… I fell in love.
I heard about it
(bit-by-bit, bit-by-bit)
I heard about it
(bit-by-bit, bit-by-bit)
I heard about it, no
(bit-by-bit, bit-by-bit)
Bon Iver - "666 ʇ", 22, A Million

—

This is my third exorcism. Charlie's hands are on the dials of the kit, steady, rippled with veins, unflinching. I'm opposite him across the table, tracing out the stencilled dotted lines on the baking paper, trying to concentrate - or not to concentrate - on the thing in the jar.
The humming in the air is not from the apparatus but from my lips as I vocalise my control mantra. The content is less important than the intonation; syllables must be low, soft and clear; the sigil lines can only modulate the thing in the jar so much without the conscious direction of human will, best applied through extension of human voice.
"Ur … aher … evan," I chant, "Olibi … thy name … "
A wincing. The thing in the jar convulses, luminscent coral green tissue-paper flicker-flap unveiling, and a spark flies from the baking paper. "Fuck!", I go, and I try to refocus, to bring the pattern in - but then the mantra is already broken and my hands go on without me and the circuit is complete before it is complete - in a flash the thing in the jar dissolves prematurely into a million field lines, rippling and exploding into the leads like a spectral miscarriage. Immediately Charlie wrenches the dials down and yanks the wires from the jar. The energy in the jar dissipates into the room, and I smell the all-too-familiar tang of botched discharge - burnt metal and ash and lemons.
Charlie hands me a fresh sheet of baking paper. "Again."
The AAFM is an old model, salvaged from one of the earlier failed prototypes, its only saving grace being that it fits on the kitchen table. The full ones are the size of small fridges, suspended around head level from thin wires, self-discharging and self-cycling. For the training kit, each botched exorcism necessitates a manual discharge instead. So while I replace the sheet and wipe away the ash, Charlie busies himself with sparking the thaum capacitors, disconnecting them from their cigar-shaped plugs and tapping each sharply by the rear on the edge of the table. Each makes a sound like a dropped penny as the invisible energies escape (invisible to the naked eye, but with the goggles, there would have been the distinctively clear silver-aurora puff of neutral thaumic discharge). He lays them out in a row on the table when he's done, and one by one fits them back into the kit, click-click-click. Then he dabs the conductive gel onto the pads and sticks them back onto the jar, three on each side, with an extra squeeze to make sure the suction holds.
Re-rendering the ghost is easier. Charlie flips two switches on the side of the kit corresponding to the training presets and the jar glows back to life from the pads inwards, shadow-flicker thaumic energies mimicking standard-issue Type-A ectoplasm to a tee. If I touched the jar now, I would feel an almost imperceptible coolness; they say your breath formed smoke in the heart of the house. Charlie places his hands back on the dials, tweaking the amperages and voltages and casperages ever so slightly, and the thing in the jar shifts into focus, a floating, swirling, neon-green hankerchief. Charlie arches his thick brows at me to continue.
I take a deep breath, and put pencil to paper again. Like before, I follow the trace with my mind, taking in the edges of the energies, sensing the ineffable butterfly-stain pattern through my fingertips and breath and spine, visualising the thing in the jar in its full Technicolour ARI glory - but at the same time, not really visualising, in same way one sees dim stars in the night sky, or the tip of one's nose. This time, something catches that hadn't before, and in the sweet sweet moment of clarity that follows (Charlie calls this "the flow") the sigil connects and connects at the same time doubling over loop-the-loop and shazam! The thing in the jar disappears into a perfect silent harmony under the destructive interference of the traced-and-tailored sigil. Success!
Unfortunately, I seem to have lost the ability to move. The flow is done, spent through, but it sticks to me like seaweed, holding my nerves in place and I find myself frozen in a brief awkward catatonia. Help, I mouth. Charlie grins and carefully removes the pencil from my trembling hand. Thirty seconds later when I'm composed, he pats me on the cheek and hands me the pencil again.
"Good job, Mol," he drawls. "Now, one more time."

