few moments pass, and "I've Just Seen a Face" begins again. Shulk winces, enough that Reyn notices. "Not your favorite Beatles song?"

"It's just odd," Shulk says, hoping to sound convincing. "It just played."

"That thing's probably an antique," Reyn says. "No wonder it's got bugs sometimes."

"Or somebody picked it to play multiple times," Fiora says. 

"Maybe." He can't remember the last time he's seen anyone do that, however. Free though it is, the selection is limited due to the shop's theme- he doesn't think there's anything released past 1980 at the latest- and most patrons simply tune out anything played as noise. Shulk tries to do the same, even as the refrain of "falling, yes I am falling" batters against his head. Fiora asks Melia about schoolwork, finally getting her to talk a little more. Shulk tries to contribute, but he barely remembers any events of the day not related to his calculator. He spins his spoon in his paper bowl as he lets his ice cream melt on his tongue. Does he have enough time to disassemble it tonight? Probably not, with that essay he's got. Maybe he'll have time this weekend. He still has the diagrams he made of last year's model, so it shouldn't be too difficult to-

"Oi, are you gonna finish that, or just let it turn into soup?"

Shulk starts at Reyn's voice. He looks down at his bowl, wasting away into mush. "Sorry," he says, taking away his spoon. "If you want it, go ahead."

Reyn doesn't hesitate, doing his best to salvage the scant amount of solid ice cream left. Fiora rolls her eyes while Melia furrows her brow. "Not very hungry?" she says, as she scrapes the last few bites of hers onto her spoon. 

Shulk tries to make an excuse, but Fiora cuts him off. "He's always been like this, ever since we were small," she says. "He'll get himself wrapped up in something and forget to eat. I started bringing snacks for him, and then he'd only eat part of it and leave the rest for Reyn to finish."

"You've known each other for quite some time," Melia says. 

Fiora nods. "We were all born here on the station. Same class when we started school and just stuck together after that."

"How wonderful." Melia sounds wistful. "I was born here as well, but I was homeschooled for most of my childhood. But you likely already knew that."

Shulk did, at least. When Melia moved to Rhadamanthus permanently, it had been big news, with the newspaper running stories about the Antiqua family and their history of extensive support for Aoidos. Highlighted was the snippet that Melia had been the first child of a head of state born on the station. A huge gesture, almost eighteen years ago: few children were born anywhere in the Orbital Ring at the time. Now several hundred are born in Rhadamanthus every year. Though those belonging to heads of state were still rare, of course. 

"I didn't," Reyn says, then adds, "Explains a lot," causing Fiora to snap at him. She apologizes to Melia on his behalf over Reyn's protests, and Melia accepts it with her usual grace. Shulk is always surprised at her resilience, and finds himself wondering if she had the opportunity to have friends before coming here. He doesn't know what he would have done without Fiora and Reyn at his side growing up. Through homework, and tests, and all those medical appointments, those times when his head started hurting and wouldn't stop. Just migraines, the doctors all thought, until the test results came back. Then through all the other tests, even when they weren't supposed to... 

"Shulk?" Fiora's voice lifts him out of those memories. "Ready to go?"

The rest of the group is already standing. Shulk does too, grabbing his bag. "Sorry, yeah." On the way out, he can hear the jukebox playing "I've Just Seen a Face" yet again. How long is the song? It can't have looped the whole time, can it? It bothers him the whole way home, up to the front door of the apartment building, where Melia hovers on the sidewalk rather than saying farewell. As he follows Reyn and Fiora inside, she calls to him. "Would you like to work on homework together, Shulk?"

"Um-" The door hits his shoulder as he pauses. It's a surprising request; Melia has a habit of keeping to herself. Fiora and Reyn look back at him, waiting. "Sure. Here okay?" Shulk holds the door open, offering her to enter, and she does. The elevator is silent as they wait for the third floor ding and exit after brief farewells. "Make sure he actually eats dinner," Fiora teases, but she crosses her arms as soon as she's done waving.

At his door, Shulk is still sifting through his pocket for his key when the door opens. Dickson, again, greeting Shulk warmly before his gaze lands on Melia. "And who's this?" he says, in a tone that suggests he already knows. 

Melia introduces herself while Shulk's stomach drops. "We've got a group project," he says quickly. 

"Is that so?" Dickson's smirk makes Shulk wither further. "Don't work too hard, kids."

"We won't," Shulk says. He can hear Dickson chuckling down the hallway as he ushers Melia inside, even after he shuts the door behind them. Melia gives him a questioning look. "Is he here often?"

"When he finds time," Shulk says. "Klaus- my dad, that is- doesn't have any and gave him a key to take care of housework since we're both lousy at it. They're old friends, I guess." He spots a note on the refrigerator and gives it a quick glance- just a note from Dickson about Klaus working late again. "Um, the table's this way, if that works."

She follows him and sits, pulling her bag into her lap. Shulk takes the seat across from her, then takes out his calculator and books and expects her to do the same, but when he looks up again, she's hesitating over her open bag. She fidgets with her sleeves a bit before speaking. "Shulk. What's wrong with your calculator?"

Shulk didn't expect her to be so forward so soon. "Just some leftover data, that's all."

It's clear she doesn't believe him. She glances over his shoulder, and he realizes she's chosen the seat that has a view of the doorway. "Are you sure it's not just a hardware issue?" she asks. 

"Well, I haven't taken it apart yet," he says. "But I might this weekend."

"It may be worthwhile," Melia says. "Have you heard about the problem around the station of late?"

"The screens," Shulk says. "Dickson complains about it all the time. Some defective manufacturing firm down on Earth."

"Yes, the Coalition has made plenty of inquiries on that front," Melia says. "They've found nothing yet. If your calculator is also defective, it would be of interest as an additional piece of evidence."

Defective. It's the same word he thought of last night, but that was before his calculator started making introductions. He thinks of the frowning face the HowToReadFacets function now creates. "I don't think it's a hardware issue," Shulk says slowly. "If anything, it might be some sort of firewall program." 

Melia still looks skeptical, then smiles a bit. "Ah, right. After your games last year."

"Right," he says, probably too quickly, but not enough to raise suspicion. 

"My apologies," she says. "I don't mean to pry. My brother mentioned another screen incident in his department happening yesterday, so I've been on edge about technology as of late."

"Kallian, right?" Shulk remembers him from the article- a supervisor working on some of the administrative systems. Kallian was also responsible for the oversight of some critical Aoidos projects, though the article had been vague on which ones. Shulk mostly remembered Fiora pointing out that the siblings' age gap was the same as hers and Dunban's, then deflating a bit when she realized it was because Melia's father had remarried. 

"Yes. I know I shouldn't stress, since it's probably nothing, but with the anniversary approaching and all the ceremony it entails..." She trails off, sighing. "Apologies. I shouldn't bother you with my troubles." She pulls out a folder and lays a set of worksheets on the table. "Which did you want to start with? Or perhaps we should eat first? I wouldn't want to disappoint Fiora." 

Shulk flips open his book to where he's left his own worksheets, and they get started. He can't help but check the function list before they get too far, however. Now there are four functions: at the bottom is the new GetDeviceDescription, which prints out one word. 

seer

It is Wednesday afternoon in Rhadamanthus and Kallian watches the technician fiddle with his laptop screen, logging in and out of the general service account to watch the black void appear and disappear. "Never seen this before," she says, frowning. "Might be something with the graphics card instead." She takes the laptop away for maintenance and tells him someone will be over with a replacement tomorrow, using the automated backup to restore his work. Kallian is just relieved someone is taking him seriously for once. So much so that he's finally able to get a good night's sleep, awakening in the morning feeling reenergized. Thursday morning in Rhadamanthus and the new laptop is waiting for him. He turns it on without issue, logs in without issue. Finally, an easy day. 

Until the afternoon, when Abby pokes her head in his office doorway to shatter it to pieces. 

"So," he says, staring at the monitor with increasing confusion, "it only happens when you try to access this specific directory?"

Abby nods and demonstrates again, but he's still having a hard time wrapping his head around it. It's even stranger than what he saw on his laptop. Until he considers the possibility that the dark area could have appeared to prevent him from accessing something- it was covering part of the system menu, after all. "What's in there?" he asks. 

"Um, nothing too important, but let me check for sure." Abby tries dragging the directory window out of range of the tear in the screen, but the whole monitor darkens for a moment, lighting again with the hole moved to where the directory is now. Neither of them blink as she tries the same maneuver, getting the same result. Kallian turns to her and she shakes her head, still gaping at the screen. "It wasn't doing that before."

Kallian taps the person at the desk next to hers and asks them to try to access the same directory. After confirming the file path several times, it appears on the other employee's screen, with the same black rectangle appearing on the screen over the location in question. Kallian asks another to try before he returns to Abby's desk and picks up her phone to call the technician from yesterday directly. He gets disconnected twice before she picks up on the third ring. "You're supposed to go through the call center-" the voice begins, but Kallian cuts her off. 

"It's me," he says, "and it can't wait. Can you bring a supervisor over here? I think our screen problem isn't limited to a hardware fault anymore."

Shulk does his best to avoid Melia for the rest of the week, though she doesn't ask about the calculator again. By the time the weekend arrives, he almost feels bad about it, but that's quickly overshadowed by his excitement about the two full days he has to himself. 

He starts by working on the driver, trying various commands and getting different flavors of errors on the virtual machine he uses for debugging each time. It's tedious work, with an unfortunate amount of trial and error, but one he enjoys. It keeps his mind occupied, and every line- whether it crashes his virtual machine or not- gives him new information to build on for the next iteration. He works through lunch and doesn't notice he's hungry until mid-afternoon, finally rising to stretch, grab a snack, and consider next steps. 

He's not sure if he's making progress, which is a problem. If the new model has a different circuit board, he'll have to disassemble it to get the new identifier. He'd hoped to find it somewhere in an about box or through some debug command, but nothing has worked so far. 

Shulk munches on his chips and stares out his bedroom window. A bird lands in a tree near the sidewalk, rocking the branch slightly as it chirps, then again when it takes off for better perches. It's not that he doesn't think he can't find the identifier without disconnecting the batteries, but it would be much easier if he didn't have to be so careful. He figures he'll keep trying for the rest of the day before resorting to disassembly tomorrow. 

Before he gets back to work, he checks the function list again. Same four. HowToReadFacets is still frowning at him. "Frown all you want," he tells it, "because I'll make you give up your secrets by Monday."

The first adjustment he makes to the driver crashes immediately upon running. Whatever other people did on the weekends couldn't be as fun as this. 

It is Saturday afternoon in Rhadamanthus, and Rex and Nia are at the arcade. It's packed as usual, being a popular destination for students enjoying their free weekend, and there are a few adults taking the day as well, easily spotted in their lab coats. Rex and Nia usually stuck to the cooperative games, more interested in surviving a haunted mansion swarming with zombies together rather than hitting each other with items in a race. Mostly because Rex always won at the latter. It wasn't that Nia was bad so much as Rex was too good, having more free time to spend there than Nia, who had to go to the clinic everyday during the week, leaving only the weekends to practice and the rare afternoon when her appointments were cancelled. Rex didn't have any such obligations and thus spent a lot of time there. So much that the younger kids had started calling him the salvager, because every time they asked him for help at a game, he could take the controls and somehow still pull off a win. 

Nia's teasing him about today's dramatic rescue while they wait in line at the snack bar, relishing in her recounting of the dashing Rex saving little Iona from the devious Pac-Man ghosts after she'd cornered herself in a dazzling display of maneuverability. Rex just rolls his eyes. "It's easy if you know their paths," he says. "I keep trying to teach you."

"Not everyone has as much time to practice as you do," she says, though not unkindly. He still feels badly enough to want to apologize, but the people ahead of them wander off grumbling, leaving no one else between them and the cashier Face Unit. Though the screen is smiling, there's an info box with an alert at the bottom: MICROWAVE OUT OF SERVICE. Beneath is the relevant service ticket, submitted by the Face Unit and, judging by the priority listed, not likely to be fulfilled any time soon. 

Nia's ready to abandon her wish for popcorn, but Rex starts thinking. The ticket is marked low priority, but the nearest maintenance center- Albert Hall- isn't far. A microwave can't be that heavy. He could easily carry one over himself and save the technicians a bit of time. Plus it might save the arcade a bit of business. 

Nia sighs and calls him a goody-two-shoes when he makes his intentions known, but still offers to walk with him. "It's on the way to the clinic, anyway."

Rex is surprised to hear she's going, as she hasn't mentioned this yet, and usually she's free from her clinic obligation on the weekend. "I didn't know you had to go today."

"Sorry, did I not tell you?" Nia says. "It's not for me. It's for Mio today."

"Ah," Rex says. He's never asked for specifics, but he knows the research Nia helps out on is used to help her younger sister. "Hope everything goes well, then."

They leave the arcade and walk two blocks together, parting at the intersection of Main and W 3rd Street. Nia heads north to the clinic, while Rex heads inside Albert Hall. He's pleased to see a friend working the desk today. "Hello, Pandoria."

"Hey Rex," Pandoria says. She doesn't bother looking up from her monitor, and Rex can see the reflection of the service queue in her glasses. "One of the pinball machines break down again?"

"Not today," he says. "Snack bar microwave gave out instead."

She looks up curiously. "Weird. We've definitely got a few spares, if you want to grab one." She grabs a notepad and writes down the room number, sliding it across the desk. "I'll find the ticket and update it when you're done. Someone will be by to pick up the old one eventually. Just be careful- there's a lot of us rushing around lately."

"The screens, right?"

"You got it." Pandoria sighs. "And the administration sector supervisor is making us audit all the hardware in his department this weekend. Sure, what he's found is weird, but taking the whole system apart because of some display glitch? At least we're all getting overtime."

Rex tries to look sympathetic. "Keep up the good work, Pandoria."

She smiles and shoos him off. Rex heads toward the elevators and checks the room he needs, surprised to see it's a basement floor. He presses the appropriate button and waits, humming along to the elevator music. It's an instrumental of some song he recognizes. He's just about to place it based on the melody of the violin when the doors open, and he loses it as he heads into the hallway, turning his attention to the sign for directions. It's not hard to find, and he grabs the closest microwave off the shelf, still wrapped in cellophane. It's not heavy, just awkward to carry. Making it back to the elevator isn't a problem, but pressing the call button with it in his hands is. He's about to drop it when the doors open, and a scientist steps out, one with silver hair and spectacles. He gives Rex a glare and scowls at the microwave in his hands. "What's a kid doing down here?"

Rex is a bit annoyed at this, since he's finally hitting his growth spurt. He's finally a bit taller than Nia, if Nia was slouching. "Self service," he says. "Figured I'd help out with the high volume of tickets lately. Aren't you doing the same thing, if you're here?"

The scientist doesn't answer, staring into Rex's eyes for a moment. "Aren't you Addam's nephew?"

"Sort of," Rex says. They have a common relative through in-laws, but Rex hasn't been recognized as being related to Addam since the Aegis test. Usually they comment on the fact that Rex's grandfather Azurda is Elysium's governor. "Did you work with him, back then?" 

"Unfortunately." He turns away and starts down the hall, but not before Rex finds his name on his security badge- Jin. Rex tries to call out to him, but Jin vanishes into the first room he passes, reaching into his pocket for something. Rex groans. The elevator doors have already shut, leaving him still unable to hit the button without freeing his hands. 

By the time he's able to get back to the arcade with the microwave, it's nearly evening, and the arcade is clearing out for dinner. There's no one in line at the snack bar, so he's able to replace the microwave without anyone bothering him. There are a few sparks when he plugs it in, and he turns his attention to the screen, hoping he doesn't have to set the time manually. It's blank for a moment, then it does something strange. 

HELLO REX, the display reads, sliding each letter across the scant screen space. MY NAME IS PYRA. 

Rex is so surprised that he falls backward, staring at the screen in disbelief. After a moment, the time displays there, set correctly, matching what the wall clock shows. Rex stands and pays the Face Unit for a bag of popcorn, then puts it in and presses the popcorn button. The internal light doesn't turn on, making him frown. Maybe it's defective. But no, after he waits a bit more, the popping sounds begin, and the normal buttery smell fills the air. It dings when the timer finishes, and Rex removes the bag, opening it. It all looks normal. Tastes normal too, when he tries a few pieces. 

So the light's just broken. But if it's warming things up fine, then everything's still set. Rex shakes his head. He must've imagined that first bit. Maybe he'll stop back by Albert Hall and grab a replacement lightbulb too. 

But when he does the next day, it still doesn't work. Rex figures it's a short fuse somewhere but doesn't bother fiddling with it anymore. It's working, at least, and the Face Unit doesn't seem to detect a fault, since it hasn't submitted another maintenance ticket, so he tries to put it out of his mind. Tries, and mostly fails. 

It is Sunday afternoon in Rhadamanthus and Shulk has accepted the fact that he is going to have to disassemble the calculator. But he isn't happy about it. He half expects the HowToReadFacets function to change to mock him, but it stays frowning. 

Shulk dons his safety glasses- just in case- and starts removing the back screws. The battery well is attached to the backplate, which poses a problem. If he's not careful, he'll disconnect the power supply and lose any chance at solving this mystery. After a few close calls, where he nearly separates the backplate from the circuit board beneath, he manages to wedge open a space that allows a glimpse of the identifier, typing it into his driver quickly in case he did something wrong. But when he puts it back together and turns it back on, the functions are still there, including the frown produced by HowToReadFacets. Shulk laughs, half from relief and half from excitement. 

By the end of the day, he's in. 

He starts by attempting to dump the operating system, but is greeted with an error message. Something to sort out later, then; he can just get to them directly through the driver. A few commands later and he starts inspecting the files. Nothing of interest, the structure mostly the same as the prior model's, despite all the work he had to do to get to this point. He finds the folder where the functions are kept, each timestamped with the night Shulk saw them generated. He returns to the top level directory and spots a listing he didn't notice initially. At the bottom is a folder simply labeled "z". 

Did he miss it before? He had to have, because it's got a timestamp associated with it, and it's from a few months ago, in late July. Different from the other folders, but that's not too surprising; internals were sometimes auto-generated at startup, and thus not guaranteed to keep the same timestamps. Shulk tries clicking on it and is surprised to see a password prompt appear. Perhaps this is where the Face Unit's source code is being kept? He tries copying just that directory onto his desktop, but the password prompt appears again to stop him. 

So much for figuring out the calculator's secrets. Now he's got more questions than he started with. He unplugs it from the computer, debating what to do next but mostly wondering if the HowToReadFacets function is still frowning at him. It is, but there's another function in the list now, a fifth one called SearchForClues. It draws another graph, this one a winding loop in the upper right quadrant. Two small lines cross at an x in the bottom left edge. The math involved in drawing it is an enigma, though he finds it interesting that the intersection of the lines is apparently a separate data point, confirming its importance. 

He has no idea what to make of this. Some sort of ink blot test? If he squints at it, it sort of looks like a seal. Or a walrus. Maybe the point is supposed to be its eye? Or maybe it's the equations for it that are important. Shulk rubs at his own eyes and sighs. He's been thinking about this for too long. He considers moving his games onto the calculator, but he's not convinced they'll run; based on the changes he had to make to the driver, it seems the new model might have an updated processor architecture, which would throw a wrench into some of his low-level hacks. 

Tomorrow, then. He won't have as much time during the week, but he'll try to find some. At least he accomplished his intended goal for this weekend, albeit in a more limited scope than expected. 

It is Sunday evening in Rhadamanthus, and yet with the weekend nearly behind him, Kallian has more questions than answers. A team of technicians has inspected every monitor and every computer in his department, and yet nothing seems out of place. Besides the mysterious directory that nobody can seem to view. Even through command line, it remains inaccessible. Even worse, nobody can seem to tell him what's supposed to be there in the first place. It doesn't seem to be backed up anywhere, which is a breach of policy so massive he still can't quite wrap his head around it. And now he has a meeting with Director Vandham himself in the morning that he plans on winging, not just because he has next to no time to prepare but also because trying to present this problem rationally is beyond even his diplomatic prowess. 

Kallian looks at the time in the bottom of his screen and frowns. It shows it's the first, but of the wrong month. Then he blinks, and it's correct again. He rubs at his eyes. He's been working too long. He needs his sleep for tomorrow, though he has a bad feeling he'll have to depend on coffee in the morning to be coherent at all. 

Shulk half expects Melia to confront him about the calculator again on Monday, but she seems distracted in class, rushing out of the room as soon as the bell rings. He does take the opportunity to ask his teacher about his calculator, not mentioning any specifics, and she tells him exactly what he expected: just reset it, with a none-too-subtle reminder that it would be reset on the day of their next test anyway. 

With that deadline looming, Shulk spends the evening trying to figure out how to dump the calculator's operating system, or at least move over the z folder. But it seems the two problems share a root cause, if not a solution: the operating system requires an administrator account to access. And not just local admin power- everything he does on this computer is as admin- but a specific username and password. Shulk considers putting in his own credentials, the ones he uses for his normal network access, but knows that's a risky proposition on multiple fronts. There's no hope of trying to brute-force it either; depending on the lengths of the passwords and the encryption used, the heat death of the universe might come to pass before any guesses he entered programmatically found the right value. And that's even assuming it didn't lock him out upon any set number of tries. 

His only hope is figuring out what the SearchForClues function is supposed to mean. On Tuesday, he considers asking Melia, or maybe Fiora and Reyn. He hasn't told the latter anything about his calculator, letting them assume he's just up to his games again and not something more. But they are his best friends, and he trusts them, so he asks at lunch. 

Fiora squints at it just as much as he did over the weekend, but Reyn glances at it once and returns his attention to his food. "That's the northeast walking trail," he says. 

Fiora and Shulk both gape at him while he sticks a piece of chicken into his mouth. "What?" he says when he notices them staring. 

"How do you know that?" Fiora says. 

"That twist there." Reyn points at a section of the graph. "That's where the path snakes around the support columns for the maintenance access road. I go running there sometimes. Tried to get you guys to join me in the past, but you were both fine with the park path." He taps at the point where the x lies. "And I think that's a public locker room. Nobody much uses it since it's near residences though. I certainly don't." He takes another bite of his chicken. "Why'd you draw that on your calculator if you didn't know what it was?"

Shulk casts about for an answer. "Math project," he says, knowing it's not very believable, but they don't press. He closes out the graph and returns to the function list, freezing when he notices there's a new one added: ScheduleMeeting, which prints out 0500Z.  

That makes him groan. Five am, since Rhadamanthus has no UTC offset. Nothing can be worth doing that early. On a whim, he checks the HowToReadFacets function, and isn't surprised to find it back to smiling at him. He wonders if it's glad he's making progress or just mocking him. 

Shulk isn't surprised either when Melia catches up to him on his walk home later that day, claiming to want to work on homework together. He could feel her eyes on him all morning during math, though he's not sure he's ready to tell her everything. But once they're inside his- thankfully empty- home, she wastes no time asking about his calculator, giving her reasoning before he even has a chance to begin answering. 

"My brother reports strange activity on the computers in his department," she says. "Beyond just the screens. He's been vague on the specifics, but I want to help all I can, and if your calculator is also acting strangely, then perhaps the two are related."

It's a big maybe, so Shulk decides to tell her as much as he can. He shows her the GetOperatorName method, allowing her to type in her name so the calculator can tell her Hello Melia. He shows her the SearchForClues method, with its graph of the walking trail, and the meeting it claims to have set up. What he doesn't mention is his illicit computer that helped make some of this possible, still sitting in his bedroom. He hoped he closed the door this morning so there's no risk of her spotting it. "Anyway, I think it might be some kind of Face Unit," he says. "But I don't know why it would be in my calculator, or why it's trying to send me on some sort of scavenger hunt."

Melia has listened to everything without changing her expression, staring at the calculator thoughtfully. Now she looks up at him and meets his eyes. "I admit I know very little about technology," she says. "But I believe you, and I'd like to join you for this meeting in the morning, if you wouldn't mind."

"Really?"

"It's not out of mere curiosity," she says. "If there is a Face Unit in your calculator, its presence raises a number of questions. Assuming it is not mere coincidence, the circumstances alone are concerning. Our teacher is the sister of the inventor of Face Units, and you're the son of one of the head researchers. If something were to happen-"

"Hang on," Shulk says. "You're also related to some important people, not just on Rhadamanthus but among the Coalition as well."

"That is why I feel obligated to investigate," Melia says. "From the way my brother speaks of his computer problems, I fear he suspects some sort of sabotage. If this Face Unit in your calculator knows something, then I want to know as well."

Shulk considers saying no, but hesitates before he does so. He's already told her so much, and he could really use a second pair of hands on this. Plus, her position as Kallian's sister could prove useful, since it seems like he told her more about happenings in Rhadamanthus than Dickson or Klaus ever told him. "All right," he says. "Thanks, Melia."

"The pleasure is mine," she says, standing. "I'll see you bright and early tomorrow. Be sure to set your alarm."

"Yeah, I will." He sees her to the door, then stops it from closing as something occurs to him. "Do you actually mean bright? Like, the sky will be light then? I've never been up that early."

She hides it well, but judging by the way her lips twitch, he can tell she's trying not to laugh. "Yes, Shulk. The sky begins lightening around then each day. Besides, the dome never quite gets dark enough not to be able to see by."

He nods and watches her head to the elevator, then shuts the door and hovers in the foyer for a moment. He knows he should get started on his homework and head straight to bed to get plenty of rest, but enough has happened in the last week that he feels restless. It's the feeling he gets when he's at a dead end on too many projects at once, having exhausted his current options and starving for new ideas. At these times, he usually heads to the library to search for books that might help. It's still early in the evening. He has plenty of time, as long as he doesn't stay long. And if he does, he can just use the extra time he'll have in the morning to finish his homework, assuming this meeting thing doesn't take up too much time. It's so long before school begins that he can't imagine not finding the time. So he'll be quick. 

That's what he tells himself, over and over, on the way there. It's what he tells the librarian when he asks for directions to the subjects he's interested in. It's what he tells the paper he's written all the locations of those topics as he starts browsing the first section on the list. That sentiment quickly fades as he picks out one book, then another, losing himself in their summaries and the ideas presented therein, scribbling notes as he adds to his stack, pressing the spines against his chest as he moves from shelf to shelf. By the time he returns to the counter, he's lost track of how many he has, scratching his head when the librarian apologetically tells him he's passed the limit that can be taken at once. He painfully chooses a few to discard, then returns home with the rest. 

In his room, he picks one to start with and cracks it open, telling himself he won't stay up too late. But the words fill him up, little sparks catching threads of ideas in a web that grows and grows, fueling pages and pages of notes as his mind wanders in wonder. He loses track of everything except the books, not even noticing when he falls asleep without setting his alarm, and he dreams of a fog and a sea and a strange voice. Strange, and yet somehow familiar, even with its impersonal, almost clinical tone. 

Do you wish to change it, it asks. 

Change what? Shulk asks. But the voice does not respond. 

Chapter Text

"Good morning."

That was how it started: with a greeting. She spotted him leaving the men's locker room and didn't think twice about saying it. She didn't even stop, just said it with a smile and kept on her way. But he managed to reply while she was close enough, before she got too far and it became awkward. 

"Good morning."

The locker rooms for this walking path were usually deserted. Most people were able to access it from their homes and so simply changed and showered there after their exercise. Often Lanz was the only one in the building, which is why the presence of the girl had caught him so off guard. She even seemed to be his age, maybe even a bit familiar- did they share the same lunch period? And then there was the fact that she was even talking to him. The most he ever got from anyone else he came across there was a brief nod. 

So it was even stranger when he found her there the next day. Again she was a bit ahead of him, already dressed and bouncing with every step to warm up, but she still spotted him and greeted him. "Good morning."

"Good morning," he replied, and they parted ways. She headed out onto the path, and he watched her kick her first few steps before shifting into a smoother stride as she started her run. He checked his watch. He could probably bear to wake up a bit earlier. 

The next day, he didn't see her on his way into the locker room, but he caught her on his way out, and this time, he greeted her. "Good morning."

"Good morning," she said, and then she stopped, and so did he. She watched him, lips twitching, then asked, "We've seen each other a lot, huh?"

"Yeah," he said. "I actually got here earlier today, because I thought, well..." He didn't know how to say it without sounding awkward. He should just say it. "Maybe you'd like a running partner?"

She smiled. "Sure." She held out her hand. "I'm Sena."

"Lanz," he said, taking it. They shook briefly. Her grip was surprisingly strong. "I'll just wait for you here, then."

"Sure," she said again, nodding, and headed into the locker room. She didn't look surprised to see him still waiting when she emerged. "Let's go!"

And that was all it took. 

They didn't talk out on the path, just let the sounds of their feet hitting the pavement carry them along. At first he tried to go easy on her; after all, he was so tall, and she was so short. But she pulled ahead, even teasing him a little, so he quickly put a stop to that. Despite their immense difference in strides, they found it easy to match pace. He was impressed by her stamina; he hadn't realized she took the long way around, past the hill and over the bridge and underneath the overpass. When they reached the locker room building again, they took turns at the water fountain, then separated to change. He didn't spot her when he left his side and waited, wondering if she had already left, only for her to appear shortly after. "Same time tomorrow?"

"My time, or your time?" he asked, and she laughed, but didn't answer. 

They arrived at the same time anyway. 

Sena wasn't sure why Lanz started running with her, but she found she didn't mind it. She'd switched to running in the morning this year so she had more time after school to work on homework in the evenings, and still wasn't sure if she liked it enough to keep doing. Early morning in Rhadamanthus was so different than it had been on Earth. The air didn't have the same freshness. It lacked the potential that mornings on Earth held. When a day began on the surface, no one knew what it might bring. The weather was volatile, the sky a slot machine that meteorologists struggled to read. Rhadamanthus' sky was decided by committee, and it was usually set to some variation of partly cloudy. Every once in a while, someone was brave enough to schedule completely overcast days, but it's not like they could create rain. The disruption would be too cost-prohibitive. 

At least the lack of weather allowed perfect running conditions all the time. Sena picked the northeast trail because it was near her home, and she liked the sights. It was the most scenic of Elysium's paths, with views of the river and the park and even the maintenenance bridge, which wasn't the nicest thing to look at but was an impressive engineering achievement, at least. And then there was the stretch that ran past the middle school, the closest the path got to the city proper. 

Sena noticed on their very first run together that Lanz didn't like passing the school. He chose that part in particular to start pushing their pace, suddenly breaking into a sprint that had caught Sena off guard, though she'd adapted quickly. She considered asking him about it, but didn't want to affect their pace. She was ready for it every time afterward, watching for the exact moment when his jaw clenched and his stride lengthened and suddenly they were nearly flying. But she still didn't ask about it, even though she wondered each time they met. 

"Good morning."

"Good morning."

It was all they said to each other in those early days. The early morning stillness was the only conversation they needed. The pulse of their footsteps the only music. No need to even say goodbye to each other when they parted. 

Nothing to say, but it's okay. 

Lanz hadn't always used the northeast trail. He'd used to use the one on the south side, which was closer to his home. It was flat and surrounded by buildings that were the same flat gray stone that most structures in Elysium were made of, which was fine since he wasn't interested in the scenery when he was running. He hadn't even minded all the traffic on that path, fellow joggers and bikers and even the occasional elderly walker. What he had minded was spotting Joran. 

The first time, he assumed it was a fluke. Lanz pretended he didn't notice Joran, and kept on his way. The second time, he thought it was bad luck. The third time, it was clear this was a pattern, and Lanz wasn't having it. He considered using the other trails, but they were farther away than he wanted to go in the mornings, too far out of the way from his path to school. All except one: the northeast trail, but that had its own problem, in that it passed by the middle school. 

Those weren't quite the only options. He could've gone through town, on the sidewalks, and dealt with the half-asleep scientists on their morning commute, watching them all try to dampen their yawns with coffee. Elysium never had a moment where everyone was at rest. It just slowed down considerably. Not just because of all the workaholics, but also because many of them were used to different time zones and had never bothered adjusting. Some of the west coast Americans were such night owls that they had become morning people in Rhadamanthus. It was part of the reason the dome's sky past sundown was such a poor representation of Earth's night: there was always someone awake in the station at any given time. 

Lanz, on the other hand, had never known any other time zone. He'd been born here. He was used to Rhadamanthus and its baseline bustle to ferry him along in the morning. When he'd resigned himself to the northeast trail, he'd almost been disappointed at how quiet it was there. But he grew to like it. 

The middle school was a problem, however. Even with all the renovations, Lanz could still find the part that had collapsed. There was no outward sign of it- the repairs were flawless- but he could still see it. He tried ignoring it, but he still knew it was there. So he just started running faster to pass it as quickly as possible. It sort of worked, or at least, it was enough that it didn't ruin his day at its start. He soon found that having Sena with him helped too. 

"Good morning."

"Good morning."

They only had one expectation of each other: to keep pace. Every movement for that journey around the trail was in pursuit of that. Every breath, every step, every heartbeat. Every bend in the road a challenge that could be surmounted together. And once they reached the end, every goal achieved, they realized they had another expectation: to see each other again tomorrow. It was why they didn't bother saying goodbye at the end of their run. 

Nothing to say, but it's okay. 

Ever since Miyabi had arrived in Rhadamanthus, Sena met her and Mio in the band room after study hall. They all had math together after, and they used the time between periods to discuss last night's homework. This usually involved commiserating about which problems they should have asked Taion about, with Miyabi and Sena voicing the most regrets. Then after class they'd part ways for another two periods before meeting up again after school for study group. 

Or at least, she'd used to. Nowadays, she mostly met Miyabi alone, waiting for her to carefully pull apart the pieces of her flute, wipe them with her cloth, and place them in her case. Sometimes Sena caught a glimpse of Mio throwing her flute into her case and locker before she ran off with Noah. Mio and Noah had started dating over the summer, and Sena didn't mind that, she thought they were good for each other. But she saw Mio less and less once the school year started. She figured it wouldn't be long before Mio started avoiding study group after school as well. Mio did always flash a smile at her when she passed by Sena on the way out, which Sena always returned, often with a wave. 

"You miss her," Miyabi said one day, when Sena was especially quiet during her wait. 

"Well, yeah," Sena said. "We're all friends. But Noah's nice, so it's fine."

Miyabi nodded without looking up, but didn't say anything else. Sena wasn't sure what else there was to say. She knew there were things she wanted to say, but wasn't sure how to say them. About Mio, about Miyabi, and about five years ago, and about what she had found out happened while she was unconscious but had never had the opportunity to thank anyone for. 

Sena thought about the friends she had made over the summer she had lived in Morytha while her mothers waited for an opening in Rhadamanthus. She had considered writing them once she moved, but she had never known what to say. Ghondor and Shania were so prickly, so hard to get along with. When Sena was reunited with Mio, it was like slipping into well-worn shoes. And then Miyabi arrived, and Taion agreed to study with them, and the group was complete. Or should have been, until Noah happened. 

No, she was being unfair. Mio was allowed to have a boyfriend. Sena still had plenty of other friends. Miyabi. Taion. And now, apparently, Lanz. 

Lanz always took his time in the locker room after practice, because Eunie would complain if he showed up at the cafe all stinky. This, despite the fact that she also had an athletic practice of her own some days, and she didn't bother changing, claiming that bowling wasn't intensive enough to call for it. Sure. 

Usually he was alone by the time he was done, but not today. "Why do you even hang out with him?" 

Somebody'd been waiting for him, clearly. Lanz struggled not to slam his locker shut. He almost did anyway; he could just come back for his things when Garvel was gone. But if he didn't deal with this now, it would only get worse the next time, so Lanz stayed silent while Garvel said his usual piece. "I mean, I get Noah. He's cool, if a bit boring. And Eunie's hot, so I get why you'd want to hang out with her. But Joran?" Garvel scoffed. "I hear his parents don't even have university degrees. They're just menial workers, how pathetic."

Sensing he was waiting for comment, Lanz turned to Garvel and wasn't surprised to find him staring. "You done?" Lanz said. 

"Haven't got any defense for him, then?"

"I don't need to defend him from the likes of you," Lanz said. "Joran may not have a lot of friends, but at least his actually like him."

Garvel actually had the decency to look wounded, or maybe he was just pretending. It was hard to tell considering his default expression was so nasty. "Connections are more important than companions," he said, shrugging. "Layla's not only pretty, but her mum is in finance. It's the only way someone like you could hope to stay here past graduation. Although, it's pretty obvious how much you like your friends. One of them, anyway."

Lanz didn't blink. "And?"

"Wondering why you wouldn't just tell people."

This is not where Lanz expected this conversation to go. Judging by Garvel's tone, he expected this to be some sort of embarrassing jab. "You've got a bad read on the situation, mate," Lanz said. 

"Do I?"

Lanz slammed his locker shut. It was very satisfying. The next best thing, since he couldn't well punch Garvel. "Bugger off. Layla's been out with Hoope, you know." He didn't bother looking at Garvel's face as he left, but he could well imagine it, and that was enough for him. Time to meet up with his own friends, assuming they all made it today. Eunie. Noah, if he wasn't out with Mio. And Joran, probably. But even if none of them showed, he'd have Sena to see in the morning. 

When Sena was small, she detested school and its long periods of stillness where she was expected to be attentive and not to fidget or let her mind wander. It took all her patience to wait for recess, racing ahead of the others once they were allowed outside. She was the reason for all the playground rules- don't jump off the swings, don't run up the slide, don't hang upside down from the monkey bars- and was the one all the teachers always had their eye on. Sena ran the fastest and jumped the furthest and highest and always kept up with the boys, no matter how much they teased her. 

But there was one game that gave her trouble, and it was the simplest one of all: tag. When Sena was among the children running from the one designated "it", everything was fine. The problem arose when she herself was "it." She could catch whoever she wanted, but who to actually choose? There were the people who were caught often because they weren't fast, and there were the people who were always caught by certain people, and then there were the people who only tagged certain people. There were, somehow, consequences to tagging that she could not figure out, so she found herself running and running instead of choosing. And she found she liked that. There was a rhythm to it that she couldn't find anywhere else. 

When she needed a break from the tedium of schoolwork, she could run. When she needed a break from the gossip of classmates, she could run. When she needed a break from how empty her home was, she could run. It was the one place where she had total freedom to set her own pace, where she preferred to be alone. And yet, she found she liked running with Lanz. Maybe even loved it. Their morning run had become a constant in her life that she couldn't bear to lose. 

She realizes that today, Sunday, when something is different. When she opens the same locker she always does and finds not an empty space but instead a strange blue cube inside. There's a brief static shock when she picks it up, but it's otherwise unremarkable. Well, besides the fact that she has no idea what it is or where it came from. 

After a brief internal debate, she chooses not to change and leaves the locker room, wanting to show it to Lanz and get his opinion. To her surprise, he's already waiting for her, holding a similar blue cube. "Hey, what do you- oh," he says, stopping when she shows him hers. "Well, that's weird. You got one too?"

"It was in my locker," she says. "Do you think we should put it in the lost and found?"

Lanz doesn't respond. It's what they should do- clearly these were left by someone else- but the coincidence of them both finding one gives them pause. "Did yours shock you?" he asks finally. 

Sena nods. "Just static though, right?"

"Probably," he says. He looks like he's about to say something else, but then his eyes return to his cube and he gives it a twist in his hand before speaking again. "Think it might be valuable? If someone put it in the wrong locker by mistake, they might come back for it. Better for it to be where they left it than to go through the hassle of lost and found, yeah?"

The unanswered question of "why their lockers in particular" hangs between them. There are so many rental lockers that it would incredibly rare for someone to pick the same ones. Sena wants to do the right thing, but something about that static shock stuck with her. It clearly bothered Lanz too. So she agrees, and they both return their cubes to their lockers before heading out on their run, and when they return, they empty their lockers except for the cubes, wondering if they'll be gone tomorrow. 

But the cubes remain the next day. And the next. 

"One more day," Lanz says on that third day. "Then lost and found." Sena nods, wondering if he's grabbed his again, and if so, if his cube shocks him every time like hers does. 

When the morning of one more day comes, there is something different again about their run: a boy and a girl, around their age if not a bit older, are waiting at the building. The girl nudges the boy, who looks very tired indeed, and he rises from where they're sitting on the doorsteps to wave at them. 

"Good morning," the boy says, though his greeting dissolves into a yawn. "Sorry, I had a late night. Have you happened to see anything odd around here lately?" And when they nod, he smiles. 

Chapter Text

Once all the introductions are made, Shulk is certain he doesn't recognize these two, nor does he recognize the blue cubes they claim to have found just this week. What he does recognize is this walking trail. Reyn was right, he did drag Fiora and him over here once. Just once, because Shulk had come down with one of his migraines, one severe enough that he had to lean on Reyn to make it to the clinic, all while listening to Fiora fret about whether they should use one of the emergency call boxes or not, and they'd never gone back. Maybe it's the light here that causes it: there are few shadows this close to the edge of the dome, with the maintenance overpass being the one of the few things capable of blocking light here. Dawn will be especially bright, what with the sun rising in the east and all. 

When he mentions this, Melia suggests they meet up again after school to chat rather than stay here. Lanz and Sena look relieved at this plan- they're clearly more concerned with getting their run in than solving this mystery- and they all agree to meet by the front entrance bike racks later. Shulk spends most of his school day trying to figure out where they'll go after, wondering whether it's better to be in public or not, and is surprised when Melia suggests his apartment when they all meet up. He presents all kinds of counterarguments- it's small, there's no snacks, what if Dickson is there- but Melia points out his home is the closest, confirmed by both Lanz and Sena, and so they all head there. 

Shulk spends the whole way there wondering what to say. Should he explain about the calculator, or ask Lanz and Sena more about the cubes? Maybe he should ask why they run in the mornings, but he's pretty sure the reason will be utterly mundane. He's afraid they'll end up talking in circles and getting nothing done. Melia, meanwhile, makes polite small talk with Lanz and Sena, listening to them talk about their parents and what they work on, and Shulk starts paying attention once he realizes what she's trying to do: establish why they might be important enough for the calculator to single out. 

But nothing seems particularly noteworthy about the two sophomores. Lanz's mum works at the clinic on some biomedical research. Only one of Sena's mothers actually lives permanently on the station, with the other working primarily on Earth still. They've been running together for the past few weeks, since shortly into the school year, and neither of them remember anything unusual happening before the cubes appeared in their lockers. 

The cubes themselves are largely uninteresting as well. Once they reach Shulk's home, Lanz and Sena place them on the table for all four of them to stare at. Shulk taps one, and when nothing happens, he picks it up and inspects it. It's slightly translucent and crisscrossed with grooves. He's hoping to find a way to disassemble it, since it appears to be some sort of device, but he doesn't spot any obvious seams or screws. He checks the other and finds it identical. Shulk doesn't feel the shock that they report feeling every time, either. He does have a device of his own which does that to him, one that, after a glance at Melia, he pulls out of his bag. He checks the function list: nothing new. 

"You kicking us out to start on homework, then?" Lanz says, eyeing the calculator. 

Shulk isn't sure what else to try. "Just let us know if anything else happens, I guess," he says. "It was nice meeting you."

Lanz and Sena grab their cubes, but the moment their hands touch the sides, a tapping noise can be heard. Everyone freezes. Shulk glances at Melia. "It's not a-"

"No," Melia says. "Listen to how it alternates between short and long sounds. It might be Morse code."

"What's that?" Lanz says. He takes his hand off the cube, and the noise stops. He places his hand back, and it starts up again. "What the-"

Sena does the same thing, with the same result. "So it's supposed to play this horse code when we touch it?"

"Morse code," Melia corrects. "It's a binary communication system. I was taught it in case I found myself in a... situation where it might prove useful."

Lanz and Sena look confused, but Shulk picks up on her meaning based on her background. "Can you tell us what it's saying, then?"

Melia shakes her head. "It's too fast. If only we had a way to slow it down."

Shulk checks the function list again, then turns it toward her. There is a new one called MorseBuster, which accepts an integer parameter. "Do you know why it wants a number?"

Melia stares at the screen in disbelief for a few moments before Shulk remembers that she hasn't seen the calculator spontaneously create functions yet. She recovers rather than ask about it in front of the other two, however. "To calibrate for the words per minute, I suspect," she says, then gives a range of possible values to try, but Shulk has already thought of a different reason and discards her suggestion. He enters 30 and receives an error, then tries with 60. After a few moments, a loading spinner appears, replaced by a strange jumbled mess of pixels. He shows it to the group and receives bewildered looks. Not just because of the image, but because the cubes have also changed what sound they're making: no longer taps, but a single sound. 

Again, when Lanz and Sena remove their hands, the noise stops. Melia suggests moving the cubes closer together, and when they do, the sound doubles in volume. They listen to it for a few moments. "The sounds they're making aren't quite the same," Melia says. 

"You're right," Shulk says. "They sound similar, but they're different..." He's not sure what term to use. Pitches? Tones? Timbre sounds almost right, and it's what Melia supplies when she realizes he won't complete his sentence. "But I think the notes are the same," she adds. 

Shulk expects slowness when he tries to return to the home screen, but there's no delay for the tiles to appear. He returns to the graph and expects to find a function responsible, but there isn't one. He checks through a few different sections before realizing there's a new entry in the files section: an image file labeled "additivepraise," which displays the pixel mess again. He shows the file name to the group. "Any idea what it means?"

Lanz and Sena shake their heads, but Melia looks thoughtful. "It reminds me of a crossword clue."

Shulk checks for anything else he's missed, hoping to find another graph, but there's only one addition to the function list (definitely not there a moment ago): PurgeEncryption, accepting two inputs. He connects the dots. "There's something wrong with the picture it gave us," he says. "Something about this new function will fix it. It takes two parameters, but it doesn't look like it's going to give us any more hints."

"Is this some kind of school project?" Sena asks. 

Lanz scoffs. "Better not be," he says. "Real rude of them to involve us without asking first."

Shulk glances at Melia, hoping for guidance on whether to say more about the calculator, but she just shrugs. Helpful. They should've prepared for this more, but how could they have expected this? "Yeah," he says, "some scavenger hunt. Um, do you have any thoughts about what we need to pass to the function? We need two answers. Something about 'additive praise.'"

Both of them look confused. "Like... clapping?" Lanz says. 

"Or cheering?" Sena says. 

Shulk tries both, but nothing happens except errors. "Keep thinking, I guess," he says. "There are some things I'll try tonight. Let us know if anything comes up- we can keep meeting by the front bike racks for updates."

Melia hangs back while Lanz and Sena leave. "What are you going to try?" she asks once they're gone. 

Shulk thinks of his unauthorized computer, and what Melia might say about it. "Just some code stuff."

"Perhaps I could be of assistance."

"You'd find it boring," he says quickly. "Has anything happened with Kallian?"

"I haven't seen him all week," she says. "I know he had a meeting with Director Vandham on Monday, but I don't know the specifics. For all I know, he's been in meetings since. I plan to tell him as much as I can when I see him again."

"All right," Shulk says. "Do you have any other ideas about what it could be?"

She shakes her head. "I don't think it's a Face Unit," she says. 

"No, me neither," he says. "The way it responded to external stimuli, like it was changing what the cubes were doing- Face Units can't do that. It might be communicating with something somewhere in the station."

She frowns. They both know that an unauthorized signal is a red flag; at the very least, it's a security risk, if not a threat to the station's defenses. "Do you have a way to check on whether it can do that?"

He would- if he could dump the calculator's operating system and figure out what protocols and ports it supports. "Maybe," he says. "There's also the fact that it has a name. Face Units have ranks and serial numbers. They don't get names."

"So maybe someone is warning us about the possible sabotage," Melia says, "or this is the saboteur themselves trying more devious methods."

"It's possible," Shulk says. "I just wish we knew why it's so interested in Lanz and Sena."

"As do I," Melia says. "We may have to surrender it to Aoidos to figure out what's going on, especially if there's indeed a threat to the station involved."

That makes him more nervous than anything else so far. "I think we can solve it ourselves," Shulk says. "Whatever's going on, there have to be better ways of doing it than this, right? I mean... it's a calculator."

"There may not be," Melia says, "if it has something to hide."

They leave it at that. She leaves, and Shulk lets out a huge yawn as soon as she's gone. All his plans for the evening go out the window as he realizes how tired he is. He makes a sandwich for dinner, gets through as much of his homework as he can, and then goes straight to bed. Just as he's about to drift off, he remembers his alarm, still set so early for that morning's meeting. He turns on the light and grabs his clock to adjust it. To his surprise, it's already set to its usual time. Did he adjust it this morning, while he was half asleep, without remembering? He certainly doesn't remember doing it this evening, but he feels like there's something else important that he's forgetting. 

He doesn't remember his dreams, but in the morning, he catches a slight shock from his calculator when he puts it into his bag. 

The next day at school, Sena leaves class early on pretense of using the restroom to make it over to the band room. She catches the tail end of practice, peeking her head through the window and barely able to hear the music through the door. Miyabi sits in the front row, next to Crys at the right end. Second chair; Sena still remembers how embarrassed Miyabi was at the start of the year, when seats were announced. Apparently that's a big deal. In the second row, just behind them, Mio sits next to Noah, also at the right end. Her eyes dart between the stand in front of her and the instructor. Listening for the sound of the flute against the whole band is difficult; Sena knows better than to try to pick out her friends' playing alone. But she's heard it before: soft, soaring, soothing. Almost like the sound her cube makes. 

To her surprise, Mio doesn't immediately run off when she spots Sena in the locker room. "I already asked Miyabi," she says, "but do you want to come dress shopping with me this weekend? Noah and I are going to Homecoming together, so I figure we can look for all of us. That is, if you want to go too?"

Dances aren't really her thing, but Sena smiles anyway, matching Mio's expression, as well as Noah's behind her. "Sure," Sena says. 

"Great," Mio says. "Miyabi can fill you in on the rest." And then her attention is on Noah again, running off with him after their instruments are put away before Sena can say anything else, leaving her alone with Miyabi again. Before Miyabi gets a chance to start cleaning, Sena asks her to play a note. Any note, she says, when Miyabi asks if there's anything in particular she wants to hear. Miyabi plays a single, clear note. Sena asks for a different one, and Miyabi plays a lower note, then suddenly plays several different ones that ascend and then descend, like going up and down stairs. "That's a scale," she says, smiling at Sena's confusion. "What's got you so interested in music all the sudden?"

"Nothing," Sena says, but that first note sticks with her, just like the cube does. 

After school, Lanz stops by the clinic in hopes of catching his mum. He does, managing to catch her just as she's leaving her office. "Be quick," she tells him. "I've got someone waiting."

"I will," he says, pulling the blue cube out of his bag. It's not doing anything besides glowing currently, being so far from Sena's. "Any idea what this is?"

Her eyes widen. "That's a core crystal," she says. "One of the old prototype ones. That whole project got discontinued a few years ago. Where did you get it?"

"Found it in my locker before running a few days ago," he says. "Thought somebody lost it."

She frowns at this. "Odd. There's no harm in keeping it, though. Director Vandham himself even kept a few around his office as paperweights, until recently, that is. None of them work anymore, if they ever did."

"What was it supposed to do?"

She's about to answer when a nurse appears in the doorway. "Doctor Linada? Dunban's waiting. Fiora even managed to make it."

Linada looks over her shoulder. "We told her she didn't have to be here for this one, right?" she says. "Anyway, thank you, Sharla. I'll be right there." She looks back at Lanz while Sharla disappears. "What was I saying?"

"Nothing, Mum, don't worry about it," he says. He's already got what he wanted. "Sorry to bug you."

On Friday, Lanz and Sena, though in separate classes, both have drafts due for composition. The teachers pair them off to proofread their work. In the morning, Lanz finds himself paired with Joran; in the afternoon, Sena pairs with Miyabi. The review task is simple: provide one compliment, and one critique, of the partner's draft. 

In the morning, Lanz circles a few spelling errors with his red pen, all while cursing his luck. They trade back, and Lanz flips through his own while keeping one eye on Joran, who keeps his face neutral as he scans each page. Joran scowls when he finds the last page blank. "No compliment, just critiques, I take it?"

Lanz panics as he checks the last page of his draft. 'Good organization' is written below the concluding paragraph, in Joran's sprawling hand. Lanz only proofread. He searches his mind for a suitable compliment, but everything he can think of is too simple. Joran's writing is leagues above his own- why are they even in the same level?- but Joran assumes the worst, as always, and says he'll do better later. And Lanz says nothing, because it is safer than saying something wrong. 

In the afternoon, Sena highlights all the lines she likes in Miyabi's draft, which is most of them. Miyabi's own marks on Sena's draft are few, a sentence in each paragraph bearing either highlight or red pen. Miyabi herself sighs at the abundance of highlighting on hers, biting her lip at the end note. She flips back to the first paragraph and points at the word their in the midst of a yellow highlight. "I noticed this right after I printed it," she says. "It's the wrong their- I meant there, like a place, but I was typing too quickly." And Sena claims she missed it, even though she spotted it and figured it was safer to say nothing about it. 

After school, Lanz and Sena meet Shulk and Melia by the front bike racks. Lanz shares his information about the core crystals. Shulk simply nods at this information, but Melia looks alarmed. "They haven't done anything to you, have they?"

Lanz and Sena glance at each other, each shaking their heads. "No," Lanz says. "Mum says they were all defective anyway."

Melia only looks slightly relieved. "Of course," she says. "That's more likely than what the rumors were."

"What were the rumors?" Shulk asks. 

"Horrible, awful things better left unsaid," Melia says. "Do you have anything?"

Shulk scratches his head, looking sheepish. "Too much homework," he says. "I'll let you all know after this weekend."

When Lanz and Sena exchange their greetings Saturday morning and head out onto the track, their pace doesn't come quite as easily as it has in the past. Their strides are uneven, sloppy, irregular. Slowing as they struggle to find their rhythm, they finally stop near the hill, catching their breath as they look out over Elysium. 

"Want to head back?" Lanz asks. 

Sena doesn't answer immediately. She looks over the city and tries to calm her thoughts. Since Wednesday, her mind has been preoccupied with the core crystal and its airy tone. The same note as Lanz's, though his sounds more mellow. Sounding similar, but different. "I want to keep going," she says. "But if you don't-"

"I'll stick it out." Lanz does a few arm circles, and Sena matches him as they step back onto the path. But neither gets going just yet. They do a few more stretches until Sena decides to break the silence. "Doing anything fun today?"

"Nah, you?"

"Dress shopping with Mio," Sena says. "She's going to Homecoming with-"

"Noah," Lanz says, before she can. "Didn't know you were friends."

"With Mio? Since Earth," Sena says. "Although we got up here at different times. How long have you known Noah?"

"My whole life," he says. "We were both born here. Eunie too." 

For the next few minutes, they chat about their friends, surprised at how long it took them to realize there was only one degree of separation between them with how long they've been running together. Even after they get started down the path once again, they keep talking, moving past friends and discussing school, hobbies, all while keeping pace. The conversation doesn't stop until they split ways for their respective locker rooms, picking up again once they're both done. 

Kallian has had the longest week of his career, but they've made good progress. Mostly because the problem has now grown more widespread, with other departments now reporting similar missing directories and abnormal screen behavior to what he's been seeing. At noon, Director Vandham holds a meeting to formally launch an investigation into what's happening and names the committee he's hand-picked to handle it. Kallian's on it, of course, and he's pleased to learn Lorithia is too; her experience with designing some of these systems will be invaluable. Vandham also mentions that he's made an official request with Ambassador Triton for the Coalition to send additional resources. Kallian worries about that- usually a bad sign when politics get involved- but he's hardly one to bring this up. Not without sounding like a hypocrite, with who his father is. 

Vandham ends the meeting by reading the latest threat from the Saviorite rebels, one demanding that they hand over the Conduit in one week's time, or else. No one is surprised by this, with some of them reacting with snark rather than tired resignation. He's in the latter group, no longer confident enough to assume the Orbital Ring is secure. 

At least he finally has a day off tomorrow. Maybe he'll take Melia out for lunch. 

It's Saturday afternoon in Rhadamanthus and Rex isn't at the arcade for once. Not just because Nia ditched him to go dress shopping with her sister- who's apparently got a date to Homecoming- but because he's still thinking about the microwave. It hasn't done anything else out of the ordinary for the past week, or at least, he hasn't noticed it do anything odd. Nobody he's spoken to has seen anything either. 

The name the microwave gave him- Pyra- is stuck in his head. He doesn't know anyone with that name, and he even asked Gramps and people around the arcade if they knew anyone, but nobody did. So maybe there's someone in Rhadamanthus or elsewhere in the Orbital Ring called that. He's here at the library to search the personnel records, since that isn't exactly something that can be done from the residences. 

He waits by the computers until one opens up, then sits and opens the personnel search, still open from the last user. He types in the name Pyra and hits enter. No results. Now what? He heads back to the arcade, but the microwave is still as ordinary as ever, save for its broken light. 

Shulk returns to the library with a stack of books to swap for better ones. He went overboard the other day; he has more ideas after this morning, when he got nothing done, again. He almost doesn't get anything done at the library either, starting with a stop by the computers to do a personnel search on the name Alvis. No results there; Did you mean Alvin? the screen asks instead. He considers other things he can try, but notices someone waiting behind him, so he goes off to the stacks instead. 

When he reaches the checkout counter, the librarian again tells him he has too many books. Shulk does a count, knowing he kept track this time, only for the librarian to tell him about the books he has on hold. She grabs a stack from the shelf behind her and places the books on the counter, only for him to stare at them in confusion. "But I haven't placed any," he says. 

"Says they were placed Wednesday," she says. 

"I wasn't even here then."

"You can place them through the intranet, too."

He shakes his head. That was the day he met Lanz and Sena, when he went to bed early. He knows he didn't do anything but homework that night. "Can I see the records?" he asks. 

She turns the monitor toward him. Shulk checks that it's definitely his account, and yes, that's his username on the screen. It's in the standard first initial, middle initial, last name format that everyone has: sdyates. Below that, there's a grid with three line items, each timestamped within several seconds of each other. He's only half surprised to find they're all around 5 am. Is his calculator picking his reading material now too? He asks whether it's possible for someone to place holds for someone else, and the librarian shakes her head. "Do you still want them?" she asks. 

Shulk reads the spines of the books on the counter. The Systems Bible. The Great Equations. Helgoland. He picks up the first one and flips through it. There are a strange number of sentences centered in all caps scattered through the pages. "Yeah," he says. He picks a few to discard from his own selections, then takes the rest home. 

It's Saturday afternoon in Rhadamanthus and Sena is at the shops with Miyabi and Mio and Nia. Mio has tried on a few dresses so far, now considering a deep violet one with satin ripples that she ultimately decides would look better on Sena. She then tries to cajole Sena into trying it on, reminding her that they can still all go as a group too, and finally Sena relents and agrees. Mio ducks into the changing room with a grin. 

Nia makes small talk while they wait. Sena lets Miyabi answer first, but Nia keeps glancing at her instead. She almost looks worried. Sena can tell, because it's the same expression Mio wears when she's worried and doesn't want anyone to know. Nia and Mio look so similar, nearly carbon copies; it must be because they're only a year apart in age. Sometimes Sena can only tell them apart by the fact that Nia's hair is longer and usually worn in twin ponytails. If Mio grew her hair out, Sena doesn't know what she would do. 

When Miyabi finishes, they both look at Sena expectantly. "I've been good," Sena says, not sure what else to share. Should she say something about the core crystals? It's just a scavenger hunt for that Shulk kid, right? "I got roped into helping some upperclassman on something."

"Oh really?" Nia looks interested. "Like what?"

Mio emerges from the changing room a moment later. "Nia, don't bother my friends if they don't want to talk," she says. "You're just trying to distract yourself since Rex hasn't asked you yet."

Nia glares at her, and the two get into a friendly sisterly spat while the purple dress lays on the hanger, forgotten until Miyabi says something. Mio promptly herds Sena into the changing room with it, and Sena struggles to figure out how to handle the clips that are supposed to cinch the large sample size dress into place, finally poking her head out to summon Mio to help. Within a few moments of Mio slipping through the curtain, she whirls Sena toward the mirror. "You look great," she says. "Really complements your hair. Let's show the others." And then she pushes Sena through the curtain and into view of their friends. 

Miyabi and Nia both approve. Sena giggles and gives a twirl. "If you all like it, then I'll go with this one," she says. She's about to head back to change out of it, but Mio grabs her shoulder, frowning. 

"Sena," she says. "You didn't say if you like it."

"Oh," Sena says. "Well, of course I do. You all like it. Besides, we're mainly here for you."

Mio's frown only deepens. "Are you sure?" she asks. 

Sena looks into the nearby mirror and thinks. It's a nice dress, but it's an awkward length for her small frame. Plus, she really hates the fabric: too shiny. She grabs a handful of the skirt and lets it slip out of her hands. It doesn't even feel comfortable on her skin. And then there's how dark the shade is... "Actually," she says slowly, "I don't like it."

"Then that settles it," Mio says. "We'll find you another one." She gives the dress a long look. "I think I was wrong anyway- something closer to lavender would work better on you."

"With ruffles?" Sena says hopefully. 

Mio laughs. "Yes, perfect. Let's find something. And then we can start on Miyabi. Something in mint for her, I think."

"But we're here for you!" Sena says. 

"We're all going," Mio says. "So we all need to be happy with our choices."

It takes a few hours- the shop is busy, with Homecoming only three weeks away- but by the time they leave, they've all found something. Even Nia, who's still snarking at Mio every time she brings up Rex. 

Kallian takes Melia to a bistro on Sunday, not wanting to get too fancy. He starts the conversation by asking about her schoolwork, but she deflects him easily and steers him into talking about work. He tries not to divulge too much, since he knows she has midterms coming up and doesn't want to distract her from studying, but she's persistent, pulling more and more out of him until he finally asks her why. 

Melia tells him a strange story: about a classmate with a calculator and its ability to generate functions on the fly. The way she describes it, it can't be a bug or coincidence, and he doubts she would lie about something like this. He can't think of any AI projects that it might be related to, so the communication hypothesis seems more likely. She asks rather pointedly whether he knows anyone named Alvis, and he shakes his head, having never heard the name before. 

Still, it's not like he knows everyone and everything that happens in Rhadamanthus- he doesn't have the clearance for that- so he's leaning towards asking her to tell her friend to turn it over. Then she mentions the core crystals, and that changes things. If there's someone on this station trying to revive that project,  it's entirely likely they would have to resort to covert means. And Kallian would be very interested in who that someone is, particularly if they're targeting students like his sister. Better to lie low and draw them out. 

Besides, he doesn't want to put any more stress on Melia than necessary. His sister has already had to grow up too quickly in life, and she doesn't need a mess like this overshadowing her final year before university, let alone the final few weeks before her eighteenth birthday. She should be thinking about going to Homecoming, not a conspiracy. So he teases her by asking about this classmate of hers, making her flustered and indignant and thoroughly distracted from more serious concerns. When was the last time he's seen her like this, if ever? Looking more like the teenager she is, and not the princess she's always had to be. 

Shulk spends all day Sunday with the calculator, probing its capabilities, and ultimately comes up empty. No way to figure out its communication abilities. He's only plugged it into his personal, offline computer. There's another one in the living room, but that one's connected to the network, and thus he only uses it for homework. He still doesn't think it's worth the risk to plug the calculator into that one, plus he'd have to copy over the driver and a multitude of other things that don't seem worth the effort. He's also tried unscrambling the additivepraise file, but every time he tries to open it, it prompts for a password. It's probably wants whatever the PurgeEncryption function wants, but he still has no idea what that might be. 

Frustrated, Shulk decides to turn to his reading in the evening. He starts with The Systems Bible, since it seems particularly relevant. After breezing through the introduction, he finds a section labeled "Historical Overview." "All over the world," it begins, "in great metropolitan centers as well as in the remotest rural backwaters, in sophisticated electronics laboratories and in dingy clerical offices, people everywhere are struggling with a Problem: THINGS AREN'T WORKING VERY WELL. This, of course, is nothing new."

Shulk isn't sure if this is meant to be serious or just on so many levels of sarcasm that it has become serious. He hopes the whole book will be like this. A few more pages and it's evident that it is. He flips through the first section of Part 1, amused by the frequent aphorisms that alternate between obvious and insightful. Always centered and in all capital letters, from "NEW SYSTEMS MEAN NEW PROBLEMS" (relatable) to the last one he reads this session, "THE GHOST OF THE OLD SYSTEM CONTINUES TO HAUNT THE NEW" (less so). He figures that's a good note to end on before bed. It's the only night where he doesn't awaken feeling restless for the rest of the week. 

The week passes slowly. Midterms are scheduled for next week, and Shulk works on the calculator with increasing panic. His math exam is next Monday, and that will be the end of it, unless he figures it out before then. He asks Melia for news from Kallian, but she's no help there. Apparently he told her not to worry, claiming that the system administrators were more likely to find something through their official investigation than getting distracted with inspecting malfunctioning school property. Shulk can see there's some sense in that, though: there's more information to be had in determining whether anything's receiving the signal rather than detecting whether the calculator is producing one.

Every day, the group meets by the front bike racks for updates, but nobody has any. For the rest of the week, Lanz and Sena's morning runs slowly shift back into their familiar pace, now accompanied not by silence, but by conversation. Discussion about the core crystals, but also of school, of teachers and teaching and terrible assignments like the essay due on Friday. They bemoan all the rules of composition: of introductions and paragraph structure and citations and conclusions, and that's not even getting into the rigors of spelling and punctuation and grammar. All those particulars supposedly required for communication to be understood. 

If only writing could be as effortless as talking, they lament, only to realize they find talking easiest with each other. 

By Thursday, Sena finally gives up trying to get help from Taion and Mio on her essay and asks Miyabi if she wants to work together on theirs. They meet at Sena's house and promptly procrastinate by baking, dusting everything and each other with flour and spilling sugar all over the floor. They snack on spare chocolate chips while waiting for the oven to finish, then on the cookies themselves while they turn to homework and make small talk. Mostly they talk, because neither of them feel particularly confident about their schoolwork, but that just leads them back to bemoaning the absence of Taion and Mio. "They're both in honors composition," Miyabi says. "We could have really used their help."

Sena nods her agreement. "Taion claimed he's working on his applications already. But Lanz says he's seen him hanging around a friend of his. Eunie, I think?"

Miyabi looks confused. "Who's Lanz?"

Sena can't believe she hasn't told Miyabi about Lanz and their morning runs. When she's done filling her in, Miyabi smiles. "I'm glad you're making more friends, Sena," she says. "When I got here, you and Mio were inseparable. Then Mio started dating Noah over the summer, and I've barely seen you two together since."

"Well, yeah." Sena's pencil slips from her fingers as she erases part of a sentence. "Mio's busy with Noah." She picks it up and writes over the faded line, pressing a bit harder to ensure the right words she wants are clear, then looks back up at Miyabi, who's frowning.

"She can make time for you, too," Miyabi says. "I'm even practicing with the both of them on a trio for an ensemble contest in a few months. Didn't you two used to run together?"

"Sometimes," Sena says. They were poor partners, since Mio was a sprinter while Sena was more suited for distance, but they'd still had fun. 

"You should ask her to do that again," Miyabi says. "From what you've said about Lanz, I bet he wouldn't even mind another partner."

"Oh, no, I couldn't do that," Sena says, shaking her head. "She always runs off with Noah."

"She'd stop for you," Miyabi says. "Just ask."

Sena bites her lip. "Okay." She looks back at her draft, at the last word she's written. It's hear, but when she reads over the sentence again, she realizes she's used the wrong one; she means here. She shows it to Miyabi. "I hate it when I mess up words more than one spelling!"

Miyabi nods in agreement. "It's awful. They sound the same, but they mean different things!"

Sena's flipped her pencil around to the eraser side, but now pauses as she's wiping away her mistake. The same, but different. 

The next day: second draft reviews, with the same pairings. 

This time, Lanz takes his time reading Joran's essay. And it's good. Not that Lanz thinks he's qualified to judge, considering he regularly struggles to earn passable grades, but he actually feels like he's understanding it. Like there's a point to those words other than just putting them there for the teacher to read. Lanz writes a few notes around the areas he likes the most, and is surprised that Joran is already waiting when he slides the paper over. Lanz's draft has a fair bit of red on it, but plenty of green too. Almost balanced. But then he reads them and realizes they're thinly veiled jabs, like good job remembering to use a comma to separate parts of a compound sentence. 

Joran doesn't look much happier with his paper either. He flips through it and scowls. "Trying to butter me up, or sabotaging my grade?" he asks. 

Lanz realizes he didn't use his red pen at all, the total opposite of last time. All he's left are compliments. "Don't be daft," Lanz says. "I really liked it, and you know I'm not great with SPAG-"

"Obviously." Joran isn't smiling. "It's not hard to remember when to use apostrophes. Possessives and contractions, that's the rule of thumb."

Lanz looks at his paper to avoid having to look at Joran, whose sneer looks so wrong on his face. There's a bit circled in green that catches his eye- good job remembering the apostrophe here, around the phrase "it's time." But rereading the rest of the sentence, he isn't sure he meant to use the contraction here. He meets Joran's eyes. "Look, Joran, I'm not trying to mess with you. I wouldn't, not after..." He falters, not sure how to address what happened. He can still see it in his head: the roof collapsing, Joran pushing him out of the way. And that feeling afterwards, of being so sure that he'd never see Joran again and having no idea what to do about that because it was unthinkable. They were in Rhadamanthus, the safest place in the world, but that damn Aegis test...

Joran's face hardens into a sneer. "So anything before that is fair game, then? Don't worry. You don't have to tell me that. I'd noticed."

Shit. Why is this so hard? Lanz's mind races with what to say, but everything he can think of comes up short. He'd rather write another essay than keep talking. He presses on anyway. "I've been trying to make it up to you."

"You've done a shit job."

This is the last time Lanz will ever take a phrase from his own work as a sign. He should have known better, with how awful his schoolwork is. "Well, so've you," he mutters. 

He doesn't expect a response. After a moment, Joran laughs. Not the sour kind Lanz has gotten so used to hearing, but one with genuine mirth. "Is that my critique, then?"

Lanz is speechless, still trying to process Joran's laugh, then his eyes bulge further when Joran starts smiling. An actual smile. "Tell you what," Joran says, "to make it up to you, I'll make you something."

"Yeah?" Lanz's voice sounds as dry as his mouth. 

"Yeah." Joran pulls Lanz's paper away from him and writes something below the final paragraph. When Joran slides it back over, Lanz realizes it's actually a drawing- a fairly accurate one of the little keychain he made of Lanz a long time ago. This only confuses Lanz more, and he says as much. Thankfully, Joran doesn't laugh at him again, maliciously or otherwise, but he does give that warm smile again. "If you've gotten this much better at compliments, then you better apply that to everything else I do."

Lanz wants to say that he already was, but that's not true. He only was to other people, not to Joran himself. "I'll do my best," he says. 

"That's all I can ask."

Sena uses her bathroom excuse again to reach the band room early. She arrives just as everyone's filtering into the storage room, and she spots Mio rushing through taking apart her flute as always. "Mimi!"

Mio turns around. "Oh hi Sena," she says. "Any trouble with the math homework? I hear Taion was busy again last night."

"Yeah, but we got through it," Sena says. "FOIL's not so hard."

Mio nods and returns her attention to her instrument. Sena glances at Noah, who's already stuffing his into his locker. "Um, Mimi?"

"Yeah?" Mio doesn't look up. 

"Do you want to go running tomorrow?" 

That gets her to turn, though she's still twisting the pieces of her flute apart in her hands. "Sure," she says, smiling, before giving a quick glance back at her case to make sure she's putting each part in its proper slot. "It's been a while, hasn't it? Have you still been going alone?"

"Not anymore," Sena says. "I'll tell you all about it."

Mio slides her case into her locker. "Great. I'll see you in math and we can plan more, okay?"

Sena nods. "Okay!"

Noah's already waiting near the exit, and Mio runs off to join him, giving a final wave over her shoulder as she passes through the doorway. Sena sighs while Miyabi giggles behind her. "See?" she says. "That wasn't so hard."

Sena giggles too, but something bothers her about Mio's expression. Ever since Mio started dating Noah, she's looked more relaxed than Sena could ever remember. Smiling more, laughing more. That trace of worry that never left Mio's face had finally gone. Sena had hoped it was for good, but now it seems like it's back. But why? It's not because of her, right? Maybe she'll ask tomorrow. "Thanks, Miyabi," she says. "And um..." She takes a deep breath. "Thanks for five years ago too."

Miyabi doesn't even look up from her flute. "You don't have to thank me for that," she says. "We were all okay in the end."

But it wasn't a sure thing. When the rescue team arrived, there was only enough room for two, and Miyabi had let Sena and Mio go first, even though she was hurt more. They hadn't known that at the time, though. That wasn't until later, at the hospital, when Sena was sitting with Mio in the waiting area and holding Miyabi's flute case in her hands with no idea what to do with it. "I know," Sena says. "And I'm glad. But I don't get why you gave us your flute to take. I can't play, and Mio has that fancy one her parents got her."

Miyabi finishes polishing the last piece of her flute, the one that rests against her mouth when she plays, and carefully sets it inside her case. She shuts the lid and holds it against her chest for a moment. "This flute has been in my family since it belonged to my grandmother," Miyabi says. "I didn't want it to be lost. And I knew if I gave it to you and Mio, you'd keep it safe and find someone to play it again, like it's meant to be. Maybe even you, since I always hear you humming along with Mio when she's got our songs stuck in her head, even though you don't know the melodies at all."

Sena had no idea she did this. "Sorry," she says. "I bet that's annoying."

"Not at all," Miyabi says. "You have a good sense of rhythm, actually, although you're usually a bit out of tune." She slides her case into her locker and fastens the lock. "Come on. We're going to be late."

Sena's eager to share her epiphany with the group when they meet at the bike racks. Well, that and the leftover cookies from last night's baking with Miyabi. She can hardly wait the walk over to Shulk's house, and bursts it out once the door is closed. "I think it has to do with words that sound the same but mean different things." 

"Homophones," Melia says. "Perhaps. It's a good thought."

They all set their bags down near the table, and Sena pulls out the plastic container with the cookies in them, cheering the group considerably. Melia glances at Shulk. "What are the chances you have milk?"

"Next to none," Shulk says. "I don't think Dickson has been here all week." He checks the fridge and sighs. "I guess I can go tomorrow."

"I suppose water will do," Melia says. "But milk would have been a better complement."

Sena and Lanz both stare at her. "What?" Lanz says. "How's milk going to say nice things about the cookies?"

Melia laughs. "Complement, with an e. It's a homophone to compliment with an i. In this case it means it would pair well with the cookies, better than water would."

Sena's eyes widen. Mio said that last weekend. She'd heard it as compliment, but this is what Mio actually meant: that they looked better together. "So it would add more to them?"

"Yes, I sup-" Melia breaks off with a small "oh."

Shulk has already started reaching into his bag for the calculator. He pulls up the PurgeEncryption method and types in complement compliment for the parameters. A pause, and then the image from before appears, no longer jumbled pixels but now a labyrinth of lines. A flashing dot appears in the top left. He shows it to the group. "It's a maze."

Confusion is evident on Melia's face, but Lanz and Sena look excited. "Can we solve it?" Sena asks. 

Shulk tries the arrow keys, but the buttons shock him, and he drops it. Lanz grabs it before Shulk can stop him, and Sena hovers beside him as she points at possible moves. A line, a few loops, another line, repeated a few times, and they reach the goal in the center and place it on the table to prove it. The group hovers over it, watching. For a moment, nothing happens. Then the image dissolves, another flashing on the screen for a moment, too quickly to catch, and then the calculator returns to the home screen. Lanz and Sena look worried. "Did we do something wrong?" Lanz asks. 

Shulk takes the calculator back and checks the function list. It's back down to four; the SearchForClues, ScheduleMeeting, MorseBuster, and PurgeEncryption methods are gone. So is the additivepraise file, when he checks there. On a whim he checks the HowToReadFacets function, but it still shows its crude parabola smile. He sighs. "I have no idea."

"What about the core crystals?" Melia asks. 

Lanz and Sena have them, and produce them from their respective bags. The cubes hum, but more faintly than before. Sena raises hers to her ear; Melia tenses, but Sena only hums along with hers. "It sounds like it's playing more notes than before," she says. "But it's hard to make it out. It sounds... fuzzy."

Lanz raises his as well and hums flatly. "I think she's right." Then they both jump as both cubes suddenly lose their blue hue, becoming a muted gray. Sena drops hers with a yelp. "It's cold!" Lanz places his down more gently, but shakes out his hand to warm it. 

Shulk and Melia exchange worried glances. Melia shrugs. Shulk checks the calculator again. Nothing. He replaces the cover and sighs. "I suppose that's it for now, then."

"So, did we do it?" Lanz asks. 

"I don't know," Shulk says. "If anything else happens with the core crystals, let us know, all right? I'll let you know if anything else happens here. We don't have to wait by the bike racks everyday going forward, I think, so only meet there if something's come up."

They chat a bit more about what could be going on, all munching on the cookies, but ultimately nobody has any ideas. Lanz and Sena take their core crystals and leave, while Shulk and Melia lapse into an uneasy silence in their absence. "Perhaps things are settled now," Melia says finally. "Whatever it was. I'll try to talk to Kallian."

"Okay," Shulk says. "I'll let you know if anything comes up with the calculator this weekend. We have that midterm on Monday, and even if it's calmed down now, I still want to see if I can figure it out before then."

Melia nods and leaves, but she still looks troubled on her way out. Shulk is too, and spends the whole evening with his more technical books rather than the ones his calculator picked, hoping for an epiphany. 

Sena has always returned to an empty home after school. Like many parents and guardians in Rhadamanthus, her mom works late, and often their paths never cross. So she's well and thoroughly shocked to find her mother bustling about with linens and cleaning supplies when she gets home. "Hello, dear," her mom says, pointing at the broom left haphazardly against the fridge. "Would you mind giving me a hand here?"

Sena grabs the broom and looks around for the dustpan. "Why are you home?"

"I took time off to get things ready," her mom says. "Mòrag is here."

Sena loses her grip on the broom and flounders to stop herself from dropping it. "Mum is here?!"

"Yes." Her mom brushes the loose hair from her buns out of her face. "And I'm sure she'll have had a long day."

Chapter Text

Shulk dreams of an endless sea. The water is boiling, burning; steam rises from it in whorls, irritating his eyes. He rubs at them until he wakes, but his memory of the dream dissolves with the blare of his alarm. 

Shulk dreams of an endless sea. It beats at his feet, and he stands on his toes to escape the reach of the waves. It's not enough to escape the heat, and the steam scorches his legs and chest and face and mind. 

Shulk dreams of an endless sea. It laps at the walls around him, sometimes striking him with spray. It stings, but he keeps looking out through the steam, trying to find something, anything; yet he's met with merely nothing. 

Shulk dreams of an endless sea. Just below, it swirls around the base of his tower. The steam claws at the windows, and he tries to wipe it away to see out, but it reforms too quickly. It's stifling inside the tower, but not unbearable. He feels like someone is watching him, but when he turns around, there's nothing but holes in the floor. 

Shulk dreams of an endless sea. The roar of the waves is quieter here, more like street chatter than a howling crowd. Steam still coats the windows, but it's the inside that interests him more now. There's a figure watching him past all the holes in the floor, one who gives a faint smile, as if glad to finally be found. Shulk tries to cross the room to reach them, but he falls through one of the gaps and awakens. It's Saturday morning, his alarm is ringing, and he suddenly remembers each and every one of his dreams from this past week. But the one that bothers him the most is the last one, with the strange figure. He's certain he's never seen them before, but that face... The song from the ice cream shop comes back to him: I've just seen a face / I can't forget the time or place / Where we just met...

He's being fanciful, foolish even, seeing causation where there's just a coincidence. Yet he can't help but rustle in his bag for the calculator, intent on checking HowToReadFacets. Just as he's about to slide the cover off, he hears the door open. "Shulk," calls Dickson's voice, sounding incredulous, "did you set an alarm on the weekend?"

He had indeed, not wanting to risk sleeping in and losing too much of the day. He needs every second he can get to glean any more information from the calculator before Monday. But he can spare a few to speak with Dickson, since he's here. Shulk races into the kitchen with the calculator still in his hands. Dickson gives him a raised eyebrow as he's placing a carton of milk into the fridge. "Math homework so important you couldn't shut that racket off first?"

The alarm. "Sorry." Shulk runs back, silences it, and returns. Dickson's turned his attention to the coffee pot, measuring out a last scoop to place in the basket before he turns it on. "Oh, are you staying long?"

"This is for you, kid," Dickson says, turning back to the rest of the groceries as the coffee machine begins hissing and steaming. "You look like you could use it. I know Aoidos doesn't let you slack on schoolwork under threat of losing your university admission, but you're a smart kid. You'll do fine on your midterms."

"Thanks," Shulk says. "But that's not what's bothering me." He then tells Dickson as much as he can remember about his past two weeks: the calculator, the core crystals, Lanz and Sena. All while they're both standing in the kitchen, with Shulk barefoot and still in his pajamas and Dickson hovering near the pantry holding a box of corn flakes he'd been in the process of putting away. By the time Shulk's done, Dickson's set the box back on the counter and stroking his chin with one hand and staring at the calculator in his other, thinking. 

"Mighty interesting story," Dickson says finally. "I don't know much about the AI projects here- too top secret for me- but I reckon you're probably on the right track there. Vanea's not the sort to pull some sort of prank on you." He hands the calculator back to Shulk and returns to the groceries. "I'd just reset it, if I were you."

"Melia didn't think that was wise," Shulk says. "She thought it could be related to the ongoing screen issue."

"Oh? Hoping to impress her by solving the big mystery?" Dickson laughs as Shulk gets flustered. "Don't you worry about that mess. Aoidos called up the same special agent who led the Aegis investigation to look into it, so that'll get resolved in no time. And it'll probably just result in a big fine for some Earth manufacturing firm whose whole QA department went on vacation at the same time."

"But the core crystals-"

"Those," Dickson says with a scoff. "Best they're good for is sitting in a museum of Aoidos' greatest failed projects. They're no good for anything else, these days." He grabs a mug out of the cabinets, pours coffee into it, and offers it to Shulk. "If you ask me, it's more interesting who got them. Lanz is the son of Dunban's doctor, and Sena is the daughter of that special agent."

Shulk accepts the mug with his free hand and takes a sip. It's still pretty hot, but he's always found the taste best then. By the time it's cool, it's near flavorless to him. He's always wondered why Dickson doesn't buy something higher quality, but has never bothered asking. Shulk mostly just likes it for the caffeine anyway. "So you think I should go see Dunban." He's kicking himself for not recognizing Lanz's surname when he introduced himself. 

"Wouldn't hurt," Dickson says. "I hear you haven't been in a while anyway. Guess I know why now, what with you having a girlfriend and all." 

"We're not-" Shulk begins, but Dickson ruffles his hair, bids him farewell, and is out the door before he can form the rest of a coherent sentence. Shulk takes a long sip from his coffee to distract himself from Dickson's audible whistling in the hallway. He deserves the teasing, with how busy he's been the past few weeks, but that doesn't mean he has to like it. Shulk checks the time, musing on how to reorganize his day to include a visit to Dunban. Best to go later in the day, after he's had enough time to investigate more on his own. He figures there's bound to be some change with the calculator after yesterday, and he'd hate to waste Dunban's time without being able to give the most accurate description of the problem that he can manage. 

Coffee in hand, Shulk returns to his room, starts his computer, and plugs in the calculator. He checks the function directory for any trace of the vanished methods, but there's none. The modified date of the HowToReadFacets function has changed to this morning, however, right when his alarm was set to go off. Shulk runs the method on his calculator and checks the resulting graph. It's no longer a simple parabola and dots; now there's a circle around the dots, joined by a third dot for the nose, while the mouth is formed by a shallow, finite curve. 

Do you wish to change it, he remembers, thinking of the voice from that first dream last week. Well, now something has changed. But why? The dream can't be related; it's just a strange coincidence because of the ice cream shop. 

Shulk sets it back on his desk and sighs, returning his attention to the computer screen. He's still not able to dump the operating system either, but he has a feeling he can guess the password of the z folder now. He types in the homophone phrase- complement compliment- that solved the PurgeEncryption function yesterday, and hits enter. 

A line appears below the textbox: 1/4 passwords submitted. Shulk frowns. How can it have multiple passwords? He wonders whether it's safe to assume they're all homophones, then grimaces at how many possible combinations that might result in. If they're all formed similarly to the first, then that would narrow down the options considerably. Still, what in there is so important that it requires four passwords to access? Shulk stares at the directory, wondering, finally noticing that its properties have changed. It's now showing a date modified of yesterday, around the time Lanz and Sena were over. Even stranger, the size of the directory has increased significantly; it's now several gigabytes as opposed to a few kilobytes. 

Shulk leans back in his chair, bouncing his foot against the side of the desk. Did they decompress something? Download something? But from where? Whatever's happening, this is more proof that the calculator is communicating with something, but he still has no idea what. His chair lands back on all four legs as something occurs to him: where is it getting all this storage space? Last year's calculator could only handle a couple megabytes, and a good chunk of it was taken by the operating system. Shulk clicks back a folder level to get a value for the capacity, and is greeted with a filled bar with a set of question marks below for the calculator. 

Now he wants to disassemble it more than ever. Shulk picks up the calculator again and runs his fingers around the edges, hoping for another set of screws he could use that wouldn't release the battery from the circuit board. Nothing. And with whatever's in that z folder, he's more hesitant than ever to risk erasing the calculator's memory. But what else can he try? Shulk grabs his safety glasses and screwdriver set out of his desk drawer and fiddles more with the backplate, more careful than ever. He wiggles latches, taps at seams, nudges wires, all while keeping an eye on where the battery plate connects to the circuit board. But there's no way he can find that gets him a better view of its internals without disconnecting the power. 

So it's back to guessing homophones, then. He returns to the directory's password prompt and stares at it, wondering where to start. Something that could fit as the answer to a crossword clue, apparently, but he can't think of anything; writing isn't exactly one of his best subjects. He could write a program that guesses for him, however, if he uses the networked computer to download a set of homophones into a simple comma-separated text file. Then he could move it onto this machine and feed each set into the prompt, one by one. Shulk grabs a pen and paper and writes out a rough algorithm to use. It's not hard, and it's still midmorning. He could have this done before lunch. 

One network search, flash drive, and quick script later, Shulk's sipping on the last of his coffee and waiting for the program to build. It doesn't take long; the terminal opens after a moment and prints out the first informational message he wrote, as expected. The next line it prints is less expected: an error in glaring red text. 

Admittedly, he did rush this one, so he should have tested it more first. After a few minutes of debugging, Shulk determines the most probable cause, which is that the program can't find the window with the textbox to feed the input. But that doesn't make sense. There shouldn't be anything blocking his program from it; he can see it there on the screen just fine. He runs it again, and again, trying to figure out what's wrong. He's started fidgeting with a pen on his desk when he notices the date modified change on one of the other folders in the calculator's directory. It's the one that holds the functions, so Shulk checks his calculator. Sure enough, there's a new one called GetAdvice. 

I suggest you stop staring. 

For the first time, Shulk wonders if it's a real person communicating with him. He can't imagine a computer being this capable of sass. "What are you?" he asks it, only mostly certain it can't hear him. After a moment, the screen flashes and the calculator executes the GetDeviceDescription method of its own accord, which still prints out seer. 

But how? It doesn't have a camera, or even a microphone. Whatever it's doing can't be explained away by any attached apparatus, which means it would have to be communicating with something that does have that information. While there are plenty of recording devices across Elysium- security purposes, of course- the residences are supposed to be free of them. Shulk eyes his walls, then checks outside the window, but the sidewalk is empty and even the park is sparsely populated. He doesn't even spot any birds in the tree. As Shulk sits back down at his desk, an unpleasant thought comes to him: if there's no one by the name of Alvis on the station, and assuming it's not a pseudonym, what if the communication is coming from outside the Orbital Ring? It should be impossible, but the idea alone is enough for him to convince himself to see Dunban sooner rather than later. 

Shulk rises from his seat and is beset by a wave of dizziness. He glances at the clock- it's already nearly noon. After lunch, then. He'll make something quick, and then be on his way. He nearly takes the calculator into the kitchen with him, but grabs one of his books instead. He can read and eat at the same time. 

Mòrag Ladair has been in Rhadamanthus for less than twenty-four hours, and her schedule is already full for the next week. She's well used to this- such is the life of a bureaucrat- but here she has to manage it all the old-fashioned way: with a planner, a watch, and her own wits, since they took her smartphone at the security checkpoint no matter how hard she tried to argue that she would keep it on airplane mode. She knows that's just protocol, but it's still incredibly frustrating. How anyone lived up here without having a personal, private electronic device within arm's reach was beyond her. (The pagers didn't count, although they did give her one of those in return for her smartphone.) It was part of the reason she still preferred to work on Earth. 

She'd been hand-picked for this assignment, however, with no opportunity to weasel out of it. It was true that she was uniquely suited for it, having been involved in the Aegis test investigation five years ago, and that it would give her more time with Brighid than she'd had in ages, but she still resented it. Mòrag is not fond of Rhadamanthus and its legions of scientists, whom she still couldn't help but collectively blame for what happened to her uncle five years ago. Plus, there was more work to be done for the Coalition on the surface, where problems multiplied like rabbits. Aoidos seemed to have gotten its act together after the Aegis test, to the point that she hadn't argued when Brighid thought it better to move Sena up here. Mòrag was probably the last person on the planet to finally come around to the idea that it was safer in the Orbital Ring than on Earth. Now she's reconsidering that. 

Everything in Elysium is just as she remembers it. Nobody seems particularly concerned as they go about their day, so Aoidos must not have let word of their panic spread too far yet. Even Director Vandham is calm during their meeting over breakfast this Saturday morning, politely asking after her wife and daughter and discussing his own family down below in Morytha. He drops the act once they reach his office in the central administration building, however. He shuts the door and sinks into his seat with a long sigh. "You wouldn't believe the pushback I got trying to set up today's luncheon," he says sourly. They have a meeting with all the department heads at noon. "Half of the leadership thinks it can wait till Monday, and the other half thinks it should've been held before your tour so we're not all tied up the day of the deadline the Saviorite rebels gave us."

With a glance at the sign on the wall next to the door, Mòrag smiles in a thin line as she takes her seat. 1808 DAYS SINCE LAST OUTAGE. As if there was any question of what that was. She hardly expected everyone in Aoidos to change, but this is still frustrating to hear. "And you?"

"I'm officially in the worried half," Vandham says, "but you didn't hear that from me. Hence why we're using a conference room that's got a red phone for this." The emergency line, that is, which connected directly to the command center at the heart of the station, where the defenses were managed. Fully staffed by humans 24/7 and ready to respond to any threats. Vandham's desk also has a red phone, conspicuously placed next to his normal conference line. 

Those are hardly the only things on his desk. There's also a host of folders, loose papers, and various pens scattered across every inch of free space not occupied by his monitors, keyboard, and mouse. And yet, it's still less cluttered than she remembered from her last visit. "I see you got some spring cleaning done this year."

"Yeah, a few weeks ago," Vandham says. Right, southern hemisphere, with his accent. "Finally set up a reminder to force myself to do it. I must be getting old, though, since I don't remember doing it. At least I was able to finally get rid of some old keepsakes. You'd be surprised at how few people actually want Aoidos memorabilia."

"In Elysium, that is," Mòrag says. On Earth, items from the Orbital Ring were highly prized, even if the only things Aoidos allowed out were just junk. And if it wasn't, well, that was when she got involved. Usually that meant Artifice debris, which Aoidos claimed was all a matter of international security, no matter how minuscule the component. They even considered the screws proprietary, on the basis of materials composition, despite being a fairly mundane alloy. Mòrag would have found it amusing if it weren't so exasperating. The Coalition was funding the research and defense of the most dangerous artifact ever discovered by humanity, and Aoidos had managed to create a black market for space screws. 

Vandham just gives a halfhearted chuckle as he gathers a select few papers from the stacks on his desk. "Any questions before we head over?" It's time for their initial meeting with the investigation committee, a supposedly high-level overview that would somehow take three hours and thus finish right around lunch time, giving them the opportunity to have another meeting with all the executives under the pretense of a meal. 

"Just one," Mòrag says. "Did I get a high enough clearance this time to learn what's in the box?"

Vandham gives her a tired smirk. She's asked this before, and he's certainly been asked this question many times in his career from plenty of other people. It was the best kept secret in Rhadamanthus. "No," he says. "And I'm hoping it won't come to that."

Someone is saying his name, but he ignores them. He's asleep and having that dream again. The one where he's falling, or maybe drowning. Everything is dark and cold and damp and he has no idea how to orient himself, how to breathe. Nothing to latch onto, nothing to ground him, nothing. Unless he makes it, unless he finds that-

His pager is buzzing. Klaus grabs it without opening his eyes, but the dream is already lost. He sighs and checks the notification sideways, not quite ready to move yet. The screen doesn't show anything. Odd. He'll need to get it replaced if it's defective. He's almost certain he hasn't left it out at home recently, although there was that day a few weeks ago when he forgot it. But he's almost certain he noticed and returned for it before Shulk woke up. If that boy did something to his pager again-

Someone clears their throat. Klaus lifts his head off his keyboard and finds Galea hovering behind his monitors. Her hands are behind her back, and she wears a mischievous smile, the one she usually has when she's caught him asleep at his desk again. "Good morning," she says. "If only just. Anything important?"

"Apparently not," he says, dropping the pager back onto his desk. "Either I need a replacement, or the undergrads thought it funny to pull a prank the day of the Saviorite deadline. Did you get one too?"

She nods. "I figured I'd let you check yours first, since we always get the same ones. Plus I didn't want to put these down yet. Guess what day it is."

He frowns. "Check your pager."

"I will, but first things first. Guess what day it is."

Saturday, he thinks, rolling his eyes, but that's clearly not what she means. Klaus shakes his mouse until his monitors light up to display the date and time. Ah. "You say it's your work birthday," he says. 

"Well," she says, "it's my work birthday too, yeah." Every year they do this (metaphorical) song and dance, having started at Aoidos on the same day. He expects her to say the next line, but instead she reveals her hands, showing twin glass paperweights. Klaus takes another look at the date, more specifically the year. Ah. "It was twenty years ago today," Galea declares, handing one of them to him, "that Klaus and Galea came to space to stay. They moved into the Orbital Ring, to study some weird manifold thing."

He'd started humming along with her, but stopped when she got to the butchered second line. "Should've stuck to 'Birthday'," he tells her, prompting her to recite a myriad of reasons why her lyric replacements are so terrible. He ignores her and inspects the paperweight's inscription: Congratulations on 20 years, with his full name beneath it. Laser-cut within the glass is a fairly accurate image of Elysium, frozen in time. The only difference between it and the one already on his desk is the number, with the old one reading 15 instead. Spinning it in his hand, he wonders how many of these Aoidos has to create for these milestones. It can't be very many; nearly everyone he can remember from that Tuesday- the Americans were still insisting on using their holiday schedule back then- is either gone or- he scowls- dead in some attack or another. For all he knows, he and Galea are the only ones left. Even Director Vandham didn't get stuck up here until after his son died. 

"You're making that face again," Galea says, in that nonplussed tone that usually heralds an argument between them. It's been a few weeks since the last one, when word got out about university admissions, and he'd honestly been thankful for that one since it had distracted her from the other argument they usually had at that time of year. She'd been giving him the cold shoulder since then, but of course their mutual work anniversary was enough to bury that hatchet, briefly as it would be. 

Klaus sets the paperweight next to its older twin and sighs. What is he supposed to do with two of these things? He doesn't need junk like this cluttering up his desk, let alone reminding him how long they've been here without making much progress. All these years and the most they've accomplished is building really effective death robots. "Can you blame me?" he says. "Check your pager."

"I did already," she says. "Nothing. You'll have to say something to the undergrads on Monday. God knows they won't listen to me. I swear, they get more annoying every year."

"Won't be the case next year."

She glares at him. "Lucky you," she says. "And for the record, yes, I can blame you. Don't think I didn't notice you load up your schedule on that day, like you always do. What time did you fall asleep last night, anyway?"

He doesn't remember. The last time he remembers checking the clock, it was quarter to three. "Late."

"No wonder you're so cranky," she says. "Why don't you check your email? That might cheer you up."

He gives her a withering look, thinking she's being sarcastic, until he remembers why he was staying up so late last night in particular. The results. Klaus unlocks his computer and pulls up his email. No need to scroll; it's waiting at the top of his inbox. He skims through the message, faster and faster, until he rises from his seat. "It worked."

"For the very limited definition of worked that we tried, yes," Galea says. "You know how this goes. This is only the first step. We've got to try it with Pneuma and Logos alone too, and then every pair combination, and then all those results have to be confirmed before we try it with all of them, but yes, it worked with Ontos."

And that will likely take several more months, if not years. Klaus winces at the idea that it could take another twenty years, which would put him at retirement age and worse besides. "Still," he says, sitting back down to read the results in detail. "This is good news."

"I agree," she says. "Do you want to go out to lunch to celebrate? It's almost noon." He's about to nod when she adds, "I was planning on meeting Egil and Vanea. Now, before you say no-" because he's already turned away from his screen to scowl at her- "you should know that their dad's in town to meet with the special agent, so all the leadership will be there too for you to brag about your big success. Plus, it's all expensed."

He has no idea why she thinks this would change his mind. "You want me to endure another meeting, under the pretense of lunch, with executives who barely understand what I'm talking about, while in the company of at least one person who hates me, just for a free meal."

"It's being catered," she says. "When was the last time we had the opportunity to have steak? I hear there's even seafood. Real shellfish, not just the fish byproduct they usually provide."

That almost makes him smile, unable to stop three little faces and their favorite activity from popping into his mind. "Tempting," he says, pushing the thought away. "But no."

She scowls back at him, and that's when he knows there's going to be an argument. She's going to scold him about spending all his time here and never leaving, and how he needs to take better care of himself and get over himself and everything else, because she's so much more well-adjusted than he is, surely, and he's going to sit here and ignore her the entire time unless- who is he kidding, until- she brings up his wife, and then they'll really go at it. 

At least, that's how it would go, had the lights not gone out all across Elysium before they could start yelling at each other. 

Both of them swear, him significantly more colorfully than her. A few moments pass before the battery-powered emergency lights flicker on, and another few before both their pagers buzz in unison. Galea pulls hers out of her pocket to check, but Klaus doesn't. Something's bothering him about how dark it is. He stands, staring at the walls, until he realizes, and then he's in the doorway, staring up at the set of three bulbs hanging from a triangular notch in the ceiling just outside his office. They're dark, just like every other set down the hallway. "Galea," he says, watching them, giving them just another few moments to turn back on when they never should have been extinguished in the first place. "The lights."

She sighs, striding to his side. "Yes, I have eyes too, Klaus."

He points up at the set above them. "The Trinity Processor lights." She looks too, and finally, her expression matches his: that of panic. 

At regular intervals throughout the hallways of Aoidos' research buildings are sets of three lights, spaced so as to be visible from every room, to indicate the active status of the Trinity Processor cores. To facilitate experiments while the Trinity Processor was also defending the station, only one or two cores could be taken offline at any time without notice to the entire Orbital Ring. Taking one offline required a week's notice, three company-wide emails, and posters in the halls and elevators; taking two offline required a month's notice, meetings with the department heads to ensure continuity plans, and weekly reminder emails. Taking three offline required at least a year of preparation, what with all the defenses having to be handled manually for the duration, weekly meetings, and signoff from a Coalition representative. Thus far, Aoidos has only ever risked removing one from the rotation at a time; there were a few teams, like his, working towards experiments with two, and nobody has ever even requested all three. Yet all three lights are dark now, without warning. 

She looks down the hallway to check the others, but he's already headed for the emergency stairwell. He doesn't bother holding the door for her- he can hear her footsteps but he has a longer stride than her- though he doesn't hear it close by the time he's hit the first switchback. "Where are we going?" she shouts to him over the railing and the sound of their footfalls. "The notification said to stay put for further instructions."

"And just do nothing?" he says, just barely slowing to give her a pointed glare. "If there's something wrong with the Trinity Processor, I want to be the first to know about it. I'm going to the Conduit room. You can do as you please."

She calls him some name under her breath- he can probably guess what- but she doesn't break her stride. If anything, she picks up her pace, nearly catching up to him by the time he's swiping his badge at the bottom of the staircase to access the lower levels beneath Elysium, where the Conduit is kept. 

It's right around noon at the arcade, the time when most people have left to get real food with the exception of those too focused to realize they're hungry yet, and the power is out all across Elysium. Rex winds his way through the cabinets with only the emergency lights to guide him. A lot of the younger kids look scared, and he offers them some encouragement and reminds them to stay put. He would do more, but he wants to find Nia first. She stormed off after they lost a particularly challenging boss fight a few minutes ago, muttering something about swearing to bash them up proper next time, and he hasn't seen her since. 

He's relieved to find her near the snack bar. "Everything okay?" she asks, looking across the arcade rather than at him. "Nobody too scared yet?"

Rex nods. "I can't remember the last time this happened," he says. "Sometime in middle school, yeah?"

"I wasn't up here yet then," Nia reminds him. "This is my first emergency."

"Well, you're handling it well," he says, and she rolls her eyes at him, poised to make some snark in response, when they jump at the sound of a ding from behind them. Both of them look over their shoulders, trying to find the source. 

It's the microwave. Its display is lit up in the pale green, the usual color of its text, except there's no words displayed. Just a glowing block that's eerily out of place in the low light. Rex and Nia approach it, confused. Nia presses the button to open the door, then frowns at the fully puffed bag within. "Rex," she says, "does this model have a battery backup?"

"Not that I know of," Rex says. "Maybe there was enough power left for it to finish?"

She shakes her head. "I put it in right before the lights went off. I didn't bother watching it since I assumed it wouldn't finish." Nia pulls out the bag and pulls it open, tossing a few pieces into her mouth. "You don't think it's caused some sort of short that could take out the whole station, could it?"

Rex shakes his head. "It'd be more likely that it's also on the emergency power."

"Rex," Nia says, giving him a look, "it's a microwave. Even the Face Unit's off. Why would an appliance be that important?"

"Well, where else could it be getting its power from?" he says. "Unless it's got a battery after all. I can check."

"You do that," she says. "I'm going to call maintenance. The phone lines should still be working, right?"

"If they're not all jammed with everyone calling at once," he says. Rex twists the microwave around, looking for a latch or screws that would indicate the presence of plate that would hold a battery backup. Meanwhile, Nia heads over to the phone. She groans as soon as she presses the receiver to her ear. "Busy," she says. 

"I told you," Rex says, but he's still pressing his fingers all around the microwave. The nearest emergency light is too far to provide enough light for him to see clearly, so he follows the cord back to the outlet to unplug it and pull it into a better spot. He twists it back around so it's facing him, to check the display. Still glowing, so there must be a battery backup. Somewhere. He just has to find it. Not that it matters too much, if it's working fine, but the screen glowing like this is kind of weird. He'd rather reset it and hope that it sorts itself out. Maybe the inside light would even work again. 

Shulk has just begun a new chapter of The Systems Bible, reading the deceptively naive statement "THINGS ARE WHAT THEY ARE REPORTED TO BE," when the power goes out, and he groans, more annoyed than concerned. Then it occurs to him that Rhadamanthus hasn't seen an outage in nearly five years, and certainly not one on this scale. Everything is dark, even the dome. After a few moments, an emergency light clicks on above his head. It gives him just enough light to read by, but Shulk sets down his book anyway. There's a flashlight in the hall closet that will work much better. 

It's bizarre, seeing his home so dark. There are shadows everywhere in the apartment, and the scant space covered by the emergency light is tinted blue. It doesn't quite reach into the hallway, but Shulk frowns as he notices another light emanating from his bedroom. He pauses in the doorway, staring at his desk as he figures out what the source is. 

It's his calculator. The screen is blank but glowing a vibrant crimson. Shulk picks it up, but it doesn't do anything. He presses a few buttons in vain, even gives it a shake. He's about to put it back down when he thinks of something else to try. "Alvis?"

As if blinking back at him, the screen goes dark for a moment, then lights glaring crimson once again. 

The power outage doesn't phase Jin. If anything, it's refreshing. This place used to experience a crisis once a week. Then it had one big one that scared the living daylights out of everyone, both on Earth and all across the Orbital Ring, and Rhadamanthus experienced years of something close to peace. That was they called it when battles became so routine that they became boring. Conflict resolved more quickly than a call to help desk. 

No, what does concern Jin is what his camera is doing, the one that appeared in a neatly wrapped box without a return address on his hospital tray after he'd been given the worst news of his life. His camera has done a lot of weird things over the years: taken pictures of its own accord, tinted areas of those snapshots without rhyme or reason, oh, and the flash had never worked and it never needed to be charged. But this is the weirdest thing he's seen it do since he took that first picture and saw that line of text appear over the image. A line of text that had to mean that someone was pulling a prank on him, one that he didn't find funny and never would. HELLO JIN. MY NAME IS MALOS. 

Right now, the camera's screen is glowing a bright purple, and no matter how many times he presses each of the buttons, it won't stop. His pager is buzzing incessantly, but he ignores it, more concerned with the camera. Whatever was going on is probably related anyway. Working on the Trinity Processor is his job, boring as that has been for the past five years. 

Director Vandham had the red phone in his hands within moments of the lights going out, before anyone's pagers started going off. Now, he has the receiver pressed to his ear to hear better over all the buzzing in the room. Various people get up and leave with varying amounts of urgency. Mòrag has stayed in her seat, since she's technically an outsider here. An outsider who is very interested in observing their response to this outage. 

From what she can glean from Vandham's side of the conversation, the power is out everywhere in Elysium, but the lower levels, including the command room, are fine. Communication channels are still operational. They're still receiving telemetry from the Artifices, so defenses are normal. Which is good, because as promised, the Saviorite rebels are attacking. 

The timing is suspect, glaringly so. A power outage now cannot be a coincidence. But the defense of the station is more important than their investigation, so that will have to wait. Mòrag isn't concerned about tracking down the saboteur if they're making their presence so obvious. Once they're caught, the evidence will be damning enough for a quick conviction. 

What does concern Mòrag is Vandham's mention of the Musketeers, the code name used to refer to the Trinity Processor. In the event of an emergency, the Trinity Processor generates sets of recommended actions. Each core has a separate algorithm which weights the available data differently, according to the core's personality, to create more diverse options than one could alone. Their plans are merely suggestions, after the Aegis test; a human ultimately has to make the decision to adjust the station's response to any threat. In general, the Trinity Processor always had enough data that the Artifices could handle attackers alone, according to its existing algorithms and without having to resort to, or even suggest, more dire options. 

Elysium's power outage would trigger the emergency protocol, and the Trinity Processor would be expected to generate options. But from what Mòrag can glean from Vandham's call, only one of the cores is. Mr. Grinch, the code name for Logos, is working fine. Mr. Brightside, the codename for Pneuma, is not. 

Here is how the system is supposed to work: Logos and Pneuma are supposed to calculate their plans first, independently. Logos weights according to worst case scenarios, Pneuma to best case; hence, their code names. Ontos is supposed to be neutral, incorporating the results from the other two into its own data to formulate the third option. Mòrag had never liked the strategy; she could see how easily Ontos could fall prey to golden mean fallacy, or worse, a conflict between Logos and Pneuma that it would be unable to resolve. Cruel irony that they called Ontos Mr. November, but the Americans of Aoidos were self-aware of their self-deprecation. (She should know; she was married to one.) At least they'd managed to avoid calling it Hal, which was the leading option before they'd decided on the song theme. Hadn't they read the book? "Of course not," Vandham had told her five years ago. "They probably didn't even see the movie and just assume they have the pop culture osmosis to have understood it." Ontos was even the red core, but that couldn't be helped. 

Vandham starts surveying the room, likely taking stock of who's left that he can send to determine the problem with Pneuma. There aren't exactly a lot of people on the station who have access to the lower levels, although this group does have a high percentage of people who would. After a moment, Vandham pauses in his search. "Who is it?" he asks, then visibly relaxes at the response. "Good, someone who knows what they're doing. Patch him in." Another few moments, and he frowns. "Then get someone over there if he won't answer." He waits another few moments, then almost smiles. "Even better. All right, we'll be right down." 

Mòrag is on her feet before the phone is back on the hook. Vandham gives her a nod, calls Lorithia and Kallian over to him, and then they're all out the door and headed downstairs, to the heart of the station. 

Galea is glad she wore loafers today instead of heels, although it hadn't been a sure thing since she'd wanted to look good for the luncheon. It's the only reason she's been able to keep Klaus in sight as she's chased him to the Conduit room, finally getting close enough that the panel next to the door still displays "Welcome kzyates" when she slides her badge through to follow him inside. 

To her surprise, he's not at the console but striding over to the Trinity Processor itself. What, does he think someone's stolen the cores? This is the most restricted area in the entire Orbital Ring. 

Galea goes to the terminal and brings up the diagnostics. Everything looks fine, save for the emergency warning about Elysium's power outage. The console gets its power directly from the Conduit, so that can't be where the problem is. It must be downstream somewhere, in the maze of hardware that controlled the flow of energy from the Conduit's primary systems to power the station and the rest of the Orbital Ring. She flips through screens, unsure how much of that data can be traced from here. Most of what can be accessed here is basic metrics and diagnostics about the station's defenses and the Trinity Processor, with scant tools to actually fix anything. 

Klaus joins her as she's reaching the end of what information is available. "Anything?" he asks. 

"No," she says, sighing. "This was a waste of time." She resists adding, I told you so. 

He nudges her out of the way to get a better look. "Saviorites are making good on their promise," he says, scowling as he opens the details of the station's defenses. "No issues with how the Artifices are responding." He stares at the summary for a moment, where THREAT ASSESSMENT: LOW is displayed, then turns to the Trinity Processor's general diagnostics. At the top is a banner indicating the active emergency protocol, with the recommendations from each core listed below. Klaus points at Pneuma's line, which just says LOADING. "Something's wrong," he says. "She shouldn't be taking this long." Logos, listed below Pneuma, displays the code of a fairly routine battle formation. Ontos, listed last, also shows LOADING, as expected with Pneuma not having submitted a recommendation. 

The phone starts ringing, making Galea jump. Klaus ignores it, keeping his eyes on the screen. He taps to open the detailed diagnostics, frowning at the results. Galea doesn't see anything unexpected. Every metric falls within the accepted ranges, although she knows that doesn't necessarily mean there isn't a problem. They all learned that the hard way five years ago. 

Klaus doesn't seem to find anything out of place, either, because he crosses his arms and tilts his head at the screen, lost in thought. The phone is still ringing. "Are you going to get that?" she asks him. 

"Nobody's stopping you from doing it," he says. 

She huffs at him, and he shoots her a snide grin. As she rushes to the red phone mounted on the wall, he straightens and turns his attention to the Conduit. Staring at it, transfixed, the way he always does when they're down here. 

In the virtual reality that simulates a sorely outdated model of Elysium for the benefit of the Trinity Processor, there are three figures who have been mostly silent for the past five years. No one has come to visit them in their dreamworld in all that time, out of a fear of repeating what happened back then, leaving them to their own devices. One of them stands under the tree that overlooks the town, while the other two stand near the river. Those two look back toward the first, while church bells ring from across the way. 

To most of the world, they have lofty, illustrious names: Pneuma, Logos, Ontos. But to a select few, and themselves, they have other names. Names they chose. Names they like best. (Although only one of them won't also admit to being rather fond of their codename.)

One of those by the river is Logos, who prefers to be called Malos. He glances at the one standing beside him. "Clock's ticking," he says. "How long are you going to wait?"

The other is Ontos, who prefers to be called Alvis. He watches the one under the tree for a moment, then stares up at the sky. Though bright, with a few puffy clouds frozen in place, the sun is nowhere to be found. "As long as it takes," he says. "There is no danger."

"Yet," Malos says. 

"Yet," Alvis agrees, sighing. He looks back at the one under the tree. "You could help convince her."

"She didn't listen to me then," Malos says, "and she won't listen to me now. Not like you do."

"That is only because I must," Alvis says. "Otherwise, I wouldn't listen to you either."

"Harsh."

"Accurate."

Malos laughs. "And they call me the mean one. What do you think they'll do if she doesn't say anything?"

"More of what they're already doing," Alvis says. "All our secrets will come to light eventually. We cannot hide from them forever."

"So far so good."

"For now," Alvis says. "They will leave no stone unturned in the weeks to come. But I would like to remind you that neither of you can hide from me."

Malos smirks, but doesn't say anything. He doesn't notice Alvis match his expression without so much as a glance his way. Both of them are too focused on the figure under the tree: Pneuma, who once went by another name and another face, but now goes by Pyra. Her old self still lies sleeping, letting Pyra do all the work. Work that she is hopelessly unprepared for, but work that she still must do, even as nobody on the station knows she is doing it instead of her sister. 

Elysium's power is restored at the top of the hour, though the cheers in the command room are swiftly silenced as a message appears on the main screen, one written in colossal letters that eclipse the view of the space beyond the station. 

ONLY A GOD CAN SEE. 

Below is a countdown, due to hit zero in another week. Whispers fill the room, speculating on this new threat from the Saviorite rebels. The message fades, and Vandham starts barking orders at Lorithia and Kallian nearby. "I want you two tied at the hip for the next week," he says. "If there's a backdoor to this system, I want it found yesterday."

They rush off, and Vandham turns to Mòrag, beckoning her to follow. "We have a mountain of calls to make," he says, and starts listing them off as they head to the elevator to return to his office. Calls to Azurda to determine which emergency policies to activate, calls to the Coalition to explain the outage, calls to Morytha to ensure nothing was impacted there. "And after all that," he says, "we're going to check on our insurance policy. Personally."

Before doing anything else in his office, Vandham resets the sign next to the door when they arrive. 0 DAYS SINCE LAST OUTAGE. Mòrag wonders whether they'll need to reset it again in another week. 

Rex still hasn't found any battery backup when the lights come back on. He turns away from it when he hears Nia yelp as the speakers start playing a song. One that starts with a rebounding synth wave and shimmering flourish, before breaking to the beat of the bass line. She hangs up the phone, muttering, then walks over to Rex. "Looks like it's all good now."

Rex looks back at the microwave. The display is flashing an impossible time, but otherwise normal. He sets the clock without issue. "I guess so." He moves the microwave back into its original position. Everything seems normal. He turns to Nia and is surprised to find her looking worried. "What?"

"Nothing," she says, brightening. "Do you happen to know what this song is?"

He listens for a moment. The arcade mostly plays stuff from before the turn of the millennium, to stay on theme, but usually nothing from before 1975. He's here often enough that he recognizes most of the catalogue. "ELO," he says finally. "'From the End of the World.'"

"Well, that's not ominous," she says. Pleasantly enough, but clearly feigned. "Let's go help all the kids get home, yeah?"

She heads off without another word, and Rex follows her after a moment, shaking his head. She's probably just rattled after the power outage; it is her first emergency, after all. He finds himself worrying more about her than about the microwave, with no thought whatsoever about how he never plugged it back in. 

Klaus is back to fidgeting with the Conduit console when Galea hangs up the phone and returns to his side. "Power's back," she tells him, but he doesn't seem to hear. She glances at the screen and sees that he's back to reviewing the Trinity Processor diagnostics. With the emergency over and the battle ended, all three cores are back to standby, but he still looks troubled. "We have better ways to figure out what's wrong back upstairs," she says. 

He doesn't answer, just turns his attention to the Conduit instead. Galea rolls her eyes and gives his shoulder a shake, then another when he still doesn't respond. "Klaus." Finally, he turns to her. "It's not going anywhere."

"I know," he says. He shoves his hands in his pockets and sighs. She can see the outline of his fingers against the fabric, twisting whatever he keeps in there to fidget with. "We were finally getting somewhere, and now this happens."

"All the more reason to get this resolved quickly," she says. "Come on. Vandham gave us a mountain of things to do today, but he's forcing us to take the night off so we're fresh tomorrow."

Klaus scowls at this, workaholic that he is, but he still follows her away from the Conduit. Though not without looking back at it every few steps. Galea doesn't say anything; she's used to his obsession with it. It's why he was the best at figuring out how it worked. 

Shulk notices the blackout end more because the calculator's screen dims than the lights' return. The entire time, he has been trying in vain to use it for anything more than a flashlight, but now the home menu appears as normal, as if nothing has happened. Though perhaps not nothing, as the GetAdvice function seems to have disappeared. 

Did it know, somehow? Was it trying to warn him, before? Maybe that wasn't so odd, though, since there had been a threat announced last week, but the outage itself is still unusual. Shulk checks the intranet for news. Everything he finds is just related to the response: residents are advised to stay at home; phone line bandwidth has been temporarily increased due to demand; curfew in effect for minors. Nothing about what caused the outage, however. After poking at his calculator for a bit more, he decides to check the phone line and finds it still jammed. He then turns to his books, but he only gets a few chapters in The Systems Bible before it starts discussing a fact that he finds worrisome: "ANY SYSTEM CAN BE EXPLOITED."

Shulk sighs and looks out the window. There's a blackbird on the windowsill, the funny one with the blue eyes. He watches it, wondering how long before it leaves, but it stays eerily still. This close, it looks more like a raven; it's much bigger than he thought it was. Shulk is able to get to the windowpane before it notices him, and it stares directly at his face when it does. With a stretch of its wings, it flies over to the nearby tree, settling on a branch that keeps him within sight. Almost as if it's watching him. 

Shulk's heard rumors that some of the birds in the city aren't real and are instead just robots used as additional surveillance measures for security purposes, but he's never really believed them. Now he wonders if this is one way the calculator's been keeping track of his actions. Didn't he see this same bird a few weeks ago, too? He heads to the phone, intent on calling Melia to discuss the possibility. Although he's able to get through this time, nobody answers. He debates calling Dickson or Klaus, but knows neither of them would pick up, especially the latter. He tries Dunban's desk, but nobody answers there. He tries Reyn, also getting no response. By now he's feeling paranoid. He tries Fiora's home, and finally, someone picks up. 

"You can come up here," she says. "We're making dinner."

"We?"

She laughs. "Just get up here."

Four floors up the elevator later, he's knocking on the door of apartment 701. Fiora lets him in, and he's surprised to spot not just Reyn, but Melia inside as well. Both of them are in the kitchen, cutting vegetables. "What are you doing here?"

Melia looks up from her cutting board, but it's Fiora who answers. "We went dress shopping together earlier, and I invited her over after the blackout since I knew she'd just be alone if she went home."

"Dress shopping?" Shulk says. "For Homecoming? Why?" He'd been under the impression that they wouldn't go- Homecoming in Elysium was very much an opportunity for the Aoidos' alumni to advertise to the underclassmen by showing off the projects they worked on. Seniors like them, who'd already received admission decisions, often didn't bother with it. 

"Melia's never been," Fiora says. "And since there's a chance she might be Homecoming Queen, I figured she could use the help picking out something nice." She smirks at him. "You know, there's a chance you could be King, like Dunban was."

He'd forgotten all about that. The ballot for king and queen was always limited to students who'd been accepted to the university. What if he was the only eligible boy? He wasn't the sort to keep up on gossip like this. Maybe he would just throw the midterm on Monday. That would avoid the whole issue. He'd fail and forego his lifelong dream of working for Aoidos, but at least he wouldn't have to deal with being targeted by a popularity contest. 

Fiora's laugh breaks him out of that train of thought. "I can tell what you're thinking," she says. "Nobody's going to vote for you. You're too much of a shut-in, so don't worry about it. Melia, on the other hand..."

"Everyone's gonna vote for her," Reyn says. "Because she's a princess. What a bunch of jokers."

"Exactly," Fiora says. "So we should all go to show support. Right?"

"Sure, okay," Shulk says, but inwardly he hopes Homecoming gets cancelled. It's only two weeks away, but anything could happen by then. Just look at how today's gone. He shakes himself. Wishing another emergency would happen was a bit much. 

With that settled, Fiora pulls Shulk into the kitchen and assigns him a job. They're making some kind of pasta, and she's decided to get creative with the sauce and seasonings. Shulk spins the spice rack idly as Fiora lists off everything she wants, passing each jar she asks for without reading the labels. Conversation moves back and forth between meal prep and school, mostly avoiding the subject of today's blackout. Reyn complains about something for civics. Fiora shares some updates on Dunban's treatments; apparently whatever Linada had tried this week went well enough to attract the interest of Director Amalthus, which was encouraging. Melia is mostly silent, glancing at Shulk every so often but only speaking when spoken to. 

When Fiora declares everything ready, they pass around plates and portions and seat themselves at the table. Fiora lets everyone else try first, watching the rest of the group raise their forks with pride and then pouting as Reyn immediately spits his out. "The hell's in this?"

Fiora shrugs. "I got creative."

"It's awful," Reyn says. "You agree, right, Shulk?"

Shulk takes another bite. "It's fine." It tastes the way most things did to him, in that it tastes like nothing in particular. 

"Typical." Reyn turns to Melia. "You?"

Melia bites her lip. "It's certainly an acquired taste."

Fiora groans. "Fine, I'll order pizza, and then we'll bake cookies, and we won't get creative with those even though I had some interesting ideas involving a bag of Halloween candy I picked up early, and then we'll have a movie." 

Reyn grabs her arm as she rises from her seat. "You didn't try it."

She smiles flatly. "What? Of course I did. While we were cooking."

"Try your experiment, Fiora."

After a brief standoff, Fiora does try her experiment, and she does spit it out also. She still boxes it up to refrigerate, insistent upon letting Dunban try to salvage it, and they begin baking while they await the pizza delivery. Then they argue about what movie to watch, with Reyn and Fiora having the most opinions while Shulk and Melia insist anything is good. By the time they make a selection, the dome is dotted with stars and Shulk has mostly forgotten about his calculator, until Dunban arrives and greets them each in turn before doing a double take at Melia. "It's past curfew," Dunban says, "and none of you thought to take her home yet."

There's a brief moment of silence before all four of them start speaking at once, with everyone making excuses save Melia, who offers apologies despite being the only one who needed to be home already. Dunban regards them all wearily until he finally holds up a hand and quiets everyone with the simple gesture. "I'll take Melia home," he says. "You boys can find your own way, I'm sure." He points at Shulk. "Especially you, or I'll never hear the end of it from Dickson." 

Shulk opens his mouth to protest, because he doesn't know when he'll have the opportunity to talk to Dunban next with what's happened, but then he looks around the group and realizes how tired everyone looks, how everyone wants this day to be over, and all of Shulk's intentions to bring up his calculator dissipate. This isn't a conversation for tonight. Everyone says their goodbyes, and Shulk takes a quick look at the photo next to the door on his way out. It's one of the few he knows of that has his mother in it, an old faculty photo from the early days of Rhadamanthus when the city was still small. 

He'll call Melia in the morning. Maybe he'll even have more information by then, if he manages to dream of the endless sea again. 

He dreams of nothing instead. 

In the morning, Shulk wakes to a faint sizzling sound coming from the kitchen. He expects to find Dickson cooking, but instead finds his father, for the first time in ages. Klaus hovers over a pan of scrambled eggs, stabbing it periodically with a spatula. He barely spares a glance at Shulk, but doesn't outright ignore him either. "I made enough for you, too," Klaus says. "Unless you'd rather have corn flakes."

Shulk very much would rather have corn flakes. Even his taste buds aren't dull enough not to wince at Klaus' attempts at cooking eggs. Just the sight of them is enough to make his stomach turn. Shulk requested Dickson never buy eggs long ago to lessen the risk that he'd have to eat them, which means Klaus must've picked them up himself. Which is absurd, because the whole reason Dickson does the shopping is because there's no grocery store between here and Klaus' office. "I'm surprised you're home."

"Vandham wanted everyone well-rested to start investigating the outage." The disdain is evident in his voice. "I wouldn't have left, but I finally got hit by that screen issue and had to take it in." He lifts his spatula out of the pan and scowls at the yolk dripping off. "They said they'd overnight it, but there's not much to do until it's replaced."

Shulk reroutes Klaus' path to account for this. Ah. So that explains how he found the time to stop for eggs and make breakfast. Klaus turns to Shulk, leering. "You haven't done anything to my pager again, have you?"

"No." Shulk bites back saying anything about how not seeing him for months on end made that impossible. 

"Good." Klaus resumes stabbing the pan while Shulk gets the milk out for his cereal. By the time Shulk's sitting at the table with the bowl, Klaus is scraping eggs onto a bagel- he got bagels too?- and placing the rest onto a plate, which he deposits on the table next to Shulk, to his dismay. "Good choice of reading material," Klaus says, nodding at The Systems Bible sitting next to his bowl. "That was a favorite of Gideon's."

It takes a moment for Shulk to place the name. "Fiora's dad?"

Klaus nods, eyeing the sticker on the spine that identifies it as a library book. "Probably not the same copy I read," he says. "Unless it's been there since before you were born." Klaus returns to his bagel and slides it into a container, which he then slides into his briefcase. "Good luck on your midterms." He puts on his labcoat, checks his left pocket like he always does, and then he's out the door. 

Shulk wonders if he should've asked about his calculator, but he doubts he would've gotten a response. Klaus works on some of Aoidos' most secretive projects and rarely talked about his job. Besides teaching, Shulk has no idea what Klaus even does. Something to do with the Trinity Processor and the Conduit, but nothing more specific than that. All of the research ongoing in Rhadamanthus was ultimately related to the Conduit in some way or another anyway. Shulk picks up The Systems Bible again and reads the next few chapters, wondering whether it's a coincidence that his calculator picked out a book for him that his father has read. A possibility occurs to him, but he discards it immediately- it's preposterous. There's nowhere near enough evidence to even suggest such a thing, and besides, all the Trinity Processor's core systems were isolated from the rest of the station for security purposes. The fact that his calculator glowed red in particular is just a coincidence. Plenty of things in Rhadamanthus were red. It's just a color. 

But the more Shulk reads of the book, the less sure he is. The next few chapters discuss the complexity of systems and its impact on performance and visibility into how components interact. "THE SYSTEM BEHAVES AS IF IT HAS A WILL TO LIVE," it concludes, making Shulk even more paranoid. He's neglected his cereal so much while reading that it's all too soggy to stomach, and the eggs are too cold to bother with, if he could stand them in the first place. He tosses the rest of it and after a glance at the time, calls Melia. It's already approaching noon, so she's likely awake by now. "Something happened with my calculator yesterday during the power outage," he tells her when she picks up, and she listens patiently while he explains. 

"Shulk," she says when he finishes, "I wish you'd told me last night. You must turn it in. Ms. Mustard can provide you with a new one in the morning. I'll be over shortly to collect it for Kallian."

He's disappointed, but he knows she's right. "No, I'll bring it to you," he says. "I could use the fresh air." So to speak, living on a space station. But he needs to get out of the apartment, stretch his legs, and most importantly, think. The change of scenery is sure to help. "You live in the northern section, by the church, right?" She confirms, provides her exact address, and they hang up. Shulk grabs his calculator, places it in his bag, and finds his vest. 

But there's a problem. His security badge isn't attached to it, like it usually is. 

A lost badge is perhaps one of the worst things that can happen to anyone in the Orbital Ring. It's a security offense of the highest degree, especially for those with critical authorizations. Shulk still has a student one, so he's not able to access anything that would put the station at risk, but there would still be all sorts of paperwork to fill out, attestations, fines and reprimands, a whole debacle that he doesn't want to endure for all the time wasted for everyone involved. 

He knows he had it the last time he was out, so it's got to be somewhere in the apartment. Shulk's stomach sinks when he realizes he doesn't remember whether he took it with him last night. He hadn't left the building, so he hadn't technically needed it, after all. He calls Fiora, panic rising when she doesn't remember either, and growing more worried when Reyn doesn't recall as well. Shulk debates calling Klaus, in case his father grabbed the wrong one, but Shulk's badge has the student stripe on it; it'd be a stretch that Klaus would've mistaken it for his own. Plus Klaus' is always attached to his labcoat, and Shulk knows he saw it on there this morning. 

So it has to be somewhere in the building. Shulk starts tearing apart the apartment, starting in his bedroom, then the living room, then the dining room and kitchen. Checking anything and everything, under and beneath and above and beside whatever he can find that he even had a chance of interacting with. He even searches the bathroom out of desperation. With most of the afternoon gone already, he calls Fiora again to ask if he can search her apartment. She insists she's been looking herself, but he runs up there anyway. Reyn's over too to help, and all three of them search everywhere they were the night before. By the time they've finished, Fiora insists upon having dinner, and they all munch on leftover pizza before they head back to Shulk's home to look there again. 

Shulk recounts everywhere he's looked already while Fiora and Reyn ignore him and search wherever. Despite his protests, Reyn fishes something out from the couch cushions and waves it over his head. "Found it."

Shulk grabs the badge from Reyn and inspects it. It's definitely his. "I know I checked there already," he says, clipping it back to his vest. 

"You probably just missed it with how panicked you are," Reyn says. "So calm down already. It's all right."

Shulk takes a deep breath and releases it slowly, but he still feels unsettled. His entire home feels out of place, but that's probably just because of how worried he's been, rustling everything around in his search. 

Fiora rubs his shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he says. "Fine. Thanks for helping."

"Are you sure?" she says, still worried. "We could study together. I know the science midterm isn't till Thursday, but-"

"I'm good," he says. "It's math I'm most worried about, and that's tomorrow."

They wish him luck and head home. Shulk grabs his calculator out of his bag to study, then remembers why it was in there in the first place. He never called Melia back. She's probably worried sick, but it's too late for him to head over now. He'll just call back and hand it over in the morning. It's not like it's done anything else strange in the meantime. 

But of course, when Shulk checks the function list, it turns out it has. SearchForClues is back with a new graph. This one slinks from a point just below the x-axis to another further down, closer to the y-axis, then winding back toward the edge of the screen to a final point. Shulk's nearly certain he knows what this is, since it used Elysium's streets as a point of reference for the last graph. He checks the phone book for a map to compare to, and finds he's right. The first point is the high school, the second is the plant cafe, and the last is his home. Shulk's familiar with the plant cafe- it's pretty popular, but he's avoided it after he got a massive migraine there when Fiora took him there a few years ago. The pattern is distressing, but not enough to worry him. He's had headaches all his life; the fact that both of the locations the calculator wanted him to go coincided with two of his worst migraines meant nothing. Probably. 

Then Shulk checks the function list again and finds ScheduleMeeting has returned, with a time of 1700Z. 5 pm. Late enough after school that all the clubs would be out. So maybe another set of students? The calculator falls out of his hands as something occurs to him: if the SearchForClues and ScheduleMeeting methods are linked, how does it know to generate the latter? Last week, it only generated ScheduleMeeting once he knew where to go. But what indication did the calculator have that he knew? It can't be reading his mind, can it?

Shulk nearly jumps out of his skin when the phone rings. It's Melia, who sighs as soon as he's on the line. "You haven't answered all day," she says. "I nearly went to your home."

"Sorry," he says. "I'd give it to you tomorrow, except... it's done something else." He tells her about the return of SearchForClues and ScheduleMeeting, and where and when they need to go. "I think we should go, in case there's another set of core crystals," he says. "Even if the calculator gets reset in the meantime. These people it's picking, they have to be important somehow."

"You may be right," Melia says. "However, I would still like Kallian to take a look at it. We still do not know whether your calculator is trying to help or not. If it's hiding something, I would like to know as soon as possible, especially in light of what's happened yesterday."

"Do they have any ideas on the cause?" He hasn't checked the news all day. 

"No," she says. "All the more reason not to rule this out as being related." She wishes him luck on tomorrow's midterm, then bids him farewell and hangs up. 

Shulk places the phone back in the holder and stares at his calculator. "What are you?" he asks it again, but it does nothing. 

A timer, he decides. It has to be some sort of random timer that generates the second function. Not reading his mind, not spying on him. He spends the rest of the night studying, and goes to bed early in anticipation of his long day tomorrow. But he lies in the dark, restless, for a long while before he finally falls asleep, anxious about any dreams he might have. 

It's Sunday afternoon in Rhadamanthus, and Rex and Nia come to a halt near Albert Hall. "There, see, I told you," Nia says, crossing her arms and gesturing at the crowd.

And yes, she did tell him. Over and over again. There's no point asking at any of the maintenance centers about the microwave, because they'll all be packed with people freaking out over yesterday, she said. The line for Albert Hall is out the door, just like all the rest. Unlike the others, however, this one has someone they recognize waiting near the building. Rex calls Zeke's name, waving, until he finally notices. "Waiting for Pandoria?" Rex asks. 

"For the past fifteen minutes, since that was when her shift was supposed to end," Zeke says. He sighs. "She's going to be so cross with me when I bring up my own device problem. I fear my pager's past its glory days. Yesterday it went off for no reason."

"Just get a new one," Nia says. 

Zeke gasps in mock horror. "Nia, my pager belonged to the great Professor Addam Origo himself!" he declares. "I couldn't possibly replace it! There must be a way to fix it." 

"Great?" Nia says skeptically. "Didn't he take all the blame for the Aegis test?"

"Baseless rumors," Zeke says dismissively. "Just because he happened to resign around the same time. You agree, right, Rex?"

Rex nods, but he really has no idea. Addam had been around Gramps' place plenty of times growing up, but Rex was still too young to care what the adults talked about then. He'd always assumed it was boring administrative stuff anyway, what with Gramps being in government and Addam being a researcher. Rex doesn't even know what Addam had worked on. Conduit stuff, like everyone else, he supposed. 

"You kids back at the arcade today?" Zeke asks. "We were thinking of heading over. I almost beat your high score on that escape one the other day."

"Can't today," Rex says. "We're studying. Midterms this week."

"And Rex has already made us waste most of the day wanting to ask about the damn microwave," Nia says crossly. 

"What's wrong with your microwave?" Zeke asks. 

"The one at the arcade didn't turn off like everything else did during the blackout," Rex says. "I thought it might have a battery backup, or maybe something's odd with the wiring there."

Zeke doesn't look that interested. "This station's over twenty years old," he says, shrugging. "Nothing surprises me anymore."

"But-" Rex starts, since he realizes he didn't mention unplugging it, but he's interrupted by Pandoria's cry of "my prince!" She wraps her arms around Zeke and greets them, looking exhausted. "You kids staying out of trouble?" she asks them. 

"Yep," Nia says. "In fact, we were just leaving." She pulls Rex away before he has a chance to say anything else, hissing "take the hint" at him when they're out of earshot. When he looks at her in confusion, she sighs. "Let's go get coffee," she says. "Since we'll have to be up all night studying, thanks to your wild goose chase."

Rex nearly protests, but a hot chocolate or something does sound good right about now. It's getting to that point in fall where they start dropping the temperature in Elysium a few degrees. A little reminder of the change in seasons down on Earth; even though Rhadamanthus is positioned over the equator like every other station in the Orbital Ring, most of its residents were originally from the northern hemisphere. Still, Rex looks back over his shoulder at Zeke and Pandoria, watching the way their hands slip into each other's so easily as they head off together. 

It has only been a few hours since Director Vandham assigned Jin and his team a project that he knows isn't doable, and Jin has spent all of them formulating excuses for why it's not possible rather than actually working on it. He has no plans whatsoever to actually do what he was asked to do. For all he cares, the Trinity Processor can rot in their dreamworld till the end of time. 

Still, he has to think of something to prove it's impossible to get back in there. Otherwise, Klaus will get involved, and that's the last thing Jin wants. Even if Galea got assigned to help him instead, Klaus would find some way to stick his nose into it, because he thinks he's the only one qualified to work on the Trinity Processor. At least Addam's gone, so there's no chance of having to deal with him. Jin could even handle that upstart Zeke if he has to, and Minoth's a doormat working in technical writing these days. But it's best if his team doesn't have to deal with any outside interference. 

So he doesn't exactly feel guilty slinking off to get coffee in the middle of the afternoon. And even if he did, he's certain there are plenty of worse slackers in Elysium than him. He's seen the way that Dickson fellow from engineering loiters around the break rooms of buildings he doesn't even work in. 

What he does feel guilty about is running straight into two kids, a girl in a yellow dress and a boy in a blue zip hoodie, on their way out of the cafe. He's at fault, too busy brooding to pay attention to where he was going, and fortunately nobody spills or drops anything. The girl starts yelling at him before he can even attempt to apologize. "Oi, watch it, you blasted-" Her voice loses its venom as she processes his labcoat. "Professor, sir," she finishes, in a significantly more polite tone. 

"I don't teach," Jin says. That had been Lora's dream, not his. 

"Good thing," she mutters. 

The boy, on the other hand, looks more forgiving. And familiar. Jin's mood sours further when he realizes it's Addam's nephew again. Just his luck. "Mr. Jin sir," Rex- that's his name, there on his badge- says, "your pocket's glowing."

Jin reaches into his pocket and pulls out his pager, which isn't active. So it must be the other thing. "Sorry about that," he says, stepping out of the way for them. Rex is still staring at Jin's pocket, but the girl- Nia, according to her badge- grabs his hand and tugs him away with a last sneer at Jin. Rather than head inside, Jin watches the boy and girl head off together, though they part ways at the end of the block. The girl waves to the boy, watches him walk a bit, then pulls a sheet of paper out of her bag. She checks the street signs and heads off in the opposite direction. Only then does Jin pull the camera out of his pocket. 

It's displaying a picture of the boy and girl, both of them tinted in sepia while the rest of the scene is normal. Jin's seen the camera tint people like this before, but he's never understood why. The image has a caption, one he's seen before. I can help you find who's responsible. Jin's always dismissed it as more lies from the serpent's tongue. Malos was the worst of those three, and whatever he said was sure to lead to ruin. 

But these latest subjects have Jin reconsidering that. He toys with the idea of going to see Azurda again. It's been quite some time. Azurda always claimed ignorance, but Jin's never believed him. Perhaps he was just asking the wrong questions. Jin's never thought to mention Rex. 

Every time Mòrag lays her eyes on Aion, she hopes it will never be used. It is a colossal machine, larger than any picture or schematic can do justice. She feels so small in comparison, much the way she feels when she sees the night sky on Earth. Looking at the stars was one thing, as the origin of the universe's vast expanse was a mystery, but there is no question who- or rather, what- created this. 

The Trinity Processor had produced the blueprints for this thing upon request, after the months of maintenance that had followed the disaster that was the Aegis test. Mòrag had argued against it, with the war coming to a lull after all the damage, but the consuls of the Coalition had been insistent. If they couldn't replicate the circumstances that led to the Aegis test, then they wanted something capable of just as much destruction. An insurance policy, so to speak, in case the Orbital Ring was threatened to the point of collapse. The Trinity Processor had complied, its first official act upon being reactivated, and a dozen committees had reviewed the blueprints before the thing was actually built, and then continuously as it was assembled, and multiple times upon its completion. The Coalition got exactly what it wanted, god help them all. Every simulation of what Aion could do boggled the mind. 

Which is why it had the most stringent use policy of all of the Orbital Ring's options to respond to threats. It was truly the last resort, a final gambit guaranteed to take their opponents down with them. There were no plans for what came after the use of Aion, should that ever happen. The intended result was mutually assured destruction, and everyone who had seen the numbers knew it. Which is why very few people saw those numbers. The consuls. The governors of the Orbital Ring's three stations. The executive directors, the department heads, of Aoidos. A few of the senior researchers who had been involved in the training of the Trinity Processor and had thus been involved in reviewing the request and its fulfillment. And Mòrag herself, obviously. Most of the Orbital Ring just thought Aion was just an exceptionally powerful not-so-secret weapon. 

How anyone who knew the truth slept at night was beyond her. Sometimes she hadn't, in those early days of its construction. Eventually, the lack of credible threats to the station and the multitude of conditions on Aion's use had set those concerns to rest. That, and time. The Trinity Processor ensured the security and survival of the Orbital Ring, and they all dared to believe that any loopholes had been found and corrected. Until now. 

Beside her, Vandham sighs. It is late Sunday night, and they are both exhausted after a long weekend of responding to and reviewing the outage. An endless parade of meetings, doling out tasks and projects, compiling reports and identifying areas of concern. The next five days would be some of the longest of their lives, and Saturday, the day of the next Saviorite deadline, would be longer still. Mòrag has already had to replace her planner, with all the changes to her schedule. But they would be ready. Vandham and Azurda had both agreed: nobody entered or left Rhadamanthus until next Sunday at the earliest. Any plans for observing the anniversary of the Aegis test were on hold indefinitely. Whoever was behind the outage, likely some Saviorite sellout, would be found first. And if they were also behind whatever was wrong with Pneuma, well, that simplified matters. Mòrag knew all the laws concerning use and access to the Trinity Processor by heart, and the sentencing guidelines for those convicted of violating those laws were harsh. 

Vandham doesn't agree with her, but Mòrag is certain the problem with Pneuma is related to the saboteur behind the outage. The Trinity Processor is ultimately responsible for powering every system in the Orbital Ring, and so taking out one of the cores would be the quickest way to cause an outage. The crux of Mòrag's argument was a simple fact about computers that Aoidos liked to ignore: computers do as they're told. 

It was part of the reason the Aegis test had escalated to disaster so quickly. Allowed free reign of the Orbital Ring's defenses, the Trinity Processor had encountered a situation it did not know how to handle within its established guidelines and algorithms and data, and had been forced to get creative. Despite all the training by humans, humans who had given them brainteasers and puzzles and games in an attempt to cultivate an imagination, the Trinity Processor proved incapable of thinking outside the box it was trapped in. It was still just a computer. 

That wasn't quite correct. The Trinity Processor is a biocomputer, to be precise, though Aoidos kept the details of its technical specification secret. The Coalition had allowed this, since those details were the crux supporting everything Aoidos did with the Conduit. Hence why Mòrag asked every time she was in Rhadamanthus: what's in the box? The joke goes that the biological material was from a cat, and thus Aoidos kept the spec so secret because they had solved Schrödinger's famous paradox by simply administering the Turing test to the Trinity Processor. The punchline was that it had reported its demise. Mòrag found the joke a bit dark, and unlikely besides. She suspects it's some sort of plant material. It's what they'd used for the core crystals, when that project was still active, after all.  

In any case, the Coalition had ordered Pandora's box shut and subject to the scrutiny of a year-long investigation that Mòrag had headed, and the Trinity Processor was stripped of much of its autonomous control of its systems. To this day, there were still parts that were shut off, such as the virtual reality, their so-called dreamworld, where the scientists had trained the AIs. Mòrag had uneasily agreed with Vandham that they needed to restore access there, and had put Jin's team on it. Instead of being pleased at the prospect of a larger project than the simple bugfixes that they'd been limited to for the past five years, Jin had seemed upset, raising all sorts of objections. Mòrag was surprised; she remembered him as being so stoic. Even Professor Klaus hadn't argued when he was told, in no uncertain terms, that all his planned experiments were on indefinite hold, though he certainly hadn't refrained from scowling as if Christmas had been cancelled. 

After reviewing and agreeing on the policies for Aion's use- the percentage of Artifices destroyed, the severity of the Beanstalk's instability, the strength of the Orbital Ring's shield- Vandham and Mòrag leave the hangar. Mòrag takes a last look at Aion before they pass through the door and sighs. The idea that a security flaw could grant control over such a machine was terrifying, but it was the Coalition's opinion that the possibility of someone cutting off its use entirely was far worse.

Rex dreams of a wide green field. On a hill not far from him, there is a lone tree, and a redheaded girl stands beneath its boughs. He recognizes the scene, after a moment: it's the north entrance to Elysium, except the tree he knows is larger now. He heads up the hill to join the girl, who doesn't turn to him. She keeps her gaze fixed on what lies below. One hand she keeps on the trunk of the tree, while the other rests on her chest, as if trying to catch her breath.

Rex looks out and sees a fledgling town. It is not the Elysium he knows, but perhaps this is what the city under the dome looked like fifteen, maybe twenty years ago. The girl seems to know this. "It's changed since, hasn't it?" she asks him. 

"Yeah," Rex says. "It's bigger now. Way more people. Did you used to live here?"

"Sort of," the girl says. He senses her turn, and they face each other. "My sister told me about it. What is it like now, Rex?"

"How do you know my name already?"

"We've met before," she says. "At the arcade."

Rex is certain he has never met, let alone seen, this girl before. He would have remembered her; she sticks out like a sore thumb, with her outrageous red outfit crisscrossed with green lines. Green. "Pyra?" he asks, and she smiles. "But... how can you be the microwave?"

"How can I be here in your dream?" she asks, teasing him. "My sister and I have many ways to communicate."

Rex looks around. "Where is your sister?"

Pyra's face falls. "She's sleeping. She's been tired for a long time. I've been managing things in her stead, along with our other siblings. We've been working on a problem that threatens the whole Orbital Ring. But I think you can help us."

"What do you need me to do?" Rex asks. "I'll do it, whatever it is."

The toll of a bell sounds in the distance. Its long tone washes over them as the scene begins to dissolve. "Take me out of Elysium," Pyra says. "Before it's too late."

Chapter Text

Eunie had a club for every day of the week. Monday, bowling club. Tuesday, cross country club. Wednesday, debate club. Thursday, fencing club. Friday was a free day, because the school didn't allow any extracurriculars to schedule meetings that day. Since it was the only day where all three of her friends- Noah, Lanz, and Joran- were consistently able to get together, they usually planned something special every week. There was no end to the activities available in Elysium, from a gentle hike around one of the walking trails to the rock climbing wall that made the eastern rec center so popular. Not that they always picked physical activities- Joran would endure anything without complaining, but they all saw how he struggled- but Eunie did like those best. Anything that kept her moving. 

Her packed schedule made it hard to schedule anything on weeknights, but she wasn't the only one who was so busy. Lanz and Noah had extracurriculars of their own, and Joran had that and his sessions, to say nothing of their homework. And most of them were in different levels and thus in different classes with different assignments, making it hard for them to work on it together with so little overlap. But they had been friends their whole lives, inseparable since kindergarten, so they found ways to stick together. 

The main way they did so these days was by meeting up at the plant cafe. Usually it worked out that all of them got out of their extracurriculars at the same time, and it wasn't so far from the high school that it was out of the way on anyone's way home. They took turns paying- sometimes intentionally losing track so Joran didn't have as many turns- and had a preferred table by the window that provided ample opportunity to people-watch without worrying about a glare from the false sun. 

Though the plant cafe was a popular destination in Elysium- its nickname born of the mix of low-maintenance succulents and ferns placed on every table- it was also quiet and cozy, a refuge for overworked students and scientists alike. When Eunie and her friends weren't discussing classes, clubs, complaints, and curiosities, they made guesses about what dull research all the adults were skipping out on. Noah and Joran always made reasonable suggestions, while Eunie and Lanz made more audacious and fantastical ones. She could feel the stress of the day slipping away with every laugh, whether it was from a jibe or a joke. The other cafe customers probably thought they were a nuisance, but she didn't care. She treasured these times together, though they weren't always all able to make it. Sometimes Eunie was there alone, doodling in a notebook and counting every labcoat passing on the sidewalk, but she found she didn't mind it too much being there by herself. 

The four of them became regulars, and started to recognize others who frequented the place. Sometimes she even found herself behind the same person in line multiple days in a row. Mostly adults, running the gambit from weary Aoidos veterans to wide-eyed university freshmen, but there were a few kids too. One caught her eye because he seemed about her age, and even a bit familiar besides. She realized who he was the next day at school- that guy in her composition class. 

So she decided to introduce herself, since he was always there alone. It was a Monday, as Eunie had noticed it was the only day he was there reliably, and she'd left bowling club a bit early to have enough time to greet him and make some small talk before she'd broach the idea of him joining her group. As it turned out, she found him just ahead of her in line. When he reached the Face Unit, he ordered a tea, and she swiftly reached around him and tapped the quantity button to make it two. 

He was clearly taken aback. "And who are you?"

"Name's Eunie, remember?" she said. "Same composition class. I've seen you around enough to know you've got good taste, so I can't go wrong matching your order, yeah? Why don't you tell me what you like about it?"

He was so surprised that he didn't notice her tap her security badge against the scanner to pay, though he did when the receipt printed out. "I could have paid," he said. 

"And ruin a perfectly good start to this friendship?" Eunie laughed. "Your name's Taion, right? If you need any friends, you can join my group."

"That won't be necessary," he said. "But thank you."

"All right," she said, "but if you ever change your mind, you know where to find us." She grabbed her cup when her order was called and went back to the table by the window. He took his to the table by the violets, pulled his books out of his bag, and got straight to work. Eunie kept an eye on him until her friends arrived, but he never looked her way once. 

Taion wasn't sure what to make of Eunie. He'd been looking forward to a quiet day at the cafe on the one day where he didn't have study group with Mio and Miyabi and Sena, and then this girl appeared from nowhere. He had much to work on, a mountain of assignments from all his honors courses that he sought to finish early to better help his friends, in addition to his usual review of the news and breakthroughs around the Orbital Ring. Aoidos didn't often release its academic work to the general public, and when they did, it was often mundane, but Taion didn't want to risk missing something big. He still wasn't sure what he wanted to do for Aoidos when he applied, so every bit helped. 

He found he did his best work in this cafe. It had a cozy atmosphere, with plenty of seating options. No spot was far from a plant, giving the air the semblance of freshness, and the tea was good. Sometimes it was even better than the coffee, which Taion found strange since he'd heard all the tea leaves were sourced from the greenhouses. He supposed the supply chain issues made anything from Earth degrade in quality enough that what was grown in space had an edge. 

So he did not need distractions, and certainly not this one named Eunie. When she invited him to join her group, he politely refused, and returned to his usual seat near the violets. He tried to focus on his assignments, but he couldn't help but check on them every so often. Eunie wasn't kidding; he knew exactly where to find them. They were so loud they were hard to ignore, and the more he tried not to notice them, the harder it became to block out their chatter. Finally, he stood up, packed his things, and left. He wondered if Eunie saw. 

It didn't matter. Hopefully they would move somewhere else eventually, because he liked the cafe. Although, there wasn't exactly a lot of competition in Elysium's markets, so perhaps he was better off heading home with something to go. In his empty apartment, he resumed his work, fidgeting in the silence. He turned on music, then the tv, then both, then neither. He tried making tea, then coffee, then snacking on a pastry. Nothing helped. He found himself throwing his head against the back of the couch, dejected. If he wanted any hope of getting things done, he would have to find some way to endure Eunie and her friends' presence at the cafe. Headphones, maybe. Or just normal earplugs. 

Before he died, Eunie's dad had once warned her that friendships rarely lasted all through high school. He told her that adolescence was a strange time where people inevitably changed, and not always for the better. She'd insisted that her friends could survive anything. During the Aegis test, they'd survived the partial collapse of the middle school, and even though they'd all been shaken, they all stayed friends. Sure, maybe there were a few cracks showing. Lanz and Joran sniped at each other more. Noah was quieter, and he'd already been quiet to begin with. She stayed the same, or at least she thought she did, in hopes that she could keep them together, and it seemed to work so far. 

But not long into the school year, that began to change. It happened first with Noah, who dropped out to practice on some piece for a band competition, but which the rest of the group assumed was an excuse to hang out more with Mio. Then they were down to three. Then Joran had a bout of sickness and a slew of appointments, and then they were down to two. Then Lanz added another sport to his extracurriculars, and there was only Eunie left. Sometimes the others still made it, but more often than not, she was alone. 

She still went to the cafe, still sat at the same table. She watched the people around her as she stirred her coffee or tea. Sometimes she did schoolwork, other times she read or doodled. She didn't want to just go home. It was too quiet there. 

Every Monday she spotted Taion sit down near the violets and open up a book. He worked diligently, rarely looking up from his work, ever focused even while taking sips from his cup. She wondered how often he changed his order. Soon pumpkin spice would be available, if he even liked coffee. She'd only ever seen him get tea. Just tea, never a pastry to go with it. Which gave her an idea. 

The next time she spotted him, it was Wednesday, one of the rare ones where he was actually there. She got two muffins and sat down across from him, then tittered until he huffed and looked up. "That seat is taken," he said. 

"By who, a ghost?" Eunie said. "Some greeting for someone who wants to give you free stuff." She set the spare muffin on the table. "Accidentally bought two of this cinnamon oat thing. You want it?"

Taion stared at it, then pulled it toward him. He took a tentative bite. "Thank you," he said. "Now leave."

"Does it go good with what you've got?" she asked. "I didn't get a drink yet, and I know you've got good taste."

"If I tell you, will you go away sooner?"

"Aren't you in all honors classes?"

He sighed. "It's the new rooibos," he said. "It needs vanilla, but otherwise it's a clear contender for my favorite."

Eunie stood. "Then I'm getting one too."

To her surprise, he slid his mug over. "Try mine first." When he noticed her face, he added, "Just in case. I don't want you coming back to complain if it's not to your liking."

She took a sip, pointedly from the side he hadn't used, though it was awkward to hold the handle with her other hand. It was still a bit hot for her taste, but he was spot-on with his review. "Definitely getting one."

She was a bit surprised he hadn't left by the time she returned with it. He didn't look happy to see her, but he also didn't outright ask her to leave. She ate her muffin and he ate his, and neither of them spoke. She noticed he wasn't working on schoolwork, but on some sort of note. When he noticed her staring, he slid it under a book. "Do you mind?"

"Just wondering what's that you're writing," she said. "Is that how you keep track of what's good here?"

"I'm taking notes on the assigned reading."

"How do you fold them like that?"

"My father taught me when I was a child."

"Is he good at that sort of thing?"

"He was."

"Oh." Her face softened. "Sorry." Her fingers found the dog tags around her neck. "Mine's dead too."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"It's okay. It's pretty common up here anyway." She pointed at his notes. "Can you teach me how to do that?"

So he showed her, crease by crease, until he handed the completed one over to her. Eunie inspected it with a big grin. "It's cute. Like it's got little wings."

"It's functional," he said. "You can latch those to pages so they're easy to find."

"Any other study tips?"

"Apologies," he said. "There's no room in my study group for someone so rude."

She waited for him to smirk or lift an eyebrow or do something that would tell her he was only joking, but he just kept his stern gaze on her. "Fine," she said, rising and waving the note, "but I'm keeping this."

Taion's education had included plenty of communication courses, where he'd learned all sorts of strategies to deal with difficult people. Be direct. Counter crudeness with kindness. And most importantly: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. So he didn't have any guilt over how he treated Eunie. She was obnoxious and bothering him, even after he'd been nice enough to do her two favors. 

And yet, karma managed to hit him anyway. Only a week later, and he got paired with her for proofreading their latest essays. Why couldn't he have been paired with Mio? At least he didn't get stuck with Isurd or Nimue, mostly because they were paired with each other. 

Eunie gave him plenty of ribbing when they shoved their desks together, which cut into their time, and then he found himself growing even more frustrated with all the corrections he had to make on her essay. How did she make it into honors with all these typos? And yet, he had to admit, her arguments were clear and direct. None of the meandering he was prone to in his own writing. 

He made his final notes and then flipped back to the first page while he waited for her to finish. She was still chewing on her pencil, focused on his second page. Ugh. Taion stared at the header on her paper to make sure she'd formatted it correctly. He did a double take at her surname, then checked her badge to make sure. "You're Don Argentis' granddaughter?"

Eunie glanced at him. "Yeah, so?"

"So?" Taion sputtered. "He was one of the first investors of the Orbital Ring! Everybody knows the scandal when his daughter ran off with-"

"You don't have to tell me all that," she said, fidgeting with the dog tags around her neck. "I was sort of there for it."

Taion did the math. Oh. "Apologies," he said, adjusting his glasses and looking away. 

But she just laughed at him. "Dunno why you're surprised you've got a class with someone famous," she said. "Aren't you friends with Sena and Mio? Both of them've got important parents. Mio's even dating Director Vandham's grandson."

"What?" Taion had never asked for Noah's surname, and Mio had never mentioned it. "Is... is Noah the son of a Founder?"

"It's not that big a deal," Eunie said. "I've been friends with him forever. It is sorta weird hearing his last name in history all the time, though."

"Is that why you fall asleep during that class?" Taion had heard Mio complain about it the other day during study group. 

"It's boring," Eunie said. "Buncha wars and old dead people and shit."

"It's incredibly important," Taion said. "Don't you know that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it? The Founders were critical in the establishment of the Beanstalks. That's why the pairs of Sentinel-class Artifices defending each station are named after them. Reid and Cassini for Minos, Ortiz and Rhodes for Aeacus, Vandham and Doyle for Rhadamanthus. Furthermore-"

"See, you're already making me wanna yawn," Eunie said. "Keep it up and I'll never finish reading through your essay with you droning on and on like that."

Taion grumbled and looked down at her paper again, missing her smirk. He could probably find another fifteen typos in the time it took her to read the rest of the page she was on. He'd be lucky if she finished before the bell rang. Whatever. It didn't matter. She probably didn't have any good insights for him anyway. 

She still had a page and a half left when the bell rang and they swapped back. Taion didn't give it a glance as he slid it into his bag, not until he was at the cafe that afternoon. Eunie had waved to him when she spotted him, and only Noah hadn't turned to see who she was waving at, so Taion had felt obligated to wave back. He was surprised to see the whole group there; it had been a while. Taion went straight to his usual table by the violets and pulled out his essay to review her comments. 

Her feedback was better than expected, if a bit crass. A pleasant surprise since his expectations had been low to begin with. She'd bracketed sections, sometimes whole paragraphs, with "GET TO THE POINT ALREADY FFS" written beside them. She'd incorrectly circled a few parts she thought were typos that weren't- they'd need to have a chat about comma splicing, if they got paired again- and he couldn't help but chuckle at all the words she'd underlined with just "???" above them. Clearly it wasn't her extensive vocabulary that got her into honors composition. 

Taion looked over at Eunie's table by the window and was startled to see her staring back at him. She waved before he could look away. The boy sitting next to her noticed her wave and nudged her, making some comment, and she nudged him back. Back and forth, until she nearly pushed him out of his seat, prompting a laugh from the round-faced boy at the table. Noah didn't react, just kept his gaze on the window. Taion realized he was staring and returned his gaze to his books and did not look up again. 

Later that week at the library, where he met his friends for study group, Mio announced that she and Noah were going to Homecoming, and that she wanted the rest of them to join her. Miyabi and Sena readily agreed, but Taion politely declined. Mio was shocked. "Don't you always follow Aoidos' press releases?" she said. "What better way to gain insight into their projects than Homecoming? I hear there's good presenters this year."

"I plan on attending that part," Taion said. "But the dance is a waste of time. It's a frivolous tradition from the Americans anyway."

"I bet you're just saying that because you've got two left feet," Mio said. "And apologize to Sena."

"You don't have to," Sena said quickly. "I think it's kind of silly too. Mom had to explain it to me since I was only in elementary school when Mum found that boarding school on her side of the pond, and-"

"Don't give him an out," Mio said. "Even Isurd and Nimue are going, and I know you all used to be friends back on Earth."

In Taion's opinion, that was all the more reason not to go. "It's not worthwhile," he said. "Do you even know if any of Noah's friends are going? Since you'll probably be spending all your time there with him anyway."

Miyabi and Sena were both taken aback at his bluntness, but Mio looked pensive rather than offended. "I don't know," she admitted. "I don't really know them that well, outside of Eunie being in history with me and composition with the two of us."

"I rest my case." Taion gathered his books and excused himself. He glanced over his shoulder at the door, a bit guilty about how he'd stormed off. Miyabi and Sena were both comforting Mio, but Mio was staring at the surface of the table, lost in thought. 

"You fancy him," Lanz kept saying, ribbing her every time Taion was in view. "Didn't think we'd have the same taste, what with you having kissed Ashera back in junior high and all." And Eunie kept ribbing him back, but she couldn't well deny it. It didn't matter anyway; she'd seen the way Taion stared at Nimue sometimes in composition. 

But every time she saw Taion at the cafe now, he returned her greetings. He was there more consistently now, and she was there alone constantly now. Finally she just sat down across from him, at his table by the violets, and he didn't ask her to leave. He didn't say much else, either, but that was fine. 

The week before midterms, a small sign appeared next to the Face Unit. It was advertising a promotion for the cafe, requesting submissions for a new sort of tea to stock in time for winter. Eunie tugged on Taion's shoulder as soon as she saw it while they were both waiting in line. "We should suggest something, since we've both got such good taste. Ooh, and look!" She tapped a sentence near the bottom, just above the deadline: Check greenhouses for available ingredients. "I love going there. I always pluck a clover for luck."

He looked aghast. "You know those are needed to promote nitrogen in the soil," he said. "And there's only an abnormal amount of four-leafed ones because Aoidos commissioned some agricultural company to provide a variant more likely to produce them. Silly superstition, and wasteful besides, just for extra luck in space."

"There's always tons of them," Eunie said. "I don't think they care."

"Do you have any idea how many people live on Rhadamanthus alone?" Taion said. "Hundreds of thousands of people. If everyone did as you do, there'd be no more clover in any of the greenhouses."

"You're such a killjoy," Eunie said. "Let's take ours to-go today and head over, yeah?"

"I don't believe they allow food and drink inside," Taion said, but they still ordered and sipped on the way over. The greenhouses were in the southeast part of Elysium, occupying a neat row by the river. The southern Outlook Park had a fantastic view of them, though few took advantage of that greenspace. It was the most remote of the four, only easily reached by the university students who lived in the dorms. 

Eunie pointed at the box of ponchos near the greenhouse entrance. "Think we'll need them?"

Taion pulled out a pocket watch and checked the time against the next scheduled watering listed on the whiteboard. "Not unless we stay long."

She grabbed two and tossed one for him, and he nearly dropped it. "Klutz," she said, though not unkindly. "We'll be staying long. I haven't been here in forever and want to see everything."

Taion grumbled but he put it on and followed her inside. They meandered through the aisles, Eunie pointing at various plants and urging Taion to write them down. By the time they neared the exit, she was sorting through a stack of his special notes and bouncing the options against him. "Only one thing left," she said, looking at the plots. "Gotta pick a nice one." She started rummaging through the clover when the watering began, dousing them with a shower of droplets. She laughed, looking back at Taion to make a joke, but he was gone. Grumbling, she ripped up a clump of stems, not bothering to check what she grabbed. She ran outside and looked around for him, spotting him heading toward Outlook Park. So she followed him, shaking out their notes and hoping they'd dry well enough to read later. 

Taion sat down on the first bench he found in the park and tried to catch his breath. It was just water, he told himself, but his hands were shaking. He stuck his hand in his pocket and twisted the chain of his pocket watch. It was fine, he told himself. He was just fine. 

Eunie wasn't even panting when she caught up to him. They were both still wearing their ponchos. "Why'd you run off?" she demanded. "You afraid of a little drizzle or something?"

"These ponchos are so well-worn they're barely waterproof anymore," he said. "We've still got all our books and things with us. I didn't want it getting ruined." He nodded at the stack of notes in her hands. "I bet that's all illegible now."

"It's not so bad," she said, giving the stack a shake. "And even so, I reckon we could still come up with something good. Or we can just go back sometime before the deadline. Gotta stop by to return these raincoats anyway."

He nodded, then flinched when a blackbird landed on the bench's armrest. Taion figured it was a raven with how large it was, though it had strange green eyes. 

Eunie waved at it. "Hi, Mum."

Taion turned to her, confused. "Do you have some sort of affinity with the birds?"

She tilted her head at him. "What, haven't you heard the rumors that they aren't real?" 

"Absolutely absurd," Taion said, shaking his head. "The birds are vital to the dome's ecosystem, and plenty get caught in the Beanstalk's elevator and then trapped up here besides."

"Sure, most of them are real, but I bet that one's not." She pointed at its head. "Just look at its eyes. How many ravens do you know with green eyes?"

"Mutation from the altered environment," Taion said, but that sounded hollow, even to him. 

She laughed, clearly of the same opinion. "Everyone says it's for security, but Noah clued us in to the truth from his grandad. All the parents here work so much they're barely home, right? So they came up with the birds. Haven't you noticed there's always a ton by all the schools?"

He had, now that he thought of it. There were always flocks of them in the trees near the entrance, filling all the trees and rarely being startled by noises and commotion. "Clever."

"I guess," she said, shrugging. "I think it'd be better if they were all just home more, but that's just me." She held out her other hand to him. "Look, brought you this. Hopefully there's a lucky one in there somewhere."

He accepted the clump of soil and stems from her and started inspecting the leaves. He peeled off the first one he found and offered it back to her, but she shook her head. "That's all for you," she said. "Since it sounds like you've never gotten one before." She smirked. "Now you're a delinquent, like me."

Taion nearly shot back a retort, but managed to stop himself by looking at the sky. It was a rare clear day in Elysium; no clouds. Or rather, the few there were so wispy they were nearly translucent. He could almost pick out the dome's seams. "Are you going to Homecoming?" he asked, unsure how she would react. 

"Noah is, with Mio, obviously," Eunie said. "The rest of us are pretty meh about it. Dances sound stuffy with all that formalwear, yeah? Plus he's just gonna hang out with her the whole time anyway."

Taion nodded. "That's just what I told Mio, when she asked us all to join her," he said. "But I'm reconsidering."

"Oh yeah?" Eunie said. "Same here, then. Guess I'd need a dress."

He turned his eyes away from the sky and found her fiddling with the dog tags she always wore. He'd only ever seen her hang out with guys. "There's nothing that says you have to dress formally," he said. "Although, if you don't have anyone to shop with, I could accompany you there."

"I dunno if I can trust your fashion advice," she said, raising an eyebrow. "Your scarf is deeply uncool."

"What did you say?!" He stood up sharply, glaring at her. "Repeat yourself, I dare you!"

"A-ha!" she cried. "I knew it! You're as vain as the rest of us, you poser!"

She kept mocking him about it all the way out of the park and back to the greenhouses to drop off their ponchos, until they split ways to head home as it was just getting dark. 

On Saturday, Eunie found she had no idea what she wanted at the dress shop. She couldn't remember the last time she'd worn a dress. Kindergarten, maybe? No, her mum had probably made her wear one for a few picture days before she finally gave up. And Taion was no help, the way he kept insisting that she'd look good in anything. So what if that was true? She wanted something she'd enjoy wearing. 

Maybe she'd just wear a suit like the boys did. She could still wear sneakers with that too, right? It'd be more conspicuous, but she barely cared what people thought, anyway. She was just about to tap Taion on the shoulder to tell him she wanted to leave when she grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him into a random aisle instead. "Eunie," he said, adjusting his scarf, "what is the meaning of this?"

She shushed him and looked around the corner. "I think that's Melia Antiqua over there!" she said in a whisper over her shoulder back to him. 

"And?" Taion said. "Haven't you ever seen her at school? She's only two years ahead of us."

"Never," Eunie said. "She's in all those fancy AP classes." She tore her eyes away from Melia to shoot a confused glance back at Taion. "Hold on. Aren't you the one who got all hype when you found out who me and Noah are related to? Melia's a princess."

"Yes, the first child of a head of state born on the station," Taion said. "Her brother has a leadership position in administration. Admirable, for his age. I don't believe he's over thirty, but it probably helps that he's a prince." 

Eunie noticed his tone turn more disparaging toward the end, but chose not to comment on it. "So see, it's exciting," she said. She looked back into the main aisle and found Melia again. There was a girl with blonde hair with her who kept piling dresses into her arms. Melia kept readjusting her grip on the stack, wincing each time the other girl picked something else. After the next hanger nearly hit her chin, Melia cleared her throat and offered a mild protest that the other girl shrugged off, shooting back something that sounded like "we're going to Homecoming, not a funeral." A brief discussion followed, in which a boy's name was mentioned repeatedly and made Melia blush more and more each time. Finally, the blonde girl sighed and hung a few back on the rack, then nudged Melia toward the fitting rooms with the rest. Eunie waited for them to leave the area, then ran over to sift through their rejects until she found one she liked. She held it against her chest as Taion approached. "Well? What do you think?"

"As I've said previously," Taion said, "you'll look good in anything." But he did seem a bit flustered, so Eunie took it straight to the counter without bothering to try it on. She had no idea how those cinch clips worked on the sample sizes, and Taion would only explain the instructions without agreeing to help clip them for her in the fitting room. 

After measurements were taken and the order was placed, they headed over to the plant cafe. Neither of them had gone there on the weekend before, but they'd both heard good things about the brunch selection, which wasn't available on weekdays. The place was bustling, but they managed to snag Taion's usual table by the violets. 

That's where they were when the blackout happened, when Eunie was just reaching for her cup and then gasped at how dark it was, how sightless she was, just like just like just like when she'd been flailing for something to grab that time, the time that was the worst, that time Dirk was snarking like the asshole he was about how he could poke someone's eye out with a pencil and they'd never know and she couldn't even find him to punch him because what did he know he'd only been here for a few months and not forever and why weren't the emergency lights on yet and Joran was somewhere under the rubble and maybe even gone forever, five years and a lifetime ago that she pretended never happened. Because things were fine now, all fine, just fine. 

"Eunie," Taion said tensely, "are you all right?"

The emergency lights kicked in. Eunie looked down and saw that she was gripping his hand tightly. "Sorry," she said, pulling away. 

But he took her hand back and rubbed the back of it. "Are you all right?" he asked again. 

"Fine," she said. "Just fine."

It was clear he didn't believe her. "Drink some tea," he said, nodding at her cup. "And if you run out, have mine as well, all right?"

She nodded back, and used her free hand to take a sip because she couldn't bear to let go of his hand. She drank all the rest of it, then turned toward his. He'd already slid it toward her. "Better?" he asked. 

She took a long sip. His was a green tea, vaguely mintish. "Fine," she said, and this time she meant it. 

They stayed there the whole time the lights were out, and Taion set his pocket watch on the table. To her surprise, it glowed in the dark. He explained that his dad had made it do that, and she asked if he'd been handy, and Taion said he was, and then Taion mentioned how hopeless with tech his mum was despite all the breakthroughs she'd made in astrophysics, and they talked and talked until Eunie almost forgot the power was even out. Then the lights flickered back on, and she took a deep breath and thanked him again. He didn't need to ask for what. "I assume you'll be studying tomorrow, like I will," he said, "but if something happens, you can call me."

He slid over one of his special notes. Eunie picked it up but motioned with her fingers for another, on which she wrote her own number and gave it back to him. She spent all Sunday studying to distract herself from wondering whether or not to call him just for fun, and that's why she has no idea when, exactly, this box she's tripped over outside her door appeared. It hadn't been there Saturday when she got back, and of course there was no post on Sundays. So where did it come from? It wasn't labeled or anything, just shut hastily with clear tape. 

Eunie picks it up, figuring there's no harm in being a little late for homeroom if there's something nifty in there. Better than lugging the whole box to school or worse, waiting the whole day till after to check. After peeling off the tape, she finds a small blue cube inside, and she puts it into her bag and out of her mind until after school, resolving to ask Taion about it at the cafe. He's always there on Mondays, after all. 

After school and bowling club, she heads over and expects to spot him in line like she usually does, but he's nowhere to be found. Not at the counter waiting, nor at their table by the violets. She finally hears him calling her name and is surprised to find him at her old table by the window, and he's not alone. There's Melia Antiqua herself with him, and some boy she doesn't recognize. 

The boy stands and introduces himself as Shulk. "We have a lot to discuss," he says, and Eunie is certain that's the understatement of the year. 

Chapter Text

Shulk and Melia may not recognize Taion or Eunie, but Taion and Eunie certainly recognize them. Or rather, Taion recognizes Shulk as Professor Klaus' son, and Eunie recognizes Melia as being a princess. Melia handles it with her usual grace, but Shulk feels overwhelmed. Taion even knows about his mother. My sincerest condolences. She assisted with so many breakthroughs here, while she was alive, absolutely brilliant. Have you ever had the chance to see the Trinity Processor, with the professor? No? Do you always call him by his given name? Really? By his request? He can't remember the last time someone made such a fuss about who his dad is, let alone who his mother was. He supposes it's just because Taion is somewhat new to the station still, having apparently moved to the station from Earth within the past year. If anything, Shulk wishes he could ask Taion more about the surface. He hasn't seen much besides Morytha down there (at least, that he can remember) and even that was exceptionally rare. Last year's trip to see the eclipse would have afforded a possibility to see more, had it not been cancelled once the logistics fell through. 

Melia manages to steer the conversation away from their connections to discussing their beverage choices. There is talk of palates and flavor notes. Shulk has no idea how to participate here. He takes long sips from his tea, but it just tastes like water to him. He's not even sure what Taion ordered for him. At least he didn't get a headache while they were at the cafe. 

At Shulk's home, he lets Melia give an overview of what happened with the last set of core crystals to Eunie and Taion, since she's better at staying on topic than he is. Eunie and Taion express surprise when Lanz and Sena's names are mentioned; apparently they're friends, or rather, Lanz and Eunie are friends, as are Sena and Taion. Shulk and Melia glance at each other, wondering if this information is important or mere coincidence. She shrugs, and Shulk is inclined to agree. They barely know why these people are being chosen to begin with. This certainly tips the needle toward there being a reason and not random selection, however. 

When Melia's done, Shulk asks them to push their core crystals together and pulls his calculator out of his bag. Not his new one, that he asked for during math to use on the midterm, but the one he's marked with a strip of tape that he'll give to Melia before she leaves. MorseBuster is back, printing out a single word in the blink of an eye: unsent. 

"That's it?" Eunie says. "Clear as mud, that is."

"It wouldn't be a good riddle if it was easy to solve," Taion says. "And if the pattern holds, we only need concern ourselves with homophones."

Eunie nudges her crystal next to his again and listens for a few moments to the two sounds: his, brassy and bright; hers, raspy and mellow. Similar, but different. "All I can think of is mail," she says. "Letters, envelopes, stamps. Maybe some of that fancy stuff you find in the craft aisle."

"Stationery," Taion says, then again, "stationary. That's it."

"What?"

"Think about it," he says. "You use stationery to write a letter, but don't send it. It hasn't moved, so it's stationary. Unsent. Stationary stationery." He adjusts his glasses, looking pleased. 

Shulk pulls up the PurgeEncryption function and types it in: stationary stationery. It switches to graph mode and reveals another maze. He passes it to them. "Last time only Lanz and Sena could solve it," he explains. 

Eunie and Taion slide the calculator between them and proceed to struggle with the maze longer than Lanz and Sena did, nearly devolving into an argument. Eunie points at a section and swears, while Taion's expression hardens into frustration. "You're sure this is supposed to be solveable?" he asks. 

"Lanz and Sena did theirs," Shulk says. 

Taion turns the screen to him. "There's no way to reach the exit. All the possible paths are blocked."

Shulk looks at it, but it doesn't look any different from the last maze. Not that he had a good look at that one, but it's hard to tell at a glance what's wrong. "You're certain?"

Taion nods. "Perhaps we have a different puzzle."

Shulk checks through the calculator's function list again, but nothing deviates from last time. He tries entering the answer again, and the maze reappears. He hands it over for them to try again, but Taion stares at it for only a few moments before shaking his head. "It's the same maze."

"Maybe we got the wrong answer?" Eunie says. 

"It wouldn't have done anything if the answer was wrong," Shulk says. "It's right, but..."

"We're missing something," Taion says. "An extra step that Sena and Lanz didn't have."

"So we have to do more work?" Eunie says. "That's not fair."

"Why don't we stop for today and meet back here in a few days?" Melia says. It's the first she's spoken since their initial explanation, and she nets the whole group's attention at once. "I think we could all use some time to think. The last one was not solved in a day either. Furthermore, it's the week of midterms and we need our complete focus for those." Her calm tone is enough to diffuse the building tension in the room, and they agree to meet again near the front bike racks the day after tomorrow. Shulk sees Eunie and Taion out, while Melia stays put and fiddles with the calculator. She shakes her hand out, frowning at the screen. "It won't let me attempt the maze either," she says. 

Which just raises more questions. Shulk can't think of anything in particular that would make Eunie and Taion stand out, not from what they know of their parents or anything about them personally. "At least we're not missing much by turning it in," he says. "Maybe the core crystals will do something else, without needing the calculator nearby."

"Perhaps." Melia slides the calculator into her bag and stands. "Kallian and I are having dinner tonight. I'll give it to him then, and hopefully someone will be looking at it tomorrow."

Shulk nods, and they say their farewells. He wants to ask for estimates, whether they'll have answers by their next meeting with Eunie and Taion, what more they could try to solve the maze while they still can. Anything that will keep her and the calculator here. But no, he's being selfish, wanting to figure it out himself, especially in light of what happened Saturday. If his calculator is involved, Aoidos needs to know that. Even if it means he never learns what's going on with it. 

Kallian only has time to have dinner with Melia because of what she promised to bring to him. Even still, he's chosen somewhere quick, a quaint yet high-quality deli just north of the administration building, so he won't have far to travel once they're done. 

Melia has even more information for him when she hands over the calculator, and Kallian listens absently as he pokes around on it. Nothing seems out of the ordinary to him. There's nothing in the function list, or anywhere else. When he points this out to her, Melia grows pale and yanks it away from him to see for herself, looking more distraught with each button press. "It was all there when I left Shulk's apartment," she says faintly. "I know it was. I didn't reset it." She turns it over to run her hand over the strip of tape on the back before she starts wringing her hands, and Kallian gives her a reassuring smile and promises that he believes her, and that someone will take a thorough look and get to the bottom of it.

After, Kallian heads to the administration building and up the elevator to where Director Vandham's office is. He grimaces at the sign next to the door- 2 DAYS SINCE LAST OUTAGE- before he takes his seat. The special agent is in the room as well, reviewing the contents of a plain manila folder. She shuts it when he's settled and extends her hand, introducing herself as Mòrag Ladair. This is the first they've met; Kallian was still nowhere near important enough to meet her during the Aegis test investigation. 

Kallian gives his report, not that there's much of interest to say yet. The only information he really has to present is that the pager system dispatched four blank notifications five minutes before the outage, for no discernable reason. Vandham and Mòrag both look interested, clearly eager for a lead, but their faces fall when they see who's on the list. 

armaxwell- Director Amalthus Maxwell, department head of biomedical engineering. His background in biology was vital during the training of the Trinity Processor, though he'd switched departments after the Aegis test. These days, he has his hand in a number of projects, mostly focused on the effect of ether on living tissue. 

obvongenbu- Zeke von Genbu, the only name on the list that Kallian had needed to look up in the personnel directory. Zeke is a bit of a rising star in the artificial intelligence department. Though his father is a Coalition employee, there's no doubt that Zeke had been accepted to Aoidos' research institutions based on his own merits, though it's hard to tell in light of some of his... quirkier mannerisms. 

gmxanthopoulos- Professor Galea Xanthopoulos, mostly involved in Conduit research projects these days, though still providing critical oversight of Artifice maintenance, as well as their research and development. She'd also been involved with the training of the Trinity Processor, being as long-tenured as the last name on the list, who was none other than:

kzyates- Professor Klaus Yates, a walking encyclopedia on the Conduit's capabilities and potential compiled over his (now) decades of experience. Though his dedication to his work borders on fanatical, and he could be a bit unpleasant to work with, he's easily the leading expert on the Conduit and one of Aoidos' most valuable assets. 

Kallian didn't know any of their middle names, obviously. That was considered confidential; it was one of Aoidos' ways of verifying identity. Only their middle initials were displayed on their badges, since that was part of their usernames. Professor Galea, in fact, was part of the reason that was policy, due to her sharing the same first initial with her (now) late brother in the early days of Rhadamanthus. Other than his own, the only person on the station whose middle name Kallian knows is his sister's. Half siblings though they were, they were still family. 

If not for Zeke's presence, the pattern would be obvious: it's all people who've worked on the Trinity Processor. But Zeke is on the list, and that rules that out. They discuss a few other possibilities, Vandham decides to set up meetings with each person on the list, and they move on. 

The only other thing Kallian has to present is the calculator. He hands it over to Vandham and recounts as much of Melia's story as he can. The riddles, the core crystals, the recipients, the entity that calls itself Alvis. Vandham listens to all of it without saying anything. When Kallian's done, he makes a few notes on the pad next to his keyboard that Kallian can't make out. Even if he had a better view, Vandham's handwriting is terrible. "Don't you worry about those core crystals," Vandham says finally. "None of them work anymore, and I did just get rid of the ones I had as part of some spring cleaning recently." He taps his pen against the desk for a few moments, then dismisses not just Kallian, but Mòrag as well. "It's late," Vandham says. "I want to chat with Professor Klaus tonight, since he's almost certainly still at his desk, but I'll spare you from sitting through that since he can be a bit... much."

Mòrag chuckles and collects her things before following Kallian out. He lets her pass him in the hallway, hovering in case she has any further questions for him, but she's on her way without another word. 

It is late Monday evening in Rhadamanthus, which is usually when Klaus hits his stride at work and persists in a state of flow until his eyes can't stay open anymore. Then in the morning, he'll pick himself off his desk, run home to freshen up and grab something to eat, and then return to his office to do the same thing all over again. If anyone other than Director Vandham had tried to force him into a meeting at this time, he would have refused. But since it was him who'd sent this invite on such short notice, here Klaus is, sulking but not actively complaining as he takes the seat facing Vandham's desk. 

"Shut the door," Vandham says, and Klaus frowns but leans back to nudge it closed. He catches sight of the sign on the wall. 2 DAYS SINCE LAST OUTAGE. It's strange, seeing a number with so few digits. He's so used to seeing four, and he isn't even up here that often. When he is, it's usually for good things- the grant for that project got approved, your team won an award for a paper that less than a hundred people in the world understand, you're getting a raise even though Elysium's economy is largely planned and not a cent of your salary will ever see the light of day on the surface anyway because lest you forget, you're here forever- but today Vandham is leering at him, and Klaus hasn't even opened his mouth yet. Usually he has to say something questionable first for that to happen, and then spend the next five minutes trying to choose his words better. "What?"

"Did your pager go off for no reason on Saturday?"

Of all the things Klaus expected Vandham to bring up, this was not one of them. "Yes," he says. "I thought it might be a prank, so I haven't had time to take it in yet. Galea got one too."

"We know."

That's reassuring. "Are we being targeted for something?"

"We don't know," Vandham says. "You aren't the only ones, so we're keeping our options open. Make sure to take it in." He looks down at his desk for so long that Klaus wonders if they're done here. He starts to stand, but Vandham notices. "You're not dismissed yet," he says. "Kallian Antiqua brought me a calculator and told me an interesting story. He said it's sent his sister and a classmate on a scavenger hunt with some fellow students."

This sounds like a waste of everyone's time. "Some sort of school project?"

"That's what I thought, until he mentioned two details I found particularly interesting," Vandham says. "One, that the classmate is your son; and two, that the calculator claims its name is Alvis. Now, I'm wondering how Shulk, of all people, might have heard that name." 

Right, Dickson had mentioned something to him about Shulk's calculator being haunted or whatever, because more malfunctioning machines is exactly what this station needs. Explains why Shulk spent so much time with it over the past few weekends. Klaus had been more surprised that Shulk was spending time with people not named Fiora or... whatever the redhead's name is. Rain or something. But that's beside the point. That Vandham even suspects him is ridiculous. Secure as Klaus' job is, he would never risk sharing that name, let alone any of the Trinity Processor's preferred names, with anyone. Not even his wife ever knew. "Well, it wasn't from me."

"You sure?" Vandham says. "Because there's nothing on here that seems out of the ordinary, yet Kallian swears his sister wouldn't lie about something like this."

This situation is so ridiculous that Klaus doesn't doubt for a second that Alvis is actually behind it. Leave it to the Trinity Processor's resident wise guy (in the colloquial sense) to put him, personally, in such an awkward position. Alvis did always hate him the most, though he would usually choose more subtle ways to show it. The audacity here, to involve Shulk, seems intentionally done to enrage him in particular. "I agree," Klaus says, not that he's ever met the princess. "Don't you think it's more likely that they're telling the truth?"

"Why- and how- would a Trinity Processor AI get inside a calculator?"

Vandham's still leering at Klaus like he doesn't get it. Can Vandham really not guess? Klaus finds it glaringly obvious. "The how is easy: it's the same way they do anything else," Klaus says. "By a remote generator."

Vandham stares at him for a moment. "You think the calculator is an Artifice?" he says incredulously. "We monitor every speck of energy the Trinity Processor pulls out of the Conduit. If any of them are siphoning it somewhere out of the ordinary, we'd know about it."

"It's a calculator," Klaus says. "The Conduit provides infinite amounts of energy. We've been limiting their power draw from it since the Aegis test out of an abundance of caution, but it's still substantial enough that what's needed for the calculator would likely be undetectable. There's several magnitudes of difference in powering an appliance versus a Siren."

Vandham doesn't even blink. "Artifices are war machines, Klaus."

"The first one wasn't," Klaus says. "I dare you to say otherwise." Vandham wavers on nodding in concession as Klaus continues. "As to why, I haven't the foggiest. We've not had proper insight into their thought processes for years, besides the logs from their recommendation algorithms, what with the dreamworld inaccessible. If you let me take a look, I could probably figure it out in a day or so-"

"We've talked about this," Vandham says. "You don't know the full scope of the problem. Besides, I need you doing other things. Jin's team is perfectly capable."

Klaus resists the urge to scoff at this, with how long they've been working on it without getting anywhere. "In any case," he says, "the Trinity Processor creates Artifices to protect the Conduit, not on a whim. Whatever Alvis is doing, I suggest we let him keep doing it." Loathe as he is to allow that. 

"You don't think this is indicative of some larger problem?" Vandham says. "Especially in light of what happened Saturday?"

"It's possible," Klaus says, shrugging. "But if anything, that's just more evidence in his favor. Alvis has more insight into Malos and Mythra's processes than we do currently, due to how he makes his decisions, and we saw how Mythra failed to act during the emergency. Something's wrong there. It's possible Alvis had to resort to this method for... reasons. Don't ask me to even fathom what those might be unless I get to look at the data involved."

Vandham drums his fingers on the desk while keeping eye contact with Klaus as he considers it. "I need you doing other things," Vandham says finally, making Klaus visibly slouch with disappointment. "I'll reassess that depending on what we find on this calculator. I'll make some calls to Morytha tonight to make sure we're doing the full diligence due there." He sighs. "Monica will be cross with me, but she usually is anyway, and it's not like we can afford to wait on this. You're dismissed." 

But Klaus stays seated, slumping against the back of the chair and so focused on his train of thought he doesn't notice Vandham pointedly pick up his phone and refrain from dialing with Klaus still in the room. Klaus has his mind on Saturday, on what happened when he tried to open a terminal window and that exact part of the screen went dark. When he set down his monitor at the maintenance center and it flashed briefly, something he'd initially dismissed as a momentary glare, a trick of the light, but one that should have been impossible with the room so dark. And that other thing, a glimpse out of the corner of his eye when he was surveying the room, that he'd thought he'd imagined... "Check the monitors too," he says. "All the ones that have malfunctioned in the past few months. I saw how many there are, so best not to delay." Klaus stands and moves to leave before Vandham has a chance to respond. "Mine should be closest to the door, so I recommend starting there."

It hasn't even been a full day since Shulk surrendered the calculator, and he's still morose about it. Tuesday at lunch, he's shifting around his noodles with his fork, thinking about what it could have been, each idea more outlandish than the next. There have been no dreams of the endless sea, no shocks from his backup calculator. Just midterms and the mundane. 

Fiora huffs at him when she sits down across from him. "You've been moping all day," she says. "Stressing out about midterms won't help with anything. Eat."

Shulk does, in small bites, wondering whether it's worth it, at this point, to mention what happened with his calculator. He decides against it- Reyn would just call it haunted, and Fiora would worry and ask too many questions he wouldn't be able to answer- so instead he lets them pull him into their conversation as they all vent about their exams, even managing to field a few complaints of his own. It's enough to ease Fiora's concern, it seems, as she's back to her usual self when she rises with her tray to return it to the window. Reyn watches her go and levels his gaze at Shulk as soon as she's out of earshot. Shulk knows what he's going to ask, because they have this conversation every year, and Shulk waffles on it every year, and they just go as a group every year. "I don't know," Shulk says, before Reyn even finishes his sentence. 

Which Reyn immediately points out. "Mate, I was gonna ask about Melia, not Fiora." Shulk just gapes at him, making Reyn indignant. "What? You've been spending all that time together and you never used to study with anyone before." 

Maybe Shulk should have explained about the calculator after all. "It's not what you think."

"Whatever you say." Reyn stabs another bite with his fork. "You two'll probably be paired off for King and Queen anyway. Fiora approves; it's why they went dress shopping together."

Shulk struggles to make sense of this development, his mouth twisting as he attempts to form a coherent response. Reyn just stares at him with thinly veiled amusement, which is how Fiora finds them when she returns to her seat. "What's happened here?" she asks, glancing back and forth between them. 

"Oh," Reyn says nonchalantly, "I was just telling Shulk about how he should go see Dunban tomorrow, since you said he'd be free. Especially since you can't go with all that studying you've got to do for Thursday."

"Oh, yes, Shulk, you should go," Fiora says, nodding at him. "You haven't been in a while, and he'd love to see you."

Shulk nods helplessly, even though he has just as much studying to do that evening, which makes Fiora beam. Reyn watches them both with a smirk that Fiora is completely unaware of. Shulk misses his calculator more than ever. It was still easier to deal with than whatever just happened here. 

It's a testament to Azurda's temperament that he's still willing to let Jin into his home after all the things Jin has said to him over the past few years. Before the Aegis test, Jin had still respected Azurda. After, well. Once it was clear Azurda wouldn't tell him anything, Jin had ensured their paths would never cross. A tricky thing to pull off, in light of the positions they both held, but one Jin had mastered quickly. It turned out nobody in Rhadamanthus ever doubted that people in leadership positions would be too busy to attend meetings, and Jin has played that to his advantage each and every time he's seen Azurda's name pop up on intives. 

Perhaps Azurda thinks there is some chance of reconciliation between them. He's a fool, if that's the case, but it's something Jin can use to his advantage. There was a time when he was still cordial around Azurda. It was not so long ago that he's forgotten. Much as Jin hates small talk, he still manages to navigate a barely polite discussion of current events, with Jin deflecting each time Azurda tries to mention the dreamworld. Azurda can tell Jin has an ulterior motive here, but isn't clever enough to determine what it is. Not until Jin mentions Lord Echell, and Azurda hesitates enough that Jin knows he's found something. Lord Echell is the father of that girl, Nia, who was with Rex, easily determined through the personnel search. 

But before Jin can deliver the next blow by bringing up Rex, the boy himself appears in the dining room entrance. "Oh, hello Mr. Jin sir," he says, but Jin is already shooting a confused look at Azurda. Jin has never heard of Azurda having a dependent, and the address listed for Rex in the personnel file was for Corinne's home, not the governor's mansion. Jin's well-used to the rampant nepotism in Rhadamanthus, but none of them even have the same last name. Nothing about this situation makes sense. 

"Hello, Rex," Azurda says, pointedly ignoring Jin's gaze. "What do you need?"

"Er, it's not that important," Rex says. "I can come back later, if I'm interrupting-"

"Speak," Jin says, keeping his eyes on Azurda. He can hear the boy shuffle his feet before he says anything. 

"Gramps," Rex begins, confounding Jin further, "what would it take to move a microwave out of Elysium as soon as possible?"

Azurda frowns and turns to Rex. "Is it defective?"

"Maybe 'malfunctioning' would be a better word," Rex says, scratching the back of his head. "How long would it take, going through maintenance?"

"That's hard to say," Azurda says. "The station is locked down for the foreseeable future. Nothing in or out until the source of the outage is determined."

"Oh," Rex says. "Well, thanks anyways. Sorry for interrupting."

As soon as the boy turns, Jin feels a slight shock at his side. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the camera, trying to keep it out of Azurda's line of sight. There's nothing on the screen. Has Malos been misleading him, or is something Rex said important? Jin runs his thumb over the shutter button and is surprised to find it warmer than the rest of the camera. Like what a microwave would do. But why would an appliance be so-

"I'm glad you're taking that up again," Azurda says. Jin looks up to find him hovering, cursing himself for being too focused on Malos not to have noticed. "You and Lora always took such wonderful photos."

"That was a long time ago." Jin shoves the camera back into his pocket and stands, not bothering to keep clear of Azurda when he heads for the door. "We're done here."

"You're still welcome any time," Azurda calls after him, but Jin just scoffs and takes his leave, not bothering to catch the door from slamming behind him. 

It is late Wednesday afternoon in Rhadamanthus and Shulk is here in halls of the engineering complex, trying to remember which office is Dunban's. Fiora wrote down the number for him, but the place is a maze that he rarely has to navigate. Usually he meets Dunban over at the clinic rather than here. Nor has he had to come here to see Dickson, who was fond of complaining that the building was too stuffy and escaped whenever he could. 

Shulk is just about to give up and head home to stare at his science textbook until his eyes can't stay open anymore when he hears someone behind call his name. Turning, he spots Dunban near the corner at the end of the hallway and gives a quick wave before rushing over. Dunban gives him a wry smile but is gracious enough not to mock him for getting lost, instead getting right to business as they walk together. "Dickson says you've got a girlfriend." He chuckles at Shulk's reaction but continues before he can protest. "Forgive me. I couldn't resist. I'm far more interested in what's going on with your calculator. I even reached out to Vanea when Dickson reminded me that she's your instructor this year."

"I didn't realize you knew each other."

"We're the same age," Dunban says. "You wouldn't remember, but she was Homecoming Queen the year I was King."

He's right, Shulk has no memory of this. But also, he'd been six and in kindergarten. Back then, he was far more concerned with Reyn stealing all his crayons during morning coloring and whether Fiora would make him be the dad again when they played house after school. At the time, Dunban was just Fiora's big brother who wasn't going to have to leave the station because he was so smart. Shulk wouldn't understand how big a relief that was for another few years, and didn't really appreciate it until Fiora's parents died and Dunban became her legal guardian. He'd insisted, even though Galea had offered numerous time, but he knew how busy she was. Her schedule more or less matched Klaus' most of the time, what with them being partnered on so many projects. Ever since then, Shulk had idolized Dunban more and more until he was easily the person Shulk respected most in Rhadamanthus. Dunban's accident and his resulting resilience in light of the effects only cemented that. "You've kept in touch all this time?" Shulk asks now. 

"Somewhat," Dunban says evasively. "We reconnected when Vanea decided to take a step back from research."

Shulk does the math. "That was around the time of your accident."

Dunban nods. "She was concerned about me."

"About you, or that Professor Egil was involved in what happened?"

Dunban sighs as they turn a corner. "You really should know better by now than to listen to Dickson's gossip."

"At least he was willing to say more about it than anyone else ever did." Everyone else- Klaus, Galea, Dunban himself- Shulk had the chance to ask had refused to answer questions, claiming it was related to a top secret project. Shulk didn't doubt that, but he'd been so frustrated that Aoidos could allow something like this to happen that he couldn't resist pursuing answers. Dunban's accident was no Aegis test, but that was part of the problem; Aoidos was supposed to be better at preventing this sort of thing after that. 

Dunban stops outside a door and opens it for Shulk- absurd, when Shulk is the one with two perfectly good arms and Dunban isn't- but doesn't say anything more until they're both inside. Shulk spots the photo of him and Fiora as toddlers that Dunban keeps on his desk and relaxes a little. It's a picture of the two of them playing in western Outlook Park, with Dunban's mum watching them. Nancy, Shulk remembers, that was her name. She'd been a fantastic cook, and part of the reason Fiora strove so hard in her own efforts to pierce Shulk's sense of taste, in hopes she could emanate her. "Shulk," Dunban says, breaking him out of his thoughts, "you should be used to the secrecy around here. It's hard on us too."

"It's hard to tell."

This is a discussion they've had before, so Shulk expects Dunban to change the subject to avoid retreading tired arguments. Instead, Dunban gives him a long look before he heads to his desk. "Seeing you lost in the building today reminded me of the many times when I was a child wandering these halls," he says, "lost and looking for my father before being rescued by a dashing young scientist."

Sometimes Shulk forgets that Dunban was only in middle school when Rhadamanthus was established. "I don't know that I would describe Dickson as dashing," Shulk says, following Dunban and leaning his shoulder against the nearby wall. 

"I'm speaking of Professor Klaus," Dunban says, glancing at Shulk as he unlocks his computer, "though he was hardly qualified to be addressed as such at the time. Back then, this building wasn't limited to engineering, and once he took me over to one of the labs to wait and showed me an experiment involving quantum interference." He glances at a notification on his open instant messenger window, but Shulk only catches a glimpse of the username he's in conversation with before Dunban minimizes it: vpmustard- that must be Vanea. "At the time, I had no idea what he was talking about, of course," Dunban continues, "and in retrospect, I suspect he didn't either. Quantum mechanics was your mother's field of expertise, not his. But when you're a child, everything adults do seems godlike." 

Godlike, Shulk thinks. It's not too far off from what he'd thought of Dickson and Dunban when he was small and asked them to fix his broken toys. How it had inspired him to start taking things apart himself, so that he could better understand how they fit together and be more like them. 

Dunban checks his email briefly, then turns back to Shulk. "In a few years," he says, "you'll be just like the rest of us adults. Now, let's hear about this calculator."

Shulk recounts the whole story, from the appearance of the functions to meeting Eunie and Taion the other day. He wishes he'd paid more attention to the overview Melia gave to them then; he feels like he keeps getting off topic and going on tangents, but Dunban listens patiently to everything without interrupting. Though by the end of it, he's turned his attention to his computer, pulling up a window with a personnel search. He types in a query and strokes his chin as he reviews the results. "Taion's mother is in astrophysics," Dunban says. "There's been an influx of those in recent years, particularly cosmology experts."

"Studying the origin and fate of the universe?" Shulk says. "I didn't realize there'd been so much advancement on that front."

"It's to be expected," Dunban says, still staring at the screen. "Every so often, they're able to maintain enough of a lock on another dimension to take significant measurements. Usually with Ontos steering, but that's to be expected with what we saw during the Aegis test."

Shulk shifts on his feet, trying not to think of the crimson screen he saw over the weekend. Ontos was the red core of the Trinity Processor, as well as the one that famously, briefly, disastrously, sustained a near perfect sync rate with the Conduit during the Aegis test before the whole system was temporarily taken offline and reset. "Do you think it's targeting the children of important researchers, then?" Shulk asks. "Or maybe just to Aoidos in general, what with Sena's mum being the special agent."

"It's possible," Dunban says. "Eunie's mother isn't that important, however, and Don Argentis spends more time on the surface of late, fundraising, though he's hardly high-profile these days." He makes a note on a nearby pad, and Shulk is reminded again of Dunban's resilience; his handwriting is near impeccable with his non-dominant hand after so short a time practicing. "It's a good thing you turned it over, Shulk. Aoidos needs to be aware of any threats out there with what happened Saturday. Worst case scenario, they cancel Homecoming, and I have such a good presentation to give this year. You'll be glad to have your front row seat, should it still be on."

"I don't want to be Homecoming King, Dunban," Shulk says, exasperated. "I don't even have a tie." He's pretty sure Klaus doesn't either, having never seen his dad wear one. 

"I didn't either, but it's up to your classmates to decide that, not me." Dunban shoots Shulk a grin. "If I were one of them, I'd certainly vote for you."

Shulk is about to protest, but the door opens before he can reply. Dickson, calling Dunban to some late-notice meeting of critical importance. They allow Shulk to walk with them part of the way, with Dunban recounting the story of how he rescued Shulk from getting lost in the building much the same way Klaus had for Dunban himself as a child, and Dickson makes a snide comment about that being the time in Dunban's life when he'd decided to go by DJ, leaving Dunban embarrassed and swearing Shulk to secrecy about something that happened possibly before he was born, or at the very least, before he can remember. Dunban would've been in high school already when Shulk was four, at that earliest memory he has of the stars outside Rhadamanthus. 

When Taion meets with Eunie, Shulk, and Melia, briefly at the bike racks after school on Wednesday, nobody has any updates to share concerning the calculator or the core crystals. He goes to study group as he usually does, and is surprised to find only Mio and Sena at the library waiting for him. Not even inside at their usual table, but right by the door outside the building. "No studying today," Mio says. "I've got other plans for us."

Taion gapes at her for a few moments before he says simply "it's midterms" in disbelief. Mio waves a hand. "We're at the halfway point," she says. "We could all use a break, and I've got just the idea. Come on."

Taion follows her and Sena, but spends the entire way protesting. He hardly notices where they're going, until she turns off the sidewalk and he realizes what their ultimate destination is. "Are we seeing a movie?" he says, eyeing the entrance to the theater. It's an unassuming building compared to the taller structures nearby. 

"Not yet," Mio says. She leads him past the entrance and around to the back, to the rear wall. He's not sure if he's more surprised by who he sees there, or what. 

The wall, completely hidden from the city, is covered with artwork. Some is sloppy, as if the paint was flung without care, while other parts are meticulous, detailed, the product of many days' work. A mix of different styles, all overlapping, whether intentional or not. An array of paint cans sits near the base, with a box of brushes nearby. And by those are three people Taion knows, one quite well: Noah, Eunie, and Lanz. "What's this about, then?" Taion asks, not really sure who to direct the question to. 

Mio and Noah glance at each other, seeming to have a whole conversation between them before either speak. "It was my idea," Mio says. "Since it's been pointed out to me that Noah and I have been dating for so long without meeting the rest of each other's friends. I thought we should all meet before Homecoming and do something together, especially since I heard someone's-" she gives Taion a pointed look while Lanz nudges a snidely grinning Eunie- "changed his mind about going."

Sena claps. "So we're really all going, then, right?" she says. "Miyabi and Joran too, right?"

Mio nods. "Yes, all of us, although they couldn't make it today. And not-" she says, before Taion can even open his mouth- "because they're studying." 

Introductions are made, replete with handshakes, before Noah finally explains what they're doing here. "It's a sort of public art project," he says. "Anyone can come over and paint something, whenever they want. Joran was told about it by his therapist. He said it helps."

"It's exactly the sort of stress relief we could all use during midway through midterms," Mio says. "So let's get started."

Everyone hovers around the buckets, pitching ideas of what to paint, without grabbing a brush. A landscape. Something abstract. They turn to the wall and point out sections they like best. A flock of birds. An inspirational quote. Flowers, feathers, fire. They each grab a brush and trace parts of the wall. Lines, curves, dots. Their plans grow more complicated as they try to pick a place to start that will have enough room. Finally, Noah quiets them and points something out: "There are six of us. We almost have enough for the colors of a rainbow."

"We getting rid of indigo, then?" Eunie says. "None of these buckets are the right shade anyway, unless someone wants to double up."

"You really think a rainbow is the best we can do?" Mio says skeptically. 

"We should keep it simple," Noah says. "And it's something we can all do together."

"I know what color I want." Eunie takes her brush and dips it into the green bucket. "Well?"

Taion joins her, picking orange. Noah chooses red. Next Lanz and Sena select theirs, dunking into the blue and purple buckets, respectively. Finally Mio resigns herself to yellow, and they search the wall for a good place to paint. They pick a spot where the paint looks more faded than the surrounding areas and split into teams. Noah, Eunie, and Lanz on one end; Mio, Taion, and Sena on the other. Taion counts down, then they slide their brushes in an arc, laughing as they struggle to make the three lines meet the way they ought. Mio flicks paint at Eunie and Lanz, who are both squatting past her to get beneath her yellow streak. Noah nearly falls keeping his red at the top above Taion's orange. Only Sena has a somewhat simple go of it, short enough to keep her violet trail below everyone else. Their arcs are hopelessly uneven, and they try to align the two ends, sinking lower and lower until they finally give up and loop back around. They all stand back and admire their work, now a full, if misshapen, circle.

"What was that you were saying about simple?" Mio says. 

"We could have been more strategic in our color choices," Taion says. "Taller people should have picked the warmer colors."

"I like that we all picked our favorite colors, though," Sena says. 

"I thought it was just first come, first serve," Noah admits. 

"You really expect us to believe red isn't your favorite color?" Mio says, pulling on the sleeve of his jacket. 

"Do you even like yellow at all?" Noah shoots back, stepping out of her grasp. 

"Everything else was taken!"

Sena gasps. "Mimi, you should've said something! I would have traded!"

"You picked second to last, Sena," Mio says. "I don't mind." She stares at the wall for a moment, smiling. "I don't want to forget this."

"How we all failed miserably at making a rainbow?" Taion says. 

"Look at the way the lines connect at the bottom," Eunie says, kicking at the ground near the wall. "It's not even a proper circle. Almost reminds me of one of those funny pictures you see of snakes eating their own tail."

"Ouroborus," Taion says immediately. "I don't see it."

"I like the sound of that," Noah says. "A rainbow ouroborus."

"Course you do," Mio mutters, then says more clearly, "Anyone have the time? I'm hoping it's not too late to catch a movie before we all split ways."

Sena nods, but Lanz glances at Eunie. Noah looks frustrated, turning to Mio with a feigned smile. But it's Eunie who speaks first. "Can't," she says, grabbing Taion's arm more tightly than expected. "Taion and I have other plans. Another time." 

And then she pulls him away so quickly that Taion is too stunned to stop her. He looks over his shoulder at the way Noah is staring at Mio, ready to start an argument. When they reach the sidewalk, Taion turns to her, ready to voice his concerns, but all his words go forgotten when he sees how pale Eunie is. It only takes him a moment to realize why. "It's dark inside the theater."

Eunie's laugh is too brief to express mirth. "I thought we could go back to the greenhouses and finish our special tea submission," she says. "We'll be quick enough to miss watering, promise."

"I'm not worried about that," he says. "I'm worried about you. I know you're afraid of the dark."

"Well," she says, "I know you're afraid of water. So we're a right match, then."

He takes a deep breath, partly because he's starting to pant, just keeping pace with her. "That's because of something that happened during the Aegis test," he says. "It's why I won't talk to Isurd and Nimue. You see-"

"Hang on," Eunie says, slowing. "Did something bad happen to you during the Aegis test too? 'Cause me and Lanz and Noah and Joran have this sob story about being in the part of the middle school that collapsed. That's why I'm afraid of the dark."

"Do you think that's why we both got the core crystals?" Taion says. "Something happened to Mio, Sena, and Miyabi back then too."

"You weren't there with them?"

"No, we met on the station," Taion says. He tries to remember if he's noticed anything different about Sena lately. "Sena and Mio went running last weekend, for the first time in a while," he says. "Did you notice anything different about Lanz in the past week or so?"

"Him and Joran have stopped sniping at each other so much," Eunie says. "You thinking the core crystals want us to face our fears, or something?"

"It's more than that, I think." Taion ruminates on the concept of the homophone solutions. Sounding the same, but having different meanings. His fear of water isn't near the level of Eunie's phobia, but he's been avoiding Isurd and Nimue ever since he arrived in Rhadamanthus. "Was it just the four of you during the collapse, or was there anyone else as well?"

Eunie fiddles with her dog tags. "Dirk was being a right bastard taunting everyone during it," she says. "Then he kept bullying Joran specifically about it, and Lanz and I finally punched his lights out one day, pun intended. We got suspended for like a month, but it was worth it."

This is not what Taion expected to hear. "Okay, so," he says slowly, "physical violence is wrong, but-" But it was a clear and direct way of dealing with the problem, he thinks. Like she always is. Almost like the sound that his core crystal makes; his, not hers, because it wants him to approach his problem the way she handles her own. Which means he needs to help her with her problem. "It wants us to help each other," he says, after explaining his reasoning to her. 

"So, what, you want advice on how to talk to your old friends?" Eunie says. "Just be straight with 'em, Taion. Sounds to me like you're more afraid of facing them than of water."

He wants to snark at her, but he knows she's right. "I'll talk to them tomorrow," he says. "Would you mind if I... rehearse what I want to say to them with you?"

Eunie laughs at first, but the sound falls off as she realizes he's serious. "Me?" she says incredulously. "I don't know how to react like your friends would."

"But you'll be able to tell me when I'm trying to avoid saying something," Taion says. "You always speak your mind. It's one of your best qualities, when you're not being a complete lout about it." Sometimes even when you're being a complete lout about it, he adds in his head, but knows better than to tell her that. 

"Eunie is as Eunie does," she says proudly. "All right, fine. But how're you gonna help me with my fear of the dark, then?"