—

We share a drink on the rooftop. The moor stretches before us; the only landmarks here are the hills, and the hut, and the house. The view of the last has been blocked off behind us by a blue striped tarp draped between two of the comms antenna. Duct-taped onto the tarp is a laminated notice, handwritten in green marker: RULE #1.
Below that: DO NOT SPEAK OF THE JOB.
And then, in smaller caps: THE JOB IS DONE. SILENCE IS GOLDEN.
Kenny Rogers wafts from the radio, his voice layered with static. We've got tonight, he coughs. Don't think about tomorrow. It's okay, because none of us are.
I'm cross-legged on the floor with a shandygaff. The chairs are for the vets. Jo prefers to stand, gazing at the sunset; black hair cropped close, a face worn so smooth you can barely tell she's forty-five, she surveys the horizon through her horn-rimmed spectacles with bottle in hand. This is her land, her eminent domain: no one disturbs Mother Jo on the rooftop. Downstairs, she is all smiles and band-aids and apologetic chop-chop efficiency; up here, she is queen.
Jorge is Colombian, and isn't drinking either. He only touches the proper stuff, the fire-water which lies snug in a smuggled crate at the bottom of the pantry. Anything less would be a travesty. Jorge's alcoholic habits are the stuff of myth, held with all the power of a haughty demigod - that is, sparingly, but in magnificent quantities. I've seen him down a quart of fire-water in a night. We kept him away from the sigils the next day, in case the sparks set his skin alight. That same man now lounges easily on the deckchair beside me with pink lemonade in his cup holder and my knitting needles in his hands, piecing together something with orange leaves around the edges. I think he fancied me, once, when I first arrived -though Jo and the rigours of the job soon took care of that.
There's Rao, pensive in his armchair, dust already gathering on his beard. He looks to be a hundred, turning a thousand, but Jo swears he's only fifty-three. Woman's intuition, she claims. Rao drinks the same as Jo, but in sips so sparing and small you could hardly tell he's moved at all. He stares into the sun, fingers tightly gripped on the edge of his chair, and his mind is a million light years away. Jo tells me that behind the vacant gaze is implacability itself, that the man has the mind of a mountain, and I do not disbelieve her when I look into his eyes. Hell hath no fury to scathe him. Recreation fazes him not. But he's part of the family, and family means tradition, so he's here with us too - if only in form, and not in soul.
And old Charlie Carrington, the legend, slouched like a lion in the silver chair behind us, the mage from Mississippi, cigarillo clamped hard between his teeth billowing smoke and dreams and more, the blue tarp framing his great shaggy gray mane from behind, a tapestry fit for a vagabond king. He says he was born with Rao in same batch as the ECRG's first mystics, made a whole man anew from sigils and psychotropics in the bowels of Site-20. At least there's much more of him left than Rao, and he's a better teacher to boot. In his head is every cantrip, pattern, chant and spell known to the Foundation's repertoire, and a few more beyond that. Most are of his own invention. Everything we know, we learnt from him. And - thanks be to God - he's here with us, still.
The new guy, however, isn't here. Jorge figures that he's probably writing and rewriting his notes in his room. Jo simply rolls her eyes. I think he's new, and a stickler - and leagues above our pay grade too, going by the fresh new boots and hiking gear Jo found him in when he arrived, scowling at the mud on his knees. I think he'll settle in, given the time.
Charlie reckons he's not here because Foundation protocol forbids him from drinking on the job. Technically, it forbids us too. But first day here, first thing you learn: you're one of us now. You're ECRG - you're the kooks and the cranks and the madmen, the twitchy witches with the toys. And out here, on the moor, with the nearest site a whole half-day and a world away by battered white National Parks van, you start to appreciate any company, any company at all, because the kooks and the cranks and the madmen are what you got. So it's the hut, now, not Provisional Site-2696, and, more importantly, it's also home. So balls to operational protocol, and it's drinks on the roof till sundown.