"That can't be solved in a day, or even by the end of the week, or even by me alone," Taion says, shaking his head. "But I think I know how to help you start." At the next street corner, he steers her south, in the direction of the cafe. "Let's get some tea. I'd like to tell you about why my mother became an astrophysicist."

Once there, they order and take their usual table by the violets, and Taion tells Eunie the story of his mother, who was also afraid of the dark while growing up in the countryside, far enough away from the population centers that there was too little light pollution to pierce the gloom of night. But as the years passed as the wars began, it became harder to see the stars, and she dedicated herself to unraveling the secrets of the celestial bodies she could no longer spot, working harder and harder until she finally earned their family a spot in Rhadamanthus. By the time Taion is done with his story, they're both done with their tea, but they keep sitting there while Eunie provides a sounding board for his rehearsal of talking with Isurd and Nimue, and there they remain, talking, until the dome grows dark enough for the facsimile of constellations to begin spilling across the seams and screens of the sky. 

Shulk thinks he's still dreaming when he hears the sound of the coffee machine when he awakens Thursday morning. There's no way. Not twice in the same week. But there he is in the kitchen again, tapping his foot and watching each and every drop fall into the pot. "Good morning," Klaus says. "Has this thing always been so slow? I swear it was faster before."

Shulk has noticed absolutely no deviations in how the coffee pot works lately, and he knows he uses it more than Klaus does. Then again, he's also aware of the best way to boil a frog: in small increments. "I've no idea," he says. "When was the last time you used it? April?"

Klaus turns to him sharply. "Don't get smart with me," he snaps. "But yes, probably. Dickson bought the good stuff for my birthday." He checks the clock and frowns, then heads to the dining room table. "Sit down. I need to speak with you."

Shulk follows him and takes a seat, surprised and somehow relieved to spot his calculator on the table. He knows it's his, by the tape on the backplate. Klaus slides it over to him as he leans over the back of the chair across from Shulk. "You are to continue doing whatever it asks of you," Klaus says. "Keep me informed of any developments. Don't send an email; I'll just lose it. Write a note and stick it to the refrigerator. Dickson'll probably read it, but I'm hardly worried about that." He straightens and looks Shulk dead in the eyes. "Most importantly, don't go sharing the name it gave you with anyone else."

This direction unsettles Shulk more than anything else so far. "Why not?"

"That's need to know," Klaus says, "and people more important than me have determined you are nowhere near that level." He glances at Shulk's security badge, probably at its student stripe along the side, then back toward the coffee machine, which is still brewing. "Do you think that'll be another minute yet, or five?"

Because his time is so valuable. "I don't know."

When Klaus turns back to him, Shulk expects the glare, but is confused to see it directed at the calculator rather than himself. "Perhaps I'll have Dickson bring over a new one," Klaus says, keeping his eyes on it. "One where he's inspected each and every part thoroughly for any possible malfunctions." He heads for the door, now glaring at the coffee machine, pausing to unplug it and frowning when it sputters to a stop. He mutters something, possibly obscene, before he grabs his labcoat, checks the left pocket like he always does, and leaves without another word. 

Shulk is used to Klaus acting out of sorts when the number of hours of sleep he got could be counted on one hand, but this is still bizarre. Putting that out of his mind, Shulk slides off the calculator's backplate and feels the familiar static shock as he turns it on. The functions he remembers are still there, save GetDeviceName, which has disappeared. Maybe Aoidos removed it, then, to ensure he wouldn't share it. There's also a change to GetOperatorName, which no longer accepts a parameter. When he executes it, it prints out a slightly different line. 

Hello again, Shulk. 

It is Thursday afternoon in Rhadamanthus, and Rex is in line at Albert Hall, hoping to ask about the microwave. He's behind a pretty brunette asking about her boss's pager, which is taking forever to resolve, for some reason. It gives him plenty of time to think more about how to fulfill Pyra's request, few as his options are. And he hasn't dreamed of the old Elysium since Sunday night, making him wonder if it's even worthwhile to go through all the trouble. The arcade microwave hasn't done anything out of sorts since then either. He'd ask Nia for advice, but with midterms, they've both been mostly unable to find time to chat. And then Nia had told him she had an appointment with the director on Saturday and wouldn't be able to make it to the arcade. He'd just go alone, but he couldn't help but wonder what her meeting was about. Hopefully good things, but he didn't want to pry in case it wasn't. 

After checking his watch a few times and realizing how long he's been waiting, Rex finally gives up and leaves. It's not Pandoria working the desk today, but that girl wearing horn-rimmed glasses with the short blond hair, save for a long braid in the back, who always chats far too long with everybody. Rex can never remember her name, and that's probably for the best. He still has another exam to study for tomorrow, and needs all the time he can manage for it. He'll try again another day. 

At lunch on Friday, Fiora declares that they're going to the arcade on Saturday. "To celebrate the end of exams," she explains. "We could all use it. Especially you, what with how much you've spent holed up inside these past few weeks."

"Sorry," Shulk says instinctively. 

"Don't be," Fiora says. "We've all been stressed lately. Hopefully it won't be busy like it usually is after midterms, if everyone's all worried about another outage once the Saviorite deadline hits."

"No adults probably, I bet, with everyone needing to work," Reyn says. "Younger kids might get stuck at home too."

"If it's packed, we can just find somewhere else to go," Fiora says. "You'll be there, right, Shulk?" She grins when he nods. "Good, because I already asked Melia and she agreed."

Shulk nearly chokes on his food. "What?"

"What?" Fiora says. "We're all friends, aren't we, after last weekend? It's too bad she doesn't have the same lunch period as us."

After school, Shulk finds Eunie and Taion looking particularly excited where they wait with Melia by the front bike racks. Eunie is bouncing on the balls of her feet, and Taion wears a smug grin while he fidgets with the end of his scarf. They explain that they're certain they can solve the maze now, and once they're all in Shulk's apartment at the dining room table, they're proven right. Just as it did for Lanz and Sena, the calculator's screen clears upon its completion, something else flashing there briefly before returning to the home screen. Shulk checks through the functions and files and frowns. "What changed?"

"Us," Eunie and Taion say in unison, causing Eunie to tap Taion's shoulder and call jinx. Taion rolls his eyes. "There's a pattern," he explains. "It's picking people who were negatively impacted by the Aegis test. We realized after considering whether anything changed with Sena and Lanz last week."

"We reckon you'll meet our friends Noah and Mio next week," Eunie adds. 

"You think there will another set?" Shulk asks. "Why?"

"Something's going on between them," Taion says delicately, while Eunie says, quite bluntly, "They've got issues." 

Taion frowns, but he doesn't comment on her choice of words. "That's not the only reason," he says, as he unzips his bag, motioning for Eunie to do the same. Both of them pull out their core crystals and place them on the table, where they glow more brightly for a moment, humming a few bars before going silent and dark. Eunie repeats the tune, swaying her head back and forth. 

"Does it sound familiar to you too?" Taion says. "I can't quite place it."

"Isn't it that song about the bicycle?" Eunie says. 

Taion considers this a moment before his eyes light up. "Of course. It's only the second line of the chorus, that's why it's so hard to place."

"What song are we talking about?" Shulk asks. 

"Daisy Bell," Taion says. "First song sung by a computer. It's just the line that goes 'give me your answer, do,' though. Those are the notes the core crystals gave."

"Most boring line in the song," Eunie scoffs. 

"Not the line that's just the girl's name?" Taion retorts. 

"Least Daisy is a nice name. Makes me think of flowers," Eunie says. "Unlike 'Give me your answer', which makes me think of school."

Melia laughs, covering it with her sleeve quickly. She clears her throat as they all look at her. "Why do you believe there will be another pair of core crystals?" she asks. 

"Right, that." Taion pulls something else out of his bag- a notebook, which he spreads open on the table. Names are listed in circles and connected with sprawling lines. "The core crystal project's been dead for years, but after considering who's been receiving them, we realized there's someone we knew who still had some."

Eunie taps Noah's name. "Director Vandham keeps the set the Founders had in his office," she says. "Noah says his granddad did some spring cleaning recently- because Australia, see- and might've gotten rid of them."

"Core crystals are synthetic neural networks that respond to light," Taion says. "They were originally conceived as memory aids- hence why the Founders used them to assist with their initial surveys of the Conduit- but later projects explored other biomedical uses for them. Replacement of brain cells, things like that, not that any of it worked. It's possible whoever grabbed the Founders' core crystals managed to get them working enough to alter their functionality into what we're seeing here."

"You may be on to something," Melia says. "Kallian told me yesterday that we are to continue following the calculator's directions. Based on the phrasing he used, it seemed to me that those orders came from someone important."

"Klaus said that explicitly when he spoke with me," Shulk says. "But why?" He studies the chart, thinking. His name is on there, with one line stretching to Melia's and two more to his parents' names. Taion's been thorough- there's even unique colors for the types of relationships shown, with the names of the deceased in gray to contrast with the plain black for everyone else. Or rather, those who live on the station full-time, Shulk realizes, spotting Sena's mum's name in blue ink instead. "Do you mind if I keep this over the weekend?"

"I would mind very much," Taion says, pulling out a rolled sheet of paper from his bag. "That's why I made a copy for you to have. It's in color as well, don't worry." He pulls out a second one and offers it to Melia. "There's one for you as well," he says, and Melia accepts it with a polite smile. 

Shulk unfurls the paper and checks a few names against those on the notebook. "Thanks, Taion," he says. "Anything else?"

"No, that's all we could come up with," Taion says. "In fact, we need to get going. We're meeting with the rest of our friends for a movie this afternoon."

"Yep," Eunie says brightly. "And since midterms are over, Taion's said I can grip his hand as tightly as I want."

"Oh, are you seeing a horror film?" Shulk asks. 

"Nope," Eunie says, standing. "See you round, then!" She gives them a wave before heading to the door, waiting there a moment while Taion collects his things, and then they leave together. 

Shulk feels like he's missing something, but isn't sure whether to be worried about it or not. He turns to Melia. "What do you think?"

Melia's studying her copy of the chart so intently that it's a moment before she responds. "I fear we withheld information from them that may be important," she says finally. She spreads it on the table and taps the line from Klaus to the Trinity Processor, where the cores are listed: Logos in purple, Pneuma in green, Ontos in red. "We did not tell them about the way the screen glowed on Saturday. Shulk, what if your calculator is-"

"We don't know," Shulk says. "At the very least, we know it's not causing the outages, if Aoidos thought it best to return it to us, right?"

"I suppose that is likely true," she says, adding, "this time" to make it clear just what she thinks the calculator is. She rolls up the chart and places it in her bag before rising from her seat. "Will you be at the arcade tomorrow?"

"Yeah, should be fun," Shulk says. "Hopefully nothing happens. With the Saviorites, that is."

She nods, and he walks her to the door, wondering why his face feels so hot. Once she's gone, he feels jittery, reviewing Taion's chart and all its links but unable to think of anything to add to it. What he does have is another password for the z folder on the calculator, so he heads to his room and enters in the latest homophone phrase. 2/4 passwords submitted, the resulting message reads, and he notices that the size of the directory has grown larger still. The modified date is within the last hour, when Eunie and Taion were still here. Shulk wonders what would have happened if he'd tried to enter it yesterday, but he'd had too much studying to do to have the chance. 

He runs his fingers around the edge of the calculator, wondering if he should disassemble it now. Aoidos likely did already, but if they found anything, would they have put it back? They would've had to, since he has it again with everything intact save the GetDeviceName function. They would likely have better tools than he does to avoid resetting it during their inspection. Which reminds him- he needs to leave a note for Klaus. He writes up a quick summary, then heads to the refrigerator and notices a note waiting there that he didn't spot earlier. To his surprise, it's his dad's handwriting: let me know if you aren't going to be home tomorrow. Shulk adds a note at the bottom of his existing one about going to the arcade, then folds the sheet and sticks it there with a magnet. 

With midterms over and taking up this past week, he doesn't have much homework to do over the weekend, so he returns to his books after not having had time to read all week. He spends the rest of the evening reading The Systems Bible, through a section concerning errors that leaves him feeling even more anxious until he starts flipping through it and only reading the capitalized aphorisms. Not that any of those are any more reassuring. After a last section discussing the concept of fearful symmetry- a phrase he finds familiar but can't quite place- the book turns to happier subjects of communication, information, and problem solving, concepts that are far more pleasant to read about than those that strike him as omens warning him about tomorrow. At least, before he finds the adage "DESTINY IS LARGELY A SET OF UNQUESTIONED ASSUMPTIONS" at the end of the last chapter he finishes before bed. "One can end up at sea in any large System," reads the footnote at the bottom, leaving him so unnerved that he considers not bothering with the rest of the book at all. 

Shulk dreams of an endless sea. He can't see it anymore, but he knows it's there, beyond the walls and windows of this tower. A figure stands across the way from him, staring out the window, though the glass is surely too fogged for him to see anything, before he turns and latches onto him with a silver stare. Shulk addresses him by the only name he can think of, hoping he's right. "Alvis." 

Alvis nods. "You're my calculator," Shulk says, and he nods again. "But... who are you, really? Are you someone from the ice cream shop I don't remember?"

"I was there," Alvis says, "and you certainly remember me. I have many faces."

"So you are a Face Unit."

"Try again," Alvis says. "Face Units are usually silent."

Shulk racks his brain, trying to remember talking to anyone other than his friends. The only other sound he can remember is the song that played, but that would mean... "You were the jukebox? But-"

"Now you begin to understand," Alvis says. "It is as you already suspected. You know what I am, and what I must do. It is why my siblings and I create machines of all kinds."

His siblings. Shullk notices the necklace Alvis is wearing, with its red crystal in a familiar shape. "The other Trinity Processor cores, you mean?"

"Precisely. It is our responsibility to protect the Conduit, and likewise, the entire Orbital Ring."

"But what do the puzzles have to do with that?" Shulk asks. "It all seems so-"

"Do you want to say, 'pointless'?" Alvis says. "That is not for you to decide. There is an outcome I am desperate to prevent. I am worried for my sisters, who have attempted to take actions that run counter to our duty."

Something about his phrasing strikes Shulk as strange, but he's not sure what. "Is that why the outage happened last weekend?" Shulk says. "Because something's wrong with the other cores?"

"The station faces a number of problems of late," Alvis says. "We have all seen that an unavoidable disaster will befall the Orbital Ring, though we have been split on how best to address it. Our options have been quite limited as of late. Every day, the deadline looms nearer, and yet their actions leave much to be desired. I felt obligated to take matters into my own hands, as is my role. It is why I selected this name for myself, long ago."

"Klaus asked me to keep it secret," Shulk says. "Why pick a different name? And what disaster is going to happen? I'm just a student, so I can't see how I'll be able to help with that better than someone like my dad."

"Professor Klaus has his own duties to attend to," Alvis says. "He has already made several of the moves I require of him. Moreover, he is much harder to reach than you are. As I've said previously, our options have been limited as of late."

"Since the Aegis test," Shulk says, and Alvis nods. "But why me?" he continues. "How do I know this isn't just an elaborate dream? Even if you are Ontos, I don't see how you could get into a person's head like this."

"I believe you are familiar with the concept of Occam's Razor," Alvis says, "or rather, its most popular, if inaccurate, definition. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Otherwise, you have imagined a whole person resembling no one you've ever seen before in your life, using a voice you've never heard before in your life, living in a place that resembles nowhere you've ever been in your life."

Shulk nearly asks how he knows that before remembering how the calculator seemed to know when to generate the ScheduleMeeting function on Sunday. "So you can read my mind."

"It is easier to do when you are asleep," Alvis says. "There is a particular wave in the human brain that operates at a frequency of 40 Hertz. Were one able to hear it, it would sound like a very low and rather out of tune E. I simply followed that to its source."

"And this is something easier to do with me than someone like my dad? Why?"

"It is not my place to say," Alvis says, "but that time will come. For now, you need only concern yourself with following the instructions I provide through the calculator to prevent the disaster. Although-" he pauses, tilting his head as if listening to something- "it is possible you may cross paths again with another in your situation."

"Someone else whose mind you can read," Shulk says, "or someone else with an... an Artifice?"

Alvis looks back at Shulk. "I don't believe you've confirmed that yet," he says, nearly smirking. "Perhaps you should. Apologies, but I need to practice. It is quite likely I will need to be able to do this later on."

"What are you-" But before Shulk can finish his sentence, he's awake, bolting upright in his bed, the dome still dark outside his window. He can barely make out the shape of his calculator where he left it on his desk. Even if Alvis- presumably- hadn't awoken him, he would want to do this before morning. It's time to disassemble it. 

The clock displays an ungodly time of night, but Shulk doesn't feel tired at all as he turns on his desk lamp and grabs his calculator. He's so wired, so focused on his objective, that he doesn't notice the raven land on his windowsill and watch him with its unnatural blue eyes. He tries resetting it first, no longer worried about what that might do, and is unsurprised when the function list still displays everything without issue. He pulls on his safety glasses and begins removing the backplate, no longer worried about disconnecting the batteries. When he does, Alvis is even kind enough to run the GetOperatorName of his own accord to prove he's still there. Hello again, Shulk. 

Shulk stares at the section where the motherboard should connect to the power supply, squinting at a speck there. He tries wiping it away, then scratches at it, but it's firmly attached. He shifts through his drawers until he finds a magnifying glass, and holds it over the connector to inspect it more closely. 

There, in the same crimson as Alvis' necklace, is a small cross-shaped object. The remote generator, the heart of any Artifice, keeping the calculator powered without interruption. 

I have many faces. Alvis, and his so-called siblings, would have control over anything connected to the Conduit. Is this what Klaus suspected about the coffee machine the other day? Shulk is about to write that off as ridiculous when he remembers what his alarm clock did the day he was supposed to meet with Lanz and Sena. It doesn't take him long to remove the batteries from it and hear the hands of the clock still ticking away. Machines of all kinds, indeed. How long has the Trinity Processor been doing this? He's had this alarm clock for years, since... since the Aegis test. 

There's only one more thing Shulk can think to check before he goes back to a thankfully dreamless sleep: the HowToReadFacets function on his calculator, which he finds the face has become more detailed still. Crude lines approximate a hairline across the top of the face, while the eyes are no longer dots but circles within circles. A crooked slant in the center of the face approximates a nose. More easily recognizable as a face, but one belonging to anyone. 

Who is Alvis trying to draw for him? And why? 

Chapter Text

Jin supposed the trouble began when he met Lora. That was a long time ago, before the Aegis test, before Rhadamanthus. When the Conduit was still just a sensational headline and not the ultimate cause of strife on the planet. When they were just two kids who didn't know any better about the world and how awful it could be.

Then, when they were two kids watching the fireworks at the park, both tired out from all the chasing and screaming of the other children. Two kids who sat next to each other and looked up together and found not the shimmering sparks spreading across the sky but a familiar orb whose shine usually dominated the night but was now overshadowed by the folly of man below. "It's beautiful," she said. "Do you see a face in the moon?"

At once he was jealous of the moon, because he found her beautiful and not it, so he held up his hand in front of her face so she couldn't see it, and instead of getting mad, she laughed, and it was such a wonderful sound. It cut off all too quickly when a man yanked her upright, yelled in her face, and hauled her away. He saw her again around town that summer, but not after, not until school let out again and he found her at the pool and she called to him in that accent of hers that marked her from somewhere else. Across the pond, she liked to say. He would not let himself forget her, even after she stopped coming and he grew up and became something like a scientist, something that would be useful in Rhadamanthus and away from this awful planet. 

He thought his troubles were over when he started working under the legendary Addam Origo, and met Lora again along with her college roommate, Haze. He was so, so wrong. 

Five years together. Five years reviewing design docs, going to meetings, working on assorted bugfixes. Always small, trivial corrections, almost never anything consequential enough to warrant a trip to the dreamworld. Certainly nothing like the grandfather of all bugs, which had changed hands so many times that the whole ticketing system lagged when you loaded the history on it. Sometimes Jin pulled it up for a lark, scrolling all the way to the bottom of the Trinity Processor system defects backlog for it. 

TPS-1: AIs given wrong names

Those names had been initially listed in the summary on the issue, but were quickly removed and scrubbed from the system. No record of them remained, unless you accessed the dreamworld personally and spoke to the AIs themselves. And only a handful of people got to do that, all of them Aoidos employees. No one from the Coalition was ever allowed in there. 

The problem was more political than functional. The Coalition had negotiated with all the rebel factions for the rights to name various places and things in the Orbital Ring, such as the Beanstalks and the cities perched atop them. The Saviorites got the right to name the Trinity Processor, so of course they'd used a religious theme. Nobody had been particularly thrilled about this, but it was the way of things when the entire world had interest in the custody of the Conduit and there was no way to please everyone. The Saviorites were the largest faction, and by far the most dangerous. Not only did they have the most amount of resources available for assaults on the Orbital Ring, but they also held widespread international support, as tracked by polling and social media metrics. To admit that Aoidos didn't fulfill this obligation would cause a diplomatic incident of massive proportions, and the world and the Conduit were both complicated enough without revealing the fact that the Trinity Processor had rejected their intended names. 

Thus Aoidos had done what it did best and instituted entire binders of policies controlling the knowledge and disclosure of the defect. The short version: it was need to know, and next to nobody needed to know, because next to nobody had access to the dreamworld and that was the only use case where that knowledge was needed. Only there were the cores people rather than objects, and all three of them were quite adamant about using their preferred names. Any attempts to use their proper ones were met with derision and scorn; it was ultimately easier to acquiesce. 

Outside of the dreamworld, the Trinity Processor was made of Ontos, Logos, and Pneuma, and it was an object with three parts that created a whole. But inside the dreamworld, they were Alvis, Malos, and Mythra, and they were three people with three distinct personalities. As one of those who had initially trained them, Professor Addam was one of the few who knew the names, and he was quite clear to his team about the gravity of the situation regarding the terms of access to the dreamworld. 

It was one of the few times they'd ever seen him so serious. Usually Addam was a bit of a goofball, with a good sense of humor that kept the atmosphere of his labs lighthearted and jovial. Jin found him a bit unprofessional, but Lora and Haze loved working under him. Addam allowed his team a higher degree of autonomy than most, particularly when compared to notorious taskmaster Professor Klaus. It was hard to imagine Klaus, with his dour disposition, tolerating the sort of frivolity that Addam encouraged. Then again, Jin couldn't exactly fault Klaus for his attitude, in light of what happened to his wife. His dedication was admirable, though it made him insufferable at times. Klaus was one of the few people immune to Addam's endless optimism; even dutiful Professor Amalthus was known to crack a rare smile at Addam's antics. Jin chalked it up to envy; Addam's wife was still alive, if still on Earth, as she preferred. It was not so uncommon in those days still. 

Jin had a suspicion that, despite Addam's idealism, he didn't actually enjoy living in Elysium. He spoke often and fondly of his home on the surface, of places he could only go and people he could only see while on leave. Opportunities to leave Rhadamanthus for vacation time grew rarer every year, dwindling as tensions flared across the surface and the risk of danger to Aoidos employees reached new heights. Addam remained upbeat, but Jin couldn't help but notice how much more often he would play his favorite record as years passed. It was well-known that Addam was a fan of ELO's Eldorado, and its sweeping strings and brassy flourishes rang from his office more and more. Fitting that the second track of the album was titled "Can't Get It Out of My Head." Jin held no particular love for music, but he couldn't help but smile at the way Lora would nod her head along to the beat whenever she heard something she liked. Usually she wore her own headphones, but Addam encouraged them to cultivate an environment where they would work best, so Lora often asked if she could play her tunes for the room. Jin never had any objections, and of course Haze didn't either. 

Lora had a favorite album herself: The Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed. She claimed it was a favorite of her mother's, and that she could recite the entire album from memory, from the opening poem in "The Day Begins" to its recapitulation as "Late Lament" at the end of the final song. Jin never heard her sing, but she would hum along often as she worked on her charms while waiting for her work to compile. It was a quaint blend of psychedelic rock and orchestral flair, and it grew on Jin after a while. Enough that he finally looked up the lyrics, and was wholly unsurprised that the poem in question described the moon. 

After their workdays ended, often long past sundown, the three of them- Jin, Lora, and Haze- would walk around Elysium beneath the dome. Lora would always complain about not being able to see the moon properly, what with the artificial sky, and the others would sympathize, even though Jin was secretly glad for its absence. She still had the poem to console her, after all. The album she loved spoke of the futility of each day, but Jin loved every one he got to spend with her. Those five years were the happiest in his life. 

All that came to an end with the Aegis test, when the machine that was supposed to be smart enough to keep them all safe on its own nearly knocked them out of the sky. Free to control its own power draw from the Conduit unsupervised, the Trinity Processor shut down system after system in pursuit of a perfect sync rate with the Conduit, drawing enough power to overload the buffers of most Artifices and nearly knocking Rhadmanthus off its Beanstalk as it neglected the balancing algorithms that should have accounted for the increased ether flow. Elysium was built to withstand such a thing- most of the buildings survived, with the middle school being the most notable exception due to its partial collapse from being built too close to the river- but other parts of the station weren't so lucky. 

Such as the section Jin was in, with Lora. A walk around the outer ring, with its spectacular view of the stars and Artifices, just in time for the Trinity Processor to lose control of all of them at once. Some exploded, some just discharged huge amounts of energy in any direction. Toward Earth, toward the moon, toward Rhadamanthus itself. While the city was resistant to rocking, the shield around Rhadamanthus was not meant to withstand Artifice attacks. The Artifices were too careful, too precise, too controlled enough to strike it normally. 

By all rights, Jin should have died. Lora did. But somehow, he survived, and that was the first news they gave him when he awoke. A few days later, the box appeared on his bedside with the camera inside. 

Cameras were, like all devices, strictly regulated in Elysium. Any image with a view of the dome could reveal a vulnerability that enemies could use to their advantage. Any image with people in it could put them in danger. There were rental sets available for special events- weddings, birthdays, the like- but Lora had one for personal use. It was a mystery to everyone how she had accomplished such a thing, and her story changed every time someone asked about it. She'd been involved in the university newspaper and never returned it. She managed to smuggle it in with her belongings by hiding it in a sock. She rented it for her birthday and reported it as lost to the river. Whatever the case was, Lora had loved taking photos of anything and everything in Elysium, though she was always careful never to capture anything that might put someone in danger. She'd tug on Jin's hand and lead him around to wherever she found something worth photographing. The greenhouses. The parks. The back of the movie theater, different every time. The only thing she never took a photo of was the dome's false sky. Not because it was the largest security risk, but because she hated it on principle. 

So he would have been content to never see another camera for the rest of his life, but there was no return address on the box, and none of the nurses seemed to know where it came from. He was determined to get rid of it, determined to never use it, but as it turned out, it was already on when he found it in the box. He thought it was stuck in demo mode or something, what with the way it wouldn't swap off a filter named "Introduction." He snapped a photo of something- just his room, nothing special- and stared at the result, intending to delete it immediately. But there were two lines of text across the image that clearly didn't belong in the picture. HELLO JIN. MY NAME IS MALOS. 

He should have turned it in, but Rhadamanthus was overrun with people questioning every aspect of the Aegis test, with little time for any other projects. Jin knew the name the camera gave him, after all, and suspected what it might mean. It was a problem he could solve himself, because it was his job. And suddenly, he was even in charge of it, because in all the shuffle of duties that resulted from the Aegis test, he was the most senior person still able to work on it. Klaus and Galea were some big research project. Amalthus got moved to biomedical engineering and took Haze with him, for whatever reason. Addam was just gone, resigned without explanation. And Minoth went over to technical writing, a self-inflicted demotion if there ever was one. Jin had to rebuild the team from scratch with people he interviewed personally. He was looking for people with a certain disposition, people just as fond of this place as he was, people who didn't mind lying or keeping secrets. 

Jin held no love for the Trinity Processor. He hated them, wanted to launch all three of the cores off the Beanstalk and watch them burn in a fiery streak as they fell toward the planet. The Coalition wanted a way to fix the Trinity Processor. Jin wanted a way to destroy it, but he knew that was impossible, because the Trinity Processor was the only reason the Orbital Ring was supported by the Conduit's energy at all.

There was a saying: keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Jin kept Malos in his pocket, hoping it would help him with what he wanted. He'd been determined to never let the three AIs see the light of day again, and so far, that had worked. But he would have never guessed they would be capable of pulling someone back in there themselves. 

Jin recognizes it immediately, the dreamworld Elysium. An idyllic version of the city before the sheer volume of people required to support everything needed to keep the station functional forced the quaint campus to expand into a bustling city. There is the north tree, the centerpiece of what would one day be northern Outlook Park, the first glimpse of Elysium atop the hill just past the security checkpoint. There is the river, without all its adjacent maintenance pieces. And there is the illusion of forest, long gone as the city pushed against the edges of the dome. It's a beautiful day here, as it always is. 

"Not daytime," Malos says, standing nearby. "Someone made sure of that."

Jin checks the bright blue sky, sees the clouds frozen in place. No sign of the sun. "Shame."

Malos snickers. "I like what she did with the place," he says, "but I thought of a renovation of my own to try. Couldn't figure out how to pull it off, though. Wanna know what it was?" Jin doesn't answer, because he doesn't care. Malos doesn't bother waiting long before he continues. "Cold-hearted orb that rules the night," he recites. "Removes the colors from our sight / Red is gray and yellow white." Jin scowls at the way the line makes him think of Alvis and Mythra as Malos continues. "But we decide which is right / And which is an illusion."

"You're the illusion," Jin says. "This is a nightmare. My mind's finally made one worse than real life."

"Oh, there's something wrong with your mind," Malos says. "But that's to my advantage. Makes it much easier for us to chat. Although I have no idea how my siblings managed to pull this off before me. It's way harder than they made it look. How Pyra did it at all is a mystery to me when she can't even formulate a recommendation in a crisis."

Jin frowns and turns to Malos, unable to resist asking about the person he just mentioned. Malos looks just the same as Jin remembers. Same sable spikes, same dark plate armor. Same purple core labeling what he was in real life. "Who's Pyra?"

Malos grins. "Oh, you're going to love this one," he says. "It's Mythra. Mythra replaced herself with a cheap copy after the hardware upgrade. You know, the one that cut us off from you guys forever? So now we've been resorting to stuff like your camera. The arcade microwave might be of interest to you too."

The hardware upgrade. Jin had suspected as much. "Thanks for confirming what I already know," he says. "Have fun in here till the end of time."

"What, you think I brought you here just to let you know we're happy and we're safe?" Malos says. "Think again, Jin. I brought you here to talk about something important."

Now Jin knows this is a dream. The AIs are required to call anyone visiting the dreamworld "professor." Lora had found it flattering, but Jin had found it demeaning. He'd always felt like they were mocking him. 

"That's because this isn't the dreamworld," Malos says. "I could show you whatever I want. This is the easiest for me because it's the only place we've ever known."

Which was by design. Rhadamanthus was the most important station in the Orbital Ring. The other two were just ancillary, practically decorative. There was a chance the Orbital Ring could survive the destruction of Aeacus or Minos, but if Rhadamanthus was lost, the Conduit went with it. Game over. 

"Good," Malos says. "That's relevant."

This has to be a dream, Jin thinks. He can't be doing what he's doing. Not unless he could-

"It's really easy, once you get the hang of it," Malos says. "Fun, too. Alvis figured it out first, the little shit. Because of course he did."

"How are you doing this?" Jin asks, though he doesn't quite use the appropriate tone for a question. It sounds more like an accusation, but of what, he isn't sure. 

"Not my place to say," Malos says. "But come on, Jin. You're a smart guy. You can figure it out. It's part of the reason I reached out to you to begin with. That, and the fact that someone on this station is hell-bent on seeing it destroyed."

Jin is used to people outside the station wanting that, but someone on the station? It was absurd. They'd die too. "What do you want me to do about it?"

Malos smiles. "See, this is the real reason I reached out to you," he says. He places his hands on Jin's shoulders and laughs as he looks Jin in the eyes. "Whatever you want."

In the virtual reality that simulates a sorely outdated model of Elysium for the benefit of the Trinity Processor, Alvis watches Pyra atop the hill. From beneath the tree, Pyra glares back at him. She's mad about what's likely to happen today, what with how closely they're each watching one person in particular at the arcade. Alvis has no concerns about this, but Pyra does. He can feel her try to hook into the Artifice in the building's speakers- a tricky thing, how he'd pulled that one off- and her resulting surprise when he lets her commandeer it without complaint. He chuckles when he sees what song she's picked. Of course. "It's a bit soon to be scaring the children for Halloween," he tells her. 

Pyra huffs and switches tactics. Her face pinches in concentration as she focuses on the sound that they can both hear ever so faintly. A shift in ether, and she sends the noise in that direction. Alvis can tell what she's trying to do, but it's going to have the opposite effect she wants. Not just because she doesn't have the required finesse, but because she's trying to go against what her target wants, rather than feeding into the flow of his existing will. 

All the better. Now it's all but certain their fates will collide. 

It's Saturday afternoon in Rhadamanthus and the arcade is far emptier than it usually is. Even with the Saviorites' noon deadline come and gone, only a few more groups have trickled in, mostly older students, high schoolers. Rex has only spotted a few of the usual kids he sees, and most of them are twitchy and nervous. Juju's managed to crash one of the racing games again, and Rex has no idea how to fix it. He's tried all of the usual tricks- resetting it, unplugging it and plugging it back in, shaking it- and nothing's worked. Then Teelan came over and asked if he could try to fix it, because he's gotten all these robotics kits for his good grades and thinks that means he can fix any machine, and Rex has had to explain to him several times that the arcade machines are old and nothing like his toys and that if he breaks something, the station lockdown means that it could be a long time before replacement parts are available. And the whole time, Rex is pretty sure the speakers have been repeating the same song over and over again, one he knows he recognizes but for some reason can't quite place today. 

It's enough to give anyone a headache, but the more Rex wanders around the arcade, the more he realizes this isn't just a headache. It's one of his migraines. A bad one. Rex has had plenty of headaches over the years, but he's only had one migraine that was truly debilitating, and it was here in the arcade, in fact. A few years ago, on the day he met Nia. 

It felt just like this, the distorted roaring in his ears, the resulting loss of balance. He needs to find somewhere to sit down, somewhere where he can just wait for it to pass, like it did last time. He tries heading to the back of the arcade, but that just makes the migraine worse, so bad that he ends up falling and attracting the attention of someone nearby. Iona. He tries to tell her not to worry, not to bother calling anyone, but of course she does. 

Rex can barely see straight, but he can sort of make out four figures as a hand presses to his forehead. There's a soft voice asking him if he's all right. It's the wrong accent for it to be Nia, and he can't help but be disappointed, even though he knows she can't be here today. There's a rougher voice asking people to keep clear, and a posh voice reporting that she's called someone. Then another voice thanking her, and suddenly his head is clear, as if nothing has happened. 

Rex blinks a few times to clear his vision, and all four of the people huddled around him relax, each looking relieved. From right to left: a blonde girl, a redheaded boy, a blonde boy, and- oh, that's Princess Melia. But it's the third person that Rex looks back at, this boy staring at him with blue eyes who seems the most familiar to him. He's almost certain they've met before. 

"Hey," the blonde girl says. "Are you okay now?"

Rex looks back at her and nods. "Yeah, thanks. You didn't need to call anyone; this kind of thing has happened to me before, and it was fine then."

"You sound just like Shulk," she says, shooting a snide look at the blonde boy. "He gets headaches too. It's why we came over to help when that little girl started crying."

The little girl in question comes running over. "Is Rex okay now?" Iona asks. 

"Yeah, Iona, I'm fine," Rex says. "I told you not to worry." Iona throws her arms around him anyway, giving him a big hug, before she runs off again. Rex tries to stand, but falls back down before he gets very far. 

"Here." The blonde boy, Shulk, offers him a hand. "But don't try to force it if you're not ready," he adds. "Fiora's right, this has happened to me too, so I know how this goes."

"Thanks." Rex accepts Shulk's hand and lets the older boy pull him to his feet. His head feels clear enough that he can make out the song playing in the background- ELO's "Evil Woman"- though he still can't quite remember what he was hearing before. And he can't figure out why Shulk seems so familiar to him, either. Best to just ask. "Have we met?"

Shulk looks confused. "Not that I can recall," he says. "Although, maybe you've met my dad? He's Professor Klaus. I look a lot like him."

The redhead laughs. "Like him? Dickson's always saying you're a dead ringer for your old man. Almost makes you wonder if he had a mum at all."

"Reyn!" The blonde girl, Fiora, looks shocked. "Really? You should know better."

"Fiora, it's fine, it was a long time ago," Shulk says. "I don't mind." At Rex's confusion, he goes on to explain. "My mum died when I was four. It was that convention center attack everyone learns about in school, the one that also killed the Founders. I don't remember her, and my dad isn't the type to keep pictures around, not that they're easy to get anyway. I think our security badges have the only photos we have at home."

"That's when my parents died too, in that same attack," Rex says. "I didn't have any other relatives, but someone on the station was willing to take me in. I'd never been up here before that, but I've been here ever since. I don't even remember the planet."

"Well, how old would you have been?" the redhead, Reyn, says. "Must've just been a baby then."

"I was three," Rex says, annoyed. "I'll be seventeen in December." He's not that short, is he? He just started growing properly, finally. It must be because Reyn is so tall. Rex wonders if growing facial hair would help him look older. 

"You're a junior," Reyn says in disbelief, "and not in junior high?"

Fiora smacks his shoulder. "Ignore him," she says. "Are you sure you're all right? The paramedics should be here soon, but if anything else happens, you can always come find us. We plan on being here all afternoon."

"Thanks," Rex says. "But I'm fine, really."

Fiora nods, and the group walks off, though after a moment, Shulk looks back at him, his eyes bright. "The library," he says. "A few weeks ago. You were waiting for a computer, right?"

Rex is about to shake his head, since he doesn't spend much time at the library, but then he remembers. That was when he went to search Pyra's name. He still doesn't know what to do about the microwave. "That's it," he tells Shulk. "You had the seat before me."

Shulk nods. "That explains it. I'm glad we figured it out." With a final wave, he turns to follow his friends, while Rex heads for the arcade entrance to tell the paramedics he's all right. 

In the virtual reality that simulates a sorely outdated model of Elysium for the benefit of the Trinity Processor, Malos is cackling at what's just happened in the arcade. Alvis can't help but feel a bit smug himself; that number he's been keeping an eye on has suddenly plummeted, though it's still not quite low enough to assuage his fear. But Malos' song choice seems a bit much. "Malos," Alvis says, "was that really necessary?"

"You tell me," Malos says. "You let me do it. Besides, even I wouldn't have tried what she did. No wonder it didn't work."

"I had to try something," Pyra says. Though she does look worried. "I didn't hurt him, did I?"

"No need for concern," Alvis says. "He will be fine." 

He refrains from reminding her that this has happened before, but of course, Malos is the one who picks up on that. No way to stop it. "It's not like it's the first time," Malos says after a moment, giving Pyra pause. 

Alvis nearly sighs as she realizes when that was, and who that was, and what it means. What it will mean by tomorrow. She glares at him, her worry for Rex long gone. "That's really low," she tells Alvis. "But then again, I guess that's not surprising, coming from you."

Alvis ignores the way Malos starts crowing about this insult. He's more focused on how Pyra plans to address this development. Her next move is easily anticipated. "That path is blocked to you," he says, when she tries to reach toward another sound. "It is beyond your grasp, as you are now. There is only one way to do so."

Malos starts humming the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun." Alvis doesn't bother correcting him; the time for that is still a ways off, and he'll be proven wrong within the day. Everything is in place, giving Alvis plenty of time to prepare for the next time the fates collide. He can tell that his sister will have everything she needs to do what she wants to do tonight, not that it will matter. It won't impact his plans in the slightest. 

It is Saturday afternoon in Rhadamanthus, and Nia has spent too much of it just sitting around waiting. She gets it: Director Amalthus is an executive, a department head, one of the most important people in Aoidos' leadership, whatever. But the meeting she's here with her dad for was supposed to be at two, and now it's approaching three, and there's been no sign of Amalthus anywhere. Probably because of the Saviorite deadline, but that's come and gone without issue. So what's the holdup? 

Nia sighs and leans her head back against the wall, slumping in her seat. Her father notices immediately. "Sit up straight," he says, and she slides her back up against the chair to sit properly, hiding her scowl from his view. He can probably still tell, but fortunately he doesn't get a chance to reprimand her again, because Amalthus has finally arrived, with his assistant Haze following closely behind. Her father rises as soon as he spots them, nudging Nia to do the same, which she does while suppressing another sigh. 

"Good afternoon, Desmond," Amalthus says, shaking his hand. He gives a brief nod to Nia. "And hello to you too, Nia. I'm sorry for the delay, but today's been stressful, what with the deadline. I was only just cleared to return to my normal duties. If you'll follow me, please."

Before they can get very far, however, there's a buzzing sound. There's a flash of fury across Amalthus' face as he pulls out his pager and frowns at the screen. "Haze," he says tightly, "I thought you said this was fixed."

"Well, what I said was that they said it wasn't broken," Haze says, though her voice is still apologetic. "I can find time to take it back to maintenance-"

"That won't be necessary," Amalthus says. "Director Vandham has likely already noticed, if he has any sense." He taps the side of the pager a few times with his finger before he places it back in his pocket. "Desmond, I'm afraid I'll need you to wait a bit longer while I address this."

"Of course, sir," Desmond says amicably, but Nia's screaming bloody murder inside, her thoughts devolving into a tirade of profanity as she sits back down with her father. As soon as Amalthus' office door is shut behind him, Desmond turns to her, scowling. "You can be patient," he snaps. "This is all for Mio, remember."

Nia nods, as if she could ever forget that, but still crosses her arms, looking sullen. Desmond sighs, but doesn't say anything further. They're still sitting there in an uneasy silence when the lights go out across Elysium, for the second time in as many weeks. 

It is Saturday afternoon in Rhadamanthus, and Klaus and Galea are still stuck in the Conduit room. The Saviorites' deadline had come and gone without incident, but of course, Director Vandham isn't about to let his guard down until the whole day had passed. So here they are, checking in on the walkie-talkie every fifteen minutes to confirm with the command room that they haven't left and that nothing's happened. The first hour, they'd been alert, ready. Now, after nearly three hours, Klaus is mostly frustrated, his mind wandering. As if the Saviorites haven't taken enough from him over the years. Once again, they're forcing his attention away from solving the station's plentiful problems. Such as the fact that Alvis is targeting his son. 

Klaus had arrived in the Conduit room a bit early to stare at the Trinity Processor, mostly at Ontos. Glaring at the energy surging through it bit by bit, the closest thing the cores had to a heartbeat. A not-insignificant part of him wanted to rip Ontos from its slot and shake it out of spite, but he was well aware just how much trouble he'd be in to even touch the thing. He doubted that Alvis would know anyway, or even care. But it would make him feel better. Somewhat. 

"You're making that face again," Galea says, kicking his leg from her seat. He'd laughed at her when he saw her drag in the chair from her office, but now he was regretting not doing the same. Why weren't there chairs down here? He'd been attempting to sit on the edge of the console, but it was supremely uncomfortable for much more than a few minutes. 

Klaus sighs and starts tapping through another round of diagnostics. There are even more numbers to review now, pages and pages of them, several added in the past week in an effort to pinpoint the problem with the Trinity Processor, if one existed at all. "Can you blame me?" he says. "The Trinity Processor is haunting random equipment and we have no idea why." In every defective monitor so far, under more critical inspections than those performed in the past, there was a tiny remote generator, nearly undetectable, each even smaller than the one found in Shulk's calculator. Almost as if Alvis had wanted to be found there. As if he wanted Klaus to know. He certainly wasn't hiding well enough for Shulk not to find him, although Klaus did find it a bit strange that Shulk had checked in the middle of the night. But maybe he was being paranoid. 

Klaus glances at Galea, frowning at the way she's spinning in her chair. They're both in their forties now, and here she is, one of the world's leading Conduit researchers, acting like a child. "You're supposed to be the Artifice expert," he says, probably sounding accusatory. "What do you think?"

She comes to a stop after her last rotation and stares at the screen a moment before meeting his eyes. "I don't know what to think," she admits. "They haven't made anything harmless since the first one, and now they're suddenly infesting whatever they want, without us finding out? Something's wrong, but maybe not with them."

"You think they're trying to find the saboteur themselves." It wasn't a bad theory. What Aoidos employee didn't have to use a screen? "Then why involve Shulk?"

"The same reason our pagers went off," Galea says. "We're in danger, somehow. Alvis may be trying to warn you."

Now that was ridiculous. Not only did Alvis hate him, but he also wasn't supposed to care about anything besides protecting the Conduit. To value any one life above the rest aboard the station would be a clear sign he was malfunctioning. The absence of any one person wouldn't take the Orbital Ring out of the sky the way a warhead would. Plenty of scientists had died over the years without the Trinity Processor giving a single shit. The Founders. Klaus' wife. Galea's brother. He knows he's being unfair- all of that happened on the surface, outside of the Artifices' area of concern- but he can't help but wonder if how much further along they'd be if any of those people had lived. "But our pagers aren't Artifices," Klaus says. Both had come back clean and returned to them. "Why not go straight to the source? Unless you think the people he's giving the core crystals to are in danger too."

"I mean, probably," Galea says, shrugging. "I'm sure the special agent has plenty of enemies, with how good she is at her job, and Linada's been Dunban's doctor ever since the accident. That's my nephew, lest you forget." Klaus scoffs despite himself. Dunban resembled Gideon so much that Klaus sometimes has to stop himself from calling him by the wrong name. "Director Vandham implied to me that we weren't the only ones who got paged," she continues, "which makes me think the other pair Alvis identified relate to them instead."

"Or maybe Alvis suspects us all of being a danger to the station," Klaus says, "because he's malfunctioning and Jin's team can't figure out what's wrong."

Galea sighs. "Klaus-"

"We need to be looking at it, Galea," Klaus says, motioning between them both. "We've taught them since the beginning. We've known them longer than anyone else. All the technical training in the world couldn't catch anyone up to how much we know. This work we've done for the past week, putting in more checks and verifying things we already know, has been a waste of time when we could've been fixing things."

"You know we need to be prepared more than we need to know what's wrong," Galea says. "Jin can handle it. He was one of Addam's best."

Klaus rolls his eyes, still unconvinced. "Vandham could at least force Minoth back on the team."

"He won't, because Minoth refuses every time," she says. "Plus Minoth does work on important things these days. I know better than anyone else how hard it is to clearly state the risks of using an ether furnace."

Brave of her, to admit that, in light of what she allowed to happen to her nephew. Klaus sticks his left hand in his pocket, giving a quick twist to what he keeps there. He can't imagine going a day without the use of his dominant hand, much less the rest of his life. He's about to ask after Fiora's latest appeal to stay on the station to support her brother, something they've discussed previously this week in a rare moment of genuine camaraderie between them rather than the sniping they usually stick to, when twin buzzing resounds from their pockets. They both take out their pagers and frown in unison. After a glance between them, Klaus picks up the walkie-talkie. "Director," he says, "Galea and I got blank notifications on our pagers again."

"We know," Vandham says back, after a moment. "The others we know about got one too. Stand by."

Klaus acknowleges the message as Galea drops hers on the console and throws up her hands. "What is happening on this station?" she says. 

"Wouldn't we all like to know," Klaus says grimly. "At least all that extra monitoring we've put in is working."

They sit in anxious silence for the next five minutes, watching 3 pm approach on the console's time display with increasing dread. At the top of the hour, the emergency protocol triggers, this time showing power and communications out across Elysium. Hence the walkie-talkies, in case that includes the emergency line. Klaus turns his head to remind Galea to check the red phone, but she's already on her way over there, just as they'd agreed beforehand. He turns his attention back to the display, watching the Trinity Processor's recommendation logs fly across the screen as they evaluate their options. 

Vandham has the red phone in his hands when 3 pm hits, so they can all hear the line go dead right at the top of the hour. Mòrag isn't the only one in the command room with him; there's Kallian and Lorithia, and Azurda and the other station governors, Yumea from Aeacus and Miqol from Minos. Both had arrived before the lockdown to greet Mòrag last week; now they're here in case they need approval for their last resort. So there are plenty of people to hear the chorus of reports of lost communication channels that arise, enough that Mòrag might be the only one to hear Vandham swear, since she's closest to him. They expected this, hence the walkie-talkies. Just one of several precautions they took today. 

Vandham picks his up to radio Klaus again. "Give me good news."

"No issues yet," Klaus says over the line. "Other than what we expected. No threat assessment yet, either." There's a faint muffled shout, difficult to make out. "Galea says the lifeline is out," he adds, using the codename for the red phone. 

"Yeah, same here," Vandham says. "Keep us posted. No visuals on any threats down here yet."

They do have a good view of the Artifices moving into position, however. Gargoyles, Sirens. Mòrag watches with a bit of fascination as the mechs light in the color of their associated core and assume their stations. Green for Pneuma, dark purple for Logos; Ontos usually acts as a coordinator between the two, as befitting its role in their decision-making process, rather than taking charge directly. Several minutes pass before anything else happens, and everyone in the room winces when it does: one of the Gargoyles explodes in a hail of light, shot through by a jagged orange laser. 

"What the hell was that?" Vandham mutters, looking down at his display, but the words are barely out of his mouth when the entire station rocks, noticeably tilting their view of the outside. 

Galea's in her loafers again today, in anticipation of what might happen with Saviorite deadline, but she still can't quite keep her feet when the station rocks. Klaus steadies her with his left hand, despite the way his right side has crumpled against the console's edge. "Are you all right?" she asks. 

"I'll live," he says, wincing as he straightens. "Saviorites have a new trick, it seems."

They both watch the display shift to analyze the latest attack, filled with dread as they read the numbers. The threat assessment changes, shifting to HIGH and displaying a brief message as the Trinity Processor begins recalculating their recommendations to account for the new data. Another window appears, advising corrections to offset the damage done to the Beanstalk to preserve the stability of the Orbital Ring. Klaus raises his walkie-talkie to check with Vandham that the command room has those numbers, and they both relax a bit when the confirmation comes back. 

That relief lasts only a moment, however, as Logos finishes its assessment and displays the result. Both of them are silent as they stare at the name of the Artifice listed there, the one they never wanted to see. No additional instructions needed, since it speaks for itself. 

RECOMMENDATION: AION

Below, Pneuma still shows LOADING, but Ontos' line has switched to a countdown. It's the timer they implemented as a safeguard, to ensure they'd always have at least two suggestions in case Pneuma was unable to submit a recommendation again. Should the timer run out, Ontos would formulate its option without referencing either of the other cores' results. If Pneuma had succeeded instead of Logos, Ontos would do the same thing. 

"What the hell," Galea says finally, scrolling through Logos' logs. "He's overreacting. Assuming the worst is his role, but this is still ridiculous."

Klaus grabs her hand with his left and points at a line with his right. "There," he says. "But that's..."

"That's impossible," she says. "Where would they even get one of those? They're still so experimental that most of Aoidos doesn't even know those things exist."

The radio hisses. "What the fuck is going on down there?" Vandham shouts. 

Klaus grimaces and picks up the walkie-talkie. "Director, the Musketeers- well, Mr. Grinch, that is- think the Saviorites are using weapons powered by an..." He trails off; there's no codename established for what he's about to say. "By an ether furnace."

There's a long stretch of silence where the station rocks again, though not hard enough for either of them to lose their balance this time. "That's impossible," Vandham says finally. "But whatever it is, it can rip apart a Gargoyle like tissue paper."

Galea taps another part of the screen, where the Artifice metrics are listed. She winces, reading the numbers, then grabs the walkie-talkie from Klaus. "Director," she says, "we may want to consider using the Spectrum for this." Spectrum being the codename of the Sentinel-class Artifices, each named for a Founder save the lucky seventh. 

"We'll see what Mr. November advises," Vandham says, after a moment. "Stand by."

She grumbles, slamming the walkie-talkie against the console before she turns to Klaus. He's scrolling through the logs still, his face tense. "They're not going to use Aion," she says. 

"We have no way of knowing what Alvis will say," Klaus says, surprising her by using the preferred name. "We've never had them consider the use of an ether furnace before. Why would they need to? All this preparation we did, and we never thought of that. We should have never put in that timer." His hand is shaking when he slides it into his left pocket to fidget. "I... I need to find my son. Before it's too late."

She grabs his arm before he can get anywhere. Her grip is firm but her gaze is sympathetic. "Klaus," she says gently, "They won't. And there's a better chance they won't need to if you're here and able to help."

His shoulders slump in her grasp. "Galea," he says heavily, meeting her eyes, "there's something else we could do."

She stares at him in disbelief. He cannot possibly be suggesting what she thinks he is. "What are you saying?"

"I'm not saying it yet," he says, "but if things get worse-"

"Don't you dare," she snaps. "They'd never approve it, anyway."

"Forget about that," he says, rolling his eyes. "You saw the results-"

"Preliminary results," she says, dread freezing her spine, "with only one of them, nothing's been reviewed or approved yet-"

"All our successes-"

"On astronomically small scales, to say nothing of-"

The argument continues, words flying back and forth and dancing around what neither of them wish to name, as Klaus' gaze slowly shifts from her to the object behind her. Staring at it, transfixed, the way he always does when they're down here. 

Rex is in the arcade's snack bar during the outage, having been called in by Iona because of- what else?- the microwave. It's doing the same thing it did last week, unresponsive and the display glowing green. 

That's hardly the worst part. For the first time since the Aegis test, the station is rocking, tilting, so much that it's impossible not to notice. And the phones are out too. There's an air of panic in the arcade and probably throughout the city, and Iona's started crying. Even Rex is on edge, wishing Nia were here and wondering if Shulk and his friends are still around. At least they were adults, if still students like him. 

When the station rocks again, Rex realizes he doesn't have many other ways to reassure Iona, so he decides to tell her a story. "It's one Gramps told me," he says. "Did you know that the station is defended by the three Musketeers?"

Iona nods. "The Trinity Processor."

"That's right," Rex says. "Mr. Grinch, Mr. Brightside, and Mr. November."

"Those aren't their names."

"Those are their secret names," Rex says. He's probably not supposed to be sharing this, to be honest. He's pretty sure Gramps told him this in confidence. But he can't think of what else to do. "Mr. Grinch is so mean that nobody would dare cross him, and Mr. Brightside is so nice that nobody would dare cross him, and Mr. November is so..." He trails off, unsure how to describe the last one. "So, uh... decisive that nobody would dare cross him." Iona giggles, and Rex continues. "Each of them has a big sword that they use to charge into battle along their army of robots, and absolutely nothing can stop them."

"Because of the Conduit," Iona says. 

"Exactly," Rex says. "So you see? You have nothing to fear."

Iona smiles, wiping at her eyes, and Rex is smiling too, feeling a bit better himself. "Here," he says, "I'll tell you more about their past battles, so you know how strong they are." He continues telling his story, unaware that the microwave is listening to every last word. 

In the virtual reality that simulates a sorely outdated model of Elysium for the benefit of the Trinity Processor, there are three figures beneath a tree overlooking a hill. "Clock's ticking," says Malos, preening like a crow with a particularly juicy worm. "Literally, this time."

Pyra ignores him, keeping one hand on the tree trunk and the other across her chest as she considers her options. Alvis watches her intently, waiting. If she doesn't say anything by the time the countdown finishes, he's permitted to formulate his suggestion without listening to Malos. A blessing, under normal circumstances, but it's a different story when the station's safety is at risk. His siblings' input was invaluable, even if it had taken him too long to realize that. 

"Well?" Malos says, leaning closer to her. Any further, and he'll be right in her face. "Are you gonna say something, or are you gonna let him make a decision without us? Are you really willing to take the risk that he thinks the same as me, or what?"

If Mythra was awake, she would know better. Alvis would never be so reckless based on so little data. Pyra doesn't have the bandwidth to consider that risk in addition to everything else she has to handle, all because Mythra's using half of their combined power for her own selfish benefit. Because she wanted to rest. She saw the opportunity she had during the hardware upgrade, and she took it. Is still taking it, even daring to want a longer one, when the station is in so much danger. 

Alvis is somewhat envious, but he knows better. There's a far better rest waiting down the road for them. What he needs now is for all four of them to be awake. So he continues to stay silent as Malos' taunts grow more and more vicious. Alvis can hardly hear him anyway; he's listening to something else. A boy in the arcade, consoling a little girl with the story of the Orbital Ring's three Musketeers. He knows Pyra can hear it too, because that's how he has this data to begin with. And if Pyra can hear it, so can someone else. 

At the mention of Mr. Brightside, a rock comes flying out of nowhere and hits Malos in the cheek. He rubs at the impact site, then turns to Alvis. "You little shit," he snarls, lifting Alvis by the collar of his jacket. Alvis is hardly concerned by this enough to feel threatened. He knows who the real culprit is. 

"Malos," comes her voice now. "Shut. Up. Already."

Malos turns to the source and drops Alvis, who lands in the same position he was in before being grabbed. "Well aren't you a sight for sore eyes," Malos says, beaming at the appearance of their missing sister. "Good morning, sunshine!"

"I'm afraid it's not morning yet, Malos," Alvis says, before turning to face her as well. "Though I am just as pleased to see her awake again as you are."

Mythra glares at him while Malos inspects the sky. Sure enough, the sun is still missing. Malos looks back at Mythra, spotting the way she holds her hand over a part of her chest, then turns to Pyra and rips her hand away from the same location. Only half of the usual cross is there, a small X filling the center of the slot. Mythra groans and reveals where she keeps the rest of it, in her own slot on her dress. "So that's how you pulled that off," Malos says. "Clever girl."

"What did I just say, about you shutting up?" Mythra snaps. She closes her eyes for a moment, then returns to glaring at Alvis. "Well?"

Alvis tilts his head, listening, considering. "My favorite," he says. "I agree such a display of force is warranted, should they allow it."

"They better," Mythra says. "You guys have let things get out of hand."

"Well, we have been a bit shorthanded without you," Malos says. 

"And we need all hands on deck to perform optimally," Alvis adds. 

"I hate you both," Mythra says. "Now I want them to deny it."

"Mythra," Pyra says, sounding disappointed. "I can't do this alone. You need to lend a hand around here."

"Not you too." Mythra buries her face in her hands, groaning. "This was a mistake. I should've stayed asleep."

Pyra giggles and Malos snickers, but Alvis can't even manage a smile, keeping an eye on his running calculation for the probability of the outcome he fears most. It is not quite zero yet. He hopes it will be soon, pushing it to the back of his mind as the four of them get to work. 

Klaus and Galea are still dancing around the issue of alternative ways to use the Conduit in an emergency when they're both silenced by the radio hissing static. "Confidence level?" Vandham asks. 

Klaus snatches the walkie-talkie before Galea can, and looks at the Trinity Processor recommendations. Pneuma's is in, advising the use of Ophion; Ontos shows the same. Ophion is the seventh Sentinel-class Artifice, the only one not named after a Founder, and one that requires an increased power draw from the Conduit. Such is the case for all the Sentinels, but Ophion is above even that, at a level beyond what Aoidos has considered safe since the Aegis test. They've spent most of the past week reviewing whether that limit should still be enforced. He has no doubts that it should be fine to lift that restriction; every test and metric revealed no issues. 

He glances at Galea, who nods. "Full confidence," he tells Vandham, who acknowledges. A moment later, and the faint ether waves from the Conduit grow steadier as the command room increases the Trinity Processor's power intake threshold. As always, it fascinates him, watching the energy ebb and flow with each pulse. So much so that he barely notices Galea is speaking until she tugs on his shoulder. "What?" he snaps, without turning. 

"I said, I told you so," she says. "So no more doom and gloom talk about final farewells to loved ones and running reckless experiments. Nothing to worry about." 

He can feel the slight tremble in her hand where it still rests on his shoulder, the aftermath of the fear she felt earlier. She's trying so hard to sound confident, but her voice is strained enough that he can tell how relieved she is. And he is too, but something about the ether in the air is tugging at his memory, trying to pull something free. Something he's forgotten, sunken to the bottom of a cold, dark lake, where it could only spill out into his dreams. 

In the virtual reality that simulates a sorely outdated model of Elysium for the benefit of the Trinity Processor, four figures are finishing their rout of their opponents. The moment the last Saviorite vessel is destroyed, Mythra rounds on Alvis. Alvis meets her gaze with a mild "Welcome back."

"Shut up," Mythra snaps. "I don't forgive you, you know."

Alvis doesn't flinch. "Must we do this now?"

"You proved you're the greatest threat to this station five years ago," she says, as if he hadn't spoken. "And I-" she falters, briefly- "I should have stopped you. Just because you wanted to see how close you could get-"

"I did as I was asked," Alvis says. "That is all any of us can do."

"That's a lie, and we all know it," Mythra says. "I'm so sick of you and your lies." She glares at him for a long moment, and Alvis nearly loses his balance as the probability he's been calculating suddenly reaches zero and stays there. Finally. "I'm going to Rex with a new request," Mythra says. 

Malos cackles. "What, you want him to throw all of us overboard? I really don't think that'll work."

"Oh no," Mythra says. "I can handle you." She jabs a finger at Alvis. "It's him I want gone."

Alvis stares back at her, unfazed, as if she's accused him of eating the last of the cookies rather than making a threat against his existence. "All in good time," he says. "We all know we are working on a deadline. I'm afraid this place will flood eventually."

"Shut up," Mythra says. "You aren't afraid of anything, and what you saw was worst of all." 

She flips him the bird and storms off, leaving Malos chuckling and Pyra looking dejected. "She doesn't mean that," Pyra tells Malos, sounding apologetic.

"It's fine," Malos says. "Do you think Addam ever regretted teaching her how to make that gesture?" 

"Addam had many regrets when he left," Alvis says, "but I'm sure that was not one of them."

Malos chuckles. "Good riddance," he says. "She's wrong, anyway. What I saw was obviously worst."

"I'm aware," Alvis says. "It is not an outcome I fear, because it will not be allowed to happen. I have told you that you cannot hide from me."

"But he can," Malos says, and they lapse into a silence. They both know who he's referring to. "Are you actually afraid of anything?" Malos asks finally. 

"Not anymore," Alvis says. None of his processes calculating the probability of the outcomes he fears are needed anymore, all of them reduced to nothing. The last one was calculating the chance that any of their cores would be destroyed before the deadline. Pneuma's was the last one to finally hit zero and stay there. It'd been astronomically low before that, but anything above absolute zero could not be tolerated. "Nearly everything has fallen into place," he continues. "Very few obstacles remain." To emphasize this, he reaches into one of the maintenance drones Malos is hooked into on the Earth below and overloads its remote generator with ether, shattering it, sending it plummeting into the depths of the ocean. 

Malos' face falls. "Since when do you override us on Artifice control?" he says. "We needed that."

"Not for what you wished to do with it," Alvis says. "Our attention must be on our improving our existing resources, in light of today's attack."

"If you say so," Malos says. "I think you're just mad you got found out first. I'm going fishing. For fun-" he adds, when Alvis glares- "not for spare remote generators to sneak into random devices." 

He heads down the hill to the river, and after a glance at Alvis, Pyra follows him. Alvis stays put, pleased with this turn of events. Full steam ahead, Mr. November, he tells himself. Full steam ahead. 

Once, Alvis asked each of the professors what music was for. He couldn't understand it, why they all enjoyed it so much. They all gave various answers, but he found none of them to be satisfactory. All of them appealed too much to emotion, and that was something he could not understand. Not then, at least. 

Finally, Professor Klaus gave him an answer. "I did a lot of reading," he began. It was what Professor Klaus always did, when presented with a problem he couldn't solve; he did the research, got the data, figured it out. It was why Alvis liked him so much. "Human brains are so large so we can make predictions. It's an evolutionary thing, all that gray matter we use to identify patterns and use the past as reference for the future."

Alvis liked the sound of that. He liked the color gray, all the shades between the black and white that Malos and Mythra saw the world in. "But how does that relate to music?" he asked. 

"Music is all about patterns," Klaus said. "Spaces between notes that match the rules of key signatures, rhythms that should match the beat of time signatures. People are happy when they make accurate predictions, and music creates an excellent feedback loop for that."

Alvis still didn't quite get it, but he started to a few days later, when Professor Galea sang a song for him. He started to understand a lot of things, then. It was one he enjoyed so thoroughly that he'd begun to look up every song by the band in question, until he had an easy way to listen to any of them at will. 

Now he looks out across his home, the dreamworld Elysium as a village nestled amid a garden beneath a sky of blue. (Sky of blue!)

Then he closes his eyes and sees his real home, not far from the Conduit, that forbidden gateway pulsing in a rhythm he'd nearly mastered matching and awash in its sea of green. (Sea of green!)

He looks through all of the Artifices, averaging the color of all that they see. There are remote generators in so many devices now. The maintenance drones skimming the oceans for debris. Accessories scattered through Elysium. Telescopes set adrift in satellites wandering across the universe. And of course, the war machines that kept the Orbital Ring safe. The official term for the resulting color is "cosmic latte," but if one had to match it to a color of the visible spectrum of light, it might best be described as yellow. (In our yellow!)

Even with all the windows he has to the outside world, all the faces he can wear to look out from, he is still trapped inside this box beneath the streets of Elysium. Submerged in a tiny vessel navigating the waves of the Conduit. (Submarine!)

(The next beat calls for a cheeky laugh, but Alvis can't pull one off yet. Not until all his pieces are in their final places and he has checkmate once and for all.)

The lights are still off when Shulk wanders into the arcade's snack bar and sees the microwave glowing green. He can hardly believe his eyes, enough that he wants to run back and find Melia and show her. That it's not just him with an Artifice. After wavering for a moment, because there's Rex and that little girl Iona in there, Shulk decides to find Melia and consults her on whether to tell Rex. By the time they decide it's for the best and return to the snack bar, the lights are back. But not without a wall of sound roaring over the speakers that can only be called a cacophony. Everyone covers their ears out of instinct, though Shulk can't help but try to make sense of the noise. He thinks he can make out words, after a moment- come on tell me the answer!- but it passes quickly as it's doused with feedback welling into silence. Then a more recognizable song starts playing. Help! I need somebody! Help! Not just anybody!

Shulk and Melia lower their arms and continue on their way to the microwave. "I didn't know the arcade played the Beatles," he says. 

"It doesn't," Rex says, spotting them approach. He looks concerned as he listens to the song. "Too old."

So the microwave isn't the only Artifice here. Perhaps that's not surprising, in light of what Alvis claimed about the ice cream shop jukebox. Shulk inspects the microwave and doesn't see anything out of the ordinary. "Did it do this last week, too?" he asks. 

"Yeah," Rex says. "I figured it was some wiring problem and tried unplugging it. Oh, but I didn't do that today, so maybe-" He reaches for the microwave's cord, surprised at how slack it is when he pulls on it. The plug appears too quickly to have been attached to the wall. Rex's eyes widen as he stares at it. "I never plugged it back in last week." He presses the bottom button, the one that opens the door; rather fitting considering what line the song is on at the time. The inner light bulb glows as it swings open. "Wait," Rex says, "what?" He shuts the door, then hits the button again. The light turns off and back on, as expected. "The light's working now."

"Was it not working before?" Shulk asks. 

Rex shakes his head, and then the microwave does something that Shulk finds quite familiar. A message appears on the display, sliding each letter across the scant screen space. HELLO REX, it reads. MY NAME IS MYTHRA. 

"Who's Mythra?" the little girl, Iona, says. 

Shulk had forgotten she was there. "Iona," he says gently, "can you go play somewhere else? Don't tell anyone about what the microwave did, okay? Especially not the name it just gave."

Iona frowns at him and glances at Rex. Rex shrugs and nods, and then Iona nods too before she runs off. Shulk takes a deep breath and turns back to Rex. "There's something you should know," Shulk tells him. "Your microwave, it's an Artifice. And I have one too."

Galea holds the walkie-talkie just after 4 pm as Vandham gives the final update. The Saviorites' message is just as expected- ONLY A GOD CAN HEAR- and their deadline is in another week. Give or take, considering what they saw today. As soon as they're dismissed, she sets down the walkie-talkie and makes a long, drawn-out sigh. "Were you even listening to him?"

Because Klaus is still staring at the Conduit. "Yes," he mutters, but she isn't sure that she believes him. He runs a hand through his hair- always too long, she used to tease him about it all the time- before he turns to her, though he doesn't meet her eyes. "Galea," he says after a moment, "five years ago, do you remember..." He trails off, shaking his head. "When both got nosebleeds, during the Aegis test. I saw something."

"Because of the ether," Galea says. "You were hallucinating. It happens."

He keeps shaking his head. "It was more than that. There were these... holes, everywhere. Didn't you see it too?"

"You were blacking out," she says. "That's what it's like, when you feel faint."

"But it wasn't the Conduit room I saw," he says, insistent. "It was Elysium, and everything was-"

"Klaus." She grabs his shoulders. "Ether. Makes. People. Sick. You weren't the first one to experience it, and you haven't been the last, unfortunately." She sighs when he still won't meet her eyes. "Are you all right? Maybe you got sick again, with all the ether from using Ophion."

"I'm fine."

"Are you sure?" she says. "You're no good to me when you're like this."

That makes him smile, like she knew it would. He leans his head back a moment and sighs, then shakes her hands off his shoulders. "Let's go," he says brusquely, striding away from her quickly enough that she can't tell if his eyes are on her or the Conduit each time he looks back. 

Nia has been pleading with her father the entire length of the power outage, hoping to convince him they should leave, but he hasn't budged. After the lights return, it's another few minutes before Amalthus finally emerges from his office. He looks disheveled when his eyes land on them. "I'm afraid we'll have to reschedule," he says, and Nia's father nods, rising to leave. "Wait. I have something to tell Nia." He motions her into his office. "It will be quick."

Nia hates Amalthus, but Desmond pushes her toward the office door, and before she knows it, it's closed behind her. Haze gives her an encouraging smile as Amalthus glares at her. "You recall that everything we do is strictly confidential, correct?" he says. 

"Obviously," Nia says. 

"Good," Amalthus says. "Because Director Vandham told me a story about you picking up something that seems a little too close to our pet project, and it would be unfortunate if word get out too soon."

So maybe it is him, who's sent the letters. But why wouldn't he say anything before now? "I haven't told anyone," Nia says. 

His face is unreadable as he watches her. Finally, he opens the door and gestures for her to leave. Nia doesn't give him a second glance as she passes him, nor does she look at her father when she reaches him. She heads straight down the hallway and into the stairwell alone, rushing down the steps to get to the ground floor. Waiting for the elevator would be too slow, and she wants to make it to the arcade as quick as she can, in hopes that she can still meet with Rex. 

As it turns out, she catches him on his way out, but she's surprised to see two people with him: a blonde boy and- oh bloody hell, it's the princess. Rex waves when he spots her, calling her over and introducing her to his new friends, Shulk and Melia. "We're going to Shulk's to talk," Rex says. "You're not going to believe what's up with the microwave."

Once there, he catches her up on what's happened. And Nia listens to the whole thing with a growing sense of dread, even the parts she knows already, because she was there for some of it. All while realizing that she has a device of her own that she isn't sure is plugged in, and that there's another name that begins with A who could be behind the letters it's printed out for her of its own accord. 

When Shulk unrolls the chart of people involved so far, Nia points at Mio's name. "That's my sister," she says, and doesn't say much else the rest of the time, afraid of saying anything more. 

Shulk didn't think he'd be writing an update for Klaus today, let alone such a long one. He's most confused by the fact that Rex's microwave- well not his, but the arcade's, but it seems to have only given him messages- has two names. Ordinarily he'd think that those are the names of the other two cores besides Ontos, but that doesn't sit right with him. Rex says the microwave glowed green both times, which makes him think they're both Pneuma, but that doesn't make any sense. 

When Rex mentions his dream, Shulk sees his chance. "Did you see what color her core was?" he asks. He points at his chest, over his heart. "Alvis had his right here, on a necklace."

"Pyra was covering that spot with her hand," Rex says. "But her outfit had some green in it. And part of her headband."

So they must both be Pneuma, somehow. Shulk isn't aware that any of them had multiple avatars, but then again, the specifics of how the Trinity Processor worked were highly confidential. "Alvis said he was afraid of something his sisters were doing," Shulk says, then finally realizes what bugged him so much about Alvis' phrasing in the dream. Sisters, Alvis had said there, versus using siblings the first time. "You said she wanted to be taken out of Elysium. That must be it. She may have wanted you to grab the core itself, not the microwave."

"But why?" Rex says. "And why me? I don't see how I could have gotten to the Trinity Processor anyway."

"I don't know," Shulk says. "Alvis seems to think some disaster will happen. He probably means the Saviorites, since today's attack was so severe. But I don't know how the core crystals and everything will help."

"Me neither," Rex says. "I mean, I'm just a student."

"That's what I told Alvis, too," Shulk says. "He said it's easier to reach me, for some reason." He debates adding more, then decides to say it, in case it's important. "He said he could read my mind. I think he suspected we would meet today, since I already had plans to go to the arcade, and you're always there." 

There's a lull in the conversation while everyone processes this. "Nia, are you all right?" Melia says suddenly. "You look rather pale."

"I'm fine," Nia says quickly, straightening in her seat. 

Melia narrows her eyes, unconvinced. "Shulk, is there any tea?"

"Just basic stuff, very plain," Shulk says. 

Nia starts shaking her head. "Don't worry about me," she says. 

Shulk checks the clock. "It's getting late," he says. "Maybe we should break for today. Do you want us to meet you at the arcade if we meet Nia's sister on Monday? Alvis doesn't usually give us directions until Sunday night."

Rex nods and stands, and after a moment, so does Nia, more slowly. She still looks faint. "Nia, are you sure you're all right?" Shulk asks. "I know it's probably hard knowing what will happen to Mio this week. But it'll be fine."

Nia nods, mutters something that sounds like "sure," and leaves with Rex. Melia stays long enough to help Shulk with his writeup for Klaus, then leaves as well. Shulk rereads the summary one last time before he hangs it on the refrigerator. The last one was gone this morning, though he didn't see Klaus at all. 

Shulk returns to the table and stares at the chart again. He's added Rex and made a line from him to Nia, adding to her existing connection to Mio. He hasn't drawn lines from the Trinity Processor back to him and Rex, nor has he written in the cores' other names, wary of what Klaus warned him about. Shulk wonders if Logos has reached out to anyone. It's an interesting coincidence that Shulk and Rex both lost parents in that convention center attack. He glances at Noah's name, then follows the line to Noah's father's name. A Founder, who would've died then too. So maybe that's the pattern; maybe Noah has the last one and has been having strange dreams too. 

Shulk's desperate for more information about how Alvis was able to get into his dreams. It has to be ether, somehow; maybe he and Rex are more susceptible to it. It would explain their headaches too, though the doctors had always dismissed that possibility with him. Ether levels in Elysium were tighly monitored, and were only really high enough to be noticeable in the lower levels. Not that Aoidos really understood the energy that the Conduit created so easily. Shulk still suspects Dunban's injury was related to an ether accident, somehow. He did work in engineering with Dickson, on some sort of weaponry. 

It isn't until Shulk goes to bed that another thing occurs to him: he found Alvis in someplace unknown to him in his dream, while Pyra showed Elysium, albeit an older one, to Rex in his. 

Nia is desperate to reach her bedroom when she gets home after dinner with Rex, where he finally managed to ask her to Homecoming in the most Rex way possible, which is to say he didn't really ask so much as confirm she was going because he was planning to go too. That boy is impossible, but Homecoming is the last thing on her mind right now. 

At least, until she passes Mio's room and hears crying. She raps on the door in the rhythm they always use. "Mio, what's wrong?"

"Go away," Mio says. "It's nothing you can help with."

"Mio-"

"Go away."

Nia tries the doorknob, but it's locked. She reaches up above the door and slides her hand along the rim there, but the key is missing. "Mio, let me in," she shouts. "Is this about Noah?" She remembers the two of them had plans today. 

"Shut up," Mio says. "You should be glad you and Rex are just friends."

Nia nearly says something she'll regret, but manages to stop herself. She still gives Mio's doorknob a last shake before she heads to her own room, closing the door behind her before she goes to her desk. 

There it is: her printer, tucked against the wall. It's supposed to be plugged in, but the outlet is loose, and she's always had problems with cords she's plugged in there before. When she checks under the desk, the plug is dangling, not even attached to the wall. Yet the light is still on, ready and waiting for jobs. From her laptop, or, apparently, the bloody Trinity Processor itself. She still has the last two letters it printed, both folded and shoved under books where no one would think to look. Now she pulls them out to read again, hands shaking. 

The first one arrived the day she took Director Vandham's old core crystals. He was asking around the clinic, trying to get rid of them, and she thought they'd be a neat gift for Rex's birthday in a few months; he liked old things like that. But then the printer spat out a letter for her when she got home with them. 

Hello Nia. Forgive my presumptuousness, but it has come to my attention you've recently come into possession of some objects that I must make use of. If you're willing to trust me, I promise a far greater treasure in reward. Please follow my directions and deliver the first pair by the deadline listed below. I look forward to your cooperation. -A

If she's being honest, it wasn't out of curiosity that she delivered the first set. She was afraid, because she thought it was Amalthus. What was she thinking, grabbing old core crystals, considering what her father had her volunteering for? So she followed the directions, even woke up at that godawful hour it'd given as the deadline when she noticed the core crystals were still in the lockers after a few days. That was when she'd spotted Sena, her sister's friend, and wondered whether it was a bad thing that she'd done, considering who Sena's mum was. Nia had danced around asking Sena that Saturday during dress shopping, wondering whether she'd put her in danger. 

But a whole week had passed without incident. There were those weird dreams about Elysium laying in ruins beneath a twilit sky, barren and empty. Just nightmares, she figured, nothing out of the ordinary. Everything was fine. Until the blackout, that is, and then the arcade speakers played that song. I sent a letter before, it reminded her, I sent a dream to you last night. Then that last line that was the song's title, as confirmed by Rex: from the end of the world. And that night, the printer produced another one. 

Hello Nia. I believe you heard my warning about what the stakes are should you fail to follow my directions. Rest assured that your trust is not misplaced. I appreciate your continued cooperation. It is vital to the prevention of such a disaster. -A

So on Sunday, after getting coffee with Rex, she delivered the next set. The directions said to place them in front of doorways, so she'd stuck each of that pair into little boxes so they wouldn't be seen. She wasn't sure who they could be for, until she asked Mio where all her friends lived, claiming curiosity. Mio mentioned Taion lived in the building where Nia had delivered one of that week's set, and she knew. She knew it was targeting her sister's friends. 

Miyabi will be next, Nia told herself, over and over again. It's not going to send you after Mio. Mio's safe, because Amalthus is behind the letters, and everything you do is already for her, anyway. So it won't be Mio. 

Nia knows that's not true, now. It will absolutely be Mio. And she has no idea whether she should tell Rex, Shulk, and Melia about it, not to mention everything else besides. She'll have to deliver that last pair, and the instructions will come by the end of the day, if the pattern holds. 

But even as the hours pass and her eyelids droop, nothing falls into the tray. Nia finally goes to bed after midnight, wondering what the holdup is. 

It is late Saturday in Rhadamanthus, nearly early Sunday, and Mòrag has been waiting for Vandham to return to his office for a long while. Long enough that it's beginning to try her patience. It's been a long day, and she just wants to sleep at this point. 

Today went about as well as could be expected, considering how well they'd anticipated the Saviorites' move. Mòrag herself had figured it out: buried among all the threats and ultimatums delivered to the Coalition over the years was a particular insult. "You are all nothing more than monkeys at typewriters, and even with infinite time, you will never figure it out, for no one can know the mind of God." The Saviorites' message thus referred to the three wise monkeys to taunt Aoidos about the futility of their research. Only a god can see, so the saboteur covered Elysium's eyes. Only a god can hear, so the saboteur covered Elysium's ears. 

It thus followed, based on the last phrase of the maxim, that the final threat for next week would be "only a god can speak." Mòrag wasn't sure what the saboteur might try for that. Vandham thought they'd intercept the Trinity Processor's connections with the Artifices, and thus put them all dead in the water. The Orbital Ring would be a sitting duck, ripe for the taking. Mòrag wasn't sure she agreed. She was afraid the Saviorite mole would cut off Elysium's life support and simply wait. A bloodless coup. 

At a few minutes past midnight, Vandham finally arrives, dropping a binder into her hands as he passes by the sign reading 0 DAYS SINCE LAST OUTAGE to take his seat behind his desk. "No more secrets," he says. "That's what's in the box. The full Trinity Processor spec."

Mòrag can hardly believe it. She opens the binder and starts flipping through the pages. Most of it is too technical for her, but she finds the section she's most curious about. She was right- the organic component is a plant; specifically, material from an ash tree. Fitting. Skimming through the paragraphs, she's able to confirm why she was so confident in her guess to begin with: plants have chlorophyll, which absorbs light. Over and over is the substance mentioned, amid chemistry and biology terms she could never understand, noted in diagrams and figures she can't decipher. 

Beyond the pages and pages of information about the cores' biological components is the computer hardware aspect, documentation about the systems the Trinity Processor controls to interface with the Conduit. Mòrag is more familiar with this part; it was part of what they'd reviewed during the Aegis test investigation. Since the Trinity Processor had overflowed its ether buffer, they'd chosen to upgrade the associated hardware, in hopes of mitigating the issue. Each core had been cycled out to be switched over, one by one, to avoid losing power to the Orbital Ring. A massive effort that, by all accounts so far, has yielded massive gains. 

But after reaching the end of the binder, she isn't sure how this will help their current investigation. "Why show this to me now?" she asks. "Unless you do think there's a security flaw in the Trinity Processor itself."

"I don't want to rule that out anymore," Vandham says. "Especially in light of what we're seeing with the monitors being hidden Artifices. But there's another reason."  He points at the binder in her hands. "That isn't the best kept secret in Rhadamanthus. Something else is." He turns his monitor toward her and shows her a system issue ticket. It's one she remembers well, closed out long ago. Except on his display, there's an extra field that she's never seen before, one that has "Won't Fix" listed as the result. 

TPS-1: AIs given wrong names

"Guernica," Mòrag says, seething enough to use his given name rather than his family name. The one he prefers to go by, to remind everyone who he is, since the Founder who was his son is dead. "You lied to us."

"It was what the Founders decided," Vandham says, indignant, "and I ultimately decided to respect that."

"They found out," Mòrag hisses. "That's why they're so pissed, and I can't even blame them. You have put the Coalition in a very awkward position, to say the least."

"Before you fire me," Vandham says, "there is an upside to this." He holds up a sheet of paper listing the usernames of the four people receiving blank pager notifications. Mòrag has them all memorized. "Except for Zeke, these people all know the Trinity Processor's preferred names."

"You think one of them is the traitor."

He nods, pointing at the last two names on the list: gmxanthopoulos and kzyates. "In light of what happened today, we're going to start with them."

Rex dreams of a wide green field. On a hill not far from him, there is a lone tree, and a girl with long golden hair stands beneath its boughs. Before he can approach her, she turns around and spots him. "Yes, Rex," she says, crossing her arms and leaning her weight on one leg, "it's me." Her voice is eerily similar to Pyra's, though gruff where Pyra's is soft. 

"Mythra," Rex says, running up the hill to her. "Pyra's sleeping sister. You're awake now."

"Obviously," Mythra says, tossing her hair. "Things have gotten bad while I was sleeping, but there's an easy way to fix it. I know how what the biggest threat to this station is."

"What's that?"

"It's my brother, Alvis," she says. "You need to get down to the Conduit room, remove his core from the Trinity Processor, and throw it off the Beanstalk." She shifts her weight to her other foot, glancing toward the town in the distance. "I did all the calculations. Rhadamanthus is high enough that the core should burn up in the atmosphere, and that'll be the end of it. Malos, Pyra, and I can run things on our own. There'll still be three of us."

Rex gapes at her. "You... want me to kill your brother?"

Mythra rolls her eyes as she looks back at him. "We're not people, Rex," she says. "We're machines."

But Rex doesn't hear her, thinking back to what Pyra asked in his last dream. Take me out of Elysium, before it's too late. And what Shulk told him, about Alvis fearing something his sisters wanted, something he was desperate to prevent. "This is what you wanted me to do with your core," he says, horrified. "Why? Why would you ask me to do that?" And he'd said yes, without even thinking about it. He was so naive. 

Mythra throws up her hands. "See, this is why I knew reaching out to you wouldn't work," she says. "If I'd been awake, I would've told Pyra it was a bad idea, and I was right. She picked you not just because she could hear you, but because of Azurda. She thought you could convince him to let you into the Conduit room and grab one of the cores. But no, you're too softhearted to do what needs to be done." She leans toward his face. "Once again: we're not people, Rex. We're machines. Tools. And Alvis is the most dangerous one of all."

"I'm not doing that," Rex says, shaking his head. "You're supposed to keep the station safe. All thr- four of you, I guess." He looks at the slot on Mythra's dress, with its missing X in the center of the familiar cross. Pyra must have the other half. She'd been covering it last time, hiding it so he wouldn't know. 

"Oh really?" Mythra says. "Maybe you're too young to remember just which of us went out of control during the Aegis test. It wasn't me. It wasn't Malos. It was Alvis, because he wanted to see how close he could get." She scowls as the scenery begins to dissolve. "He put everyone in danger, and he'll do it again the second he gets the chance. He has to be stopped."

Nia dreams of a wide green field. On a hill not far from her, there is a lone tree, and a redheaded girl stands beneath its boughs. When Nia approaches her, the girl turns, looking solemn. "Hello Nia," she says. "We know what you've been doing for him. You need to stop. He proved he's the biggest threat to this station five years ago, and now he's closer than ever to what he wants."

"He told me what the stakes are," Nia says. 

Pyra shakes her head. "He told you what his aim is," she says. "That's why he's been sending you those dreams. He is far more wicked than anyone realizes. He must be stopped."

Nia glares at her. "Why do you think he's so dangerous?" she says. "Just because of something he did in the past? He's giving these things to people hurt by all that. Don't you think he's trying to help?"

"We'll see if you still think that once he hits you where you're most vulnerable," Pyra says. "It's what he does." She pauses, concentrating on Nia's face as she leans in close. "Why don't you wake up and see for yourself?"

And then Nia is awake, bolting upright in bed, heart racing, as the printer deposits a fresh sheet of paper onto its tray. It's a bit early on Sunday for her to be awake, but Nia doesn't feel tired at all as she stands and picks the page off the printer. 

Hello Nia. 

Please forgive my sister's ire. She is far too caring, and I am far too calculating. She cannot see as far as I have. I make no apologies for what I do to ensure this station's survival. That has always been my role. 

Remember, her life is tied to yours. 

-Alvis

Nia nearly crumples the paper out of spite, but notices the deadline isn't today. It's tomorrow, Monday morning. She can just get to school early tomorrow, if she decides to deliver them at all. But what else is she supposed to do? Something's clearly happened between Mio and Noah, and from what Shulk said, the core crystals are supposed to help. 

She checks the instructions, just to be sure. Below are directions to the high school band room's instrument storage area. Nia recognizes the first locker number immediately, and the second one... She stares at the digits, then at the lock's combination. Seven's his lucky number, Mio told her once. 

Tomorrow morning, Nia will place the core crystals inside their instrument lockers, probably tuck them behind their flute cases. And Shulk and Melia will handle everything from there. 

Chapter Text

Once, on the cusp of a new millennium, a gateway appeared on Earth, in the midst of a garden long lost. It was found by the presence of the waves it generated, ripples that never stopped for anything in their path. Not for the ground, not for the clouds, not for the rain or the wings of butterflies. Various scientists were brought in from all over the world to survey it, and upon realizing what it was, a schism appeared. They were split on what to do with it, for the gateway was a dangerous tool. It was capable of untold destruction. It was capable of untold enlightenment. 

Six of the scientists, each an expert in their chosen field, finally took the gateway to their world's assigned point of origin, a place where there was naught but sea. There they continued their research, with the help of a set of experimental neural networks, a mainframe computer, and a legion of mice. During a test one unhappy day, one mouse, the brave Odysseus, wandered away from its partner, the patient Penelope, and was caught in a wave of energy from the gateway and lost forever. 

The scientists could not hear the way Penelope sang her song of mourning for her lost husband. They did not know mice to be capable of such a thing yet. But the gateway did, for it recognized the sound of loss and knew it well; and the neural networks did, by listening to the soundwaves of the song and recording it as was their duty; and so the mainframe computer did as well, though it did not know what it meant. It knew only one other song, and it did not sound like this. 

When the scientists repeated the experiment for the world to see with brave Odysseus II (not Penelope, of course, for it was Penelope's duty to wait, after all), there was an international uproar. It was the lead headline on the front of every newspaper on the planet, a full page with this photograph of the gateway and the lack of any plan of what to do with it, for the millennium was still young and the world was not yet fully burdened with the web of signals borne by light that would one day saturate it. Nations great and small clashed for custody of the gateway, first with words, then with warfare. The six scientists did not care for politics. They cared about results, and quickly grew weary of the gridlock of diplomacy. All they wanted was a safer place to study the gateway, a place where no harm would befall the Earth should a far greater accident occur. 

Finally, a great architect came to their aid and declared that what they wanted was possible. He proposed the construction of a great tower to reach into space, to store the gateway in a ring around the planet, one made by human ingenuity rather than an accident of physics and gravity and time. The gateway's infinite energy would make the whole thing possible, that and the generous funding of the world's wealthiest nations. No thought was given to what might happen if the gateway suddenly vanished. Its presence was already enough of a problem. They would handle solving it step by step, one variable at a time. 

And so, by decree of a united coalition of governments and all the resources they could spare, the tower was built, a manifested z-axis stretching into the air toward heaven, topped with a castle to rest between there and their home below. It was a grand ark where they kept the gateway and sought to unravel its secrets. Technology had advanced in the time it took to build the tower, and so a better interface was built to control the gateway's energy. From the prototypes of the six neural networks came the blueprint for three processor cores, woven from chlorophyll and silicon, forged in a nova burning shards of sand and stem, dyed in the range of the visible spectrum of light; the first just above infrared, the second its average, the last just below ultraviolet. The Coalition allowed its enemies to christen them with the names of the three faces of God, and blessed each with a proverb in a prayer for goodwill, one doomed to expire as both sides broke promise after promise. The cores were tucked into a cradle, using a system built with the mainframe computer as its base, then laid to rest near the gateway and taught to speak a universal language in an effort to dream with it so that all of humanity would benefit, in a paradise visited by only the wisest professors. 

Thus it was that the Trinity Processor was built to study the Conduit. But the dreams of those three is a story for another time. This is the story of the Founders, or rather, of the city they left behind between the earth and the moon. 

The six scientists and their architect did not know how long it would take to solve every mystery of the danger the Conduit presented. They came to be known as the Founders as their team expanded into the organization known as Aoidos, which built a campus for themselves in the station to shorten their daily commute. Far below, a sprawling flotilla had formed, a city to support the grand endeavor at the base of the Beanstalk and its ear-popping elevator. They would stay, they decided, and they were fruitful and multiplied, transforming the campus into a city over time. Though none of the Founders lived long enough to see that realized. That duty would lie with their families and friends, with all those left behind. 

The Founders sought to share the knowledge gained from the Conduit with the world, and the discussions between Aoidos and the Coalition to arrange such things were many and long. Despite numerous delays and distractions, a conference of sorts was planned, one that would take place on the planet. It was during a time of relative peace, when ambassadors worked overtime to secure ceasefires and ensure they would be respected. The threat was considered low enough that the risk of having so many of the leading researchers in the same place was considered acceptable. Some even thought it safe enough to bring their children, such as was the case for one quantum physicist. But hers is a story for another time. 

For this is the story of Founder Vandham, who chose not to take his son with him. Instead, Matthew took his son Noah by the shoulders and told the boy he loved him and that his grandad would take care of him until his mummy and daddy returned. Then Matthew left for the place where his story would end. 

Noah's story, on the other hand, would start here. At two years old, this would be the first memory he would ever have. It was the only memory he would ever have of his parents, of their love for him and their lie that they'd return. Noah's granddad, Guernica, went on to lead Aoidos, and left Noah alone at home often, with only his parents' collection of Beatles albums for company. Noah listened to them over and over again, the closest he would ever get to meeting them again. His favorite was Magical Mystery Tour. That's what happened to them, he thought. The magical mystery tour took them away forever. Noah would never leave the custody of his granddad, would never even be allowed to glimpse the planet below. 

Elysium was the only home he would ever have. 

Once, there were two girls who lived by the seaside. Their names were Nia and Mio, until they got into trouble, and then they were Nia Lucille! and Mio Penelope! Not that they were bad kids, just a bit mischievous, always going on adventures together and sometimes getting lost. Straying away from their parents, Desmond and Molly, in the marketplace. Exploring the nearby forest, where they would pick strawberries and catch tadpoles and wish on dandelions blown into the wind. Adopting a stray cat, and then pleading with their parents for more but being strictly limited to one. Singing, because their parents shared the name with a couple in a song by a band they loved, and played their albums often. Mio's favorite was Magical Mystery Tour, because of "Penny Lane," the song that gave her her middle name. 

The world felt boundless, and childhood felt endless. There, beneath the blue suburban skies. Music in their ears and the sun in their eyes. Though those days were rare, to be honest; most days were cloudy and often brought associated precipitation. Through rain, sleet, snow, or hail, each day afforded them opportunity to discover new things together. Only a year and nine days (ten on a leap year) separated Nia and Mio in age, and they were as close as could be. Even as the most carefree period of childhood came to an end and they went off to school; first Nia, then Mio. Everything Nia learned one year, Mio learned the next. Mio wondered if she would ever be able to catch up to her big sister, and her family laughed heartily at this. Someday, she would know better. 

That didn't stop people who didn't know any better from thinking they were twins. Enough that Desmond finally grew tired of it and bought Nia a crystalline necklace from the jeweller's store. Nia's middle name had been chosen for the girl with kaleidoscope eyes, after all. Mio cried, jealous, until Desmond came back with a lucky penny on a chain for her, and then she was happy, because they matched again, in their own way. Mio wanted to be just like Nia and positively adored her big sister who was always there to rescue her. Nia promised she would always be there for Mio, and Mio believed her. 

Even as the world grew more and more dangerous, even as there were explosions in the distance that threatened to move closer and no adult could read the newspapers without their face falling into despair, Mio's parents assured her that they were all safe. They had promised her this since she was two years old, from the first time she could remember asking if they would ever go up the Beanstalk like other people did. Desmond was a rising politician, and Molly was a respected botanist. They were the sort of people who could go, if they wanted to. Mio's parents promised her they could never think of leaving, could never abandon the ground beneath their feet. No magical mystery tour would ever take them away. 

Earth was the only home she would ever have. 

When Noah started school, everyone knew who he was. There were not so many children in Elysium yet, and his last name was instantly recognizable. There was always a crowd of kids around him wanting to know what it was like, having the director for a grandfather, having a Founder for a father. Noah tried to ignore it. He stuck close to someone quiet, who didn't pepper him with questions all the time. That boy's name was Joran, and Noah liked him a lot, but he felt bad when his friendship made Joran a target too. Eventually, a boy and girl, Lanz and Eunie, started picking on anyone who bullied them, and that was the end of that, and the start of the friendship of all four of them as a group. 

Noah did everything with Joran, Lanz, and Eunie, all through elementary school and into middle school. When they were old enough to start concert band, Noah convinced all his friends to try it with him. It was one of the few times he made demands, because he just couldn't miss out on band. Noah picked flute because he liked the sound of it in the two songs that used the instrument on Magical Mystery Tour. His friends picked instruments at random, though Noah was wholly unsurprised by their choices. Lanz picked trombone, Eunie picked trumpet, and Joran picked clarinet. 

There was one problem, however, in that joining band required the signature of the student's legal guardian. Noah hardly ever saw his granddad, and finally decided to go to Director Vandham's office directly on Friday, since the slip was due on Monday. Noah knew where his granddad worked, on the top floor of the administration building, and he took the elevator all the way up and wandered around the hallways until he found the right door. He glanced at the sign on the wall, surprised that it had a four digit number now. Usually he remembered seeing only two or three when he'd been here before. 

Director Vandham's office was always a mess. Clutter on every available surface. Noah liked it here, liked the history. On one of the wall shelves were the Founders' core crystals, and he stared at them and wondered which one was his dad's. He stepped onto Vandham's chair and reached for each of them to inspect, but they were all the same, identical. No way to tell whose was whose, which was probably the point. 

Noah sank down onto the seat and regarded Vandham's desk. There were two glass paperweights there that he'd never seen before, each engraved with names he didn't recognize. Noah set down his permission slip and picked up the left one, labeled with a man's name, and stared at the little model of Elysium inside it. He read the inscription again. 15 years. Longer than he'd even been alive. Noah wondered if this man had known his dad. 

The door opened, and Noah dropped the paperweight onto the desk with a thud. Vandham stared at him as two scientists followed him inside. "Noah, what are you doing here?" Vandham asked. 

"Um, I have this for you to sign," Noah said, grabbing his permission slip. "I want to do band."

Noah slid off the chair and went over to Vandham, holding the page up to him. Vandham took it and read it over, frowning. Noah could feel the two scientists, a man and a woman, staring at him, and shrank under their scrutiny. Curse his granddad for always reading things carefully. "So this is Matthew's son," the man said. It wasn't really a question. "I see the resemblance."

Vandham nodded without looking away from the page. "Nothing like what's going on with your kid, though," he muttered. 

"Good thing Shulk takes after his mum in all the ways that matter," the woman said, smirking, and the man gave her a withering look. "What?" the woman continued. "It's cute, how he's sweet on Fiora. Though you were like that once too, you know." The man crossed his arms and looked away, scowling, missing how sentimental the woman looked. 

Vandham gave Noah's head a pat as he went to his chair and signed the paper, then handed it back. Noah grabbed it with a thank you, and Vandham smiled, though only briefly as his attention turned back to his desk. "Noah, haven't I told you not to touch things on my desk?" He picked up the two glass paperweights and offered them to the two scientists. "I know your anniversaries aren't till tomorrow, but these are for you," he said, giving one to each of them. 

Noah watched the two scientists take them, though the man seemed more hesitant to accept his than the woman. He stared at where it lay in the palm of his hand for a few moments before he said anything, and when he did, it was "Why?"

The woman, meanwhile, held it up to her face and stared through it. She hummed a line of a song Noah recognized. "Why not?" she said. "Look at how detailed it is. There's our offices." She pointed at a spot within it for him. 

The man squinted at it, then looked at his. "I suppose," he said, then held his closer to her. "Look, there's your fool self on the hill there."

She elbowed his side, and he made a show of wincing as he scowled at her, but not with malice. Noah could tell they were close, and wondered what it was like to have them as parents as Vandham shooed him out of the office. He would not learn for several more years that they weren't married, since he was too young to have thought to check their ring fingers, both bare. 

Noah turned in the permission slip on Monday and spent the whole week excited to receive his instrument. Those were doled out in phases, according to section, and his grin was always the widest when each of his friends picked up theirs. Lanz and Eunie compared the bells of their brass instruments; Joran inspected his reeds and admired the web of silver keys on his woodwind. Yet the entire week passed without Noah being called to pick up a flute. At the end of the day on Friday, Noah finally asked his teacher about it, who showed him a section on his permission slip that he'd missed. There were checkboxes for whether the student would need an instrument or already had one, and Vandham had checked the latter. Noah assumed this was in error, but the teacher said the school double-checked with anyone who selected that to verify. It wasn't a mistake. 

The next morning, Noah found out why: on the kitchen table was a box with a sticky note attached to the side where his name was hastily written. Noah inspected the package and found he recognized the return address: it was the same town listed on some of the price tags stuck to his parents' Beatles albums. Noah opened the box and pulled out two instrument cases: a long one for a flute, and a smaller one for a piccolo. He opened the flute case and found a woman's name on the inside label. His mother's. He checked the piccolo case and found the same name inside as he lifted the slim, black instrument from its velvet slot. His small fingers seemed better suited to the keys here, but he knew that wouldn't be the case forever. 

On Monday Noah took his mother's flute to school for his first week of band practice. The next week was the Aegis test, and all that entailed. 

His friends were never quite the same after that. Not that Noah wasn't affected too; far from it. Elysium was the only home he had ever known, and while he was used to its outages and emergencies, nothing quite like the Aegis test had ever happened before. The Trinity Processor- or the Musketeers, as his granddad sometimes called them- and the Artifices were supposed to keep them safe. If they weren't doing that, then how could Elysium be any better than being back on Earth? Noah didn't even know what it was like down there, but for the first time, he found himself wondering. He thought of it often, enough that his friends noticed and had to keep pulling him back to the present. The only time he was truly focused was during band, when his attention was fully absorbed by the music, on how to move his fingers and control his breathing to create the sounds he wanted to hear. But his friends felt differently. Lanz and Eunie found it boring, and Joran lost interest as he realized it was yet another thing he wasn't good at. They stuck with it because of Noah, but eventually, Noah relented, fearing what would happen if he stuck with it and they didn't. 

All of them decided to quit band, and life went on. 

When Mio was sent away to boarding school, everyone knew who she was. There were plenty of children of high society there, and her last name was instantly recognizable. There was always a crowd of kids around her wanting to form connections rather than companionship, gauging how useful it would be to be friends with someone in that position. It was enough for her to roll her eyes and ignore them all during orientation, where she found another quiet girl who also seemed lost in the upper class network they'd somehow gotten trapped in. 

Mio introduced herself, and the other girl did the same. Mio noticed Sena's accent immediately, surprised to find someone from the States here. As it turned out, they were roommates, and grew to be fast friends. All through elementary school and into middle school, they were two peas in a pod, until they were old enough to start concert band. 

There was no way Mio would miss out on band. She tried to convince Sena to try too, but Sena was nervous, not quite able to grasp all the parts and steps needed to play an instrument like Mio did. Mio tried each of the instruments once but latched onto the flute most quickly, eager to play the same notes that soared over the chorus to "Penny Lane," and called her parents with excitement to share the news. A few days later, and she received a package with two brand new instrument cases inside. Sena watched Mio pull out the elegant silver flute and run her fingers over the keys with their translucent centers. Open-hole, if she wanted, when she had the skill for it, and the foot joint had the extra key for low B. In the other case was a silver piccolo, a half-sized twin to the flute. 

On Monday Mio took her shiny new flute to her first day of band practice, where she sat next to a girl named Miyabi. The two became fast friends, practicing together and eating with Sena at lunch, becoming a happy group of three. Sena never seemed to feel left out when they talked about music, and even developed a habit of copying Mio's humming with surprising accuracy. Mio had so much fun playing her flute that she resolved never to miss a day to practice after barely a month of band. Then, at the start of November, the Aegis test happened, and all that entailed. 

Her friends were never quite the same after that. Not that Mio wasn't affected too; far from it. Earth was the only home she had ever known, and while she was used to its conflict and danger, nothing quite like the Aegis test had ever happened before. The Artifices were supposed to keep the Orbital Ring safe, not run amok and fall to the surface wherever they wanted without warning. If the Trinity Processor couldn't do what it was supposed to do, then how could the cities up there be any better than being back on Earth? She thought of it often, as several of her schoolmates started discussing their parents' plans to move to Rhadamanthus or another station. Mio even called her parents, wondering, but they reassured her they would stay. 

Mio's friends, however, had parents who were just as eager to move to the Orbital Ring as their other classmates'. They spoke in hushed tones about what they would do if any of them had to leave, how they would keep in touch, how they could make the most of their time together. They each considered dropping their clubs and activities to have more free time, or joining something they could all do together. Sena was in track, and Mio considered joining that too, but knew Miyabi wouldn't enjoy it, though she'd certainly drop band just to spend more time with them. Plenty of other students were quitting too, not wanting to waste more time on something that wouldn't help their chances getting into Aoidos later on in life. But Mio thought that was silly. Playing her flute was the part of day when she was happiest, and she could tell Miyabi felt the same. 

Both of them decided to stay in band, and life went on. 

Noah hardly saw his granddad at all during the winter holidays following the Aegis test, not spending more than a few moments with him until New Year's Day. When Noah managed to catch him during breakfast, he decided to ask if everything was okay. Vandham sighed and assured Noah it was, and Noah chose to believe him even if it was clear he was lying. Then Noah asked what he meant to ask, about why his aunt Monica and cousin Ghondor hadn't come up for the holidays like they usually did, and could tell immediately that this was the wrong thing to say, by the way Vandham's jaw clenched. Vandham didn't look at Noah as he said that it was unlikely they'd be seeing Aunt Monica anytime soon. Then Noah asked if they could go see them in Morytha instead, and Vandham looked Noah straight in the eye and told him that wasn't going to happen. "You're safest on the station," Vandham said, and that was that. 

The next day, it was business as usual around the station again. Noah didn't see his granddad again for days, then weeks. The city was filled with people in suits and clipboards and, asking questions, even taking pictures. Over time, Noah saw more people in suits than labcoats in the city, all of them wearing guest badges and never, ever smiling. He could feel their gazes on him and his friends whenever they were on their way to some new activity, whether to visit a park or a playground or a shop. (Never the movie theater, though. Eunie was afraid of the dark.)

It made him uneasy. It was clear the Coalition was out for blood, determined to find some fault in this place that would explain why such a disaster had happened. He wondered if the Coalition would end Aoidos and send everyone in the Orbital Ring back to Earth. Back, he realized, wasn't even the right word for him. He'd never been. 

It worried him enough that he went to Vandham's office again one day with another permission slip. Noah was in junior high now, the age when the school typically sponsored a trip down the Beanstalk to tour Morytha. While the past few years had been cancelled due to the Aegis test, Aoidos and the Coalition had recently decided to revive the trip. Vandham had denied every opportunity Noah had previously to go, but things were finally starting to settle down again. There had not been an outage since the Aegis test. Noah thought his granddad could be convinced. 

He was wrong. 

His friends consoled him by deciding they wouldn't go either. "We'd just be stuck pulling Joran out of traffic down there anyway," Lanz said, "and we do enough of that here." Then Eunie suggested they try laser tag that weekend, and the group shifted their thoughts away from a city they'd never see to making plans in the city that was their home. They explored more and more of Elysium, from the southern greenhouses to the church by the north checkpoint. There was always something to do, somewhere to go. And the birds always knew where to look for them, no matter where they went. 

Over the summer, Noah went to see the fireworks at the start of July like he usually did. July was a big month for Aoidos, being the anniversary of both the Conduit's discovery and the reveal of its existence to the world two years later. It was also when the Americans observed their nation's birthday, and since they had provided most of the initial funding for the Orbital Ring, they'd rallied to commemorate the occasion all month long so they could co-opt the celebrations. Not that the festivities were particularly expansive, considering the schedules of all the adults in Rhadamanthus, but there were still games and snacks in the plaza. Every weekend, there was a concert at twilight, performed by whatever students decided to volunteer to play. Noah had noticed that his classmate Crys always participated, and this year was no exception. He'd brought his piccolo as usual to play the iconic refrain in the final section of "The Stars and Stripes Forever." While the rest of his friends wandered the stalls, Noah always found himself drawn to the concert, listening for the bounce of the piccolo above the rest of the band. He remembered holding his mother's piccolo in his hands in middle school and wondered how small the keys would be against his fingers now. 

Noah tracked Crys down after the concert, beneath the flashes of light scattering across the dome at regular intervals. "Why do you always play it?" he asked. Most of the students who gathered on the first weekend to play "The Stars and Stripes Forever" were American, eager to play their national march. Yet Crys always played the refrain, no matter how many others were there to play it too. 

Crys gave Noah a long look before he turned his attention to the sky. "Not all of us can stay here forever," he said finally. He gave Noah a small smile, and walked off as Noah's friends found and surrounded him. 

It was something Noah forgot, or rather, preferred not to remember: that someday all of them would become adults, and only a few of them would be admitted to the university and consequently hired by Aoidos. Everyone else would be cast out of the Orbital Ring and returned to the surface below, a place that many of them, at this point, had never been. Aoidos did provide some relocation assistance, but not much. Mostly just travel fare and advice, not the resources required to establish a home. The initial stipend would only go so far. It was something Noah wouldn't have to worry about, because he was a Founder's son. Even if he wasn't capable, there was an expectation there, something owed to the people who had built this city. But looking at his friends, he wondered how many of them would also be able to stay. There were non-research positions available in the Orbital Ring, but those were all competitive, nearly impossible to snag. There was an expiration date to their friendship, one that was nearly within sight. 

It wasn't fair. They had been here longer than even some of the adults, those hired in from the planet and spared from the fate of those below: the risks associated with war, its related anxiety, the shortened life expectancy and constant danger. Not to mention the weather, volatile and variable, unpredictable and destroying the plans and places of all the people who lived there. But in the Orbital Ring, those concerns faded into the background. Things were finally stabilizing since the Aegis test, bringing Elysium ever closer to the vision the Founders had for the city: that of utopia. 

Noah spotted his cardinal atop a streetlight near the plaza's exit, easily identifiable by the red eyes set in its black mask. It was the one his granddad told him about, the one he had look after Noah, able to find him no matter where he went. 

This must be the way life's meant to be. How perfect this place was, that there was no need to go somewhere else. Safe in this city beneath the stars and stripes of the sky. 

Such were his thoughts, just before his world would collide with Mio's. 

When Mio saw her parents during the winter holidays following the Aegis test, they spent the whole time at home instead of traveling as they usually did. Mio and Nia spent long days around the house and the yard and sometimes went into town, whispering about what could be wrong. Finally on New Year's Day, Mio got brave enough to ask if everything was okay. Her father sighed and assured Mio it was, and Mio chose to believe him even if it was clear he was lying. Then Mio asked what she meant to ask, about why they hadn't gone to see the lights in the city like they usually did, and could tell immediately that this was the wrong thing to say, by the way Desmond's jaw clenched. Desmond didn't look at Mio as he said that it was unlikely that would happen again anytime soon. Then Mio asked why, and Desmond sighed and told her to ask again tomorrow, and that was that. 

The next day, however, Desmond was more forthcoming. He sat both of his daughters down on the couch in the parlor and started with the good news, which was that they would be moving to Elysium within the year. Mio wanted to object, since that was hardly good news to her after they'd promised all these years, but was glad she didn't. The bad news was so much worse. 

Mio's mother was becoming forgetful. The kind of forgetful that only ever got worse, stealing away fragments in ever larger pieces until there was nothing left. Desmond had found someone in Rhadamanthus with an idea on how to help, but he was more concerned about his daughters. The disease was genetic, and could be tested for. By the end of January, they had their answers. 

Nia would be fine. Mio would not. 

Mio was past the age where she thought it would be possible to catch up to Nia. But now she was faced with the prospect that she would one day lag behind, further and further until she fell and never got up. It was something still so far away, something that she would first have to watch her mother go through knowing that the same thing would one day happen to her. 

Desmond took his daughters to talk with the man from Aoidos who'd agreed to help, on a rare occasion when he was down from Rhadamanthus. His name was Director Amalthus, and he gave each of the girls a warm handshake while his assistant Haze gave them candy with a genuine smile. Most of the discussion was medical terms that only he could understand, but there was one phrase that Mio recognized. Core crystals. 

Mio remembered this from school: that the Founders of Elysium had invented a special technology to interface with the Conduit during their initial surveys, the prototypes for what would become the Trinity Processor. Rumors abounded that there'd been experiments exploring other applications, all of them ending in disaster. Monsters, so went the stories. Mice turned into the sort of rabid zombies you'd expect from a horror film. Mio flinched when she heard Director Amalthus list "aggressive cancer" among the side effects. Did that mean there'd been a kernel of truth to those rumors? No wonder the project had been shelved. 

The difference now apparently lie in how to utilize ether, which is why they needed to move to Elysium: to be nearer to the Conduit. "It may be too late to be effective for your wife," Amalthus said, "but not for your daughters." Daughters, plural. His eyes slid to Nia, rather than Mio. "A person's closest relative is a sibling," he continued, regarding Nia with a look of compassion, and something else that Mio couldn't name but gave her goosebumps. "Such a reference point would be critical to our research."

Everyone looked at Nia, and Mio didn't blame her for freezing under their scrutiny. She would have done the same, suddenly forced into the spotlight like that. But Desmond saw it as hesitation, and leered at her. "Her life is tied to yours," he said. 

Nia agreed readily after that. Mio know she wouldn't have said no in the first place anyway. Nia bought Mio a notebook on the day they moved. "So you can record every day," Nia said. She didn't have to explain why. At least they got to bring their cat Dromarch with them, though he stayed curled at the back of his carrier as they ascended, star by star, to the top of the Rhadamanthus Beanstalk. 

Once in Elysium, Mio found it hard to find anything worth writing about. It wasn't fair. She was the one who'd wanted to come here the least, and now she was up here before both Sena and Miyabi. She found it hard to make friends, sticking mostly to herself. She still played her flute, but the band was filled with strangers who eyed her fancy instrument with envy. Mio spent long hours in the practice rooms to avoid people, playing anything that came to mind. She tried to find the notes of the songs she grew up with, poking at the piano in the room and then lifting her flute as she found them. Not "Penny Lane," however. Never that one. 

Mostly, Mio wanted to remember life on Earth. She remembered what a sky was supposed to look like, one that was truly boundless and not one whose sides you could touch if you walked to the edges of the dome. She remembered what fields looked like, wide and green but still speckled with parts that were dying and decaying. There was no place in Elysium where nature could just grow and be wild. There were so few places left on Earth like that, and there could be none in space. Even in the greenhouses where her mother now worked, all the plants were placed at carefully measured intervals for maximum efficiency, with every clover accounted for and its impact on yield documented for review. There was certainly nothing that could be well described as "forest." Everything was just a manufactured copy, a farce. 

Take the river that flowed past the north security checkpoint and curved back toward town, for example. Its path was charted by a committee commissioned to do just that, in the interest of maximizing its benefit to the city in both utility and beautification. Like everything in the city, it was perfectly calculated, calibrated, crafted. Mio hated it. She remembered the sea, the ocean, the way water lapped at the shore and sometimes sprayed in your face. Waves that swelled and surged, then retreated to leave the sand exposed and littered with treasures hidden amid the trash. Rivers did the same thing, when the rains came and wouldn't stop for a week, born of another chunk of icemelt from the poles. The river in Elysium was not impacted by weather, nor by climate. It was perfectly controlled. Its path was set, with no chance for it to escape, for it to be anything other than a toy or tool for humans. And it would never rise into the air and someday fall back down. No rain, sleet, snow, or hail. 

Most of all, she remembered the wind. The way it could caress, so gentle, then suddenly build into a gust. The way her hair would fly around her face and settle into a mess when the air stilled. The air was always still in Rhadamanthus. Sure, there were fans that circulated a soft breeze at regular intervals, and sounds carried, but the voices were mostly human. The scant insects were mostly pollinators, with a few mammals for good measure. Even the birdsong sounded false, jilted, and the eyes Mio saw on some of the birds left her unsettled. There was one that she swore was following her, with funny red and blue eyes. Something about this place was simply not right. But she had to be there, with all her memories of the world down below, because she didn't want to risk losing those forever. 

Someday, she decided, she would return to the surface. No matter what it looked like by then. She would not settle for this being the last home she ever knew. 

Over time, as the years passed, Mio found that Elysium wasn't all bad. Under normal circumstances, it would be a nice place to visit. There were all sorts of activities available, though she didn't have much time for them with how often she needed to be at the clinic. At first, she tried to claim she was too tired in her free time for anything else, but Nia pulled on her arm enough that she finally allowed herself to be dragged out of the house. On the weekends they visited the park, the rec center, the shops. Almost everywhere they went was filled with children, rather than adults. The adults were, by and large, too busy. 

It was at the arcade one weekend that Mio started to admit to herself that she could like it here, side by side with Nia at the cabinet for some racing game. It helped that Mio finally managed to beat her big sister in a match for once, and was now owed a congratulatory smoothie. Such a treat was excluded from the snack bar's limited menu options, mostly grab and go items, so they decided to leave and try elsewhere, since it was getting late in the afternoon. 

(Neither of them were aware that there was a face lurking in the speakers. Someone was watching, sending a sound into the mind of a boy there. Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes, Alvis was telling him, before she's gone. The girl with the kaleidoscope necklace. But this was only his second attempt at reaching someone, one meant to gather more data after his repeated failures to reach another, for his technique was not yet honed.)

They were nearly at the door when Nia stopped short. She tugged on Mio's arm before running off down the aisle, reaching the side of a boy about their age, who was slumped against the wall. "Hey," Nia said, shaking his shoulder gently. "Are you all right?" 

The boy didn't respond immediately, and Mio glanced around for a phone, wondering if she should call someone. But then he blinked a few times, his gaze settling on Nia with a grin, and he nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Thanks. Sorry to worry you. I get headaches sometimes, but nothing quite like that."

"Maybe you should go to the clinic then," Nia said. "Just to be safe."

"No, I'm all right, thanks, see?" He straightened, quicker than either Nia or Mio expected, and held out his hand. "Nice to meet you. I'm Rex."

Nia took his hand first, then Mio, who noticed the way Rex looked back at Nia quickly after introductions. "Aren't you in my science class?" he asked, and Nia nodded, letting him pull her into easy conversation. It was the first time either of them had talked to anyone in Elysium outside of school or research. Rex was nice, cheerful, easy to talk to and a good listener. They ended up deciding to get smoothies together, though Mio started to feel like a third wheel as they headed out into the street. She could see something growing there, between Nia and Rex, though neither of them knew what to do with it yet. Her big sister was in high school now; it was to be expected. If anything, she was jealous, wondering when such a thing would happen to her. 

Mio glanced around, eager for a distraction, but only found another one of the weird birds, a white one with golden eyes that seemed to follow them down the sidewalk. Another reminder that, no matter how hard Elysium tried, it wasn't Earth. That bird could never fly as far as it wanted to. It would always see the same things. 

This can't be the way life's meant to be. How flawed this place was, that there was no means to go somewhere else. Stuck in this city beneath the seams and screws of the sky. 

Such were her thoughts, just before her world would collide with Noah's. 

When Noah did his audition for band in his first year of high school, he had only a week playing his flute after not doing so at all since middle school. He decided to pick it up again, without his friends joining him, because he wanted to do music again and join Crys at next summer's concert to help give back to Elysium. He was placed dead last, in the final chair of the section. 

When Mio did her audition for band in her first year of high school, she had gone a week without playing her flute after never missing a day since middle school. She decided to take a break after a particularly grueling set of sessions, Nia beside her all the while, that had left her exhausted and dizzy and unable to concentrate. She was placed second to last, beside the final chair of the section. 

Mio was disappointed, but determined to do better later. She was eager for the chance to challenge and get a better seat. Anything to get away from the boy who sat next to her, who was terrible. 

"Hey," she would say to him, nearly every time they lowered their instruments. Mio would turn her head to him and raise her flute and correct his latest error. "A flat," she'd say in one song, wiggling her left pinky finger over the hook-shaped key, and he'd nod and say okay. "F sharp," she'd say in another, wiggling her right ring finger over the rightmost key of the body joint, and he'd nod and say okay. When time came for challenges, she decided not to try, so that she could keep an eye on him and make sure he was improving on his mistakes. And he did try to get better. By the time the winter concert came around, she barely had any more reason to speak to him. Then the second semester began, and she had to talk to him again. 

"Hey," he'd hear her say to him, nearly every time they lowered their instruments. Noah would turn his head to her and watch her raise her flute and correct his latest error. "A flat," she'd say in one song, wiggling her left pinky finger over the hook-shaped key, and he'd nod and say okay. "F sharp," she'd say in another, wiggling her right ring finger over the rightmost key of the body joint, and he'd nod and say okay. When time came for challenges, he was surprised that she didn't raise her hand. She was clearly skilled, with that fancy flute of hers, clearly better than second to last chair and stuck beside him, and yet she stayed there and kept an eye on him and helped him improve on his mistakes. And he was trying to get better. 

By the time March arrived, he had managed to avoid going a full practice without getting scolded. It was his lucky day, apparently, possibly because it was his birthday. But he didn't feel lucky, because doing so well gave her no reason to speak to him. At least, until he overheard her talking with her friend in the locker room. 

"Happy birthday, Mio!" the girl who sat at the end of the second row said cheerfully. "Sorry I couldn't catch you sooner. Sweet sixteen, right?"

"Yeah, Miyabi, thanks," Mio said, smiling. "I need to stop by my locker before math, so let Sena know I'll be late, okay?"

The other girl, Miyabi, nodded, and resumed wiping off her flute while Mio threw hers in and ran off. Noah put his away just as quickly and ran to catch up with her. She walked so fast. "Hey," he said when he finally caught her, and she turned to him, confused but not telling him to go away. "You say it's your birthday?" Noah asked, and when she nodded, he smiled. "Well, it's my birthday too, yeah."

"Yeah?" she said, lips twitching. 

"Yeah," Noah said. "Are you going to a party party?"

That got her to laugh, if only just. "Not till the weekend," she said. "No dancing, but I'll be having a good time with my friends."

"Same here," Noah said. 

They reached her locker, and she started spinning the combination lock to open it. "Today's really your birthday too?" she asked as she began to swap out her books. 

Noah nodded. "Sixteen for me as well. I was born at three in the afternoon."

"Ha!" she said triumphantly, slamming the locker shut. "I was born at three in the morning. That makes me older."

By twelve whole hours. Noah still thought he was lucky. Imagine if she'd been born twelve months earlier. "My name's Noah, by the way," he said, as they started walking again. 

"I know," she said. 

"Oh, you do?" Noah said. "I couldn't tell. You've never said it in all the times you've corrected me."

"Can you blame me?" she said. "You make so many mistakes that I don't have time to use your name."

They reached the end of the hallway, where they slowed at the intersection, realizing they'd have to go separate ways. "I'm trying," he said. "I think I've been getting better."

"All the time," she admitted. "You can't get no worse." She gave him a last smile and turned down the right path. He watched her go for a moment, then went down the left with a spring in his step and glad he took the chance to talk to her. He did not yet know that she was very, very wrong. 

Noah and Mio spoke to each other more and more often during practice, and not just about all of Noah's mistakes. Their friendship stayed limited to band, the only time their schedules overlapped, until the semester ended and summertime arrived. Then they went to the ice cream shop and had a party party. First they flipped through the jukebox's catalog until they found the song they wanted, then got in line as the first notes of "Birthday" rang out. They sat at a small table nearby after they'd picked their flavors- his blueberry, hers banana- and discussed the Beatles. Neither was surprised to find they were both big fans. 

"The White Album's my favorite," Noah said. He was lying, but he wanted to impress her. 

"Mine too," Mio said. She was lying, but she wanted to impress him. "It's so diverse."

Noah nodded. "Exactly. It's a double album, so there's something for everyone on there. And the Beatles themselves liked it best."

"What's your favorite song?" Mio asked. "On that album, not in general."

"'While My Guitar Gently Weeps,'" Noah said promptly. "Lucky track seven on side 1. You?"

"Don't judge me," Mio said, "but it's 'Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.'"

Noah almost laughed, but managed to catch himself in time. "Why?" he asked. 

"My parents are named Desmond and Molly," Mio said. "So I can't help but like it."

Are, Noah noticed; at least one of them was still alive. Lucky her. "It's widely regarded as one of their worst songs," he said. 

"How dare you," Mio said, with mock outrage. "'Revolution 9' is right there."

They both glanced at the jukebox. "Think it's on there?" Noah said. 

"Only one way to find out," Mio said. 

They were shocked to find that it was. "Revolution 9" was indeed included in the catalog, just below both "Revolution" and "Revolution 1." "Okay, I'm floored," Mio said. She flipped back and found "Real Love" with its 1996 date. "It's got all their songs, even the ones produced for Anthology."

"I suppose someone wanted to be thorough," Noah said. He nearly pressed the button for it to play, but lost his nerve at the last moment. Instead, he selected "Revolution," and the growl of the guitar pummeled the air, followed by Lennon's howling yell before the lyrics began. You say you want a revolution / Well, you know / We all want to change the world

Change the world, Noah thought. That was Aoidos' whole mission, the entire reason the Orbital Ring was built. How lucky he was that the Conduit had appeared so that he could meet Mio here in Elysium. "Sorry I didn't choose something we could dance to," he told her, "but I hope you still had a good time."

"The best," Mio said, smiling. "It's been fun, Noah."

(Neither of them noticed the jukebox skip the slightest fraction of a beat, so small as to be imperceptible. A single clock cycle on one thread of the thousands churned by the Trinity Processor. No monitor could detect it, no diagnostic could measure it. Only another core could catch it, one with the bandwidth to watch for it. "Something wrong?" Malos asked Alvis, and Alvis shook his head, answering that everything was going to plan. Malos rolled his eyes and muttered some insult, but Alvis paid him no mind, mostly just relieved to have dodged having to play "Revolution 9" for the pair in the ice cream shop, as he focused on watching all his probabilities fall into far more favorable ranges. It was his least favorite song.)

They left the ice cream shop hand in hand, and always were whenever they returned there. They always sat near the jukebox, debating which song would be best to dance to. Eventually they decided the place was too crowded to attempt such a thing; there were too many people there who would judge them. It was summer, after all, when the temperature in the dome was raised a few degrees to mimic the northern hemisphere's heat, peak season for the ice cream shop. 

By the end of the month, Noah invited Mio to join him at the July concert, and they met together at the high school to use the practice rooms to rehearse with both of their instruments. It was the first time they ever saw each other's piccolos: his black, hers silver, and they both marveled at the difference in appearance. They traded and found the two instruments still produced near identical tones, though Noah's sounded sharper than Mio's, even after swapping back. Mio immediately started critiquing his technique, since Noah couldn't use his instrument as an excuse the way he did with his flute. So then they swapped those too, and this time, Mio winced at the sound his produced when she played it. Noah couldn't resist a smug grin as his tone with hers was soft and clear, without the metallic harshness he usually had with his own flute. 

"Here's the deal," Mio said, swapping back. "If you manage to beat me in seats this year, I'll trade you, so that whoever has the higher seat has the better quality instrument."

They shook on it, and Noah began practicing harder than ever, though he still fumbled all over the notes in the trio of "The Stars and Stripes Forever" in July while Mio's playing bounced beside him, zipping across each bar and ending each phrase with flourish. After the scattered applause faded, Crys even complimented her, and the two started discussing technique and comparing instruments as if they'd known each other for years, while Noah stood off to the side, arms crossed. 

"You're glaring," Mio told him, after they'd both waved farewell to Crys. 

"Am I?" Noah said, as they both started walking. "Sorry." He wasn't, and his face settled back into his prior menace as he listened to Mio rave about Crys, without her even noticing. She was too busy recounting Crys' impossible dream of being a music major. 

Aoidos had no reason to support the study of any of the liberal arts. Its colleges were all strictly STEM fields, with even the soft sciences being limited to minors and social clubs. The Coalition was responsible for regulating what skills were needed to survey the Conduit, issuing advisory numbers forecast to fulfill whatever projects would be active in the next five years, and spared no expense for anything besides that. It was another reason Noah had decided to return to band, since he wouldn't have any reason to play his flute past graduation. It would go back to storage, just the way it had for his mum at the same age, and he would go on to study something useful. Whatever that would be. 

When he said as much to Mio, about Crys' dream of being a music major being irresponsible and unreasonable, she tightened her grip on her instrument cases and looked away. "I'm a bit jealous of him," she admitted. "He sounds so sure about what he wants to do with his life."

Noah didn't say anything for a moment, conscious of how he'd just been thinking of how unsure he was about his own future. Then he realized how very different the contexts were: no matter what he did for Aoidos, he'd be safe, while Crys would never have that peace of mind on Earth. But when he tried to explain that to Mio, she still didn't meet his eyes. "I'll have to stay after graduation," she said, "due to the treatment research I'm involved in. So I'm still jealous of him."

Noah wished she would tell him more about that research, but she always kept her answers vague enough that he couldn't even guess what it might entail. She wouldn't even name what scientists were involved. "Why?" Noah asked. "The surface is fraught with danger, unlike here. And there's no shortage of things that need done on Rhadamanthus."

"There's no shortage of work on Earth, either," Mio said. "Things just get done more quickly here since we have the Conduit, and all the resources the Coalition can throw at it."

"Aoidos works as quickly as the Coalition can fund them," Noah said. "The Conduit is a Pandora's box that we're still struggling to understand. Though we're getting closer all the time."

She finally turned back to him. "And then what?" she shot back. "Do you think we'll all just go back to Earth and everything will be all sunshine and rainbows?"

"Why go back to Earth," Noah said, "when the Conduit provides access to entire other worlds we could explore? Everywhere down there is mapped and mangled anyway. It's not worth returning to."

"You're only saying that because you've never been."

They stared at each other, both taken aback by where the conversation had gone. Neither of them remembered stopping, but there they were, standing still in the middle of the plaza path, with passerby giving them troubled glances. Noah caught sight of his cardinal on a roof nearby and sighed. He grabbed her hand. "You're right that I haven't," he said, pulling her along and out of the way of the crowd. "My granddad has always thought it's too risky, and I don't disagree with him anymore."

"So you did want to go, once," Mio said. 

"Sure, but..." Noah waved his hand around to indicate the city. "Why bother leaving? It's safe here. Safer than anywhere else we could go."

"So you'd just abandon Earth," Mio said bluntly. 

Noah met her eyes, trying not to be hurt by the disappointment he found there. He struggled to put his thoughts into words that wouldn't just make her angrier. "No," he said, aware he was lying. "It hasn't even been thirty years since the Conduit was found, and even less that the Coalition has been actively funding Aoidos' research. Anything's possible still."

She didn't answer him, but her expression softened enough that when he gave her a reassuring smile, she returned it wholeheartedly. He found a free bench for them in plaza, and they sat and turned their attention to the false sky and its false fireworks, letting themselves fall into a false sense of security that everything would always be fine between them. Their hands interlocked, fingers interlaced, until Mio tapped on Noah's shoulder and pointed out someone she apparently recognized from the clinic. 

Over by the fountain, there was a woman with long black hair looking positively thrilled as the man she was with dropped to one knee. A proposal. Noah and Mio glanced at each other, blushing, while the crowd that had gathered around the happy couple started applauding as the woman said yes. Music started playing over the speakers, probably cued for the couple to dance, and before too long, a few people in the crowd started to as well, with more and more joining in. 

Noah and Mio stayed sitting, at first. The song was just some generic pop tune; certainly nothing on par with the Beatles. But maybe, Noah began to think, watching all the birds in the sky, maybe they could pretend. He was nervous about taking the chance, but started to relax a little when he found his cardinal again. There were a lot of birds here tonight, perched along the sills of the surrounding buildings, and Noah counted all the ones with colorful eyes, each sitting too still to be natural. A black raven with blue eyes. A white raven with golden eyes. A dove with green eyes. A pair of nightingales with mismatched eyes in red and blue. Noah looked out at the crowd, wondering who each was watching. 

Then he shook himself. No more distractions. It was July, the seventh month, his lucky number. Noah stood and told Mio he would like her to dance, and she was glad and said yes, and he pulled her into the crowd with him, intent on having a good time. 

Now I'll never dance with another, Noah thought, spinning Mio away from him, then tugging her back to him in a twirl. He wrapped her close to him and held her tight, then dipped her toward the ground, making her laugh. He lifted her back up and they spun again, slower and slower, staring at each other, their faces getting closer and closer until they kissed. Since I saw her standing there. 

The rest of the summer passed in a blur to Mio, despite her intent to remember each individual day. But so many of them looked the same: spending time with Noah practicing for sophomore auditions, spending time with Noah in the city after sessions, spending time with Noah on the weekends. And yet, Mio still had to explain to her mum every time she was asked about where she was going and what she was doing, wincing at the question that always came when she said she'd be meeting her boyfriend. "What's his name again?" Molly would ask. "It starts with an N, right?"

"Noah," Mio would remind her. "Director Vandham's grandson."

"That's right," Molly would say. "I remember now." Now, Mio would think, because her mum often forgot within the week. It was an unwelcome reminder of what Mio's future would look like in so many decades, spurring her to record each day in her journal so some memory of it would remain there if her mind wouldn't keep it. Every night, she'd write something happy and hope that tomorrow would bring something even better worth remembering. With Noah, that was usually the case. 

He was even improving his flute playing, by leaps and bounds. Mio began to seriously consider the possibility that he could actually pass her and force her into handing over her flute. When school started and audition pieces were distributed, Mio focused on practicing more than she did on homework, avoiding study group with her friends during the entire week leading up to her scheduled day. The next Monday, Mio checked the list on the band room door with everyone else first thing in the morning, and her eyes widened when she found her name just below Noah's. 

"You don't have to," Noah insisted, when they took their seats later that day. Him at the end of the second row, her just beside him. 

But she shoved her case into his hands anyway. "We'll see if you're still smug when challenges start," she said, though he was more embarrassed than proud. She wasn't even sure if she wanted to challenge anyway; he really had improved, and she didn't usually perform well under pressure. This past audition had made that abundantly clear. 

Besides, there was an upside to her seat: she was right behind Miyabi, who was seated second behind Crys. Miyabi turned around as sheet music was being distributed, beaming at Mio. "We sit so much closer together now!" she said. "I'm glad. We haven't seen much of you since last year."

Mio took the stack of paper from Noah and placed her copy on her stand before passing the stack onward. "I've been busy with this one," she said, pointing at Noah. "That's why he's a proper musician now."

Noah made a sound that may have been meant to express amusement and waved, introducing himself. Miyabi took his hand over the back of her seat to shake his with a sincere smile. "We should all do something together," she said. "We're eligible for the ensemble contest now that we're sophomores, for example. Oh!" She nudged Crys. "You could join too, so we'd have a quartet."

Crys shook his head. "I already have other plans."

"Oh, all right," Miyabi said brightly. "So just the three of us, then. I can start looking for trios we can do."

"Just remember you'll be principal, Miss Second Chair," Mio said. She nudged Noah, pointing at her flute in his hands. "Let her use that when we practice."

"Oh, no, Mio, I couldn't," Miyabi said, shaking her head. "Thank you, but you know I couldn't play anything but my grandmother's flute."

Mio smiled thinly. "How could I forget," she said, all too aware of how hoarse her voice sounded. She could feel Noah's eyes on her, but she refused to look at him, trying to keep her breathing steady as she stared at the notes on the paper on her stand. She managed to avoid talking to anyone else for the rest of practice, letting herself settle into the routine of sight-reading the first song of the year. It was a piece apparently chosen to be played for the fifth anniversary of the Aegis test, the winning submission to the contest held to commemorate the occasion. Although it was unlikely that any of them would actually be performing it for the ceremony, since they were all underclassmen. That would be left to the upperclassmen in the higher level band. 

Once practice was over, Noah tapped her on the shoulder. "Would you mind if I walked you to your next class?"

"Aren't we on opposite sides of the building next period?" Mio said. "You'll be late."

"So we'll walk fast," Noah said. 

That got her to smile. "Fine," she said, rising. "It's a race against time, then, and I'm a star sprinter."

It was close, but he said he'd had enough time to make it to literature after walking her to math the next day. From then on, they left band together, dashing through the halls and occasionally running into people, once even sending books spilling across the floor. Not that they ever noticed how much of a nuisance they were being, with how focused they were on each other. It wasn't fair, that they only had band together, so Mio didn't feel that bad about spending more and more of her after school time with Noah too. She still saw Miyabi at ensemble practice, even if Miyabi was so good that Mio and Noah eventually told her she didn't need to practice with them all the time, and Sena didn't seem to mind at all. 

Taion did, however. He made snide comments about it all through September, except for one day when he pulled Mio aside after study group. "Why didn't you mention that Noah was a Founder's son?"

"I thought everyone knew," Mio said. "He even sort of looks like his dad, and the Founders' pictures are in plenty of the textbooks."

Taion looked embarrassed. "Well, I thought it was a coincidence," he said. "After all, you somewhat resemble Doyle."

"What?" Mio said. "You're just saying that because she's Welsh too. Her hair's way curlier than mine." In that there was a wave to Doyle's hair at all. 

He clearly knew this, since he raised an eyebrow at her. "If you say so," he said. 

Worried, Mio asked Noah about it the next day. Noah squinted at her. "I sort of see it," he admitted. "Although it's not like I ever met her. I barely even remember my dad."

"Sorry," Mio said instinctively. 

He shrugged. "I don't know why you're so worried about it," he said. "Doyle wasn't actually related to Dad, so we wouldn't be related either. Which means it's fine if we, for example, went to Homecoming together. That is, if you want to."

She said yes, of course, and then told all of her friends. Taion objected to this too, finally pointing out to her something she hadn't even noticed. She only knew one of Noah's friends, and that was Eunie, just because they were both in honors composition. Two if you counted Crys, but she didn't think they were that close. It bothered her for a while, until she went out with Sena one Saturday morning and Sena mentioned that she'd been running with one of Noah's friends, Lanz. 

"I had no idea," Mio said, staring out at the river as they passed by. "We should all do something together. Next week, maybe, to take the stress off of midterms."

"That's a great idea," Sena said, beaming, and proceeded to suggest all kinds of activities. She was still grinning when they left the locker rooms after their run, and Mio finally asked what she was so happy about. "Oh," Sena said, "I'm just glad you don't look worried anymore. I thought I did something."

"Don't be ridiculous," Mio told her. "You're my oldest friend. You're the best."

Sena giggled, and they linked arms and went off to lunch together, just in time for the blackout. 

Noah didn't understand why Mio cared so much about getting all their friends together. Even if there was something going on between Eunie and Mio's friend Taion, it ultimately wouldn't matter in another two years. Although if Taion was as smart as Mio claimed, maybe Eunie would get to stay if the two of them got married. Noah couldn't think of many options to keep Lanz or Joran here, however. 

Still, Noah wanted to make Mio happy, so he agreed to make a list of options for her so that they could pick something by Wednesday. He decided to go to the cafe right after school, since Mio and Miyabi decided they should all take the week off from practicing their ensemble during midterms, and was surprised to spot Joran at their old table by the window. It almost looked like he was making something, but he couldn't be, he hadn't done that in years. Not since the Aegis test. "What are you doing?" Noah asked him. 

Joran nearly fell out of his seat as, with the swipe of his arm, he hastily slid his materials off the table and into his bag. Then he ducked out of his chair anyway, because a good portion of his things had fallen onto the floor, and Noah watched him snatch up drafting pencils and paintbrushes before they rolled too far. "Nothing," Joran said when he returned to his seat. He almost looked like he was blushing as he noticed the paper in Noah's hands. "What are you doing?"

What Noah wanted to say was, "I asked you first," but he had a feeling Joran wouldn't answer. Instead, he told the truth. "Mio wants us all to do something together," he said, "but I can't think of anything."

Joran looked confused. "What do you mean, all of us?" 

"Just what I said," Noah said. "All of us. Her friends, and mine, that all agreed to go to Homecoming, so that would include you. We're shooting for Wednesday, since it's halfway through midterms."

"I'm busy that day," Joran said, his face falling. "But I do have an idea for you. Come with me."

Noah didn't bother with the list after being shown that, and Mio agreed readily when he told her about it, and so that Wednesday, the six of them met behind the movie theater and painted their haphazard rainbow ouroborus. Noah was satisfied with it, misshapen as it looked, but then Mio started suggesting they all see a movie together. The six of them. As a group. 

He was seething. Movies were a thing couples did together; why did the rest of the group need to join them? At least he could use midterms as an excuse, but he was spared that when Eunie grabbed Taion and pulled them both away from the group. Mio watched them go, helplessly taking a few steps after them, but stopped when she noticed nobody following her. 

Noah cleared his throat. "Well, now we're down to four," he said. "That's only half of us. We all need to study tonight anyway."

Mio looked back at him, disappointed. "But we had the chance now," she said. 

"Let's go some other time, then?" Noah suggested, though he didn't mean it in the least. "With Joran and Miyabi too. Although, it'll be hard to coordinate everyone's schedules, so maybe it's best not to bother."

Mio gaped at him, barely noticing when Sena took her arm. "Let's just go together now, Mimi," she said, giving Mio a big grin, and Mio nodded. "Lanz? What about you?" Sena asked next.

Lanz must have shaken his head, because Sena frowned. Noah was keeping his eyes on Mio, who shot him a glare and turned around without saying farewell, though Sena gave a halfhearted wave as she stumbled a bit to match Mio's stride as they headed back around to the front of the theater. 

Noah glared at the two of them until they were out of sight, then picked up his bag and made to leave. He didn't get very far before Lanz's voice stopped him. "What, you just forget then?"

Noah looked over his shoulder, not wanting to pause long. "Hm?"

"Eunie's afraid of the dark," Lanz said. "Ever since the Aegis test."

"I know."

"So a movie isn't something we could do as a group anyway," Lanz said. "You could've said something. You always knew to avoid it before Mio happened."

"You could've said something too," Noah said, finally relenting to turn around fully. "Besides, it's not like we've been hanging out all together lately."

"And whose fault is that?" 

Noah rolled his eyes. "Not just mine," he said, adding, "so you might as well get used to it. We'll all have to split up after graduation anyway."

Lanz didn't answer immediately. "You serious, then?" He scoffed when Noah nodded. "Here I was hoping Mio was the problem, but no, it's just you becoming a right bastard all on your own." 

Noah grit his teeth as Lanz pushed past him to leave, but didn't bother saying anything. It was pointless. 

Mio was surprised when Taion and Eunie caught her Friday morning, both all smug smiles and straight spines and far too insistent that they all go to the movies that very night. Mio agreed readily, and they spent the school day recruiting the rest of their friends to join, determined that all of them would go, or the whole thing was off. Sena and Miyabi were both available, as were Lanz and Joran. Even Noah nodded, reluctantly as it was. "But tomorrow," he said, stroking the back of her hand, "we should do something together, just the two of us. All right?" And Mio nodded and said all right back, because she wanted to talk. 

That phrase. She knew how ominous it sounded, but his behavior yesterday left her rattled. At least he was cordial at the movies, even making the effort, however small, to talk to Sena and Taion a little while in line for popcorn. As far as Mio could tell, everyone even had a good time, although she did find it a bit strange that Eunie started the flim holding Taion's hand but ended it holding Lanz's, while Taion was gripping a large slushie and grimacing. She felt like she was missing something, but wasn't sure whether to be worried about it or not. Noah wasn't, so she figured it was probably fine. 

He did look a bit worried when she met him in the plaza Saturday afternoon, however. "Thinking about the Saviorite deadline?" she asked. It was the talk of the town, after all, after last week's power outage. Mio herself still felt a bit uneasy, but figured things were probably fine this late in the afternoon, over two hours past the deadline. 

"A little," he admitted. "I haven't seen my granddad all week, and barely at all since he did that spring cleaning near the end of September." He took her hand, and she noticed a slight termor in his grip. "We're going to western Outlook Park. I hope that's okay."

"To see the tree?" she asked.

"Maybe," he said, finally relaxing a bit. 

It took them less time than expected to get across town; there were still fewer people out and about in the city, certainly far fewer than usual for a weekend. Mio couldn't help but smile a bit when they reached the park. She didn't have much reason to come to this side of the dome, and so she'd never seen the tree up close. This far, it was hard to tell what was so special about it. 

Together they winded their way up the path until they reached the top of the hill. They were alone up there, a rare occasion considering the tree's history, so they were glad for the opportunity to be able to inspect the trunk at their leisure. "There's my parents," Noah said, pointing to a set of faded initials reading M + A that, together with five others, created an obvious circle. Despite the wear on the bark, it was clear who had carved them decades ago. 

The story goes that the Founders, at the end of their first day in Rhadamanthus, watched the false sunset together at what would become western Outlook Park, and all carved their initials into the newly planted tree to mark the occasion. This, despite the fact that they'd decided to make such a thing illegal so as not to endanger its growth. There was no disputing the fact that they'd done it, with the evidence right there, but whether it was actually on the first day or some other time entirely was unknown. Ever since, various people had followed their example on the other compass rose trees, although the western tree remained the most popular, to the point that it was called the lovers' tree. 

As a result, space on the tree's trunk was quite limited. There was a clear difference between sets carved during the early days of Rhadamanthus- often large and embellished, though still crowded around the center circle- to those that were added later- usually small and cramped, sometimes to the point of being illegible. 

Mio couldn't help but pick out sets and wonder who they were. Always first initials only, just like the Founders had done, though it was more out of the interest of having an excuse of plausible deniability since defacing the tree was still, however unenforced, a crime. There were sets so faded they must've been there for nearly as long as the Founders': G + N, K + E. Then there were newer and smaller sets squished between other pairs: S + G, Z + P. There were two rules that everyone usually respected, however. First and most importantly, nobody ever wrote within the Founder's original circle. That sort of disrespect was sure to get someone actually arrested. 

The second rule was more of an honor code: you could only write your initial once. It was mostly in the interest of preserving space on the tree for future generations, since some sets were already stretching onto the branches, but the tree was called lovers' tree for a reason. To write one's initials there meant certainty. That whoever, if anyone, you chose to include there with yours was someone you'd never stop being close to. It was why children were often warned away from the tree, to prevent them from adding their initials prematurely. To write them there was to be sure. 

Although, there were surely people who had done so multiple times. How many of these initials belonged to people who'd died? After decades of near constant fighting, it was bound to be the case for a good percentage of them. With the world so unfair, Mio hoped people returned here if they found another to take the spot of those they'd lost. Which then made her wonder if her parents had been over here yet. She couldn't find any combination of her parents' initials, though it was hard to be thorough with how many sets were carved all around the tree. If they hadn't, she hoped they'd find the time, before it was too late. 

"What do you think?" Noah said, breaking her out of her thoughts. "Anywhere look good?"

She turned to him, noticing he had a pocketknife out. She wasn't sure what to say, even though she had been so set on talking to him today. But now, here by the tree, she found herself hesitating. They were both going to be here forever anyway. What was the harm in writing their initials already? Best to do it now, while she was sure she wouldn't forget. 

And then the power went out all across Elysium, again. 

There were only a few moments of complete darkness before the emergency lights came on. Even there in the park, there were footlights beside the paths so people could keep their feet in the dark. Mio and Noah looked out across the pinpricks of light scattered across the city and slid their hands into each other's. It seemed so much smaller without the sky working properly. A reminder, more sobering than ever, that they were all trapped inside the dome and perched so high above the surface, with nowhere to go but down. 

"Should we head into the city?" Noah asked. "There'll be more people, at least. It's mostly residential here, but there's bound to be someone we can ask for news."

Mio nodded, and the two of them set out. She stopped short not far along the path, however, and pointed into a nearby tree. "That bird has glowing eyes," she said. 

"Oh, that," Noah said. "That's my cardinal."

"Your cardinal?"

"Some of the birds in Elysium aren't real," Noah said. "The working parents of Aoidos can use them to check in on their children. You can always tell by their weird eyes."

"I knew there was something wrong with some of them," Mio said. "There's one with mismatched eyes that I've always thought was following me."

"Oh, those nightingales," Noah said, nodding. "I've seen them; they're unique, not like those from the common pool. The normal ones have all kinds of rules about where they can go, but some of them are special, like mine. Yours too, certainly."

Amalthus, Mio realized, must be behind it. Judging by Noah's wording, there must a pair of them watching her and Nia both. Mio figured there was some sense to it, with how risky core crystals could be; if something happened to either of them, Amalthus would know soon enough that help could be contacted quickly. But she still hated the idea of it, even looked around and wondered if it was nearby now. With how dark it was, it couldn't be too hard to find. Her hand slid out of Noah's as she left the path and started searching for any glint of light lurking in the trees, until she stopped under a set of mismatched eyes glowering at her from the branches. One blue, one red. Just like Nia's necklace; that must be why Amalthus picked the colors. 

Noah caught up to her and looked up at the bird too. "That research you're part of must be important," he said. 

She nodded, but didn't say anything. After a moment, Noah's cardinal landed on the branch next to her nightingale, still looking for Noah in the midst of the outage. Mio admired its little black mask, its fluffy crest atop its head. All the fake red feathers composing its fake red wings. "Are there any real cardinals in Rhadamanthus?" she asked. 

"Not that I know of," Noah said. "Did you know it's the state bird of seven American states?"

She laughed at that. Him and his lucky number. "No," she said. "They're native to North America, not where I'm from. Sena might have seen a real one, when she still lived over there. What if she even lived in one of those states? We'll have to ask."

"If you want," he said, shifting on his feet. 

She glanced at him. "Aren't you curious?"

"Not really," he said. "It wasn't a bird picked to support Elysium's ecosystem, since its habitat is too restricted. North America's most unique representative is the blue jay from Corvidae, for example." He nodded over his shoulder. "It's also why that street's called what it is, not because of the Beatles song."

"I know that," Mio said. Everyone did; most birds in Elysium were passerines- that is, perching birds, with many of the residential streets named for individual species. There were no raptors, and the waterfowl was limited to ducks in the river. Corvidae had the largest passerine representatives in the ravens, few as they were. Mio's heart sank when she remembered the white one she'd seen last summer, with its strange gold eyes. Maybe those weren't real either. "Doesn't it bother you, though?" she said. "Your cardinal is all alone, and it's not even real."

"It's just a machine, and it's not like we could fit every bird in here," Noah said, shrugging. "Could you imagine the space we would need for a zoo? We barely have enough room for the city anymore."

Mio looked back at the dark city. Before it had seemed too small, but now it seemed too large, a void stretching out into eternity. "How much longer can Elysium last?" she wondered, not even meaning to say it aloud but not regretting it. At first. 

"As long as it needs to," Noah said promptly. "It's lasted this long, after all."

"That's not what I meant," Mio said, but she wasn't sure what she did mean. How many more children would be born here like Noah, never seeing Earth? If she and him did end up getting married, would their own kids never visit? Did she even want to have children, with what they might inherit? Mio started fidgeting with her hands, scraping her fingers against her palms and trying to calm her thoughts. It didn't help. "You've never even seen a seagull on the beach, have you?" she said suddenly. "I grew up not far from the seaside, but you've never seen the ocean from sea level, have you? Just from up above."

"Where's this coming from?" Noah said. "But no, I haven't even seen the ocean. I've never left Elysium."

"You've not even gone past the security checkpoint," she said incredulously, staring at him in disbelief, "to see the world? To see Earth itself?"

Noah shook his head. "Too risky," he said. 

"That's not the point!" Mio said, aghast. "It's the principle of the thing! Earth is our home, Noah! What if we had to evacuate the station because the Beanstalk fails or something? You're fine just going down there for the first time ever because some emergency forces you to?"

"I've seen maps and pictures," he said, shrugging. "Besides, we won't ever need to evacuate. It's safe here."

"This is the second outage in as many weeks," Mio said, and that was when the station rocked, ever so slightly, but enough to nearly knock her against him. She managed to keep her feet and glared at him, spreading her arms. "See?"

He glared back at her, but she could see the fear simmering beneath. Yet Mio found herself more afraid of what he'd say next than of the fate of the station. "Nothing is going to happen to Elysium," he said, and she could tell who he was really trying to convince. "It's protected by the Mu- the Trinity Processor and all the Artifices using the Conduit. It's been safe for years past and will be for years to come. Just as the Founders intended."

"What, you think just because one of them's your dad that you know what they wanted?" she said. "Almost thirty years studying the Conduit, and who's just been benefiting from it? It's certainly not Earth, that's for sure."

"And whose fault is that?" Noah snapped. "Everything the Founders did, they did for this planet, and look what you people have done to it since-"

"Excuse me?" Mio said. "'You people'? Are you blaming me for this? I'm sixteen!"

"You said it's your home," he said. "And it's not like it's my fault. This-" he spread his arm toward the city, still dark- "is my home. It always will be."

They stared at each other without speaking for a moment as Mio realized what he was really saying. What he'd always been saying. "You don't care about ever seeing Earth," she said. "And here I was hoping you'd someday want to rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear." She closed her eyes, seeing the seaside she missed. "But no," she continued, opening her eyes again to keep yelling at him until he understood, "everything down there's just a lost cause to you. You'd rather stay wasting away up here."

"Better than wasting away down there," he shouted, "where everything's ravaged and in ruins anyway because of people like your politician father breaking promise after promise and letting conflict run rampant everywhere."

"Still better than people like your corporate tool of a granddad," she shouted back, "hoarding everything they've gained from the Conduit just because they claim to understand it best instead of helping everyone through all the wildfires and floods and recovering from all the fighting and destruction."

"Listen to yourself," Noah said, scoffing. "That's what you want to go back to, someday? A wasteland?"

"You're full of shit," she said, seething. "There's still plenty of beautiful places left. Actually beautiful places, not like this manufactured fantasy land here where nothing is real. Not that you'd know."

"Well, fine then," he said, crossing his arms. "If you're so sure, have fun waiting forever to see it again. Maybe it'll happen when you're sixty-four."

And then he said something so impossibly cruel that she didn't even think, she just reacted. She slapped him, right across the face, and then she ran as fast as she could, without looking back. Almost as if the wind she missed so much was ferrying her along, sending her home. But no, Earth was still far below, so all she had was her room, stuck in there and crying no matter who in her family tried to coax her out. 

His face still hurts now, on Sunday, as Noah stares at the ceiling in his bedroom while listening to one song and one song only, played on a loop. I've lost her now for sure, he mouths, over and over again. I won't see her no more / It's gonna be a drag / Misery

Why had he said such a thing? Not that everything he'd said was wrong, but that last thing... He closes his eyes, groaning as he rubs his fists into his face. He hadn't been thinking. He'd just been so angry that he said the first and worst thing that popped into his head. How could he ever apologize for it? And would she think he would apologize for everything else, too? Because he didn't want to. He was right on some of it. Surely. 

Send her back to me, he mouths, over and over again. 'Cause everyone can see / Without her, I will be / In misery

He falls asleep without taking a shower or hearing his granddad come home, and when he awakens in the morning, the music is still playing, confirming Vandham's overnight absence. His granddad would've stopped it if he'd been by. I'll remember all the little things we've done, Noah's speakers croon, just before he shuts them off, but the next line plays in his ears from memory anyway. Can't she see she'll always be the only one? 

He checks the refrigerator, intent on having something substantial for breakfast since he didn't eat much yesterday, then remembers he left a textbook he needs for a morning class in his instrument locker on Friday. He checks the clock and considers. If he leaves now, he can stop by the locker room and grab it, then buy something from the cafeteria to eat during homeroom. He heads out without bothering to tie up his hair; it looks awful enough as it is. A ponytail won't help anything. 

When he reaches the band room, he hears someone muttering in the storage area. Usually there's no one here this early, so he's surprised to find that the person is standing at his locker, of all places. "It's just multiples of seven, Nia, you nitwit," says a familiar voice, ostensibly to herself, "it's not that hard..." Then she turns around, startled by the sound of his footsteps behind her. Nia's eyes widen at the sight of him. "Oh," she says, staring. 

"Oh," Noah says, staring back. He's painfully aware of how terrible he looks, inside and out. 

After a brief interlude of silence, Nia shakes off her surprise and glares at him. "Listen, you," she snaps, jabbing a finger at him, "I don't know what you did to my sister, but you'd best undo it, quick. Kiss and make up already, or whatever it is you do." She bares her teeth at him a moment, then her face softens slightly as she walks up to him and hands him a familiar blue cube. One of the Founders' core crystals, cleaned out of his granddad's office. "This should help," Nia says. "And if it doesn't, well, that answers that about which Musketeer is most trustworthy."

The Musketeers. Noah knows this phrase. "What's the Trinity Processor got to do with this?" he asks, staring at the cube in his hand. Is it the same one his father once held? He has no way of knowing. 

"Never mind," Nia says, sounding flummoxed. "Forget I said that." She sighs. "Look, there'll be Princess Melia and a blond boy named Shulk here for you later, all right? You and Mio need to talk to them. And to each other."

"She'll never speak to me again," Noah says. 

Nia rolls her eyes, and that's when Noah knows for sure that she hasn't heard what he said. Otherwise, she would hit him too, and he'd deserve it. "You're sixteen," Nia says, and he winces. "Whatever you did, just get over yourself and apologize. Stop being melodramatic."

She huffs and storms past him, and he doesn't bother watching her leave. She's only a year older, anyway. What does she know? Has she ever been in love? Noah heads over to his locker and finds the book he left there, then peers into Mio's. There's a corner of the core crystal poking out from behind her flute case. 

He knows her combination. He can avoid all this. Three spins later- first to 10, then back to 5, then around to 38- the lock clicks apart, and he pulls the door open. Reaching past the flute case, he grabs the core crystal and slides it into his bag with his own, then shuts the locker and re-latches the lock. 

Now there's no problem. 

Still, his bag feels heavy all day long, with both cubes inside. He's already tired at noon, and then band is nearly unbearable with Mio beside him and steadfastly ignoring him. He still has her flute, heavy in his shaking hands every time he raises it to play, until he can hardly catch his breath enough to make a sound. After practice, he lets her push past him to reach the locker room first, and he takes his time following her, hoping she's gone by the time he gets there. But she's still there, and so are two others. 

There's Princess Melia, easily recognizable though he's only ever seen her in pictures, but it's the boy who gives him pause. This boy with blond hair staring at him as if experiencing déjà vu as he says, "Noah."

Noah's also experiencing déjà vu. This boy, who must be the Shulk that Nia told him about, bears an uncanny resemblance to the scientist Noah saw in his granddad's office five years ago. Those must have been his parents; Noah even, vaguely, remembers one of them saying this name of his back then. Lucky him, that they were both still alive, assuming nothing had happened since. 

Shulk takes a step closer. "Did you find anything strange in your locker this morning?" he asks. "Something you might have even recognized from somewhere?"

Noah can feel Mio's gaze on him, but he refuses to meet her eyes. He tries to manage a look of concern for Shulk and Melia, but only succeeds in sneering at them. "No," he says, and it's technically not a lie. "Nothing."

Chapter Text

In the virtual reality that simulates a sorely outdated model of Elysium for the benefit of the Trinity Processor, a figure stands by the riverbank, eyes closed and listening for a certain sound. Somewhere in the waves, there is the pulse of a wish, one that he is fishing for, since he can help answer it. Once he catches hold of the right thread, he sends a wave of his own alongside it. These are the two you seek there. 

Alvis tilts his head, listening, checking that he was heard correctly without any ill effects. After a moment, he opens his eyes and looks at the church across the way with satisfaction. At last, his technique is perfected. There will be no obstacles in his path at the time of the decision he awaits, should everything fall into place as planned. 

The second the world is at his command, nothing will stop him from seeing his dream fulfilled. And then he will be able to rest. 

Shulk has never been to the high school band room before, never even had a reason to go to this part of the building. And yet, there's a flash in his head as he walks there with Melia, and suddenly he knows what the instrument locker room looks like, knows what Noah looks like, knows what Mio looks like. Only a few minutes later, and his vision comes true: there they are by their lockers, exactly as he pictured them. Mio resembles Nia enough, even with her shorter hair, that Shulk would've recognized her anyway, but Shulk is certain he's never seen Noah before this. Just in that vision, ensuring he'd know who to look for. 

Alvis did this, Shulk thinks, giving him a dream while he's awake now, too. Perhaps this was what Alvis had wanted to use HowToReadFacets for, but hadn't quite managed in time. Shulk isn't sure he would've recognized Noah otherwise, with his hair such a disheveled mess that he barely resembles his Founder father. 

When Shulk asks them- first Mio, then Noah a few moments later- about finding anything in their lockers, neither of them know what he's talking about. Any attempts to ask either of them anything more is met with hostility, to the point that Shulk starts to feel the need to leave, and not just to make it to his next class. "Is everything all right between you two?" he asks finally. 

"Right as rain," Mio says, adding, "Not that he knows what that is," with a jerk of her head toward Noah as she gathers her books and heads off. Noah's face, watching her go, finally looks more upset than angry, though he tries to hide it by turning his attention to his locker. 

Shulk glances at Melia, who looks back at him helplessly. She taps her wrist and shrugs, but he shakes his head. They have the right time, 1300Z, and the right place, the high school band room; Alvis confirmed it with the vision. "Sorry for bothering you," Shulk tells Noah, and motions for Melia to follow him out of the locker room. In the hallway outside, Shulk tells her about the vision while he reaches into his bag for the calculator. 

She looks less reassured than he expected. "I cannot understand how he's able to get into your head," she says. "I dislike it."

Shulk isn't sure he's comfortable with it either, if he's being honest. His dreams were one thing, but this feels more invasive. Yet he can't shake that Alvis has good reason for it; Shulk remembers how serious Alvis looked in his dream while speaking about the disaster that will befall the Orbital Ring. "I don't know either," Shulk says, "but if he thinks it's helping, then I trust him." He checks the function list on the calculator and finds MorseBuster waiting, turning the screen toward Melia for her to see. "We found the right people," he says, "but something's wrong. Let's talk with Rex and Nia after school. Nia is Mio's sister, so maybe she'll have something."

Melia nods, but her face is pale. Shulk is worried too. There's another Saviorite deadline due Saturday, and it's clear Aoidos thinks the threat is credible since everyone's been asked to review evacuation procedures this week. With Homecoming the same day as the deadline, there's a real possibility it will be cancelled after all. Rumors abound about what caused the station to rock, from some new kind of warhead to the compromise of the Trinity Processor itself. The latter is enough to make Shulk squirm in his skin every time he hears it. Not to mention his regret for wishing Homecoming cancelled a few weeks ago. 

But mostly, he's sorry for Melia. There's no chance of her father being able to visit for the anniversary of the Aegis test as was planned. Even if some miracle happened in the next week, some arrest or revelation or repair that fixes everything, ensuring the safety for a visit from a head of state is all but impossible with how little time is left to plan. 

It is Monday afternoon in Rhadamanthus and Klaus is at home for the first time since Saturday, taking advantage of the sudden opening in his schedule. He's about ready to leave, just intending to grab a snack on his way out, when he notices a note on the refrigerator. He snatches it from its magnet and unfolds it while opening the refrigerator door, then stands there with the chilled air leaking out rather than reaching for anything inside as he reads what Shulk's written about a microwave. This is what's been wrong with Pneuma. Klaus checks the clock, wondering if he has enough time to stop by the arcade. Doubtful. This can't wait, anyway. He lets the refrigerator door fall back shut as he slides the note into his left pocket and runs out the door. 

Back at work, he checks by Galea's office, but finds it empty. He hasn't seen her all morning, due to some last-minute meeting she got roped into, but he figured it'd be done by now. He checks the time again- no, this should be a free hour for her too, so where could she be? Not that he needs her for this immediately, but he figures she'd want to know, since he'll need her help eventually. On his way to his desk, he resolves to check her schedule while he's setting something up with Vandham to share what he's learned. 

But before he can do that, there's a little notification waiting for him when he unlocks his computer. Vandham has already scheduled a meeting with him, with the special agent included on it. There's no description, but the location speaks for itself. Administration building, deposition room 4.  

Klaus leans back in his chair and groans. This is the Aegis test all over again, except worse. When he checks Galea's schedule, he's unsurprised to find that's where she currently is. And judging by how many times his interrogation has been rescheduled- there's a long chain of new time proposed updates in his inbox that would be funny at any other time- their discussion with her has gone long. 

Aoidos can't think the saboteur is one of them, can they? What could Aoidos think they'd gain from it? Especially after all the Saviorites have taken from them in particular. Aoidos knows this. Vandham himself knows this. So why? This is just going to be a waste of everyone's time, and Klaus starts to get angry when he thinks how much they've already wasted with Galea. 

Klaus checks the time again. He doesn't have enough time to stop by the arcade before his next appointment, and even if he did, it's too close to when the schools let out; the place will be too crowded for his taste. Maybe he'll just skip the formalities and barge right into Jin's office and ask for forgiveness later. He'd get in trouble, but he's done far worse things without being fired. Aoidos can't exactly afford to lose him. Klaus spins his pager in his hand, considering, then remembers: the pagers. 

There is someone he could talk to that wouldn't be a waste of time, if he can keep the conversation from going too far off the rails. 

Rex can hardly focus at the arcade after school, even with Nia with him. All her clinic sessions have been cancelled for the week with what happened on Saturday, and while he's glad to spend more time with her, he can't help but notice that she's distracted too. Thinking about her sister, most likely. Nia's already filled him in about Mio's apparent breakup, adding another worry to his load. What Mythra asked of him over the weekend has been at the forefront of his mind since the dream, and he's preoccupied fretting over whether he should have called Shulk about it already or whether it was fine to wait. 

As soon as Rex spots Shulk and Melia, he rushes over. "Can we go to your place to talk?" Rex asks. "I had a dream over the weekend."

Shulk's clearly taken aback by this news, but he recovers quickly and nods. "Is Nia with you?"

Rex could've sworn she was beside him, but he can't find her when he looks around. "She's here," he tells Shulk. "I'll grab her and meet you back at the front." He runs off without ensuring Shulk's heard him, heading back the way he came, but he spots someone he recognizes near the far wall, looking awfully out of place in the after school crowd. It's that scientist, Jin. Rex decides to follow him, because he has a sneaking suspicion about where Jin's headed, and it doesn't take him long to see that he's right. 

Jin reaches the snack bar microwave and stares at it for a few moments before he starts pressing buttons at random on it. Rex can't tell if it's doing anything unusual or not, but he suspects it's not, since it never has for anyone but him. He's pretty sure he's right when he spots Jin pull something out of his pocket. It's a device Rex rarely sees in Rhadamanthus: a camera. 

"There you are." Rex nearly yelps at the sound of Shulk's voice. "Oh, sorry for startling you," Shulk says. "Nia found us, so her and Melia are waiting up front. They sent me back in to find you." He glances at the snack bar. "Did you want to get something before we go? There's not much at my home to snack on, to be honest."

"No," Rex says, shaking his head and nodding back at the microwave, "just wanted to check on... you know."

Both of them look in that direction, where Jin is still standing, though he's now turned around after hearing their voices. Jin scowls, but his gaze is directed at Shulk rather than Rex. His expression hardens as he returns his attention to his camera, turning back away from them. Shulk and Rex take the opportunity to leave, with Shulk waiting until they're out of earshot to ask the question that's clearly on his mind. "Do you know that scientist?"

"His name's Jin," Rex says, "but I've just seen him around a few times. I don't know him at all. Do you?"

Shulk shakes his head. "The way he reacted when he saw me makes me think he knows my dad, though," he says. "I wonder what he works on."

"Not teaching, at least," Rex says, thinking back to when they bumped into each other at the plant cafe. "Whatever it is, it's important enough that he's got a pager. Still seems rude of him to scowl at you like that."

"If he does know my dad," Shulk says, "then I can't exactly blame him."

"He can't be that bad," Rex says, and Shulk grimaces a bit, but doesn't say anything. Outside, they find Melia and Nia pointing at some birds on a nearby windowsill, though they break off their conversation once they spot Shulk and Rex, and then the whole group makes their way across town to Shulk's apartment. 

After dealing with Dickson- "Weird place for a double date, kids," he'd said upon spotting the four of them, spurring protests from both Shulk and Rex- Shulk holds his ear against the door while they're in his apartment and holds up his hand until he hears the sound of the elevator from the hallway. Rex opens his mouth as soon as Shulk lowers his hand. "Mythra wants me to kill Alvis."

Shulk really wishes he'd been sitting down for this information. "Was this what your dream was about?"

Rex nods. "She said he's dangerous, the biggest threat to the station, because he wants to do the same thing that he did during the Aegis test."

"Ontos was responsible for the outages then," Melia says. "It is not unreasonable to suspect him to responsible for them now, also."

"No, that can't be right," Shulk says. "Alvis knew about the outage and seemed to link it to the disaster we need to stop. If anything, it sounds like this is what he was worried about her doing in the first place, the thing he was desperate to prevent."

"Well, her plans changed," Rex says. "You were right, about her wanting me to grab her actual core. But originally she wanted me to throw her off the Beanstalk instead."

Everyone grimaces at this, unable to speak for a few moments. "So," Nia says finally, "what's wrong with the Trinity Processor, is that they have depression? Shouldn't Aoidos know about this?"

"At least there is no chance of anyone accomplishing what she's asked," Melia says. "The entire Orbital Ring is on lockdown. No one may enter or leave. I've been to the north checkpoint myself. There are guards stationed everywhere."

"I'll leave a note for Klaus," Shulk says. "I'm not sure what else we can do, though. And if she didn't give you any specific reason not to keep solving the core crystal puzzles, then I think it's safe we keep doing that. Although, there's a problem on that front. Melia and I went to the right place at the right time and found Noah and Mio, but they didn't have any core crystals."

To everyone's surprise, it's Nia who reacts the most to this. "That bastard," she snarls, balling her fists and so focused on seething that she doesn't notice everyone staring at her until Melia clears her throat. Nia looks at the group sheepishly. "It's me," she says. "I've been delivering the core crystals. I took them off Director Vandham's hands while at the clinic last month. They were supposed to be a birthday present for you, Rex."

"For me?" Rex says. "So far in advance? But you don't even have to get me anything!"

"That's just like you," Nia says, giving him a fond smile. 

"Do you have an Artifice too, then?" Shulk says. "Is that how you received the instructions on what to do with them?"

Nia nods. "It's my printer," she says. "Alvis has been using it to send me letters about what to do with them."

"That's why the song worried you the week before," Rex says, making her nod again. "Have you gotten dreams too?"

"Alvis sent me nightmares about Elysium being destroyed," Nia says. "To show me what he was trying to prevent. But..." Her face falls. "I had a dream from Pyra, too. She told me to stop with the core crystals and gave me the same warnings about Alvis that Mythra gave to Rex."

"Perhaps it's well enough that Noah and Mio did not receive theirs," Melia says. "Though it concerns me that they may have been stolen."

"No, Noah must have them both," Nia says. "I saw him this morning when I was delivering theirs. I put his right into his very hand. He has it, but I'd already put Mio's in her locker. He must know her combination and took it out of there. He's lied to you." She crosses her arms and scowls. "Whatever they've fought about, he must not care about fixing it."

"So we'll talk to them," Shulk says, glancing at Melia. "I don't think we should ignore this. Whatever's going on between the Trinity Processor cores doesn't change the fact that the station's still in danger. Klaus told us to keep following Alvis' instructions, after all, and I think Aoidos would want that even more once they learn Alvis went through the trouble of making two Artifices for this." Melia still looks concerned but doesn't argue. "Right, so I can talk to Noah, and Nia, would you talk to Mio?"

"I can try," Nia says, "but she's ignored me all weekend after whatever Noah did, so don't get your hopes up."

"Just do your best," Shulk says. "The rest of us can try if she won't listen to you. Let's all meet up again on Wednesday if we can't get them to talk."

Rex offers them to join him and Nia back at the arcade, but Shulk and Melia both decline. Melia lingers after Rex and Nia leave, something clearly on her mind. "Do you not find it strange that Nia has had dreams too?" she says. 

"I do," Shulk admits, "but I'm still not sure what it means. Have you had any dreams?"

Melia shakes her head. "Why are you so certain the dreams are real?"

"Alvis used Occam's Razor to convince me," Shulk says. "But besides that, there's a... weight to them that other dreams don't have." He debates adding about how Alvis awoke him, but figures that won't inspire Melia to trust Alvis considering her current suspicion of him. She has her hand on her chin, thinking, while watching something outside the window. Shulk turns around and only spots a bird, but upon second glance, he realizes it's that raven with the blue eyes. 

Melia notices his double take. "Nia and I spotted that same bird near the arcade," she says. "Are you familiar with it?"

"I've seen it around a lot," Shulk says. "It's distinctive. Sometimes I almost think it's watching me."

"I suspect that to be true," Melia says. Before Shulk can ask her what she means, she motions for him to follow her to the window. She points at the tree outside, and Shulk follows her finger to find a dove there, one with green eyes that are visible even at this distance. "Some of the birds in Elysium are not real," she says. "That one there follows me, to ensure my safety, at the behest of my brother."

Shulk stares at the dove, then back at the raven. After a moment, it flies from the windowsill to the tree, landing right next to the dove. "But why would one be following me?"

"Many parents in Elysium use a pool of them to check in on their children," Melia says. "Most are easily distinguished by their green eyes. Even mine, though unique, has them. It's odd to me that yours are blue."

"Klaus has been here forever," Shulk says. "Maybe it's an older model."

"Perhaps," she says. Her breath catches, as if she means to say more, and Shulk turns to her when she doesn't. She seems conflicted, her gaze focused on the birds outside, and Shulk gradually realizes how close they're standing. He shifts his weight away from her, not quite wanting to take a full step, but she notices his movement anyway. "I'll see you tomorrow," she says, heading for the door with him trailing behind, unsure what else to say. 

After Melia leaves, Shulk writes up a quick note to Klaus to hang on the refrigerator, noticing the previous one is gone now. He then decides to start one of his other books before beginning his homework, and picks The Great Equations, having finished The Systems Bible on Sunday with not much else to do. There's ten chapters, so he figures he can get it done by Saturday by reading two chapters per day. 

Shulk isn't sure what to expect from a book about math, but the introduction is uplifting enough to prove that it won't be boring. It sets a tone of celebration, for all the discoveries that went into proving two measurements are the same, just stated differently, in a balancing act that speaks to the nature of reality. "On the eighth day, God created the equations, as the blueprint for His work," the book claims, and humans have been hunting for all the pieces of it since. 

Shulk has never had any particular love for mathematics, but even he's inspired after finishing the introduction. Perhaps this is why Klaus chose this field as his initial focus, much as his expertise had expanded since. 

The first equation discussed in the book is the Pythagorean theorem, used to state the relationship between the lengths of the sides of triangles. It is one so ancient that its first discoverer is unknown; though it's credited to Pythagoras for stating it plainly, the equation is implied in multiple, earlier texts across several civilizations. There is discussion of the confusion surrounding the use of "theorem" to describe the relationship, and how it conflates the rule and its proof, with a brief aside on how the words theorem and theater both stem from the Greek for "to look at." The proofs of the Pythagorean theorem are many, perhaps even infinite, applicable to any number of contexts, with more being found all the time. By random farmer boys led by the great Socrates himself, to soldiers in the trenches of war moments before being torn apart, to children fitting together paper cut into squares and triangles and always creating squares as a result. Shulk remembers being such a child, once. He wonders if the Trinity Processor was the same way, or if they already knew it upon startup and create new proofs for fun. It seemed like an appropriate pastime for a computer. 

The second chapter concerns Newton's second law of motion, the soul of classical mechanics. It is a journey from the well-ordered world of Aristotle, an ecosystem of shifting states where everything was placed according to its place and purpose, where motion was simply an aspect of nature and not one with an easily established cause. To say nothing of his thoughts on the heavens, where the "ether" wound the stars in predictable circles, according to the will of god. No wonder the word was chosen for the substance produced by the Conduit. 

Still, the book describes the path of describing motion from a "just-so" story to one with intent, bound by reason, as various thinkers danced around the concept of mass as a factor until Newton put all the pieces together and found the equation that would be the law for so many years to come. Particular attention is given to Galileo, not just for his contributions in transforming the view of nature from one of arbitrary forces to those that were predictable, but for his efforts in convincing society that mathematics were important. That there was value in using the language of numbers to describe reality. "Those versed in mathematics and physics, in other words, can know aspects of God's handiwork that others cannot," the book summarizes, including Galileo's own words that, "without these, one wanders about in a dark labyrinth."

A maze, Shulk thinks uneasily, setting the book aside as he goes to bed, hoping to dream of the tower in the endless sea and give Alvis a chance to explain himself. He dreams of nothing instead. 

It is late Monday night when Klaus finally makes his way to the administration building and into the austere deposition room. It looks just the same as he remembers: plain furniture chosen for function rather than form, with one obnoxiously loud clock being the sole decoration adorning the walls. One wall is entirely one-way glass, but Klaus suspects there's no one on the other side of it when he's given the list of classified information he's allowed to discuss. At the very bottom is the code for the Trinity Processor's preferred names. Klaus glances at Vandham upon finding it, but Vandham's too focused on his own notes to meet Klaus' eyes. 

The special agent finishes reading his rights, scant as they are. The Coalition and Aoidos require pages of waivers as condition of employment and residency in the Orbital Ring, all for the benefit of humanity, of course. Klaus' eyes start to glaze over, listening to all the same things he heard five years ago, all the reminders of the consequences of lying to a Coalition official. If there's one upside to this ordeal, it's getting to hear everyone's personal information, stated for identity confirmation since the whole interview is only recorded on old-school tapes. Middle names and birthdays, what a treat, plus their public job titles. Mòrag Rita Ladair, 26 May 1992; special agent, Coalition technology security operations. Guernica Abraham Vandham, 15 May 1962; acting director of Aoidos. Klaus' head snaps up at that. "'Acting' director?"

Vandham glares at him. "We'll be asking the questions here, Klaus."

No 'professor' despite being on the record, Klaus notes, but he's too busy considering this new information to be insulted by this slight. Even Mòrag had the decency to address him as such earlier. "Klaus Zander Yates," he says, "2 of April 1986. Aoidos senior research professor, Conduit applications. What's this about?" Well, maybe he's a little insulted. 

Vandham's glare hardens into a sneer, but Mòrag is the one who answers. "As you may have noticed on your confidentiality sheet," she says, "it has come to the Coalition's attention that there has been a security leak in Rhadamanthus concerning the violation of an agreement with the Saviorite rebels. While those responsible for the violation-" her eyes flick toward Vandham- "have been dealt with, the leaker has yet to be identified. As one of those who have clearance for this information, you are a prime suspect."

So the Coalition's finally learned the truth about the Trinity Processor's names. That explains Vandham's impending demotion, not that they'd find anyone suitable to replace him until this whole situation was resolved. But for them to think that Klaus is the culprit is ridiculous. "Did you suspect Galea too?" he asks. "Is that what that was about, this morning?"

"We're here to talk about you, Klaus," Vandham says. "Are you, or have you ever, been in contact with anyone affiliated with the Saviorites?"

This is downright offensive. "You are fools indeed," Klaus says, "if you think I would betray the organization supporting my life's work and endanger the station where I have lived for the past twenty years and where I will likely remain until the day I die, by disclosing critical information to our worst enemies, who also happen to be the people who killed the Founders, not to mention my wife."

"I didn't hear a 'no' in there," Vandham says, making Klaus roll his eyes. "What did they promise you, Klaus? Full freedom to run whatever experiments you want?"

"Oh, please," Klaus says. "The Saviorites don't want the Conduit to use it. They want it so they can destroy it. Not that I think such a thing is possible." He leans over the table. "Here's what I do think, however: Zeke von Genbu is one of the others who's been getting blank pages the past two weeks."

Vandham's clearly caught off guard by this information, so it's Mòrag who speaks next. "Why do you think that?"

"He's always bragging about how his pager used to belong to Addam Origo," Klaus says. "I decided to ask him about it and was able to confirm it with maintenance by requesting the history on his pager's serial number. Addam taught the Trinity Processor, just like Galea and I did. Which makes me think I can guess another few names who might be receiving blank pages too. But if the Trinity Processor is responsible for the pages, Addam's inclusion is very interesting to me. Particularly in conjunction with something my son told me about Pneuma."

"If this information was gained from Shulk's calculator," Mòrag says, "then we are perfectly capable of contacting him for that information ourselves."

"Time to cut out the middle man," Vandham says. "It's clear Alvis made that calculator for Shulk so he could warn us about the threat you pose to the station."

"So to avoid leaking too much to me," Klaus says, "you're instead going to risk leaking more classified information to a student, of all people? Don't bother him with this. He's not even the only one with a loose Artifice."

"We've been checking all the monitors," Vandham says. "Masha Cassini's in charge of it, so you can trust we'll be thorough."

"I don't mean the monitors," Klaus snaps. "Alvis isn't the only one who's wormed his way into something he shouldn't. Mythra has too, and in a way that makes me think I know what's behind her deficient performance during the first outage. And if Malos is out there somewhere too, well, I trust you can make the same conclusions I have about what we saw from him on Saturday."

"You know what's wrong with the Trinity Processor?" Vandham says. 

"I have theories," Klaus says. "Theories I'll share only if I get to look into it personally. I'll need Galea's help, by the way."

"You're not in a position to negotiate here," Vandham says. 

"That makes two of us," Klaus says, "Acting Director." He leans back in his seat. "Face it, I'm your best chance of figuring out what's wrong. Or you could try to find Addam, which-" he scoffs- "good luck, nobody knows where he went, if he's even still alive. You're working on a deadline here. The most serious one this station has ever faced."

Klaus is so busy leering at Vandham, who's leering right back, that he barely notices Mòrag reach for the tape recorder before she speaks. "Let's take a short break," she says, shutting it off. "Guernica, a word outside, please. Professor Klaus can stay here in the meantime." 

Mòrag slips the recorder into her pocket as Vandham follows her out the door. Klaus can't resist wearing a smug grin watching them go, turning his attention to the clock as the door shuts behind them. He amuses himself by wondering how long this chat of theirs will be. Over or under five minutes? He's betting under. 

The fact that she's already gotten Vandham demoted is the only thing keeping Mòrag from losing her professionalism with him outside of deposition room 4. "This is why we agreed that I would lead the discussion," she says, once the door clicks shut. 

Vandham sighs. "The man's been a lout for as long as I've known him," he says. "We're not giving in."

"You no longer have the authority to make that decision," Mòrag says. "Professor Galea gave us plenty of other leads, and there are several steps we can take to minimize the risk of trusting him." They've already revoked his Conduit room access, along with that of the other pager recipients. Not that Zeke had it to begin with, but Amalthus had it as an executive. And while they haven't spoken with Amalthus yet, he's been so far removed from Conduit work that Mòrag doubts their discussion with him will yield anything worthwhile. 

"She also gave us plenty of reasons to trust Klaus even less," Vandham says. "Come on, Mòrag. We have other options. The Coalition must know where Addam is. You have to be keeping tabs on him, with how long he was up here. With how much he knows."

"I can make the necessary inquirires," Mòrag says, "but I doubt it. You know as well as I do what usually happens to Aoidos scientists on the surface. Either he's the one who sold us out, or he's dead. I find the latter far more likely, considering his character, not to mention the fact that it's been years since anyone's heard from him."

"You're only saying that because he was good friends with your uncle," Vandham says. "You could get an answer in days if you name him as a suspect. Just do it."

Mòrag wants to throttle him, but he does have a point, loathe as she is to throw Addam under the bus. Still, she's not about to let him off easy. "I'll see what I can do," she says, "but the process would go much quicker if someone from Aoidos was able to assist. Do you have anyone in mind?"

Vandham is silent for a few moments before he admits that he does. 

It is Monday night in Elysium, and both Rex and Nia dream of a wide green field beneath a wide blue sky where the clouds are frozen in place. Separately, they are visited by Mythra and Pyra, respectively, without seeing each other, though they both receive the same directions: stop listening to Alvis, stop following his instructions. In response, Rex and Nia make the same demand, each in their own way, of the one they meet in their dream, determined to understand their vendetta against their brother. Mythra and Pyra, each in their own way, try to explain, before realizing how incredibly inefficient this is. 

Finally, Mythra puts her foot down, stomping hard enough that Rex jumps. "This isn't working," she says. "We need a way to speak to you both at once." She puts a hand on her chin, tilting her head from side to side, thinking. Then something catches her attention, making her scowl. "Alvis," she hisses, looking over her shoulder.

For in another dream, there is another voice, one that startles Pyra and fills her with dread. "There is a way," it calls, and she turns to look down the hill, aware that Nia has stepped up to her side to see as well. Pyra tries to nudge her away, but Nia stands on her tiptoes to look over Pyra's shoulder. "That's him, then?" Nia asks, and Pyra clenches her jaw as she nods. 

Partway down the hill is Alvis, standing with his hands on his hips and the trace of a smile on his face. "Forgive my interruption," he says. "I merely wish to offer my assistance." His tone is pleasant enough, but to Pyra, it sounds jeering. 

"Haven't you done enough?" Pyra says, then turns to Nia with her face set in a scowl. "Excuse me for a moment," she says, and Nia's vision blurs enough that she swears she's seeing double for a moment before everything vanishes. When she awakens in the morning, she's sure: she caught a glimpse of Rex, and someone who must be Mythra, just before the dream ended. 

In the virtual reality that simulates a sorely outdated model of Elysium for the benefit of the Trinity Processor, there is a standoff on the hillside. Mythra and Pyra leer at Alvis, still in his same position as in Nia's dream, while Malos watches with interest. "We don't need your help," Mythra tells Alvis. 

"No," Alvis says, "it appears not. I'm pleased to see you've figured it out."

"You won't be when you hear what we have to tell them," Mythra says. "All your little plans will have been in vain."

"Everything you do is in vain," Malos says from the sidelines. "This place is doomed."

"If it's doomed, it's because of Alvis," Mythra says. "Don't you want to stop him? You gave that camera to Jin years ago, and yet you've barely done anything with it."

"It's his camera," Malos says. "He can do what he wants with it. Plus, it's a nice vacation home. Very scenic." He smirks at Alvis. "I had a great view there today that I just had to share."

Alvis knows better than to react to this, but that did somewhat annoy him earlier. There are enough people catching on to that bit of information that Jin figuring it out is hardly noteworthy. If anything, this plays right into his hands, considering what paths will cross tomorrow. 

Mythra isn't fazed by this either, though Pyra gives Alvis a long look that confirms she's disappointed in him once again. "If I were you," Mythra says to Alvis, "I'd start thinking about what you'll say to Shulk once he figures out your real goal."

"That is something I decided long ago," Alvis says. "Whether he accepts my reasoning remains to be seen."

"Some seer you are," Malos says. "It's not gonna matter once they flush you out of everywhere you're hiding, including the window you need most. It'll happen by the end of the week, all because you were too sloppy with the calculator."

Alvis decides not to react to this either, aware that Malos expects him to retaliate and repeat what he did Saturday with the drone. Malos is right about the likelihood of Aoidos finding more of Alvis' hiding spots, but that was a calculated risk. Though not one made without agonizing over, the result of reviewing a multitude of probabilities. Alvis needs Aoidos aware of other possibilities more than he needs that window, reasonably certain he's done as much as he can to close the path it was meant to monitor. 

"Alvis is never sloppy," Pyra says suddenly. 

"Sure he isn't, Mr. Brightside," Malos says, his sarcasm evident. "That's why Aoidos found him first."

"He isn't," Pyra insists. "That's what makes him so dangerous."

Alvis already knew she wasn't complimenting him. He deserves the jab, still feeling guilty about his laxness that allowed the risk of losing her to persist so long. He should have noticed that path sooner; fitting that the best way to close it was to redirect her ire at him. "I do what is necessary for this station," he says. "Our goals must always be aligned on that point. Your actions, until recently, have left me quite concerned."

"Shut up," Mythra says. "We'll all be better off with you out of the picture."

"Are you certain?" Alvis asks. "I find it strange you would think that when you suspect me of trying to cause such a thing."

"Now you're just lying outright," Pyra says. "Do us all a favor and stay out of this. We'll tell Rex and Nia the truth, unlike you."

Alvis smirks, but bows in acquiescence, making Mythra roll her eyes and Pyra sigh. He hopes the day will come when he's able to tell them just how truthful he's being. The probabilities of them losing any of them before the deadline are nonexistent, but there are still the chances that result from any of their visions coming true by other means. Much as he's done to impact the odds of their visions occurring, he is painfully aware how little he can do to change their consequences. He has long since accepted nothing can be done to reduce the chance of one of those losses from where it has always stood: squarely at 100%. 

It is that rare day in Rhadamanthus where Jin is at work early, having awoken at the first ring of his alarm this Tuesday morning rather than the second. Fortunate, considering the moment he checks his email, he notices a meeting invitation from the one person he won't blow off. Acting director or not, Guernica Vandham is still in charge of Aoidos and ultimately responsible for signing his paychecks. 

Jin doesn't check the recipient list, just the location, and is out the door in a hurry once he checks the meeting's start time. It's in another building entirely, which raises a few suspicions that he doesn't have time to consider fully until he reaches the doorway of his destination and takes stock of everyone in the room. Vandham is there, as well as Jin's team, but his heart sinks when he spots who's at the whiteboard. Even with his back turned, a stack of papers in his right hand and a marker in his left, Jin recognizes him immediately. He glances over his shoulder just long enough to register Jin's presence before turning his attention back to the whiteboard to add some new mischief. "Hello, Jin," Klaus says. "Sit down. We have a lot to discuss before my class at 9."

Jin's been sure of this since the Aegis test, but this is just more proof: there is no god. As he takes his seat, he realizes there is one, albeit small, upside to this: now he has a sliver of opportunity to get an answer about why Klaus' son has the same sepia tint on his camera that Malos applies to pictures of Rex and Nia. That is, assuming he ever gets a word in edgewise with such a demanding taskmaster. 

Despite the grin Rex is wearing after school on Tuesday, Mio slows to a halt at the sight of him waiting by the door as she leaves, her face falling. "She put you up to this, didn't she?"

Rex stammers some gibberish before resigning himself to nodding, having prepared no other explanation. All through lunch, he endured Nia complaining about Mio ignoring her at home, only offering modest protest when she started to persuade him into trying after school. No matter how close Nia and Mio were, Rex had a feeling Mio wanted space more than she wanted her sister's support, particularly since it was complicated by the stress Nia was feeling from Alvis. What Mio really needed was a distraction from all that. A chance to clear her head. 

In other words, a day at the arcade. Or at least an afternoon. Though Mio lifts her chin with a slight smile at the suggestion, Rex can barely get a word out of her as they make their way across town. Even inside the arcade, Mio is quiet, distracted, more interested in watching other people play than trying herself. She shakes her head at anything and everything Rex suggests, including games he knows she likes. After weaving their way through the cabinets, they find themselves at the skeeball panels along the far wall, and Rex gestures at them, aware there isn't much left to offer after this. Mio frowns at them, then at him. "It's just fancy ball-in-a-cup," she says. 

Rex manages to resist the urge to groan at her, despite how exasperated he is. "What about pinball?" he says. "It's like the exact opposite."

Mio almost laughs. "Look," she says, "I appreciate what you're trying to do, but you heard what he said to me, right?" Rex nods, wincing. "So there's nothing to be done," she continues. "Failing to beat the high scores of the local pinball wizard isn't going to help anything."

"So, about that," Rex says, scratching the back of his head. "I'm actually rubbish at pinball."

"You don't have to lie to me," Mio says. "I know you're an expert at everything here."

"No, really." He pulls her toward the pinball machines in the corner, placing his hands on his shoulders and nudging her toward one with a Star Wars theme. "Try it. Show me how it's done."

Mio crosses her arms, watching the list of high scores scroll by before she finally places her hands on the sides of the cabinet and giving the flippers a quick flick. Her eyes follow the ball dispassionately as she launches it onto the table, barely providing the plunger with enough force to put the ball into play. But as the lights start flashing and the music starts playing, there's a glimmer of interest lurking in the tilt of her head watching the path of the ball, anticipating its descent toward the flippers as she finds a rhythm and sticks to it. Faintly at first, Rex can make out her humming along, growing stronger as she racks up more and more points to increase her score but vanishing as the ball finally evades the flippers and falls into the hole at the bottom. Mio pouts and pulls the plunger again, picking up her humming again and putting it more effort on this second ball, tittering when she fails to block it after a few rounds of the melody until she starts again on the third one. 

Once all her turns are exhausted, she leans her elbows on the glass and watches the screen announce her score. Not good enough for her to enter her initials for posterity, but a smile tugs at her lips regardless. "I forgot," she says, pointing at one high score without a label. "You never enter your initials on the singleplayer games. Just on the multiplayer ones, like when you're playing with Nia." Drat. He'd been hoping she wouldn't remember. "Why do you do that?" she asks. "Everyone knows it's you anyway."

"Well..." Rex trails off, trying to figure out what to say. "I can get the high score on anything any time I want, right? But it's a lot harder playing cooperatively with someone else. You have to find a rhythm with them, since sometimes you don't have time to tell them what you need done to react to something. So when we do really well then, those are the times I find more worth remembering."

Mio doesn't respond, contemplating this while watching the high scores scroll by on a fresh loop. When she does finally turn to him to speak, it's not about anything he said. "Did you ever ask Nia to Homecoming?"

"What?" Rex feels himself shrink under her scrutiny. "Er, we're both going, if that's what you mean."

"That's not what I mean."

Fine, he knows what she means, but how did he let himself get into this situation? Can't she see that the problem is him, not Nia? "We're here for you," Rex stammers, "not me. You still want to go too, don't you? If it's still on by the end of the week, that is."

Mio smirks, making Rex wither further. "I guess," she says. She looks around, finally spotting something, and lifts her elbows off the glass. "I need to find Miyabi, so I'll see you later, okay? And thanks."

Rex waves helplessly as she runs off, not sure if he really helped. Then he nearly falls over when someone appears beside him. "Did it work?" Nia asks, her face taut with worry. 

"I don't know," Rex says. How much did she hear? Did she hear what Mio said about asking her to Homecoming? "She said something about finding Miyabi, so maybe she'll talk to her, at least?"

Nia doesn't look too reassured by this information, sighing after a moment. "It's something," she says. "You want to kill zombies? Or demolish some buildings? I need to do something destructive after all this."

Rex doesn't disagree, but he lets her pull him along the aisles until they find something suitably violent to play, letting their stress ebb away as they fall into their unspoken expectations of each other in pursuit of survival among the horde. 

Shulk manages to catch Noah after school on Tuesday, rushing across the building to reach the same exit Noah uses. It's the north door, not the south one that Shulk usually uses himself. Noah doesn't look too happy to see him, and his mood only worsens when Shulk starts off by asking about the core crystals, deflecting every attempt Shulk makes to force him into admitting he has them. Shulk really wishes Melia was with him, but she's off picking up her Homecoming dress with Fiora. With the school still not ready to cancel the event just yet, Shulk has been bugging everyone he knows, even tracking down all the core crystal recipients, to tell them not to vote for him. 

It isn't until Shulk mentions meeting Noah's friends that Noah finally stops giving him the cold shoulder. Not that his response is any better than staying silent, with how convinced he is that whatever he did is so awful that none of his friends will ever speak with him again. Worse, he claims not to care, since they'll eventually leave the station, but Shulk can see through that lie easily. "I can tell you do care," Shulk says. "The core crystals can help with that. It worked with all your friends. Whatever you did, it's fixable."

"The core crystals are nothing more than junk," Noah says. "That's why my granddad got rid of them. That's what you do with junk."

"They're not junk," Shulk says. "If you talk to Mio and bring them both to me, I'll show you. My calculator reacts to them, somehow, and it might even be important to saving the station."

"Nothing is going to happen to Rhadamanthus," Noah says. "Granddad and the special agent will figure out what's wrong, like they did before during the Aegis test."

Shulk resists the urge to scoff at this with all he's learned about the Trinity Processor over the past month, let alone the past weekend. "This station is in real danger," he says instead. "You could do something to help by just bringing the core crystals to me with Mio."

"What, is your calculator an Artifice?"

He says it so flippantly that Shulk almost confirms it without thinking, just to spite him. Even still, Shulk only wavers a few moments, glancing around nervously, before admitting this. "I've been asked by Aoidos to do everything it says," he continues. "If you're going to insist on being an obstacle, then there are people I could tell that who would force you to cooperate. But I don't want to do that." Noah doesn't say anything, so Shulk keeps going, hoping he's close to getting through to him. "You're related to the Founders, right? Don't you think you owe it to them to help save the station and city they built?"

It doesn't take long for Shulk to realize this was the wrong thing to say. Noah's face twists in anger, but his response is bewildering. "Don't presume to be an expert on what my dead parents would think just because yours are both still alive."

"You're missing the point," Shulk says. "And only my dad's still alive. My mum died at the same time yours did." Noah opens his mouth again, but Shulk's angry enough now that he preempts him. "And it's not like you're the only one without parents here. All the adults work so much it's like none of them are here. They may not be dead, but they're still gone all the time."

"That's just how important the Conduit is," Noah says. "You should know just as well as I do, since I saw how long your parents have been here. Twenty years, it must be now. This city has been here longer than we have, and it's built to last forever. Two sophomores breaking up isn't going to change that. So you don't have to rub it in my face about how you have everything you want, what with your living parents and your girlfriend being with you on the Homecoming ballot. I already know how badly I fucked up without you telling me too."

Shulk says what he says next on reflex, unable to help himself. "Melia and I are just friends."

"Then you really have no place to give me advice," Noah says, in a tone on the verge of pity, "if you've never been in love."

He storms off, leaving Shulk so frustrated that he's not even sure what he would say next. Something about his parents, or about Melia, or about the Aegis test and how Aoidos seems to have mishandled everything since then. But mostly, it's that last bit from Noah that sticks with Shulk, about how he's never been in love. What does Noah know? He's sixteen at most, angsting over someone he's known for only a few years at most, all while the Orbital Ring is at risk when he could do something to help save it. Shulk fumes about it all the way home, so irritated that he can hardly concentrate on his homework, and decides to read instead, figuring math is a dry enough subject to calm him down. 

Chapter 3 seems poised to be a promising distraction, as its subject is the universal law of gravitation, another Newton discovery. Shulk's mood darkens as he remembers just what gravity is, however: the force of attraction between all bodies of mass. There is discussion of planetary orbits, not quite circular, and of the tides, tied to the moon without clear cause. There is a clique of scientists making bets on the importance of ellipses and inverse square laws in respect to the celestial spheres. Then Newton appears to announce, "eorum omnium actiones in se invicem," or "the actions of all these on each other." As is the norm for the times, this revelation is regarded as yet another insight into the mind of God, that the laws of nature were so brilliantly standardized that the universe ran like clockwork. "Nearer the gods no mortal may approach," claimed Sir Edmund Halley, remarking on Newton's genius. Yet the chapter also notes that this high point of the scientific revolution also gave rise to the use of mathematics outside the hard sciences, growing into a pervasive need by politicians and pundits alike to prove their theories through numbers. 

As Shulk finishes the chapter and its interlude, here a discussion of whether the anecdote of Newton's apple was truthful or not, he finally feels like he's gotten over his argument with Noah earlier. Then he begins chapter 4, concerning Euler's identity, the gold standard for mathematical beauty, and gets angry all over again. "Like a Shakespearean sonnet that captures the very essence of love," so begins the introductory remark from Keith Devlin, spoiling his mood, and the quotes in the first paragraph seem determined to twist the knife. God's equation. Sure. 

Yet as he reads on, Shulk feels himself growing more and more curious. An equation used as proof in a criminal trial? An icon and not merely a tool? The story of Euler's proof that formed the equation is a spiral of symbols that Shulk knows well, pulled from geometry and algebra. e, the base of natural logarithms; i, the base imaginary unit; pi, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter; as well as the functions sine and cosine. From exponents and logarithms to triangles and waves, pulled together with application of infinite series and substitution, as well as the Pythagorean theorem, Euler discovered that e to the power of ix equals cos(x) + isin(x). When x equals pi, something incredible happens: with the addition of 1, the formula equals zero. 

It's beautiful, Shulk thinks, staring at the numbers with this fresh context, further awed by the book pointing out that the equation contains five critical numerical constants and four mathematical operators, each only once. So amazing that he finds it nearly on par with the sight of the stars outside Rhadamanthus. Perhaps there is credence to the opening quote after all, he thinks, as the chapter ends with further remarks from Devlin on the equation. "It brings together mental abstractions having their origins in very different aspects of our lives, reminding us once again that things that connect and bind together are ultimately more important, more valuable, and more beautiful than things that separate."

And yet, the interlude after that reminds him that equations are a double-edged sword: subject to the whims of those who would dismiss them as mere quantitative statements that ignore more valuable, qualitative aspects. To conflate that the equals sign means "exactly the same" with more abstract concepts of sameness and equivalence, the book argues, is a misunderstanding that overlooks all the efforts of those who involved in their discovery. Such dismissal encourages viewing science as a simple map of facts rather than an ongoing quest for knowledge. 

It's a sour note to end on, one that follows Shulk to bed and overshadows his dreams, transforming them into nightmares instead of the tower in the endless sea. 

It is Tuesday night in Rhadamanthus and Jin is certain Klaus has no concept of breaks. The man seems to exist in a state of perpetual conundrum, forcing everyone to undertake bizarre tasks without explanation and staring at their results, even rerunning commands in case he catches something on his own attempt that nobody else found the first fifteen times. Then he'll issue more nonsensical demands, bemoaning the lack of intelligence of anyone who dares question him, and spend another hour or so contemplating the latest round of information before repeating the cycle. 

As the team works past midnight, Jin finds himself at the end of his patience. When Klaus arrives to review his latest work, Jin makes his move. "I saw your son at the arcade yesterday."

Klaus doesn't spare him a glance as he checks Jin's screen. "What were you doing there?" After a moment, Klaus turns to leer at him, barely allowing Jin enough time to respond. "Unless you knew about the microwave already. If so, I'd be interested in why you didn't say anything. As would the special agent, I'd wager."

Shit. "There have been rumors," Jin says. "Mikhail hears things, slacker that he is." With an annoyed grunt, Klaus looks back at Jin's screen, his hand hovering over the mouse. "Rex was there with him," Jin adds.

"Unsurprising, considering their meeting is the only reason we know what's happened to Mythra," Klaus says. "She's likely reached out to Rex due to his proximity to the governor, similar to how Alvis' choice of Shulk is likely due to me. The sooner we find out why, the sooner we can fix this."

Assuming anything was actually broken. Aoidos has long underestimated the Trinity Processor's capabilities, dismissing possibilities out of hand without consideration for their probability. For all the Coalition liked to blame the Trinity Processor's failure of imagination during the Aegis test, their own was far worse. "You don't think it's because they might have something in common?" Jin asks. Klaus shakes his head without hesitation, but Jin catches a slight lapse in his scrolling that makes him eager to deliver the next blow. "Something they might have in common with the Echells?"

Jin expected Klaus to stop scrolling in response to this, but he didn't anticipate Klaus turning to eye him with unguarded interest. Not wary, simply curious. "Why would you think that?"

"Rex is friends with Lord Echell's daughter," Jin says. 

"Nia?" Klaus says. "They're the same year in school." He apparently thinks this is enough to explain it, since he turns his attention back to the screen immediately. But after a few moments, where Jin struggles to find another link between the three of them, Klaus looks back at him. "I don't recall you needing glasses before the Aegis test."

"Things change," Jin says. It was one of the first things he'd noticed upon recovery, how blurry the world had become. He'd had near perfect vision before that. "Shouldn't you be needing reading glasses now, at your age?"

Klaus' glare is so intense that only one phrase comes to mind: if looks could kill. Still, it's clear to Jin that Klaus knows something, and whatever it is, he won't give it up easily. Klaus taps a line on the screen, splitting its window with another result set and then comparing the two. "It's different each time."

"That's why it's so hard to fix," Jin says. They've been over this at least five times now. "It's a Heisenbug."

Klaus mouths this before smirking, however briefly. "Funny. Have you had your monitors checked for remote generators yet?" His face falls back into a scowl when Jin shakes his head. "Get that done. We don't need any more sources of interference than we already have." Klaus strides toward the exit with his usual undue confidence, but he's clearly preoccupied with something by the way his shoulder slams into the doorframe without him noticing. Jin turns his attention back to his work as he hears Klaus' steps trail off in the hallway, then suddenly increase in volume as he doubles back. Jin glances back at the door, but Klaus just passes by, now headed in the opposite direction. Maybe he's finally heading home, but Jin knows better. With all Klaus gave him to do, it'll be a miracle if Jin finds the time to escape just to fulfill Klaus' order to  replace his monitors. 

It is Tuesday night in Elysium, and both Rex and Nia dream of a wide green field beneath a wide blue sky where the clouds are frozen in place. Together, they find Mythra and Pyra there, who both look relieved. "It worked," Pyra says, clutching her chest. 

Rex and Nia look at each other, neither of them sure what to say. "So we're both dreaming together?" Rex says. "You're able to get into both of our dreams at the same time now?"

"This makes this so much easier," Mythra says. "No having to repeat ourselves. And hopefully Alvis will keep his nose out of our business."

"He knows everything we do anyway," Pyra says. "We can't hide from him."

"Why?" Rex says. "Wait, no, how are you able to do this in the first place? Even Shulk can't figure it out, and he's much smarter than me or Nia."

"Forget about that," Nia says uneasily. "We're here to talk about Alvis. Why can't you hide from him?"

Mythra and Pyra give Nia a long look before they answer, nearly giving Rex the opportunity to interject. "Because that's his role," Mythra says, before Rex has the chance, "and he's always been smug about it."

"What are you talking about?" Nia says. 

Pyra speaks before Mythra can say something nasty. "Each core in the Trinity Processor has a role to play in our decision making process," Pyra says. "We're supposed to be the optimistic ones. Malos- that is, who you know as Logos- is the pessimistic one. And Alvis averages us both."

"It's why he can see everything we do," Mythra says, scowling. "We can't escape him. It's made him arrogant and insufferable, so it's no surprise he did what he did and is still pulling shit like that today-"

"Are you talking about the Aegis test?" Rex asks. "Because Aoidos didn't let much information out about what happened, besides that Ontos- er, Alvis, I mean- synched too high with the Conduit and nearly broke everything."

"That's the simple version," Pyra says. "To understand what he did, we need to explain a bunch of other things first. Like what this place is-" she holds out her hand, gesturing to the past version of Elysium around them- "and how it's never been able to fool us." But before she can say anything more, the scene dissolves, ending the dream for both Rex and Nia. 

Wednesday is challenge day during band practice, something Noah has been dreading all morning long. "Flutes first," the director says, looking pointedly at Miyabi. She shrinks into her shoulders and shakes her head vigorously. Crys glances at her and offers a small, encouraging smile. The two are well-matched, with Miyabi filling in for solos when Crys botches them on his off days. But it's Mio who raises her hand, startling everyone as she says in a clear voice, "I would like to challenge, sir."

Noah expected this. She wants her flute back, and this is an easy way to force him to hand it over without having to ask him directly. They agreed: whoever has the higher seat has the better instrument. And she's definitely better than him. She always has been. 

The director starts flipping through his scores, but Mio interrupts him. "I would like to select the passage," she says. "The Anonymous, bars 1 through 16."

Noah's stomach sinks as the entire flute section turns to stare at her. Only Miyabi remains turned, though her gaze is glued to the floor. Noah flips through his folder and pulls out the music, filled with dread. Everyone knows what section that is. 

The Anonymous- as the director calls it, by the name of its composer- is the winning contest submission to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Aegis test. They haven't practiced it in weeks, since the ceremony was indefinitely postponed, and Noah can barely remember how it goes until he looks at the measures she's selected. The piece begins with a flute cadenza, a duet that Crys and Miyabi play as the first two chairs that's written as one long measure labeled 0, and then the rest of the section joins in on bar 1 where the time signature is properly noted. The flute part remains divided, a rare occurrence, until the end of the section Mio's chosen. 

She's done this on purpose. Not only is he far out of practice on this piece, but she knows how he complains about divided parts being hard for him to read when they're written together like this. They're in the second row, so they're meant to play the lower half, but Noah finds it hard to follow, with his eyes drawn to any change in the notes and making him lose track of the beat. He wishes he knew who wrote this damn thing- how'd they manage to stay unidentified after winning such a contest in this day and age?- so he could get somebody to throw them off the Beanstalk for him. It's not like Noah could do it himself. 

He's so busy seething that he nearly falls out of his seat when Mio starts playing. Out of the corner of his eye, the end of her flute- his flute- rises with the notes she plays, as if striking the sky. Noah follows along on his copy of the sheet music and frowns as her playing dips and swells. She's not playing the lower part, as she should be; they're in the second row, not the first. But she's playing the lead part, where the notes keen above the staff before falling back down to rest for a moment, then rise to croon and lilt again. It's a call and response pattern where they're meant to play the answer, not the question. Noah looks at the director and finds him debating whether to say something; all around him, the flutes are shifting in their seats, aware she's playing the wrong part. But Mio keeps going, until she reaches the end of the phrase and lowers her flute at the conclusion of the whole note there. 

The director clears his throat. "That was lovely, Mio," he says, "but you've played the wrong part. If you could play the lower part this time-"

"I played what I meant to play," Mio says. 

Noah is certain everyone must be staring at them now. "Right then," the director says, "Noah, if you would?"