—

Training again. The image is the key, Charlie says. Creating the image is one thing but the picturing of it - the holding of it in your head - that's where the magic happens. Magic, in its purest form, lines of field visible to Kirlian transistor coils and third eyes alike. That's all it boils down to: lines of field. In most cases, the baseline human has no need for the techniques of meditation and visualisation and channeling. But Charlie and Jo and Rao and Jorge and I do not work with most cases. Our case is the house on the moor - the house numbered SCP-2696 - our case is holding the lady within, and the lady within must never be let to leave.
My image is the screen. One year ago to the day, Charlie showed me my first aetheric resonance image in a dusty theatre at the bottom of Site-88. It was salvaged technology, piano-sized beige plastic carapace and multicoloured wires and dials, and it had been set up with a jet-black dish blossoming from the top, pointing straight above.
"Watch very carefully," he said, turning the machine on. In front of me, a television screen flares, and in the darkened room I squint and see numerous floating shadows, teal and white and grey, floating in the deep. "Footsteps of souls," I marveled. I moved my hand over the jet-black receiver. The display rippled with white like the froth of lakeside waves.
The method is such: first, I clear my mind. Then, I dredge this scene from memory and expand the screen until it fills my vision. On the screen I see myself and project field lines onto the image of myself, mapping the curves half by guesswork and half by rule-of-thumb. The colours I choose are teal and white, and once the curves are set in their polarity then I can begin channeling.
Of course, the curves aren't real. Channeling is not a process of conjuration or sorcery. What it is are a set of techniques created to amplify, strengthen, and manipulate the effects of thaumic phenomena. Jo says that somewhere within the Foundation's ranks are true practitioners of the craft, real wizards and witches, Type-Blues, their existence closely guarded by security clearance and pain of death. I don't disbelieve her, but it doesn't give me any less reason to practice. There's always something romantic of the idea of having a fighting chance against the unknown. Besides, the aptitude for channeling itself is also a closely-guarded secret, and fewer than five qualify for Theta-77 training a year. Therein lies our grim unspoken creed: if not us, then who?
So when the lady awakens and the alarm rings and the meters flare it's time for us to rig up and go, with patterns etched on placards by the hundreds in every vest pocket and sleeve. Some are mechanics' tools; others are workings, to dispel and defend; more are sigil batteries, to fuel the workings; most comprise the sinks and dissipators and aether recyclers just to make sure Charlie and Jo and Rao and Jorge don't explode into smoke the moment they subvocalise their words of power. When the lady in the house awakens we need every advantage we can engineer. Push her back, beyond the doorway, buy enough time for a machine to be repaired or a working to be cast to seal her away for another season or more.
A dozen exorcisms in and I think I've gotten the hang of banishing the thing in the jar. Fifty more and I might not even need the baking paper any more. On the job, Charlie subvocalises, subgestures, pictures workings resolving into spells and fights the monsters with his mind. That's the goal - once I can do that with the thing in the jar, he says, then I might remotely be prepared to survive.
Last night, I emptied the jar in two minutes flat, flow unbreaking from start to end. A new personal best - Charlie was proud. Small goals, small wins. And for now that is enough.