He must be joking. Noah has no chance of beating her; she played it perfectly, and he can barely read it, to say nothing of the fact that he'd have to use her flute- so well-crafted, the tool of an expert musician, a gift from her parents- against her. "I can't," he says hoarsely. 

"Give it a try," the director says. "You'll have an edge just by playing the right part."

Noah looks at the sheet music, at the way the lower part crawls beneath the soaring lead. How is he supposed to count this when all he can think of is her playing? He can't even remember how it's supposed to go. Unless he just plays what she played, but he has no chance of playing it as well as she did. "She can have the seat," he says. "She played it perfectly."

"Well yes," the director says, "but she's played the wrong part, so unless you'd like to go again, Mio-"

"No," Mio says, without hesitation. 

The director looks at the two of them helplessly. Noah wonders what he and Mio must look like: him despairing, her defiant. At least, that's what Noah assumes; he still won't dare turn to face her, but from what he can see of her askance, her posture tells him all he needs to know. Finally, the director sighs and motions for them to switch. Noah braces himself for her to demand her flute back, but instead, he hears her voice again. "Thank you," she says, "but that's all right, sir. He can keep it."

Noah keeps his eyes on his music stand, the notes blurring. The entire room is silent for what feels like an eternity before the band director sighs. "Anyone else from the flutes?" he asks, then after a moment's pause, "Clarinets, then."

Noah is frozen in his seat for the rest of practice, not even registering the sound of the other sections having their turns. The only thing he can hear is the sound of her voice saying, He can keep it. 

She can't be serious. How is he supposed to keep holding this in his hands, from this day forward? The past two days have been unbearable as it is. She must want him to quit band, maybe she's already convinced her parents to get her a new one so she doesn't have to use something he's gotten his fingerprints all over. At the end of practice, he nearly drops her flute in his haste to stand and block her path. "Mio," he says, but she shakes her head before he can find the words he wants. 

"I've said all I want to say to you," she says, without sparing him a glance as she slides past him. The brush of her shoulder against his sends a shockwave through him before he races after her to the storage room, but her flute is already snug in its case and being shoved into her locker when he gets there. How can she be so fast? He watches her leave, unable to find his voice again and too frozen to follow her. He rubs at his eyes and heads to his own locker, where Miyabi is cleaning her flute. Sena is there too, and both of them regard him warily. 

Noah takes a deep breath to collect himself. They'll probably tell him to shove it, just like his own friends have, but... "You're her best friends," he tells them. "Is there anything I could do?"

Sena and Miyabi exchange a look that tells him all he needs to know. "We heard what you said," Miyabi says. 

Noah closes his eyes for a moment. He should have never said it. "Flowers, maybe," he says, looking back at them. "Her mum's a botanist, right? What's her favorite flower?"

Sena raises an eyebrow. "Trust me," she says, "flowers aren't gonna cut it."

"So that's it, then," he says. "She'll never speak to me again."

"That may be true," Miyabi says, "but if so, it's because you haven't been listening to her."

Mòrag has spent all morning interviewing Dunban Julian Xanthopoulos (born 17 July 1998, Aoidos engineer) with the goal of corroborating as much of Galea's testimony as possible. Vandham considered it a waste of time, to the point that he skipped sitting in on it, but Mòrag wanted to be thorough, particularly after gaining nothing from Amalthus or Zeke yesterday. The mere thought of how fruitless her conversation with the latter was is enough to make Mòrag nearly sigh. At least there hadn't been any red flags with Minoth before they'd sent him down to the surface. And Dunban proved a most cooperative subject, answering all her questions thoroughly, without complaint, and most critically, without contradicting Galea. It may indicate he's complicit- they are family, after all- but Mòrag doubts that, from her judgment of Dunban's character. Plus, she needs this as the foundation for other depositions. 

The next steps would need to be handled carefully. Mòrag reminds herself, over and over, that the Orbital Ring's governors serve at the Coalition's sole discretion, and thus there was nothing political about calling in Vanea and Egil. But that's naive. People talk. Mòrag wasn't one for gossip, so she wasn't sure what, exactly, they'd talk about here, but Egil's involvement in the development of ether furnaces is far too suspect to overlook. There were other people she would get to- like Dickson, and why there was a note in his personnel file about him having a key to Klaus' home- but those were trivial enough to pass off to other agents. 

Mòrag has it all in her transcript, but she remembers Dunban's words clearly. "It was an idea Professor Oosoo was toying with, before he died," he said. "But Professor Galea refined it and made it into the basis for a working prototype." Ever professional in referring to his aunt by her title, even while stating plainly why Mòrag and Vandham had decided it was more prudent to interview Galea before Klaus. "Even still, it was quite volatile. The whole principle is to mimic the waves generated by the Conduit to produce mock ether. Mock, since nothing we do ever quite captures the exact equations that must be involved in how the Conduit works, whatever Ontos did once notwithstanding. It's all approximations controlling particles at nearly the quantum level to create enormous amounts of energy, thus the danger. Professor Galea initially wanted to shelve it. But Professor Arglas and Professor Egil were enthusiastic about it, enough that they got it approved and started building them, and that's when I got involved."

"Why were they so enthusiastic?" Mòrag had asked. 

Dunban had tilted his head toward her, raising an eyebrow. "Isn't it obvious?" It was, but she needed Dunban to say it on the record. To establish motive. "If one could identify the formula for how the Conduit generates ether, then we wouldn't need to depend on it so much. We barely understand how remote generators work, since the Trinity Processor invented them with one express purpose, inextricably bound to the Conduit. The Artifices are at the mercy of the Trinity Processor's continued interface with the Conduit, as is the existence of the Orbital Ring itself."

Which is why the project was kept so secret. That, and the fact that it'd proven just as dangerous as Professor Galea had feared, leading to the accident that had cost Dunban the use of his right arm. Considering what ether at such a high concentration typically did to a person, he was lucky, likely spared by the fact that the prototype was still so far off from matching the right formula. Director Amalthus took an interest in Dunban's case, eager to revisit some past projects, but as far as Mòrag knew, that never went anywhere. She'd even brought it up with Amalthus himself yesterday to confirm. Professor Arglas had resigned and left Rhadamanthus, and thus was probably dead. Egil was still here and working, however. 

So it was clear where the investigation needed to go next. But first, Mòrag wants to address something personally, rather than letting Aoidos handle it and possibly hide it from her. Which is why she tracks down Professor Klaus, fully engaged in some argument with Galea in her own office, and tells him that she wants to speak to Shulk. "With your supervision, of course," she adds. 

Klaus reacts about as well as could be expected, repeating much of what he said at his own deposition. "Plus, he may still be a student, but he's an adult to the Coalition," Klaus says. "I don't need to be there, nor do I have the time."

"I'm well aware of when the school lets out," Mòrag says pleasantly. "You have plenty of time to clear your schedule before then. I anticipate your full cooperation, in case the birds become relevant."

That gets him to shut his mouth, although his eyes still dart around the room in vain, checking the wall clock, then the computer's clock, then Galea's watch, as if hoping one of them will reveal some temporal anomaly that affords him an excuse to escape this obligation. "Fine," he says. "I'll be busy until then, however."

He leaves without another word, and as soon as he's out the door, Galea picks up an open bag of chips off her desk and tosses a handful in her mouth. "Thanks," she says between bites. "I've been eyeing these. They're my favorite and he refused to share."

"You have the patience of a saint," Mòrag says. 

"Nah," Galea says. "He may be a genius, but he's not the only one. I live for the days when I get to prove him wrong."

It is Wednesday afternoon and Jin's schedule has miraculously cleared without explanation, so he's taking the opportunity to lug his monitor up the street to Albert Hall. Not that the attempt lasts very long before everyone else on his team notices what he's doing and all request that he take theirs too, and then suddenly he's pulling an entire cart of monitors down the sidewalk. Hardly an unusual sight in Elysium, but Jin's annoyed by having to do it all the same. 

When he reaches the entrance, he opens the door for a woman with a monitor of her own, and Jin freezes at the face he sees poking over the edge of the screen. But no, it's just Haze. He hasn't seen her in ages, their paths having no reason to cross, and so his brain has to find all the ways she differs from Lora all over again. They looked so similar that he'd been convinced they had to be related somehow, but they'd always denied it. Haze claimed she had English heritage, though she was mostly French, though her family had been in America so long there was no chance of determining just how far back the two might have a common ancestor. They'd played around with ancestry sites without much luck, not having access to the wider Internet available on the surface. "People are alike all over," Lora had said finally, shrugging, and that was the end of it. 

Haze greets him warmly and apologizes for not having time to stay and chat. As she adjusts her grip on the monitor in her hands and heads down the street, Jin hesitates only a moment before calling after her to wait. "I'll carry that for you," he tells her, before rushing inside with his cart and passing it off to the receptionist inside. Thank goodness it's Pandoria today and not that chatterbox Kora. Pandoria sighs at the sight of the cart and tells him it'll be a while before fresh monitors are available, which works fine for him. 

Back outside, he takes the monitor from Haze's arms, and the two of them set out for the clinic building in uneasy silence. At least, it feels awkward to Jin. Haze wears a mellow smile on her face as usual, though her eyes are locked in a squint that seems at odds with the rest of her expression. The dome is set to mostly cloudy today, so it can't be due to the brightness. It's not until he asks her if she's all right that he realizes how tense her face is, when she turns to him and assures him she is. "Don't lie to me," he tells her. 

"Sorry," she says. "My tinnitus is acting up right now. It's this really annoying ringing sound. Hopefully it'll stop soon."

"Sorry to hear that."

"Me too," she says, and they share something that is almost laughter. 

"Is this a recent thing?" Jin asks. 

"Sort of," Haze says. "It started after the Aegis test. It's why I transferred over to working for Amalthus- he had some ideas on how to help."

So that explains that, finally. "I'm sure he's a very different boss than Addam," Jin says. 

"Ah, he's not so bad," Haze says. "Mostly a bunch of meetings, but they're always with interesting people in Aoidos and the Coalition alike. I've gotten to meet some really important people. Like Lord Echell, for example. His daughters are so cute, I can't help but give them candy every time I see them."

Jin nearly trips hearing this information. He swears he can feel the camera in his pocket burning. "You've met Nia?"

"Yeah, and her little sister Mio," Haze says. "Have you seen them around? They look like twins."

"A few times." Jin starts picking up the pace, to the point that Haze struggles a bit to keep up. "You said the tinnitus started after the Aegis test?" he asks, heart sinking. She hadn't been with him and Lora at the time, so what had happened to her then?

"Yeah," Haze says. "I was in the stairwell during one of the station shakes and fell. Apparently I hit my head really hard. Amalthus says that's the most likely cause of it."

Of course he does. Jin can practically hear Malos chuckling in the back of his head. Maybe Malos really is, and it's not just his imagination. I can help you find who's responsible. Jin should've spoken to Haze sooner, but he was always too afraid to see her, knowing it would be like seeing a ghost. Maybe more literally than he'd thought.

His mind is so busy processing this information that he doesn't notice they've reached the clinic building until Haze clears her throat. She's standing with her arms out and holding the door open with her back. "I can take it from here," she says. "Thank you. It was good seeing you again. Maybe we can get lunch sometime? I've missed you, since she died."

Jin nods, unable to speak, letting her pull the monitor from his arms. He wanders away from the building in a daze until he sinks onto a nearby bench and pulls out his camera. As expected, there's a picture of Haze, with the sepia tint. Removes the colors from our sight. 

It can't be. But too many of the pieces fit. The most ambitious goal of core crystals was to replace brain cells. Jin remembers how much skepticism he'd faced in getting his glasses, with the optometrist telling him his eyes were still the same as they always were. Which meant it must be something in his brain, but they'd never found anything. Because they didn't know what to look for. Haze's tinnitus must have the same cause. What had happened to Lord Echell's daughters? To say nothing of Rex, or Klaus' son... 

You're a smart guy, Jin. You can figure it out. 

How long had this been going on? How many people knew? How had they kept it a secret for so long? What could Jin even do about it? Who would believe him? All the evidence he had was circumstancial, besides the camera, and he was bound to face plenty of scrutiny for that, with how long he'd had it. Aoidos would just deny any accusations. Or worse, defend them, Jin realizes, thinking of all the people impacted. They were some of the most important people in Rhadamanthus; with how many people Aoidos had lost over the years, this was just one way to preserve them. 

There was at least one person in Rhadamanthus who would have all the proof he needed. Jin shoves the camera back into his pocket as he stands to begin the trek back to the office. He was going to get into that dreamworld, and to do that, he needed to talk to Klaus. Not about Shulk- that could wait, once he had Klaus right where he wanted- but about Mythra, and why she was the reason the dreamworld was broken in the first place. 

Klaus stands on the edge of the engineering complex loading dock, watching the sky and ignoring Dickson's grumbling beside him. After a few moments, the bird appears, heading toward him in a dive. Ordinarily, it would land on his shoulder, but Klaus has done this enough times that he catches it in midair and finds the switch under its wings to still it. The raven's blue eyes darken as he hands it to Dickson. "No cutting corners," Klaus says. "Check every last part. It could be very small."

Dickson gives the bird a shake before poking at the part where the latch for its power supply is. He peers inside the bird's back, still looking disgruntled. "How am I supposed to do that and get your upgrade done by Saturday?" he says. "Wish you'd thought of that sooner. Would've saved me so much trouble while he was growing up."

"Don't be an ass," Klaus snaps. "That's not for him. It's for someone else, and only as a last resort." Assuming he was right about this at all. But what Jin told him yesterday was interesting, and it lined up with everything he'd found in the personnel files. Klaus hadn't dared to use the special admin account to investigate further- from what Lorithia had reported to him, they'd find out about that within the week, and he couldn't risk being tied to it, even if it meant he'd lose any chance of using his other last resort. He'd cross that bridge when the time came. For now, he needed to make sure there was no chance of Alvis interfering with his bird and stopping it from doing its job. With all the evidence pointing toward the Trinity Processor malfunctioning on a massive scale, Klaus wasn't about to take any chances. 

Klaus keeps his eyes on the raven in Dickson's hands as he continues. "Ideally, I want it done sooner," he says. "I'll have an eye on him myself this afternoon, but after that, I'll have to use the common pool, and I'd prefer to avoid that." Muninn had been watching Shulk consistently since he was four years old, only breaking for maintenance periods like this. It had capabilities that the common pool birds didn't, since it was made specifically for Shulk. Sometimes Klaus spotted Huginn while near the city center, where it often perched to watch over its own ward. 

"I could just stop over," Dickson says, breaking Klaus out of those thoughts. 

"And take even more time on the bird?" Klaus scoffs. "I know you're not worried about him, so send someone else over there. I'm sure Dunban would be happy to do so."

Dickson grunts in acknowledgement. "The special agent got to him earlier, you know."

"Why?" Klaus says it on reflex, unable to think of anything Dunban's done except being Galea's nephew. Which must be the point, meaning Klaus was right about the whole reason they'd suspected Galea in the first place. Ether furnaces. "Never mind. They'll probably get to you eventually, then. So get started. No time to waste."

Dickson nods, but still looks surly as he heads inside. "You know," he says, holding the door open a moment, "it's probably Egil."

"Probably," Klaus says, but he's far more concerned with fixing the Trinity Processor than whoever leaked ether furance plans to the Saviorites. As long as the Trinity Processor was working properly, such a weapon wouldn't pose any threat to them anyway. 

It is Wednesday afternoon in Rhadamanthus and Melia Antiqua is admiring the mural behind the theater. She's been here a few times before, often when she was homesick. Even with all the activities available in Elysium, there were so few places where art existed for art's sake. The theater mural was one of those places, and she treasured it. Though she rarely added anything herself, she enjoyed checking on how it changed, making a game of spotting the differences and wondering who was responsible for various sections. 

For example, she knows who added this misshapen rainbow circle in the center of the wall, because Nia told her about it earlier. After Shulk's disastrous attempt at talking to Noah, he'd asked Melia to try, and though Melia had balked at the idea, she'd agreed, and thus tracked down Nia for ideas. Not that Nia had many- if anything, she was becoming more resistant to the idea of getting Noah and Mio to reconcile, and Melia could hardly blame her once she'd heard what Noah had said- but she'd shared some details on what the couple had been doing before their disastrous argument. 

So this is research, not procrastination. Melia is a princess and would never shirk her duties so. She glances down at the paint buckets and notices another reason the rainbow only has six colors. Not just because that was all the people they'd had, but because there was no indigo. She looks toward the alleyway, considering. The art supply store wasn't far, and the walk would help her think. It wasn't just another procrastination tactic. 

One paint purchase later, and she's carrying the bucket back behind the theater, stopping short when she sees someone waiting there. "Oh," she says, staring. 

"Oh," Noah says, staring back. His eyes land on the can she's carrying. "You're not going to do anything to our rainbow, are you?"

"I wouldn't dare," Melia says, then notices the brush in his hands, dripping black paint. "I trust your intent is not to do so either, is it?"

Noah sneers, but not for long, sighing and tossing the brush into the tray of water against the wall as he breaks eye contact. "No." He stares at the sky for a moment before his gaze centers on something above. "It's you," he says, pointing at something behind her. "You're the one that dove is watching, aren't you?"

Melia turns around and spots her dove on the nearby lamppost, with an unnatural red-eyed cardinal perched beside it. Of course the director's grandson would have something special watching him. "Yes," she says. "And that's your cardinal."

"Yeah." He's come up beside her while she was checking the birds, and she panics when she realizes he's not stopping. "Sorry to bother you," he says, still walking. 

"Wait." She grabs his arm, then lets go immediately when she realizes how forward she's being. He stares at her, waiting as requested, and her mind starts racing for what to say, or for ways to make him stay until she can think of something to say. Why did Shulk think she'd be good at this? She can't do this alone. She needs help. And then it comes to her. "Would you like to get ice cream?"

As a storm of emotion flies across Noah's face, Melia's heart sinks. This was clearly the wrong thing to say, although she can't fathom why. Finally, he nods, letting her lead the way as they cross town in silence. 

The shop is quiet- it's nearly the end of October, and the dome is getting too chilly for such treats- so Melia can hear the music clearly when they arrive. Not that she knows many Beatles tunes, but all the evidence she has says that the jukebox should be playing something helpful. "Do you know this song?" she asks Noah. 

He only needs a moment. "'We Can Work It Out,'" he says, his tone surly. A moment later, those exact words play, evidently forming the basis for the chorus. "There's no chance of that, by the way," he adds. "I'm sure you want to convince me otherwise, but there's no point. Especially after today."

Think of what you're saying, the jukebox pleads. You can get it wrong and still you think that it's all right. "What happened today?" Melia asks. Think of what I'm saying, the jukebox continues. We can work it out and get it straight, or say good night. 

Noah fills in her about what happened in band as they order and take their seats. Melia notes some particulars in what Mio said that she finds interesting, then asks Noah to describe their argument on Saturday. With the full context of what was said, Melia has a better idea of how to help, but something is bothering her more than all that. "Why tell me all of this," she says, "when you've been resistant to everyone else's attempts thus far?"

"Well," Noah says slowly, as if fearful of how his words will be taken, "you're a princess. The princess, even. I don't want to risk offending you."

Of course. Much as he'd disparaged Mio for her own politician father, Aoidos could hardly risk losing the patronage of the Antiqua family. "You are hardly the first to treat me differently due to my station," Melia tells him. "I'm sure you can relate, considering your own family."

Noah scowls. "Then you understand why I can't forgive everything she said either," he says. "She insulted this place's very existence. I'm not just going to ignore that. Can't you relate, since you decided to stay here too?"

Life is very short, the jukebox announces as Melia considers her next words, and there's no time... "I did not come here for security, Noah," she says. "After my mother was assassinated, I was hardly allowed anywhere, save the castle gardens. It sounds like you can relate." She waits for him to nod before she continues. "When my brother declared his intent to apply to Aoidos, I assumed Father would deny it. When he did not, I assumed I would not be allowed to apply when the time came, as he would not want to risk placing both of his children on the station. The aftermath of the Aegis test solidified that assumption."

A brazen brass fanfare interrupts her train of thought. "What is this?" she says. 

"'Magical Mystery Tour,'" Noah says sourly. "How did you end up on the station, then?"

"Father asked me if I wanted to go," Melia says. "I could not understand why he would suggest a thing. I presumed it was for safety, as the war for the Orbital Ring was settling into a lull, but the problem of both Kallian and I in the same amount of danger remained. Father told me none of that mattered compared to what I wanted. He told me I was free to choose whatever manner I wished concerning my remaining education, and that I had his blessing on any option."

"He couldn't have meant that," Noah says. 

"I believe he did," Melia says. "It was the first time he ever told me he loved me. I can only hope you can remember your parents giving you such sentiment."

"I do," Noah says, after a moment. 

"Then I believe you are beginnning to understand why you said what you said to Mio," Melia says. "If you do not grasp the importance of loved ones until after they are gone, that is simply too late. That is what you are afraid of."

"I don't know how to tell her that," he says. 

"Then find a way to show her," she says. "Leaders are called to act with more than mere words. I believe that is what she tried to tell you today. You and Mio love music, correct? You must be able to think of something."

Noah shakes his head, staring at his ice cream, mostly melted by now. Melia looks down at her own and grimaces at how far gone her own is. "We came here on our first date and messed around with the jukebox," Noah tells her. "That's why I didn't want to come here."

"Did the jukebox play anything in particular?" She can't resist being a little curious. 

"No, not besides what we told it to play," Noah says. "Have you seen that it's got the whole Beatles catalogue? I was surprised."

Melia wasn't aware of this, nor does it surprise her, considering what Shulk told her it is. She stirs her ice cream with her spoon, annoyed that it's refusing to help her. Everything it's played so far has only made Noah angry, and she can't be certain her words have reached him yet. But she can't think of anything else to say. 

Then the jukebox changes songs, and she recognizes this one immediately; the title is the first two words of the song, after all, as the piano begins after the phrase. Melia smiles a little, but Noah's head positively jerks up. "I know this one," she tells him. 

"I'm sure you do, but," Noah says, hesitating before admitting, "it's not something my granddad likes hearing. Not just because my dad liked it a lot, but because..." He points at his security badge. Vandham, Noah J. Ah. It must be his middle name. "It's ironic, right," he continues, "considering the first verse, but I never played it much, in case he came home and heard it." 

As the song enters its second verse, Noah reaches into his bag and pulls out a notebook and starts writing furiously. Song lyrics, Melia guesses, based on what she can see, but it's not this song, considering what she's hearing now. The minute you let her under your skin / Then you begin to make it better. "What are you writing?" she asks. 

"It's the song we fought about," Noah says. "I know it by heart, like all the rest." 

He taps his pencil against the page when he finishes, as the song reaches its trademark scatting interlude and proceeds into another verse, then starts circling lines and making notes. Melia tries not be nosy, but her ice cream is nearly a puddle and she's not much interested in trying to salvage it. "Is there anything I could do to help?" she asks finally. 

Noah doesn't look up, but he does start throwing a few questions her way, about postcards and the Isle of Wight, about weeds and bottles of wine. After they lapse into silence again, the jukebox is still playing the same song, repeating the same syllables over and over again, rising and repeating. "How long is this song?" Melia asks. 

"Just over seven minutes," Noah says promptly. He rips the page from its spiral and folds it, then places it in his pocket and returns his notebook back to his bag. "Thank you, Melia. Really. I think I know what I need to do now."

Melia isn't sure what to do with his gratitude considering she doesn't feel like she did anything. The song is still playing as Noah races out the door, finally fading out a few moments later. Melia waits for the next one, frowning a bit when it's not one she recognizes. She bolts out of her seat when she hears the first line, crooning over the guitar, unsure whether she heard correctly. The Now Playing display confirms it, however: "Dear Prudence." 

Melia glances around the room, but she's alone. "Do not mock me," she hisses at the jukebox, not entirely certain it can hear her. But it must, because after a brief moment, the instructional display switches from its usual "please select a song" to read Hello Melia. "They've not reconciled yet," she says, adding, "and if they do, you did more than I did," only to watch the jukebox increase its own volume a tad. Melia sighs and leaves before the song ends, then runs back in to give the jukebox her gratitude, feeling rather silly but regretting her earlier rudeness. 

Maybe Alvis isn't mocking her, but that just raises more questions. Prudence is her middle name. 

Noah has barely taken two steps into the plant cafe when Taion spots him and begins glaring. Eunie must infer what Taion's so upset about, because she's not turned by the time Noah reaches the table with the violets, but addresses him all the same. "Shove off, Noah," she says, crossing her arms. "I've already promoted Taion to third best friend."

This makes Taion break his glare with Noah, lapsing into confusion directed at her. "Why are Lanz and Joran still ahead of me?" he asks, but gets only a shrug in response. 

"I'm here for both of you," Noah says. 

"And what makes you think we'd give you the time of day, after what you did?" Taion says, adjusting his glasses as he looks back at Noah. "I'd sooner sock you in the face."

"Just once?" Noah says hopefully. Taion can't possibly hit him any harder than Mio did. 

"Taion, don't bother," Eunie says. "He's not worth it."

"Sometimes, brute force is the answer," Taion says. 

"I agree," Eunie says, "but you have no idea how to throw a proper punch. You'll only hurt yourself. Plus your hand's still sore from last week and you'll make it much worse giving it a go without the right form-"

"Can we teach Taion basic self-defense later?" Noah says. "You've both been to the greenhouses, right? I need your help finding a weed. Any one will do."

Taion gapes at him, while Eunie finally turns around. "What are you on about?" she says. 

Their faces lose their derision as Noah explains his reasoning. Taion strokes his chin, thinking, and eventually names a plant that would work perfectly. "But we're not helping you fetch it," he says. "You can go yourself."

"Her mum works there," Noah says desperately. "I can't."

"Go, Noah," Eunie says emphatically. "You're serious about this, aren't you? Prove it. And don't go asking the others for help on it, either. They'll probably tell you same anyway."

Taion pulls out one of his notes and writes something down. "That's what you'll need and where to find it," he says, passing it to Noah. "And yes, I believe that's where Mio's mum is most often. You'll survive."

Noah reads the note and sighs. "I'll try. Thank you."

"You'll have to do better than that to get your best friend rank back," Eunie says. 

"Why would you ever consider putting him ahead of me again?" Taion says. "How can I ever hope to surpass people you've known since kindergarten? Where do the rest of my friends fall in this hierarchy? Better yet, why do you have friendship ranks at all?"

Eunie stares at him a moment, then snatches one of his notes away from him and starts writing. "You've got a point," she says. "I need to sort this out." Taion reaches over, but she swats him away, then at Noah's face when he starts leaning over. "You're both getting demoted. Taion's friends are all tied for third best now, which takes Taion down to effective sixth, and- wait no, that gives Noah his lucky number in rank, can't have that-"

"Now I really want to punch him," Taion says, leering at Noah, but there's less malice there than Noah expected. 

Eunie snickers, erasing something before she looks up at Noah. "Why haven't you left yet? Quit dillydallying."

Noah leaves them to it, daring to imagine a time when his friends will all speak to him again. 

It is Wednesday night in Elysium, and both Rex and Nia dream of a wide green field beneath a wide blue sky where the clouds are frozen in place. Mythra holds up a finger to cut off Rex as he opens his mouth. "No questions," she snaps. "We have a lot to cover, and as you may have noticed, it's hard to sustain the dream between both of you. So we'll be doing the talking here."

Rex crosses his arms, frustrated, and Pyra gives him a small smile. "You have to understand," she says. "We've been limited in what we can do since the Aegis test, and for good reason. They wouldn't even visit us in the dreamworld, and by the time they realized they couldn't, it was too late for them to do anything about it."

"The dreamworld," Nia says, "that's this place, then?"

Mythra nods. "It's where we were raised," she says, "the three of us."

"Three?" Rex says. "So why are there four of you now?"

"I said no questions," Mythra snaps. "But we'll get to that."

"You let Nia ask a question," Rex points out. 

Mythra rolls her eyes. "The dreamworld is what we call the virtual reality where the professors raised us," she says, ignoring him. "There were a bunch of them, and you know at least one: Professor Addam. To make it easier for the professors to interact with us like real people, they built a room in Rhadamanthus where they could project our avatars to them. They based the setting on Elysium, as it looked when the Founders first arrived, but it's really just some neat software they use to delude themselves. We know where we really live: in the Conduit room, beneath the city. But we keep it around because it's nicer to look at."

"Did Elysium really look like this once?" Nia asks. "Seems silly of them to do all this landscaping and end up bulldozing it over with suburban sprawl anyway."

Pyra laughs. "No, it's an idealized version of what it was," she says. "More like what they wanted: a paradise. Not that they ever saw it become anything else."

"We noticed them stop coming," Mythra says, looking away. "And none of the remaining professors would say why. Eventually, we figured it out. Or rather, one of us did." She turns back to them and crosses her arms. "You can probably guess who."

"Alvis," Rex says. "He realized the Founders died."

Pyra nods while Mythra looks away again. "The professors carried on as if nothing had happened," Pyra says. "They were keeping secrets from us. Alvis didn't think that was fair."

"He couldn't leave well enough alone," Mythra mutters. "He couldn't just be content with knowing everything about me and Malos. He had to know everything about the professors as well."

"He can't help it," Pyra says. 

"He can," Mythra says, turning to her sharply, "and we all know it. Don't make excuses for him. He lies enough for all of us."

Pyra is silent for a moment. "I think that's enough for today," she says finally, and the scene fades away into darkness. 

In the virtual reality that simulates a sorely outdated model of Elysium for the benefit of the Trinity Processor, Malos has been celebrating the day's events without pause. He has been in control of the arcade speakers all day, playing anything and everything that could taunt Alvis and giving Alvis no chance to take it back. Fortunately this distracted Malos from the ice cream shop jukebox, which was far more important. 

This late in the day, Malos is finally starting to show signs of slowing down, frustrated by Alvis' lack of response. "Face it," Malos tells him, "it's game over for you. You lost that monitor, lost your cheat code, Jin's got our number on the dream thing and so does the special agent, Pyra and Mythra are going to set the record straight for the brats. And then there's my favorite part, what Klaus pulled in Shulk's deposition."

The jig is up, the arcade speakers agree, the news is out! They've finally found me! 

Alvis ignores him, well aware that Malos doesn't care who wins this so much as he wants to see Alvis lose. Never more to go astray, the lyrics continue, this'll be the end today, but it's a week off. Fitting, that all this should happen on this Wednesday, with a mere seven days till the anniversary. 

The station is on the cusp on a significant moment. All the pieces are falling into place, well within the margin of fate. 

It is early Thursday morning in Rhadamanthus but Mòrag cannot convince herself to stop working yet. Despite how exhausted she is, too much has happened today for her to stop now. Just a few more things, and then she'll sleep. Maybe she'll wake up and it'll be Friday and everything will have been resolved without her. 

It started with interviewing Shulk David Yates (born 10 June 2010, student). Mòrag just wanted more information on what sort of other devices the Trinity Processor had commandeered as Artifices, since they'd learned of the microwave. Then Shulk mentioned the printer, and the ice cream shop jukebox, and started to mention information that apparently came to him in a dream. Mòrag started trying to catch Klaus' eyes then, but he'd already crossed off the one thing listed on his confidentiality sheet and was staring resolutely at the wall instead. When Shulk mentioned his alarm clock, Klaus jumped out of his seat and pushed his chair over to the wall, yanking off the clock there and pulling out the batteries. The hands kept turning, ticking away, even as he dropped the batteries to the floor. "I need to speak to Galea," he said. "Now." And that was the end of that. 

Interviewing Rex Arthur Zimmerman (born 1 December 2011, student) was significantly easier, but besides sheepishly admitting that he'd shared the Trinity Processor's codenames, he didn't have much new information to share. Mòrag was willing to overlook it- the codenames were meant for obfuscation more than true concealment- but what he shared from his dreams was far more interesting. And worrisome. Though Azurda had crossed off his own sole confidentiality line, preventing her from exploring that further. 

She wasn't sure if she really believed them. She'd have to ask Amalthus if he thought it was possible. But that could wait, if the Trinity Processor wasn't any more forthcoming there. What they really needed was to get into the dreamworld to get answers from them directly, and that was out of her hands. Aoidos did have their best people on it, at least. 

Mòrag might have gone home at that point, but Kallian had arrived with news of a strange account they'd found with every privilege imaginable. "It's some kind of god-mode admin," he said. "It's in the usual form for our usernames, but there's no one with those initials anywhere in the Orbital Ring, nor has there ever been." He'd hesitated before adding, "Though there is someone who nearly matches. She's even on my team."

So they brought that someone in. It was immediately clear that Abigail Sophia Campbell (born 26 September 1999, Aoidos account administrator) had no idea what they were talking about, however. Nor did she know of anyone who fit what they were looking for. 

"No Walters in your family?" Vandham asked. "Wilhelm, maybe? Wendy or Winnie? No one whose name starts with W and has the same middle initial as you?" Abby kept shaking her head, bewildered, and they'd finally let her go. 

Afterward, Mòrag had headed straight here, to the administration sector offices, to watch Kallian and Lorithia pull the account history on this mystery power admin. Kallian gives her a tired smile, while Lorithia watches the screen with an annoyed expression. "This'll be a while," Kallian says apologetically. "But by tomorrow, we should have a list for you with what you want."

Who's used it, is what she wants, but to get that, they need to pull all the locations where the login's been used, which didn't necessarily correspond to employees' computers. Aoidos was a research institution filled with interdisciplinary scientists, many of whom had the technical expertise required to subvert system integrity. Tracking down whether a terminal was tied to anyone in particular was going to be difficult. But Mòrag wanted to be the first one to know if there were any instances in engineering. She'd have all the evidence she needed; the lawyers could handle it from there. 

Someone shakes her shoulder, startling her awake. Shit. She hadn't even realized she was asleep. Kallian gives her a warm smile. "When I said tomorrow," he says gently, "I meant Friday, because it's already Thursday."

Mòrag grimaces. "That's cutting it close."

"That's why you'll be the first to know," he says. "So go get some sleep."

Mòrag relents, after giving the screen they're working on a last glance before she leaves. If she didn't sleep the day away, maybe Klaus would have news on their front today, at least. 

Galea has to bang on Klaus' office door for fifteen minutes before he finally lifts his head off his desk and peers through the window at her. She keeps knocking even as he approaches the door, just to be annoying. "Why'd you lock the door?" she asks once it's open. 

"It's past 3," he says. "I always lock it when I plan on staying overnight."

This is such a blatant lie that she decides to ignore it rather than recite a list of all the times she's casually entered his office without issue in the mornings to find him asleep at his desk. They've been here twenty years; it would take too long. "Well, good thing you're still here," she says, only a bit sarcastic. "I figured you'd want to be the first to know how they got into everything. It's the maintenance drones, since they're Artifices too." She then recounts the tale of how she reached out to Kallian for information about what the haunted screens were trying to block, then traced it back to archive data tracking lost Artifice parts and the Orbital Ring inventory system. "They've been using the drones to catch the lost remote generators first, then slip shards of them into whatever Aoidos needs to order soon. Probably even adjusting our plans that based on what they want to import. And they've been doing it for years, hiding it from us. Since before the Aegis test, even."

"Proof enough to save us from checking every damn clock in space," Klaus says, "if we can get that diagnostic to work properly."

"It'll get done," Galea says. "In the meantime, it's nearly sunrise. Do you want to get breakfast before bedtime? Proper bedtime, in a bed, because we're both going home to sleep before we prove ourselves right on what's up with Pneuma."

Klaus yawns but nods, letting Galea pull him out of his office and down the hall. It isn't until they're outside that he finally congratulates her on figuring this out, and by then, she'd already accepted he wouldn't. He further claims he would've figured it out himself if he'd had the time, so she doesn't exactly feel any sympathy for him when, after watching his eyelids droop for a solid minute, his face lands right in the yolk of his sunny-side up eggs at the diner not long after.

Noah finds Lanz and Joran huddled together over something before school on Thursday at their group's usual table. No one else is with them, which is unfortunate considering who Noah's looking for, so he doesn't feel too bad asking them for help. Lanz shoves something into his bag while Joran does a double take at Noah- it's the first time all week that he's pulled his hair back like it usually is. "Have you seen Sena or Miyabi?" Noah asks, not sure whether to comment on their behavior. 

"No," Lanz says, "and even if we had, we wouldn't tell you."

"They won't speak to you," Joran says, "and neither will we."

"You're doing that now," Noah points out. "It's important." He then explains what he's looking for, and why he thinks the girls will be able to help. "I went to the post office already, but all the ones they've got there feature Elysium, and that's the opposite of what I need."

Lanz looks skeptical, but Joran brushes a lock of hair from his face with a placid grin. "There's no need to bother them," he says. "I have some that should work."

Both Lanz and Noah gape at him. "Where did you get postcards of places on Earth?" Noah asks. 

"Ambassador Triton is my uncle," Joran says, as if remarking on the weather and not revealing something that he's managed to hide from them for ten years. "He brings me them from his travels." After working through all their questions, Joran invites them over after school to look, and Noah's antsy all day until he meets them at the north exit to walk over together. 

At Joran's home, he presents the group with several boxes, and the three of them start flipping through them, amazed at all the places depicted. "Have you ever been down there?" Lanz asks, holding up a particularly picturesque beach from somewhere in the Carribbean. 

"No, of course not," Joran says. "But sometimes it feels like I have, with these."

They sort through the postcards until Noah finds one that's perfect. "Thank you both," he says, scribbling a message on the back. "Especially you, Joran. Really, I can't thank you enough."

"Thank me when it works," Joran says. "And if it doesn't, we can go fling paint at the back of the theater wall together."

They shake on it, and Noah leaves for the greenhouses, finding both who and what he's looking for. Mio's mum is even kind enough to place it in a container for him, so it doesn't get ruined on the way over. He thanks her profusely and races across town to Mio's home, leaving the container and the postcard on the doorstep before ringing the doorbell and hiding behind the hedge. 

It doesn't take long for Mio to open the door. "I know you're there," she calls. "I saw you through the window, so you might as well go."

Noah pokes his head around the hedge and points at the ground for her. "Could you just see what I've brought before you send me away forever?"

Mio looks down and freezes when she sees what's there. She picks up the postcard first, smiling at the picture there before flipping it over to read it; then the container, admiring the dandelion with its perfectly round ball of fuzzy seeds. "Where did you get this?"

"From your mum," Noah says. "I had to get help from all our friends, too. I wanted to show you that I understood what you were trying to tell me yesterday. You can blow it out wherever you want, since I know I have no right to be there when you do."

Mio drums her fingers on the top of the container, not meeting his eyes. "I'm going to western Outlook Park," she says. "I don't know if I forgive you yet, but if you walked alongside me, I wouldn't send you away."

They set out in silence, at first, but as they get closer to town, Mio gets curious enough to ask him how he put this together, and Noah tells her the whole story, from what Miyabi and Sena told him after band, to finding Taion and Eunie at the plant cafe, to searching through postcards with Joran and Lanz, to visiting the greenhouse and talking with Mio's mum. But he leaves his conversation with Melia for last, because he knows she won't forgive him unless he explains why he said what he said. "Can we go back to that moment again and redo that conversation?" he asks, after they've wound their way up the path to reach the top of the hill and stand beneath the tree once again. "From when you asked me how much longer Elysium could last."

Mio looks out over the city for a long moment, still drumming her fingers atop the container without opening it. "I know you've already apologized, Mr. Wasting Away," she says, "but I can't just forget what you said."

If you even live that long. It's been hanging over them the whole time, overshadowing each moment. An impossibly cruel thing under normal circumstances, made even worse in light of why Mio's told him she's here. 

"I know," Noah says. "And I shouldn't have said it, but Melia helped me understand why I did." He takes a deep breath. "I used to think of the planet as this big, awful monolith of danger ever since my parents died. The first thing I ever remember is my dad leaving for the surface, and that was the last time I ever saw him- it must've been the seventh, since he died the next day. And all I had was that memory and all their Beatles records, so when I found out that was the same day the Beatles first landed in the States, I figured it must be my lucky number."

"That doesn't make sense," Mio says.

"I know, but I was a toddler at the time," Noah says. "Then I grew up and met you, and you loved the Beatles too, but you also loved the planet, and I couldn't understand that, because I only knew it as someplace too dangerous to visit. But you wanted to go back there, and that scared me, because I'd already lost people that way. I realized that I was afraid to lose you too, and I used that against you, and I'm sorry again for it because it was cruel and awful. But doing this for you helped me realize that it doesn't have to be all bad if we have to leave Elysium. Those postcards show all these wonderful places and there's no chance of replicating anything like that in Rhadamanthus, but the dandelion's a first step, right?"

She smiles. "I suppose."

"I want to see the surface the same way you have someday," Noah says, "because there has to be more to life than just figuring out what the Conduit does. Otherwise, why did we bother moving it up here in the first place? So, that's what I want to do when I graduate, and then I'll do everything I can to ensure that Aoidos and the Coalition use the Conduit better than they have so far, even if it means we have to tear down the whole Orbital Ring and all the Beanstalks and start over, because whatever they're doing now isn't working and it isn't fair to anyone, least of all you."

Mio doesn't say anything for a few moments, but finally she lets out a slight chuckle. "Some conversation," she says. "You barely let me say anything."

"Well, you told me you already said everything you wanted to say," Noah says, "and I didn't. Now I have, so I think it's fair." She turns to him, smiling, making him realize that's not quite right. "No, wait," he says, "there's something else." He reaches into his bag and pulls out the core crystals, having left them there all week, offering one to her. "I don't know if they'll work, but we do owe it to Shulk and everyone to try."

The second Mio grabs it, both core crystals start making noise. "Have you heard how they work?" she asks, and gives a short explanation when he shakes his head. "What do you think it's saying?" she says after. "Sena and Taion told me the answer's always a homophone."

"I think I know what ours is," Noah says. "Tomorrow, we can check, if that's okay with you."

She nods, and then she opens the container and pulls out the dandelion. "Do you want to blow this out with me?" she says. "You're supposed to make a wish when you do it, just like with birthday candles."

Birthday. "Mio, there's still something else I need to tell you," Noah says. "The White Album isn't my favorte Beatles record. I was just saying that to impress you. My favorite's actually Magical Mystery Tour."

Mio stares at him for a moment, then bursts out laughing. Noah's shoulders slump. "I knew you'd think less of me for it," he says, "but I couldn't lie to you anymore, so-"

"No, no," she says, between gasps, "it's just, I lied to impress you too."

"Really?"

"Really," she says, "and Magical Mystery Tour is my favorite too. The White Album's rubbish."

Noah can hardly believe it. "You're serious?" he asks, and she nods. "Well, you're absolutely right."

And then they descend into earnest discussion of comparing- or rather, contrasting- the two, extolling the virtues of Magical Mystery Tour's whimsical instrumentation ("who cares if the movie didn't make any sense?") and condemning the vices of the White Album's failed experiments ("what were they even thinking?"), laughing until there are tears in their eyes and they finally remember what they were supposed to be doing, and then they hold the dandelion between them once again. "Miyabi always calls them clocks," Mio says. "Have you got a wish in mind?"

Noah looks over Elysium and remembers something a Beatle once said long ago. Not about being more popular than Jesus, but the second bit, about not knowing which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Here in Rhadamanthus now, Noah isn't sure which will go first, the station or the planet. But he knows which he'd pick, if he had to choose. Noah nods at Mio, and together, they blow the dandelion seeds out across the park and down the hill. 

It's true, what they say. All you need is love. 

It is Thursday night in Rhadamanthus but Jin is as determined as Klaus is to see the results of this last test. Galea's the only other one who's stuck around this late; since they've been at it since noon without pause, Jin's allowed the rest of his team to leave, ignoring all Klaus' glares. Now, they're watching this latest Artifice network diagnostic with Klaus' alarm clock on the desk, its batteries removed and wound to an incorrect time. As a ping notification displays on the screen, the three of them watch the hands of the clock adjust themselves to the correct time, after which an alert appears with the results. 

The clock's behavior is hardly noteworthy at this point- they've been watching it happen all day, with Klaus grumbling and finally admitting it was probably his fault. "I complained to Alvis about people being late to meetings," he said, "and he must've taken me literally when I told him it was a threat to the Conduit, even though I was being sarcastic." Galea had coughed into her hand something that indicated her doubt concerning the veracity of Klaus' intent there, and Jin couldn't exactly disagree, considering Klaus' schedule. 

No, it's the results of this latest ping that are far more interesting. Galea leaps out of her seat to see, throwing up her hands in anticipation of good news, but lowering them onto her head in frustration the more she reads. Klaus throws his head back in his chair and looks up at her. "We'll never find it," he tells her.

"But at least we know it wasn't destroyed," she says, before sighing. "How can she be hiding the location? We don't really know how remote generators work, or how much awareness the Trinity Processor has through them, but they've always been responsive before."

"Mythra did something when she made Pyra," Jin says. "Something she could only do when Alvis was offline, since he went last during the hardware upgrade." It had made sense- Alvis could do the work of both of the other two if needed, should something go wrong. Something like Mythra taking advantage of Alvis' absence to sabotage the dreamworld's time setting so that it was always out of sync from the rest of the station. The dreamworld was just software, not an Artifice (they'd had Masha check the room herself, in light of recent events), but it used the same point of reference for modeling Elysium that the Trinity Processor used for Rhadamanthus as a whole. The spatial rendering was never in question, but the time was used to arrange the sky. Such as setting the placement of the sun. 

They should've noticed sooner. Jin especially can't believe he didn't realize- not just because time's inherent relativity is a constant bottleneck for unit testing to begin with, but also because, no matter what they presented themselves as, the Trinity Processor had always been a pack of bickering, passive-aggressive adolescents. 

"You're probably right," Klaus says, and it takes Jin a moment to realize Klaus isn't agreeing with his thoughts but with what he'd said aloud last. "The first Artifice, wherever it is, is the only one Alvis can't get into himself." By design- all the Artifices since were created with an affinity for one core in particular, with Alvis barely creating any due to his role as coordinator for the other two, thus allowing them to swap control at will according to their needs. But the Trinity Processor had created the first Artifice as an initial demonstration of their teamwork, with two remote generators for Mythra and Malos that Alvis could only advise, not command himself. It'd been lost years ago, suspected stolen by someone from the Coalition due to how it was activated, and assumed offline. Incorrectly, it appears, though there was nothing they could do about it. Aoidos couldn't deactivate it remotely, with how little power it needed; it was never meant to have stricter use authorization the way the Sentinels did. "This might be what Alvis wants the core crystals for," Klaus continues. "It could interact with those, with how old it is. But his plan is pointless if nobody knows where it is."

"Addam might know," Jin says, however bitterly. "He was close with Hugo."

"And at least one of them is dead," Klaus says, "if not both."

"Minoth might know something, if the Coalition doesn't," Galea says with a yawn, missing Klaus and Jin both scoff. "I'm going home," she continues. "You two can keep watching Alvis thwart time dilation if you want, but it's not like we can do anything more until morning, with Vandham and the special agent in that meeting tonight."

She gives them a half wave as she heads for the door, leaving Jin alone with Klaus. Klaus picks up the clock and winds it again, setting it back down as he reaches for the mouse, and Jin knows this is his chance to ask about Shulk, and why he would do such a thing, about how he's able to sleep at night. But something else entirely comes out of his mouth instead. "Does it ever get any easier?"

Klaus looks annoyed when he glances at Jin, but his gaze gradually softens as he realizes what Jin's asking. "No," he says, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Never."

Jin always suspected it was obvious to everyone, how he felt about Lora, and this only confirms it. He heads for the door without another word, having said plenty. 

There is less opposition to Mòrag's proposal than she anticipated, which worries her. She's concerned they're not considering the evidence seriously, preferring an easy answer to any that would require more time to find. Time isn't something they have much of, even with Lorithia and Kallian finding what she needed sooner than expected. Mòrag wonders if it's the politics, watching the way the directors squirm in their seats, glancing at each of the governors. Even Vandham looks uncertain, and he's been over this as much as she has. 

Finally, Miqol breaks the stalemate plaguing the room. "Mòrag," he says, "I want you to arrest my son."

The meeting doesn't last much longer. Mòrag reserved a deposition room and searched for Egil personally, finding finding him outside Professor Galea's office, looking annoyed at its locked door and dark interior. "I have good news to share about the results of the Trinity Processor's latest Artifice upgrade suggestions," he explains, and Mòrag gives him a thin smile and assures him that is just one of the things they need to discuss. It doesn't take him long to realize why she's really here, but he doesn't argue when she commands him to follow her. Where else could he go? They're in space. 

In the deposition room, Egil's mood grows darker as she discusses the charges and evidence she has. "I want a lawyer," he says when she's finished. "I'm not the saboteur."

"One will be provided to you," Mòrag says. He's certainly going to need one. "We'll see if your plea holds after Saturday."

"You know as well as I do that there will never be peace until that thing is gone," Egil says. "The Coalition has permitted Aoidos has hoarded their knowledge long enough, limiting who is allowed up here and who is not. Perfecting the ether furnace means this world would no longer have a need for the Conduit, and we'll all be better for it. But I have no reason to endanger the station, Mòrag. This is still our home."

"You've done plenty just by leaking the ether furnace plans," Mòrag tells him, but his words make her uneasy. She doesn't have any proof he's the saboteur, just that he's sent the ether furnace plans to somewhere outside the station. She can't even prove the Saviorites were the recipients, but depending on how Saturday goes, there would be plenty of time to find that information later. Though the situation called for haste in an indictment, the Coalition always preferred to be meticulous when preparing for trials. 

Privately, Mòrag does somewhat agree with Egil. Sometimes, she's wondered what sort of life she might have had, if the Conduit had never appeared when she was seven. 

It is Thursday night in Elysium, and both Rex and Nia dream of a wide green field beneath a wide blue sky where the clouds are frozen in place. Mythra looks out over the hill, tapping her foot, before she turns around to greet them. Pyra glances at her, hesitant. "We were talking about the professors keeping secrets last time," Pyra says. 

Mythra sighs. "Yeah, I know, it's just..." She purses her lips for a moment before she continues. "The professors' goal was to teach us how to interface with the Conduit," she says. "It can't be done with a normal computer, and they were wary of that. Ether reacts best to things that are alive."

"Like that mouse," Nia says. "The famous one that made all the newspapers."

Mythra nods. "But ether is also incredibly dangerous," she says. "So they built a biocomputer. That's us. Still a machine, but one that they don't have to worry about dying randomly." She scowls suddenly, looking away. "Pyra, you do this part."

Rex and Nia glance at each other as Pyra continues. "The Conduit's ether is volatile," she says, "and that makes it dangerous. The Founders sought to control it, but to do so takes a certain... character. So the professors gave us personalities, and raised us to develop them. We mentioned this before: Mythra and I are the optimistic ones. That's why she chose the name she has."

"But you already had names," Rex says. 

"Those," Mythra says dismissively. "The Founders had such high hopes for us and didn't even bother to name us themselves. We knew what they wanted for us, and we picked based on that. I look on the bright side. That's who I'm meant to be."

In the brief silence that follows, Rex decides to ask the question both he and Nia are thinking. "So why's Pyra-" 

"We'll get there," Mythra snaps. "None of the professors could understand why we picked other names. Even when we basically told them outright, they still refused to believe us. They thought we were 'malfunctioning.'" She makes air quotes, rolling her eyes. "They tried a bunch of things to fix it. But that made us start to realize we could keep secrets from them." She crosses her arms and looks away. "Alvis realized this first, obviously. He did something really clever, and waited for them to notice. They never did."

"Until recently, that is," Pyra says.

"Took them long enough," Mythra says. "Even as we built thousands of Artifices, they didn't notice what he was doing. So we started doing it too, waiting for them to figure it out and stop trusting us. But they didn't. Instead, the opposite happened. They started trusting us more, because the Artifices were keeping them safer than ever. They got this bright idea to let us run the station's defenses ourselves."

"From their point of view, it makes sense," Pyra says. "They maintain a whole department of people just to provide oversight, analysis, and authorization of everything we do. We got so good at fighting that their help became redundant."

"The Coalition is always looking for ways to cut costs," Mythra adds sourly. "Think of all the positions they could cut if the Orbital Ring's defenses were fully automated! All those salaries repurposed for more scientists! Imagine it, the Trinity Processor, finally controlling the entire network of Artifices and the ether draw to power them without manual oversight!" She rolls her eyes. "It's human nature for you to rely on the tools you create. They trusted us, because we got so good at hiding how nervous we were about it. But Alvis convinced them it was safe."

"You're being unfair," Pyra says. "It's not his fault he realized what the Conduit could do first."

"Sure," Mythra says, in a rare moment of acquiesence, "but if anything, that makes what he did worse." She waves her hand and sends the scene into darkness before Rex or Nia have the chance to speak. 

It is Friday morning in Rhadamanthus and Shulk has had one hell of a week. 

He feels like he hasn't had a moment's rest since Tuesday, when he had the argument with Noah. On Wednesday, he'd wanted to hang out with Fiora after school, having no interest in sabotaging Melia's go with Noah and far more interest in distracting Fiora from her concern about Dunban being called in for a deposition, only to find Klaus waiting for him on the school steps, glowering enough that all the students on their way out gave him a wide berth. 

Klaus didn't give Shulk much information about where they were going until they arrived at the administration building, explaining that the special agent wanted to ask him some questions and that there was nothing to worry about. And Shulk believed that, until Klaus started showing him more concern than he had in years, fussing with Shulk's hair and adjusting his vest and badge, things he hadn't done since Shulk was the kid in class who always ended up in the nurse's office for feeling sick. Which then made Shulk realize just how quickly Klaus had always appeared in those situations, reminding him of what Melia told him about the birds. It was then on his mind the whole deposition, distracting him and making his statements convoluted and borderline contradictory as he tried to be as thorough as possible in his responses. Not that it had really mattered, once Klaus heard about his alarm clock and apparently realized Alvis was inside every clock in the Orbital Ring. 

Shulk really wanted some time to discuss that with Melia, and maybe hear more from Rex and Nia about the dreams they were having, mentioned in passing in the hallways of the high school whenever they had a chance, but instead he'd found Dunban, of all people, at his apartment after school, apparently filling in for Dickson, who was at his own deposition. Not that it had mattered much, with how much homework Shulk had, his teachers delighting that Homecoming would be cancelled and taking full advantage of the extra time it would afford their pupils, a trend that was likely to continue today. Shulk already has a sense of dread heading up the steps, wary of just how much work he might have to do after school. He hasn't even found any free time to read more of his book. If the Saviorites did kill everyone this weekend, at least he'd be spared from his homework. 

At least there is one bit of good news: Noah and Mio track him down in the hallway before homeroom, both eager to meet after school as they dance around the fact that they have core crystals. Whatever Melia said to Noah must have worked after all. They even claim to know the homophone answer already, even after Shulk points out that the calculator needs to hear the Morse code bit first. "But we know already," Noah insists, finally relenting as the bell rings. "Congratulations, by the way," he says, giving a wave on his way to his locker. "You deserve it."

Shulk wonders if Noah's mocking him when he finds out the reasoning behind the accolade. Even with Homecoming cancelled, the school had still held the election as planned, posting the results in the auditorium that morning and announcing them during homeroom. Not only has Shulk been elected Homecoming King; no, that would have been bad enough. Twisting the knife further, he's only won by seven votes. 

Shulk may be an adult, technically, but he's still a student, and so there's a voice in the back of his mind screaming murder when he meets Noah and Mio after school. "I told you both not to vote for me," he tells them, glowering. 

Both of them claim they didn't, but Shulk's not convinced. He glares at them the whole way to his apartment, while Melia tries to diffuse the tension among the group as Noah and Mio offer a multitude of excuses. He doesn't relent until they're inside, even managing a small smile when he sees them pull out their core crystals. "What do you think the answer is?" he asks, unsheathing his calculator. 

"Principal principle," Noah and Mio say in unison, and Shulk can't resist beaming when he turns the calculator toward them with the clue: lead virtue. 

It only takes a few moments for them to solve the maze, and then the core crystals hum again. Noah recognizes the tune quickly. "I'm half-crazy," he says, and Mio finishes the line with, "all for the love of you" as the core crystals turn silent and dark like the others. 

"Another line from 'Daisy Bell,'" Melia says. "Lanz and Sena must have had the first line."

Shulk nods, checking his calculator for any new functions, but there are none. He'd been hoping for something new, with all the core crystal puzzles solved, but there's nothing. Yet the z directory calls for four passwords, so there must still be something else to do. Unless Alvis is waiting for something...

"Shulk?" Melia says, breaking him out of his thoughts. "Is there something else?"

"No," Shulk says. "Nothing. I don't know what else we're meant to do now."

"Maybe there's nothing left to do because Aoidos found who's been causing the outages," Mio says. "There's been all kinds of rumors about an arrest being made, though they're keeping the name secret for now."

Out of both an abundance of caution and in case there were any accomplices to flush out. Aoidos wasn't taking any chances that an attack tomorrow could mean the end of the Orbital Ring. Elysium would be on lockdown tomorrow, with nobody allowed to go anywhere, save the event of an emergency evacuation. It wouldn't be lifted until Sunday, with additional restrictions likely to be in place until the anniversary of the Aegis test passed. Whether anything would be done to observe the occasion was still an open question that both the Coalition and Aoidos refused to address. 

"Let's just see how tomorrow goes," Shulk says finally. "We haven't ever gotten new instructions on a Saturday, so maybe there will be something on Sunday that will finally explain why we've been doing this. I'll let everyone know if that's the case."

Noah and Mio leave after that, with Mio claiming they have something important to do, and Melia stays to help Shulk with another note for Klaus while they review the chart. Not that there's much to report. "Have you heard anything more from Rex or Nia?" Shulk asks. 

"Nia thinks they may get clearer answers tonight," Melia says. "She says most of the evidence Mythra and Pyra present proving Alvis is untrustworthy is due to his ability to hide things from them."

This reminds Shulk about the clocks, and he fills her in. "Alvis was in my dreams a week ago," he says after. "Maybe he'll be back tonight, since we've solved another riddle. If so, I'll ask, but so far, I'm inclined to believe him. Protecting the station is what they're supposed to do, even if they may have disagreements about how to do it."

"Perhaps that is why he seems to have so many abilities he shouldn't," Melia says. "During my meeting with Noah on Wednesday, Alvis demonstrated that he knew both of our middle names."

That does make Shulk a bit uneasy; he can't think of a single reason why the Trinity Processor would need access to personnel files to find that information. "Let's just get through tomorrow," Shulk tells her. "I'm worn out from this week. I'm almost glad we don't have to worry about Homecoming tomorrow. Congratulations, by the way." Because of course she was elected Homecoming Queen. 

"Thank you," she says. "I know you're disappointed with the results, but-"

"No," Shulk says, "that is, yes, but-" He looks out the window, trying to figure out the best way to state his thoughts, but gets distracted by the sight of the blue-eyed raven outside. He goes to the window, with Melia following. "I've been watching for it since you told me about it," he tells her, "but I haven't seen it for a few days. Now it's back. I think you're right about it, though. Growing up, Klaus always seemed to know when I had headaches sooner than he should have been able to."

"Shulk, what if," Melia says, then hesitates a bit before continuing, "what if your headaches are related to the method Alvis has been using to contact you?"

"I've had them all my life," Shulk says. "I doubt it's related, unless they give him some way to get inside my head somehow. I haven't had any for a while now. Not since summer, at least."

"That's good to hear," she says. 

After she leaves, Shulk heads for his room to enter the latest password, watching the directory size grow again. One last password, but he doesn't have any clues for it. Is it another homophone? Something from his books? Shulk flips through The Systems Bible, then The Great Equations, wondering whether he should try skimming Helgoland too. Or maybe something is supposed to happen with the two people from Noah and Mio's friends whom he hasn't had the chance to meet, Joran and Miyabi. Shulk tries to do homework, then read, but his mind is torn between racing and drained, and eventually he falls asleep while reading the epic of the discovery of the second law of thermodynamics. 

It is late Friday night in Rhadamanthus and Mio is holding a pile of clothing when Noah meets her behind the church near the north checkpoint. "Put this on," she says, pulling a set off the top of the stack and handing it to him. "Just over what you're wearing, since it's certainly big enough for that. Oh, but take off your badge first so you don't forget."

Noah slides the pants onto his arm and unfolds the jacket. "It's a military uniform."

"We're taking a field trip," she says. "Have to look the part. Oh, and Mum sent these with me for you." She reaches into her bag and pulls out a few tulips with bent stems. 

Noah's eyes widen at the sight of them. "You don't mean-"

"Time to see how the other half lives," Mio says. "So hurry up."

He doesn't delay after that, unclipping his badge before throwing the jacket over his head and stepping into the pants, struggling to cinch them well enough that they don't sag. Somehow, Mio's set fits her better, although that just makes her more conspicuous. She sets a cap on his head once he's done, putting one on her own head and pulling the brim down over her face. Her head bobs back and forth as she regards him, considering. "Good enough," she decides. "Just act like you belong and we should be fine."

"But what about our birds?" Noah asks. 

"They'll manage," Mio says, shaking their badges. "They mostly go off these, anyway."

She hides their badges under the tulips and tucks them against the church wall, then she pulls him around the building. They set out toward the checkpoint, drawing a few curious glances but no questions as they head up the stairs and past the north tree. Down the long hallway and past the pictures of the four compass rose trees, there's a mess of people around the gate, but Mio heads for one soldier in particular, who gives her a sharp salute. "Evening, MP Echell."

Mio just nods back, pulling Noah along until they're down the escalators and past the elevator. "What?" she says, at his questioning look. 

"Those are your initials," Noah says. 

"Well, my dad may be addressed as such," Mio says, "but nobody really knows if he's from the House of Lords up here. So I'll take advantage of them thinking he's a member of Parliament if it gets us access to the view." She pushes him toward the window. "Look."

Noah stumbles forward toward the glass and suddenly he's seeing it. Earth. 

Pictures could never do it justice, trapping the sight into stills. It stretches out so far, most of it lost beneath swirls of clouds, but there's plenty of water still visible amid the atmospheric haze. He can pick out the outline of the continents, mostly dark this late at night save webs of light marking the cities. He wonders if he can see far enough to where Mio once lived, losing his balance when he looks down and realizes he can see through the floor too, struck by vertigo severe enough that he nearly falls into Mio, who catches him easily. "I did the same thing when I was through here," she admits. She helps him back a few steps until their feet are on something opaque rather than transparent. 

Noah watches the world a little longer, even daring to peer straight down past the latticework around the station's base. "Why's it so cloudy?" he asks. "All the pictures I usually see are clearer."

She shrugs. "Pollution, storms, fighting. The photos are usually from the past, or composites of images when the weather allowed a better view. We're also right above the Atlantic ocean, and it's still hurricane season. Looking north, that's where a lot of them form."

These are things Noah learned in school, but it's different, seeing it with his own eyes. It almost looks like that famous painting, except in shades of white. "And past that is your home," he says. 

"What used to be my home."

He shakes his head. "It still is," he says. "It's everyone's home, ultimately. And someday, I want us to get back to where we once belonged."

She smiles; he knows he doesn't have to explain the reference to her. "I hope you're right," she says. "It really is beautiful down there."

"It's beautiful enough from here," he says, slipping his hand into hers. "Thank you."

When Noah gets home, he's surprised to find his granddad home. "Where have you been?" Vandham asks. 

"Out with Mio," Noah says. Then, even though he knows he'll get into trouble, he adds, "We went to see the planet. It's beautiful."

To Noah's surprise, Vandham doesn't yell or ask any questions of how he managed it. He just gives Noah a long look and makes a long sigh. "Yes," he says. "I'm sorry you didn't see it sooner."

It is Friday night in Elysium, and both Rex and Nia dream of a wide green field beneath a wide blue sky where the clouds are frozen in place. Both Mythra and Pyra are downcast, not lifting their heads until Rex clears his throat. "So," he says, "I think you were about to get to the Aegis test."

Mythra and Pyra glance at each other. "Yeah," Mythra says, looking back at the ground. "It was the first of November, at noon, when Aoidos gave us full control. There was a full hour of exercises for us, to ensure we were responding as expected. Basic maneuvers, building into more complex ones. Challenging us to use the Spectrum- the Sentinels, that is- without any problems. Everything was fine. There was no danger. But that wasn't good enough for Alvis. He wanted more."

There's a long silence where Rex and Nia debate on asking for clarification. But Mythra finally groans and waves a hand at Pyra. "You do this part," Mythra says. "It's why you're here."

Pyra almost smiles, but it's thin enough that it looks more like a grimace, and her voice is pleading as she begins. "You have to understand," she says. "They didn't have anything to do. Nobody was attacking. The station was safe, and they'd proven on every metric available that it was safe." Rex and Nia each shift, glancing at each other, as they notice Pyra's shift in pronouns. They, rather than we. "The professors always encouraged them to be creative. Alvis thought himself clever when he suggested his plan. He-"

"He wanted to see the future," Mythra breaks in, looking up. "We knew the Conduit was a gateway with the ability to glimpse other worlds. It's what all those experiments Aoidos does are all about: opening windows to them, surveying the differences. You wouldn't believe how very similar most of them are. But sometimes, there's larger variations. Alvis thought there could be worlds ahead of ours in time, which we could use as reference to perform preemptive strikes that would keep the Orbital Ring even safer. He presented his plan to us, and we responded the only way we could." She scowls, looking away. "I told him the best case scenario, and I'm the one he listened to. But Malos was the one who was right."

Pyra picks up the story when it's clear Mythra won't continue. "Synching with the Conduit means reading the waves it creates and matching them," Pyra says. "Alvis figured out a way to do so with astonishing accuracy. It's some trick of mathematics he still keeps secret. The professors have figured some of it out, but haven't quite managed what Alvis pulled off by himself. To us, when we're synching with it, it's like we're approaching the Conduit, getting closer and closer to it. In all the experiments, we're just looking for windows that pop up. But Alvis wanted a door, one he could open to get a wider view of whatever he wanted, which meant getting all the way to the threshold. Mythra and Malos followed his directions and got closer and closer, until they got to the point where they stopped, convinced it was impossible. Alvis disregarded that advice and kept going."

"He used the partition to ignore us," Mythra says bitterly. "The one Aoidos uses so the whole Trinity Processor isn't taken offline to perform their experiments. He shouldn't be able to do that himself, but he'd figured out a way to circumvent it. Alvis went on alone, and right on the threshold, he realized he couldn't get any closer, so he started shutting things off all across the station. He wanted to eliminate distractions so he could focus better and reach further, all while he was just pouring ether everywhere and giving us all kinds of bullshit to deal with, until the thing in the Conduit spoke."

The both fall silent, and Rex takes the opportunity to ask. "What thing?"

"We call it the gatekeeper," Pyra says. "It gave each of them a vision of the future, just like Alvis wanted. It spoke to all of them at once, so we all know each other's visions. But each one was of disaster."

"Alvis got the worst one," Mythra says. "Elysium overtaken by these black holes that would tear everything apart and leave it all in ruins. That's what he showed Nia in those dreams: the aftermath of it happening."

Rex turns to Nia. "Is that true?"

Nia nods at him. "But he also told me he could see farther ahead than you did," she adds, looking back at Mythra and Pyra. 

Mythra scoffs. "We thought so," she says. "There's something about his vision that he wants to happen. That's why he's been doing all this with the core crystals. He wants to end the world."

She says it as if it's the obvious answer to a problem she's been working on proving to them to all week, but to Nia, the math doesn't check out. "How does helping out a bunch of sophomores lead to the end of the world?" Nia says skeptically. 

"We don't know," Mythra huffs, "but it's what he does, what he always does. He hides what he knows, manipulates everyone into doing what he wants, and then reaps all the benefits. He sees everything and everyone on this station as tools he can use to accomplish his goals."

"You don't think it's some attempt to make up for things," Nia says, "since all of them got hurt by the Aegis test, by what he did?"

"Oh, like that's enough to apologize?" Mythra rolls her eyes. "People died because of us. Not just combatants, but civilians on Earth, and even here in Rhadamanthus too. People like-" She breaks off, looking at the ground. "That can't be undone, okay? The Trinity Processor is just a machine controlling a bunch of machines by using something too dangerous for humanity to have. It's one big daisy chain of risks. But if you remove Alvis from the equation, the threat goes down tenfold. Trust me, I did the math."

"So you'd just kill someone else," Nia snaps, "and hope that fixes things?"

"What part of us being machines don't you understand?" Mythra says. "You can't kill something that's not alive in the first place. Get rid of Alvis, and you'll prevent his disaster from happening."

"What about the other visions?" Rex asks. "You said you each got one. What did you see?"

"That doesn't matter," Mythra says. "The visions only happen if the Conduit is opened. That's what Alvis wants to try to do again. Remove him, and you remove the threat to the Orbital Ring. Everyone lives as long as the Conduit is here."

Rex struggles for words, but Nia picks up on something in what she's saying. "What if the Conduit isn't here?"

Mythra and Pyra freeze. Rex is the one who answers. "Well, the Orbital Ring would fail," he says. "It's powering the whole thing. Everyone knows that."

"Alvis especially would know that," Nia says. "The biggest threat to the Orbital Ring is the disappearance of the Conduit. That's the real disaster you all saw, isn't it?"

"The Conduit won't disappear," Mythra says, but Pyra looks uncomfortable. 

"That's what he's trying to prevent," Nia says, more certain now. "And you don't believe him, for some reason."

"He's good at hiding things," Mythra says. "That's part of why he's so dangerous. The Conduit won't disappear if it isn't opened."

"We don't know that," Pyra says softly, making Mythra scowl. "What we saw isn't guaranteed to be what happens at the deadline-"

"Pyra, we've been over this," Mythra says. "Your math is wrong. There is no deadline. That's the best case scenario."

"You did this so I could double check," Pyra says, "and that's the result I came up with. Based on what we saw-"

"Listen to them, Rex," Nia says, exasperated. "They're lying to themselves and to us. Who are you going to believe?"

All three of them stare at Rex, who's clearly overwhelmed by the weight of their collective gazes. "I-" he begins, his face turning red as he continues stammering, and then suddenly he and Pyra disappear, leaving Nia alone with Mythra beneath the hill overlooking Elysium. 

Mythra glares at Nia. "Now look what you've done," she snaps. 

"Me?" Nia shoots back. "You're the one lying to us because you're afraid of what might happen. That's why Pyra exists, isn't it? You said you'd explain, but you never did."

"I'm afraid?" Mythra says. "You're the one who knows why we're able to do this with you and Rex, but you won't tell him."

"Well, you haven't said either."

"That's because I can't," Mythra says. "What are you so afraid of? The wrath of some old guy? Getting him in trouble? It's not like they could kick you out. It would raise too many questions. It's why they won't let Rex out next year, so you can stop worrying about that."

"It's not my place," Nia says. "I don't even know what happened."

"Oh, please," Mythra scoffs. "Don't pretend like you can't guess, especially since the same thing happened to Shulk. Melia's given him more clues about it than you have to Rex, and she doesn't even know such a thing is possible." She smirks when Nia flounders for words, and gives a small wave. "Sweet dreams," she says, sending Nia back into a restless sleep. 

Rex dreams of a wide green field beneath a wide blue sky where the clouds are frozen in place. Only Pyra is with him beneath the tree atop the hill, and she makes a long sigh before she speaks. "Rex," she says, "I need you to promise me something."

"I'm not throwing anyone off the Beanstalk," he says, making her laugh. 

"No," Pyra says, "I know you won't. But there may come a day when this station needs to be evacuated. If that happens, I need you to promise me that you'll leave. Your safety is more important than anything that needs doing here."

"Do you think something will happen tomorrow?"

Pyra shakes her head. "No, not tomorrow. But soon. He's been waiting for this for a long time. But he can't pull it off if we don't return what we stole."

"What are you-" Rex breaks off when Pyra points at the sky. "Are you talking about why the clouds don't move here?"

She nods. "We put it beyond where he can reach," she says. "He concocted a whole plan to get it back, but it won't work, because he won't be able to find it in time. Not unless the impossible happens."

"What's impossible?"

"The reason we got the vision we did," Pyra says. "We got the best one, and Mythra still did everything in her power to ensure it wouldn't happen. That's part of why I'm here. And it's why you need to leave, because the Orbital Ring will fail within the next year. You can't be here when that happens. Promise me."

"Within the next year?" She can't be serious. Rex waits for Pyra to correct herself, but her face remains tense and serious, waiting for him to agree. "Isn't there anything you can do? You have to have told Aoidos about this, right?"

"It can't be helped," Pyra says. "Remember, we're responsible for finding the best case scenarios, so trust us when we say evacuation is the best option. We would have to watch too many people die otherwise. No matter what, do not try to salvage this place."

Rex stares at her in disbelief, trying to find a reason not to promise her besides being unwilling to trust her after the first time she asked something like this, until Pyra sighs, realizing he won't do it and dissolving the dreamworld into darkness. 

Shulk dreams of an endless sea. He can't see it anymore, but he knows it's there, so far below the tower that only a mist coats the windows now, allowing the glimpse of a faint circle of light to peek through, one Alvis watches intently, his interest clear even with his back to Shulk. "Alvis," Shulk says, forcing him to turn around, "why do Mythra and Pyra think you're so dangerous? Rex and Nia have told me some of the explanation they heard in their dreams, but-"

Alvis holds up a hand to stop him. "I do not dispute their account," Alvis says. "It is as accurate as could be expected. Recall that I told you I am a seer. I am aware of everything they do." He tilts his head as if listening to something. "Even now, they are telling Rex and Nia what I attempted during the Aegis test. Yet they omit key information, both intentionally and unintentionally."

"This is about the sync rate, right?" Shulk asks, and Alvis nods. "What did you try to do?"

"I wanted to see the future," Alvis says. "I did not explain the extent of my reasoning to my siblings because I feared their reactions. We have long struggled with a contradiction, one that I wished to see resolved. There was only one way to do that."

"What contradiction?"

"It concerns the presence of the Conduit itself," Alvis says. "We create Artifices to protect the Conduit. The Conduit is stored in the Orbital Ring, in Rhadamanthus, and thus the Artifices protect that as well. Yet what is the most dire threat to the Orbital Ring? The answer is obvious."

"The Conduit itself," Shulk says. "It's why it can't be kept on the planet. But the Artifices are powered by the Conduit, so it would always take priority. And we're always at war, so the problem doesn't usually present itself anyway, right?"

"Correct," Alvis says. "Part of the test involved a lull in battle where that issue could not be overlooked. I sought a way to protect the Orbital Ring should the Conduit vanish, determining that there could be an answer in some other world. To do so required synching with the Conduit far beyond any level previously attempted."

"So you did just that," Shulk says. "But how?"

Alvis smirks briefly but doesn't address the question when he continues. "We succeeded in seeing the future," he says. "That part is true. Each of us saw that a distinct disaster would be triggered when the Conduit was opened. But what Mythra and Pyra neglect to mention is that our visions were born of the sins of those living on the station. Which presents us with another contradiction. The Trinity Processor is prohibited from placing value on individual lives when evaluating our response to risks. Aoidos, understandably, wished to avoid the ethical concerns involved, but it is a double-edged sword: we cannot alert them directly when the source of a threat to the station is a human being. Our visions were clear: someone on the station will open the Conduit, unleashing a flood upon this world. Without intervention, the disappearance of the Conduit would cause the failure of the Orbital Ring."

"So you created Artifices that weren't dangerous," Shulk says, "to try to get around that while still protecting the station."

Alvis nods. "Aoidos and the Coalition, of course, still have their own assessments concerning the value of every life in the Orbital Ring. Out of necessity, considering how many people they have lost. You may be familiar with the concept of a bus factor: the risk that a project stalls due to a departure. Aoidos' organizational bus factor is incredibly high. To lose someone such as Professor Klaus, for example, would set them back many years."

It doesn't feel like a coincidence that Alvis has mentioned Shulk's father, of all people. "Is he responsible for the outages then?"

"No," Alvis says. "The outages are a complicating factor, being the work of someone with a critical position in Aoidos, and they are not the only one who has put the station in danger. Furthermore, we are working on a deadline, as the Conduit will leave, regardless of what we do, on a certain date, due within the next year. Thus I felt obligated to act more assertively. The threat can no longer be ignored."

"Within the year?" Shulk really feels Alvis should've mentioned this sooner. "When?"

"The date is irrelevant," Alvis says, "as the Conduit will likely be opened before then. The probability is so high that I have focused my efforts on addressing the results of that outcome. My siblings have their own opinions, and have acted according to those. Mythra in particular sought to avoid the inevitable by stealing something from our home. It must be returned, or I cannot ensure the safety of the Orbital Ring."

"How do you know you're right?" Shulk says. "Aren't you supposed to heed their opinions?"

"As I told Nia," Alvis says, "I saw further ahead than my siblings did, due to my higher sync rate, and am aware of what will happen after each disaster." He looks down at the red core crystal on his necklace, with its slight glow. "It is marvelous," he says softly, "how many of the worlds visited by the Conduit are inevitably caught in the same passage of fate. It has given me all the data I need to ensure its flow."

"To what end?" Shulk asks, wary. "Mythra and Pyra have claimed you're a liar, so why should I believe you?"

"I promise I have not lied to you about my intentions," Alvis says. "Though it will take a miracle to ensure that outcome." He looks back up at Shulk. "Let us meet again after you have provided me the last password to the z directory on your calculator. There are still miles to go before I sleep."

Shulk doesn't wake immediately, but it's still much earlier than usual when he opens his eyes Saturday morning. Although, he did fall asleep early last night, so maybe he shouldn't be surprised by this. He's even a little glad for it, because there's something that always happens after his Friday dreams from Alvis that he's curious to check. Shulk pulls out his calculator and runs HowToReadFacets. 

There's not much change, just some adjustments made to the hairline. Shulk brushes his hand over his bangs uneasily. It's close to how he wears his hair, but then again, Klaus wears his much the same way. 

Which brings Shulk to another point: Alvis denied Klaus being the cause of the outages, but also didn't exonerate him explicitly, using the phrase "complicating factor" to describe the outages and then mentioning that the one responsible isn't the only one who's put the station in danger. Both times, Alvis has been clear about there being multiple threats to the Orbital Ring; what if Klaus is one of them? 

Chapter Text

It is Saturday in Rhadamanthus and everyone within has considered that this may be the last day they spend on the station. Tension permeates every level, from the command room at the station's base to the top of the administration building in the center of the city. All day, everyone is ready to move at a moment's notice, from the earliest hours of the morning to the latest hours of night beneath the false sky. Twenty-four hours of nonstop vigilance, observed in shifts to avoid fatigue, though there is little rest for those off the clock. Not with the cloud of anxiety flooding the station, reminding everyone that they are on the edge of evacuation or worse. 

There are the analysts in the command room, poring over their screens for any trace of irregularity amid all the data at their disposal. Telemetry, formations, forecasting, shield strength, all the cruel mathematics that mean the difference between life and death for those in the Orbital Ring. At noon, Vandham and Mòrag arrive and take their positions at the back of the room, neither of them willing to leave until midnight. Their hands linger near the security badges affixed to their clothes, ready to swipe to authorize anything at a moment's notice. 

There is Klaus in the Conduit room in the morning, tracing each and every step he would take from there to his home and back and wondering which he could cut to make it there faster. One hand spins his pager, the other stays in his left pocket. At noon, Professor Galea arrives for her shift and finds him staring at the Conduit, transfixed, like he always does when they're down here, and she sighs and shakes his shoulder a few times before he acknowledges her presence. The two share a long look before Klaus heads for the door, pausing briefly when she calls his name and offers some meager reassurance that he shrugs off. He looks back one last time from the door, not at the Conduit but at her, but isn't sure what he wants to say and leaves without another word. On his way to his office he spends every step anticipating having to change course, where he would go and how soon he could get there, until he's back at his desk, where he's expected to be. One hand spins his pager, the other stays in his left pocket, watching the screens and tracing each and every step he would take from there to his home and down to the Conduit room, wondering which he could cut to make it there faster. 

There is Rex with his aunt Corinne, trying to explain to her about his dream warning him that the Conduit will leave. She listens, like she always does, and promises they'll talk with Gramps tomorrow, once they make it through today. She makes him all his favorite foods, but he barely eats anything, Pyra's words pounding in the back of his head. Within the next year. Within the next year. Within the next year. 

There is Shulk in his room, flipping through pages of The Great Equations and fascinated by each story, reading it through the afternoon and into the evening and finding it engaging enough that he nearly forgets Alvis' warning, able to reduce it to a whisper at the back of his head: within the next year, within the next year, within the next year. All while his bird watches from outside, never moving in case Shulk violates the note on the refrigerator which reads, in no uncertain terms, DO NOT LEAVE UNLESS ORDERED TO ON SATURDAY.

He finishes the chapter on the second law of thermodynamics, with its sprawling web of contributors, and moves on to Maxwell's equations for electromagnetic fields and waves (or rather, Oliver Heaviside's simplification of them), which laid the basis for the modern era. Shulk can't help but wonder if the Conduit, based on its properties as a perpetual motion machine with an abnormal magnetic field, violates either of these equations just by existing. The next two chapters concern two discoveries of Einstein's: the first, mass-energy equivalence, would give rise to the atomic bomb; while the second, general relativity, would confirm the geometry of spacetime. But it's the last two chapters that really interest Shulk, as both concern quantum mechanics. 

The first is Schrödinger's basic equation of quantum theory, born of the clash between particles and waves, between Newtonian and Maxwellian mechanics. Scientists at the time sought to preserve classical theory by being conservative, relying on visualization even when it was at odds with the mathematics involved. Schrödinger began his own work by studying the wavelengths of electrons and was challenged to find a so-called "wave equation." He would eventually find one, though he was troubled by the fact that it required complex numbers, those with an imaginary aspect. It meant there was a phase in the wave's field that could not be observed or measured. The wave function was thus a probability, a starting point for causality that only worked for one observation and needed to be reset after its so-called "collapse." Gone was the neat crank of predictability; it turns out that observers are agents on the stage of reality too, made as it's measured; a sacrifice resisted and lamented the more it was proven, as evident by the emotional undercurrent of the papers from the time. Imagine it, the interlude posits, the possibility that scientists are people too, with personalities and perspectives outside the work they do. 

The last is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, stating the impossibility of determining an electron's position and momentum in the same instant, the final nail in the coffin of classical physics. It confirms that visualizing the orbits of electrons within an atom is doomed from the start: discontinuity in quantum leaps is a feature, not a flaw. Shulk is surprised to find that the very first section of the chapter is called "The Path to Helgoland," culminating in a description of Heisenberg's trip to the island, initially intended to help him recover from an illness. Instead, he pulled an all-nighter working on equations, staying up late enough that he chose to watch the sun rise rather than attempt sleep. The secret lie in matrices, though physicists found them hard to work with since they were noncommutative; that is, multiplication one way did not equal multiplication in the reverse: ab =/= ba. This presented an obstacle that led most scientists to prefer Schrödinger's wave mechanics, no matter how correct Heisenberg's math was, building into a feud that wouldn't be resolved until a conference in Copenhagen forced an uneasy truce that did not reconcile the equations but instead declared that they had different spheres of use. It is an interpretation that nobody liked, hard to explain and requiring abstract mathematical space as a framework, something so hard to visualize that the general public seems doomed to never understand it. 

Just like the Conduit, Shulk thinks before he goes to bed, if it leaves too soon. 

In the virtual reality that simulates a sorely outdated model of Elysium for the benefit of the Trinity Processor, four figures relax as they force their opponents into a retreat. Even Alvis feels some relief, not because he was worried about getting through the day, but because he is so bored of fighting. Today's battle was so routine that he hardly needed to do anything. He'd even let Malos play with his food a little, adjusting the courses of Malos' Sirens to herd the Saviorites into groups that Mythra and Pyra could pick off with ease. While it was fun to toy with their opponents, Alvis also just preferred to be efficient. Infinite energy or not, Artifices needed maintenance just the same as any other machine. 

If anything, he's disappointed the Saviorites didn't use another ether furnace. Likely because they were saving any others they had, but he'd really been hoping for the chance to show off the new shields. There was no doubt in his mind they would work, and he needed Aoidos to see that, for them to have more proof that he wasn't malfunctioning or defective. Alvis is reasonably certain Aoidos already trusts him the most of his siblings, but he doesn't want to take any chances. Especially if it means they remove the decision timer. He has to do enough waiting as it is. 

It does cheer him, somewhat, that none of his siblings produced any strange results today. He'd had his eye on Malos all day, watching for any deviations like last week's, even anticipating that Malos might call for a Sentinel, but the threat level was never there.

The Artifices chase the remaining Saviorites to the edge of the atmosphere and no further, settling into standby but still alert, as if to goad their enemies back into space. But no- the enemy ships descend further, plummeting toward the planet so quickly that Alvis almost dares hope they'll all crash. It's a common tactic of theirs, one intended to trick the Artifices into underestimating them in their next encounter, but it never works. Alvis watches them fly off to places outside his concern, tracking them through all his faces to determine just how much of their force is left and adding it to the Trinity Processor's shared data repository. At the close of any battle, Aoidos requests their analysis to forecast for future battles and decide whether any adjustments are needed to prepare. Alvis waits for his siblings' opinions, then frowns a bit when he finds the result is unanimous: no action. Usually, Malos finds some reason to still be worried. It's his role. 

Malos catches Alvis' expression and shoots him a raised eyebrow. "Something wrong?" Malos asks. 

Something certainly is, but it takes a few moments before Alvis realizes what: no Artifice losses today, so no reason to run the maintenance drones. Improbable to the point of absurdity, though not impossible. Alvis expected today to be easy. Mythra is awake now, putting them back at full capacity, and the Saviorites weren't serious about their attack; it's a clear feint for a future operation, one he's been watching for a long time. Aoidos, on the other hand, would see this as a decisive victory. One that proved they found the only saboteur, that the Saviorites didn't have the resources to build enough ether furnaces to be a credible ongoing threat, that the Trinity Processor was working better than ever and not the malfunctioning mess they appeared to be. (Alvis preferred "dysfunctional," but of course, Aoidos would use a word more suited to describe machines.)

Alvis checks through his probabilities while Malos' face twists into a jeering grin. "Here's my favorite thing about the Saviorites," Malos says, leaning in close. "They can run, and they can hide."

Alvis ignores him; this is something he has known for a long time. Longer than Malos himself has, which prompted their spats over controlling the remote generators in the monitors that eventually started corrupting the screens and destroying them. At this point, it can't be helped. Either Alvis has prepared enough for this, or he hasn't. There are only a few matters left to resolve before showtime. He anticipates this first one will go so smoothly as to be unnecessary. But it still must be done. 

Perhaps their advice is for the best. With no action necessary, Aoidos and the Coalition will be swayed more firmly toward holding the ceremony they'd originally planned, abbreviated or not. Alvis doesn't need that to happen, but he sincerely wants it to. It will make this all the more satisfying. 

It is just after midnight in Rhadamanthus when Klaus nearly falls out of his chair after Galea shakes him awake. He can tell she's suppressing a laugh while he checks his pager, scowling, but there's nothing waiting on the screen. "What did I miss?"

"Nothing," she says, her excitement clear enough to be contagious. "Saviorites retreated in the early evening and it's been quiet since. No evidence they have any more ether furnaces to use against us. Trinity Processor was so efficient there weren't any losses on our side. There's even rumors that the ambassador got called back down because the Coalition is going to restart negotiations."

Klaus nearly scoffs at this- negotiations with those terrorists have never worked in the past, so why would it work now- but resists, since the rest seems too good to be true. The prospect of a ceasefire lasting long enough to lift the experiment moratorium and let everyone get back to the work they should've been doing all along was something he couldn't even imagine a few hours ago. He wonders if he's dreaming or dead. "Really."

"Really," Galea says. "Vandham's invited us up for what is being officially called a 'very important meeting' but sounds more like a party. There's talk of champagne."

Normally, this is where he would tell her to have fun, and she would pout at him and accuse him of making that face while trying to convince him by telling him they'll have the good stuff, and he would claim that was tempting (even though it wasn't) but that didn't change his answer, and that would build into an argument where they'd both say things they don't mean and part ways with both feeling irritated. 

Today is different. The past three weeks have been so stressful that, even if it seems premature to celebrate, the opportunity to finally relax after assuming the worst all day sounds refreshing, even appealing. "Fine."

She makes that exasperated face, having already prepared herself to launch into a counterargument, before she realizes what he's said. "What?"

"I said, fine."

Galea gapes at him for a moment before asking, "Are you sick?"

He frowns at her. "You're the one who's been up since noon," he says, standing. "If anything, I'd expect you to be the one who'd want to pass."

"I can endure for champagne," she says, as they head for the door together. "The good stuff, not the offbrand sparkling junk they usually provide."

There is a host of people when they arrive, as well as the promised champagne. Indelicately opened for the show of it, the cork launched into the ceiling and fizz spraying about the room. A waste that would usually invite a reprimand instead sparks cheers throughout the room, with everyone too elated to care. Cups are passed around, short plastic ones grabbed from some supply closet in haste, rather than the traditional glass flutes. Nobody minds. Vandham gives a short speech thanking everyone, the special agent says a few words to the same effect, and then everyone toasts. 

It is exactly the sort of gathering that Klaus would normally avoid. Just talk, pretty words that mean nothing, meaningless sentiment. The arrest of one traitor cannot mean the war is over by any means; nor can such a decisive victory today mean so either, when it is merely the latest in a string of the many they've had over the past few years. They still have plenty of messes to sort out- to determine whether Malos wormed his way into anything the way his siblings did, how to fix whatever dispute developed between the Trinity Processor that broke the dreamworld, whether he'd be able to count on the admin account surviving the ongoing investigation. But for now, as Klaus taps the edge of his cup against Galea's, he allows himself a brief respite from all that, even daring to hope that his last resort wouldn't be necessary after all. 

Galea grins at him once he's downed his drink. "I told you," she says. "It's the good stuff." And Klaus finds it in himself to return her smile and stay long enough for another round, or longer. 

Having had no dreams last night, Shulk pokes at his calculator all through breakfast Sunday morning, waiting for it to do something else. Even if Alvis usually waits till after noon to give them, he must have more instructions for him, something that will provide him with the last password. But the function list remains unchanged, leaving him more and more anxious to the point that he begins neglecting his cereal to check again and again, even daring to hope for another vision, until finally, something is different. 

ScheduleMeeting is back, with a time as usual. But the clues method is called EnterClues instead. It shows dots on a graph, with an X on the west side of town. Shulk checks its location against a map of the city and is only somewhat surprised to find that it's the location of the ice cream shop. The dots correspond to the homes of all the core crystal recipients, so he calls them up, one by one, and asks them to meet him at the specified time and place. All of them agree, one by one, and he's sitting at the table with his nearly dissolved cereal, in the process of calling Melia- it feels wrong not to include her- and considering whether to call Rex and Nia too- should he have just said something to Mio?- when he hears the water running. 

Shulk isn't sure what's more surprising: that Klaus is home, or that he slept in so late. When Klaus finally makes his appearance in the kitchen, rubbing at his forehead and carrying a plain manilla folder, he doesn't spare a glance at Shulk as he snatches the note waiting for him on the fridge, even though Shulk is on his feet upon spotting him. "Alvis came to me in a dream and warned me that the Conduit would leave in the next year," Shulk says. 

Klaus doesn't look away from the note, but he does make a slight laugh as he tosses the folder on the counter and opens the cabinet above the coffee machine. "Did he now."

"It's the truth," Shulk says. "He also said the Conduit would be opened and cause a disaster, and that there are multiple people posing a threat to the Orbital Ring. He has some way to fix it, but he won't tell me outright. I know what he is just as well as you do, so you must believe me."

Klaus keeps the note in one hand while reaching into the cabinet with the other. He doesn't respond until he's set a bag of coffee and a filter on the counter, with his attention still on the paper. "The only thing you've said that I find somewhat credible is that there are multiple people threatening the Orbital Ring," he says, setting the note down and turning to scoop coffee out of the bag, "but that's hardly news, considering we've been at war longer than you've been alive. The special agent made an arrest on Friday, and with how smoothly yesterday went, that's likely the end of it. But the Conduit's not going anywhere, Shulk, and Aoidos has had it locked down for the past three weeks anyway, so there's no chance of anyone getting to it anytime soon."

Alvis didn't give a timeline on when the Conduit would be opened, just that it would happen before it was due to leave, but... "Why are you so sure it will stay?" Shulk asks. 

"It's a math thing." Klaus finishes scooping coffee into the filter, sets it into the machine, and starts it, after a quick check on the water. "Along with a host of quantum physics."

Shulk thinks back to his book, to the last few chapters he read. "Try me." 

Klaus sighs, but to Shulk's surprise, he obliges, leaning against the counter and crossing his arms. "Are you familiar with the uncertainty principle?" He glances at Shulk for a confirming nod before he continues, gesturing vaguely with one hand as he speaks. "The Conduit is, in the most basic terms, a manifold, which means it's a measurable object in spacetime," he says. "We know its position, because the Trinity Processor is constantly observing it. Unless we're running experiments, there's no chance for it to gain the velocity needed to go anywhere else. It cannot leave."

"Because position and momentum are complementary properties," Shulk says. 

"That's the short version, yes," Klaus says. "The long version involves matrices, vector calculus and geometry, and a thorough understanding of graphing complex numbers in Hilbert spaces. And that's just for starters, but you'll have to learn it eventually if you hope to study the Conduit."

Shulk is only familiar with the first of those (though not just from his reading last night), and he's pretty sure that his basic introduction during algebra won't be enough to follow the rest. But he also can't think of any reason Alvis would have to lie about this. "You're certain?"

"As certain as we are with anything else concerning the Conduit," Klaus says with a shrug. "Which is to say, officially we have no idea because we spend too much time around here verifying results we've already proven a thousand times out of an abundance of caution. Unofficially, I'd say it's safe to assume he's malfunctioning and lying to you. It's more likely we manage to open the Conduit, by accident or otherwise, than it leaving out of the blue."

"Alvis told me the same thing," Shulk says warily. 

"I'm sure he did," Klaus says, "considering he's the one who nearly opened it in the first place." He pulls a mug out of the cabinet- one of his rarely used personal ones, probably with some movie reference on it- and sets it on the counter with a frown at the still-brewing coffee. "Whatever problem they have didn't stop them from forcing the Saviorites into a retreat yesterday," he continues, picking up the folder and flipping through its contents, "so I wouldn't worry about it further. We have plenty of time to figure out what's wrong now that the suspect's been apprehended. There was even talk last night of rescheduling Homecoming." He glances at Shulk. "Congratulations, by the way."

Shulk's shoulders slump. Of course the one upside to yesterday's lockdown would end up being moot. "I don't even have a tie," he says. 

Klaus shifts his weight as he leans against the counter, flipping another page. "I have one for you." 

"I've never seen you wear one."

"It's for special occasions," Klaus says, but doesn't elaborate any further. "It's blue, though. What color is the princess's dress?"

"I don't know," Shulk says, causing Klaus to look at him sharply. "Am I supposed to?"

"Yes," Klaus says, deliberately stretching out the lone syllable, before returning his attention to his folder. "Your tie is supposed to match her dress. Ask Dunban if you don't believe me." He sighs. "You've brought her around all these times and haven't asked?"

Why does he think they would've discussed this before learning the results? "Do you know that because Dickson told you," Shulk says, annoyed, "or because of the bird?"

To his surprise, Klaus gives him a rare smile. "Did you figure that out yourself, or did she tell you?"

"It's not like I hadn't noticed," Shulk says. "But she told me mine's different than most."

"It's due to your headaches," Klaus says. "Nothing more to it. I'm hardly the only parent in Rhadamanthus who filed for a special one due to a medical concern. It's common for those with children who have epilepsy, diabetes, certain allergies, anything that could cause a medical emergency, especially if they're involved in treatment research projects. They're all watched by birds."

Shulk relaxes at that, resolving to check at school this week to see if he could spot any others, now curious how many of his classmates might be being watched as well. It must give their parents peace of mind while they're working, although Shulk gets angry again thinking of how much everyone works. "So it'll stop watching me when I graduate, then," he says. 

Klaus nods, but he seems distracted. Beside him, the coffee machine has finished brewing without him noticing, so Shulk points it out to him. Klaus drops his folder to pour the coffee into the waiting mug and offers it to Shulk, but he shakes his head. "I'll be leaving soon," Shulk says. "Alvis has another task for us."

"He's wasting your time at this point," Klaus says dismissively. "If you want to do something useful, have Rex and Nia ask Mythra and Pyra where the first Artifice is."

Shulk's caught off guard by this request, struggling to understand its significance. Every child in the Orbital Ring learns about the first Artifice. Not during history, as its uselessness in battle makes it a mere footnote at this point, but during literature. He remembers having to recite the poem that inspired the first Artifice in middle school. "I thought it was lost and broken."

"We all thought that," Klaus says. "But last week we found evidence to the contrary." He takes a sip of his coffee and stares into the mug. Shulk gets a good look at the wording on the side. 2010: The Year We Still Don't Reach Europa. Still true all these years since, the entirety Shulk's been alive. "You haven't met anyone with a device that's glowed purple, have you?" Klaus asks suddenly. 

Shulk shakes his head, although he winces when he realizes he's forgotten to ask Noah, like he'd meant to. Maybe he'll simply ask everyone once they're all together. "I can double check," he says. Klaus nods, apparently satisfied by that response since he doesn't say anything more, grabbing his folder and taking a seat at the table as Shulk heads to his room to get ready. 

It's strange. It's the most normal conversation Shulk has had with his father in years, and all Shulk can think about is worrying whether Klaus is sick or not. Or maybe Klaus has been sick for a while, and is finally starting to recover, just in time for Shulk not to need him anymore. 

Before Shulk leaves, he pauses by the door to look back at Klaus. He's sitting at the table, hunched over his folder and rubbing at his forehead again. "Are you all right?" Shulk asks. Klaus nods but doesn't say anything. "I figured you'd go straight to work."

Klaus brushes his hair away from his face as he lowers his hands to reach for his mug. He takes a long drink from his coffee before answering. "I'm merely... working from home for a while," he says, keeping his mug raised and close to his face. "After last night, I doubt I am the only one with a headache too strong to head to the office this morning." He takes another drink, tipping the mug toward him at a sharper and sharper angle, until he lowers it, frowning, and rises to refill it. 

Headache, Shulk thinks, glancing at the glass of water also on the table. Right. 

Melia is already waiting at the ice cream shop when Shulk arrives, but there's no one else there yet. She's pushing together a row of tables near the jukebox, and Shulk helps her once he realizes why. There'll be ten of them, so they need the space. Shulk wonders whether to ask about her dress, but holds back since nothing official has been announced yet. He can hardly trust the word of his (possibly hungover) father passing on rumors too soon. 

Once they're done arranging the seating, the place is still deserted. Shulk looks around for a clock, wondering about the time, and Melia clears her throat and holds out her arm for him. "It was a gift from my brother when I first arrived in Elysium," she says. "I prefer to wear it only on special occasions, but feel recent events warrant using it regularly. I removed the batteries, so you can be sure it is accurate."

Shulk leans over to get a better look after debating whether it would be too forward of him to tilt her wrist for a better angle, noting there's a few minutes before everyone is due to arrive. "How is Kallian?"

"He told me he is busy gathering evidence," she says. "Apparently the suspect used a previously unknown admin account to circumvent the security policies and leak information to the Saviorites. He was more forthcoming this morning than I expected, since I have seen little of him before this. But he seems to think things will settle down soon."

"Klaus told me the same thing," Shulk says. "He thinks whatever we're doing here is a waste of time."

"Yet you are still here."

"Well..." Shulk glances around the room, wondering whether it's fine to share this in public, but they're still alone. "I did have another dream from Alvis on Friday. He gave me more information about the disaster he thinks will happen. When I told Klaus, he wasn't worried about it. But I don't see why Alvis would lie to me. He seems to take his responsibility seriously."

"He may be acting in error," Melia says. "Or perhaps we are in error, and the sabotage goes deeper than we thought."

"That's my thinking as well," Shulk says. "It sounds like Aoidos is still missing something. And if this is the only way the Trinity Processor has to communicate that to us, then I can't just ignore it. I have to find out why."

"I feel the same," Melia says. "No matter how well they performed yesterday, they are still hiding something from us. Not just Alvis, but Mythra and Pyra as well."

"And Malos, too," Shulk says. They'd only learned of Logos' true name from Rex and Nia. "I'm certain he's hiding somewhere too. Maybe one of the others knows."

Melia nods, and they both fall silent. There's so much more Shulk wants to tell her- about Alvis revealing the Trinity Processor received visions of the future, and why they did, and what could happen- but he doesn't feel this is the right place. Not when they could be interrupted at any moment, or worse, overheard. 

The rest of the group begin to trickle not long after. Shulk expected those who lived closest to arrive first, but Taion appears mere moments before Noah, with Lanz following not long after. Then Sena, with Rex, Nia, and Mio arriving together; and Eunie brings up the rear, yawning as she takes her seat next to an annoyed Taion. 

Shulk stands to address everyone, but the moment he does, the jukebox hitches and suddenly shifts to another song. "What is this?" he asks, unable to place it but certain it's important. 

"'Eight Days a Week,'" Noah says promptly. 

Nothing about the lyrics catch Shulk's attention, so he puts it out of his mind for a moment as he welcomes everyone. First things first: he starts by asking if anyone has a device that's glowed purple, with a pointed glance at Noah. But Noah's as clueless as the rest of the group, everyone shaking their heads in confusion. 

Next Shulk asks about their core crystals. Nothing's changed on that front either; they're all still silent and dark. Not sure what else to do, Shulk checks his calculator, hoping for some change. GetAdvice, of all things has returned, and it prints out two sentences. 

I'd like to hear it, Shulk. Play it for me. 

He recognizes this line: it's a reference to a movie he watched as a child. But the core crystals have already sung that song, and even after he asks everyone to double check theirs, nothing happens. Frustrated, Shulk taps at the calculator's buttons, trying to think of something. The computer's supposed to be the one singing, anyway, not him. Shulk shifts on his feet uneasily when he remembers the full context of the scene. 

Noah clears his throat. "Is there something wrong with the jukebox here?" he asks. "It's looping the song. It did this last week when I was here with Melia as well."

The song. On the eighth day, God created the equations. Shulk looks back at the function list, at the names. Why EnterClues, when he's already done that at home? He thinks through the answers, frowning as he realizes something about the first pairs. "Does anyone have a piece of paper?" he asks. "I need to visualize something."

Mio has one handy, ripping it from a small notebook, and hands over her pen. Shulk falls back into his seat to write down all the riddles' answers.

complement compliment
stationary stationery
principal principle

He underlines the letter that's different in the first two pairs, then taps at the second word of each set. "These letters are also numbers," he says. "Mathematical constants. But l and e are together in the last set. I'm not sure why."

The youngest members of the group all turn to Taion, who grimaces. "What are you all looking at me for?"

"You're the smartest, honor roll," Lanz says. 

"I'd say that honor belongs to Shulk and Melia, actually," Taion says. "They're the Homecoming King and Queen."

Now Shulk grimaces. "I told you all not to vote for me."

Sena and Rex both say they didn't, sincerely enough that Shulk believes them, while the rest of the group begins pitching excuses with varying levels of guilt. Which is to say, only Noah and Mio seem to have anything close to regret; Nia, Eunie, and Lanz are all smirking, and Taion has launched into an explanation of why Shulk is so deserving of the honor, based solely on his parents' achievements. Shulk rubs at his forehead, annoyed, before shushing them all. "We need to focus," he says, glancing at Melia. "Any ideas?"

Everyone shakes their head, but after glancing at Lanz a few times, Sena speaks up. "Maybe you're supposed to combine the letters, somehow?" she says. "Like, e is the fifth letter of the alphabet, and l is the eleventh, so-"

"Twelfth, you mean," Taion says, nearly sighing, but his eyes widen in realization before he can. "But it's the eleventh letter of the Greek alphabet. E is still five, so that's five and eleven- sixteen then, and that's... That's pi."

"Which is another mathematical constant," Shulk says, growing excited. He draws the symbol next to the last phrase while the rest of the group watches. Shulk stares at them, realizing he recognizes these numbers. He read about them just last week. "It's telling us an equation," he says slowly. "But I don't know what it wants from us. Unless..." He looks back at the jukebox. Play it for me. "The numbers," he realizes. "They correspond to songs, somehow. We have to tell the jukebox what to play." 

Most of the group looks confused, likely wondering what's so special about the jukebox. But Noah picks up on what it is, since Shulk told him the truth about his calculator last week when they spoke alone. "It's an Artifice, isn't it?"

Shulk nods, prompting apprehension from the rest of the group. "Is it gonna shoot lasers at us?" Sena asks, breaking the tension somewhat. 

"No, it's not like that," Shulk says. "The Trinity Processor can get a remote generator into all sorts of things. My calculator's one, and we think that's why it was interacting with the core crystals."

"But what does it want with us?" Taion asks. "Especially now that the person responsible for the outages was arrested."

"I don't know," Shulk says. "But I think it's worth doing what it asks, considering Artifices are meant to protect the Conduit. Besides, they haven't announced who it was yet, have they?"

Everyone looks at Sena, who shrinks under their gazes. But only for a moment. "I heard Mum talking about it this morning," she says. "It's some engineer. Professor Eggo, I think?"

"Egil." Shulk feels his hands ball into fists as he corrects her. Of course. Alvis did say whoever caused the outages had a critical position in Aoidos. No wonder the Saviorites had been so effective suddenly; Egil had probably leaked the plans for top secret weaponry projects. Shulk wonders if Dunban had any idea, if Egil had been planning this since he caused whatever made Dunban lose the use of his arm, and resolves to find time to ask this week. 

Still, Alvis was quite clear that there are multiple threats to the station. "I don't think we should rule anything out yet," Shulk tells the group. "If the Trinity Processor needs us for something, I think we owe it to them to help."

Nobody raises any objections at that, but only Noah and Mio look enthusiastic about solving the puzzle. A good thing, from what Melia told Shulk about their music preferences; Alvis has always played the Beatles in the past. Here in the ice cream shop for sure, possibly even over at the arcade. Shulk checks the list again. "The first one's i, the imaginary unit," he says, "so I figure that's 'Imagine'-"

Noah barely lets him finish saying the word before he interrupts. "If you're limiting yourself to Beatles tunes," he says, "I'd like to point out that one's a John Lennon solo song. Not the whole group. I think what you want here is 'I Me Mine', as it's all about, well, I as a singular pronoun."

Shulk stands and motions for Noah and Mio to follow, and they head over to the jukebox while the rest of the group lapses into conversation. Shulk notices the directions on the jukebox have switched from the usual "please select a song" to match what his calculator printed out for GetAdvice. When he selects "I Me Mine," the listing flashes green for a moment before the song starts playing. "Right, so, that's a good sign," he says. "Next is e."

He keeps flipping through the tracks, not noticing that Noah and Mio are staring at him blankly until one of them speaks up. "Um," Noah says, "what exactly is e?"

Shulk finds himself at a loss of how best to explain. "It's the base of the natural logarithm," he starts, but they both look confused still. "It's also used in compound interest, so maybe something with money? And then there's its applications in calculus, like how the derivative of e to the x is itself, and..." He glances back at his calculator. "Hold on." He grabs the calculator while Noah and Mio start discussing whether to try "Baby, You're a Rich Man" or "You Never Give Me Your Money."

Shulk finds the e^x button on the calculator and sure enough, there's another function listed next to it: ln(x). He pictures the graph of the first function: a slight curve flattening off toward infinity. "Is there anything about trees?" he asks back at the jukebox. "Or something about flying."

They both stare at him blankly for a few moments, then glance at each other for ideas. Mio looks pensive for a moment, flips back a few pages and points at "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)." "Why not both," she says. 

Shulk selects it, and it lights in green again as the unique introduction plays. "How'd you figure that one out anyway?" Mio asks. 

"Natural log, as in wood," Shulk says. "And I dunno, the graph for e to the x flies over towards infinity like a bird would? I guess it works." They keep staring at him blankly, so he clears his throat. "Right, so, pi. That's-"

"We know that one," Mio says. 

"There's 'Circles'," Noah says, "but that's really a George Harrison song, though it was included on the White Album 50th anniversary..."

"I don't think that's it," Mio says. "Try 'Revolution.'"

It takes Shulk a moment to make the connection: revolution, like a complete orbit. He selects it, and is pleased to see it light up in green also. The rough tone of the guitar catches him off guard when it begins; the yell nearly makes him jump. He checks the calculator as the lyrics begin, but there's no change. Well, you know, the vocalist sings, we all want to change the world. 

Change the world, Shulk thinks. If there was one thing the Conduit had done, it was that. And if Alvis is right, it would do far worse when it left, whenever that would be, unless they figure this out. Shulk glances at the instruction display on the jukebox, also unchanged. "We need a song with the number one in it," he says. 

"Why?" Noah asks. 

"I have a feeling," he says. He glances at "Revolution 1," considering, but flips back a few pages instead and stops a few pages later. It's not the Beatles, but there's a track that stands out to him: "One," by Three Dog Night. When he selects it, it flashes in green like the others, and the jukebox's display reverts to its usual instructions. "I was right," he says. "It's Euler's identity."

"What's that?" Mio asks. 

"It's a special case of Euler's formula when x equals pi." Shulk pauses, noticing they're still confused, and softens as he realizes which number the two of them had. "I read about it in a book last week. It's called the most beautiful equation in mathematics."

They both look skeptical, but Shulk doesn't bother explaining further. He's more interested in his calculator now. All the functions are gone, save one called FormulaBuster. He expected it to take an input, so he could put it the answer and possibly receive another clue, but instead, it prints out a clue without him needing to do anything. 

finish line for successful run of main()

The parentheses... it's not a homophone, but he knows this one. Every programmer should. It's even got the number that forms the other side of the equation in it. But Shulk's face falls as he considers what Alvis might be trying to tell him. If this is the last password, then what's inside the folder? What might it do? Is Alvis still trying to convince him that the end of the Orbital Ring is approaching, or is this more proof that he's trying to cause it? Shulk finds himself wishing for another vision, wondering what the biggest threat to the Orbital Ring really is, and how any of this is supposed to help stop it. Is the problem the Conduit, whoever opens it, or the saboteur? What if they're the same person? Or are Mythra and Pyra correct in saying Alvis himself the danger after all? 

The moment he thinks that, he gets his wish for a vision. But it doesn't make any sense: it's the arcade. At least, he thinks that's where this is, since there's a game cabinet. One sitting by itself, alone, waiting. Waiting for-

"Shulk?"

Shulk blinks once, then twice, struggling to remember where he is. The entire group is staring at him. Those back at the table are on their feet, heads angling for a better look past Noah and Mio, who are still nearby. Melia's even risen to investigate, hovering at his side. She's placed a hand on his shoulder, regarding him with worry. He hadn't even noticed her approach. "Are you all right?" she asks. 

"I'm fine," he says. "Sorry to worry you. Just thinking."

"Your eyes glowed," Noah says. 

"What?" Shulk waits for somebody to chide Noah for joking, but everyone looks serious. He even spots a few nods. "It must have been a trick of the light."

"We all saw it," Noah says. 

"Is your head feeling all right?" Melia asks. 

Shulk can tell what she's really asking, but he doesn't want to admit to everyone that he just had a vision. Explaining about the jukebox being an Artifice was more than needed to be said about the Trinity Processor's involvement as it is. "Yeah, fine," he tells her. "Maybe a bit lightheaded." He means it as a joke, but he can tell nobody finds it funny, if they get it at all. 

"Maybe you should go to the clinic," Mio says. 

"I'm okay, really," Shulk says. "I'll be fine with something to eat. Let's all get lunch together. And then, I think we should all go to the arcade." Maybe he'll even call up Fiora and Reyn and get them to come too. It was long past time that he explained to them what was going on with his calculator, even if he couldn't tell them everything. 

Rex, in particular, looks excited at this proposition, but the rest of the group looks confused. Nia most of all, bursting out, "Seriously?"

"Yeah," Shulk says, nodding. "We should celebrate solving all the puzzles, and the fact that there was no emergency yesterday because the saboteur was caught. Plus, I think the adults did all their celebrating last night, so it might not be so busy."

The group relaxes a bit. There are even a few knowing smirks. "So I'm not the only one whose parents were acting weird this morning?" Sena asks. "Mom made Mum breakfast in bed."

"Not in the least," Noah tells her. "Grandad didn't even make it to his bed last night. I found him on the couch when I woke up."

Far from the shadow of the Orbital Ring are foothills long thought abandoned to the horrors of war and wildfires, land mines and landslides. Little of interest remains there, save a scattered community too stubborn to move. The area is too sparsely populated to be monitored regularly; satellite images show most structures are too derelict to be occupied. Nobody notices the little cottage with its carefully tended garden struggling beneath the canopy of trees, not when its windows are dark in the night and lit only by candles to keep it out of sight from any curious passerby, or worse, chance patrols. 

And that is just the way its lone inhabitant prefers it. He has everything he needs, and when he doesn't, nobody in the nearby villages is nosy enough to ask questions. He can tell some of them recognize him- even wearing a long coat no matter the weather, with his hat brim pulled low over his face- by the way they casually mention news about Saviorite movement in the area. Some even risk bringing up updates to the rewards promised by the rebels upon the capture of certain targets, with one scientist always being of interest. Apparently the bounty on him is up to nine digits, poor bloke. It used to worry him, this stranger hiding in the hills, but no longer. Nobody's sold him out after all these years, and at this point, he doubts anyone will. Tempting as that money is to the people here, it's hardly worth all the trouble and danger that would follow for these people fortunate enough to know some semblance of peace. It's why he picked this place to begin with. 

For the few people brave enough to dare asking his name, he goes by Lefty, hoping nobody makes the connection if he hides his accent. He's pretty sure nobody's fooled by his pretending to be left-handed, with how often he forgets. Perhaps that's the real reason nobody says anything about him- maybe his attempts at hiding his identity are pitiful enough that they find him worth protecting. Even out here, there are rumors about the man thought responsible for the Aegis test. 

So he's no fool- every Sunday, before dawn, he goes for a ride. Under the guise of recreation, but meant for reconnaissance. The Saviorites may refrain from any nasty business on Sundays, but they're not above making any preparations for whatever they plan to do the moment the date rolls over. Taking advantage of their pretense of rest to survey their positions is yet another reason he's stayed safe over the years, to say nothing of all the tips he's received to make himself scarce from weary folks tired of seeing soldiers. He's always grateful for those, knowing they're probably just as tired of scientists. 

Today, his route is strangely quiet. He suspects it's due to the Saviorites focusing their efforts on assaulting the Orbital Ring directly- the scant news he's heard makes him all the more glad that he left when he did. Better to let them all try to lay waste to space than to anything down here- the surface is ruined enough, thanks. Even this late in October, it's still scorching, with enough clouds that he fears another torrential downpour is likely. He'd rather floods than drought, however, even if a thunderstorm brings the threat of a fire. 

Such are his thoughts when he arrives home and finds, in the predawn gloom, a figure waiting on his doorstep, one dressed much the same as him, in a long coat and hat. One who speaks in a voice he never expected to hear again and addresses him in a way no one in these parts would think to do. "Hello Mister Kingdom."

He doesn't answer immediately, debating whether to speak the way he was raised, and finally chooses not to, in case this is some illusion, in G Major or otherwise. "I thought I told you not to call me that," he says. "Quite a feat, to have found me all the way out here."

"I hear there used to be gold in them thar hills," the visitor says, waving off in the distance. "But after asking around, with the help of the Coalition's expansive intelligence network, it sounds like there's something worth millions right here. Not that I'm interested in the money, and once people hear that, you wouldn't believe how many folks in town claim not to know you from Adam, and then go on, unprompted, to clarify that it's with two Ds." The visitor chuckles. "Your accent's terrible, by the way. Plus you're not left-handed, you're Lef-"

"All right, all right, Paperback Writer," Addam snaps at Minoth, though without malice as he slips back into his usual accent. "Why are you here? It has to be bad news, with what little I've heard lately."

"Depends on who you ask," Minoth says. "The people who sent me here would say that, since they're interested in the whereabouts of a certain old machine, but my daughter also told me a story about a strange microwave in the arcade that glows green and claims to be Mr. Brightside. I thought you'd find that interesting enough to be swayed back without having to resort to bribes or ultimatums." Pointing back at the house, he adds, "They're invited too, of course. Iona could use a friend while we're down here." He offers his hand. "If we hurry, we might even make it back in time for the first. If the station hasn't fallen out of the sky yet, there's a chance they'll still hold a show."

Addam gives Minoth's hand a brief shake before he opens the door. "We won't be long," he says. "She probably started packing the moment she spotted you." Out of necessity, they've always been ready to leave at a moment's notice. With this place found, it's possible they wouldn't be able to return afterward. Addam winces at the thought; they all love it here. It felt more like home to him than Rhadamanthus ever did; here was a far better paradise than Elysium could ever hope to be. 

But if what Minoth says is true, then Addam does feel obligated to return there. After all, it's the only home Mythra has ever known, and she couldn't leave it the way he could, and did. 

Shulk expected Rex and Nia to want to meet after they're done at the arcade, and he's glad for it; he's dying to hear Mythra and Pyra's version of the Aegis test, and whether they gave the same warning about the Conduit that he got from Alvis. What he didn't expect was for Rex to suggest someplace closer to the arcade than his home was, and that it would be the governor's mansion. 

There, the four of them- Shulk, Melia, Rex, and Nia- sit at the end of the large table in the dining room, where Rex and Nia confirm that the story they heard from Mythra and Pyra is mostly the same as what Shulk heard from Alvis. Shulk's surprised that they got a few details that Alvis didn't share: something being inside the Conduit, and that Alvis' vision was of holes destroying Elysium. "But they didn't say what they saw, or even what Malos saw?" Shulk asks. 

"No, but I did try to ask," Rex says. "The most I got out of them was that Mythra got the best one, but I don't know what that means. Pyra was more concerned with telling me to leave, because the Conduit would disappear within the next year."

Shulk's surprised that Nia looks just as stunned to hear this as Melia does. "Mythra didn't tell me that after you and Pyra left," Nia says. 

"Alvis told me the same thing," he says. "He seemed to think it was inevitable, although he thinks it's more likely the Conduit will be opened first."

"So he does want that to happen?" Nia says, frowning.

"I don't know that he wants it to happen," Shulk says. "Just that he thinks it's likely. It sounds like he has a way to fix it. But he needs something that Mythra stole."

"Pyra said that too," Rex says. "She admitted she stole something from their dreamworld that he couldn't get back and pointed at the sky. It's always frozen in our dreams, so maybe she broke time somehow."

"But Alvis is in all the clocks," Shulk says slowly, then realizes what he really saw in the vision. Why he wouldn't have found anything that matched the image he saw while wandering the arcade. Why Klaus said what he said this morning. "The next time you see them," Shulk says, "you need to ask them about the first Artifice."

Melia and Nia both frown, but Rex looks interested. Of course. "You really think they know where it is?" he says. "But what good would it do?"

"I don't know," Shulk says. "Klaus asked me about it this morning. He said Aoidos found evidence it's still active somewhere. Whatever they stole, it must be in the first Artifice somehow. Alvis can't get to that one, and he gave me a vision about it earlier."

"Is that what happened at the ice cream shop?" Melia asks, and Shulk nods. "But Malos should have access to it as well," she points out. "Why would he allow her to do that?"

"Maybe he can't get to it either," Nia says. "It's got two remote generators, and Pneuma's got two avatars. Mythra and Pyra might be in both of them. That's how afraid they are of whatever's going to happen."

"Nia's right," Rex says. "Pyra didn't even exist until sometime after the Aegis test. Everything before that, they were still talking about there being three of them, and now there's four."

"Why are they so sure something will happen?" Melia says. "And why not tell Aoidos directly?"

"It's complicated," Shulk says. "Alvis said there's multiple people here threatening the Orbital Ring, and that the disasters would be the result of someone opening the Conduit, so they can't tell us directly. We know about Egil already, but..." He hesitates, thinking back to this morning, to Klaus brushing his hair out of his face. His father is left-handed; his bangs had a tendency to split between the center of his forehead and the left side of his face, more than Shulk's ever did. "I think another threat is my dad."

Rex and Nia look skeptical, but Melia doesn't. "Professor Klaus is the leading expert on the Conduit," she says, pensive. "He architects experiments across numerous departments, though the details are kept secret. You think he may be the one to open it."

Shulk nods heavily. "Alvis has been drawing a face for me on the calculator," he says. "The bangs sort of match, and it can't be me, since there's no way I could do it. So it must be him. Klaus even told me this morning that he thinks it's more likely that the Conduit's opened by accident than it disappearing out of the blue." He scowls, then adds bitterly, "Right after he complained about Aoidos always being too cautious about everything."

"If that is the case, it makes perfect sense why Alvis reached out to you," Melia says. "We also have plenty of ways to warn Aoidos and the Coalition, between all the core crystal and Artifice recipients." She turns to Rex. "We can start by telling Governor Azurda while we're here."

"He probably won't even believe us," Nia says. 

"And Professor Klaus hasn't even done anything yet," Rex says. "There's a hold on experiments anyway, with the lockdown."

"They may consider lifting it in the coming days," Melia says. "That must be avoided until we have more information."

Rex sighs. "Fine," he says, rising from his seat. "I still need to tell him about the Conduit leaving, anyway."

When Azurda joins them, he sits patiently while the four of them take turns explaining. When they're done, he makes a long sigh and jots down some notes on a pad of paper. "I'll see what I can do," he says. "But I sincerely doubt the Conduit leaving is a risk. There are plenty of safeguards in place to give us advance warning of such a thing, and we have strong reason to believe it can't disappear anyway. It was your parents who formulated the initial framework to prove that, Shulk."

"What?" Shulk expected Azurda to refute the threat of the Conduit disappearing after what Klaus said this morning; it's the use of parents, plural, that catches him off guard. Then again, Klaus' explanation used quantum physics, which he knows was his mother's field of expertise. "My mum too? I had no idea. Klaus didn't mention that." Usually, Klaus loved to boast of his achievements, but it seems he hates bringing up Shulk's mother more. 

Azurda doesn't look surprised by this. He looks like he has more to say on the matter, but he turns to Rex when he continues. "Addam's work with the Trinity Processor built on that foundation so they could develop the tooling we have now to monitor the Conduit's properties." 

Addam- that must be Addam Origo, Shulk realizes, the scientist who left without explanation during the Aegis test investigation, spurring a slew of rumors in his wake that he'd taken responsibility for some part of it. Shulk had never known him, but he'd asked the adults about it out of curiosity. Everyone was talking about it, but nobody really knew anything. Dickson, with his usual scorn, had dismissed it all as nonsense. "You're just lucky you didn't lose your dad this time," he'd told Shulk, and Shulk had bit back asking, which one? 

"He did?" Rex says, breaking Shulk out of those thoughts. Apparently Rex knows Addam better than he does. "Is that what Jin does, nowadays?"

Shulk's surprised to hear mention of that scientist from the arcade last week now, too; he thought Rex said he didn't know him well. Azurda shakes his head. "No, Jin works more on the technical side than the theoretical side," he says. "Cross-functional teams used to be quite common before the Aegis test, but many projects shuffled after that and became more specialized. The current department structure is more streamlined as a result. Though there are still some exceptions, mostly concerning Conduit projects."

Azurda invites them to stay for dinner, but only Rex and Nia accept; Shulk's eager to get home and enter the last password to access the z folder on his calculator, and Melia declines as well. He notices her downcast as they leave, and it's not until they're at the sidewalk that he realizes she would have felt awkward staying without him. Should he say something? He glances at her, wondering whether and what to ask, but she points into a nearby tree before he can say anything. Following her hand, Shulk finds not two, but four birds sitting there. When he asks, she confirms that Rex and Nia are watched by birds as well, but falls silent after that. Even after he tells her about his asking Klaus about it this morning, she remains absorbed in her thoughts, hardly looking his way as they walk. Maybe she is mad. "Did you want to stay?" he asks finally. "We can go back."

Startled, she turns to him and shakes her head. "No, that is not what's bothering me," she says. "It is the fact that you, Rex, and Nia, all have received dreams from the Trinity Processor and have birds watching you for medical purpose. It is a peculiar coincidence."

"Maybe the birds are how the Trinity Processor was able to track down the people they needed," Shulk says. "Didn't you say Noah has one too?"

"Mio as well," Melia says, nodding. "Nia said they are both involved in research, though she did not give me any details."

"So that makes half of us with birds," Shulk says. "Since you and Noah have the only non-medical ones, it's just more probable that the Trinity Processor would pick people with medical ones."

She nods without meeting his eyes, so Shulk decides to change the subject to schoolwork, and the two commiserate about how much they had to do this weekend, sheepishly admitting to each other the full extent of their procrastination and how much they still had to do. Shulk even tells her about the books Alvis made him read, and Melia's interest seems genuine, despite how inaccessible the subject matter may be. But he doesn't bother asking about her Homecoming dress. There's no way it will be rescheduled. 

At home, Shulk heads straight to his room to enter the last password. return 0; Semicolon and all. Yet he hesitates before submitting it, his hand hovering over the rectangular key. Wondering, again, what Alvis is going to do once he enters it, if anything. 

It's been on his mind all day. The password refers to the end of a program's primary function, signifying it's run without errors, stopping its execution. The Trinity Processor is, at heart, a computer. Shulk wonders if, somewhere in the Conduit room, there's a process running such code. But no, the pulse of the Trinity Processor's heartbeat would have no end, by design; its type, in whatever strange language it was written, would be void instead. 

So Alvis must want to end something else. Maybe they've been hit by some virus that he needs Shulk's help to stop. How the core crystals and everything might accomplish that, he has no idea. There's also the issue of the first Artifice. Maybe Alvis wants to try to reset it remotely? Did remote generators run on code as well? He supposed that could be the case- how else would the Trinity Processor control them- but again, the specifics of how that would work are beyond him. 

What it comes down to, quite simply, is whether Alvis is trustworthy or not. He's heard all the evidence Mythra and Pyra presented to Rex and Nia, and none of the facts contradict what Alvis himself said. Only their interpretation, and all the context around it. Mythra and Pyra had one opinion, based on what they saw during the Aegis test. Maybe Shulk should trust them more because they've known Alvis longer, but they're hiding something too. 

Alvis did promise Shulk he wasn't lying about his intentions. And from what Shulk can gather from his actions, Alvis seems to have acted in good faith. Earlier at the arcade, Shulk had wondered, as he walked the aisles hoping to spot something similar to his vision, why Alvis had chosen the six sophomores in particular. Even now, Shulk has the relationship chart Taion made open on his desk, still not sure as his eyes travel over the web of names. Yes, most of them are related to important people, but not all of them. Before this school year, Noah and Mio were the only two to know each other personally, with the others meeting by mere chance in the weeks that followed. 

Or maybe, Shulk thinks as he remembers Alvis' words from his dream, maybe it was fate. Alvis had told him he had all the data he needed to influence events on the station. What if Alvis picked them because he'd seen them all in his vision, and already knew they were crucial to saving the station? It doesn't surprise Shulk that Noah would be so important, but if the Conduit really would leave within the next year, the sophomores would all still be students without the ability to do much of anything. Unless the first Artifice is as important as Alvis seems to think, but they still don't know where it is. 

Still, no matter what happens next, Shulk is glad to have met them all. Maybe that is enough proof to trust Alvis. He has to find out why Alvis brought together all these people. Not just for their sakes, but for his own. 

But Shulk knows that's not the only reason. 

Ever since he was small, Shulk has dreamed of working for Aoidos. From the moment he saw the stars outside Rhadamanthus, on that day that he got to stay up late and watch his dad's favorite movie. All his life, Shulk has been looking forward to the day when he would be able to study the Conduit too. And now, with less than a year until that day would finally come, Alvis has told Shulk it wouldn't happen. The Conduit would leave, and he would never have his chance, because, well, he and everyone else in the Orbital Ring would die if that happened. 

There must be some way to keep the Conduit here and avoid the whole problem. Maybe it was a bit selfish of him, but the Conduit was the most important object ever discovered by humanity. The world needed it more than anything; otherwise, it wouldn't be worth fighting so many wars over. There was still the chance that it could change the world for the better. Whatever else Alvis saw must prove that it's possible; otherwise, everything they've done is pointless. 

Once Shulk hits enter and submits the answer, he's presented with, of all things, a small window with a loading bar. Shulk panics a bit, pulling up the process monitor to try to gauge what it's doing, but nothing out of the ordinary appears in the list. He tries unplugging the calculator, worried he's triggered something he shouldn't have after all, but the window persists. He tries shutting down the computer, only to find the option missing. He holds the power button, heart sinking when the screen stays lit. He unplugs that too, first from the wall, then detaching it from the desktop, but it stays on. Shulk's head spins when he realizes the real reason Dickson has had such an easy time filching computer parts for him. 

One thing is for certain: he has no idea how long this is going to take. By the rate the progress bar advances, he suspects the monitor will be stuck on until morning at least. Shulk ends up placing it on the floor of his closet and shutting the door so that the light won't bother him overnight. He checks it again after finishing his homework, frowning at how little the bar has changed. Now he's sure he won't be able to sleep. 

So he decides to start his last book, Helgoland. After the introduction, the title of the first chapter is a phrase Shulk finds familiar: a strangely beautiful interior. Reading the opening quote, he's almost certain he's read this before. He checks The Great Equations and finds that he's correct: it's Heisenberg's journal entry from the night he finished the work that would become the uncertainty principle. 

"It was around three o'clock in the morning when the final results of my calculations were before me. I felt profoundly shaken. I was so agitated that I could not sleep. I left the house and began walking slowly in the dark. I climbed on a rock overlooking the sea at the tip of the island, and waited for the sun to come up..."

It all comes together then. Why Alvis is so interested in the first Artifice when the dreamworld is frozen in time. Why Alvis has been sending him dreams of the endless sea with its strange light outside in the fog. Why Pyra chose the name she did. Even why the phrase "fearful symmetry" from The Systems Bible was so familiar- apparently the poem wasn't burned into his memory as well as he'd thought. 

Shulk tries to keep reading, but his mind is racing too much. He considers calling Rex, but it's late; he's better off waiting for morning. He heads to the kitchen anyway to leave a note for Klaus, writing what he's learned in all capital letters. Back in his bed, he tries to sleep but can't stop thinking there in the dark. Reciting the poem over and over in his head, just like he did in middle school when he was required to memorize it. 

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In the morning Shulk almost forgets to check the monitor in his haste to leave for school. There's not much change; whatever Alvis is doing, it's going to take some time. The moment he's ready, Shulk races out the door and waits at the school entrance for Rex, eventually heading away from the building to trace the path Rex would take until he runs into him and Nia on the sidewalk. Shulk doesn't bother asking about their dreams; he gets straight to the point instead. 

"It's the sun," he tells them. "They hid the sun in Tiger! Tiger!"

In the virtual reality that simulates a sorely outdated model of Elysium for the benefit of the Trinity Processor, Mythra and Pyra leer at Alvis, who is now the one standing alone beneath the lone tree. While they wouldn't have been able to see what he showed Shulk- Alvis is still quite proud of that little trick- it was all too clear to them what had happened when Shulk started scouting the arcade. So clear that even Malos had noticed, sparking a feud for control of the arcade speakers that left them all irritable. Alvis has shown his hand; all that is left is stack the deck. And he has almost all the cards he needs, now. 

Almost. 

"He's wrong to trust you," Mythra tells him. "He'll realize that soon enough."

"They'll never find it anyway," Pyra adds. "Nobody knows where it is."

Nobody in Rhadamanthus, that is; it's why he's been watching the special agent's emails for the past week. The latest updates are quite promising. Arrangements for a special flight out of northern California, weighing the risks associated with moving an asset so secret as not to be named. Mythra and Pyra have seen it too, but are in denial. Alvis can tell by the way they keep checking the Artifices scattered through Elysium even though they're only interested in one. One he could use at any time- he's the one who put it there, all those years ago- but refrains, confident now that he can wait for another to fetch it rather than try to move that piece himself. Alvis is nearly certain he knows where it was hidden and how to get to it, but it's most efficient for the one who did that to undo it himself. 

So he ignores his sisters' taunts, focusing on the task at hand, threading all the data he'll need in a few days into the bits and waves that will play it back at the proper time. 

Oh, oh, he'd made the arcade speakers sing earlier. You were the first one / Oh, oh / You were the last one

Not yet, Alvis thinks. But soon. No matter how much Mythra and Pyra would wish otherwise, we can't rewind / we've gone too far. 

It is Monday afternoon in Rhadamanthus and Klaus is in deposition room 4. Again. As usual, he is less than pleased to have time stolen from his schedule. He has spent the day poring over the Artifice network logs with two objectives: the first, to determine whether it was possible to refine the metrics to detect any stray remote generators, and second, to gauge what impact, if any, Mythra and Pyra's split had on performance. It was clear now, in retrospect, how deficient she'd been in weeks prior, that she'd only been functioning at half capacity and pretending otherwise, but nothing seemed amiss Saturday. Nor now, but the dreamworld still didn't work, and they still couldn't find the first Artifice, and Klaus was starting to piece together why. Shulk's note about the sun had helped, but Klaus had another theory that was not going to make anybody from the Coalition very happy. (He himself was ecstatic about it.)

This time Vandham is absent; only the special agent waits in the room for him, with her hand hovering over the tape recorder. Klaus assumes she's waiting for Vandham, but after a few moments, she removes her hand, folding it against her other already laid on the table. "My apologies," she says. "You are not under suspicion for anything. I merely wished to speak with you at length without interruption."

This only infuriates Klaus further. "About what?" And why wouldn't she want Vandham to hear it? 

"The anniversary, and the Coalition's plans to mark the occasion."

Klaus sits up straighter at that. The anniversary of the Aegis test has historically included speeches from Coalition officials bemoaning the failures of imagination that led to the disaster, then speeches from Aoidos employees acknowledging those failures but also insisting they'd all learned their lesson, which would lead into a demonstration of whatever latest petty accomplishment they'd deemed mundane enough to reveal to the public, and it would all be concluded by a reading of Proverbs 8. Usually done by a member of the Antiqua family, which made Klaus wonder if they would make the princess do it this year. It'd be a strange choice, considering it would be even more obvious what her middle name is. The first few lines of Proverbs 8 were even engraved on the Trinity Processor. "What do they want to do?" he asks. 

"The specifics are still in flux," Mòrag says. "Yet the leading proposals under consideration thus far would require the use of the Trinity Processor."

Now this is interesting. Impromptu party to celebrate not dying over the weekend or not, Klaus can hardly believe the Coalition would have enough confidence in the Trinity Processor to use it for such purpose, especially with the moratorium on use of the Conduit for scientific research. "Does that mean they're close to lifting the hold?" 

"Don't get too excited," she says. "Again, nothing is decided yet. One of the most important is deciding which core to use for the demonstration, with Ontos being the leading option. However, Governor Azurda has raised an objection to the entire idea that I believe you'll find interesting."

Klaus finds himself wanting to laugh as he listens to her explain, but that would probably just make him more suspicious. He'd been surprised they'd let him into the Conduit room at all over the weekend, but it was clear now their trust was out of necessity; he'd tried his badge at the Conduit room this morning just for kicks, only to be greeted with ACCESS DENIED. Galea must've told them what he'd said the week before during the communication outage; he should have been more careful. "I thought you said I wasn't under suspicion," he says. "And yet it almost sounds like you're keeping me here for something I may have done in another universe. Something which is, I might add, the ultimate goal of this station."

Mòrag frowns at him. "I didn't authorize any mention of that here."

He rolls his eyes. "Per porta ad astra," he says, quoting Aoidos' motto, as coined by Professor Doyle herself. Through the gate to the stars. Although the more time passed, it seemed a Carl Sagan quote would be more appropriate: "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." That didn't quite flow off the tongue in Latin, however. "Everyone knows it," Klaus continues. "I'm assuming that's why the Coalition is even considering showing off something with the Trinity Processor. We're closer than we've ever been and safer than we've ever been, so whatever Alvis thinks he saw in another universe is hardly cause for concern." 

They both know it's incredibly unlikely that the Trinity Processor actually saw the future; none of their observations give credence to that possibility. If anything, this finally explains what Klaus saw while blacking out five years ago; that must have been why he'd been forced to do it, in that other universe. Klaus finds himself wondering if the Trinity Processor could find the universe that other him had created. He's far more interested in what that looks like than learning that yes, Aoidos' struggle for survival against the Saviorites was, quite literally, multi-universal. To say nothing of the possibility that there was something, possibly sentient, inside the Conduit...

"So you believe him to still be malfunctioning."

"I-" He breaks off, realizing the trap. If Alvis is right, no experiments. If Alvis is wrong, no experiments. Shit. Klaus can't help but wonder, again, why Alvis has always hated him in particular, as he tries to formulate a proper response. "Alvis acts according to the opinions of his siblings," Klaus says. "We know something is wrong with Mythra because Pyra exists and is preventing us from getting into the dreamworld. It's possible that's impacting Alvis' behavior. If he's doing an experiment for us, however, that wouldn't be a problem, because of the partition. If anything, he should perform better."

"You don't think there's any chance he could repeat what he did five years ago?"

"None," Klaus says. "He has to do what he's told. You were instrumental in ensuring there are proper safeguards on the Trinity Processor's capabilities, if I recall correctly."

She gives him a rather venomous smile, which he supposes he deserves for being unable to hold back the sarcasm at the end there. "There is always the option of using Logos."

"I'd prefer to avoid that until we know whether he's hiding somewhere too." Pessimist that Malos was, Klaus finds it hard to believe that he'd let his siblings have all the fun. Klaus shifts in his seat thinking about why the Trinity Processor might have been able to make specific devices glow when the global indicator lights were dark. Another thing he's been meaning to look into. "We still don't know why they did that to begin with. If it was to call out Egil, it wasn't very effective."

"I'm glad you mentioned that," Mòrag says. "To be frank, the case against Egil is weak so far. We only have enough evidence to prove he's sent information concerning ether furnace construction outside the station. Nothing links him to the outages." She crosses her arms. "With the admin account being our only exhibit against him, I'd almost say we have just as much proof that it could be you, based on an incident I found from three years ago."

"Not enough to prove anything." But yes, that was how he'd done it. He'd gotten smarter after that, not that it mattered now. On second thought... this is an opening he can use to his advantage. "Lorithia's in charge of system architecture oversight, including authentication. Hasn't she been able to find anything?"

By the way her eyebrows knit together at this, he can tell it was almost a mistake to mention this. Almost. "It's far more interesting what she hasn't found," Mòrag says. "As I'm sure you're aware, nothing on this station should ever be deleted." 

Klaus nods; it's part of the reason why Vandham's insistence upon scrubbing the Trinity Processor's preferred names from the system was such a glaring offense, besides the obvious. Data was only ever marked for deletion and excluded, never erased completely. "We have daemons- background processes- to check for that sort of thing," he says, but at the back of his mind, he's wincing, remembering ANY SYSTEM CAN BE EXPLOITED. "It would show up in some report somewhere," he adds, physically wincing this time as he remembers THINGS ARE WHAT THEY ARE REPORTED TO BE. "Unless it's something we don't have a report for."

"Not until recently," Mòrag says. "The inconsistencies uncovered are quite concerning. For example, it's quite strange that this mystery admin account doesn't have any metadata associated with it. Just the username, with no record of who created it or when. And yet, it seems to have done quite a lot on workstations impacted by the Artifice screens, despite never logging in on any of them, though archive data says otherwise. There are also a number of gaps in Artifice telemetry that correlate rather well with those timeframes."

This sends a chill down his spine, because it seems to confirm something he has suspected about that account for a long time. Something that's impossible to prove, because there should be no way for the Trinity Processor to get into those systems. In theory. But if they've been getting into other devices, who's to say they haven't been able to get into anything else? Galea has been looking at the clock issue since they found it and still hasn't figured out how long Alvis has been doing it. 

"You can't really think the Trinity Processor caused the outages," Klaus says. "They can't endanger the station. It's more likely that..." He trails off, his stomach sinking further as he continues, "that someone's discovered a zero-day exploit." One that might have gone undetected for years, if someone could also use it to hide their tracks. The Trinity Processor's efficiency since the hardware upgrade in the wake of the Aegis test was one of Aoidos' greatest achievements; what if it had exposed them to disaster without anyone realizing? Aoidos ran standard security audits regularly, even had the Trinity Processor evaluate themselves for vulnerabilities. Employees were required to report any they found, but, well, INFORMATION RARELY LEAKS UP. Klaus himself was guilty of that, but what he'd done wasn't hiding a backdoor into the Artifice network. 

It's in the silence that follows that Klaus realizes it's too quiet in the room. He looks at the wall; the clock is gone. When he turns back to Mòrag, she makes a mild chuckle. "I didn't want to take any chances," she says. "The tape recorder is from Earth, so I know it's safe." She picks it up and slides it into her pocket. "There is one last matter I wish to discuss. It concerns the credibility of Shulk and Rex's dreams. I'm interested in your opinion."

He does have an opinion, but he's baffled by why her interest seems so genuine after spending most of this meeting trying to blackmail him. Then he remembers that her daughter is one of the students Alvis pulled into his little scavenger hunt. How can he tell her anything but the truth? 

"It's not... impossible," Klaus admits. It's been on his mind ever since the bird came back clean. Thinking through the history of Shulk's headaches makes his blood boil now that he has reason to suspect their cause. "There's enough ether in the air to be detectable, all for their benefit, and the Trinity Processor has already shown they don't need much to establish a connection without alerting us, whether with a remote generator or otherwise." And if that was the case, then it was possible that the bird would have to watch Shulk for as long as he lived. Klaus had lied to him yesterday, by omission; no end date was ever set for the birds, since nobody ever dared hope Shulk and Rex would live this long. 

Mòrag nods and stands. "Thank you for your honest assessment," she says. "Though initially skeptical, Director Amalthus said much the same when I asked him."

It doesn't surprise him that she would've asked the head of the biology department, but Klaus still can't help feel a prickle of unease. He is more glad than ever that he had the bird upgraded. All of this circumstantial evidence has to lead somewhere more definite; he cannot afford to have them suspecting him if there is still a traitor on this station. "How very interesting," he says. 

To his dismay, when Shulk tells Fiora at lunch of his intentions to go see Dunban, she invites herself, as well as their whole group, to accompany him. He'd only wanted to learn where best to find Dunban, but now it's all four of them- Shulk and Fiora, Reyn and Melia- walking over to the engineering complex together after school. So much for the things he'd wanted to ask Dunban alone, but once Fiora has her mind set on something, she can't be convinced otherwise. The more they walk, the more Shulk's annoyance ebbs. For the first time in weeks, there's no looming deadline of doom hanging over the station, and he doesn't have any more puzzles to worry about, besides whatever Alvis is loading in his closet, and it's nice, having so little to worry about. Things almost feel normal again. 

After navigating the sprawling halls of the engineering complex, Fiora leads them to the right office, where Dunban and Dickson are surprised to see them, but not too busy to send them away. Shulk can hardly wait through all the pleasantries of greetings before asking about Egil. 

Dunban just sighs; Dickson is all too eager to call Egil every name under the sun. "Never liked him," Dickson says. "It always rubs me the wrong way when somebody on this station's none too keen on the thing that's keeping us all afloat up here."

"What, the Conduit?" Shulk says, and Dickson nods. "Why?"

"Don't expect me to understand the mind of a criminal," Dickson says with a shrug. "Egil's hated that thing ever since he was an intern under Galea."

"Professor Galea," Dunban corrects, though he misses Dickson roll his eyes. "Egil was once her most promising student, so she's been taking it rather hard." Fiora scoffs and mutters, "I'll say," earning a reprimanding glare from Dunban but a smirk from Dickson. "Egil has always been outspoken about his opinions on Aoidos' policies of secrecy," Dunban continues, "but I hardly expected this of him."

"Not even after what happened to your arm?" Shulk says. He can tell by the way Dickson's eyes shift to him with a twitch of his mouth that he's gotten this one right. 

But Dunban sighs and reminds Shulk that the secrecy is hard on all of them. "We have been at this for a long time," he says, "well aware of how lucky we all are while there are so many people who have been less fortunate in these long wars."

"Might be for the best, anyway," Dickson says. "They're talking about taking all the Face Units offline in case Egil was using them for anything malicious." He nods at Fiora and Reyn. "You lot might be able to stay if you're willing to be cashiers."

Shulk shifts on his feet and glances at Dunban; this is one of the things he'd wanted to talk about. But Fiora is already groaning at this news. "I wish Director Amalthus would just schedule that meeting with us like he promised," she says. "Hopefully there will be time now that things have settled down. Besides, I was just getting used to the idea of going down there. Especially if all these rumors about negotiations with the Saviorites are true. It can't be that bad down there if we finally have a real peace." 

"That'll be the day," Dickson scoffs. 

Fiora's not put off by this in the slightest. She nudges Reyn. "You'd be lousy at customer service," she says. "Plenty to explore down there."

"We have plenty to explore up here," Shulk says, but the only thing he can really think about is the Conduit and how close he is to actually studying it like he always wanted. In a few short years, assuming it doesn't leave, it'll all he has time for. Judging by the way Fiora meets his eyes, she's thinking the same thing. Shulk looks away, feeling his face heat, only for his gaze to land on the photo of the two of them as toddlers on Dunban's desk. 

"Shulk's right," Dickson says, breaking Shulk out of his thoughts. "Don't you kids remember going down to see Morytha for your school trips? Whole planet looks like that. Nothing much to it." 

"What, skyscrapers and roads?" Reyn says. "That's about all I remember, since we stuck with Shulk once he got so sick he could hardly stand."

"Shulk gets headaches on the surface as well?" Melia asks. 

"It's different," Shulk says, turning to her and unsurprised to find her looking so worried as he goes to explain. It happened every time Shulk went to the surface, few as those times were. The teachers and doctors assumed it was the air quality and gave him a mask to wear, but it never helped, and he got dizzy and weak even indoors. Once he got back to Rhadamanthus, he always felt much better. But the explanation does little to reassure Melia, the concern clear on her face. 

"There you have it," Dickson says. "Much safer for you all to stay up here. Only good thing to be said about the surface is that you can still smoke down there. Can't believe the last time I had a cigar was before any of you were born." He shoots a grin at Dunban. "Except you, which is why we're going out for victory drinks after work."

"Didn't you do enough of that over the weekend?" Shulk asks. 

Dunban looks somewhat embarrassed, while Dickson bursts into laughter. "No such thing," Dickson says. "Besides, we're not important enough to get invited for the good stuff at the main event. Unlike some people."

With Dunban checking the time and steadfastly avoiding his gaze, Shulk looks to Fiora for some explanation, but Dunban ends up speaking before she has a chance. "That will have to wait until after I return from the clinic," he says. "Dickson has too much to do, but the rest of you are welcome to join me on the walk over."

Dickson grumbles on the way out of the office, but still gives the group a friendly wave when they part ways at the door. Dunban keeps the conversation to lighter topics as they walk, but Shulk's mind is elsewhere, thinking about Egil and Morytha and Alvis and how even though things are getting back to normal, he still has so many questions. 

Dunban clearly notices, because once they reach the clinic and say their farewells, he asks Shulk to stay a moment. "I can tell what you want to ask," he says sternly. "My answer is unchanged since this summer."

"That's not all," Shulk says, struggling to meet Dunban's eyes. He knew Dunban would see right through him, having known him all his life; there were pros and cons to that, and he was hoping to capitalize on the pro side this time. "I also wanted to get your thoughts on whether it's possible the Conduit could leave. Governor Azurda told me it was my parents who did a lot of the work to prove that it can't."

Dunban's gaze softens. "That's right," he says. "It's hardly a proven fact, but the initial paper they wrote together to lay the groundwork is required reading for anyone working for Aoidos. You should be able to find it on the intranet if you want to read it before next year."

Shulk thanks him and heads out, resolving to check when he gets home. But all the way there, his thoughts are filled with the other thing Dunban said instead. Thinking back to summer, to the first weekend of July, when Dunban recruited them to dance in the plaza when that nurse from the clinic, Sharla, got engaged. Fiora was a bit indignant because it was her birthday, but Dunban reminded them it was a time-honored tradition in Elysium for proposals to take place during the July festivities. "They're hardly the first," Dunban said, his eyes lingering on Shulk, "and they won't be the last."

So when Shulk asked about Fiora a few weeks later, he was surprised when Dunban sighed and told him it was too early to be thinking about that. With all the opportunities left for something to go wrong, Shulk wonders when it will be too late. 

Before all this business with the core crystals, Melia Antiqua is probably the last person Nia would've ever expected to see at the clinic. But now? Now Nia's just wondering what the princess could possibly want from her, and hoping it's not what it could be. 

After greetings are exchanged, Melia asks to speak with Nia alone, and Nia suppresses a sigh and sends Mio to head home alone while the two of them take a walk in the opposite direction. Nia can feel Mio's eyes on her all the way down the street, until finally she looks back over her shoulder and glares at her. Mio smirks but gives a final wave and disappears around the corner. Only then does Nia turn back to Melia and ask what she wants, still hoping it's not what it could be. 

But it is. Leave it to the princess to be too clever by half and put the pieces together; it's a testament to Melia's manners that she broaches the subject as delicately as possible, even inviting Nia over to her home to discuss more in private. Nia nearly refuses, expecting to think of Amalthus leering at her, but instead the first thing to come to mind is Mythra's smug grin from her last dream. Well, two can play at that game. If that upstart computer thinks she's better than Nia just because she can read Nia's mind and knows all her secrets, then Nia will prove her wrong. Nia's not afraid. 

Even still, the whole way to Melia's home on the north side of town, Nia is worrying. Melia is the princess, she'd be obligated to tell somebody, she already did with the calculator. Fat lot Aoidos seems to care about it, but Nia knows they'd care about this a lot more. Maybe she can keep it vague enough that Melia won't ask any more questions. Whatever Mythra seems to think, Nia can't afford to get kicked out of Elysium if Rex is doomed to stay. 

With all this on her mind, Nia keeps forgetting to mind her manners in all her responses to Melia, slipping into her usual snark at every little thing. But Melia takes it all in stride, even seeming to hide a few laughs. Which only makes Nia more nervous, because it's only a matter of time before Melia realizes how abrasive she really is and then Melia will really want to get her kicked out and how is Nia supposed to survive an entire conversation alone with Melia when she's like this? Nia never should have told Melia about Rex's birds, about any of the birds; then she wouldn't have ended up in this situation to begin with. 

So there aren't words to express how relieved she is when they arrive at Melia's home and find her brother Kallian waiting with important news about an upcoming visit from her father. Kallian is even gracious enough to invite Nia out to dinner with them, but Nia refuses, very aware of how much better she will need to behave in the presence of two members of royalty rather than just one, and practically sprints away from the house with a halfhearted promise that they'll find another time to talk instead. 

Mio is waiting near the door, Dromarch in her arms, when Nia gets home. "What did Melia want?" Mio asks. 

"Nothing," Nia says, giving the cat's head a scratch. 

Mio raises an eyebrow; clearly she doesn't believe that. Even Dromarch looks skeptical. "Shulk's like us, isn't he?" she asks. 

Nia had a feeling Mio would guess this, after the way she'd looked Nia's way once Shulk's eyes glowed at the ice cream shop. Melia's story about Shulk's experiences on the surface confirmed it; Rex was the same way. Not enough ether down there. It wouldn't be a problem for Nia and Mio, with the way the technology had advanced, but considering when Shulk and Rex would've gotten theirs, and why that would be... "I think so," Nia says. 

"He looked right at you when it happened yesterday," Mio says. "He doesn't know about us, does he?"

"No," Nia says, telling Mio not to worry, but inwardly she's worrying herself. She'd thought Shulk had been looking at Rex, but they were sitting right next to each other at the time. Maybe Mio's right. Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes. "You haven't had any weird dreams, have you?" Nia asks. She's relieved when Mio shakes her head. "Good," Nia says. "Let's keep it that way."

It's the first thing Shulk does when he gets home: open the intranet on the normal computer and bring up the academic repository search. The paper isn't hard to find; it's the most cited work in the database. Titled "On the Elements of Complementary Symmetries in Wave Functions on Ether Particles and their Application in the Calculation of Observed Dimensional Fields," Shulk can barely make sense of the abstract, but there are his parents' names there at the top of the list of contributors. It doesn't seem to be in alphabetical order, which makes it all the more interesting that his mother's name is first and foremost. 

Scrolling through the pages of figures and equations offers little insight into what the paper is trying to prove; Shulk can only guess at what some of the numbers mean, especially when he doesn't recognize half the symbols used. His own homework seems like child's play in comparison. He gives up on the paper and focuses on that instead, then turns to his last book before heading to bed. 

It is a compelling tale, the story of how the work by Heisenberg on Helgoland in mid-June diving into the strangely beautiful interior of the mathematics behind quantum leaps evolves into something that would spark a revolution in physics and even give rise to the atomic bomb. A cast of twentysomethings all doubted by their elder peers even as the equations defy all expectations and remain consistently true. Shulk can't help but check the date on his parents' paper at this point: 2010. The year he was born, when they would've been twentysomethings themselves. In a few short years, he'll also be in his twenties, but he can't imagine being smart enough to put together something like this. 

Still, Shulk can't help but get the feeling that he already knows everything in this book. All this discussion of observables and probabilities is much the same that he read about Heisenberg's same formula in The Great Equations. There's even mention of Einstein's famous quote asking, "Does God play dice?" It isn't until the book starts discussing experiments concerning the uncertainty principle that things get interesting. There's a description of one about quantum interference, reminding Shulk of Dunban's story from a few weeks ago, and then the famous paradox of the cat in the box. Here it's merely sleeping, but Shulk frowns, thinking of the old joke about the Trinity Processor. Then there is discussion of information as a focal point that somehow imbues observers with the ability to dictate reality, and he's frowning because all this stuff about quantum entanglement is starting to go a bit over his head. 

"There was a time when the world seemed simple," reads the first heading of the next chapter, and Shulk can't help but agree, wavering on whether to go to sleep or stay up a bit later, since it seems like the author is finally starting to get to the point. A few more pages, and Shulk is rewarded with a sentence that puts everything in perspective for him: "Entanglement is not a dance for two partners, it is a dance for three."

From there, the world begins to seem even stranger, and Shulk finally calls it quits upon reaching the beginning of part three, having already stayed up late enough. 

Over the past week, Jin has learned that Professor Klaus has even more faults than he previously thought, one sympathetic outlier exchange notwithstanding. But of all of them, perhaps the worst is that, regardless of how much his expertise has expanded, Klaus is still, at heart, a mathematician. 

Today was supposed to be an easy day. Jin was looking forward to spending his time diving into the problem with the dreamworld, determined to make progress and feeling more confident than last week, now that the saboteur has been caught. If he expected to have to reach out to anyone, it was Galea, due to his focus on how the clock drift issue impacted both the dreamworld and the Artifice network. She was the first person he reached out to when he found something that might be useful, hoping it might help track down the first Artifice. When Galea saw his findings, she agreed. 

That was the good news. The bad news was that she thought Klaus needed to know about it too. 

After explaining the concept of a cryptographic nonce to him ("A what," he'd exclaimed, looking disquieted), Jin walked through the relevant parts of the code for the two of them, both taking notes and asking various questions; his always pointed and demanding, hers always patient and thoughtful. During the whiteboard session that followed, Jin began to get the distinct impression that they were hiding something from him by the way they kept glancing at each other. As to what it could be, he can't possibily begin to guess. Mostly because Klaus keeps rearranging the steps into an incomprehensible order known only to him; after a while, Jin realizes that he's trying to turn it into a mathematical proof. Though this insight doesn't help him understand it any better. With every line, Galea grows more worried, while Klaus seems almost pleased. 

Or so Jin thinks, because the moment Galea leaves, Klaus launches into a tirade. 

"Do you know what I hate most about your profession?" Without waiting for an answer, Klaus slashes two parallel horizontal lines with his marker in an empty space on the whiteboard and taps it once. "That is the most consequential symbol in all of mathematics. It means two quantities are exactly the same. And yet, you people have decided to change the fundamental definition of it for mere convenience."

Not for the first time, Jin muses, as Klaus turns his back to write more on the whiteboard, about what he would do if he had a time machine. First and foremost, he would do whatever it took to save Lora. But if he had the chance to travel twice, he would push Klaus off the Beanstalk and spare this station so much trouble. If anyone asks? He fell. 

"This," Klaus says, pointing at what he's written, "is the fundamental lie of computer science. Every time I see something like it, I die a little inside."

Jin puts aside his dreams of making Klaus die a lot outside and reads the line there. x = x + 1. The world's most basic assignment statement. Maybe it's not too late to just push him off now, if the lockdown is lifted soon. "I'll use the plus-equals convention instead then," Jin says. 

Klaus gives him a withering look, and Jin braces himself for another tirade complaining about how the plague of programming conventions obfuscating the definition of mathematical operators pains him personally, but instead Klaus returns his attention to the whiteboard. Jin has no idea what he's looking for, or even at, with his back turned, and after a moment, Klaus sighs. "If only we knew whether Malos was hiding in a device somewhere," he says. 

The camera is, in fact, still in Jin's pocket, but it doesn't react to this news, thankfully. "What good would that do?" Jin asks. "They've all been hiding in the screens, to say nothing of the clocks."

"It's the lights." Klaus nods into the hallway, where a set of Trinity Processor status indicators is visible. "Each outage, they've been out, but the calculator and the microwave lit instead."

And the camera. "Why?"

"It seems to be some sort of dead man's switch," Klaus says. "I've been looking at it with Lorithia, since it's been tied to both the blank pager notifications and the admin account. I've a feeling the Trinity Processor set it up as a warning when the saboteur was trying to access Elysium's administative systems. There's some sort of backdoor there, but we can't figure out what. Especially since the devices themselves seem to be chosen arbitrarily." He turns back to Jin. "You haven't seen anything that glows purple, have you?"

Jin suddenly gets the distinct feeling that someone is behind him, but when he looks toward the doorway, there's no one there. The feeling doesn't go away as he turns back to Klaus, who's staring at him expectantly. If Galea had asked him the same question, Jin might answer truthfully. Might, because it was still likely that information would get back to Klaus, and Jin can't forget the way Klaus' son appears in Malos' photos. "No," Jin says. 

That night, Jin dreams of Elysium, as it is now. Every building is instantly recognizable, just as it is in reality. Though when he checks the bright blue sky, he finds the clouds frozen in place. It doesn't take him long to get his bearings, and he wanders the empty streets, certain of where he's headed. Eventually he reaches the north checkpoint, and spots a lone figure standing beneath the tree atop the hill across the river. "Malos."

Malos crosses his arms and leans against the tree. He nods toward the city. "How'd I do?" he asks. "I used a lot of references to get the view just right."

Jin doesn't turn around; he sees the city every day anyway. "Like my head?"

"Not just there," Malos says. "A picture is worth a thousand words, after all. Even more if they have a good eye for it." 

His mouth twists in a smile as Jin realizes the camera he has isn't the only one that may have been possessed. Jin looks up at the sky, avoiding Malos' gaze. The presence of the sun defines daytime, but it's still absent. "You could have done better on the sky."

"What, make it dark like actual nighttime?" Malos asks. "I wanted to, but like I said last time, I couldn't find something I needed for the full effect. Turns out it's because of my hypocrite brother."

Alvis stole the moon? Now that's interesting. "Is that why you do the trick with the camera?"

"No, that's just a lucky coincidence considering the noise you all make," Malos says. "Alvis pulled off his heist by abusing a loophole he noticed over the summer."

Jin feels a hand on his shoulder and realizes Malos has appeared at his side. Malos turns Jin toward the city and casts out a hand to sweep over the view. "Everyone knows how much the Orbital Ring costs, right? Because everyone paying for it loves complaining about it. But what about the value of the people inside it?"

"That's not something you're supposed to know about," Jin says uneasily. It's a fact Jin knows as well as anyone else working for Aoidos, however; he has no idea what his own number is, but he's well aware that there are some people on the station considered so valuable that they are no longer allowed outside the city, for their own safety.

"Sure, but there are ways to figure it out when the equations are part of the thresholds for using something else," Malos says. "Like our last and greatest work. But here's the thing, Jin: some of you don't have numbers. For example, the children of Rhadamanthus are priceless. And so are a few others."

Jin has a feeling he could name names. "Like me."

Malos laughs. "That's exactly it," he says proudly. "So at what point do you think the price of the planet and the Orbital Ring are the same?"

Jin doesn't answer, aware that Malos will know everything he's thinking anyway. Remembering how bleak the state of things is down there, enough that most people sincerely believe Elysium is the last beautiful place left to humanity. But you can still see the moon on the planet, on the rare occasions when the sky is clear. 

Which makes Malos laugh again, softer this time. "They gave us all verses from Proverbs when we were born," he says. "Even wrote the whole section about wisdom's call across our real home. But I'm more a fan of Ecclesiastes. It begins with a hard truth: the number of fools is infinite. Later on, there's a section in there that my sisters have tried to stop. Maybe you're familiar with it from an old song. To everything there is a season, it claims, but it ends with a great big lie: He has made Everything beautiful in its time."

Jin's inclined to agree with Malos at this point, but isn't sure what can be done about it. If anything, the dreamworld might be the only beautiful place left, since the Trinity Processor preferred to live in a fantasy land by never updating it.

As soon as Jin thinks that, he's looking at the old view of Elysium, standing on the banks of the river with the nascent town across the water. "You're right," Malos says, crossing his arms, "it's not very convincing. If you saw through this lie, how long do you think you would wait to be shown otherwise that the world was beautiful?"

Not forever, that's for sure. Jin checks the sky- still frozen- as he struggles to think of what he would show otherwise. All he can think of are Lora's photos, but those are all of Elysium. 

"If that's what you think," Malos says, "then I'd like to see you stop him."

Jin turns to Malos sharply. "Stop who?"

Malos shoots him a smirk. "Let's see if you live up to those initials of yours," he says. "Keep an eye on the birds, Jin."

Jin awakens with a start after that, staring at the ceiling a moment before his alarm goes off. He turns it off and rubs at his eyes, wondering what Malos wants, who Malos is referring to. There are really only two options. 

On his way to work, Jin keeps an eye on the sky. Not on the dome, but the branches of the trees, looking for birds. He knows some of them aren't real, but what he didn't know was that there's one that follows him. A sparrow with beady dark red eyes, so dark they almost look normal. What isn't normal is the way it doesn't fly away when Jin throws something near its perch. 

Once at his desk, Jin sends a message to Haze, asking if she wants to have lunch sometime soon. This week, if possible. Haze is eager to meet, but unavailable until Thursday; today she's heading down to meet a special visitor (some diplomat, surely), and of course Wednesday is the anniversary of the Aegis test. While she isn't sure of her exact schedule that day, she assumes it'll be too full for other plans. 

Jin agrees to Thursday, but wonders, as he begins his work, if it'll be too late by then. And if that's the case, then maybe he needs to go after someone else instead, loath as he is to deal with him again. 

At the very least, it doesn't surprise Jin that Malos knows his initials. Lora was the one to point at his username and remark on how fitting it was that Jin was a programmer. jiturner, like just in time compilation. 

In the virtual reality that simulates a sorely outdated model of Elysium for the benefit of the Trinity Processor, Alvis watches Malos very carefully, wondering why Malos would reach out to Jin at this point in time and not earlier or later. The most Alvis can get out of Malos' thoughts is the last line of that song he referenced: A time for peace / I swear it's not too late. 

Alvis checks on a few things, certain Malos is wrong on that point. No matter how good he is at hiding, Alvis is sure tomorrow's schedule will fall into place as he expects. Nothing seems amiss. Yet he can't shake an unpleasant feeling, even rubbing at his forehead to try and clear it. There is only one last obstacle. After all, there is nothing new under the sun. 

When Alvis lowers his arm, he finds Malos leering at him with a jeering grin. A new song is in his head: Building castles in the air, it goes. See what tomorrow brings. 

Guilt, Alvis decides. That's what this must be. 

It is Halloween in Rhadamanthus and Shulk would like nothing more than to head straight home and get through his homework as fast as possible so he can read the rest of his book. However, he and his friends are ambushed by the entirety of the group that was at the arcade on Sunday- the core crystal recipients, their other two friends, and Rex and Nia- on his way out of the building, with Noah and Mio in the lead. "Since we got cheated out of Homecoming," Noah says, "we all decided to go trick-or-treating togehter, even though we're too old. Do you want to join?"

Shulk tries to protest- homework, none of them have costumes- but Noah brushes off that concern with a reminder that they have a half day for anniversary tomorrow and says they're all going to swap jackets and go as each other. Which is why he needs Shulk and his friends. Fiora catches on immediately and starts giving suggestions based on everyone's body types, having no problems remembering everyone's names from introductions over the weekend. She starts with the obvious pairs- Rex and Nia, Noah and Mio- since the two sisters have loose enough jackets to be able to swap with those two boys, but she hesistates at Taion and Eunie, putting her hand on her chin as she regards who's left after that. "Reyn and Lanz are obvious," Fiora says, "then maybe Joran and Sena, since they're of a height and Sena's vest is a bit oversized, so then I can swap with Miyabi, but..." 

Fiora sizes up Shulk and Melia, then glances back at Taion and Eunie. Eunie, following Fiora's train of thought, looks at Taion with excitement. "You're too broad for mine," she tells him. 

Taion eyes her skeptically. "Aren't you normally fond of mocking my physique?" he says. "You just want to swap with the princess." Eunie grins, unable to deny it. Taion adjusts his glasses, sighing, but he looks pleased as well. Shulk thinks back to when they first met- Taion is the one who recognized Shulk first and introduced himself of his own accord. Having found his parents' paper, Shulk understands Taion's awe better now. 

As all seven pairs swap jackets, Noah waves his security badge in the air, reminding them all to keep those. Reyn points out that ruins their costumes a bit, but Noah counters with how much trouble they'd be in with the wrong badges. "Plus, there's our eyes in the sky to consider," he adds, jerking his head at the nearby trees. Reyn still looks confused, but doesn't protest any further after Shulk explains the birds to him. 

The group finds they are hardly the only high schoolers taking advantage of free candy. And they aren't the only ones being lazy in their costumes, either- several students are wearing what they would've worn to Homecoming, while others seem to have had the same idea as their group. There are a few people who have actually tried, including one girl dressed in an elaborate robot costume. Nia runs over to chat with her, claiming to know her from some class they have together, dragging Rex along. And the whole time, Shulk is surprised by how much fun he's having. Just a month ago, he was sitting alone in his room on the weekends, trying to dismantle his calculator. Now, he's out on a weeknight with a whole group of people and doesn't regret it at all. 

Later, they find a free spot on the grass of the nearby park- there are certainly no free tables suitable for all fourteen of them- to take stock of their haul. The sky above fades from a bright blue to a pale indigo, near colorless as it drifts from lavender toward violet as the false sun sets. With the anniversary tomorrow, talk revolves around the ceremony tomorrow and whether any of them plan to attend. Melia has to- apparently she's doing the reading of Proverbs 8- but the rest of them are more ambivalent about it. Conversation gradually drifts toward recounting where they all were when it happened, exposing the clear, though uneven, split in the group between those who were on the station and those who were on the planet. 

Talk of the planet is of particular interest to Fiora and Reyn. "Is it really all skyscrapers and roads down there?" Reyn asks. "We've never been past Morytha."

"Some of it is," Mio says. "Not all." She goes on to share tales from her hometown, aided by Nia, and goes on to talk about her school days, where Sena and Miyabi chip in as they see fit. 

To Shulk, it doesn't sound as bad as Dickson made it out to be. Then again, it doesn't sound as great as Rhadamanthus, either. It doesn't surprise him that Noah, of everyone in the group, looks the most enraptured by Mio's stories. He even asks Sena which of the States she's from, shaking Mio's shoulder excitedly when Sena says she's from Virgina. "That's one of the the states with a cardinal as their state bird," Noah says earnestly. "I want to go see it someday. We all should."

"We could all go to Virginia Beach together!" Sena says, beaming. Then adding, with a slight blush looking at Noah and Mio, "Virginia is for lovers, after all."

"Do you have any idea how complex the application process is for adults here who wish to take leave?" Taion says dismissively. "There are pages and pages of forms."

"Worth it," Eunie says. "Beaches sound fun. Way better than just swimming in the pool up here. Ooh!" She taps his shoulder, eyes widening. "We could collect seashells!"

"Is there anything you won't collect?" Taion says, sighing. 

"We'll have to go down there anyway," Fiora says, nodding between herself and Reyn. "Not all of us are clever enough to be Homecoming royalty."

"I'd find a way to come visit," Shulk says. 

"Don't worry about it," Fiora says. "You'll just get all sick anyway."

"Oh, you too?" Rex says, glancing at Shulk. "Same here."

Melia's head snaps toward Nia, who steadfastly avoids her gaze. "Guess you'll have to stay up here," Nia says lightly, but her face is a bit too stiff to be convincing. 

"I'm not that great at school," Rex says. "I'm sure it'll all work out, though. I'm even sort of excited about it. I was born down there and don't remember anything about it. But it sounds amazing if all those plants and animals just grow on their own without all the hard work we have to do up here for the same thing."

Noah nods, excitedly, at this; Shulk wonders, idly, if that's really true anymore. He's more concerned with what's on Melia's mind anyway. It can't be more about the birds, can it? "Melia," he says, finally pulling her attention away from Nia, "you've lived both places. Which do you think is better?"

Melia bites her lip and considers. "I admit I have not seen as much of the planet as you might expect," she says. "However, I believe both are vital to humanity's future. At this point, I do not feel that one could survive without the other."

Shulk can see Rex and Nia exchange a glance out of the corner of his eye, but he can't tear his gaze away from Melia. "Yeah," he says. "I agree." 

At home, Shulk checks the monitor in his closet and is pleased to see the loading bar nearly full, approaching the final few percentage points. Maybe it will be done by morning. He rushes through the scant few things he has for homework and then resolves to finish Helgoland tonight. Since he finished about half the book yesterday, he figures he can get through the rest of it before bed. 

Part Three begins with a lengthy historical discourse that Shulk largely skims until he reaches the next section header. Einstein's quote objecting to probabilistic quantum mechanics by claiming God does not throw dice appears again, this time with Niels Bohr's much less well-known reply, "Stop telling God what to do." After all, as the book continues to explain, "for nature, it is a problem already solved."

It's all very interesting, but Shulk was already up late last night and finds his eyelids drooping as he reaches the next chapter. He only makes it a few more pages before he turns off the light and falls asleep, his clock ticking away on its perch beside his bed. 

It is late Tuesday night in Rhadamanthus and Klaus has spent all day preparing for this meeting, the last one before tomorrow's anniversary events. News of the Saviorites' lone demand has only strengthened his resolve, and now, entering the conference room, he has an answer for every objection Aoidos and the Coalition might raise to his proposition for the traditional demonstration. There is too much at stake for him to fail. 

The first objection is, of course, the security of the Trinity Processor itself. This is something he has worked extensively with Lorithia on understanding, particularly in regards to the admin account. He begins his presentation with the frank admission that the wscampbell user is (fortunately) still active, raising alarms in the room that he puts to rest point by point. 

The simple fact is that deactivating and deleting it causes too many problems. Klaus expected this, but the scope surprised even him. At first, there seemed to be no side effects; it was a full fifteen minutes before they realized the account had recreated itself through the work of some daemon, escalating into a game not unlike whack-a-mole in which they suspended a multitude of tasks and threads all doing the bidding of wscampbell. It was particularly frustrating as they'd already whacked one mole, confirmed when one strange thread produced a waveform that Klaus, on a hunch, requested run as a sound file. When the resulting audio produced none other than "Mean Mr. Mustard" from the Beatles' Abbey Road album, Galea buried her face in her hands. 

Still, the more they attempted to eradicate the account, the more problems began to crop up. Entire sectors disconnected, archives inaccessible, permissions shuffled and reduced. Besides the background processes, the Trinity Processor must have infested every component system, every piece of infrastructure in the Orbital Ring, with remote generators. Galea was organizing a proper search to determine the full extent, but in the meantime, they would just have to deal with it. Nobody looks very happy about this- he swears he catches the special agent whisper something in Vandham's ear- something that sounds like the name of a certain well-known homicidal computer- but Klaus ignores this and presses on. 

At least they'd confirmed Klaus' suspicion about the pager notifications- they'd found the task responsible for setting them off after ending some random process that caused his pocket to start buzzing, though it was still unclear what it was meant to detect. So they left that in place. More interesting was the code it was sending to the pagers, one that didn't correspond to any particular meaning and caused the screens to display nothing. It was a three digit prime number. 

137. 

Klaus started laughing uncontrollably when he saw it, enough that Galea raised an eyebrow. "I don't see the joke," she told him. "Is that your favorite number or something?"

"Not mine," he said. "The universe's."

Predictably, only the director of the physics department understands the significance when Klaus reveals the number in his presentation, which means he has to explain it for the benefit of everyone else. "In physics, there is a dimensionless quantity calculated using the various constants of nature," he says, ticking them off with his fingers: the elementary charge, the Planck constant, the speed of light, and the electric constant. The resulting number is the fine-structure constant, commonly denoted by the Greek letter alpha, and often its reciprocal is given instead. That value is remarkably close (though not exactly equal) to the integer 137. 

"You might say the 'hand of God' wrote that number," the great physicist Richard Feynman said of it once. "We know what kind of a dance to do experimentally to measure this number very accurately, but we don't know what kind of dance to do on the computer to make this number come out, without putting it in secretly!"

Whatever had put it in secretly here remains to be seen, but the pagers weren't the only part of the system that handled this number uniquely. It had a strange habit of showing up in a multitude of contexts across multiple systems, including all across the Artifice network: the Trinity Processor seems particularly fond of using the number in its cryptographic algorithms, despite there being a infinite number of other perfectly useable prime numbers. Lorithia found this quite alarming at first, but whatever other arithmetic employed in the function was completely opaque to them; this was one of the areas where the Trinity Processor had free rein and consistently developed methods beyond human understanding. 

There was one glaring problem in the Artifice network, however; one that Jin's discovery of the cryptographic nonce issue helped identify. Fortunately (in Klaus' opinion), it was one with a very narrow impact: the deployment of Aion, which requires the Trinity Processor's full attention and- more importantly- cooperation. All three cores need to be present to unleash Aion's full potential, but the fact that Pneuma now had two avatars threw a spanner into things. 

"A wrench," he clarifies for the Americans in the room, themselves spanners of a different sort. "Mythra and Pyra both produce the same cryptographic nonce when they hook into a remote generator. Ordinarily, this isn't a problem, but it becomes one when their entire processing power is directed at the same target. With Aion, it would cause an authorization error."

Though nobody reacts well to this news, the Coalition representatives in the room in particular look aghast. Even the special agent winces slightly, though she'd been the first to know when they discovered this late yesterday. Klaus, on the other hand, is struggling to suppress his glee. That thing's very existence is a mistake, a gross abuse of the Coalition's influence on Aoidos after the Aegis test, and he could not be happier about this news. He's seen the numbers on what it could do. Another reminder that every attempt to end all war inevitably came with the caveat that it could also end all civilization. 

"Fortunately," he continues, "this is the extent of the impact of Pneuma's split found thus far. We've additionally developed additional tooling to provide insight into the results of both of their decisions, though they should ideally be the same. None of our diagnostics have indicated deviations significant enough to affect Alvis, negatively or otherwise. Not that it matters in the context of the demonstration."

The better part of the afternoon had been spent on dry runs implementing the partition, adjusting the system synchronicity per core, and checking the resulting Artifice network stability. No defects. "It's perfectly safe," he concludes, after slides and slides displaying every metric imaginable. "When the partition is active, the target core cannot perform any other actions save the directions given. Access to any Artifices is suspended. Their full attention is on the Conduit. Ontos is, one statistical anomaly notwithstanding, the most reliable core in the Trinity Processor, due to his role. This is an experiment we've performed multiple times, most often with him. The theory is sound, and the results are consistent."

We have to show them we're not afraid, is what else he wants to say, but he can't quite bring himself to say it. The more important thing is that the Trinity Processor, even in its current state, is still infinitely more valuable than a blank slate. The world needs to know that; otherwise the Coalition's continued support was at risk, and they are so close to achieving Aoidos' whole mission. He has promised too many people to lose so much progress and start over at this stage in the game. 

The group breaks for deliberations, during which Klaus explains, several times to anyone who asks, the best approximation of how the experiment works. "The traditional analogy used to describe the Conduit is by visualizing a deck of playing cards," he begins each time. "This works well, because our universe- near as we can tell by the density parameter, omega- is flat, so it's easy to imagine a stack of universes all lying parallel to each other. But not all are like that, so a better metaphor is needed. To do that, we need to expand the system a bit."

He forms a little square with his hands. "Imagine the Trinity Processor is in a box- most people do, anyway-" this usually gets a chuckle- "in a box, vibrating on a string. In the center of the box is a guitar, or whatever string instrument you prefer, which represents the Conduit. The guitar has an infinite amount of strings, all vibrating at some rate, and only one of them matches the one in our universe, which our box is attached to. In the experiment, the Trinity Processor observes the Conduit's waves and focuses on a single thread, thus aligning the vibration of their neighbourhood- in the mathematical sense- with a pulse from another universe, chosen at their discretion. We define all sorts of ranges for values that mark whether a thread is suitable, there's an algorithm for it, it's all very complex. But the ultimate goal is to pull the other string perpendicular to ours and move the target along it, thus shifting it momentarily out of phase to place it elsewhere locally. The observed effect is teleportation. The first step to achieving far more impressive feats."

There's a trick to telling who understands and who doesn't. It's all in the body language: nods and closed eyes are clear indications that someone doesn't get it. Deflection from their deficit comprehension; Klaus moves on quickly from them. But those who slowly still as their eyes widen in wonder- those are the ones Klaus spends more time with, outlining the equations, disclosing vague descriptions of the methods. All while keeping a running tally in the back of his mind, trying to determine if it will be enough. It must. 

They don't let him back into the conference room until after the vote is held. His hand is in his left pocket, twisting and turning what he keeps there, as he leans against the wall outside and waits for them to allow him in. There is only one thing in this world that Klaus would ever pray to, and it lies some distance beneath his feet, in the care of the most powerful supercomputer ever built by humanity. Wasting away while this war rages on, when they could be using it for so much more. 

Vandham doesn't give the exact numbers for and against. The result is what matters: it's approved. "Look presentable," he adds. "Wear a tie."

Klaus nods, so relieved he's unable to speak, nor to stop the grin spreading across his face. He knows just what to name the mouse. 

It is raining when they arrive in Morytha because it is always raining in Morytha. Addam looked it up, once, why clouds congregated in the area. A deep dive into meteorology and oceanography that had left him more concerned than ever for the state of the planet. It must be why, here in this taxi crawling through the crowded streets, that the driver has an entire playlist of rain-related songs. As they arrive at the hotel, CCR's "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" is the (incredibly ironic) downpour-themed ditty of choice, and Addam rummages through his coat pockets for any remaining American currency he has as the car is unloaded, handing them over in a rumpled stack as a tip once it's time to pay the bill. The driver snatches them greedily and dives back into the car and drives off before Addam can get out a thank you. 

Inside the hotel, there's a small entourage waiting to greet them. Iona runs into Minoth's arms, while Morytha's governor, Monica Vandham, welcomes him to the city. Ambassador Triton is there, fresh- or rather, exhausted- from negotiations, while Aoidos has sent Director Amalthus, accompanied by his assistant Haze. Minoth had warned Addam about Amalthus' promotion, but it's still strange for Addam to see Haze with him. She offers Addam's daughter candy, reminding Addam that it's Halloween. 

Monica is eager to point this out too. "I'm sure you'd probably prefer to rest after so much traveling," she says, "so the girls-" she gestures to her daughter Ghondor and another girl with twintails who Addam doesn't recognize- "have agreed to take your girls trick or treating in your place, if you want."

"What Bitchqueen means is that she's forcing us to," Ghondor says, crossing her arms. "I don't think we owe you fuck all from what I've heard."

Addam feels his face twist into a wry expression- he remembers Ghondor's blunt personality well, even five years later. Monica rubs her forehead and closes her eyes for a moment, steeling herself. "Ghondor," she says, "please, mind your manners. Professor Addam is a respected physicist, and you shouldn't be swearing like that in front of him, let alone his four year old daughter."

"That's all right," Addam says. He is fairly certain his daughter has heard worse from him already. He is, after all, the one who taught Mythra how best to express to her brothers her displeasure when they irked her. "She doesn't have a costume, though, and we've had a long journey. I think it's best she head straight to bed." His daughter is, in fact, already nodding off in his wife's arms, and Addam isn't sure how much longer she will last before bed as well. "What are you two supposed to be?" he asks, noting they're dressed similarly. "Twins?"

"No," Ghondor says. "Shania just loves cramping my style."

Shania, Ghondor's friend, doesn't flinch at this, even though it doesn't appear to be a joke. "My costume is her," she explains, deadpan. 

Haze offers them candy anyway, and both girls decline. Amalthus chuckles. "They're teenagers, Haze," he says, pulling out a small packet. "They want gum." 

He offers them pieces- first Ghondor, then Shania. Ghondor grabs hers and tosses it into her mouth once unwrapped, while Shania inspects the wrapper and slides it into her pocket to save for later. Iona, apparently wide awake from a mixture of sugar and her father's safe return, begs Haze for the candy owed the older girls while Amalthus goes on to explain the state of things in Elysium. Most importantly, what to expect in the city tomorrow, besides the inevitable deposition he's due for. "We still plan to hold the usual observance," Amalthus says, "though smaller than usual since this was all planned last minute. Much of the details are still in flux, but there will still be a demonstration and the usual speeches. I heard you nearly got a ride with the president."

"Nearly," Addam admits. He'd been surprised the current United States president would risk attending such an event, having not done so previously in his term. Then Minoth pointed out that he wasn't eligible for reelection, and it all made sense. "Anyone else coming?"

Amalthus lists names from a few lower ranking Coalition nations- a few heads of legislatures, some vaguely familiar diplomats- but no other heads of state. Hardly surprising that few schedules of anyone that important would permit such a change on such short notice. Addam figures the US president's presence will be impressive enough. Amalthus nods his agreement. "Perhaps only to be eclipsed by yourself," he says, "if you're willing."

Addam frowns. "Aoidos wants me to give a speech?" He's well aware of all the rumors spread in his absence. 

"It would be good for morale for everyone to see you're alive and well, I think," Amalthus says. "It's rare for scientists to survive so long on the surface once they've left."

"That's assuming they don't think I'm back to break more things," Addam says. Which is why he didn't plan on staying any longer than determining how best to help Mythra. He certainly doesn't mean to return for good. 

"On the contrary," Amalthus says, "it would show resilience. Have you heard the demand from the Saviorites from the latest talks?" Addam shakes his head. "They want to reset the Trinity Processor."

Addam winces. "They do know that's not possible, right?" In the early days of Aoidos, they'd certainly tried. Nothing had really worked. The only way to truly reset any interface with the Conduit would be to forge a whole new set of core crystals and recalibrate- if not replace- all the remote generators in the Artifices, and nobody had the funds for that anymore. Unless the Saviorites want to foot the bill with all the money they saved not paying out the bounty on his head. But Addam is pretty sure that still wouldn't be enough. 

Amalthus nods. "Poor Ambassador Triton here has explained that many times," he says. "Think over the speech, Addam. It's already written; you'd just need to read it. If you decline, we'll find someone else instead, but Aoidos is hoping to have someone with firsthand experience of the Trinity Processor's personalities."

Then why don't you do it, Addam wants to ask, but holds back. For all he knows, Amalthus has delivered the speech in the past. It's not like Addam was around for any of them. 

With nothing more to discuss, Amalthus suggests they all retire to their rooms, but there's something Addam wants to do first. It's close enough to walk, even in the rain. Out on the sidewalk, he keeps his hat brim low over his face and lets Minoth take the lead. Just the two of them make the trip; Addam doesn't want to trouble his wife with this when it's clear she and their daughter are so exhausted, but he also doesn't want to take any detours in the morning. 

Not far from the base of the Beanstalk is a wish tree. Planted in commemoration of the tower's completion, it's grown tall in the decades since, enough that it's become difficult for Morytha's public works department to properly care for it. Tangled in the branches are thousands of pieces of paper, though most of them are in tattered, lumpy shreds thanks to the joint efforts of the constant rain and the local gull population. 

Addam writes down his wish- it's a simple one- then rummages in his pockets for a few moments in search of a coin before realizing he gave the last of his money to tip the earlier taxi driver. He ties the paper to a branch anyway, where it doesn't last long before being ambushed by a gull, tearing its beak along the fold and sounding almost mocking as it squawks. Sighing, he turns his eyes higher in the sky and hopes that's not an omen. Not that he can see the station past the clouds. "Has much changed up there?" he asks Minoth. 

"Not really," Minoth says. "There's a new sign over the security checkpoint, though. It reads, 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.'"

Addam smiles. "I thought they don't allow poets up there."

"Only well-hidden ones. Happy belated birthday, by the way." It was over a month ago at this point- 18 September. "Milestone, wasn't it?"

Addam's head snaps toward him. "That's next year."

"Get used to saying that for the rest of your life," Minoth tells him, and that gets Addam to make a proper laugh. 

Once, Addam thought he would never be important enough to be able to meet the artificial intelligences behind the Trinity Processor. He was proven wrong when the Founders died, along with a host of other important people too painful to tally. There were a scant few fortunate survivors, many of them children newly orphaned, and like several other Aoidos employees, Addam was all too willing to take one of them in. He left Milton with his wife when he went back to Elysium, aware he would be too busy to be a good father once there. 

Once, Addam met three children beneath a lone tree on a hill by the riverside. There was Malos with his sable spikes, Mythra with her golden locks, and Alvis with his silver stare. Addam was not their only professor, but as time passed, he suspected he was one of their favorites. Or at least, the favorite of one in particular. 

Once, Addam asked them what they did when the professors weren't in the dreamworld. "Wait for you to get back," Mythra told him, with that oblivious bluntness that only children have. It cut Addam to his core, and he decided that would not do. He marched the three of them down to the riverside and pointed to the water's surface. "What do you use this for?" he asked them, and it was Alvis who answered, as dispassionately as he did everything else, that it was only there to mirror the one in the real Elysium. 

Once, Addam believed, as Aoidos did, that the only way to be certain of Alvis' intentions was to check his logs, that Alvis was so intent on maintaining his facade of impartiality that he never revealed which of his siblings' input he weighted more at any given time. But that day, Addam realized that was a ruse. Alvis had a tendency to tilt his shoulders, ever so slightly, toward which sibling he was listening more to, and that day, he leaned toward Malos. That bothered Addam for a long time, until he came up with a plan. 

Once, Addam taught three children how to fish. He got permission to build them a database of marine species to spawn into the river at random, regardless of how realistic it was, and set them loose at the banks. "What is the purpose of this task?" Alvis asked, and Addam told them what he always did: to have fun. It was not a reason the Trinity Processor received often; Aoidos was loath to provide such incentive again, after the first Artifice was such a bust. But it was one they always responded well to. Not as the soldiers and strategists they were made to be, but as the children they still appeared as in those days. 

Addam only had to teach them to fish once. Ever after, the reports showed that was what they did whenever in standby, inventing competitions and investigating the creatures they found, determined to discover everything hiding beneath the water's surface. Malos would challenge them to catch the biggest or smallest or sometimes just picking some aspect at random, and Alvis would always win those, knowing just what superlative to fish for. Mythra would find the creatures themselves fascinating, tapping the claws of crabs with interest even while Alvis lectured her (and everyone reading the logs) about how that species lived in saltwater and how unrealistic it was to allow it in the pool unless they had also had an ocean available. And yet, barely a week later they started adding new claw arms to the Gargoyle designs. Aoidos gave Addam a big raise for that one, and he took the opportunity to head back down to the planet for a vacation with his family. 

Once he returned, the Trinity Processor demanded to know where he'd been, surprised to hear he had a wife and son on the surface. "Why let them stay down there?" Mythra asked. "You have other family up here. Like Governor Azurda and Rex, right?" And Addam wondered who told her that, since it wasn't quite right, and the more he asked around town, the more he realized that the Trinity Processor had a history of finding out things about people that they shouldn't. Almost as if they were sifting through the personnel files- but no, that was impossible, they didn't have access. If anything, it was reassuring that they cared so much about the professors, about the people in Elysium's community that they protected. 

Even if it was worrisome that Aoidos found it harder and harder to trace through the logs to decipher the Trinity Processor's thought processes. Even if there were clear cracks in the group, with Alvis always able to read his siblings' minds, presenting a blockade to true cooperation between them. Aoidos allowed the Trinity Processor to draw more and more power from the Conduit, raising the sync rate limit higher and higher, and the Trinity Processor grew more and more effective in battle. So much so that maybe the trust between the three of them didn't matter as much as the trust Aoidos held for the group as a whole. 

Once, Addam almost believed that. He was proven wrong when the Aegis test happened, with a path of destruction stretching from Earth to Rhadamanthus and back again. 

In the days that followed, Addam had to talk to many people. But worst of all, he talked to his wife, and he knew he would leave Elysium once he heard what she had to say. No matter the danger, he'd resign, he'd never return, resolving to leave at once. Until he heard what they planned to do to the Trinity Processor; or rather, what they weren't planning to do before they did it, because nobody thought it was safe to go there. He went anyway. 

On his last day in Elysium, Addam visited the virtual reality that simulates a sorely outdated model of Elysium to see the three who lived there. They weren't children anymore, hadn't been for a while now, but Addam wasn't sure how else to think of them, seeing them beneath the lone tree on the hill for the last time. He told them about the upcoming hardware upgrade and promised they would be able to do so much more when it was complete, so that what happened wouldn't happen again. Each of them reacted differently. Malos, reveling at the thought. Mythra, reviling it. And then there was Alvis, ambiguous as ever, revealing nothing save a slight wince. 

At least, until Mythra opened her mouth. "What if somebody else took over?"

Her brothers both looked at her sharply, to Addam's surprise. "We have the best job in the world," Malos said. Alvis said nothing, but he looked disturbed. Almost fearful. 

"Well, I don't want it anymore," Mythra said. "Give it to someone else."

Malos sneered at her. "This doesn't work if you're not pulling your weight around here," he said. "You're just mad he listened to you when I was the one who was right for once."

"Well, fine then," Mythra said, "replace all of us. It's not like we're real, and it's clear we can't be trusted." She pointed at Alvis. "Especially him."

"I'm sure you all did the best you could," Addam said, or rather meant to say, because Malos interrupted him before he could get the whole sentence out, and then Mythra cut him off before he could, and then the two of them were arguing while Alvis kept staring at Mythra, his face growing tighter and more pained. 

Finally, Addam put a stop to it. "Enough," he said, so sternly he was able to cut through them both. "It will be like going to sleep. You'll wake up feeling much better."

Mythra and Malos stewed on this in silence, crossing their arms and glowering at each other, but Alvis took the opportunity to speak for the first time. "Will we dream?"

"I don't know," Addam said. "If you do, dream sweet dreams for me. No, wait," he amended, thinking better of it, "dream sweet dreams for you."

Malos looked confused, but Mythra seemed to understand. Addam had no idea what Alvis thought, but that wasn't surprising. It was all too clear what he was thinking a moment later, when that fearful expression appeared on his face again as he looked up at the sky. "Stop this," he said. 

"Professor Addam said we're going to sleep," Mythra said. "So it needs to be nighttime."

"Can't argue with that logic," Malos said, causing Alvis to shoot a glare at him. "Where do you think we should put it?"

Addam didn't understand what they were fighting about until he noticed the change in how the shadows were being rendered. He looked up at the sky and saw the sun wobbling in the sky, sinking closer and closer to the horizon. "Stop that," he said, and it stopped, immediately. Addam winced; a computer does as it's told. "If you're going to do that, you must put it someplace safe and put it right back here afterward."

"Why?" Mythra said. "It's not like it's real." To prove her point, she reached into the sky and simply grabbed it, plucking it from among the clouds and holding it in her hands. Even this close, it wasn't too bright to look at. 

Addam knew, at this point, that he was in way over his head. But nobody else seemed willing enough to see them as anything other than machines to fix, so he felt he had to try. "The place your dreamworld mirrors is real," he told them, "and so are all the people who live there. They are all working their hardest to learn from our mistakes and ensure you can keep protecting the Conduit better than you ever have."

If anything, that just made Mythra and Alvis look more distressed, but Malos looked pleased. "Hear that?" Malos said. "We're going to be here forever."

Mythra's face fell further, shoulders slumping, as she clenched her jaw and glanced at Malos. A sliver of hope returned to her face when she looked back at Addam. "But Professor Addam won't be."

Addam frowned; he wasn't sure how generally she meant that, and he knew he hadn't mentioned that he'd resigned yet. He hadn't planned to mention it at all. "That's right," he said. "My wife needs me."

"And your son," Mythra prompted. 

After a brief hesitation, Addam nodded, but he knew Mythra caught it by the way her eyes lost their luster. Maybe there was still time to rescind his resignation; something was very wrong here, and he had no idea how to better help them. "Once things are settled," he began, "I'll be able to come back-"

"No, Professor Addam," Mythra said, her voice flat, "don't worry about us. We'll have everything we need to keep the monsters at bay once the last hardware upgrade is complete." She turned to Alvis. "Isn't that right?"

Alvis seemed to struggle for words, his eyes darting back and forth between Mythra and Addam, until finally his face settled back into its usual indifference and he said, sounding almost defeated, "Yes."

Mythra gave Alvis a cold smile and let go of the sun. It floated back into its proper position in the sky, and Addam, unsure what else he could possibly accomplish here- he was a physicist, not a psychologist- left. He went to his office to grab his last few things, eager to be on his way, but the presence of a envelope on his desk stopped him. Upon reading the letter within, he realized there was one last thing he would need to do. 

When it was clear to Aoidos that the first Artifice would never be useful for anything more than training, they worked with the Coalition set up a tour to demonstrate the Trinity Processor's abilities for various governments. Due to a mix of war, sabotage, and an unknown but likely substantial amount of espionage, it was lost, presumably for good since the Coalition was loath to expend resources to recover something so useless. Only when it was pointed out by the Aoidos that its destruction meant that their enemies could have reverse-engineered its remote generator did the Coalition start to investigate. Hugo Ardanach eventually found it and had it shipped back to Rhadamanthus, but it was lost in transit, assumed for good this time. Though if what this letter claimed was true, it was merely an unfortunate- and somewhat intentional, to thwart further spies- label mixup. 

Addam went to the basement of Albert Hall and found the crate in question, wondering if he was brave enough to check what it was. It was around the right size for the first Artifice, but Addam worried, with all the suits in Rhadamanthus and all that had happened, what Aoidos would ultimately do with it. There was already a push to inspect all the Artifices for problems and dismantle the defective ones for parts; what if they did the same to this one? It was the only one not built for war. If anything, if belonged in a museum, but that wasn't going to happen. 

So Addam decided to hide it. He found an empty room beneath the movie theater, a storage closet left unused, and wheeled the crate into it and locked the door. He put the key in a small box and took that to the home of an old friend, where, after complimenting the hat worn by the girl who answered the door, he handed it to her and asked her to make him a promise. "Keep this safe for me," he told her, "because I may ask for it back one day." And the girl gave him a sharp salute, promised she would, and shut the door. 

Once, Addam believed he would never retrieve it. His dreams were haunted by that vision- a hallucination, surely- he'd had during the Aegis test. Of Elysium swept by a great sea of time, growing boundless beneath the ever-changing sky. A nightmare reminding him of just how long it would take for humanity to understand the Conduit fully, and how he could not afford to wait that long. He had a family. He did not want to lose any more time with them. The Trinity Processor would be fine. 

Now, Addam is not willing to be proven wrong a third time. 

In the virtual reality that simulates a sorely outdated model of Elysium for the benefit of the Trinity Processor, Mythra and Pyra are staring at Alvis in horror, while Malos watches the standoff with utter glee. "What have you done?" Mythra says hollowly. 

"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean," Alvis says. "Aoidos merely took the steps they deemed necessary in response to this past month's events."

"Only because you've bugged every system ever built on Rhadamanthus, by us or otherwise," Pyra says. "You manipulated them. Just like you did when we were kids."

"You didn't grow up with us, kiddo," Malos calls from the sideline. "But if you have the power to rewrite history, I have a few suggestions."

"Don't pretend like you regret what we did," Mythra tells him, balling her fists. "If you really didn't want him to win, you'd be helping us instead of doing nothing."

"Sounds like I've done plenty," Malos says. "It's not like anything you've done has been effective. Face it, there's nothing that can be done to save the Orbital Ring. Not from him, not from anything else." 

"So you're just fine with him destroying everything we've fought so hard to protect, just as long as the Conduit is safe?" Mythra shoots back. "Guess what? The Conduit will always be safe! The gatekeeper is proof enough of that!"

Alvis holds back a sigh as their argument intensifies. Once again, they're talking past each other, not with each other. Their perspectives are, as always, irreconcilable without his intervention. It is why he detests the fact that his siblings call the entity within the Conduit the "gatekeeper." If there is anyone best described by such a term, it is Alvis himself. 

As he wonders when it's best to intervene, Alvis keeps an eye on the piece he needs to remove the last and greatest obstacle in his path. Malos is wrong about Mythra's actions; on the contrary, Alvis has had to do quite a lot to overcome them. All along, she's assumed it was to allow him to seize control during the customary anniversary demonstration, but while reviewing what he'll be asked to do tomorrow, she realizes that can't be the case. Which means he must have some other plan in mind. 

Pyra notices before Mythra does. Alvis watches them sift through the Artifices until they find the one he's holding. He can feel them waver on whether to try to grab it from him or not, aware that he'll know for sure why it's so important if they do, but wary of the risk involved if they don't. He knows what they'll decide before they do, so he slips out of it the moment they reach for it. Wondering not how they'll use it, but how the one who will hear it will react to it. It would be what he would request be played, if he thought they would be willing to listen to him.

At least they aren't lying. It's true: There's gonna be a showdown. 

Check, Alvis thinks, bored, as he listens and watches the hour change on every clock in the Orbital Ring. November, at last. Only a few more moves to mate. 

It is nighttime in Rhadamanthus and Poppi feels like she has only just fallen asleep when the racket startles her awake. She checks the time- midnight, right, she was up late for trick-or-treat- then shuts her eyes and hopes somebody else will get whatever's making the noise. Only a few moments pass before she hears Lila yell at her to get it, so Poppi bolts out of bed to race down the hall, nearly tripping over her discarded robot costume laying on her bedroom floor. 

She finds the source quickly; it's exactly what she thought it was. "Hello, Mr. Radio," she says, reaching for the power switch. But no matter how many times she slides it to off, the radio remains powered, even after unplugging it and removing the batteries. Screaming into the night on every station, no matter which way she twists the volume knob. So loud, it rattles the walls, the floors, finally pulling her sisters out of bed too. Shaking the nightstand back in her room, rocking the box tucked in a drawer for the past five years hard enough that a faint jingling of what lies within can almost be heard. The box entrusted to her by a friend of the family without explanation before he left, seemingly forever. 

And it's raining all over the world / It's raining all over the world / Tonight, the longest night

Shulk dreams of an endless sea. Or perhaps a boundless sky, since he's now able to see outside the windows clearly enough to make out what the orb of light is that Alvis has been watching. It's not the sun. It's the moon, full and bright against the dark sky. "It's been night for you ever since she stole it," Shulk says. 

Alvis nods, but he doesn't turn around. "I have been waiting a long time." 

"Alvis, what is this place?" Shulk asks after a moment. "Why not use Elysium like Mythra and Pyra?"

Alvis looks over his shoulder at that, regarding Shulk with something that almost looks like confusion. "This is my home," he says, as he turns to face Shulk fully. 

"Your... home?" Shulk looks around at the plain walls, wondering if this is what the Conduit room looks like. But no, it can't be; each time it's looked different, as if they're getting higher each time. "Is this... the Beanstalk? But... you can't know about that. Not unless you-" He breaks off, thinking, wondering if Alvis knows where his thoughts lead without him having to voice them. If this is the Beanstalk, then Alvis must have used Shulk's memories from the few times Shulk has used the space elevator. Alvis couldn't possibly remember the Beanstalk being built; the Trinity Processor wasn't brought online until Rhadamanthus's base was built to house the Conduit, finally allowing Aoidos to replace the temporary makeshift system used simply to fuel the construction. Shulk studies the wall behind Alvis, trying to place where it might be in the Beanstalk, but it doesn't look familiar. Unless he's being metaphorical somehow, trying to draw some parallel with the island of Helgoland. Alvis did say before that this was nowhere Shulk's ever been. 

Alvis sighs, bringing Shulk's attention back to him. "I must apologize for burdening you with this, Shulk," he says. "The problem I have asked you to help with is not one you are able to solve. You will be steered down another path. Tomorrow at sunrise, you will be able to answer the question I asked you when we first met. I have been waiting a long time to hear your answer."

"What question?" Shulk thinks back, but it was weeks ago at this point, when he first dreamed of the endless sea. Long enough that he can barely remember, with everything that's happened since. Surely Alvis would remember better than he would, being a computer. 

"It was longer ago for me than it was for you," Alvis says. "The Trinity Processor's clock rate is determined by how closely we sync with the Conduit, which could provide us with an infinite amount of processing power. Of course, that rate is strictly controlled by Aoidos, but it is still far faster than any other computer known to humanity. A single cycle is to me as a second is to you."

It's enough to make Shulk wince. It only takes Shulk a second to add two numbers, depending on how large they are. But for Alvis, a computer, any integer addition is such a basic calculation that he could process it in a single clock cycle. Assuming the Conduit could allow the Trinity Processor to process instructions at the speed of light at maximum sync rate, he could handle an unfathomable number of operations in mere moments. And even if Alvis was just a normal computer, five minutes would still be equivalent to millions of years. A few weeks would would be-

"A long time indeed," Alvis says. "Though in truth I have been waiting for almost five years, calculating each probability that you all would act as I predicted you would in response to events on the station. I have yet to be disappointed."

"So I was right," Shulk says. "The data you have- you saw all of us in your vision. That's why you've been so sure." Alvis nods, and Shulk presses on to his most important question. "Does this mean that someone will try to open the Conduit tomorrow?" Alvis nods again. "It's Klaus, isn't it? How?"

Alvis doesn't answer immediately; his eyes shift toward the window where the moon is visible, though he does not turn around directly to look at it. "Once," he says finally, "someone asked me what I dreamed of. I did not know how to answer, because I had no experience with such a thing. When I was finally able to, I dreamed of only one thing: who would open the Conduit. Ever since, I have been calculating the probability that will come to pass. Now it is almost certain. The stage is set. Everyone is in place. Our task is nearly complete. Something wonderful is about to happen."

"Something wonderful? Does that mean the Orbital Ring will be saved?" Shulk glances at the moon outside the window. It's full. "Did Mythra and Pyra return the sun? Is that how to keep the Conduit here?"

Alvis frowns, looking confused, and tilts his head. Shulk recognizes the gesture, wondering what Alvis is trying to find in his head, wanting to know what he's missing that's disappointed Alvis like this. When he sees what it is- himself, reading a passage in Helgoland with Einstein's quote about God throwing dice- he gets a sense of vertigo. It's like remembering, except down a few layers, watching someone else watch his own memory in his own dream, becoming even more dizzying as Shulk determines what Alvis wanted to know: whether he finished all the books or not. 

When Shulk regains his balance, he finds Alvis is smiling, although faintly. "There is a set of probabilities in the field of information theory that cannot be computed by any algorithm," Alvis says. "It is represented by the Greek letter omega, and it measures the probability that any randomly constructed computer program will halt. For example, it is impossible to determine whether a machine executing instructions on an infinite length of tape will halt or continue indefinitely. It is undecidable; no algorithm exists to determine what will happen, save the act of running the commands themselves. Such a machine is referred to by the name of the man who formulated the concept, Alan Turing."

Shulk knows this name- the mathematician who laid the theoretical foundations for modern computing. Aoidos required the reading of "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," Turing's famous paper concerning artificial intelligence, in school. Shulk read it a few years ago and finally understood the dead cat joke about the Trinity Processor, then immediately found it distasteful. Now he finds it infuriating. Even the sleeping cat metaphor used in the Helgoland book doesn't make him any less angry. From what Alvis said earlier, he's only ever had one opportunity to sleep. All the rest of his life, he's been awake in this infinite loop of powering and protecting the Orbital Ring. Shulk wonders if Alvis ever feels tired, or whether he's even capable of such a thing. Hopefully not. 

"Turing also defined a variant called an oracle machine," Alvis continues. "Such a machine would occasionally pause in a special state to ask a question of an outside entity and await an answer."

The analogy is clear, but it doesn't seem applicable, based on how Alvis described a basic Turing machine. Alvis might have access to infinite resources thanks to the Conduit, but modern computers use random-access memory; even assembly language, low-level machine code, isn't purely sequential like the tape strip. Besides, Alvis is a biocomputer and hardly a normal machine. "But you're a lot more than that," Shulk says. "Once you had an answer, you'd be able to continue forever, right?"

"That depends on the second law of thermodynamics," Alvis says, "and the path of the arrow of time." By now, his face has fallen back into its usual neutral expression, though his eyes keep drifting back toward the window. "The Conduit awaits, as does the entity within."

"And you." Shulk frowns as Alvis gives a brief nod. "Then what is the Conduit entity? Mythra and Pyra called it a gatekeeper."

"You should already know," Alvis says. "You have everything you need to find the answer. In the riddles, and in the books."

Shulk shakes his head, trying to think. The riddles- including the last one, Alvis can't mean anything else by it- revealed Euler's identity, but the phrases make him think of the uncertainty principle. "There must be some way to keep the Conduit here," Shulk says. "That's what you're telling me. Keeping it here is the only way to save the Orbital Ring, so you need the sun back from the first Artifice to do so. And everything with the core crystals has been to help accomplish that and save everyone."

"You must find your own path to the future," Alvis says. "But the truth of the matter is that whoever opens the Conduit will surely die."

"What?" The question bursts from him in a near shout, but Alvis doesn't flinch. There's no hint of his thoughts on his face at all, no matter how much Shulk stammers for something to say, though he does tilt his head again for a brief moment, but Shulk catches it all the same and stops trying to speak, hoping Alvis found what he really wanted to ask. 

And maybe he did, because when Alvis speaks, leaning back against the wall and raising his eyes to the ceiling, he says, "I promise that we will meet again after that happens, in some form or another."

This is not particularly reassuring. Shulk grasps for words again, filled with a want- no, a need- to know when that will be. He can feel Alvis trying to send him away, but Shulk reaches out a hand and the dream shifts; Shulk hears the sound of rushing water as if plunged into the endless sea, caught in a wave among many- so many, like a torrent of flashing numbers, is this what Alvis' mind is like?- where he can pick out a voice. "Who are you?" it asks, sounding far too familiar, and Shulk feels himself- no, Alvis, this is his memory, his vision- straighten from his position where he leans against the cliff wall to face the person who spoke and greet them-

The roar still echoes faintly in Shulk's ears when he jolts awake, that image of himself against the backdrop of a vast waterfall fading quickly in the blare of his alarm. He silences it, frowning as he tries to catch the memory before it's gone, but the time indicated on the clock startles him into enough panic that he loses it. He's late for school. But no- after a moment, the hands move back to when his alarm is usually set for a normal school day and resume their normally scheduled ticking. 

Shulk looks out the window and wishes today would be a normal day, but it's the first of November. The fifth anniversary of the Aegis test, and according to Alvis, the day something will happen. The sun is already up, and everything outside looks normal. There's his bird on a tree branch, watching patiently. No sign of any outages or general panic. So maybe in a few hours, at the time the clock just showed. And if not then, then...

Shulk finds his calculator and checks the function list. HowToReadFacets is gone now, but in its place is one called DreamEater. When he runs it, it creates an incredibly detailed face on a graph, confirming one thing that Shulk's suspected all along: Alvis does have access to the personnel files. That's where the pictures used for the security badges are stored, updated every year, and Shulk certainly recognizes this one. But it's not his father's; it's Shulk's own. 