—

June fifth, midnight-thirty. My first breach event. Much to Charlie's chagrin, I'd barely only mastered subvocalising my workings, and only two at a time, so I'd have been useless in any regard. That's how I find myself crammed into the control center - really a three-by-two metre space in the basement of the hut lined to the brim with video screens and oscilloscopes and readouts and dials, all connected to a monstrous bundle of thaumically-shielded TV wires winding all the way upwards to the roof.
The new guy is squeezed in next to me tight against my shoulder, all one-point-five metres of twitchy bones and contained precision and inexplicably still dressed in immaculate lab attire, white coat and laced shoes and all - it's three in the morning, for Christ's sake! And how?
I don't rightly know how the monitoring setup works, myself. That's what the new guy is for, with angry black cables flowing out of the headset fixed onto his face like a vise, his fingers flying across the dials, conjuring images onto the screens in dizzying false-colour flashes - 1, 2, 3, switch; 1, 2, 3, switch. I ask him what's going on. He ignores me, hitting a series of switches on my left, then switches something on his headset, letting it unfold and slide up above his forehead.
"Right now, that is team A," he intones, pointing at the largest screen in the center, where dull green figures crouch against a maelstrom of rainbow. I recognise the silhouettes: Charlie in the front, with his shaggy mane tied up in a ponytail behind his helmet, clad head to toe in protective plating etched with the ninety-nine names of God, barely legible in the flickering. Jorge, further behind, hunching under the weight of his toolbox. Both men are trembling. White light blazes from both of their hands, snaking upwards to hot spots at their armpits, waist, and thighs - no doubt from their overclocked sigil batteries. Ahead of them hangs a Mark-IV AAFM, cloaked in its own flickering light, pale yellow sparks arcing ominously across its symmetrical geodesic shell.
"Carrington, Vasquez - device ell-oh-one is just down the hall. I've amplified oh-two and twelve to compensate. Expect heavy turbulence." The new guy flicks another switch, showing the shadow of the empty stairwell. "Simos, Rao - no sign of dash-one. Stand by."
I gulp. "How bad is it?"
The new guy taps a dial twice, and the big screen flashes to another pattern - this time recognisable as a 2-D ARad render overlaid onto the floor plan of the house. Multicoloured field lines emanate from the center, dissolving at the edges into spikes of deep violet that crash into each other, and fade mutually into black.
At one corner of the first floor, however, the rainbow escapes, propagating into starbursts of yellow that arc across the screen, looping around and bursting into the violet, staining it an ugly brown. "HF leak," he mutters. "Thaum capacitor cycling loss in ell-oh-one. Symmetry is broken in three places. They can fix it, but they do not have long." His right hand gestures to another screen, where a waveform shivers taut like breaking thread.
"Is there … something I can do here?"
"No." He brings his headset back down, and flips the left switches again in a different pattern. The screens flicker back to the psychedelic overlays, field patterns and projections, 1-2-3 switch, 1-2-3 switch - but I notice the feed of Charlie and Jorge at my corner of the setup, their shadows striding into the storm.
"Thanks," I whisper, even though I know he can't hear me through his torrent of thaumic data.
As if in response, the comms crackle again, from Charlie: "It's no problem, doc." Then, shortly later: "I see it. We're going in."
"Oh-two and twelve at maximum," reports the new guy. My screen flares to white. Five seconds of silence. Then, crackling, in Jo's voice this time - and I swear I can taste the fear beneath her calm.
"Charles," she breathes, "she's here."
And the screens explode into fireworks.
In the blizzard forming on the screen in front of me, I see Charlie raise his right hand, his left hand clenching Jorge's. The interference grows worse, threatening to blot out the feed entirely, and before it goes out I can see that both of them are screaming.
The new guy swivels into action. His hands fly over the controls, flickering between screens reflexively now, and his headset starts going off like a Geiger counter in heat - clack-clack-clack-CLACK - no doubt cycling through the massive wave of data flooding the ARIs. I smell burnt metal and lemons. The feeds are cycling faster now, flickering from spectrum to spectrum, far too fast for my eyes to register.