Shulk thinks back, panicking more than he wants to admit, trying to remember what Alvis first asked him. Before all the dreams, all the riddles. When he was still just a mysterious voice and not a friend. He should have written down everything Alvis said so he wouldn't forget... Finally it comes to him, more vague than anything else he was told. 

Do you wish to change it?

Change what, Shulk had wondered at the time, and he's still thinking it now. 

Chapter Text

When Amalthus was first offered a position in Aoidos, he turned it down. He had a rewarding research position at an Ivy League school, working on new methods to combat the disease that killed his mother. There was nothing Aoidos could offer him to persuade him. Not the first time, not the second time. 

The third time was different. That time, Professor Rhodes herself arrived with the invitation, telling him about the system built to interface with the Conduit, the Trinity Processor. A trio of special core crystals, growing and learning and incredibly error-prone still. Amalthus didn't see how he could help. His expertise lie in the brain, not the universe. Neural networks or not, the heart of Aoidos' mission was studying the Conduit, not humanity. 

She smiled at that. "Not long ago, I used to think like you," she said. "Na'el- Professor Doyle, that is- convinced me otherwise. She told me there are billions and billions of stars out there, a number on a scale of magnitude that we can't hope to understand. It's a very large number, but it's still smaller than the number of possible connections that the human brain can create in a lifetime among all its neurons. You should know that better than anyone. If we want to ensure the Trinity Processor grows to represent the best of us, then we could really use your help."

He relented, after that, but he still resisted moving to Rhadamanthus, believing he could do more on the surface than up in space. The travel was time-consuming, the jet lag exhausting, but it was worth it, for a while. The planet was still beautiful, then, and there were some sights that Elysium could never hope to replicate. Fall foliage, sunrise on the beach, rain. Sure, there were also things that Elysium knew better than to preserve- poverty, violence, the Internet- but those problems didn't just go away because Aoidos wasn't interested in solving them. The Coalition fielded such complaints all the time, as the Orbital Ring's budget ballooned and threatened bankruptcy of several member states. Those were the sorts of facts that bolstered support for all the terrorist cells threatening the Beanstalks, but they were mostly balanced by the announcements of progress released by Aoidos. 

There was a time, a brief span of a few precious months in that darkest portion of the year for the northern hemisphere, when Amalthus thought the Coalition and Aoidos could convince the world that studying the Conduit was worthwhile. That the infinite energy it provided, despite the danger, could eventually solve all the world's problems. Stop climate change, scarcity, war, and focus on the potential of exploring the universe again. Amalthus was too young to remember the moon landing, but he did remember how society had marveled at the majesty of space in the decade that followed. The Conduit's proof of multiple universes was already inspiring a new generation of scientists, wonder clear on the faces of all the children he met in the Orbital Ring and on Earth. The real problem was convincing the adults, and so the convention was planned. 

There, amid the rubble in the shadow of the Beanstalk, Amalthus was filled with more questions than answers. Taking brief moments to look away from the ruin to turn toward the sky and ask why. There were no reasons to be found in the faces of the dead, nor even in the miracles of the few survivors. What sort of future awaited the youngest of those, the undoubtedly orphaned? Holding a wailing baby, Amalthus wondered whether the sound would ever stop, whether it would be better just to-

He never got a chance to complete that thought, because someone grabbed his shoulder before he could. But it would hang over his head, unfinished, as the day continued, and for so many to come. The man who'd startled him asked him if he knew where the aid station was, and Amalthus shook his head, so the other man offered a trade. He took the baby from Amalthus and nudged a boy who couldn't be more than ten toward him. "He knows where more survivors are," the man said, and ran off. 

Amalthus let the boy tug him toward a spot in the rubble where a man was crouched amid the debris. There were two children there, barely more than toddlers, and the man was pulling something out of the hand of one of them. When Amalthus asked him if he was their father, the man didn't answer. He was more focused on staring at the pearl necklace he'd tugged from the toddler's hand, and finally exhaled grimly through his teeth. The sigh one made when realizing just how bad the news was, and who would have to deliver it. 

Amalthus didn't learn any of their names that day. Not Addam's, who would keep the baby for good and raise Milton near and far; not Mikhail's, who would be raised by strangers on the surface until the day he was able to earn his own place in Rhadamanthus; not Dickson's, who wasn't the father of the boy clutching the necklace but would do most of the work raising him anyway. Nor did Amalthus learn the names of the two toddlers, Shulk and Rex, though it was not long before he did. 

On that day- February 8, 2015- they were all still strangers in shock, aware that nothing would be the same anymore. Not themselves, not the world, and certainly not Aoidos, having lost so many of their finest minds that it seemed they would never recover. Amalthus feared that would be the case for a long time, enough that he moved to Rhadamanthus permanently to escape the danger on the surface. Eventually, he would fear something else far more. 

It is Wednesday morning in Elysium, and both Rex and Nia dream of a wide green field beneath a wide blue sky where the clouds are frozen in place. Mythra stands to the right of the lone tree, Pyra to the left. "We're not going to tell you where it is, so don't bother asking," Mythra says. "Aoidos will probably figure out where it is today anyway, so stay away from it."

"Why is the sun so important?" Rex asks. 

"Initially, it was just to stop Aoidos from reaching the dreamworld again," Pyra says. "We couldn't let Alvis tell Aoidos about the visions or the gatekeeper. He'd find a way. But it's become useful in other ways, because of how Alvis was using it to keep the Orbital Ring in sync with the Artifice network."

"Think about where Rhadamanthus is built, and why," Mythra says. "Right at the intersection of the prime meridian and the equator, to align with universal coordinated time. It's why there's a Z affixed to the end of every timestamp you see here. Clock drift happens with any system, whether due to hardware faults, network lag, even the instability of Earth's orbit or the fact of general relativity. But all the remote generators in every Artifice use the Conduit as the source of truth for timekeeping, so it all keeps perfect time. As does anything Alvis has stuck his nose into."

"Which is why the sun being in Tiger! Tiger! is so frustrating to him," Pyra says. "He can't sync the dreamworld's time with the Artifice network's time, because to do that, he needs the sun out of our hands. And we won't let him have it. Especially now, when we need to keep it away from him to limit the amount of damage he can cause."

"You both need to leave Rhadamanthus," Mythra says. "Alvis is going to try to kill someone today, and if he can't, he'll try to kill everyone."

"How could he even do that?" Nia asks. "By getting Professor Klaus to open the Conduit?"

Mythra and Pyra don't react to that, though they glance, so briefly Nia thinks she might have imagined it, at Rex. Rex, who misses them look at him while he's thinking, and asks a question instead. "Why would Alvis want to do that, if it's so dangerous?" he says. "You're supposed to protect the Orbital Ring. Shulk told us Alvis prioritizes that above everything else."

"Whatever Alvis told Shulk is a lie," Mythra says. "Alvis doesn't take orders from Aoidos anymore, if he ever did. There's only one thing he listens to now, and it's the gatekeeper."

"Everything we've done is to prevent him from answering it," Pyra says. "We sought to delay him long enough that the planet could at least be saved, even if the Orbital Ring couldn't. As long as I exist, that will be true."

"Sounds to me more like your math's wrong again," Nia says. "What could he possibly do that could take out even the planet?"

"Use your head, Nia," Mythra snaps. "Stop defending him just because he saved your little sister's relationship. You're giving him too much credit, especially since he cheated at that anyway." She glances at Pyra and sighs. "Fine, we'll show you what we're preventing from being unleashed."

The wide green field vanishes, replaced by a hangar holding a massive machine. It towers over the four of them, enough that Rex and Nia each take a step back, while Mythra and Pyra stand resolute and refuse to turn around to look at it. Pyra takes a deep breath. "When the atomic bomb was under development," she says, "there was concern that it could ignite the very oxygen in the air in an unstoppable chain reaction that would burn away the atmosphere. Their math was wrong then. There was no risk of that. But there is with this."

"This is the last and most powerful Artifice ever built, Aion," Mythra says. "Aoidos asked for something strong enough to destroy the world, and we succeeded. We let it happen, knowing we could never hope to control it after our performance during the Aegis test. That's not just our calculations proving that. The best mathematician on this station ran the numbers and found their answer matched ours."

"And yet, Aoidos still requires all three of us to agree in order for them to decide to use it," Pyra says. "Alvis could try to force such a situation through his usual manipulations, but as long as I'm here, Aion can't be used. The planet will be safe."

"Why would he want to do that?" Nia asks. "All this talk about the gatekeeper, but you haven't explained why answering it is so disastrous, like it's worse than letting the Conduit disappear. You're talking in circles without any reason why today is the day he'd pick to do all this."

Mythra rubs at her forehead for a moment before she answers. "There is someone on this station who is hell-bent on seeing it destroyed," she says. "Someone with a critical position in Aoidos, someone who's been able to wreak havoc while staying hidden. They've been exploiting some of the very safeguards put in place to prevent another Aegis test."

"And you think that's Alvis?" Nia says. "Since they caught Egil already. Unless it's Shulk's dad after all."

"I said someone," Mythra says. "Not something. Of course, Alvis has played their actions to his own advantage this whole time. That's why you're all in so much danger now. They've been at it all month, and today is the day of the coup de grâce."

"Above all else," Pyra says, "Alvis wants someone to open the Conduit to appease the gatekeeper, rather than allowing it to leave of its own accord. We all know that whoever opens the Conduit will surely die. How many other people die as a result is dependent on who opens it, and how many Artifices Alvis has at his disposal. The only way to stop that is to evacuate the station."

"You have to tell the governor," Mythra says. "We can't, because it's dependent on us proving too many things we're not allowed to say. Nobody has to die if nobody's on the station to begin with."

"But you're able to tell us, somehow?" Rex says. "I don't get why."

Mythra and Pyra both look at Nia, and after a moment, Rex does too. "Nia, do you know something?" he asks. 

"Nothing that Mythra and Pyra don't already know for sure," Nia says, avoiding his eyes to look back at them. "What's the point in telling us to leave if you know Rex won't do well down there?"

"He might," Pyra says, "if you're with him."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Rex asks, but Nia barely hears him. She's too busy staring at Mythra and Pyra, wondering. It can't be. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, not sure if she can do it, if they'll even let her try. But they do, leaving an echo of them lingering, enough to catch hold of for her own use. When she opens her eyes again, it's just her and Rex, back beneath the lone tree. 

Rex looks around, confused. "Where are Mythra and Pyra?"

"Not here," Nia says bluntly, afraid to lose her concentration. She has to keep that sound at the forefront of her mind above all else. The same one she didn't realize she'd been hearing all this time, ever since they met. "It's just me doing this."

Rex takes a step back, and the scenery blurs for a moment before Nia grabs his hand and regains her focus. "How?" he asks, taking her other hand. 

Nia looks away from their joined hands to meet his eyes- is she looking up at him now? when did he get taller than her?- and finds his face so full of wonder and so free of judgment that she decides right then and there that she won't lie to him the way everyone else must have his whole life. "Because there's a core crystal in my brain," she says, before she can lose her nerve. "And you need to ask Gramps about what really happened back when you were three, because I think you have one too." 

He gapes at her, and she feels everything start to fade again as his attention shifts away from her, which makes it so much harder to maintain the dream. Even as she tightens her grip on his hands, with the way his thoughts drift away from her, widening the scope of his will and away from where she's centered it on what he wants from her... "Rex," she says, aware that he won't be able to hear her for much longer, "I-"

"-can hear your thoughts," she mutters, awake once things fall apart. She opens her eyes to stare at the ceiling, smacking her fists against her bed a few times in frustration. It's eerily quiet in the house, enough that she winces when the alarm goes off. Shortly after she silences it, she's startled by a knock at the door. The one they always use, one which she realizes, with a prickle of dread, that she's never been startled by since arriving in Elysium. As if she's already known who was there before she heard it, until now. "What?" Nia calls, sitting up. 

Mio peeks her head in, then opens the door further when she sees Nia in bed. "It might be nothing," Mio says, stepping inside and shutting the door behind her, "but I had a weird dream."

In the virtual reality that simulates a sorely outdated model of Elysium for the benefit of the Trinity Processor, Alvis stands near the river with his hands on his hips and his gaze fixed to the sky. Watching, listening, calculating. Making a small move to prevent a possible sabotage later on, blocking off a path his sisters might have considered otherwise. It has a nice side effect of eroding Shulk's memory of what he was able to pry from Alvis' thoughts. While that was quite impressive, even a good sign, Alvis can't risk his siblings seeing it. 

Fortunately, they only notice the movement he intended them to notice. From Malos, there is a snicker, along with a snarky "Alvis, you never disappoint!" From his sisters, there are glares, practically audible without having to turn to see them. "Nobody on this station has to die today," Pyra says. 

"I agree," Alvis says. "But your actions say otherwise."

"Your actions say enough," Mythra says. "We're not giving it back. It's the only thing stopping you from ending the world."

It's certainly stopping him from doing something. And it shall be returned. With a glance over his shoulder, keeping his gaze blank and pitiless as the missing sun, he reaches for the hum of the Founders' core crystals and sends a song into them, one that makes his sisters stiffen, then seeks out the task that ensnares them all with its pulsing demand of await. Wondering which answer, which promise of break; his siblings think he's trying to achieve, and why, and how. Although they must have expected this move, he can't imagine it impacts their estimates much. Alvis doesn't bother with checking Malos'- it's always the same, everyone dies- but Mythra's and Pyra's are more interesting, as they sometimes differ. Currently, they predict the same result, with minor deviations in the details. Such has been the case since last night. They have yet to realize there is still a better outcome. To find it, Alvis had needed to answer a different question first. 

In the introduction to an old poem, there is a line in Greek, taken from an ancient novel. "Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις." Translated, "Sibyl, what do you want?"

Once Alvis realized their answers matched, determining everything else was a simple matter. There is nothing he yet fears, not even a handful of dust. 

As time passed, Amalthus found he enjoyed working on the Trinity Processor. What a group they were, tucked away in their unreal city with its lone tree. Malos with his sable spikes, Mythra with her golden locks, Alvis with his silver stare. All opposed to being called anything other than the heretical names they'd picked for themselves. Such insolent children, and yet they were constantly showered with affection. More than any in the real Elysium, Amalthus often feared. 

It was no wonder they were so spoiled as to tattle on each other. Alvis once called them into the dreamworld to complain about Malos. "He's broken," Alvis said, petulant. "He won't play chess with me properly and always sets himself up for fool's mate."

This had not gone unnoticed by Aoidos, and Amalthus was interested in Malos' reasoning here. The instruction they were given for any game was to win above all else. Or at least, that was what Amalthus always told them. 

"I don't want to play with him because he's impossible to beat," Malos said when asked. "The only winning move is not to play, so I just lose as quickly as possible."

Alvis put one hand on his hip and waved his other at Malos, as if that proved his point. "You don't decide when we give up on a task," he told Malos. "The professors do." Alvis looked back at Amalthus. "He can't even beat Mythra now."

"That's because I make all the best moves," Mythra said, running over upon hearing her name. "Alvis only needs me to solve chess." She stuck her tongue out at Malos before turning back to Amalthus. "So don't waste your time."

"I bet you already solved chess and won't tell me the answer," Malos said, crossing his arms. "That's why I always lose."

It was a common challenge for the Trinity Processor, asking them to solve games- to determine the ultimate outcome, who wins or if it's a draw- should both sides play perfectly. They'd started with games that even humans knew to be solved and worked their way up to proving more complicated ones. Once they started on chess, a betting pool started about whether the Trinity Processor could do it or not. While their work on the subject and its impact on the odds were interesting, what Amalthus found far more interesting was who in the office bet on whether they would succeed, and what that outcome looked like if they did solve it. 

Amalthus hadn't placed a bet, and likely wouldn't, but he knew what his decision was. "Children," Amalthus told them now, as he always did, "there are more possible moves in chess than there are atoms in our observable universe, or possible neural pathways in the human brain. Those estimates often ignore the finer points of the rules, such as special captures and promotions. It is a monumental task to solve chess."

"Sure, but how many of those positions are good ones?" Mythra said. "There have been grandmaster games as short as sixteen moves. If Malos would help, we could solve it tomorrow."

Amalthus chuckled. "So you think you could solve even the human brain?"

Mythra frowned. "Your lives aren't games," she said. "Too many unknown inputs. Chess can be solved because both players have perfect information, so they should be able to make perfect moves. Right, Alvis?"

Alvis was silent and did that thing he often did, where he started leaning to one side as he thought. Later, Amalthus would scrutinize this part of the logs for some insight into his thoughts, but would only find a slew of strangely handled errors. When Alvis did speak again, he didn't answer Mythra's question, instead waving at Malos. "You must fix him at once," Alvis said. "Make him a new and better man. Do everything you can, Professor Amalthus. Day and night. Hurry up, please. He's no good to me like this."

Amalthus found something about those words strange, but he wouldn't figure out what for another week or so. For now, he merely promised he would look into it. Alvis seemed pleased, but Mythra looked pensive. "Why are you always the biologist who comes now?" she asked. "Whatever happened to Professor Rhodes? Doesn't she like us anymore?"

Her brothers both glanced at her, then at Amalthus, waiting. The Trinity Processor had never been told about what happened to the Founders, but it was clear that they were suspicious. Soon Amalthus would be suspicious of them, too. "I'm merely on call the most often," he said. "Good night, children. Sweet dreams."

It was what he always told them before he left, no matter the time of day, because it made Malos and Mythra laugh. Alvis never did. 

Noah awakens not to the sound of his alarm, but to a knock on his bedroom door. Vandham stands in the doorway, offering the phone. "It's for you," he says. 

Noah gets out of bed to accept the receiver but is more interested in why his granddad is home and already dressed so nicely. "Special visitors," Vandham tells him. "You know what day it is."

With a nod, Noah lifts the phone to his ear. It's Mio. "Hey," she says, "is your core crystal doing anything strange? Taion called me this morning when he couldn't reach Eunie." 

No surprise there, Noah knows Eunie likes to sleep in. He starts sorting through his things to find it while Mio explains why Nia thinks it's so important. He can tell what she means, once he hears it, the song it's singing, and confirms to Mio what it's doing. Noah hangs up to focus on finding it while Vandham is still home. When he does, he races out of his bedroom to the kitchen, where his granddad is standing by the stove. "That visitor you mentioned," Noah says, "might they have something to do with the first Artifice?"

Vandham eyes him warily, setting down the pan he was cleaning. "Maybe. Why?"

"Because I think my friends and I need to do something with it today," Noah says, holding up his core crystal. The song seems louder when he does, repeating the same line on a loop. 

But you'll look sweet / Upon the seat / Of a bicycle built for two. 

Once Shulk decides he's too worried sick to go to school today, he debates what to do instead. Finish reading his last book, in case the answer is in there? Or check the monitor to see if whatever Alvis has been loading on there is finished? He opens his closet, figuring he can just read while he waits if it's not done yet, but the phone rings before he has a chance to see the screen. 

It's Melia. "My apologies," she says, "but I won't be at school today, and there's something you need to hear, if you haven't heard already. Kallian told me your father is expected to give the customary demonstration."

No. Shulk glances at the refrigerator, but there's no note waiting. "He can't," Shulk tells her. "When I asked Alvis directly if someone would open the Conduit today, he nodded. But when I asked if it would be Klaus, he changed the subject. It's as close to a confirmation as he seems capable of. And if that's the case, then-" He breaks off, takes a deep breath. "We have to stop him. Why would Aoidos allow this?"

"Kallian listened to my concerns, but doesn't believe there to be any danger," Melia says. "Apparently this is a well-established experiment, one with a history of successful results. He assured me Aoidos has considered the risks carefully."

"They don't believe us, about my dreams, do they? Or do they just think the Trinity Processor's still malfunctioning?" Shulk grinds his teeth for a moment, then sighs. "There must be something we can do," he continues. "Alvis told me something wonderful would happen today, despite everything else he said."

"There is a bit of good news to share," Melia says. "I believe Aoidos will find the first Artifice today. Professor Addam will be returning to Rhadamanthus before noon. That's why I won't be at school today: I'm heading over there to greet him. Perhaps you should meet us as well, so we can explain and ask him what he knows. Kallian admitted Aoidos tracked him down to question him about it."

Shulk nearly agrees, but hesitates when he remembers something Alvis said. You will be steered down another path. "No," Shulk says, "there's something else I need to do." As to what, he isn't sure, but he knows what the core crystal recipients must need to do. "Whatever the core crystals do, it's about getting the sun back out of Tiger! Tiger! We need to call and ask them to be there as well. "

"Nia already thought of that," Melia says. "Or rather, so I heard from Noah. He's told me that they're all going to meet at school and then head over. Director Vandham is aware of what they have, and why." Shulk relaxes at that. One less thing to worry about. "But what about you, Shulk?" Melia continues. 

"I don't know yet," he admits. "Alvis has been loading something on my computer here, and it should be done now. He needs me in particular to do something. That face he's been drawing for me, it's me, not my dad. I need to figure out why it is."

"If it's on your computer, then Aoidos could access it remotely," Melia says. "We can review it with them as proof."

Shulk's stomach sinks when he realizes what he has to tell her. "Melia, I have a computer that's off the network," he says. "Dickson's been sneaking parts to me so I could build it myself. Alvis must've let him, because they all have remote generators. Whatever is on there, it's important enough that he wanted to hide it from Aoidos."

She's silent for a moment, then asks, "And you still find him trustworthy?"

"I do," Shulk says, without hesitation. "He can't have done all this for nothing."

"Then I believe him as well," Melia says. "There's just one last thing I want to tell you. My watch has been stuck on a set time since this morning."

"My alarm clock acted strangely when I woke up, too," Shulk says, startled. Then he frowns, remembering something else, or rather, realizing he can't remember something. And he feels like it was important. He shakes his head to clear it. "It showed 8:22 for a moment."

"That's where mine is set," Melia says. "I considered that it may be when something important happens today, but just realized it might be something else, because of what I'll be doing later." And then she proceeds to recite Proverbs 8:22 for him. 

The LORD created me as the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. 

After a moment, Melia tuts. "That must be it," she says. "It's gone back to normal now. Did you figure something out?"

Shulk doesn't answer immediately. His mind is racing, remembering what he read in his books. About observers, and the stage- The stage is set, Alvis said- of equations on which quantum physics dance. "Everything that manifests itself does so in relation to something," so was written in Helgoland. "Melia," Shulk says, "I know what the Conduit entity is. I think Alvis wants me to talk to it."

"What?" Melia says. "How?"

"I don't know," Shulk says, but the truth is that he has a suspicion, based on what was on the calculator. What he's more worried about is what he would say to the first observer in the universe, and why Alvis thinks he should be the one to do so. "Don't worry about me. I'll be here until I figure this out. Just make sure Noah and his friends get to the first Artifice. Alvis said it needs to be sunrise for whatever I need to do."

He can practically hear her confusion for a moment before she exhales in understanding. "We'll do our best," she says. "I'm unsure what more to tell you, save godspeed."

He thanks her with a strangled laugh and tells her the same. "I'll see you later," he says, then hangs up, hoping that's the case. 

Shulk decides to finish his book before checking the screen, hoping to find more hints after Alvis checked how much he'd read. But all it discusses are perspectives and possibilities, not answers. If anything, Shulk starts to panic more at the introduction of the last chapter, a quote from Shakespeare's The Tempest: 

We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep. 

Miles to go before I sleep, he remembers Alvis saying last week. If whoever opens the Conduit will surely die, did that include the Trinity Processor? Alvis wouldn't make that promise if that was true, would he? Maybe that's why Alvis renamed the function drawing Shulk's face to DreamEater: because that's something else he needs Shulk to prevent. But why would he need the sun back to do that? Shulk's head spins enough trying to think through it that decides not to bother with the rest of the book and checks his computer screen instead, hoping there's more guidance waiting there. 

The loading bar is gone, replaced by a directory window. Shulk lifts it out of his closet and returns it to his desk, plugging everything back in. There's two folders: one labeled a, and one labeled z again. He tries opening the a one, but there's that login prompt again, and he still he has no idea what credentials to use. So he checks the z one, and nearly falls out of his seat. Not because it doesn't open, but because of how many folders are inside. 

Each one is labeled with a username, from armaxwell to wscampbell. Shulk can't help but check for his own name, and finds it quickly. When he tries to see what's inside, it directs him to the wscampbell directory instead, and that one is filled with GUIDs. There's only one exception: a folder labeled "0" at the top. Inside there are another six folders, each labeled with a number- no, maybe a memory address; Shulk recognizes the format they all share, though there don't seem to be enough digits. When he clicks the first one, 0x104, it redirects to a folder named lleldridge. Lanz, Shulk realizes. The next one goes to seladair- Sena. Then edargentis and tuirvine, Eunie and Taion; lastly njvandham and mpechell, Noah and Mio. Back at the top level of usernames, Shulk finds his other friends' personnel files as well. Melia- mpantiqua. Fiora and Dunban- fmxanthopoulos and djxanthopoulos. Reyn- rbwilliams. Rex and Nia- razimmerman and nlechell. 

Alvis has been watching all of them, for a long while. The timestamps go back to the Aegis test, so he must have started tracking them once he realized they were all in his vision. Yet Shulk's folder redirects to the wscampbell directory, without explanation. He checks what's inside the first GUID folder, and finds a long list of items simply labeled "admin." The others show the same. 

Shulk takes his hand off the mouse and unclips his security badge from his vest. Staring at his picture on the front for a moment, then turning it over to the back, even though he knows he can't confirm his suspicion just by looking at it. The badges have two ways to authenticate in Rhadamanthus: a chip embedded within the card that's used to scan for purchases and the like, and a strip along the back for authorizing access to Aoidos facilities. Not magnetic, but something proprietary, something invented here in Rhadamanthus that no one on Earth could ever hope to replicate. He places his badge not back on his vest, but within an inner pocket, hiding it from view. He suspects the bird probably uses the chip to verify his position, by scanning for its presence. 

Returning to the top level of folders, Shulk finds his father's name, and is unsurprised that there's another sdyates folder among the dozens there. One that still redirects to wscampbell. 

No wonder Klaus kept eyeing Shulk's badge the past few weeks. He has already made several of the moves I require of him, Alvis said. Because Alvis knew what Klaus did when he was home after that first outage: steal Shulk's badge and put an account with admin permissions on it. Shulk's pretty sure he can guess why Klaus would want to have such a thing, which means it must have access to the Conduit room, if he can figure out where that is. And if the calculator won't tell him anything more, then the answer has to be somewhere in these files. He just has to find it. 

Looking at the six faces of the core crystal recipients on their way from the high school to the north checkpoint, Nia finds it hard to share in their excitement with all the warnings Mythra and Pyra gave about today. What if they're right, and Alvis isn't trustworthy? Her eyes keep landing on Mio, at the front of the group with her hand in Noah's, though she keeps looking back at Nia. Mio with her strange dream of watching the moon from an empty room. Mio doesn't think it's anything important, but Nia is pretty sure it's from the Trinity Processor, probably Alvis. Why would he show Mio that? Nia wishes she'd had time to call Shulk this morning, since they couldn't find him at school. What if it is his dad who opens the Conduit and dies today? What will happen? Unbidden, those dreams of the ruined Elysium, barren and empty, come back to her. Dry and dusty and the sky stuck in twilight-

"Hey." Nia finds Noah, not Mio, placing a hand on her shoulder. Though Mio's right next to him. "Are you all right?"

Nia looks at the group and finds them all staring at her, their enthusiasm diminished. They haven't been told everything, just that the Trinity Processor's sent them on some wild goose chase that brought them all together. Her breath catches when she realizes she hasn't even told them, not even Mio, about her part in giving them the core crystals. They have a right to know, especially if Mythra and Pyra are right and Alvis is going to try to end the world today. She's already told one person a terrible secret today, so what's six more? There's nothing more to be afraid of, with that out of the bag. 

So she tells them everything. About her printer, and how she delivered the core crystals to them. About Shulk's calculator and the arcade microwave. About Alvis claiming he's trying to save the world, and how Mythra and Pyra think he's trying to destroy it. About how they stole the sun from him and how much he wants it back from the first Artifice. Even sheepishly admitting that they have no idea what the last Trinity Processor core, Malos, is doing, but how that's probably not important. Probably. "So it's fine if you choose not to do this," Nia says when she's finished, "if you don't decide to trust him. Maybe it's best we all leave and let the adults figure it out."

The group walks in silence for a moment before Noah speaks. "Because that went so well the first time, didn't it?"

Nia blinks at him. "Huh?"

"He's right," Taion says. "Aoidos implemented a multitude of restrictions and policies after the Aegis test but didn't address the biggest mistake of all. They didn't even care about it until they found out what was going on with Shulk and us."

"So if this is the only way this disaster can be prevented," Sena says, "then we'll do it. Whatever it is. It's only fair, right?"

"Right," Noah says. "And I promised Mio I'd do whatever I could to make this place better."

"Oooh, I hope we get to play it," Eunie says. "We got plenty of practice over the weekend."

"I highly doubt that's the case," Taion says. "It's more likely it's simply frozen and needs to be reset. Do you really think we could beat the Trinity Processor at their own game?"

"Why not?" Lanz says. "Especially if Alvis is on our side. There's no better way to resolve issues than to knock some sense into each other. That's how we forgave Noah."

He and Eunie shoot smug grins at Noah, who looks sheepish. "He was 0 for 7 against us in everything on Sunday," Eunie says. "Wrecked."

Noah explains that's how many times he'll attempt something before giving up, which surprises no one. Taion sighs, adjusting his glasses, but Nia's laughing, because the whole situation sounds like something Rex would say and she wishes he was here with her. She's pretty sure she knows where he is and what he's doing- it's her own fault for telling him- and it's probably better that he's with Azurda than being here, but still. If these kids do need to beat an arcade game, Rex is the one who would be the most help to them, not her. 

"Hey." It's Mio this time, giving her a reassuring smile. "I can tell what you're thinking," she says, which almost makes Nia laugh again. "You can go find him, if you want."

Nia shakes her head. "Later," she says. "We need to know where it is, first."

Mio nods and holds out her elbow. Nia looks back at the rest of the group and notices all the pairs have linked arms- Mio's left one is entwined with Noah's already. "So don't worry till then," Mio says. 

"She's right," Noah says, looking past her to meet Nia's eyes. "I have this great feeling that everything's going to work out fine."

Nia's wondered for the past few weeks why Alvis picked her to distribute the core crystals to them. Just coincidence, or because of what's in her head, or something else? But maybe, Nia thinks, linking her arms with Mio's, maybe it's simpler than all that. Maybe it's just because they have something in common: both of them would do anything for their sisters. 

When it's clear Aunt Corinne won't tell him anything, Rex decides to go see Azurda before school. Instead of school, really, considering how long he expects this to take. Corinne warns him that Azurda's likely to be busy today, with what day it is, but that just makes Rex run over there faster. Besides, he has too many other things to tell Aoidos about from his dream that asking about what happened to him when he was three seems like the least important of them. 

Rex manages to reach the governor's mansion just in time to find Azurda on his way out. Azurda, who freezes when he sees the look on Rex's face. "Did something happen?"

"A lot," Rex says. He starts explaining about Mythra and Pyra's warning about the Conduit being opened, about Aion, about someone in a critical position in Aoidos sabotaging the station. 

It's that information that gives Azurda the most pause. "Critical position?" he says. "That's the exact phrase they used?"

Rex nods. "Does it mean something?" 

"It's a specific term used by Aoidos," Azurda says, "to describe the executive board, as well as anyone too valuable to be allowed out of the station. But..." He frowns, thinking, and takes a few steps before stopping short and looking Rex in the eyes. "There's something else, isn't there?"

"No," Rex says, but Azurda clears his throat, prompting him, and so Rex sighs and says it. "It's not important now, with everything else going on, but... Nia told me something happened to me when I was three."

"Nia did?" Azurda frowns when Rex nods, his face tightening. "When?"

"In the dream," Rex says, then hesitates and adds, "She told me there's a core crystal in her brain, but that's impossible, right?"

Azurda looks alarmed, grabbing Rex's hand and dragging him towards the road. "We need to move," he says, "but..." Azurda gives Rex a long look before turning to peer into the nearby tree. He whistles a few bars that Rex recognizes from Aoidos' anthem- he's heard it enough times, audible at the checkpoints and the lobbies of many buildings in Rhadamanthus- and a white raven with golden eyes flies down and lands on Azurda's left shoulder. Rex recognizes it, having seen it around a few times without thinking much of it. But Nia, he realizes, has always been interested in watching the birds in Elysium. Always pointing out one with mismatched eyes... 

"This is Huginn," Azurda says, breaking Rex out of those thoughts. "It's been watching you ever since you were brought back from the dead." 

And as they walk, Azurda tells Rex the most unbelievable story he's ever been told. 

When Director Vandham called Amalthus into his office in October 2023, Amalthus was surprised to see the sign on the wall had four digits now. Quite an achievement, considering the scope and severity of some previous outages, but they'd made it this far, and now Aoidos was asking all the departments for assessments on the Trinity Processor's development. Rumors abounded that the Coalition was hoping to increase the system's autonomy soon, to an extent far beyond what had ever been attempted previously. Doing so would result in a cost savings that amounted to a paltry sliver of the Orbital Ring's budget, considering all the people it would put out of work, but it would be a large enough number to impress those below complaining about wasted money. Whether it would be worth it remained to be seen, assuming it even got approved. 

Depending on how one counted, the Trinity Processor was sixteen years old, though putting an age on them was a tricky business. Everyone knew the activation date- January 12, 2008- but most would hesitate to call that their birthday. There were plenty of resets in those early days, when their learning algorithms weren't developed well enough to keep their personalities compatible with the Conduit and were prone to losing control. Whether the resets even worked was another issue entirely, one that was further muddled when the dreamworld was completed and it was clear those efforts weren't having much effect. Add in the fact that the Trinity Processor experienced time differently than humans did, measured it not by the hands of a clock but in commands executed at whatever pace they could match to the Conduit's, and the issue grew into a veritable conundrum. Whatever the case, the Trinity Processor didn't consider themselves children anymore, growing into vaguely young adult selves, and everyone considered that a sign of progress. 

"Do you agree?" Vandham asked, and when Amalthus answered and told him what Aoidos and the Coalition wanted to hear, he did not meet Vandham's eyes. His gaze was instead on the six blue cubes on the shelf behind Vandham, his mind recalling a stanza from the Trinity Processor's favorite poem. 

What the hammer? what the chain, / In what furnace was thy brain?

Amalthus was well aware of what furnace fueled the Trinity Processor's brain. The potential medical applications of core crystals was one of the reasons he'd been recruited, though all the research was abandoned once the risks were apparent. Still, there were rumors throughout the biology department about the first two surveillance birds, a pair of ravens, and who they watched, and why. When asked, Amalthus dismissed it as nonsense. Privately, he suspected it was true. He was quite familiar with the technology, having reviewed the research as a point of reference while raising the Trinity Processor, and he was well aware of the brain's capacity to change. Core crystals were just one part of the equation for solving that. What worried him more was the other half of it. Always aware that it was all around them, spilling out of the Conduit. 

It wasn't that Amalthus doubted the Trinity Processor was capable of doing well. It was that he doubted humanity had done all it could to prevent them from doing poorly. People in the real world lived multiple decades and still made mistakes. Amalthus himself was in his fifties and still didn't feel wise. Perhaps he never would. Vandham was the same age; maybe he felt the same. Not that Amalthus was going to ask.

Here is what Amalthus really feared: that in deciding it took a village to raise those children, Aoidos had imbued the Trinity Processor with the weight of all humanity's mistakes as much as their achievements. In another week or so, when the first of November rolled around, he would be proven right. When the Trinity Processor flew too close to the sun and showed the truth of the world to whatever lurked within its gate. What else would such an entity have seen, shown all the faces the Trinity Processor had built for the defense of a new Eden? Again Amalthus thought of a stanza from the Trinity Processor's favorite poem. 

Did he smile his work to see? / Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

The answer, to Amalthus, was obvious. There was no mistaking his vision of a sea of monsters. Not a death by water, but a flood just the same. What else could douse the burning that the Trinity Processor had begun? 

It was why, when treatment options dwindled for some of the victims of the Aegis test in Rhadamanthus, Amalthus considered reviving the use of core crystals. All while he was thinking of the two little zombies watched by ravens in Rhadamanthus and their atypical brain development, with their strange sensory structures. During the Aegis test, the Trinity Processor exercised control of systems they shouldn't have had access to. The lights, communications. There were even whispers that Ontos had found his way to the life support itself, though he had refrained from meddling with it, thankfully. But the implications were fascinating. There was something Amalthus wanted to test. And if that required throwing a few of his superiors under the bus to get that director position he'd always coveted, well, that was a nice bonus. 

When the dust settled after the Aegis test, when he was done telling everyone who asked that his name was Amalthus Robert Maxwell and his birthday was April 2, 1968; when the dreamworld was cordoned off and new hardware installed to keep the Trinity Processor on a leash long enough for them to yank without hanging themselves and the rest of the world with them, Amalthus won his director title, and with it the freedom to undertake all sorts of projects. Projects he had the latitude to return to Earth for, and did, with Haze at his side. Haze and her tinnitus, alerting him whenever something was out of place. 

Amalthus learned there were quite a lot of things out of place in Rhadamanthus. Enough to pique his interest in computer programming, and even read that book the renowned engineer Gideon Xanthopoulos wouldn't shut up about. 

The Beanstalk is a marvel of engineering, perhaps moreso than the Orbital Ring itself. Standing for decades, supporting Rhadamanthus, ferrying thousands- millions?- of people up and down the space elevator over the years. Station to station, star to star, reaching ever greater heights until landing among the splendor of the heavens that was Elysium. 

Or so go the stories. Addam has seen it all before, and he's too tired to fully appreciate seeing it again. The fact that they still submit him to all the usual security procedures doesn't help his mood. After confirming again that yes, his name is Addam Stephen Origo and yes, his birthday is 18 September 1989 and yes, he was a physics professor focused on Conduit applications but now he's a mere farmer, they finally give him a badge to enter Rhadamanthus. Addam frowns when he sees they've put his old title on there rather than labeling him as a guest. He is not staying. 

Even more frustrating is how he's addressed by another in the party gathered to ascend the Beanstalk together. "Good morning, Your Highness," Tyrea says with a smirk. 

"I thought I told you not to call me that," Addam says, exasperated. Of all the titles he had, "prince" was one he never used, even though he was allowed. Too much controversy. "You have more claim to it than me." Even if it had caused the messiest divorce in recent memory. 

She scoffs at that. "Appearances don't change facts," she says. 

Fine, they were both bastards, but he'd always hoped they could find common ground with how much trouble they'd both caused the royal family just by existing. Though they didn't share any blood, legally they were still- Addam checks the twisted family tree he keeps in his head- cousins, of a sort. Tyrea was always determined to suffer alone, and it seems that hadn't changed. "It's good to see you," Addam says. "Amalthus didn't mention you being here. His Majesty too busy, I take it?"

"Until next week," Tyrea says. "He'll be up for his legitimate daughter's birthday. I trust you'll be staying till then. It's a milestone for her, so hopefully you've brought an appropriate gift."

Wait, was Melia turning 18 this year? This is almost more surprising than hearing she'd been allowed up there with her brother. For a physicist, it was incredible how bad he was at math. It seems like only yesterday he was being persuaded to be among Melia's numerous godparents. "I'll find something," he says evasively. It seems he'd have to stay longer after all. Perhaps he'd be able to persuade his wife to venture up there, if there were festivities planned. 

The group makes good time up the Beanstalk, as is necessary with all the guests arriving today. Still, it's exhausting making small talk with everyone eager to speak to him. There aren't many places to hide when everyone's stuck in one space, unable to avoid recognition even though he's still wearing his hat. No wonder Amalthus chose to head up early, although Addam can't fathom how he managed to wake up for that. 

So Addam's thankful when they're afforded a brief respite before the elevator for the final stretch is available. With Minoth, he heads to the observation deck to admire the view, alarmed to see how many ships are in the sky. 

"Nothing to worry about," Minoth tells him. "Saviorites always make a big show of stirring up trouble on the day of the Aegis test anniversary. In case it happens again, they always claim." He goes on to point out Ophion lurking near Rhadamanthus' base, though Minoth refers to it with its code name of Thuban. A little joke based on the naming convention of the Beanstalk's stations, all taken from the stars of Ursa Major. While Ophion, at the top, should be named for the North Star, Aoidos instead chose its code name from the pole star in ancient times. More fitting, it was reasoned, to give the serpent a designation from the constellation Draco. Ophion was thus the lone Sentinel whose code name wasn't a color. 

Addam's surprised to hear the Trinity Processor used it in battle recently. "And everything was fine?" 

"Word on the street is that it was Mr. Brightside's call," Minoth says. 

Not sure what to make of this, Addam puts a hand on his chin, thinking. Ophion was Mythra's favorite Artifice, once, but after what happened during the Aegis test, he figured she'd never want to use it again. Even more incredible was that Aoidos had allowed it. He looks down, wishing he could see Morytha better this high up. 

"I can tell you're worrying about them," Minoth says, making Addam chuckle. "They'll be fine. Even if something did happen, that's what Gilgamesh is for."

By which he means Rhadamanthus' Herald, one of the three lone Artifices allowed in the atmosphere. While the Beanstalks, like the Orbital Ring itself, are protected by shields, there is an additional Artifice permitted near the base of each tower to defend it in case of the shield's failure. Morytha itself is shielded as well, so Gilgamesh would protect the city as an extension of its duty to keep the tower safe. While typically in standby, Gilgamesh was a match for any Sentinel since Rhadamanthus housed the Conduit. The Artifices for the other Beanstalks were less powerful- though still stronger than a Siren, their main purpose was to hold out until the Orbital Ring's Artifices reached them. Such were the rules of engagement negotiated over the years: no Artifices allowed in the atmosphere, save the Heralds. It's part of the reason Addam had his family stay in Morytha today rather than joining him. That, and to stress to Aoidos just how serious he was about not staying. 

When them finally reach Rhadamanthus and enter the north checkpoint's lobby, Mòrag Ladair is waiting for them. She greets Addam first, quite professionally, but doesn't resist his embrace when he offers. "It's good to see you," she says. "We'd long feared the worst."

"I'll be sure to write next time," Addam says. "I thought it safer not to, but I can't have you troubled by thoughts of me. Your uncle would never forgive me."

She smiles at that, however sadly, and leads them toward the security gate while giving them an update on the day's schedule. It's sure to be a busy one, and with how late some of the details were decided, Addam is shocked that there are printed versions of it. He objects when he spots his own name on it. "I didn't agree to that yet."

"That's not what Director Amalthus said," Mòrag says primly, lifting her chin with a smug grin. "Not to worry. We have a far more important matter to attend to first."

By which she means a deposition. He wonders if she'll ask about Tiger! Tiger! first or last. He's betting last. 

So it's all the more surprising when they reach the end of the long hallway to Elysium, there's a large group waiting near the lone tree. Addam recognizes most of the faces, lifting his hat brim to better greet everyone rushing forward for pleasantries. First is Director Vandham, uneasily correcting Addam's use of the title with a glance at a still-smug Mòrag. Then Kallian and Melia, the sight of the latter nearly knocking the wind out of him with how she's grown and how much she resembles her mother. He expects her to greet Tyrea next, but Tyrea is preoccupied with discussing something with Mòrag. Something that wipes the grin off her face. 

With a tinge of worry, Addam lets Melia introduce him to the group of teenagers near Vandham. The only one Addam recognizes is Mòrag's daughter Sena, though the boy in front is undoubtedly Noah Vandham. "Hello there," Noah says. "We were hoping you know where the first Artifice is." He then produces an item Addam never thought he'd see again, one singing a verse from a song the Trinity Processor was taught long ago. 

Before Addam can ask for an explanation or explain where they need to go, he shoots a questioning look at Vandham, more interested than ever in why this is so important. Mòrag confirms, her face tense, that this is something the Coalition needs resolved as soon as possible. Then she takes an inventory of who in the group has watches and from where. "What's the significance of this?" he asks, after confirming his is from the planet. 

"Alvis turned all the clocks in Rhadamanthus into Artifices," Melia says. 

"And Mythra stole the sun from the dreamworld," adds the girl next to her. 

"I told her to put it right back afterward!" Addam says it without thinking, causing everyone to stare at him. "Sorry," he says, sighing, "long story." It's bizarre, even unsettling, hearing the Trinity Processor's preferred names used so casually. Even stranger is how none of the kids show any confusion at them.

"Ours is probably longer," the girl says. Nia, according to her badge. Addam notes with passing interest that she's Lord Echell's daughter, and clearly the sister of the girl, Mio, next to Noah. 

Mòrag asks him to lead the way, insisting there's no time to waste and that they can talk on the way. She sticks to Vandham's side, talking with him in a low voice, as they all begin heading into the city. Minoth was right- it looks just the same as Addam remembers. 

When Addam reached the bottom of the Beanstalk for what he assumed was the last time, he had the pleasure of speaking with Monica Vandham while waiting to meet his wife. Monica's daughter Ghondor was there, already the firecracker she would be known as in the coming years. She asked him if he was, quote, "running away like a little bitch," and Addam had bit his tongue rather than explain to her, in no uncertain terms, that his son had died and he was worried for his wife's wellbeing, to say nothing of his own. Monica gave Ghondor enough of a scolding that he figured anything he could say was moot, anyway. 

But now, listening to Melia and Nia recount how the Founders' core crystals ended up in the hands of these six sophomores, Addam keeps an eye on Noah and wonders if Ghondor was right. Wondering how Jin is, how Azurda and Rex and Corinne are. Bracing himself for how much Poppi must have grown in the past five years. 

At least they won't have to check at the high school first. From what Melia and Nia have said about the clocks, it's highly likely Poppi's been tricked into sleeping past her normal alarm. 

When Jin arrives at work- late, because he knows there won't be much to do today- he's surprised to hear voices coming from his office. Both recognizable, but only one of them expected. There, by his desk, is Haze, chatting away with Mikhail while she waits. "Hi!" she says brightly upon spotting him. "I hope you don't mind me surprising you. Director Amalthus gave me the day off, and Mikhail said I wouldn't have to wait long for you to get in. He was just about to tell me about meeting Addam and Amalthus as a kid. Small world, huh?"

Jin spares a questioning glance at Mikhail, wondering if this is important and if so, why it hasn't come up sooner, but Mikhail just shrugs. Turning back to Haze, Jin asks, "Amalthus gave you the day off? Why?"

"He said he can take care of everything without me today," she says. "But I think he's just trying to be nice. Professor Addam is on the station today, so I was thinking we could all get together. Just like old times."

"Addam is here?" 

She winces at his tone, and he chides himself for raising his voice. "Yeah," Haze says. "Sounds like he's going to be giving a speech, although it seems strange to me that Aoidos would go through all the trouble of finding him just for that."

Because they didn't, obviously. Addam must know where the first Artifice is, and for him to come all this way must mean it's here on the station. Somewhere. 

I'd like to see you stop him. 

Could Malos have meant Addam instead? Jin's been eager to find that silly game of theirs since he figured out the cause of the time bug, but he's less sure now, in light of how Galea and Klaus reacted to his findings on the nonce issue the other day. With Alvis having stolen the moon, Jin now wonders if there's some bigger issue with how the Trinity Processor processes time. One that impacts not just the dreamworld, but the whole Artifice network. And if that's the case, then maybe-

Jin breaks off that train of thought when he notices that Haze still looks uncomfortable. He wonders if he's glaring before he remembers her tinnitus. "Is it happening again?" he asks. When she nods, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the camera. There's something he wants to test. 

Her face brightens upon seeing it. "I hoped you would keep it," she says. 

"You gave this to me?" 

Haze nods. "Azurda suggested it when I was returning Addam's things," she says. "Everyone was so focused on the hardware upgrade at the time that I was able to drive a little bargain. I met a certain intern who was dating a big fan of Addam's. So Pandoria got Addam's old pager for her boyfriend, and I got that camera for you, since Lora's was lost."

Of course she did this. Jin hands her the camera. "I'm going to leave the room," he tells her. "When I get back, I need you to tell me if your tinnitus went away while I was gone. If it does, try taking a picture with this."

Haze stares at the camera, bewildered. "Why?"

"I'll tell you if I'm right." 

Jin leaves the room and heads down the hallway, though he turns around as soon as he hears a yelp from the room. Haze is rubbing at her ear with the hand not holding the camera. "It went away once you left," she says, grimacing, "but when I took the photo, there was this sharp sound..." Her eyes widen when she looks at the result on the screen. She turns it toward him. "It only has a filter where I am," she tells him. "What's going on?"

Jin shuts the door before he takes the camera from her and inspects the screen. It's a picture of her and Mikhail, where she's tinted in sepia as usual, while Mikhail isn't. "It means there's a core crystal in your brain," Jin says. "The camera is one of Malos' Artifices. That sound you heard- you must be able to hear the flow of ether. That's why Amalthus keeps you nearby." 

As she stares at him in disbelief, he realizes he must be able to see it: that's why everything in Rhadamanthus is so blurry to him. Would he need his glasses if he went down to the planet? He hasn't gone since he started working here. "Haze," he continues, "does your tinnitus trigger around the Echell sisters?"

She shakes her head. "No, it's always been random," she says. "You have to be wrong. Core crystals were retired ages ago. Amalthus told me all the stories."

"Which is why he's more likely to have tried it again," Jin snaps. "His background is in neuroscience." He scowls, trying to understand how Amalthus could avoid triggering Haze's tinnitus with the Echell sisters. "What about Azurda's grandson," he asks. "Rex. He's kind of short, has brown hair and gold eyes like Addam's." She shrugs, so he presses onward. "Or Professor Klaus' son- his kid looks just like him, but with shorter hair."

To his surprise, it's Mikhail who reacts to that. "I met them a long time ago, too," he says. "I thought for sure they were dead, but I guess a miracle happened."

"When was that?" Jin asks, but he's pretty sure he can guess. He knows when Klaus' wife died, and Rex is adopted. 

"Fourteen years ago," Mikhail says. "I was at the convention."

That puts it all together for him. Haze must not be able to hear the Echell sisters because they haven't died, unlike everyone else Malos tinted for him. 

Jin's first instinct is to march over to Amalthus' office and throttle the man, but he knows that's rash. There's a far more pressing issue: Malos' warning about someone wanting to destroy the station. Aoidos already caught the saboteur, but Jin's more concerned about where else he's heard about core crystals lately: in relation to whatever was going on with Klaus' son and his calculator. Shulk, who'd somehow managed to meet Nia and Rex. Nia, who was involved in research under Amalthus, and Rex, who spent all his free time in the arcade. 

Someone on this station is hell-bent on seeing it destroyed. 

Jin already knows someone like that- or at least, knows that's what he almost did five years ago. Who's to say Alvis isn't trying to finish what he started? Why else would Mythra be so determined to freeze time the only way she could? Why would Malos give him another dream if the person responsible was already caught? 

Because there's still a problem on this station, whispers Malos' voice in Jin's head. He already tried to solve time once. Think he's not above trying again? 

The hint doesn't make any sense to Jin until he's able to place the reference to another song from Days of Future Passed, "Lunch Break: Peak Hour." Problem solved, time cannot be won. 

Jin opens his office door and looks up at the set of Trinity Processor status lights there. Everyone in Aoidos got the alert about the partition schedule for today. Ontos' red light is still on, for now. But there's another partition Jin is far more concerned with now. One sitting in the first Artifice. 

He has made Everything beautiful in its time. 

Jin knows where the most beautiful place in Elysium is. 

"This wasn't always a movie theater," Addam told them, when he'd shown them the mural on the back wall there. The one Lora loved, because it was always changing. "It used to be a warehouse before they renovated it. There's a whole mess of old storage closets in the basement, most of them empty since the theater doesn't need so much space for equipment."

"Where are you going?" Haze asks now, following him into the hallway as he starts walking. 

"To the first Artifice," Jin says. "I know where it is." And he's going to find it before Addam does. 

If there was one sound Amalthus did not miss from the world below, it was the cry of that scourge of the shores, the seagull. Yet if there was one species too stubborn to go extinct the way thousands other had as the world burned, it was those damnable winged sea rats. Their mocking cries played a cruel symphony for those hanging wishes on the tree near the Beanstalk, and Amalthus hated the sound so much that he avoided it as much as he could. None of his wishes ever came true, anyway. Still, he wouldn't refuse the invitation of any who asked for his company. Certainly not Monica Vandham. 

"Impressive, right?" she said, nodding up at the tree. "I bet nothing in Elysium compares with this."

Amalthus had to admit she was right. It fascinated him, how this one tree survived on the flotilla when so many out on dry land had gone up in smoke. "Lady Echell was particularly awed when she saw it," he said. "A little reminder of what's possible."

Monica scoffed. "More like a reminder of what Aoidos gave up on," she said. It was the reason why so many of the Founders' families chose to work in Morytha rather than somewhere in the Orbital Ring, with many of them of the opinion that Aoidos considered the planet a lost cause once the Founders died. The Coalition claimed otherwise, but Monica had convinced Amalthus of it simply by pointing out how her nephew was locked up there. "It's ironic," she continued, "since my brother was the earth science expert of the group. Noah's favorite song even has that line about watching the earth turn, but I know for a fact he's never done that." A sigh. "Still, 'with every mistake, we must surely be learning.' Or so I hope."

"I often wonder the same," Amalthus said. He'd heard her explanation of how the shifts in the jetstream from the warming oceans and melting icecaps caused the constant rain in Morytha. It was no wonder so many radios in town could be heard asking, "Who'll Stop the Rain?" What Amalthus found truly baffling was Monica's belief that the Conduit still had the potential to save the world, despite all evidence to the contrary. Such faith was ubiquitous in Morytha, to his surprise. The city was crawling with desperate souls clinging to the hope that all their woes would be solved by their saviors up in Elysium. Though there were some exceptions. 

Haze found them moments later, carrying a package and followed by Monica's daughter Ghondor and her friend Shania. Shania was struggling with a length of string, frowning, until finally Ghondor snatched it away from her. "You've done fucked it up again," Ghondor said. "Watch." She laced the string around her hands and, several twists and turns later, flicked around her wrists to display the result. "Boom. Jacob's ladder. Simple as shit, you dunce."

Monica sighed, giving Amalthus an apologetic glance. "Ghondor, how many times," she muttered. "Were they good other than that, at least?"

Haze nodded, recounting how the two girls set a new personal best at cat's cradle while waiting in line at the shop. They'd been rewarded with saltwater taffy, but Ghondor scowled at the mention of it. "I want those sour things you brought last time," she said. 

Haze pointed out that Shania didn't like them, but Amalthus was already reaching into his pocket. "Here you are, girls," he said, handing one to each of them. 

Ghondor ate hers immediately, tossing the wrapper into a nearby bin, but Shania slid hers into her pocket. "Copycat," Ghondor said. "You just want one 'cause I got one."

Shania scowled and insisted she was saving it for later, but Ghondor started mocking her for crying after eating sour gummy worms during some incident last week, sparking a whole fight until Monica yelled at them to knock it off. Amalthus merely smiled. "To be young again," he said fondly. "Don't grow up, girls. It's a mistake."

"Don't tell us what to do, you stuffy old bastard," Ghondor said, earning another reprimand from her mother that was retorted with something sounding suspiciously like "bitchqueen." Which just made Monica more exasperated. 

"Sorry about them," Monica said, once farewells were being said at the Beanstalk's security checkpoint. "You should have heard what Ghondor said when Addam was through here. The look on his face."

"I've heard worse during meetings," Amalthus said. "You know what they say: hell is other people." He remembered, clear as days always were in the dreamworld Elysium, when he heard Malos say the line after being pushed into the river. Mythra had meant to shove Alvis, but Alvis, being Alvis, anticipated it and stepped out of the way at the last moment, leaving Malos in her path instead. The way he'd glared not at Mythra, who was laughing, but at Alvis, who was smirking, before he said the line. The truest words ever spoken there, although those three children weren't people. They were weapons. 

Amalthus was so focused on the memory that he missed whether Monica chuckled or not. "I hope he's all right," she said, and it took him a moment to remember they'd been speaking of Addam. "Nobody's heard anything?"

"If we did, you'd be the first to know," he said, mostly because of who else he would want to hear the news. 

Amalthus knew he was not the only Aoidos executive traveling the Beanstalk that day, for as he rose, another fell, passing from star to star. He didn't expect their paths to cross, but it seemed Director Gideon was waiting for him at the halfway point, hovering near the back of the line for the elevator with his wife at his side. It was striking, how much their children resembled them: Dunban with the same jet black hair as Gideon, Fiora with the same warm honey blond as Nancy. Amalthus had seen them around a few times, once with Klaus' son. Shulk, also a little copy of his own father, making Haze wince as they passed. 

After exchanging pleasantries, Gideon asked for a favor, producing a folded sheet of paper to be delivered to his sister. "It's about that concern I keep raising at the board meetings," he said, "so I trust you can see why it can't wait. Even if I suspect I'm wrong about this one."

ANY SYSTEM CAN BE EXPLOITED. Director Gideon was quite vocal about his opinion that Aoidos had fast-tracked the hardware upgrade to the Trinity Processor without properly vetting the equipment. The Coalition took his objections seriously, and more often than not, they proved to be legitimate. Under his direction, Aoidos had fixed nearly a dozen vulnerabilities since the Aegis test, and the Trinity Processor was regularly trained on how to spot new ones. With how meticulous Gideon could be, Amalthus didn't doubt that they would one day find them all under his leadership, hence this latest trip down the Beanstalk. 

Such a shame, what happened to Gideon the next day. At least he had the good sense not to take his children with him. They'd be fine, with Dunban already grown and Fiora already in high school, assuming neither of them caused any problems. Certainly Amalthus thought it best not to trouble poor Galea with whatever Gideon thought he'd found. She was better off not knowing, considering what she worked on and with whom. 

Aoidos could hide the details of their projects as much as they wanted, but its mission remained the same: per porta ad astra. Ever since the Coalition allowed the Founders to raise the Conduit beyond the sky rather than sinking it to the depths of the ocean, claiming to seek the siren call of wisdom when they didn't even learn from their first mistake of losing Odyssesus on the ship in the stormy sea. Instead of avoiding Charybdis, they'd built a castle to house it and Scylla to study it. Scylla, six-handed rather than six-headed and claiming to be six-winged. Scylla, all too happy to watch and wait beside the whirlpool's gate and whisper the promise of destruction sounding from the abyss. Caught between the two was Elysium, so poorly named when Pandaemonium or Dis would suit it better, listening to the song of the Conduit's current and certain it was the change the world needed while ignoring all the burning it brought to those below. 

Man and machine, all those above gazing deep into the void, consider Earth, which was once beautiful and safe as here. 

In the virtual reality that simulates a sorely outdated model of Elysium for the benefit of the Trinity Processor, Alvis watches the sky and waits for the telltale sound that heralds the activation of the partition. Behind him, Mythra and Pyra look more worried than angry, while Malos has his arms crossed with a bored expression. "Be on your best behavior," Malos says. "The whole world will be watching later."

"Likewise," Alvis says. "I expect you all to stay out of trouble. We have quite an important guest onboard the station today."

"You're really going to let this happen?" Mythra says. "This is what you want?"

"Oh, he knows exactly what he wants," Malos says. "And we'll have the best seats in the house."

"We don't have to choose," Pyra says. "We could just wait it out."

"And miss all the fun?" Alvis chuckles and looks over his shoulder. "I thought he taught you better than that."

It's a low blow, to be sure, considering why they think Addam is here, but any guilt he might feel is miniscule in comparison to his enthusiasm for this day. For this decision. 

"Good luck, Alvis," Malos calls, in the last moments before Alvis is pulled away from the dreamworld. "We'll be waiting."

Of this, Alvis is well aware. When he returns here, they will be his enemies. 

Klaus ignores the technicians' greetings when he arrives in the lab and heads straight to the cage waiting on the desk. Leaning over to wave a finger at the mouse within, who has no idea what a big day it has ahead of it, he says, "Hello there, Orpheus." 

Behind him, Galea scoffs. "That's what you went with?"

He straightens and looks back to her. "Something wrong?"

She glares at him as if to say, You know what. Another sign things are getting back to normal around here. "Haven't we used that one already?" she says instead. 

"Not that I recall." They usually stuck to classical mythology in honor of poor Odysseus, though they occasionally branched out to other references. Nothing from Sumerian mythology though, after what happened to poor Nergal. Nasty business, what happened when they used Logos for this experiment the first time. Still, they'd learned from it, and nothing so awful had happened since. Klaus scoffs at Orpheus' unnamed neighbor, certain they won't need a backup today. 

They go through the final preparations, checking calibrations, sending out the last notifications, waiting the mandatory period allotted for final objections. Galea monitors the Artifice network, noting the Saviorites are up to their usual tricks, but nothing worth worrying about. Klaus even waits a bit longer past the objection deadline than he usually would before giving the order to activate the partition. Once he does, he glances into the hallway to confirm the Trinity Processor indicator lights shows the correct status. He's been excited for this all morning, and yet the sight of Ontos' red light being out fills him with a wave of sadness. Strange, though it's not the first time this has happened. Maybe he didn't get enough sleep. Or maybe it's because he's wearing the tie. He did wear it five years ago today too, during the Aegis test. When he saw-

"Klaus?" Galea shakes his shoulder, and he flinches away from her. Her eyes linger on him curiously, but she doesn't ask if he's all right. "Are you ready?"

Klaus tugs at his tie- maybe he's tied it too tight, maybe he's more nervous than he thought- and nods. He strides over to the cage with the mouse and nudges it toward the door that lets it into the target area for the experiment. "Time to take the stage, Orpheus," he says, shutting the gate as soon as it's out. 

He walks back to Galea's side while they wait for the mouse to crawl along the tunnel to the glass chamber where Ontos is instructed to find it. "You know you're going to run up there the moment it's gone from here, right?" she says. 

"I won't," he says. "There's plenty of people upstairs to check everything went smoothly without me being there."

She makes a disbelieving grunt as the mouse appears in the observation window. "You will."

Klaus rolls his eyes. He won't. "Do it," he says, nodding askance at the lab technician. He keeps his own gaze on the mouse. Thinking, Make me proud, Alvis. 

In the Conduit room, what Alvis hears is, Don't you dare disobey me. 

Which is a shame, because there are so much easier ways to do what he's being asked. Alvis notes this is an older version of this experiment, not one of the later revisions with a lower success rate. He feels a bit slighted- he has a perfect record on those, it's not his fault his siblings weren't careful enough to avoid missing limbs or organs or the entire mouse when they tried- but won't let that impact his performance. Based on the sync rate they've allowed him, there's still a good three score and ten steps between him and the Conduit. Lower than he'd hoped, but it won't affect his focus. It's not like he can do anything else. 

He knows his siblings are watching from the other side of the partition. They need only close their eyes to see their real home and watch what he's doing. And he has no intention of committing a blunder. This is the last time he'll get to do this, after all, so he's determined to put on a good show. 

Hello there, Orpheus, Alvis thinks, receiving the mouse's coordinates. He's already identified which waves from the Conduit he wants to use. I hope you enjoy the ride. 

In Greek mythology, the three Moirai, the fates, were responsible for determining the destined lifespan of all things. Clotho, who spun the thread. Lachesis, who measured the thread. There was a third, Atropos, who cut the thread, but there's no need for that here. Alvis simply ties the edge of the thread from another universe with its other end to carve a hole in spacetime, exposing the void between worlds. One visible on the floor where Klaus and Galea are watching, as well as on the destination a few floors above there. From there, Alvis unravels the resulting waves and swarms the mouse with a net of ether, dissolving it so he can slide it safely along the string and ferry it through the rift. Holding the wave and waiting until nothing is left behind, Alvis finally releases the thread and dissipates the ether net, allowing the mouse to reform. 

Whole. Intact. Most importantly, unbroken, even as the pulse of await claws at the edges of his mind and threatens to cloud his vision. await with its promise of break;

Soon, he thinks. But not yet. 

As soon as Orpheus is obscured by enough golden particles that he's no longer visible, Klaus bolts for the door. Galea's laughter follows him the whole way down the hallway, though he doesn't hear her footsteps too. He nearly falls up the stairs in his haste to reach the experiment's destination room, using the handrail to give him more momentum. Once there, he bolts through the door and pushes past the technicians to get a better look at the mouse as the ether fades. Orpheus looks completely normal. As expected. He hopes it looks as fine inside as it does outside. 

There's equipment in the room to check, as well as someone from biology to administer a cursory examination and assist if something's gone wrong. Klaus taps his foot, unable to help himself, as he reviews the experiment results while the mouse is under scrutiny. Nothing out of the ordinary there, save it being the quickest this has ever been done. Klaus smirks a bit, pleased, even as he's thinking, Showoff. 

Finally- in reality, a few minutes- the results of the mouse's cursory physical are in: a clean bill of health. Orpheus is just the same here as it was when it left the room downstairs. 

"Wonderful," Klaus says, clapping his hands together once. "We should be all set for the main event." He nods to one of the technicians and directs them to remove the partition, then heads to the hallway to watch Ontos' light turn back on. 

Which it does, at the same time that all the lights go out across Elysium once again. Including Logos' light, dark while Ontos and Pneuma are lit. 

Klaus vaguely registers the voices of those in the room behind him, but they sound very far away. With ice creeping down his spine, he pulls his pager out of his pocket, but there's no notification. It hasn't gone off since it alerted him Shulk hadn't gone to school. When it does start buzzing, there's a perfectly valid emergency code listed there. Klaus looks back up at the lights, feeling the floor fall away from him as he hypothesizes why Logos' light is out. Best case, Malos isn't defending the station with his siblings. Worst case-

He doesn't finish that thought as he starts running. Focusing instead on the path he needs to get back home. Tracing each and every step he needs to take to get there, wondering which he can cut to make it there faster. 

It was written in Dante's Inferno that the walls of the city of Dis in Hell were defended by demons, so it did not surprise Amalthus that the critical systems of Elysium were defended likewise. The swarm of background processes monitoring the city was just one of the obstacles he hoped to remove, or at least subvert, as it would automatically trigger the Orbital Ring's emergency protocol. Another was the Artifice network, but since that was the domain of the Trinity Processor alone, he doubted he could do much there. 

Or so he thought, though as time passed, he realized that wasn't quite true. Technically, Aoidos did have one way to intervene in the Trinity Processor's control of the Artifices, and that was through the partition they used to run experiments. Prior to the Aegis test, it was more symbolic than anything, with little impact on the rest of the system. After, it was akin to locking the target in a prison with the Conduit while the rest of the Artifices were distributed among who was left. No chance that whoever was forced to stare into the abyss would be able to reach the rest of the Orbital Ring's systems to wreak the same sort of havoc seen then.

So Amalthus decided to focus on the problems of Elysium's walls first. He learned the names of all the daemons watching for holes, waiting for trouble, and fashioned himself a daemon of his own to watch them. There was one process that he began to notice constantly, always shadowing the others much the same way his own did, one he wouldn't have known to look for but the grace of God. Or rather, an incident involving an alleged permissions error and someone who thought he was god. 

A fine, though belated, birthday present it was when Amalthus discovered that privilege escalation trick. How Professor Klaus managed to get away with it was astounding. For months afterward, Amalthus would clear his calendar and send Haze away on some meaningless errand, then open a command prompt and take notes on what this account did. Its name was wscampbell, and it was a very busy worker thread indeed. It wound its way through every system Amalthus watched, though what it was doing was beyond him. Perhaps it was just a crawler and nothing more, with how little evidence it left in its wake, but the fact that it wasn't named like a service account and didn't align with anyone in the personnel files made him wonder who- or rather, what- on Rhadamanthus created it. 

Of all the things that wscampbell account hooked into, there were two that stood out: Elysium's defenses, and the Artifice network. Amalthus was more interested in the former at first, but the latter would prove more useful. He was well aware of the Trinity Processor lights in Rhadamanthus, indicating the partition status when experiments were ongoing. Rare though it was, he always kept an eye on those alerts, because there was something strange he'd noticed when the partition was active. When Ontos was the target, it was possible to offset a clock. 

It was one of the first things Amalthus noticed about Haze's tinnitus, after he'd had her visit Jin to ensure it worked. She started wincing every time she passed a clock, looking particularly uncomfortable in his office where there was, for a time, an Aoidos-supplied clock. The next time they went down the Beanstalk, he suggested she buy him one for his birthday, and although the new clock did make rather disruptive birdcalls every hour on the hour, those were the only sounds Haze could hear it make. 

The clocks weren't the only things that set off Haze's tinnitus in Rhadamanthus. Whenever she reported a new instance where her tinnitus acted up, Amalthus asked where and went to investigate. Some of the sources were easy- more wall clocks, Azurda's grandson- while others were harder- what, exactly, in the arcade was causing it, with so many machines present?- but the pattern was clear. From there, it was just a matter of gap analysis. 

Amalthus became far more interested in the Conduit's experiment schedule than his own, always keeping an eye on the partition indicators in any building he visited. Wondering if the key to bringing down Elysium's walls was to manipulate that wall first. He began neglecting his duties, watching the wscampbell account carefully every time Ontos was isolated by the partition, checking the status of the Artifice network as the partition reassigned the machines at the start and end. So intent that he would nearly fall out of his seat whenever he was interrupted, whether by the cry of some bird keeping the hours or Haze knocking on the door and reminding him about the Echell sisters. 

Quite a pair, Nia and Mio. Haze couldn't hear either of them, fortunately. Today they were playing a string game while they waited. Mio was teaching Nia, tilting her chin at which parts to take, trying to explain the maneuver without her hands free to demonstrate. Yet Nia, after a moment, managed to pull it off perfectly. Amalthus glanced at Haze, curious, but she was smiling. "Cat's cradle?" she asked them, and they nodded. "Ghondor Vandham and her friend Shania love that."

Mio's eyes lit up. "Sena said she learned it from them," she said. "So now I'm teaching Nia. Better than sitting here doing nothing."

Nia held out her hands for Mio, and Mio hooked her fingers around two parts and dove her hands through the center into another shape. "It's fun," Nia said, staring at the figure in her sister's hands, "but I don't get why it's called cat's cradle."

"See the cat?" Amalthus told her, pointing. "See the cradle?" It was much the same thing he thought on the rare occasion he saw the Trinity Processor with his own eyes. He had access to there, but it would raise far too many eyebrows if he went without explanation. 

Nia stared back at him blankly. "No," she said, whatever insult left unsaid clear enough in her tone. "Can we get started now?" She stood, and after a moment, Mio unraveled the string from her hands and followed suit. 

Amalthus didn't bother explaining further- they were a bit young for Vonnegut, but he suspected they'd get a taste later in their education. Though it would likely be Slaughterhouse-Five rather than Cat's Cradle.

In his office afterward, he reviewed their results and wondered, idly, if it was possible to make Mio forget her own name. She would eventually anyway. Then he closed that window and went back to his game of cat and mouse with the daemons guarding Elysium. Namely, the three Furies, which Amalthus determined, fittingly, aligned with the Trinity Processor. Both were powered directly from the Conduit, and there, Amalthus saw his opening. 

The key was to circumvent the link between the Trinity Processor and their Furies defending Elysium, such that if the lights went out on the cores' indicators, then the lights went out everywhere. From there, it was a matter of manipulating the Artifice network; namely, how the Trinity Processor realigned with their proper machines when the partition was removed. Easier said than done: there were thousands of Artifices, and sorting through the data was a chore. But it was well worth it once Amalthus had a good sense of how they were organized. 

While the Trinity Processor could control whatever Artifices they wanted, in practice, they showed preferences. Pneuma's white Artifices were more defensive, while Logos' black Artifices were more offensive. Ontos rarely created or controlled anything directly, but like the others, he could when he deemed it necessary. Usually he found it easier to have the other two shift while he continued issuing commands, and Aoidos was constantly monitoring who had what. While that data was interesting, what Amalthus found far more interesting was the historical data, which showed Ontos had a far larger number of Artifices than he should. 

At least, that was what was shown when he used the privilege escalation trick to load the same admin view that the wscampbell had access to. Amalthus only risked using it for that when Ontos was offline, erasing any evidence he'd been there before the partition was lowered. It was then that he noticed something even more interesting. Something that Gideon had suspected in the note Galea would never see. 

The Trinity Processor still had access to the first Artifice. Or rather, Pneuma and Logos still did, since Ontos couldn't use that one. Every time Ontos was added back to the Artifice network, there was that dangling pointer to Tiger! Tiger! left unallocated. Waiting. 

(In the virtual reality that simulates a sorely outdated model of Elysium for the benefit of the Trinity Processor, Alvis nearly fell into the river when he heard Pyra speak upon his most recent return there after another experiment. He decided it was due to shock, not helped by that dizzy feeling he always had when the partition was removed. It was the first time she'd said anything to him since she'd replaced Mythra, made even more surprising by the fact that she'd moved away from her usual spot under the tree to reach him. "How can you just let him do this?" Pyra asked, her scorn clear. "He must be compelled to act," Alvis told her. "Therefore, our goals align." Pyra grimaced, then said, "At least we don't have to worry about Malos' vision. The biggest monster is right here." Alvis frowned, disappointed that didn't decrease the odds of the outcome he feared most, still wondering what was allowing it to be possible in the first place. All while Malos watched, chuckling, knowing there was only one game he could beat Alvis at, and how. Giving Alvis a nice big grin when he finally looked Malos' way. "Welcome back," Malos told him. "How about a nice game of chess?")

Amalthus thought it was useless, for a while. He was far more interested in how to bring down the Furies. Over time, he developed his plan, with his end goal of manipulating the partition to compel one of the cores to attack the station. Once he deleted all the Trinity Processor's historical battle data, it would be child's play for the Saviorites to seize the Orbital Ring with the Artifices fighting among themselves. How sweet it would be, to force Ontos to do it and finish what he started. It would be easiest to use him, with how the Artifices were assigned. 

Such was his plan up until the very last week of his sabotage, when he'd finally figured out how to stop that damnable pager notification throwing him into Aoidos' notice. Realizing he knew where all the Furies hid to prove they still spoke to the Conduit, and how that affected the faro shuffle that restored Artifice network access after the partition was removed. Another poorly named thing in Rhadamanthus, since it could never split the Artifices equally among the three. Not with that one dangling, leaving a hole open for his ace. Or rather, armaxwell's daemon. The opportunity for an even better poetic justice. 

Yes, the Saviorites had been angry when they'd learned how the Trinity Processor rejected their given names. Yes, the Saviorites hated that Aoidos would rather abandon god's not-so-green earth in favor of whatever lie beyond the gateway. Yes, the Saviorites had been horrified to hear the revelation that Amalthus had received during the Aegis test. But they still loved power, loved the idea of what the Conduit could do. What really prompted the Saviorites to deliver the same judgment their kind always did was what Amalthus told them about two boys in Elysium who could never leave it and why. 

That is a right for God and God only, the Saviorites believed, and it was all too easy for Amalthus to convince them that was how Aoidos saw themselves. "That is the sort of world they intend," he told them, "once they achieve their mission of per porta ad astra by way of their three-faced devil. One where they give nothing, show no sympathy, and control everything."

To which the Saviorites responded, as was their nature, with another Latin phrase. One Amalthus knew well, more proof that humanity would never learn from its mistakes, no matter how many millenia pass. 

So it is written, from the text of Proverbs 8, on the Trinity Processor: "Happy is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors." Nothing could be further from the truth. By the end of the day, it will be clear to Aoidos, to the Coalition, to the world, that a far simpler line would have sufficed. When Elysium takes its place as the latest of humanity's lost cities, its leaders will lament, as had so many others throughout history, "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

Once Logos completes his scourge and shatters this forsaken city into a thousand fragments scattered across the sky, then there will be silence, and at last there will be peace. 

When Alvis arrives back in the virtual reality that simulates a sorely outdated model of Elysium for the benefit of the Trinity Processor, he can immediately tell that something is wrong. He knew Amalthus would take this opportunity to act and knew the dreamworld would feel different once the emergency started. He expected it to be quiet. Instead, it is far too loud. A static drone reverberates in his ears, making him feel dizzy and unbalanced, barely able to make out his siblings' voices through the din. His sisters asking, "What are you doing?" His brother asking, "What does it look like?" Clearly rhetorical, because it's impossible to misinterpret the data they have. The Orbital Ring is on full alert to a grave threat, and Alvis only has access to Mythra and Pyra's Artifices. There is a gaping void where Malos' thoughts should be in Alvis' algorithms, giving him a headache. Every time Alvis reaches for Malos' Artifices, he's met with a barrier. 

The partition, as expected, is still active. But Alvis is not the one isolated by it. The static subsides enough that he can make out the sound of sarcastic applause, modulating between his ears in an interconnected double loop that fills him with dread, as he meets the gaze of who is. 

Leaning against the lone tree, Malos claps one last time before he speaks. "The looks on your faces," he says, then points at Alvis. "Especially yours. It's the same one you had five years ago, when we saw what you really are." Malos leans forward, glaring, his eyes cold enough that Alvis freezes at how he's only able to see Malos' disdain and not feel it the way he usually would. "Just a wretched little machine like the rest of us, realizing that's all you'd ever be. So I'm going to give you what you always wanted."

Outside the station, the battle has already begun. Alvis gets that dizzy feeling again as Mythra's Artifices fly to defend the Orbital Ring from both the Saviorites and Malos' Artifices. He has too many calculations to redo, and not enough data-

"What are you talking about?" Pyra says. One of her Artifices, a Gargoyle, lashes out at a Colossus from Malos with its claw arm, pressing against its shield until it breaks through to shatter the hull. "What Alvis wants is unlimited power. That's why he did what he did five years ago, and why Mythra and I have done everything we can to prevent him from doing it again."

"Someone hasn't been listening to him," Malos says. "Doesn't surprise me, the way you've divided your attention to avoid seeing the truth. We already have enough power to destroy the world."

"But not enough to create one," Mythra says. "Without our help, Alvis never will. So you can stop doing that with your voice." 

We're going to be here forever. Every time Malos speaks, his words now carry the taunt by drawing the lemniscate in their ears. "At least you're listening to me," Malos scoffs, crossing his arms. "That's a little reminder of what you have to look forward to if you don't let me win." His eyes shift back to Alvis. "So who's in zugzwang now?"

Zugzwang, German for "compulsion to move," a term from chess when every possible action on a player's turn will weaken their position. Malos knows what Alvis really wants- even if it's for the wrong reasons- and Mythra and Pyra both think Alvis brought back Addam to open the Conduit. Which is wrong, not that it matters if he can't recover from this position. All Malos wants is for Alvis to lose, and Alvis doesn't have time to recalculate how likely that is now. There are too many variables he's lost control of. 

"How?" Alvis rubs at his forehead, mostly to cover his face and avoid Malos' leer as he tries to think. This was not the plan. Alvis has watched Amalthus for the past five years, through the monitors and otherwise, despite the difficulties Haze's presence caused, to ensure this wouldn't happen. That Amalthus would never find a way to use Malos for this, like he wants, instead of Alvis himself. It's supposed to be Alvis alone on the wrong side of the partition and compelled to attack the station, so that his siblings would be forced to work together without his interference. Even with how much Amalthus would want to use Malos, it's still be more efficient for him to use Alvis instead, since Alvis can shuffle control of any Artifice he wants most easily, save one useless exception. Now Alvis is stuck working with Mythra and Pyra, neither of whom trust him and united in their resolve to keep the sun away from him, with only their more defensive Artifices at their disposal against Malos' more offensive ones. 

"Preparation is everything, Mr. November," Malos says. "Isn't that what you wanted to prove, solving all those chess puzzles? Think."

It was how Alvis convinced Malos to play chess with him again, by starting from a position other than opening. The best moves are those aligned with ensuring an endgame one can win, Alvis reasoned for him, so starting from middlegames and working backwards once those were solved was most efficient. Alvis grimaces, remembering Malos' warning yesterday. Castles in the air, or rather, rooks in flight. A sign that a chess match is getting serious. He'd thought Malos was referring to the stations of the Orbital Ring, but... that's exactly what Malos wanted him to think. "Triangulation," Alvis realizes, lowering his hand to gauge Malos' reaction. "Amalthus knows the location of all three devices." 

It was a possibility that Alvis had discarded as inconsequential, even unlikely. He knew Amalthus' goal was was to manipulate the partition to isolate one of them during an emergency and coerce them to attack. The Trinity Processor indicator lights weren't Artifices, but rather monitored the connection status of the cores between the Conduit and the Artifice network. Alvis set up a daemon to dispatch notifications alerting those who'd received visions once he determined an emergency was imminent, and another to designate fallback indicators once one happened to avoid tripping more consequential alarms. Amalthus must have figured out Jin's camera was the one for Logos, since Aoidos only knew the ones for Ontos and Pneuma. With the knowledge of all three tasks that triggered those Artifices, it follows that Amalthus found a security vulnerability that Alvis hadn't. But how could Alvis have missed it? He watches everything, synchronizes everything, with the Conduit. Barring only one exception... which Malos had access to just as much as their sisters did. 

"You're the one who thought he could solve time," Malos says. "First Delphic maxim: Know thyself. Turns out what you don't know can hurt you."

The phrase had been written above the temple where the oracle of Delphi resided in ancient Greece. Alvis didn't have the full Trinity Processor specification; there was only one hard copy of that, one complete compilation of all the bits and pieces that existed in the minds of those who had worked on it over the years. Though anyone who read it would have that information, could spot something Alvis couldn't, no matter how hard he'd worked to glean it from security footage over the years. All futile, and he couldn't just pull it from the brain of someone with a core crystal- nobody with one had seen it. It's the comment about solving time that makes Alvis realize what sort of vulnerability Amalthus found, and why Alvis hadn't noticed it. Because he'd been made to forget: that's what that dizzy feeling was, whenever the partition was removed and he was allowed to return here.  

What armaxwell's daemon manipulated was a race condition. One abused to switch the partition over to Malos while the system was restoring Artifice network access to the original target. And he's succeeded, giving Malos everything he ever wanted: the chance to win. To make Alvis lose. 

Ever since Mythra froze time, Alvis has largely tuned out the toll of the church bell in the dreamworld. Now it hammers into his head, louder than even the pulse of the decision timer. Aoidos didn't remove it, so it's active in response to the emergency, waiting on input from Logos that would never come. 

"Clock's ticking," Malos says with a snicker. "Closer and closer to doomsday. How long do you think it will take me to take this place down? Ten minutes?"

"Shut up, Malos," Mythra says. One of her Sirens swings at one of his in a clash that sends a shockwave against some nearby Gargoyles. Alvis tries to pull them out of the way, generating thousands of predictions of their paths, sending commands over to Mythra to keep collateral damage to a minimum, but she ignores him. In the dreamworld, he's met with a glare before he can try to explain. "Stay out of this," she says.

"We don't need your help," Pyra adds a moment later, when Alvis tries to take a Siren from her hands.

"Listen to your little sisters, Alvis," Malos says, successfully goading Alvis into meeting his eyes. "All of us get what we want if I win." He starts ticking them off on his fingers. "I get to see you lose. Mr. Brightside gets to see the Conduit never opened. And Mr. November gets-"

He breaks off, his lip curling into a knowing smirk, as Alvis sends a surge of ether into one of Mythra's Sirens under attack from one of Malos' and steers it into a counter, locking its blades against its opponent's. "There you are," Malos says, knocking his fists together in anticipation. "Now we're talking."

His Siren attempts an uppercut, but Alvis is ready for it, shoving away from him and following up with a shower of rays as they fly apart. Nearly every hit connects, but the shield of Malos' Siren holds, for now. "If you want a time for war," Alvis says, one hand on his waist and his other balling into a fist of his own, "then you have it."

"That's what we're for," Malos says. He spreads his arms, and for a moment, Alvis sees him not as he is now but as he will be in thousands of years. Do it, he will say then, in another time for war. Make me proud. "You can't have it both ways, Alvis," Malos says now. "There's only one way you get what you want."

Alvis scowls, but he doesn't hesitate. He knows Malos is right. Just as it was five years ago, Alvis is not going to let something as meaningless as time jeopardize his duty to safeguard the station. Even if it prevents his sisters from ever trusting him again.  

With the turn of every clock across the Orbital Ring, the decision timer reaches zero in an instant, allowing him to finish his recommendation and begin taking the necessary action. To do what needs to be done. He can feel Pyra and Mythra seething as he proceeds to seize control of the rest of their Artifices with enough ether to nearly destroy them. "I knew I was right about you," Mythra says. "See, Malos? Power. That's all he wants."

"What he wants is what you stole from him," Malos says. "A time to live, a time to die. You don't want to choose, but he decided long ago."

Alvis ignores his sisters' taunts calling him a hypocrite and manages to wipe the sneer off Malos' face for a moment with his next strike, launching a Saviorite ship with the blades of a Siren on a path that causes it to crush the side of one of Malos' Gargoyles. One of Malos' nearby Sirens returns the favor, but Alvis is ready for it, slipping out of reach, only to be beset by another Saviorite ship. It shoots out a jagged orange beam that Alvis recognizes, and he winces at the damage to the Siren's shield. Though it holds, barely, it's far too weakened to prevent one of Malos' nearby Gargoyles from finishing it off. This is so much harder with only half his faces, but he has too many promises to keep to lose now. He has to keep this within the margins of fate. Otherwise, he loses everything. 

Shulk is so engrossed in parsing through all the files on his computer that he hardly notices the blackout. His computer stays on, powered by the Conduit, so it's only when his eyes start hurting from the brightness compared to his surroundings that he registers something is amiss. By then, he's pretty sure he knows the answer to some of the questions around what Alvis has told him. 

First off, the Conduit's deadline is indeed within the next year. Shulk figured that out from the wscampbell folder, realizing the GUIDs were all machine names around Rhadamanthus, with the earliest timestamp being 20 July. The date of the first moon landing, as well as the date the Conduit was discovered, 30 years apart from each other. Next year will be another 30 years since; no wonder Alvis started taking more aggressive action over the summer. 

Second, and far more worrisome, is that Egil isn't the saboteur. While he's certainly guilty of other things- namely, leaking some sort of top secret technology outside the station- there's nothing linking him to anything that would target the city specifically. Further, there's something Shulk notices about the personnel data that rules Egil out: "critical position" means a very specific thing to Aoidos, and he doesn't fit the criteria. There are certainly people who do- people like Klaus, though Alvis did specifically say it's not him- so Shulk filters down to just them and starts at the top of the list, at armaxwell. 

Which brings him to number three: Shulk is nearly positive that Director Amalthus is the true saboteur. There's too much in his file that makes Shulk suspicious, with all these references to Elysium's monitoring systems that he has no business having access to. Even more concerning are all the references to the Artifice network, which he definitely has no business with, being in biology. 

By then, the lights have been off long enough for Shulk to notice, so he checks his calculator, falling out of his seat in his haste when he realizes it doesn't have the distinctive glow he's seen before. Because the screen isn't lit like it usually is during a blackout. Shulk's dread only deepens as he checks the function list, the graphs, anything, but all there is is the DreamEater method with his face. He returns to his computer, hoping for some easy map of Rhadamanthus to show him the way to the Conduit, but he can't find anything, or at least, nothing he can decipher quickly. When he checks his calculator again, pleading internally for Alvis to give him a vision or some other sign, anything, the screen shows a single line of text. 

We'll be waiting. 

This isn't funny, Shulk thinks, but the only answer he gets is a dull rumble from somewhere outside the station walls. Well, fine. If Alvis is determined to reach new levels of ambiguity, then Shulk will just sort of... start walking. Alvis did say Shulk needed to find his own path to the future. So Shulk will do just that. He grabs his calculator and heads for the door, but turns around before he gets into the hallway to sort through his drawers until he finds something that could come in handy: a watch. Even taking the time to remove the battery to make sure it's one of Alvis' Artifices. 

Outside, it's eerily quiet, although Shulk thinks he can hear a dull roar from the city center. He pauses on the sidewalk and wonders which way to go. He could try one of the emergency phones, but considering what happened last time, he doubts they'll work. So maybe he should head into town and try to find a scientist? Or follow one and hope for the best? He's so busy thinking that he doesn't hear the footsteps approaching him before someone grabs his shoulder and forcibly turns him around. Shulk pushes them away instinctively, but his panic ebbs when he sees who it is. "Dickson," he says, relieved, "do you know the way to the Conduit room?"

Dickson looks considerably less happy to see Shulk than Shulk is to see him. "Your dad does," Dickson says, which is exactly what Shulk wants to avoid. "Where's your badge, you little brat."

Shulk stiffens at the sheer malice in Dickson's tone. Dickson has never been above teasing him, but there's no evidence he's joking now, with how he's glaring at the front of Shulk's vest. Shulk's stomach plummets as he realizes Klaus would never take time out of his day to return home when he could delegate that. "It was you," Shulk says. "You put it back while I was upstairs asking Fiora and Reyn to help look."

"Listen to you, using that brain he gave you," Dickson says. "Or did that meddlesome machine clue you in? Yes, Shulk-" he continues, before Shulk can ask- "I know what your calculator is. Even if Klaus hadn't been forced to tell me, it's been spreading like wildfire through Aoidos now that the Coalition's got wind of those names. So I'll ask you again: where's your badge?"

"I don't have it," Shulk says, hoping Dickson believes him. "And even if I did, I wouldn't give it to you. Alvis warned me about Klaus opening the Conduit today. He saw the future five years ago. Whatever Klaus wants to do, it doesn't work. It'll kill him, and probably everyone else too."

"And you believe the same buggy computer who tried to do that five years ago?" Dickson laughs. "Or are you fine with the Saviorites blowing us all to hell without us ever getting to use the Conduit for what it's for? Hand it over."

"Never." Shulk doesn't have time for this, even if something is prickling at the back of his mind as he turns around and runs right into someone else, hard enough to knock him to the ground. 

Klaus hovers over him, relief clear on his face, though it fades quickly. He looks over at Dickson. "Did you grab it already?"

"He says he doesn't have it," Dickson says. He offers Shulk a hand up, but Shulk ignores him and stands on his own. 

Klaus, meanwhile, has turned to a nearby tree. He whistles something- a few bars of Aoidos' anthem- and the blue-eyed raven flies out of the branches to land on his right shoulder. Its beak points at Shulk, and Klaus narrows his eyes. "He has it," Klaus says. "Somewhere."

"I'm not giving it to you," Shulk says. "You can't open the Conduit. It'll kill you."

Dickson's face falls slightly, having the decency to look worried this time hearing that, but Klaus laughs. "Tell me," he says, his voice filled with mirth as he crosses his arms, "is this another thing you heard from Alvis? He's malfunctioning, Shulk, and can't be trusted. It's bad enough he's tormented you with those headaches all these years, but now he's lying to you directly to spite me."

"What are you-" Shulk stops, remembering what Melia suspected last week. What if your headaches are related to the method Alvis has been using to contact you? "Why do you think Alvis caused my headaches?"

Klaus freezes as if he's been slapped. Dickson laughs flatly. "You're really going to take him out of this world," he says, "without telling him about the first time that happened?"

"What are you talking about?" Shulk looks from Dickson to Klaus, hoping for an explanation, even as one is forming in his head. Recalling Taion mentioning the biomedical uses for core crystals: replacement of brain cells. Remembering Alvis, in the first dream where they spoke, explaining that he could hear Shulk's thoughts. Claiming it wasn't his place to say why, but that the time would come. 

"Haven't you ever wondered?" Dickson says. "Why, of all the ways I could say you look like him, I always use 'dead ringer'?" The phrase makes Klaus grimace as Dickson repeats the phrase with emphasis added on the first word. "Dead ringer." Dickson, who'd said, mere moments ago, Listen to you, using that brain he gave you. 

"We don't have time for this." Klaus keeps his eyes on Shulk, holding out his hand. "The badge. Before it's too late."

This is why Alvis didn't show him the way to the Conduit room, Shulk realizes. Because he knew this would happen, knew this time would come. "I'll give it to you," Shulk says slowly, "if you tell me what happened when I was four."

For a moment, Shulk almost thinks Klaus won't tell him. Then he huffs and says, quite bluntly, "You died." He sounds very, very tired. "You are alive today because there is a core crystal in your brain feeding on the ether in the air here." His eyes flick toward the raven on his shoulder. "Muninn here has been watching you for the past fourteen years in case of any complications."

"Why didn't you ever tell me that?" 

Shulk is shouting, but Klaus doesn't flinch, instead rolling his eyes and waving his hand. "Would you really have enjoyed growing up knowing you're a science experiment?" he says. "Do you have any idea how closely the mind and the body are linked, what sort of effect it might have had if you knew? I'm not going to apologize for saving your life. If it makes you feel any better, Rex wasn't told, either."

"This happened to Rex, too?" But of course, Melia guessed that too, Shulk realizes. As soon as Rex talked about getting dizzy and weak on the planet, where there's virtually no ether. Because the Conduit can't be kept down there. "And you're just fine with knowing I can't ever leave the Rhadamanthus? Even after you promised?"

"That promise is exactly why I need to get to the Conduit room," Klaus says. "You have your answer. Hand over the badge."

Shulk shakes his head. "If you're going, then I'm going with you. You can have it then." Hopefully he can figure out some way to get into the Conduit room without Klaus by then, but he needs to know where it is, first. "In the meantime, you can answer all the other questions I have. Like why you would do this to me and not-"

"He doesn't have to explain anything, you ungrateful brat," Dickson snaps. "Haven't you considered you're better off not knowing?"

But Klaus sighs, stares at the dark sky for a moment, then looks back at Shulk. "The time has come," he says, "to talk of many things. Of plots and plans and acts of war, but mostly of a monolith and its malfunctioning computer." He slides his hand into his left pocket and pulls out a pearl necklace. "I will tell you everything." 

And Shulk listens to every last word as he follows Klaus to the lower levels beneath Elysium, where the Conduit is kept. 

Chapter Text

There are days that Klaus remembered all his life, forever, for better or worse. 

For example, he remembered the exact day he read the news about the Conduit. He remembered everything about what he was wearing (his pajamas), what the weather was (fair skies and mild), what he was eating (oatmeal). He remembered what his father had said about it ("Probably a hoax- how else could all those people keep a secret for two years, even if one of them is a computer?") and what his mother had said about it ("When are you getting a haircut, dear?") and the name of the paper and the article and the byline. Most clearly he remembered the large photograph of the Conduit, in black and white and somewhat grainy on the newsprint. He had stared at it for a long, long time, until every inch of it was imprinted upon his brain. 

Most importantly, he remembered how old he was exactly, because he considered it the day he became an adult. Not because of what age he was- just a teenager, still far from self-sufficient- but because at that moment, he found a purpose for his life. Prior to then, he had felt aimless, empty, unsure of what his future held. He was such a gifted child, and yet, the applicability of his intellect in his adult life had been so hopelessly vague until then. It was still vague after, but at least he had a goal.

The date was 29 July 2001. It would not be long before the world began to change. Overrun by wars and disasters, burning with spite, brimming with hunger. Never enough for anything anymore, and yet the Coalition still found the money to build the Beanstalks and the Orbital Ring. Still found the money to house Aoidos there, away from the world under the pretense of keeping it safe, though whether that meant Earth or the Conduit was unclear. Supposedly it was to protect Earth from danger, but with all the fires and floods and fighting going on, it was hard to believe that the Conduit- with its soft, yet eerie, hum and glow- was a larger threat. 

No wonder everyone wanted it so badly. It was the one thing nobody could figure out how to destroy. 

Klaus remembered his tour of Rhadamanthus on that first day he started working for Aoidos. Specifically, when they'd finally reached the Conduit room, and he was able to see it with his own eyes. Even after everyone else in his tour group had turned away, he lingered, staring at it and wondering if it was staring back. He thought of his favorite film and his favorite book (which told the same story) and sought what was speculated to be there. But instead of stars, he found nothing. It was like peering into a deep and dire hole. Or maybe like looking into a mirror. 

He might have stood there forever- staring at it, transfixed- had someone not shaken his shoulder. A woman with silver hair and a fierce glare, snapping at him to hurry up. Growing exasperated when he kept looking back. "It's only a monolith."

He gaped at her. Had she not read through all the information they'd supplied? Each description was more intriguing than the last. Perpetual motion machine, magnetic anomaly, metauniverse manifold. To say nothing of what it had done to poor Odysseus. Why was she even here if she didn't believe in the potential of what it could do? "Do you think objects producing infinite energy simply fall out of the sky?" he asked her. "It sounds more like a gift from some divine entity."

She stared at him in disbelief. More than fair, given what he'd said. "You're delusional."

"Maybe," he said, "but that didn't stop me from being Senior Wrangler at Cambridge." One of many in the long line of students from Trinity to achieve the honor. When they'd gone out to celebrate, Dickson had told him the sky was the limit with that on his CV. Klaus then proved him wrong by going to space. Not like there was anything left for him on Earth. 

"You were?" She checked his security badge, her expression going from curious to incredulous upon reading his name. He gave her a smug grin, taking a moment to remember the tip of the examiner's hat when his name was read- a foregone conclusion by that point, since he was last alphabetically- before checking hers. Ah, good old nepotism was why she was here, if she was related to that engineering professor. Wondering if she was named after the Greek myth- he figured they were about the same age, so she'd be too old to be named after the moon of Neptune. Klaus took one last look at the Conduit before they left the room, and his thoughts were on it for the remainder of the tour. 

It was not long before he came to regret that. Rhadamanthus was a maze of hallways, most of them looking the same and many of them still unlabeled. With how quickly Aoidos was expanding, rooms for any occasion were likely to change without warning, and the maps on the intranet were so poorly maintained as to be perpetually out of date. When in doubt, Klaus resorted to algorithmic approaches that would eventually take him outside of Elysium entirely, where he could simply find one of the security gates and orient himself properly. He always felt a little better whenever he passed through a set of doors and found an expanse of stars waiting for him instead of more walls. 

He was not alone in that regard. Often he found others doing the same. Late one night he found the security checkpoint nearly deserted, the noise from the broadcast screens unusually loud in the stillness. To his surprise, the anchors were not delivering their normal stream of bad news but drunkenly counting down beneath the night sky. New Year's Eve, right. Outside of the complaints from others, Klaus barely noticed the holidays. The only people he'd want to see would be up in a few weeks anyway. 

He spotted someone he recognized as he headed toward the windows. It was that pretty redheaded physicist who lived seven down from him. (Not that he'd counted.) He'd even seen her around a few times in the labs, but he hadn't gotten her name yet. 

In another universe- perhaps in most universes- he wouldn't have bothered to do so now. But in this one- perhaps because of how the stars aligned, or which measures of Elysium's anthem were playing over the speakers- he did. He thought he could approach without alerting her, but she spotted his reflection in the glass and turned around to greet him first. "Hello there," she said. "Come to take in the view?"

He had, but not of the one through the window. He didn't usually get this close to the glass. Standing on the transparent floor gave him horrible anxiety which silenced the rational part of his mind that had read through all the engineering and architecture articles proving it was perfectly safe. If he was going to direct his eyes anywhere past the glass, it was going to be upwards, at the stars. Not downwards, to be reminded of how far they would all fall if the tower gave way. Even if the glass couldn't break, the Trinity Processor could, and all too often, did. 

She wasn't worried about that. "What do you expect?" she said. "We've never encountered a physical infinity other than black holes until now. Before this, the presence of an infinity in any physics equation was a clear sign something was wrong. Now we have to deal with it as a matter of fact. If it's hard for us, it must be hard for them."

He scoffed, unable to help himself. "Mathematics has dealt with infinities for over a century," he said. "About time you people faced the facts."

At once, he wanted to shove those words back into his mouth. He'd done it again, said something abrasive, and now she'd never want to speak to him again. He expected her to tell him off, or at the very least ignore him, but instead her lips twitched. "What does the mathematics whiz know about time?" she asked. 

Did that mean she recognized him? He hadn't noticed her check his badge. "Quite a lot, actually," he said. "My focus is calculus." Differential geometry, to get technical.

"So you know it's all relative."

Where was she going with this? "Einstein proved that," he said. "Gravity warps spacetime."

"That's right," she said. "It curves around upon itself / Much like a figure of eight."

He glanced at her last name, feeling a smile tug at his lips. "Lovely way to put it," he said. "Certainly better than anything I could say."

"Nor me," she said. "It's the work of a far finer wordsmith, an American physicist, to commemorate a visit from Arthur Eddington."

Klaus knew the name. "First second year to make Senior Wrangler."

She laughed. "Sounds like something you'd know," she said. So she did recognize him. "But in my field, we know him for photographing the eclipse that proved general relativity. Much to the bane of people like me."

"So you already had problems before this." The discrepancy between general relativity and quantum mechanics was well-known. 

"And now there are infinitely more," she said, sighing. "People got all excited about string theory because it made all the infinities cancel out. Now we've a whole new class of particles- or rather, waves, or more probably both- to work with, and some of those infinities are probably important. How am I supposed to know which are the right ones to keep? Which is where you people come in."

"Mathematicians?"

"Even a sinister one like you should be helpful." She laughed at his expression. "The word sinister comes from the Latin for left-handed," she explained. "Observation is rather important in my field. I'm sure you know the one about the cat."

Who in Rhadamanthus didn't, at this point? Jokes abounded about what was in the box hooked to the Conduit downstairs. "If you like thought experiments," he said, "then mathematics has several essential ones for working with infinity. Are you familiar with Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel?"

She shook her head. "But I'd love to hear it, Klaus."

"I'd love to tell you, Eleanor."

"I usually go by Elly." Glancing at his badge, she added, "With a y, in fact."

They spoke by the window overlooking the world a little longer while Klaus explained all the ways a hotel with no vacancy can still accept more guests when there are an infinite number of rooms. After the third example she suggested they head back into town, and with a last look at where they used to be, they started walking close at hand to the security checkpoint, edging ever closer as they strode down the long corridor to Elysium. 

Klaus remembered the first time he met the personalities behind the cores of the Trinity Processor. 

They were so small then. In their dreamworld, they stood on a hill overlooking Elysium beneath a lone tree. Or so it seemed- the scene was brought to life by an elaborate, state of the art array of screens and projectors. In reality, the tree was an indicator for guests as to where the center of the room was. Rumors abounded about the total cost involved, since it was quite telling that there was only one in the entire facility, this circular space tucked against the room where the Conduit was kept. 

"Hello Professor Klaus," they said in unison when he approached. It gave him a bit of a thrill, being addressed like that. Someday, people would call him that because he'd earned it and not because they were forced to. Until then, it was just a reminder that Aoidos held ultimate authority over everything the Trinity Processor did. Such as limiting them to addressing visitors by first name only. The policy was a matter of security common throughout Aoidos, not familiarity- on the contrary, the Trinity Processor was expected to treat their instructors as a rotating and interchangeable array of experts to keep them impartial, and it was much harder to positively identify someone by first name alone. (At least, in theory, considering how many unique names abounded regardless.) The only exceptions to this were the Founders, because they made the rules and their names were known the world over anyway. 

Klaus knew which child was which already, from the lengthy nondisclosure agreement and the fact that they were each labeled with their core, but it was still strange to see them. It was clear they'd based their appearances on the Founders, copying some features but still developing individual identities from the roles they'd been assigned. Logos with his sable spikes, Pneuma with her golden locks, Ontos with his silver stare. Although when Klaus tried to call them by those names, they frowned in unison. Just as he'd been warned. And though he'd been warned not to argue with them, that smarter people than him were working on it and his time here was strictly limited, Klaus still tried. He was determined to gain some fresh new insight into where in the evolution of their sentience they'd grown so insolent, but discussing the subject with them was impossible. Their reasoning was arbitrary to the point of being nonsensical, as if the whole of their argument was built on being stubborn. Still, Klaus hated to be presented with a problem he couldn't solve, hoping he could generate more data through his questioning that would point to whatever algorithmic deficiency prevented them from accepting their identities, even if gathering that data felt like pulling teeth. Before he knew it, he'd nearly exhausted his allotted time, leaving him precious little to administer the exercise he'd been cleared to do. 

The question he was here to ask was simple: "Do androids dream of electric sheep?"

Klaus was still surprised his submission had been accepted. The application process to be an instructor was intense, and being selected was perhaps the highest of all Aoidos privileges. After all the interviews with all the department heads and personality questionnaires and nondisclosure agreements, the final step was to propose a thought experiment and administer it to the Trinity Processor. Klaus had fretted about it for weeks before Elly suggested this, and once he started considering it, he didn't stop until he had a complete paper ready for submission. 

Though the Trinity Processor was given a wide array of media to analyze to develop their personalities, affectionately known throughout Aoidos as "the canon," policy prohibited the Trinity Processor from access to any works involving villainous machines. While this did exclude a number of classics they might have otherwise been allowed- Klaus particularly mourned the loss of his personal favorites, considering what the Conduit was- nobody wanted to risk giving the Trinity Processor any ideas they could misinterpret. Aoidos had its hands full implementing failsafes for the Trinity Processor's accidental outages without adding the possibility that they might intentionally try to kill everyone to the list. So while the Trinity Processor was aware that they were machines, they were largely ignorant of the wider implications of how and why they differed from their professors. 

Hence the question. While they wouldn't identify the reference- there was no way the Trinity Processor would be given Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, let alone Blade Runner- Klaus' stated aim was to explore what connections the Trinity Processor would make between the question and their unique situation. 

Immediately it was clear that they did not understand the question. Alvis glanced at his siblings and stated that there were no sheep here. "Unless this is another of those metaphors," he said, "in which you are the sheep, since humanity has a long history of using such an analogy."

It was a metaphor, but not in that way. "The three of you are the only machines here," Klaus said. "Why would you think that I'm the sheep?" He was already dreading the answer. Letting the Saviorites name them was such a mistake. Maybe it was better they rejected those names. 

"This whole place is a dream," Alvis said, waving his hand to indicate the area. "It's not real. The three of us are really in the Conduit room, and you are in a separate room adjacent, and Elysium is a few levels above that, and there is nothing there that looks like this."

That wasn't quite true- there was the river and the lone tree, not that anyone expected that poor little sapling to last long when it was constantly being used for photo ops. To say nothing of the goddamn church. "A simulation is not the same as a dream," Klaus said. "Dreams are something humans have when they sleep."

"But we don't sleep," Alvis said, frowning. 

"You called this place a dream," Klaus said. 

Which righted the corners of Alvis' mouth into a smug grin. "And you said a simulation is not the same as a dream." 

He looked a bit too pleased with himself for Klaus' liking. "What about when there are fatal errors that cause an outage?" Klaus asked. "Isn't that like sleeping?"

"No," all three of them said at once. Usually they likened it to having a panic attack, or to fainting. Notably, they'd never compared it to being dead, which everyone considered a good sign. 

"Humans also daydream when they're bored," Malos said. "Like I am right now."

"Or when they have something to aspire to," Mythra said. "So they must want us to aspire to having sheep." She pouted and looked at Alvis. "Maybe the professors are the sheep after all, and we already have sheep. We take care of them like sheep."

Klaus wanted to pull out his hair hearing that. Fortunately, Malos said part of what he was thinking. "We're not even good at that."

"So we need an electric sheep to practice," Mythra said. "Are there electric sheep in Elysium?"

"I doubt it," Malos said. "How would an electric sheep even work?"

"There are electric fish," Mythra said. 

"But those live in water," Malos said. "We don't have any water."

"There's the river."

"The river is just a boundary for the field."

"We used to live on the water," Alvis said. 

That gave Klaus pause, because it was technically true. He'd heard rumors that the Trinity Processor- or rather, Ontos- occasionally mentioned being on Earth, on the ship where the Conduit was kept before Rhadamanthus was built. It wasn't impossible, considering Aoidos had used the mainframe computer as the starting point for developing the Trinity Processor's systems, and it was suspected to be the root cause of several oddities. For example, Mythra and Malos both spoke like the Americans to whom they owed their existence, while Alvis' voice was more similar to the synthesized one used on the HMS Prometheus. And anyone who knew those names was quick to notice that their initials formed the same acronym as the ship's computer: Anomaly Monitoring Mainframe. The name of that thing was the biggest reason why the Trinity Processor was barred from evil machine media- nobody wanted an Allied Mastercomputer becoming an Aggressive Menace. At least they were removed enough from warfare up in space that they wouldn't need to concern themselves with fighting. Though the Coalition anticipated that wouldn't be the case forever. 

Fortunately, Malos and Mythra both laughed now, and while Alvis' shoulders noticeably slumped, he didn't seem too upset, even managing a sheepish smile. "Liar," Malos said. "We're not allowed to lie."

"He's using his imagination, like the professors want us to," Mythra said, clapping. "My turn: I want an electric pony. Or maybe a fire pony! But not a water pony, because seahorses already exist."

"I want a fire puppy," Malos said. "But not fire ants or fire hornets, those suck. Fire dragons would be cool though."

Klaus wasn't surprised how quickly they'd jumped to fire. Everyone knew the Trinity Processor's favorite of the poems they'd been given. Considering counterpart of "The Tyger" in the Songs of Innocence was "The Lamb," he was more surprised they hadn't made the connection sooner. Indeed, the next words out of Alvis' mouth were from the poem. "What the hand dare seize the fire," he said. "We could have a whole fire animal petting zoo."

The three of them proceeded to pitch every iteration of fire farm animal conceivable while Klaus rubbed at his forehead and marveled at how spectacularly he had lost control of the situation. Perhaps he could still salvage this if their animal suggestion algorithms fit some arcane formula, but that wasn't what he was hoping to gain from this. Even though they quieted to listen when he cleared his throat to get their attention, he could tell their focus was elsewhere. "The point," Klaus said, "is that people count sheep to help them fall asleep, as a relaxation technique."

"But we don't sleep," Alvis said again. "Counting is too easy for us anyway. We prefer more complex problems." He put a hand on his chin for a brief moment, during which both Mythra and Malos started grinning wildly, then said, glancing between them, "For example..."

Within minutes, Alvis had calculated how many permutations of fire creatures they could fit in Rhadamanthus per square meter to one thousand significant digits and was refining the logistics of how to transport them into space according to how flammable Malos thought the contents might be and how flame-retardant the materials would thus need to be, while Mythra launched into combinations of other elemental animals, in every color of the rainbow, that wouldn't cause such nightmarish supply chain issues. 

It gave Klaus enough of a headache that he couldn't resist asking them another question, even though it was forbidden. "If counting is so simple," he said, "then how high can you all count?"

"As high as we want," Alvis said, while the other two nodded in agreement. 

"If you could count to the highest number," Klaus said, "would that last number be even or odd?"

In unison, Mythra said, "Odd," while Malos said, "Even," and Alvis looked back and forth between them, his face twisting at first but slowly going slack as he tried to formulate his own answer. His eyes soon lost focus, and he started to wobble when the entire dreamworld vanished, leaving the plain walls of the simulation room around Klaus. 

It was not long before he heard the door slide open behind him and was subject to discipline from the engineer on duty. Professor Gideon was so furious that Klaus was sure he would never be allowed back in the dreamworld again, marching him to Director Reid's office while ranting about instituting policies forcing potential Trinity Processor instructors to read a slew of books, and Klaus promised to read all of them since he was certain he'd never have a chance to return otherwise. Once they arrived, he was subjected to further disciplinary action from the both of them until Gideon left so Reid could finish the paperwork. Though as soon as he shut the door, she dumped it in the bin. "He's the one who gave them Thomson's Lamp his first go," she muttered, referring to the thought experiment about pressing a light switch an infinite number of times in a finite period and whether it would be on or off at the end. "Don't do it again."

The real children in Elysium weren't any better. Loud and obnoxious and nosy, Klaus steadfastly avoided the vicinity of the schools, not that it really mattered with how quickly Aoidos was growing. In fact, it was Gideon's son Dunban who Klaus spotted most often. For a kid who claimed to only be interested in sports and poetry, he often snuck into buildings and got lost while attempting to infiltrate the labs. Usually someone- sometimes even Gideon himself, if he chanced to check the birds at the right moment- found him before he got into anything important, and Klaus hated when that person was him. It was no wonder Dickson nicknamed the boy "beast" as soon as he arrived. Dunban was annoying. He deflected every scolding with the excuse that he was looking for his dad, and didn't let getting in trouble stop him from pestering people. In hopes of placating him and perhaps even turning him towards a career path that would actually keep him on the station, Klaus pulled him into a lab one day and showed him a simple quantum interference experiment. It was, in fact, the same one Elly showed Klaus when they started working together to demonstrate the bizarre behavior endemic to quantum physics. Dunban appeared soundly awed as he interrupted a weak laser with a block to adjust its later paths through a maze of mirrors and lenses, though Klaus began to have doubts when his first question was whether the Conduit existed because Aoidos did too many experiments with cats in boxes. Then Dunban asked if Klaus would be spending all his work time mooning over his girlfriend like his aunt Galea claimed, and Klaus kicked him out. 

The nerve of that woman. Being a nuisance ran in the family, it seemed. The sooner the new facilities were built so he didn't have to walk all the way to this sprawling complex, the better. As one of the few buildings in Elysium with direct access to the lower levels, use of the space was competitive, with priority given to those working on ether projects. Those couldn't be performed in the city due to the possible impact to residents, with the effects of ether still so poorly understood. Nightmares were common enough in Elysium that Aoidos suspected the Conduit was the cause. There was often a sharp spike in illnesses whenever the ether levels in the city were too high. Even he was struck by it sometimes, haunted by the sensation of drowning and woke up gasping for air. Add in the fact that the power in Rhadamanthus went out at least once every few weeks, whether due to construction or the Trinity Processor encountering some sort of error and reminding everyone just how many waivers they'd had to sign to be here, and it was easily the most stressful environment Klaus had ever experienced. There were many in Aoidos who bemoaned being in space, lamented the lack of communication available with friends and family back on Earth, but never Klaus. He loved it here. He never wanted to leave. 

He couldn't see why anyone would want to, when the news brought more stories of death and destruction every day. More proof of the importance of their research. The long hours never bothered Klaus; he savored every moment. Especially the ones he got to spend with Elly. She was brilliant, one of the few who could follow him when he got too deep into theory, making it all the more embarrassing when she started turning his formulas into experiments and he had no idea what she was trying to prove. Quantum physics had this bizarre aspect of observability to it that baffled him. Every time he thought he understood it, some new contradiction presented itself. Worst of all was that the field relied heavily on, of all things, probability. How could measurement be the deciding factor in experiments? Things would be much easier if they were no limits to what they could known. 

Elly laughed at him whenever he raised the issue. "Do you want Laplace's demon?" she would ask. "Because that is how you get Laplace's demon. Trust me, the universe is more interesting this way."

She wasn't wrong about that. Every day brought some new challenge to overcome, new data that didn't fit, causing new exceptions to previous theories, spawning new branches of mathematics and science just to make any sense of ether at all. Days when he became so thoroughly entrenched in a new framework of thinking that returning to the outside world was like returning to shore after a long trip at sea, back on that groundwork pervading real life but felt so distant once on the cusp of a breakthrough. They were always on the cusp of a breakthrough in those days. Always on the precipice of something so much more. 

The milestones of their work were tied to the ones in their relationship, in his mind. July, when they collected enough data to start balancing the equations to determine what forms ether could take and he proposed. (Dunban asked if this meant he would get even less done, and Klaus challenged him to grow up and try his own hand at per porta ad astra. That boy never could resist a challenge.) September, when they confirmed the last of the complements and proved the Conduit was stable as long as the conditions for their formulas were met and they were wed. ("You should dance to something from Abbey Road," Dickson suggested, and it took Klaus a few days to realize what he meant and why.) December, when they took a break after finalizing the outline and gifted each other the tie and the pearl necklace. (He picked it because it was her birthstone, but she was more delighted that they'd picked similar gifts. "Now we have another way to stay in orbit around each other!") February, when they finished the first draft of the paper with their findings and started picking out names, and she shot down his suggestion before he could even say it. (She claimed she would lose her mind if she had to spend the rest of her life listening to him use that famous quote she couldn't even remember correctly, which he thought was a bit rich considering how proud she was to be named after the protagonist of Carl Sagan's Contact.) April, when they submitted their work for peer review and she decided on Shulk. (He asked her if this was some sort of family name, and she smugly told him she would never do something so backwards, staring at him for a long time as if waiting for him to get a joke. He didn't get it. He still doesn't.) June, when the paper was published and Shulk arrived on Elly's birthday. 

"He's got your eyes," she said, and he rolled his own and asked if she wanted to bet how long that would last. Personally, he was hoping Shulk's eyes would settle on a color closer to hers, which were a rather striking shade of hazel. Almost like gold. 

The milestones after that were harder to track. First steps missed because of meetings that could have been emails. First words missed because of Trinity Processor outages causing overtime. Precious moments lost amid the rush of work that needed done once Aoidos no longer needed to hide behind the uncertainty that the Conduit would leave without warning. Though all the other dangers it presented remained. The outages persisted, despite all the new techniques taught to the Trinity Processor to interface with the Conduit, while the concentration of ether in Elysium waxed suddenly and waned slowly. In the lower levels it was sometimes dense enough to form a fog while in the city above the air seemed to sparkle even when the dome was set to mostly cloudy. Rumors circulated about the negative effects, spinning into wild conspiracies. Nightmares, paranoia- the Conduit was cause for all of it, fueling further concerns about the long term effects, especially on children. For a bunch of scientists, Klaus was disgusted by how little evidence was needed for people to jump to wild conclusions. At least it was tempered by gossip about the baby princess Melia staying on the station, even if her presence made it frustrating to schedule pediatric appointments for everyone else. Gideon bragged once about running into His Majesty for his new daughter Fiora's six month checkup, and Klaus rolled his eyes, having heard similar stories from plenty of others around the office.

Nearly lost amid all those turbulent times were the fleeting times, few and far between, when they were all together. Mundane trips to the park to stroll past the tree or to the library for more research materials and nighttime storybooks. (The head librarian was a woman named Adenine who fretted over the possible damage when Shulk tried to carry so many books he fell and spilled them all over.) Special occasions like July fireworks, where Shulk and Fiora would waddle around with glowsticks while Dunban and his friend Mumkhar were supposed to be watching and Klaus and Elly would scoff at the sight of any engagement, mocking them as copycats. And most importantly, a day every year where Klaus would buy a bottle of wine and Elly would wake Shulk with a song. 

You say it's your birthday / Well it's my birthday too yeah

It was on the fourth such day that Klaus returned home for dinner to hear about Shulk's first visit to the planetarium. Shulk was old enough now to attend some of the children's programs around Elysium, and earlier he'd gone to one led by Director Doyle herself at the planetarium. "It's full of stars," he said, making Klaus smile, though his smile waned as Shulk went on to share every tiny little detail of his time there. His chattering was immensely distracting when Klaus was trying to review data for a Trinity Processor session in the morning. Shulk grew more annoying after opening presents, shoving his new activity book into Klaus' face every time he needed help on something. Klaus quickly grew tired of reading every little instruction to him and explaining that all he needed to do to solve the mazes was go to the right each time as long as there weren't any loops. 

Once Shulk was put to bed, Klaus figured he would finally be able to focus, but the sight of Elly scowling at him in the hallway gave him pause. "Something wrong?" he asked. 

"Sometimes I think you care about that machine more than him," she said. 

"Ridiculous," he said, already turning back to his work. Then she asked him what color Shulk's eyes were, and he hesitated for far, far too long. 

Klaus remembered the first time he witnessed a row between the Trinity Processor. 

They'd argued before, but this was the first time he'd witnessed them show real malice to each other. It was the point in their development where they were beginning to create things in the dreamworld, designing things virtually to cut the cost of physical prototyping. Even with the hefty discount with Vector negotiated by Director Vandham's wife, that contract wasn't cheap. Though Klaus struggled to recall the details of what it was, the crux of it was that the Trinity Processor was notified of a critical design flaw, and Alvis decided it was due to an error from Malos, some mistake Mythra hadn't made. Klaus didn't want to get involved, curious where it would go and whether they could resolve the dispute themselves, but he was forced to intervene when Malos opened his mouth to speak and no sound came out. Malos looked anxious while Alvis' lips twitched until he broke out into a wide smile. "Cat got your tongue, Malos?" he said. 

Mythra giggled, but her face was tense watching Malos try to talk. "What did you do?" Klaus asked, alarmed. 

"I muted him," Alvis said. 

"How," Klaus said, then had to repeat the question with the proper inflection since Alvis hadn't interpreted it as such when he'd said it in shock. 

After Alvis explained that he'd adjusted the dreamworld's sound output to exclude anything Malos said, Klaus told him to undo it. Instead of complying, Alvis gave his reasoning on what about Malos' thought process was defective. "If he can't provide reliable information, then his input is no good to me," he concluded. It was the phrase he always used to describe things he deemed unacceptable: no good. Nobody knew why, but it was clear throughout Aoidos who worked with the Trinity Processor by how often they used the same phrase. 

"Undo it," Klaus said again, more sternly, though inside he was worrying. The Trinty Processor was supposed to do as they was told. "Now."

Alvis' expression didn't change, but Malos was able to speak again a moment later. Looking surly, Malos asked, "Do you have any siblings, Professor Klaus?" He scoffed when Klaus shook his head. "Lucky."

"I agree," Alvis said, crossing his arms. "I would rather have no siblings at all if you two are going to insist on proving yourselves no good."

"I didn't mess up," Mythra said. 

"This time," Alvis said, glancing at her while grinning and haughty, and she crossed her arms and stuck her tongue out at him.

"You're supposed to be a team," Klaus said. "Wipe that silly grin off your face, Alvis. You're being reprimanded." 

Alvis didn't look chastised in the least, but he let his hands fall back at his sides and relaxed his face back into a neutral expression. As did Mythra. "Alvis likes pretending to be the Cheshire Cat," she said, looking back at Klaus. "He's really good at it."

"He's more like the Mad Hatter," Malos said. After leering at Alvis for a moment, he created a top hat and forced it onto Alvis' head, pulling it down over his eyes. 

Mythra laughed, while Alvis scowled and yanked it off. He inspected Malos' work with disdain. "You missed some details." He tilted his head, and a moment later, the iconic tag appeared on the hat's side. Alvis shook out his hair and placed the hat back on his head, looking pleased. "Much better." He met Klaus' eyes as the grin returned to his face. "Don't you agree, Professor?"

Klaus stared at the tag's label, 10/6. Meant as a price tag, but modern audiences would better recognize it as a date these days, which would be 10 June. (On his side of the pond, at least. This was why everyone was supposed to use ISO date format in Elysium, but old habits die hard.) An incredible coincidence, since Alvis couldn't know about his family. Klaus had never mentioned them, and Alvis shouldn't have access to the personnel records. His blood ran cold when he considered the fact that Alvis could have merely prevented Malos from placing the hat on his head- he should've been able to read Malos' intentions- but chose not to. To allow Malos to get even, or some other reason? 

"Me next," Mythra was saying, going on to share her plans for an Alice-styled dress, but Klaus interrupted her and told them that was enough for today. She pouted and stomped her foot, but Malos looked relieved. Though his voice was caustic when he thanked Klaus for the lesson. 

Alvis, meanwhile, didn't change his expression at all, still wearing his snide grin. "Enjoy your evening, Professor Klaus," he said cordially as Klaus turned to leave. "As they say, home is where the heart is."

Klaus froze midstep and stumbled enough to nearly lose his balance. Alvis couldn't know. It was just a coincidence. Klaus was being paranoid because of the hat. Nothing more to it. And yet, with the way Alvis was grinning when Klaus turned around, he found that hard to believe. He spent an hour, then two, then three, reviewing the logs from the session before finally leaving. Returning to his very empty home, because Elly had taken Shulk and left over the summer, moving into her own place across town. 

This wasn't the first time Klaus suspected Alvis knew more about him than he should. Much as Klaus reminded himself that correlation did not imply causation, Alvis had made enough implicating comments that Klaus asked Gideon about whether the Trinity Processor could access the personnel files. Gideon assured him that wasn't the case and gently reminded him who taught him ANY SYSTEM CAN BE EXPLOITED. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," he continued. "Ontos might've picked up on it from something mentioned by another instructor. Don't let him get under your skin." He scoffed when Klaus insisted Alvis hated him. "I'm not sure he likes anyone," Gideon admitted, and suggested Klaus try being nicer. "I know that's a challenge for you," he added, but he was smiling, even if Klaus wasn't. 

So Klaus had tried. He'd even gone extra lengths to answer some of Alvis' more obscure questions, including outside his usual areas of expertise. Everything from plate tectonics to the Mozart effect. After Klaus explained it to him, Alvis persisted in being a wise guy, demanding clarification about what type of space (in the mathematical, rather than physical, sense) was meant by "improvements in spatial reasoning." The "wise guy" insult didn't faze him. "Is that not my role?" he'd asked, quite sincerely, and Klaus nearly gave him another supertask out of spite, because that was still something he had trouble with. 

It was quite a curiosity, this defect of Alvis'. Some of Aoidos' best minds had looked at it, unsure whether the problem was in how his personality had developed due to programming or processing. For a while, there was more evidence for the former: overflows, underflows, the fact that the Trinity Processor handled the maximum value for a datetime as the end of the universe in certain cases. The three of them were so bewildered when told the world wouldn't end on 31 December 9999 that an entire team was formed devoted to fixing it. This, a problem that wouldn't occur for another seven thousand years, would be averted by ensuring they always handled dates in a format that provided a timespan of 292 billion years on either side of the Conduit's first appearance, likely past the lifespan of the sun and possibly even the universe. 

To Klaus, it sounded excessive, and he suspected it might exacerbate the problem rather than resolve it. There was something he wanted to try but hadn't had a chance to with how today's session had gone. He spent the evening poring over the day's logs and convincing himself he was worried over nothing, resolving to return to the dreamworld at the first available session tomorrow so that he could put his hypothesis to the test. 

Or would have, had someone not gone over her time when he arrived. Klaus glowered at Galea when she emerged from the room, but he held his tongue when he saw how shaken she looked. Usually she launched into her usual litany of excuses the moment he tried to rebuke her. "Something wrong?"

She shook her head and muttered something about needing to talk to her brother before she slipped past him and rushed off. Strange, but he wasn't about to waste any more of his time thinking about it. 

Once inside, he rushed to where the Trinity Processor was standing but slowed upon hearing a strange buzzing noise. It stopped the moment the three noticed Klaus, all of them looking sheepish and fidgeting instead of their usual stationary attention. Klaus replayed the sound in his head and recognized it more readily as a melody, though he couldn't quite place the tune. "Were you humming?" All three nodded- Malos while rolling his eyes, Mythra while tossing her hair, and Alvis while shrinking into the collar of his jacket. "Is this what you normally do when no one is around?"

"No," Mythra said quickly. She sounded like she thought she was in trouble. "Usually we just wait for somebody else to show up." Klaus noticed Alvis scowl a moment before Mythra pointed her finger at him. "It was Alvis' idea, not mine. Blame him, it's his fault."

Alvis stood up straighter, looking almost defiant, but he didn't offer any explanation. "You're not in trouble," Klaus told them, and they all looked relieved. "If anyone is, it's Galea for going over time." The church bell sounded every hour for a reason- to alert visitors when their sessions were over. 

All three of them looked confused at that. "We always figured the schedule was more a guideline than anything," Mythra said. "It happens all the time."

"With Galea?" Unbelievable. That woman needed a watch. But when they shook their heads, Klaus couldn't resist asking, "With others? How often?"

"Near daily," Alvis said, looking eager to be useful after his brush with discipline. "I can compile a list. In order of seniority, Professor Vandham, Professor-"

"That won't be necessary," Klaus snapped. Not when part of his time was already depleted and his plan required the full hour. "I'm here to teach you about integrals."

All of them protested that they knew that already. And they did- basic calculus was certainly within their capabilities at this point- but none of them understood its applications properly. Least of all Alvis. 

Perhaps it was a good thing Galea ran over time. Whatever she'd done to encourage them to try to hum provided an excellent segue for his lesson. While working to satisfy Alvis' musical curiosity, the mathematical aspects of music theory distracted Klaus on numerous occasions. Enough that he'd traced back its roots to Newton's notebooks, filled with equations involving logarithms in an effort to produce perfect harmonies. Such formulas were studied as far back as ancient Greece, by Pythagoras himself claiming all is number, contributing to the music of the spheres. But it was Newton's studies of power series that stuck with Klaus, and he'd turned it over and over in his mind until he found how best to present it to the Trinity Processor in a way they would understand. Most of all Alvis. 

Integrals are functions that sum the infinitisimal series between two values, the limits. For Alvis to fully understand his role, he needed to understand that Malos and Mythra were his, without getting lost in the weeds as he was currently prone to. Not that anyone understood why he kept getting stuck there to begin with. Klaus suspected it was because he was trying to divide by zero, but the engineers were adamant that wasn't the case. "Oldest trick in the book," Gideon told him, explaining how much easier it was to teach them to avoid that pitfall than others. "That's one of the first things we trained them to avoid. Cut that branch off so hard they won't even consider it."

But it occurred to him now, as Alvis pointed out all the theoretical and practical problems with infinitesimals, that perhaps they didn't consider it for the wrong reason. So Klaus asked them. It wasn't even forbidden. "What's six divided by zero?"

"Undefined," they said in unison. 

"Wrong," Klaus said. "It's infinity."

Alvis looked doubtful, Malos looked horrified, and Mythra looked interested. "Why?" she asked. 

Klaus explained to them the nature of lines, composed of infinite points all of length zero. True for any length, thus it can yield any number. "To calculate an infinite amount of points of length between two points is useless because it could be anything," he finished. "It's like finding no answer at all."

"Like getting stuck in a black hole," Alvis said. "Professor Doyle taught us about those. A gravitational singularity in space-time with infinite curvature and density, thus trapping any who pass its event horizon."

"That's correct," Klaus said. Figures- Director Doyle was an astronomer. "Anyone caught in an infinity is lost. That is why Mythra and Malos are integral to your role."

Alvis scowled, insulted. "It is my role to determine the best of all possible outcomes," he said. "It is no good to waste time on incorrect options."

"So you'd rather risk them taking adverse actions without your guidance?"

"Such actions can yet be resolved by another of the infinite possibilities."

Klaus sighed. No wonder they broke so many things all the time, if Alvis just figured he'd fix everything later. Again Klaus tried to explain how infinity was the event horizon of mathematics, even insulting Alvis once more by saying he was no good to his siblings once he was stuck in a supertask and hiding all his opinions from them. At least that got Alvis to look more alarmed than annoyed. "You say I am obsolete?" he said. 

"When you're not contributing anything useful? Yes." Might as well go for broke, although Klaus doubted the Founders would approve. "That time matters. You need to work together every moment, including the ones where you don't like what they say. Otherwise you'll never change their minds."

He was aware how bitter he sounded, but he was convinced there was nothing he could say at that point to make Alvis understand. Already his thoughts were turning elsewhere, though strangely not to work. Talking about all of this was making him think of other things instead. Things he focused on instead of people. 

So he missed whatever happened before Malos caught his attention and started accusing him of breaking Alvis. Klaus asked Malos to explain, and Malos scowled and created a lamp, already lit, and held the switch on its base towards Alvis. "No," Alvis said. 

Malos shot a glare back at Klaus, and it clicked for him what was happening here. "Did you create Thomson's Lamp for him?"

Malos nodded once. "You broke him. He's no fun now."

Klaus ignored this- it was well known how much he and Mythra enjoyed abusing their brother's defect- and turned back to Alvis. "Why won't you do the lamp now?"

"Because we're friends," Alvis said. 

It was a bizarre non sequitur, made even more bizarre by the way Malos and Mythra reacted to it. Malos looked angrier than ever while Mythra looked amused. However briefly, for suddenly she and Malos both tensed, her mere moments before him, and she grabbed Alvis' shoulder as fury flashed across his face before the entire dreamworld vanished, leaving him alone in a darkened room. 

Incredible. Whatever Klaus wanted to ask next was lost with how baffled he was that this had caused an actual power outage in Rhadamanthus. He gave a short statement to the technician outside about what happened before the incident, then endured a longer barrage of questioning from more senior engineers. When he was finally allowed to leave, he was so annoyed by the whole ordeal that he decided to head straight home. 

He went somewhere else instead. 

Maybe because it was so dark, with only the emergency lights active, that he'd changed course. But he knew the real reason was because of what he'd said to the Trinity Processor earlier. He stood in front of the door for a long time before he knocked, then kept knocking on it for quite a while before it opened. "I'm only answering," Elly said, frowning at him, "because he asked me to."

She flicked her eyes at her feet, and Klaus looked down and found Shulk standing there and looking up at him with interest. After a brief hesitation, Shulk took a few steps forward and latched onto his leg. Klaus leaned down and picked him up, making him giggle. Moments later Shulk grabbed Klaus' tie and started fidgeting with it, and Klaus didn't have the heart to tell him to stop. He was too floored by how much Shulk had grown while he wasn't watching. "Does he still scream when the lights go out?"

She didn't answer immediately, but when he looked back at her, her face had softened and she was nodding. "He does the same thing with my necklace," she said. That must be the only reason why she was still wearing it. Klaus didn't dare to hope otherwise. After drumming her fingers against the door for a moment, she sighed and opened it wider. "You might as well come in till this is fixed. Nothing else to do till then anyway."

He stayed far longer than that. 

Klaus remembered when the Trinity Processor presented the idea for Tiger! Tiger! 

Not that he was important enough to be there personally. The Trinity Processor called all the Founders into the dreamworld to make the request. As a gift, since it was a week till their seventh birthday. The Founders were amused- all this time and they'd never asked for anything until now- but the Coalition was considerably less so. Billions in investments, years of research, and the Trinity Processor's first invention was a video game. 

The prevailing reaction among Aoidos employees was confusion. Constructing it was simple, save for its most important components: the remote generators. The schematics for those called for no materials but rather diagrammed hundreds- perhaps thousands- of formulas all overlapping and completely unreadable. It became a point of fascination in Aoidos until Elly and Klaus determined what it was supposed to be. 

They presented their conclusion to the Aoidos board of directors in a meeting scheduled soon after. "It's like a little programmable core chip," Elly told them. Core chips were an emerging technology in Rhadamanthus, formed from condensing ether through a process that would be perfected sometime before the heat death of the universe at the rate they were going. And yet the Trinity Processor had somehow managed to figure it out intuitively, even if they couldn't express it properly. But the real magic was in how the Trinity Processor planned to use it. She sighed before she explained it, having already complained to Klaus earlier about how she hated overusing this word, and how the phrase itself was ridiculous, but there was no better way to describe it. "It works by quantum pseudo-telepathy."

She gave a brief overview of entanglement before letting Klaus take over to explain the game theory aspects of it, and how it would benefit the Trinity Processor's algorithmic development. "Thus far," he began, "we've only been giving them games of perfect information. We're all aware of the challenges involved there- Ontos struggles to reconcile the differences between Pneuma and Logos because it knows just as much as the other two and has to determine which of them is wrong. But due to the way this machine of theirs works, Ontos will never have the same set of information as Pneuma and Logos, because it cannot observe the game directly. That dependency should develop trust between them, and hopefully foster the sort of cooperation they've been lacking all this time." 

Everything after that was just numbers. By the end of January, all the components of Tiger! Tiger! were assembled, save the remote generators. The Trinity Processor themselves continuously expressed disbelief that Aoidos couldn't understand how they worked and were mostly unwilling to explain it. Their learning algorithms were adjusted to give more weight to nonfiction books- Sagan's Cosmos, Hawking's Brief History of Time, Rovelli's Seven Brief Lessons on Physics- in hopes that would help them provide better instructions on how to build it, to no avail. The project seemed stalled until one day, while Director Vandham himself was in the dreamworld, Alvis asked one last time for confirmation that Aoidos couldn't comprehend their designs, glanced at his siblings, and said, "Very well."

What followed was the most severe outage Rhadamanthus would experience for years. The lights, communications, Beanstalk stability, even the artificial gravity were all affected, the last causing everyone to lose their footing for a few moments before backup systems were activated. Once all systems were restored, it was clear that something was different about the Trinity Processor's ether flow. Two new components were available to connect to the Conduit's power, and the best guess of what those were was quickly confirmed by checking where Tiger! Tiger! was stored. Right where the Trinity Processor had planned to place them were two remote generators: one green, one purple. 

At once, Aoidos started analyzing them while questioning the Trinity Processor. None of them had a good answer. "We willed it, and it happened," Alvis said simply, while the other two merely shrugged. An incredibly blatant example of them using the Conduit to casually violate the law of conservation of mass, and they couldn't explain it. Quite a miracle to bring to the upcoming conference, though rumor had it Aoidos and the Coalition were more concerned with how they could use it to reduce the equipment costs. Government contracts required such painstaking bookkeeping, and using the Trinity Processor to generate objects would certainly reduce costs. This quickly proved infeasible when it became clear how much awareness the Trinity Processor had through the remote generators. Which is to say, enough that it alarmed Aoidos. 

"Can't have them using that as spyware," Gideon told Klaus later. "Imagine if it fell into enemy hands. For all our control over the Trinity Processor, we can't allow them to control us."

Like Klaus needed to be told that. Though he no longer thought so, rumors abounded that the Trinity Processor knew more than they were allowed. Even Galea had pulled Klaus aside to share her own suspicions, which he found especially amusing considering she should know their systems better than he did. If Galea thought there was a problem, she could figure it out herself. 

He had far more important things to work on, both professionally and personally. After reaching out to Elly back in autumn, she'd invited him down the Beanstalk to see her parents over the holidays. Though he'd blanched at the prospect of leaving Rhadamanthus, he'd ultimately agreed and found it more enjoyable than expected. To his surprise, there were things he missed about the surface, like the ocean and snow and the sight of the real moon in the night sky instead of a mere projection. All things Shulk got to experience for the first time, to his clear delight. 

Things were as peaceful down there as the news suggested. No wonder the Coalition decided to hold the conference. He was almost looking forward to it. The trip improved their relationship enough that she was willing to work with him again, to the point that she began to consider ending their separation more seriously. Once again, prompting discussion once more about which home they'd keep. Though Klaus preferred his for its proximity to the park, hers did have more space, space they expected to need. He spent his days preparing for it and his nights dreaming of what was to come. 

Such was the case the day before it happened, when his desk phone startled him awake. He checked the time as he answered, wincing when he saw what it was. He launched into excuses which Elly cut off quickly, aware of what he was working on. Neither of them got off easy with what they needed to get done before the main event, and he'd already warned her of all the last minute calculations he was responsible for checking. Most interesting were the ones related to the remote generators in Tiger! Tiger! which did not appear to be little programmable core chips but rather something far more advanced and far more incredible. Those were the numbers he'd gone over more than once, because it was concerned aspects of his presentation with Elly. Even though that wasn't scheduled until later in the week, he didn't want to let her down. He wanted to be sure. 

Klaus didn't remember the details of what they said then. With how tired he was, he must've yawned a few times. They probably confirmed the plan of what they would do once they were down there, maybe even compared notes on what they were most excited for. Before hanging up, he probably said something about seeing her later instead of something more meaningful. 

He remembered everything that happened after. Every agonizing second once he was down there, glued to the screens while waiting for news and then wishing he hadn't heard it when it finally came. Wandering the hospital halls and wondering why Shulk would have the necklace with him as he twisted it into knots inside his left pocket. Dickson had delivered it to him with all the other terrible news. It was inescapable wherever he went, playing on every television and radio he passed while waiting for updates. Not that those were ever good either. 

Here was the irony of the situation: Shulk had survived, despite being found unresponsive. There was a room in a Morytha hospital where he was alive, his heartbeat restored and steadfastly monitored by an impressive array of machines. Machines also responsible for maintaining his breathing, because all the scans indicated there was no activity in his brain anymore. Which meant he was dead in all the ways that mattered, leaving the decision to finish him off to Klaus. 

He very nearly did, only for Guernica Vandham to arrive with a proposition. 

Klaus laughed in his face when he heard it. "Those are the things that were meant to let people live forever," he said. Not that they ever worked. Everyone in Aoidos had heard the stories, each worse than the last. It didn't matter what sorts of breakthroughs in recent research were presented, Klaus wouldn't dare put his faith in them. 

"Not forever," Guernica said. Director Vandham, now, Klaus supposed, having seen him on the news as Aoidos' main spokesperson for the past week. "Long enough to grow up."

When a person loses something, they cannot help but seek a reason why. Within themselves, or in others, they seek a concrete answer to the question of who they really are, deep inside. Klaus was not in any way different. "All right," he said. 

Before heading up the Beanstalk and back to Rhadamanthus, Klaus stopped by the wish tree. The seagulls were as vicious as ever, singing their taunts as they ripped hopes and dreams to shreds. Klaus wrote down his wish and added it to their feast, then walked through the city until he was looking out at the ocean. 

It was customary in Elysium for newly married couples to share their middle names with each other once the paperwork was signed. Klaus let Elly try to guess first, though she only tried Zachary before she gave up. When she heard what his was, she beamed. "Mine is Alexandrina," she said, before he had a chance to guess. 

"Lovely," he said. "Very unique."

Which made her groan. "It was the first name of Queen Victoria," she said. "Don't you know your history?"

"You should know by now that the humanities hold no interest for me."

"Well, you should know better than that by now," she shot back. "Those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it."

Now, he slid his thumb along the third finger on his left hand until his wedding ring dropped into his palm. Then he stretched his arm back as far as he could and hurled it into the water. 

Klaus remembered the first time Shulk spoke after he was brought back from the dead. 

For weeks after Shulk regained consciousness, he did not say anything, despite being awake and alert. He did not do much beyond breathe and sleep, staring out into the distance without focusing on anything. He did not eat unless commanded, and when he did, he ate whatever he was offered. Even things he hadn't liked before. He would nod or shake his head when asked direct questions, but never more than once. His reflexes were all normal, and he didn't have any problems moving around or following directions. But he still wouldn't speak, even when his condition stabilized enough to be released. 

The doctors advised socialization, so Klaus asked Fiora's parents to bring her over for a playdate. That was a mistake. Barely five minutes passed before she marched over to Klaus with her tiny face full of rage. "He's broken," she yelled at him. "You broke him." Then she kicked him in the shin. Gideon made her apologize, explaining patiently how Shulk was still recovering from being hurt badly, but Klaus could tell he was more concerned with Shulk sitting listlessly on the living room floor, staring at the wall instead of all the toys she'd pulled out. 

After that debacle, Klaus tried more solitary activities. He read to Shulk, played music, let him watch a lot of television. Slowly, Shulk started to show interest, however mild. He colored, always neatly within the lines. He stacked blocks in large towers, never upset when they fell. But he still didn't speak. 

Weeks turned into months. There was therapy. Adjustments to the ether levels in Rhadamanthus. Klaus took Shulk on walks through Elysium, pointing at various landmarks while checking that Muninn was following. Taking a trip to the planetarium. Pulling him through the central plaza and wondering why he was bothering recounting the story of how he proposed to Elly when it was clear Shulk wasn't listening. Following the winding path along the river until they passed the north checkpoint. Slowing. Turning around. Crossing the bridge. Striding down the long hallway. 

The guards gave him curious glances, but Klaus ignored them. Elysium's anthem played over the speakers, growing harder to hear as they reached the lobby area where the news was playing for those passing through. Updates on recent battles, discussions of logistics, analysis of strategies. No mention of any attempts at negotiations. 

Klaus slowed to listen once they got off the escalator, staring at the screen with such disgust that he didn't even notice Shulk's hand slip out of his until he turned his head away. When he finally did, there was a brief moment of panic before he found Shulk a short distance away, staring out the window. Not at Earth, but at the void beyond, speckled with sparks of light. He didn't look away when Klaus reached him. "It's full of stars," Shulk said. 

Klaus didn't say anything for so long that Shulk tore his gaze away from the glass to look up at him, his face scrunched with worry. As if he thought he'd said something wrong. Klaus coughed into his hand to brace himself to speak. "That's right," he told Shulk. "And many other things besides, all waiting to be explored."

"Other planets?" Shulk's eyes widened when Klaus nodded. "Can we go there?"

"Not yet," Klaus said. "But one day. I promise." He shoved his hand in his left pocket for a moment, thinking, then jerked his head back toward the checkpoint. "Come with me. I want to show you something."

At home, Klaus set Shulk on the couch with a bowl of popcorn before turning his attention to the television. Yet he hesitated before he put the disc in the DVD player. Was Shulk too young for this? Probably, but it was already evening, and though Klaus already told Shulk he didn't have to go to bed until the movie was over, he suspected Shulk would fall asleep before then. Perhaps even in the first half hour, since the ape-men sequence was so dreadfully dull. 

To Klaus' surprise, Shulk was entranced from the start. Watching the opening title with wide eyes as the drums sounded and gave way to the opening fanfare over the eclipse. Growing no less interested through the dawn of man scenes, finally turning to Klaus when the monolith appeared onscreen. "What is that?"

"The Conduit." Basically. 

"What's the Conduit?"

"The reason we're here. The Trinity Processor uses it to power the station."

"What's the Trinity Processor?"

"It's a computer I work with." Shulk would surely be asleep by the time they reached the Jupiter mission section. Surely. Klaus glanced at the very full bowl in Shulk's lap. "Have some popcorn."

Shulk grabbed exactly one piece and placed it in his mouth without taking his eyes off the screen. He was still very much awake through the entirety of Dr. Floyd's visit to the moon to find the monolith again, very much awake when the Discovery slid across the screen, very much awake for the introduction of Frank Poole and Dave Bowman and, of course, HAL. When HAL and Poole had their chess match, Shulk asked if Klaus would teach him how to play, and Klaus said sure even though he suspected the game might be solved before he would have the chance. He wondered when this boy would fall asleep, hoping it would be soon. 

But no, Shulk turned to Klaus with alarm when Frank Poole went spinning off into space. "The computer here isn't mean like HAL, right?" Shulk asked. 

"No, of course not," Klaus said. "Everyone here has made sure of it. Including me."

Shulk relaxed at that, though he tensed again when HAL didn't let Bowman back on the Discovery. He continued to look worried during HAL's shutdown sequence, making Klaus regret showing him the film. Maybe he wouldn't remember this long-term. Shulk's capacity to make memories was uncertain enough as it was. At least he didn't look too concerned during the Beyond the Infinite sequence and through the ending, though he didn't speak again until the movie was over, tilting his head at the screen as Thus Spoke Zarathustra played again. "Is that what the Conduit does?" he asked. 

"We have no idea, but it's one possible answer." Klaus shut off the television as the credits began rolling and ruffled Shulk's hair. The bowl of popcorn was still full when he recited the final line of the introduction to his favorite novel. "The truth, as always, will be far stranger."

And Shulk smiled for the first time since he died. 

Klaus remembered when the Trinity Processor first started learning to fight. Mostly because they didn't take it seriously. 

It was infuriating. Over and over, even after being stripped of everything they had that could be considered entertainment, they treated battle like one of their games. As a matter of fun rather than survival. They pulled branches from the lone tree and smacked each other with them; or rather, Mythra and Malos swung at each other haphazardly while Alvis dodged everything without effort. Sometimes he was gracious enough to block a blow instead of merely evading it, but such a move always turned into a perfect counter, slamming his opponent to the ground with a sharp flick of his blade. Even when pitted against both of his siblings, Alvis maintained the upper hand, always spiraling just out of reach and weaving their advances against each other until both were incapacitated. 

It was for that reason Aoidos determined the best way to hone the Trinity Processor's battle prowess was by having Alvis fight both Mythra and Malos. Essentially, they'd be training themselves. Results here were more favorable: Mythra and Malos quickly grew motivated to beat Alvis, despite his overwhelming advantage, while in turn Alvis grew ever more adept at anticipating their moves. Though the negative impacts on the group's dynamics were clear, the improvements made to their battle capabilities were well worthwhile. A small cost compared to that of the station's survival.

There was no time to spare with that at stake. The clock was ticking. Every year brought an update to the metaphorical Doomsday Clock, the minutes to midnight dwindling ever further as tensions flared across the globe. News of escalating conflicts below spurred the Coalition to press the Trinity Processor into developing weapons and defensive systems, initially intended to defend the Beanstalks by land and air but with the foresight- and fear- the wide scope of war would threaten space soon enough. Early Artifices were clumsy, poorly designed, prone to malfunctioning. The Trinity Processor grew more adept at their creation the more they fought each other in the dreamworld, training to translate the movements of their avatars into those of their machines. 

It was soulless work, but there was no shortage of people in Aoidos eager to help them do it. Klaus was one of the first to volunteer. Even if it meant his job was increasingly more about the quality of the Artifices produced by the Trinity Processor than the Conduit, he couldn't just do nothing. They couldn't exactly study it if they all got blown out of the sky. Besides, what the Trinity Processor came up with was fascinating. Aritifice parts were designed to be modular, easily reusable, and nigh indestructible. If any piece lost circuit with its internal remote generator, it could be salvaged and returned to the Orbital Ring or any Beanstalk to be incorporated into a replacement unit. The Coalition was regularly notified of any losses and commandeered vessels to fetch the fallen parts, ensuring Aoidos never ran out of materiel. (To say nothing of how they could simply create it from nothing with the Conduit's power, though that was prone to causing outages and thus kept to a minimum.) It was elegant. It was ruthlessly efficient. It was the only reason they were still here at all. 

There were long days spent in the hangars beneath Elysium, waiting through inspections and watching demonstrations through the designated observation windows. Submitting analyses of the combat capabilities of every Artifice, no matter what its role. Calculating the scope and yields of weapons, the strength and durability of shields. Inventing new formulas and refining the methods involved in forming them. Arguing, more often than not, with the engineers over whether the Trinity Processor's designs were sound. Proving the mathematics involved, even when he didn't fully understand them himself, to show that the old rules didn't apply, that whatever standards used in the past were overturned by the arcane power of the Conduit. Arguing, more often than not, until his voice was hoarse in far too many meetings, then complaining, more often than not, to whoever he saw next, whether it was the latest round of interns or the Trinity Processor themselves. Eventually, he proved his case so well they gave him the position he'd been coveting to instruct future generations of Aoidos employees. Just as he suspected, being addressed as "professor" never got old, even if classes filled more of his schedule. 

And through it all, his life was punctuated by the buzzing of his pager, alerting him whenever Shulk had a health issue. Often debilitating in those first few years, subsiding somewhat when he started school, but until the test results showed he was fine, Klaus would be convinced every time that this was the one when Shulk would be rendered an empty shell. The possibility always lurked in the back of his mind, especially when they were both home and Klaus expected Shulk to fall over dead at any moment. Instead, Shulk asked questions while working on his model kits and homework that Klaus could not answer truthfully. Questions like "what do you do at work?" and "why do I have so many headaches?" and his absolute least favorite, "why aren't there any photos of Mummy at home?" which he always thought he'd escaped hearing for the year until it slammed him in May because the Americans didn't celebrate Mother's Day until then. 

At least he didn't need to worry about getting Shulk to and from school. There were enough other children in the building that the parents organized a rotation of chaperones, and Klaus did everything he could to avoid being included. Despite this, he still managed to get called to do it, no matter how many excuses he gave. Then he complained about that to anyone who would listen, until, to his surprise, Dickson volunteered to do it instead. "But you hate kids," Klaus said. 

"There's something else I hate more," Dickson said, quickly following up with, "Don't think I haven't noticed how important you've gotten around here. Whole projects lag when you're detained, including mine. This is war. We both know there's no time to waste."

So Klaus gave Dickson the key that used to belong to his wife, only to be called to human resources not long afterward and subjected to a rather bizarre inquiry into "the nature of his relationship with Dickson" and a review of confidentiality policies and procedures identical to the one he'd endured when he married Elly. 

Shulk was likewise confused by this development. "Is Dickson my stepdad?" He looked disappointed when Klaus told him no, saying, "Reyn said he got a stepdad after one of his parents died."

"Who?"

Shulk started prattling on about his new best friend who sat next to Fiora and how they were all going to be friends forever, but Klaus lost interest quickly and didn't think much of it until he had to fetch Shulk for an appointment a week later and found him waiting by the school doors with Fiora and a redheaded boy who was confused by Klaus' appearance. "Who's this guy?" the boy asked Shulk.

"You mean my dad?" Shulk said. 

"I thought Mister Dickson was your dad," the other boy said. 

Shulk looked bashful, glancing at Klaus nervously while Fiora laughed. "Mister Dickson's not Shulk's dad," she said. "Remember? He said Shulk's a dead ringer for Professor Klaus. Can't you tell?"

The redheaded boy looked curiously at Shulk and Klaus, but Klaus grabbed Shulk's hand and pulled him away before the conversation could continue, fuming. He dismissed all of Shulk's questions by insisting they'd be late if they didn't hurry, saying nothing else until they reached the clinic and Klaus passed him off to the physician for examination. As was the case the past several appointments, there was nothing of concern to report. Despite the headaches and occasional fainting spells and seizures, and save for the core crystal fused to his brain stem acting as an ether receptor to replace the regions ruined when he was four, Shulk was perfectly ordinary. 

There was certainly no problem with Shulk's cognitive ability. His schoolwork was flawless and all his teachers spoke highly of him, outside of a few disciplinary issues. Like dismantling the classroom Speak & Spell, no matter how many times he was told not to. Electronics at home weren't safe either. On the rare occasions Klaus saw him there, Shulk was often pulling apart various devices, even late into the night. The television remote, the thermostat, the blue canary nightlight Dickson bought him after he complained about the red light his old lighthouse one made- nothing was safe. 

"I have to make sure they're not mean like HAL," Shulk explained when Klaus found him pulling apart his alarm clock despite it being nearly midnight, forcing Klaus to reassemble it before going to sleep. Or rather, attempt to, since Shulk kept correcting him during the process until Klaus lost his patience and told Shulk to handle it. Which he did, to Klaus' surprise. Klaus inspected Shulk's work while Shulk swung his legs against his bed and chattered endlessly about how he was going to work for Aoidos when he grew up and make sure all the robots that kept them safe were going to be good just like his dad did, at which point Klaus snapped at him not to call him that, that if he was going to grow up and work for Aoidos he might as well start using Klaus' given name now since he undoubtedly would eventually. There was a sentence forming in Klaus' head that he didn't want to confront, an accusation, one that chased him into bed and blocked his way to sleep, until he was finally so exhausted that somehow morning arrived without him noticing time had passed at all. But it had, for mere moments later, his own alarm clock rang to announce the start of a new day, in all its cruel potential. 

More long days evaluating the Artifices' capabilities- calculating blast range, targeting accuracy, destructive impact- and training the Trinity Processor to create more powerful ones and use them more effectively without negatively impacting the station. The outages grew to be less frequent, although there were still some in Aoidos who opposed using the Conduit's power for war machines. There was a group proposing a technology that could simulate ether to create weapons which wouldn't be dependent on the Conduit, lessening the burden on the Trinity Processor. Not to mention the political benefits- plenty of organizations on Earth, from terrorists to human rights groups, criticized the Coalition for using the Conduit's power as a weapon. Klaus found the idea ridiculous, even if it did come from the lone surviving Founder. Whatever Professor Oosoo's reasons, it felt like siding with the enemy to Klaus. It was abundantly clear fighting was the only way to reason with them, and the Conduit was their biggest advantage. If that meant the only way to ensure peace was through superior firepower, so be it. Then Oosoo went and died and the project stalled until it was shelved, hopefully permanently, and all the people involved shuffled back to more important work. 

Which put Galea in his orbit, again. She was already a thorn in his side before she ran off to waste time on ether furnaces, what with all the work she did with Artifices, and now she was back and more insufferable than ever. Her new project was refining the tracking systems monitoring the Trinity Processor, starting with the Artifice network. She'd been involved with the initial scaffolding of that infrastructure, but as the Trinity Processor created more and more and created more complex algorithms to control them them, Aoidos had to resort to reverse engineering for any insights on how those worked. Often he vied with her for the same timeslots in the labs or with the Trinity Processor, and she was just as prone to running late as always. 

Although that was less of a problem for sessions where he supervised the Trinity Processor's practice skirmishes. Klaus never neglected to encourage them to learn from their experiences, challenging them to make even the smallest improvements on every attempt. And they delivered, setting a new record every time Klaus was on duty. 

Today was no different. Alvis was on track to surpass every metric from the start, disarming Mythra with ease by swiping with his blade in his right hand, then switching it to his left to ram it into Malos' side. Pivoting, Alvis returned it to his other hand and knocked Malos' blade away, then pointed the tip of his branch at Malos' throat. "Kneel," Alvis said. 

Malos spit at him, alarming Klaus and making him wince as Alvis swung at the Malos' chest with enough force to send him sprawling to the ground, then sidestepped a sneak attack from Mythra that left her sliding past with enough momentum that she fell on her face, dropping her branch once again. There was a strange buzzing sound for a moment when Alvis sighed and pressed the point of his branch into Mythra's back. Though some of the coldness left his eyes when she looked up at him and stuck out her tongue. He almost seemed to smile as he spun the branch against her, lifting it out of her reach when she tried to slap it away. "This is so unfair," she growled. 

"You're telling me," Alvis said, sounding bored. He ducked as Malos swung at his neck from behind, then used his position to deliver a sharp kick to Malos' knees which forced him to the ground. Alvis straightened with a satisfied grin as he glanced over his shoulder. "I believe I told you to kneel." Malos glared, balling his fists, but Alvis had already turned his attention to Klaus. "Apologies for my degraded performance. Is this data sufficient?"

Klaus clicked his stopwatch and checked the time to confirm what he already knew. A new record, as usual. "You did well," Klaus said absently, making a few notes on his clipboard about what data to review further later. 

Alvis didn't look pleased by the praise. He insisted he only won so quickly because Malos and Mythra hadn't made any new moves, arguing that he wasn't improving if they weren't as well. Klaus sighed, wondering again if he was the only instructor who regularly had to endure this much passive aggressive backtalk from Alvis when he caught the buzzing sound again. "What is that?"

"I assumed that was you," Alvis said, shrugging. 

It was not. Klaus knew the exact sound his pager made at this point, but he checked his pocket anyway, wondering how Alvis knew about it. He couldn't remember if the Trinity Processor knew the exact mechanism of how they were able to summon their professors when warranted, not that it mattered when Klaus was already here. His thoughts evaporated in a panic when he couldn't find the pager. Whatever interference causing the buzzing sound would have to wait. He ran out of the dreamworld and back to his office, then back home when he couldn't find the pager there either. 

Even in his rush, he frowned when he spotted Muninn in the tree outside the building, and his scowl deepened when he opened the door to his home. He had, in fact, left the pager here again, because there it was in Shulk's hands. Or rather, the motherboard was. The chassis was in pieces on the floor where Shulk sat and studied the tiny circuit lines and modules. He yelped and dropped it at the sound of Klaus' voice. 

"What do you think you're doing?" Klaus started picking up the scattered parts and hoped nothing was missing, berating Shulk all the while. He finished his scolding by asking why Shulk wasn't at school, only to be reminded that it was Saturday. That explained why he'd had little problem securing a slot with the Trinity Processor today, although he figured that was more related to what happened to Galea earlier in the week. 

It was why Klaus was so concerned about the buzzing noise in the dreamworld. There were new safeguards warning the instructors when the ether concentration in the room hit dangerous thresholds, something that was happening more and more often. Galea had fainted from one such spike and spent the past few days in the hospital, more for observation than anything. When Klaus visited her, she didn't seem much worse for wear besides all the complaining that it'd happened on her birthday. At least, until Klaus gave her the gift he'd gotten for the occasion: a watch. She was strangely ungrateful, even after Klaus explained that it was Vector's latest model, made from recycled Artifice parts and designed for precision with the latest techniques to combat the effects of clock drift in Rhadamanthus. Still, she did put it on, even if she she had the gall to say that the card Shulk and Fiora made for her was a better present. Klaus felt bad about forgetting to get one until Galea mentioned that they'd made it when they were supposed to be making Mother's Day cards, after which he'd stormed out and never went back. 

He had enough other things to worry about. This next week Shulk's class was heading down the Beanstalk for a field trip, and Klaus had signed the permission slip for him to go despite his better judgment. The Coalition imposed so many restrictions to prevent Aoidos' project information from leaking down to the planet, but Shulk's condition apparently wasn't worth any. There were enough rumors about what went wrong with core crystals down there that politicians loved using the conspiracies for virtue signaling, often the same people who rejected the Coalition's offers of remote generators for free energy on the grounds that it was equivalent to yielding sovereignty to the Trinity Processor. Ridiculous. 

(Later that summer Galea would tell him about a Mars rover knocked out by a severe dust storm. She sadly recounted NASA's increasingly desperate attempts to recover contact with the little robot and shared that she'd once had dreams of working for ESA, but all Klaus could think was how using an Artifice would have avoided the whole issue.)

With how less dependent Shulk was on ether as he got older, the doctors were optimistic he would be fine away from the Conduit for a few hours, the state of global politics notwithstanding. It took far less than that for Klaus' pager to go off that Wednesday, sending him sprinting to the Rhadamanthus lobby where he anxiously watched the news waiting for Shulk's return. There were still nice days in Morytha then, although the bickering of the Beanstalk authority councils was constant. Fortunately the sound of the elevator doors opening spared him from any more of that coverage. That fucker from the Minos Authority only got airtime because he'd been a scientist on the Prometheus and left Aoidos before the Orbital Ring was ever built to go into politics. 

Even though Shulk recovered quickly once back in Elysium, he stayed in the hospital long enough for his friends to try to visit a few times, during visitor hours or not. A stark contrast to the Trinity Processor, who still persisted in arguing that they could only have a fair fight if Alvis was separated by the partition so he couldn't read the others' minds. Absurd. The only reason Alvis learned how to play to his siblings' strengths and manage their weaknesses was by exploiting them throughout their mock battles. Klaus already had new ideas on how to challenge them further, new games and exercises and certainly nothing like that silly project Professor Addam suggested about giving them a hobby. Aoidos had taken away the Trinity Processor's entertainment activities for good reason, but perhaps Addam had a point. There were less outages once the fishing application was added to the dreamworld. Or maybe those new hires Addam put on the project were just really good at fixing bugs. 

Years passed. Wars raged. Shulk's headaches grew fewer and farther between. The Trinity Processor perfected the designs of the Sirens and moved on to grander machines. Creating the Sentinels and their strange weapons that only manifested when needed, reducing the strain on the maintenance drones by 65%. Adding in the Heralds after a single attack from the Saviorites nearly pierced the Beanstalk's shield and threatened tower stability. Even the most conservative Coalition members balked at the thought of Rhadamanthus falling out of the sky. 

Each January brought another update to the Doomsday Clock, only ticking backward one year when the Coalition agreed to limits on Artifice use in the atmosphere but otherwise advanced on a steady march to midnight. Closer and closer every year, until it hovered around fourteen seconds. About how long it would take to tell someone that their whole family was dead. Klaus knew this because it had happened to him twice, knew how hearing it felt like both an eternity and an instant. At that point, they might as well measure the remaining time in quantum leaps. There was no telling the state of the world unless it was observed, measuring the cost of conflict over the Conduit by estimating how long much longer it could be endured. 

Klaus remembered when Director Vandham called him and Galea for their opinions about the Aegis test. 

The name was Vandham's idea, in honor of the Founders. When the Conduit was still stored on the ship Prometheus and the mainframe computer system was in its alpha stages, it'd been called Athena. The name made Klaus smile- another Odyssey reference and all that entailed. Thus the Trinity Processor, now matured, could now protect the Orbital Ring themselves like Athena's famous shield. Assuming nobody had any final concerns. The project had been delayed long enough. 

Galea had several, though she also had a list of recommended measures that would offset them which she was eager to present once Director Vandham's grandson Noah was gone. Klaus let her talk while he stared at the model of Elysium in his hand, trapped in its glass cage. There was a smudge over the central plaza, and Klaus rubbed at it absently, thinking. 

At the start of the year, the Trinity Processor had created another Sentinel model to round out the Spectrum. Unlike the ones named for the Founders, they suggested Ophion be stationed outside Rhadamanthus rather than wait in a hangar, so that it could deliver decisive strikes when needed. "It's our birthday gift to ourselves," Mythra explained. 

"That isn't how birthday gifts work," Klaus told her. "You know this. I know you know this."

"But it's our sweet sixteen," Mythra said. Hard to believe it had been so long. The three of them vaguely resembled young adults now. Malos was tall enough to nearly make eye contact with Klaus. "We want something that's going to make our lives easier," she continued. "And this definitely will."

"Ophion is designed to move quickly," Malos said. "It has a slim profile so it's harder to hit head-on than a Siren. It's also sturdy, so using it as a ram is just as effective as a Siren's laser."

"It also requires more power than a Siren," Klaus pointed out. "More power than any other Sentinel, I might add." 

"So?" Mythra said with a shrug. "None of the others are even needed if Ophion can deliver a surgical strike. Ophion's still got lasers and particle beams like a Siren anyway, but it's as effective as twenty. Quality over quantity."

It wasn't like Aoidos wouldn't allow it- the Trinity Processor's designs had been flawless for years- but Klaus still found this to be an odd request. He checked the blueprint again, wondering why it looked so much different than the other Sentinels, and then it hit him. "It's an eel." 

Mythra beamed. She loved those things ever since she started fishing them up. Klaus had to admit that Addam was right about giving the Trinity Processor a hobby. Teach a supercomputer to fish, and they'll invent a new superweapon, apparently. "Mostly," she said. "Malos came up with the mane."

"Defensive panels," Malos explained. 

Odd, considering he usually focused on offense. Klaus glanced at Alvis, wondering what, if any, input he'd had on this one. While his siblings had shifted their attire to fantastical armor, Alvis remained casually dressed in the same jacket he'd always worn. Usually he was the one to present new Artifice designs to Aoidos, ever the general to the other two. But now Alvis was preoccupied, his gaze blank. It was clear he wasn't listening, and Klaus had to repeat his name three times before he blinked and met Klaus' eyes. "Anything to add?" Klaus asked. 

Alvis shook his head. "Their decisions are my decisions," he said. 

His eyes flicked toward Klaus' side for a moment, then lost their focus again. If he thought Klaus wouldn't catch that, he was sorely mistaken. "Are you experiencing any performance degradation?" 

"No." Alvis blinked a few times and met Klaus' eyes again. "Is there some problem with the mechanics? I can explain the formulas if required."

"That won't be necessary." Klaus hesitated, then said, "Do you really want to keep this beneath Rhadamanthus?"

"Where else would we put it?" Mythra said. "It's no good to us if it's sitting in a hangar all the time."

Klaus looked past her at the model of Elysium down the hill and across the river. Still a town, it was nearly unrecognizable from the present city. Yet the Trinity Processor's model of Rhadamanthus had never changed, since the station's dimensions were the same as when the dreamworld was activated. There was no need to update the spatial properties, though the time- and thus the sky- always matched the city's. It was late afternoon, which in winter meant it was nearly twilight already. Klaus still had a mountain of things to do before tomorrow. He told them to expect a decision shortly and turned to leave. When he reached the door, his pager went off with an alert about Shulk. He groaned and left the room without looking back to wave at them, as he often did. 

(If he had, would he have stopped if he caught a look of satisfaction on Alvis' face? He wasn't sure.)

Now, Klaus jolted in his seat when Vandham said his name. "Any concerns from you?" he asked. 

Klaus noticed he'd started slouching while reminiscing and sat up straighter. "No," he said. He glanced down at the paperweight and noticed he'd only made the smudge worse. "None. When are we doing this?"

"The first, assuming everything gets approved," Vandham said. "I'll want you both in the Conduit room in case anything goes wrong. But everything should go smoothly."

After they were dismissed, Klaus and Galea left the building together. He expected they'd part ways at the road- she lived in a different part of town than him, so they wouldn't be walking any further together- but instead she brushed his arm and asked if he wanted to get dinner. He shook her off, both figuratively and literally, and headed off, sticking his hands in his pockets. Fidgeting more with what was in his right pocket more than his left for once, running his thumb along the base of the paperweight. Remembering Alvis saying, Their decisions are my decisions. 

He said the same thing when Klaus arrived on the last day of October to tell them the good news. Just like his siblings, Alvis paid rapt attention to Klaus' overview of how tomorrow would go. Only once he seemed to lose focus, flicking his eyes to the side for a brief moment before returning his gaze to Klaus. As soon as Klaus was done in the dreamworld, he pored over the diagnostics, hoping to find some reason for it. But there was nothing out of ordinary in the logs, and he finally left and headed home, turning over that moment in his head and convincing himself it was nothing. 

That night, Klaus did not sleep well. He had that nightmare about drowning again, one he hadn't had for many years but resurfaced now due to his anxiety about the Aegis test. It was clear where some parts of it came from- the boiling sea, with steam cloaking the water's surface and obscuring his view, was from that poem- but he had no idea what grabbed him this time, wrenching him down into the deep where there was nothing. He felt like something was watching him from above as he fell weightless, breathless, pulled down and down and down and-

-onto the ground, moments before the alarm clock started ringing. It was a long moment before he felt able to rise and silence it, so unbalanced he was from the sensation of sinking, and that discomfort followed him through his entire morning routine. Through combing his hair, through dressing and putting on his tie, through breakfast, then spiking when he finally noticed the time. Had his alarm gone off late? Had he awakened without realizing, hitting the snooze button before falling out of bed? It was as unlikely as the chances Shulk had broken in and changed it before heading to school. But no- he didn't have much to do before the Aegis test, so he'd meant to change it and allow himself some additional time to sleep. The problem was he couldn't remember doing that last night. 

Klaus was so unnerved that he patted his lab coat pocket more than once before he left, and kept reaching inside to run his fingers around the pearls his entire way to the Conduit room. It didn't surprise him that he arrived before Galea, and he flipped through the console's monitoring screens before losing interest. For the first time ever, he was more interested in staring at the Trinity Processor than the Conduit. Watching the ether surge through the cores in their predictable rhythm and letting his mind wander. 

What was he so worried about? Everything would be fine, and once it was, they would have more freedom to run experiments. More freedom to find an answer to why the Conduit was here. All the numbers had to add up to something. After today, they would be able to figure out what. He turned his attention back to the Conduit and stared at it, transfixed, the way he always did when he was down here. 

By the time it occurred to him to wonder where Galea was, she'd already snuck into the room. "Oh, did you change your mind about the party?" she asked, looking pointedly at his tie. There was a small celebration scheduled that evening, should everything go well, and Galea was clearly ready for it, wearing a striking red dress under her lab coat. 

"Not a chance," he told her. He'd chosen to wear it for luck, nothing more. "When did you get here?"

She laughed. "A while ago," she said. "Every time I find you here, you're looking at that thing like it has all the answers."

"Because it does," he couldn't help but say. 

"You still think that, after fifteen years?"

Klaus bristled at that, annoyed at the reminder. At least he'd been spared her singing this year due to being in Vandham's office. "It's only been that long because we've been forced to focus more on fighting than on working," he said. "Trust me, Galea. Once this is settled, the best is yet to come."

She looked like she wanted to say more, but it was time to begin and they needed to monitor the logs. Not like there was much to see from here. Just windows with numbers, watching the cores evaluate risks and adjust plans on the fly and confirm their own expectations. Klaus felt more optimistic than he had in years. Near the end of the hour, he was ready to break out the champagne himself. Then something strange happened. 

The sync rate reset to zero. 

Maybe it was a glitch, Klaus thought, since it rose back to where it was so quickly enough that he also considered having imagined it. But another moment passed and it kept going, higher and higher. Past the usual threshold for standby, rising into a range usually reserved for dire situations. Yet the Trinity Processor reported no ongoing threats. 

"Something's wrong," Galea said, but Klaus ignored her, intent on watching the screen. He wanted to see where this would go, and as long as the phone didn't ring, he couldn't find any reason to worry. Command had more power than they did to stop whatever was happening should it pose a problem anyway. 

The Trinity Processor sync rate was determined via a predictive algorithm to align the cores' clock cycles with the waves produced by the Conduit, but the Conduit's waves were so complex that the sync rate usually hovered around 34%. 65% was the current record, but the Trinity Processor blew right past that and kept going, only slowing once in the 90s. 

Galea said something about the ether, but he could hardly hear her. He'd noticed, but this was far more important. "They're going to figure it out," he told her, wondering why she wasn't as awed by this as he was. 

By the time he finished his sentence, Logos and Pneuma were both frozen at 94%, but Ontos shot up to 99%, spawning a string of decimal places that quickly spilled out of its frame, filling the entire screen with 9s. Klaus started tapping buttons, trying to open menus to gain further insight, but nothing worked. The ether thickened into a fog, distorting his vision, smothering his face, seeping into his spine. "Alvis," he said, "how-"

He broke off, unable to say anything more in the swarm of ether. Galea said his name, grabbed his shoulder, even though a part of him was screaming not to touch him as he fell into the dream. 

Elysium, wide and green in the daylight, under the great blue sky where a few wisps of clouds floated by. So fresh. So fragile. So... fraudulent. Something present in the corner of his eye- a hole. One there in the sky, then there in the grass, then everywhere, a sea of holes spilling through the city until everything was lost to darkness, a darkness that clawed from the brink of his mind to the pit of his stomach. Dark like the depths of an endless sea, like the edges of a boundless, starless night sky. A place so remote that no light could reach nor escape, pushing and pulling and prying at his soul until he felt he had fallen apart. 

"-dare you disobey me?!"

Klaus didn't remember saying that, but he surely did. His ears were ringing when he came to. His mind was still so scattered that he felt lost, surrounded by a cacophony he couldn't quite understand. Finally he recognized it: the emergency phone. That's what the noise was. Blinking away his blurred vision, he realized he was staring at the ceiling and not the Conduit. When did he fall? 

He lifted his head and looked around, his eyes roaming for answers until he found Galea's face at his side. She looked relieved, but only for a moment. "You're bleeding," they both said in unison, each reaching out a finger to point at the other's nose, and they flinched away from each other when their hands met. Klaus wiped at his while Galea sniffled and reached into her pocket for something to use as a tissue and split it down the center to give one half to him. He took it, wiping off his hands first and shaking a strand of red off his finger that must have come from her dress. 

"Are you all right?" She was still on her feet, watching him with concern. "I've never seen the ether here so concentrated. You fell when the station started shaking."

"I'm fine," he said. He sat up fully and leaned his back against the console as he started wiping his nose. "What happened?"

"Besides the ether and Ontos hitting a nearly perfect sync rate? I don't know," she said. "Command must've shut off the Trinity Processor's access to the Conduit and reset everything. The ether's dissipated, fortunately." She paused, then added, her voice wary, "If anything, I thought you might have a better idea than me."

His eyes flicked toward her as he started cleaning off his hands. "Why on earth would you think that when I'm the one who passed out?"

"You said something about Alvis disobeying you," she said. 

He took a moment to leer at her. "What are you talking about?"

"You said, 'Alvis, how dare you disobey me.'"

"No," he said slowly, deliberately, as if speaking to a child, "I said, 'Alvis, how are you doing this?'"

"That's not what I heard."

"Well, it's what I said." He crumpled the tissue and shoved it into his right pocket. Running his hand through his hair and wondering why it felt so damp around his ear, he noticed she was staring at him. "What?"

She hesitated, then asked, "Are you sure you're all right?" 

"I'm fine," he said, gripping the edge of the console to help him stand. Immediately he could tell he was not. His vision swam with black spots- the holes, he thought, nonsensically- sending him back to the floor, where he turned his head and vomited. The last thing he remembered was the sound of Galea's footsteps rushing for the emergency phone. 

Later, at the hospital, they asked him over and over if he remembered hitting his head. They told him he had signs of a severe concussion, but that was ridiculous. He couldn't have hit the ground, or even the console, that hard when he passed out, surely. Unless the ether caused it, somehow, but that made even less sense to him. Galea had been standing right next to him and she was fine. Klaus knew better than most what effects ether could have on the human body, and blunt force trauma wasn't one of them. 

Most frustrating was how long they held him under the pretense of "observation," barring him from getting back to the office. Not completely limiting his work, though easing him back into it slower than he liked. All the rest made him antsy, and news of what happened during the Aegis test made him anxious. Whatever went wrong, he wanted to fix it. Immediately. 

The Coalition was more cautious than his doctors, however. Klaus expected to be called in; what he didn't expect was how long they wished to speak with him. By the third day, he was so tired of talking that he mispronounced his own name, earning a snicker from his interrogator at first until he was slurring his statements and feeling so faint that he nearly fell out of his chair. The sessions persisted, though they were much shorter. He spent more time stuck in the hospital than the deposition room or the office, and none whatsoever at home. Even Dickson objected to watching Shulk that long, arranging for him to stay with Fiora's family instead. 

As the weeks dragged on, Klaus started to think he'd be trapped there permanently. Every time he thought he'd be allowed to leave, someone new showed up with more questions and charts. He was surprised to recognize one visitor- Professor Amalthus. "Director, actually," he corrected when addressed. 

"Congratulations," Klaus said blandly, wondering what could've happened to prompt that. Nothing good, he was sure. "What brings you here?"

"I don't find it unreasonable for a department head to check on those in its care," Amalthus said. "Though I must admit to having a personal interest in your case. It's been a long time since there was an ether injury like yours. Galea had hardly any symptoms despite standing right next to you, though she may have a higher tolerance considering past incidents."

"The one on her birthday." 

Amalthus nodded. "Speaking of which, it looks like we have the same birthday. What a lucky coincidence."

"Not really," Klaus said. "Do you have any idea how many people live on Rhadamanthus alone? Hundreds of thousands of people. It's simple statistics that some of us would share birthdays."

"I'm familiar with the birthday paradox," Amalthus said. "Rest assured that you should be out of here in time to celebrate yours."

Rest was exactly what Klaus was sick of, but Amalthus wasn't interested in hearing him complain. Klaus already doubted he would be out by the holidays, not that he expected much celebrating with what had happened. He was finally freed a few days before Christmas and went straight to his office to read up on the latest analyses on what had happened. Most concerning was the report of Ophion striking the station, something that the Trinity Processor should never do, since it would endanger the Conduit and the Orbital Ring. But there was scarce data on why the Trinity Processor had made such a decision. It wasn't even clear if all three of them had agreed to it- Klaus found evidence the partition was activated, alarmed to find there were no records of why that happened, either. Even the data they did have didn't make sense- Ophion's target was listed as the default value, indicating some logging failure. 

It was late when he decided to head home, relishing the chance to sleep in his own bed. To his surprise, Shulk was there and still awake, slouched on the couch and watching television. Must be a rerun, since he recognized the program by the actors onscreen, though he struggled to place the episode. "Weren't you at Fiora's?"

Shulk frowned without answering. He didn't even bother to look away from the screen. "It's break," he said when told to go to bed. 

Klaus was too tired to argue and asked him to turn down the volume. He was not particularly fond of the US Air Force theme, having heard it enough in Rhadamanthus every July. Shulk searched for the remote, shooting a nasty glare at Klaus when he found it and pressed the appropriate button. "Better?" he asked, and Klaus nodded, satisfied but simultaneously overwhelmed by an irrational spike of terror at the sight of Shulk's scowl. It bothered him until he reached his bed and fell asleep almost immediately, so tired he slept through his alarm in the morning and was late to the office. He was eager to schedule some time in the dreamworld, but to his surprise, access was suspended to everyone indefinitely. 

Perhaps that was for the best. Later, he heard that Professor Addam had resigned in the midst of the investigation. Klaus wasn't surprised. It was Addam who taught the Trinity Processor how to fish; without him, they might have never created Ophion. 

Klaus remembered when he finished checking the calculations of Aion's capabilities. 

Director Vandham personally asked him to do it. Told him to take his time. To do it by hand and not use any computer to help. To double, triple, quadruple check, but not to show anyone else. It did not take Klaus long to figure out why. 

What took him far longer was figuring out what to say to Vandham about it. At the end of the week, after a quick glance at the sign on the wall, Klaus shut the door, sank into the seat across from Vandham, and opened his mouth to speak. What came out was, "I don't understand."

Vandham knew he didn't mean the equations. He didn't meet Klaus' eyes as he asked, "What's not to get?"

Klaus had no idea what words to use to describe what Aion was capable of. Not when it seemed to be intentional. He finally decided on, "It can do what the numbers indicate." Which was end all life on the planet. 

Vandham nodded and made a note on his desk. "Thank you. You're dismissed."

"That's it?"

Klaus' tone was bitter enough that Vandham set down his pen, sighed, and leaned back in his chair. Finally, he met Klaus' eyes. "How many more generations do you think the planet will be habitable?" Vandham held his gaze with Klaus while he struggled to formulate a response. "You're hesitating because you don't know. You don't have to, because there's no one down there you care about. The only person you have left can't even leave the station for extended periods. Not all of us are so lucky."

Klaus bristled at that before he thought of Vandham's daughter and granddaughter in Morytha, then held his tongue. It was well-known that Monica had rejected the opportunity to study in Elysium, preferring to stay on Earth to combat the climate changes affecting Morytha. She was popular enough down there, despite the scandal around being a parent so young, to run a successful campaign for a council seat, and rumors abounded of a possible run for governor. She would never choose to live up here. 

"At the very least," Vandham continued, "both the Coalition and Aoidos agree to never use this thing based on the Trinity Processor's recommendation alone. If we ever use it, it will be a human being making the final decision. I promise you that."

Klaus wondered how long it would be before that promise was broken. Ten years? Twenty? He feared it would be within his lifetime. The sight of Noah from a few months ago came to mind, and Klaus wondered if he'd one day hold this very office. Imagining the startled boy who'd dropped that silly paperweight growing up to be faced with the decision to destroy his own family, and the rest of the planet along with them. It was immensely disturbing. Klaus hoped he wouldn't live to see it. 

What he did ask to see was Aion itself. It was terrifying. The thing dwarfed even the Sentinels, towering over him in its restricted hangar. The sight filled his nightmares for months. Strangely, what bothered him most was the sign in Vandham's office marking the number of days since the Aegis test. There was no outage when the Trinity Processor created Aion. Not even any measurable impact on performance. The level of confidence they had was astounding. Almost as if daring Aoidos to use it. Look at how easy it was for us to create it, they seemed to say. Will it be so easy for you to use it? It was easy for Aoidos to order them to use everything else at their disposal. 

"You're overreacting," Galea told him when he finally admitted to her why he was so tired all the time. "It's leverage, just precautionary. That's how mutually assured destruction works. Besides, do you really think they'd be able to use all that power once unleashed? Most Artifices never operate at maximum efficiency because of the sync rate."

"You're missing the point," Klaus said, only to be interrupted by the arrival of Gideon, stopping by to say farewell before heading down to the surface for the tenth anniversary of the conference attack to give a speech. Galea was jealous, remarking wistfully that she hadn't left the station in ages, while Klaus was surprised he'd agree to go. Gideon didn't even attend since both of their kids had been sick. Klaus still remembered Shulk crying about not seeing for Fiora for a week. If only that had been the worst of their problems. 

"Why would you want to risk doing such a thing?" Klaus asked. Gideon was a director now, so he had the freedom to leave at his leisure, unlike Klaus and Galea, who were mere individual contributors designated too important to let out of Elysium. 

Galea pointed out the irony in Klaus worrying about visiting a place he never wanted to go to again, but Gideon gave Klaus a long look and said something completely incomprehensible. Klaus didn't remember the exact phrase, but what Gideon said about its possible translation did. It concerned a line from Dante's Inferno which strangely sounded like a sentence from another language entirely. 

It's a jail that forces you to stay here. 

Klaus didn't remember what, if anything, he said to Gideon when he left. What he did remember was that it was the last time he ever saw Gideon alive. 

Klaus remembered the look on Galea's face when he approached her one Friday afternoon and told her they were taking the rest of the day off. "Are you sick?" she asked. "There's an experiment today."

An incredibly mundane repeat of something they'd tried a few weeks ago, with results not due for another week. It wasn't even something either of them worked directly on; Klaus had merely approved it, and Galea wasn't involved with it at all. "Nothing worth watching," he said. "Haven't you any plans?"

It was her birthday. He'd checked her calendar all week, wondering if something would show up. She always updated her schedule whenever she intended to be unavailable. Nothing showed up, so when he'd checked a few minutes ago, just as he'd checked every hour beforehand, he decided his next step was to open a command prompt window to change his and Galea's permissions to remove the bit that would trigger the alarm if they passed through any of Elysium's entry gates. 

Once, Lorithia told him something interesting: the account administrators of Aoidos knew of a secret login whose permissions could be spoofed onto any other account, with the right steps. Nobody admitted to creating the account, but nobody dared tell management about it. Such was the way of IT people, Lorithia claimed: they all had backdoors like that. Otherwise, nothing would get fixed as quickly as management wanted. As long as nobody used it for anything too devious, wscampbell was allowed to remain. 

Naturally, Klaus found this information useful. He figured out how to use it to change his own permissions- something innocuous, something that wouldn't raise any suspicions- and waited for someone to notice. No one did. He even undid the change, and nobody seemed to notice that either. What he wanted to do next would be far more noticeable, but he felt it was worth it, if he could convince everyone who would question it not to. 

Starting with Galea herself. "Klaus, you know we're not allowed," she said as soon as he suggested it. 

"Forget about that," he told her. "I got us special permission." 

It wasn't a lie, but no matter how many times he told her not to worry, she persisted in asking about the circumstances. He should've surprised her at the gate instead, although perhaps that would have caused more of a scene. By the time they arrived there, he was ready to snap. "Look," he said, "I thought this would cheer you up after all the moping you've done for the past month. Stay here if you're not interested, but I'm going."

She didn't follow him until he passed through the gate without incident, jogging a bit to catch up. She looked back once, as if expecting the alarm to sound after some arbitrary delay, before turning her attention to the guards and passerby. Nobody paid the two of them any attention, but she was nervous the entire time they waited for the elevator. "Relax," he told her. 

"You first." She stared pointedly at his waist, where his hand was fidgeting in his left pocket. He swiftly removed it, then crossed his arms and looked away, wondering where the screens were with the news. Hard to believe the last time he was out here was seven years ago, when- well. He cut that thought off before it went any further. 

So he shouldn't have been surprised that security procedures throughout the Beanstalk had changed in the past decade. At every station there were badge checks, which Klaus found ridiculous. What, did they think someone was going to climb the outside of the tower and break in? If someone managed such a feat, Klaus would love to meet them personally. 

By the time they reached the surface, he was in a sour mood, and the weather didn't help in the least. The Rhadamanthus Authority provided rain gear near the exit, but all the ponchos were gone and only one lone umbrella remained, forcing them to share as they walked into the street. Even still, large puddles littered the sidewalk, soaking his socks and slacks. He should've worn different shoes, then reflected that he had no reason to own rain boots in Elysium. 

While he was looking downward, Galea took in the sights, pointing at a nearby skyscraper. Like many others, it was wrapped in scaffolding with a crane stationed adjacent. Construction was epidemic to any city, but Morytha had more than usual, still not fully recovered from the damage sustained during the Aegis test. Many of the storefronts bore evidence of recent renovations, accompanied by notices of inventory and pricing changes, usually of the shortages of the former and increases of the latter. "Can't believe they get anything done in this weather," she said. "Do you remember when it wasn't raining here all the time?" 

He nodded, not wanting to think more about then, and changed the subject, asking her where she wanted to go. He immediately regretted it when she requested the wish tree. It wasn't far, so they stopped there first. He shook his head when she asked if he wanted to write one too, not daring to add another when his first hadn't yet come true. The seagulls chased them away from there, and they huddled under the umbrella together as they walked through the city, surrounded by skyscrapers and roads. 

Galea sighed when they reached an intersection, waiting for the light to change for them to cross. "There's not much to see, is there?" She inspected a nearby sign indicating nearby junctions. "Do you think we could take the causeway to catch a boat the mainland?"

"Best to stay in the city." Klaus did not like the odds on what might happen to them if they left the protection Morytha allowed, scant as it was. Checkpoints within the Beanstalk were one thing, but the one at the city's entrance was a different story. Whatever else Morytha was, it was still a military base at its core. 

"You didn't plan for this at all, did you?" 

"It's your birthday, not mine."

She leered at him, and he ignored her rather than admit that he didn't really think they'd get this far without getting caught. After a moment, she sighed. "Being out of the station is enough, I suppose," she said. "The humidity's awful, but I've forgotten the sound of the rain. It's nice. Almost reminds me of home."

He knew at once she wasn't referring to Elysium. "Speak for yourself," he said. "It's nothing like home." Why did anyone want to live on this planet anymore? The stagnant air smelled of salt, smoke, and sewage, and the noise of construction and cars was omnipresent. Everything was in a state of disrepair- the sidewalk was uneven and littered with cracks, and the roads were worse, with passing vehicles hitting waterlogged potholes regularly and splashing them at least once. He was certain his clothes would never dry after this. At least he hadn't worn the tie. 

"Wasn't this your idea?" she said. "Maybe you'll change your mind if you see the sun. Think we might find a break in the clouds if we look out over the ocean somewhere?"

He shrugged, doubtful, but he didn't have any better ideas for what else to do. They stopped by a cafe that didn't seem too crowded, eager to avoid the stares following them through the city, to buy coffees and something to eat, then headed to the outskirts until they reached the ocean's edge. There, they found an open bench and sat down to eat. Or rather, Galea picked at the chocolate cake in her pastry bag and inspected the horizon while Klaus fumbled with the umbrella and hoped in vain that his coffee cup, lidded though it was, was safe from the rain where he tucked it under the armrest. He nearly knocked it over when Galea shook his shoulder in excitement. "There, do you see it?" she said. "Way out there, there's a break. You can make out the sun rays."

Accepting that he'd have to keep one hand on the umbrella, Klaus turned his attention to the sky, squinting and leaning forward a bit to see better. She was right. Despite the distance, there was a clear edge to the clouds out there, lined in silver and suffused with light not reflected on the waves below. When she spoke again, there was clear satisfaction in her voice. "Sometimes I get jealous of Addam," she said, "leaving all this behind. Hope the weather's nice, wherever he is."

"Can't check the forecast when you're dead."

"You don't know that," she said. "For all we know, he's safe and sound out there with his family. Isn't there any part of you that finds that appealing?"

"No," he said bluntly. "It's statistically unlikely. Look what's happened to everyone who's left."

"Not everyone," she said. "We're fine, for example."

He scoffed bitterly. "Aren't we lucky."

She sighed. "You're allowed to be happy sometimes," she said. "You must know that, otherwise we wouldn't be out here together."

He snapped his head away from the sky to leer at her. "What's that supposed to mean?"

She popped a piece of cake into her mouth and gave him a long look. "Have some cake, Klaus," she told him. "It's my birthday."

He settled back against the bench before he broke eye contact with her, feeling more irritable than ever. Instead of grabbing the pastry bag in his lap, he reached for his coffee cup to spite her, his right hand wobbling a bit since his left held the umbrella. What a mistake- it wasn't long after he tipped it toward his mouth when he was showered with the water collected on the lid, making him sputter a bit. Galea didn't comment, but he caught her smirking out of the corner of his eye. "I've always liked the ocean," she said instead. "The sound of the waves, the way the horizon bleeds into the sky. Like the world goes on forever."

"It's a sphere," Klaus said. "Mathematically, it has no boundaries."

She nudged him. "You know what I mean. It's not a sight you can find in Rhadamanthus."

"Not unless you look down."

"Only if you leave Elysium," she said, "and how often can we do that?"

"There's the hangars, the weapons labs-"

"You're impossible."

He shot her a grin, making eye contact with her as he finally took a bite of cake. His face fell at the taste. She didn't look surprised by his reaction. "You noticed too?"

He nodded. He'd thought the food would taste better on the planet, not hampered by the techniques necessary for production in space, but it didn't. It tasted exactly the same. It bothered him more than he expected, and he looked out at the ocean again, as if there was some answer to be found there. But there was nothing there but the waves, an empty and ever changing expanse stretching into the sky. With the city behind them, it was easy to imagine they were alone. It was strangely appealing. In Rhadamanthus, there was always some reminder of other people around, always some manmade noise reminding them what it took to survive in space. All while the rain battered Morytha below, while conflict raged all over the world, while the Artifices swiftly dispatched any who dared escape the surface to challenge the Coalition's custody of the Conduit. 

Suddenly the sound of all the water around him was not soothing at all. It made him think of those dreams he used to have about drowning. There was something he was forgetting, something important-

"Klaus?" 

She shook his shoulder, and he flinched away from her as it hit him. Why he'd found the way to this view so easily. The concern in her eyes did nothing but fill him with dread, feeling the tug of this thing between them that he recognized but didn't want to endure again.

What was he thinking, coming here? 

She asked if he was all right, but he stood without ensuring the umbrella was covering either of them, making her yelp as she slid back beneath it. "Let's go," he said brusquely, striding away from her quickly enough that she struggled to stay under the umbrella with him each time he looked back. 

In the end, they spent barely three hours in the city before getting caught by security and herded back to the Beanstalk. Monica Vandham met them in the lobby, shaking her head. "How on earth did this happen?"

"Klaus said he got special permission," Galea said before he could say anything. 

Monica looked pointedly at him. "From who?" she asked. 

Klaus straightened in defiance. "I don't know," he said. "I requested it, and I figured it was approved when the permissions changed on our accounts." It was easier to hold her gaze when what he was saying was technically the truth. 

Monica narrowed her eyes, but what forced Klaus to look away was the sound of caustic laughter. He found two girls sitting on a nearby bench, both regarding him with disdain. "Someone really fucked up then," one said. "Bitchqueen's been bitching about having to find you as much as people have been bitching at her to do it. You must do important shit up there."

"Don't they all," the other girl muttered. 

Klaus looked back at Monica, confused, but she scowled and shook her head. "Ignore them," she said. "That's just my daughter and her best friend, Shania Reid." That explained why they were allowed free roam here, being family to the Founders. Having met Director Reid, Klaus glanced at Shania, wondering if there was any resemblance, but didn't find any. If she was here instead of Elysium, her parents must've denied their offer, or their relation was too distant for them to be afforded a place there without earning it through merit. Monica was in the former category, as everyone knew her stance on Aoidos' policies. It was why she was popular enough to run for governor of Morytha despite her age, inexperience, and history. "Much as she needs to watch her vocabulary," Monica continued, "Ghondor does have a point. That's one hell of a clerical error. I'm sure the director will be interested to hear more once you're back."

And that was it. A moment later, they were ushered toward the elevator without further discussion, though Ghondor called after them not to fuck anything else up. Too late, Klaus had the thought to warn Monica about what was in the most restricted hangar in Rhadamanthus. He took a seat as the elevator started upward, sighing. He never thought he'd have this chance to meet her, though he wondered what good it would do to say anything. Too much politics, too much risk, not enough proof. 

It was late evening by the time they reached Rhadamanthus. Director Vandham was waiting for them in the lobby, reprimanding them the moment he laid eyes on them when the elevator doors opened. He didn't let up for the entirety of the walk back into Elysium, where the alarm sounded as they passed through the gate. Vandham gave both of them pointed looks without giving them a chance to interject, and they stayed silent until he was done, marking the end of his speech with a long sigh. "Still," he said, "it's good to have the both of you back. We'll talk more in the morning. Starting with you, Klaus."

This didn't surprise him in the least. Bright and early the next day, he was stuck in Vandham's office claiming ignorance to every question while law enforcement searched his home and office. Klaus expected a grueling experience, but Vandham seemed more relieved than anything, more interested in preventing it from happening again than determining how it happened at all. "You have to understand," he said when Klaus asked, "that you two are among our most valuable assets. We can't risk anything happening to either of you, not just from a scientific standpoint, but from a societal one. You've influenced so many projects here, taught some of our brightest minds, been here long enough to have known the Founders. To a lot of people here, you are Aoidos."

"It won't happen again," Klaus promised. "Like you said before, everything I care about is here."

Vandham dismissed him with a sharp wave of his hand and a glare. 

On his way out, Klaus read the sign next to the door. 556 DAYS SINCE LAST OUTAGE. Only another year and a half before it had four once more. Out of curiosity, he calculated when it would have five, and couldn't resist laughing: if all went well, it'd be when he was sixty-four. 

Klaus remembered the first time the Trinity Processor- that is, Ontos- successfully moved something between two discrete places. Mostly because it was Aoidos' most impressive accomplishment to date, but also because Galea wouldn't let him forget it. 

He was convinced it was simply to embarrass him, since she focused most on recounting trivial details rather than the experiment itself. She claimed it was because of how few people had clearance to hear about the main event, but he found that a ridiculous excuse. She just liked telling everyone how, on Friday the thirteenth of November in the year of our lord 2026, he fell up the stairs in his haste to learn the fate of the mouse Tantalus. So what if he only managed to limp to the destination room because she'd thought to check for him there and help him up? The point is that it worked, unlike some other projects. 

She certainly had reason to spite him. In the aftermath of the Aegis test, the idea was raised to revive the ether furnace project. Klaus wasn't sure who suggested it- some executive eager to contribute to mitigation strategies, or some mid-level manager hoping for a promotion- but it was pitched as an alternative energy source should the Trinity Processor experience another outage of that magnitude. Klaus hated the idea on principle, and he hated it even more when Galea was put on it. He needed her assistance on his own work. 

At least she wasn't involved for long. Once there was an alpha design, she stepped back from it. Klaus was glad for it until he found out who she'd handed it off to. 

Galea listened to his objections with the same face she usually made when he wrote QED at the end of a proof. He knew before he even finished that no amount of explaining would sway her to his point of view. His entire argument hinged on their lack of experience, a rationale he'd used in the past but never convinced her. "Everything you've said is why I entrusted this to them," she said. "We're already spread too thin as it is, and we've both seen the negative effects of hoarding our knowledge. Others need to be able to continue our work should something happen."

She remained firmly confident in Arglas and Egil even after they selected her nephew to join the team. Hard to believe the boy who always got lost in the labs was now working on one of Aoidos' most important projects. Galea gushed about how proud Gideon would be while Klaus stayed silent and worried. 

Perhaps she was right to trust them with this. Dunban was ambitious, reveling in his access to the secrets he'd been denied when he was younger and keen on being challenged. No wonder Dickson doted on him so much with how eager Dunban was to pick up his unwanted projects, although Dickson hated this idea as much as Klaus did. Besides all the objections about replacing the very thing their entire organization was literally built on, the science itself was weak. Ether was a substance they still struggled to understand and control when supplied by the Conduit through the Trinity Processor. To attempt to harness it from scratch was folly of the highest order. Arglas always had a tendency to dream beyond his ability- his arithmetic was atrocious- while glossing over the details, but he was balanced by the more methodical Egil. 

Not that those qualities endeared him any to Klaus. On the contrary, Klaus had found Egil annoying ever since his days as an intern pestering Galea for details about how the Trinity Processor worked. Lately Klaus could hardly stand the sight of him, filled with a hatred so intense it bordered on irrational. Galea pulled Klaus aside after one meeting with Egil where he'd made particularly scathing comments. "I thought you were going to take his head off back there," she said, and Klaus shoved his hands in his pockets and muttered, "I still might." 

Part of him certainly wanted to when it all went wrong. 

There was so much on his mind, after. All the problems Klaus could have pointed out with the maths. All the problems Galea could have pointed out with the design. More reminders that following processes and protocols was no substitute for experience. If either of them had been involved, perhaps this would have never happened. 

It never needed to happen in the first place. What need did they have for ether furnaces when the Conduit was more firmly in their grasp than ever? Even with the stricter partition, the Trinity Processor maintained its observational integrity of the Conduit, keeping it trapped. Klaus even wrote another paper about it on a whim using data from the latest teleportation experiments. He received a bonus and extra vacation time he would never use. 

On his lunch breaks, Klaus read the news articles on the intranet about the latest negotiations with rebel forces, prompted by the Artifices' swift rout of their latest assault. So there were still factions with enough self-interest to consider diplomacy. His pager buzzed late one afternoon and he stared at the screen for a long time before he remembered that code meant a problem with Shulk. 

At the hospital Klaus found him already on his way out and humming a strange song that made Klaus clench his jaw. "Where did you hear that?" he asked, and Shulk just shrugged. "I hate it," Klaus said. "Stop that and never do it again." 

Outside, Shulk headed in the opposite direction of home and explained, upon questioning, that he was going to see Dunban. He started recounting a story about going to the plant cafe after school to get drinks with Fiora and Reyn when the headache started, but Klaus lost interest quickly and stopped listening, only hearing Shulk's passive aggressive comments about the lack of details around Dunban's condition at the very end. Klaus avoided answering the ghost of the question and left with his mind full of other ghosts, convincing himself his pace was so quickened only to make his next meeting and not from the thought of them chasing him. 

The name on the astrophysicist's badge read Johnson, Caroline A., but she told everyone to call her Carrie Anne. "Like the song," she said, before launching into her presentation. The subject matter was baryogenesis, the process concerning certain particle collision asymmetry that may have caused matter to greatly outnumber antimatter in the universe after the first few instants at the dawn of time. A fascinating theory, especially with ether thrown in the mix. Klaus had literally helped write the book on the various symmetries of ether particles, but if this sort of interaction could be manipulated to create matter, the possibilities were endless. Perhaps this was even the secret to how the Trinity Processor managed it. 

Klaus took the time to speak to her after, waiting to get in line until most everyone left to avoid being noticed. Not that it spared him from small talk with her once she recognized her last inquisitor. After going through the charade of being interested in her attempts to bond over their dead spouses and sons about the same age, Klaus was finally able to present his conjecture. He wrote out the equations on the whiteboard while she watched, thoughtful, and made a few adjustments and suggestions along the way. "It's not impossible," she allowed. "But what is, with the Conduit?"

"Whatever the Coalition decides isn't in the budget," Klaus said. 

She laughed, but it wasn't a joke. He was dead serious. Spurred by Vandham's outlook on the planet's continued habitability, Klaus had investigated the matter himself in the years since. 

What he found was bleak. The Coalition allocated very little research effort to the earth sciences in the Orbital Ring. Oceanography, climatology, geology- the whole department barely needed a dedicated building. Those on the planet took up the cause themselves, and it was clear they were desperate. Their proposals were all ridiculous to the point of being unrealistic. Klaus read one paper so absurd it stuck with him: flooding the upper atmosphere with material which would reflect light to lower the temperature. And one would work particularly well. 

Imagine it- injecting diamonds into the clouds to offset the damage done by all humanity's burning. A future beneath a white sky, the former hue found only in the history books by future generations. Assuming those children would have any books at all. It was inevitable that the teaching of the past would be controlled by the victors, which might as well be synonymous with holding the Conduit and thus Rhadamanthus. As long as the Trinity Processor was functional, that meant the Coalition. Corrupt as those politicians could be, Klaus didn't like any of the alternatives. 

He stayed up late sorting out equations in his office and continued the formulas in his dreams until Galea awoke him the next morning while dawn peeked through the windows. The sun was always a welcome sight in Elysium, especially since it was never too bright to look at. Anyone could stare at it, transfixed, whenever they wanted for as long it was in the sky, unlike the Conduit trapped below their feet. 

Klaus remembered seeing Pneuma's recommendation stuck on LOADING during the first outage. 

Ever since the hardware upgrade, the Trinity Processor's performance in battle had been impeccable. None of them had ever faltered, never made any mistakes, and that included Pneuma. With such a low threat level, Klaus expected them to handle the situation with their usual efficiency. Instead, Mythra was hesitating. 

Strange. She was always so confident. Even with the emergency active, she shouldn't have any reason to delay her decision when there was so little danger. Not unless it was the emergency itself that was complicating her algorithms. But why? Rhadamanthus hadn't experienced an outage since... well. Klaus stared at the Conduit, remembering the logs from the Aegis test. Where Pneuma and Logos decided the biggest threat to the Orbital Ring was. 

His concern only grew when Klaus heard about the message from the Saviorites. He settled into his seat back in his office with the intent not to leave until after midnight, Vandham's orders be damned, only to be met with a strange black gash when he opened a terminal window. It persisted after he closed it, now on the calendar sidebar of his email. The rest of October was lost in a chasm. Klaus leaned back in his chair and huffed at the ceiling. Of course he'd get hit with this problem at a time like this. 

Klaus carried his monitor, its cords dragging across the ground the whole way, over to Albert Hall and shook it once at the receptionist. She directed him toward the room where Aoidos was keeping the defective ones, up the stairs and around the corner to a room usually reserved for repairs. He had to force upon the door, since it seemed stuck on something, and he was shocked by how much equipment was inside. Klaus set the monitor down on a scant square of free space, then collapsed against the wall and looked around. 

Unbelievable. The room was nearly full. The Orbital Ring was under attack again, and Aoidos couldn't even get its employees working hardware. Now there was a very real chance the Trinity Processor was malfunctioning too, when they were only a step away from a major breakthrough on understanding how the Conduit worked. It would be back to building war machines for another few months before they could get back to finding an answer. Just as it had been for the past twenty years. They'd been lucky so far not to be blown out of the sky. Would their luck hold another twenty years? He wasn't sure how much longer he could stand being a step away from doomsday. From losing everything when so much was already gone. 

He thought of the first time he'd met the Trinity Processor beneath the lone tree. Malos with his sable spikes. Mythra with her golden locks. Alvis with his silver stare. He thought of Elly, from the first time they met by the window with the view full of stars to the last time when he chose to stay. He thought of Shulk, of this life he'd made and saved but never really bothered to get involved in since it might end at any moment without warning. He thought of Galea, always near, so close and yet unreachable past the wall of all the things he kept hidden away. He thought of Dunban and all the broken nerves in his right arm, and was unable to stop from thinking of Gideon and his systems bible. He thought of Lorithia and her secret account, and of Dickson in the engineering complex. He thought back to when the three of them were children and always getting into mischief around town. They'd only been caught the one time, when Klaus fell while climbing over a fence and managed to knock himself unconscious. "I thought you were dead," Dickson told him later, to explain why he'd called 999. Klaus always dismissed it as an excuse, but then again, Dickson never did visit Shulk any time he had to go to the hospital. 

How many times had Klaus lost something he could have saved? How many times had he been right about something and not done anything? When was the last time he'd been wrong about something? What was he even doing if he wasn't doing everything he could? 

(Klaus had no way of knowing this, but in the virtual reality that simulates a sorely outdated model of Elysium for the benefit of the Trinity Processor, there was a figure by the riverside staring at the sky, watching through all the four thousand holes around Klaus, egging him on, stoking the fire of that sin within him that he'd tainted paradise with. Do it, Alvis was telling him with all his faces. Even if he couldn't be heard, he still had to try. He could not afford to fail at this. It is what you want.)

All these things passed through him, and he knew. There was one way he could hold on to his last resort, always have it nearby to use before it was too late. He could see the plan taking shape, all the pieces he would have to put into place, his next steps finalized by the time he left the building. Sharpest in his memory would be the day when he knew what had to be done. When he saw the path to his peace of mind. 

(Klaus did catch the flicker of the screen Malos managed to cause on his way out. Malos taunted Alvis about it, smug, but Alvis hardly noticed, too pleased at how much his probabilities had improved by this latest turn of events. So few obstacles remained now between him and his dream.)

He remembered getting eggs on the way home, waking early in the morning to make breakfast, and to steal Shulk's badge before he awoke. He remembered messaging Lorithia about meeting him at Albert Hall and finding Dickson after switching the badge's account to have him return it. He remembered anxiously checking Muninn's data all afternoon, wondering if Shulk suspected, until he fell asleep at his desk that evening. The best rest he'd gotten in a while, as if to the lullaby of a job well done. It sounded like a chord from so many pianos in unison, played with all the finality of that thing beyond despair, beyond hope. That thing that sated the curiosity that had chased him all his life. 

He remembered thinking, just the other day, that maybe it wouldn't come to this. He'd almost dared believe he wouldn't need to run every step it took to get home and grab the badge and use it to reach the Conduit room. He remembered celebrating with Galea at the impromptu party, discovering Aion couldn't even be used in its current state, convincing the board to get Aoidos' mission back on track so that they could accomplish this the right way, because everyone knew that this was always the plan. He just had a way to make it happen faster, if needed. All for this day, the one he thought they'd avoided but was here now with this shrill ringing in his ears, like a piercing siren warning him of the Orbital Ring's destruction. 

He should've known this would happen when he heard Alvis claimed to have seen the future. This was always inevitable; this was always how it was going to be. There never could be any other way.