Abruptly, the new guy speaks - with preternatural calm, from a million miles away - "Redirecting thaumic gradient. Team B, fire on target position." From somewhere, I hear the roar of whirring discs and crackling sparks as more than two hundred field modifiers strain under the astronomical load.
He caps off his concerto with a final flourish of tweaks and flicks, ending (almost as an afterthought) with an arpeggio over the left switches once again. The rainbow storm on the main screen ceases, and switches to a dull brown shadow-show.
I can barely make out the front door of the house - but the feed's been dimmed, exceedingly so, like watching a sandstorm through sunglasses. The double doors have been thrown wide open, and in the light that emerges I see two figures - Rao and Jo - flickering like dead leaves in a campfire.
Jo's down into a staggered high kneel, body hunched over, hands clenched into tight fists. Rao stands tall against the storm, feet at an angle, his right hand held out in front of him, open palm facing the doorway. Faint light streams from Jo's hands; it forms rivulets of field lines that blow backwards into the wind - then bend, weakly at first, then strongly, into a steady trickle against the flow, straight into the shoulder of Rao's right arm.
And in front of them, something coming down the stairs, something with the head of a woman and the body of a shade, fractal brilliance peeking over the threshold, burning pure white even through the new guy's filtered feed. I see her two eyes open like magnesium flares, see the terrible mouth gape vast, vast with unmodulated ARad, and Jo is instantly thrown onto her haunches, nearly breaking her connection with Rao. Rao, on the other hand, looks to all the world like a man encountering a slight breeze. His hand remains outstretched, poised, ready.
Jo is yelling something I can't hear. From the way her jaw moves, it looks a lot like the word: "NOW."
The lady stumbles towards the open door, bleeding madness and light.
Rao shakes. His body rocks back on its heels.
And the entire screen rends inwards as the combined energies of the house are channeled into the layers and layers of workings running parallel in Jo's head, sparking her scalp tattoos, blistering along her aura until Rao himself roars into action, transforming before my eyes into a phoenix, a waterfall, ten thousand points of light that blast from his fingertips into the open door of the house, striking the lady straight in the center of mass. The beam blossoms upon impact as the field overcompensates, rebounding excess discharge into silvery sparks that spread across the screen like a spiderweb.
On another screen, the blizzard clears to a mere storm, and now Jorge is running, running, with Charlie backpedalling close behind, arms outstretched to defend against the burning backlash, hands reflexively spelling out defensive workings in strokes of white. Jorge reaches the device with his toolbox half-open and wrenches something out of the bottom with his bare hands. It hits the ground in a shower of green firecracker sparks and merges with the flow. Oblivious to the supernova around him, Jorge retrieves a fist-sized cylinder from his toolbox and slides it into the bottom of the field modifier with the precision of a ballerina. He twists, and it clicks into place. On the main screen, Rao expends a last burst of aetheric energy against the lady, toppling it back across the threshold. He collapses into a heap.
Almost instantly, something pops. The new guy reaches forward with both arms and twists two large dials counterclockwise back to zero. On the main screen, the brilliance fades to black as Jo crawls to Rao and cradles his body. Jorge drops to his knees, gasping for breath in a cloud of sparks. Charlie, his armpits smoking, staggers over to Jorge and pulls a cord on the side of his vest, discharging the overloaded sigil batteries in a puff of silver steam. He then does the same for himself, first on his left side, then his right. He turns to the camera and gives a weak smile. "All good up there?"
"Return to site for debrief," is the only thing the new guy says through the comms. He slides himself away from the console. With shaking hands, he peels away the tethers from his face.
"Are you okay?" I venture.
"I'm fine," he replies, and this time his voice is soft and high like a child's.
"I didn't know you could - run the hardware like that. That was amazing."
He doesn't reply. I hesitate a little, then place a hand on his shoulder. "Thank you."
"What for?"
"For - for doing whatever it was you did."
He brushes away my palm and staggers to his feet. "It's my job. I did what I'm supposed to." He squeezes past me and, with his still-shaking hands, hoists himself out of the basement, one step at a time.

—

In the evening of my first day Jorge slides the tape into the VCR and hits the play button with his thumb. The screen flickers to life – a white wall, pantry stool, clock on the wall. It's six in the morning. Hands adjust the camera, then the woman sits in front of it, jacket tied around her waist, tank top baring aged tattoos on wrinkled skin. Her long grey hair sweeps down to her waist; she sweeps it aside her face, sits feet astride across the stool, and begins. "My name is Masa Zupan," she growls, "and if you're watching this, I'm already dead."
There is stillness for a few seconds. Then something happens - the screen flickers - the light changes - and now Masa is doubling over in a low, throaty laugh. "Yeah, I can't do this. Take two, take two."
The screen buzzes, and Masa is seated again, this time with her hair tied up. "Look. You there, seeing this now. This is me. My name is Masa Zupan. I am sixty-two this year. I am a witch. I made a mistake, and now I am dead."
"I'm sure you miss me. The lot of you. But I guess you're playing this for a reason. If you're watching this, I've gone down fighting with curses on my lips and dead ghost between my teeth. Or I slipped and fell in the bathroom. It could go either way. Regardless, I'm dead and gone. And I just want you to know that I am glad to be rid of you. Yes, every single one."
Jorge smiles. "She was a real sweetheart."
The figure on the screen leans in. She breaks into a sly grin. "And between us all, I can think of no others that I would rather have served with. Theta seventy-seven – here's to us, my friends. Here's to the duty and the job. And till we meet again."
The video jumps.
Now, leaning back again, palms on her knees. "To whoever's coming in after me. You've got a lot to pick up. We come in here, some of us born with the gift, others taught. But we're all in here for a reason. Reason being there's no one like us in the whole damn Foundation who can run the job like we do. You're going to see some shit, my friend. You're going to loathe it. You're going to go down screaming and try'na claw your eyes out, and when you're done, you're jolly well going to get back up and continue. Because you're one of us now – the best of the best. So damn well act like it."
Masa pauses, ruminating.
"Y'know," she continues, "I used to tell Charlie, back when we were new – I told him, us all better be going to hell when we die. Y'know why?" She winks, and brings the camera close.
"Because the devils will never know what hit them," whispers Jorge, along with the woman on the screen. He reaches up and pauses the tape just before it reaches the end. Masa's face hangs in the frame, wry grin baring yellowed teeth, raw fire burning behind fierce blue eyes.
"How long ago?" I ask.
"Six months before you. Replacements here don't come easy."
"So how … "
Jorge swallows. "A part of the wall had collapsed, and we were going to fix it. She did nothing wrong. Clara just did something we hadn't seen before. Charles couldn't shield her in time. Got the rest of us out safely, though. I asked how he did it, but he said it'd fry my brain to even try."
"I see." I stare at the woman on the screen. I try to imagine what she was like when she was alive. I try to imagine what she would have been like in her final moments. Would she have been lucid, in the heart of the house? Would the fire still have burned even then, in the madness and the cold?
"So … do you all have a tape?" I ask.
"Charles and Jo have tapes. I don't know what to put on mine yet. And Rao isn't going to leave one – he'd probably rise from the dead, and come back with his last words himself!" He enunciates that last sentence for dramatic effect.
"Nope, that doesn't work," I laugh. "You just sound scared that it might come true."
He rests his head in his hands in mock preponderance. "That it might, that it might."
I lean in with him. In front of us, Masa's face continues to burn. I reach for the set and turn off the screen.
"So … will I have a tape, too?"
Now it's Jorge's turn to laugh. "Ha! Ha!" He throws his head back in a loud guffaw, baring his yellow teeth. "Not today, chica. Maybe next time. But you don't know what you're asking for."
He smooths his hair down, composing himself.
"Trust me. You really don't."

—

Charlie comes in with Jorge and Rao around his shoulders, with Jo trailing behind. He's a mess now, with his undone hair hanging down his face drenched with sweat. A trail of dried blood cakes his upper lip from his nose. "The truck's still loaded," is all he says to me. He lets Jorge and Rao down onto the floor unceremoniously, then collapses between them himself.
Jo enters last, dumping the discharged ward vests into the center of the room, then points towards the armoury. "Cleanse tags, six-pack, now." I nod, and fetch them for her as fast as I can. I throw them and she catches it, popping the first one out of its blister pack and unrolling it to its full length. She bites one end between her teeth and squeezes, coughing out excess thaumic energy that stains the rest of the tag dark brown. I pass the remainder to Charlie, who shambles up and onto the couch, biting two tags at once. With each of his coughs, I feel the air in the room become a little warmer.
I move to do the same to Jorge. It's harder when he's unconscious, so I pinch the end and feed it between his lips. The working takes hold and slowly, the colour returns to his face.
"Where's the new guy?" asks Charlie. There's tiredness in his voice, but also a wary concern.
I shrug. "He went back to his room as soon as he was done. I didn't think he'd have much left to do anything else."
"You know, he almost died," Jo says, kneeling down to administer a tag to Rao. The first one flushes black almost instantly, with an audible hiss; she yanks it out and puts a fresh one in its stead.
"Who, the new guy?" I ask.
Charlie raises a finger. "She means Rao."
"I know the tags look like shit, but he'll hold fine. It's Jorge that took the brunt of it," says Jo.
"I thought Jorge looked fine," I say.
"He didn't vent the batteries in time," groans Charlie from the couch. "Damn fool could've drained his aura flat if I hadn't got to him in time."
Jo tugs the second tag free from Rao's lips. It, too, has been drenched pitch black. She gives him a third. This time, the stain bleeds a healthier-looking deep brown. "Well, it's only his third breach," she sighs. "You aren't him, Charles. He isn't us yet."
"He'll have to be us anytime soon, Jo. There's only a couple more times we can keep doing this until we, you know." He lifts two fingers into a scissor shape, then cuts them across his forehead. Foundation tactical hand signal: cognitohazard, mind-affecting.
Jo rolls her eyes. "Don't be so dramatic. So when's Molly going to be good enough, hm? Didn't you say you'd have her ready by May?"
I raise my hand in protest. "Hey, I'm still here. And I've been practising. Don't drag me into this."
Charlie smirks. "She's right. Leave the kid out of this." A sudden fit of coughing seizes him, throwing his head back. "Anyway, it's partially my fault as well. I should've casted the 102's to run remotely and focused on point defense."
"Point defense? In that mess?" Jo chuckles. "You didn't burn out an entire class-four in vain just so you could show off."
"I swear it worked in the Christmas breach of '68. Cleaner discharge, too."
Jo shakes her head and smiles at me. "Maybe one day you'll be like him. Though I dearly hope not." She plucks the last tag out of Rao's mouth and crumples it up with the other used ones. "Come help me move him to his bunk."
"Yes, ma'am."
"And Charles, when you're done moping you go right on and move Jorge back to his. Make sure to check for those burns."
"Fine, fine." Charlie pinches the bridge of his nose and snorts into his used tag, clearing out the last of the congealed blood. "Just make sure someone clears out the truck before we go to sleep."
Jo doesn't reply. She picks up Rao's body from below his armpits and motions me towards his feet. Together, we hoist him to his room and place him down on his cot. He is somehow much lighter than I imagined, even considering his meager frame.
"He's right, you know," whispers Jo to me, once we are out of Charlie's sight. The door is ajar, casting yellow light in a narrow strip over Rao's cot.
"About what?" I ask. I reach over and rearrange Rao's legs so that they lie evenly on the cot, then drape the thin yellow blanket over them.
"This job. Between the three of us, I mean. Each time we go out to put her back in, it takes years off our lives. And we don't have many of them left. You know that, don't you?"
"Is that why he's here?" I ask.
"Doctor Lim?" Jo's voice drops ten degrees.
"You've listened to him."
"Well, we did and we do. He's a professional, and knows what he's doing."
"Why doesn't he talk to us? He's only a month newer than I am. Why him and not me?"
Jo averts my gaze. "I think, over the years - it's something we've found - when you have a group of diverse people who need to work together - it's hard to find the strength to trust sometimes, especially when the world hangs in the balance. It's a gradual process."
I shrug. "I don't see you making more the effort to bring him into the loop, either. He's just - there. And you still listen to him and everything, but he's still just this - guy."
In the light of the door, Jo's face looks far older than I remember. Eyes, tired lines. "It's not an easy job, Molly," she mutters. "Some people adapt better than others. We take what we can, and that's the best we can do. You take first shift, okay?"
I accept the diversion. "Sure thing, ma'am. I'll see you in the morning."
She smiles. The door closes slowly behind her.

—

From inside the hut, it's impossible to tell when day breaks. The hut's a standard-Foundation-issue end-of-the-world concrete bunker - windows are a luxury that safety cannot afford. Even now, waking up starts a kind of panic in me that I shouldn't have stayed as long as I did - that it's too late, somehow, and the world has gone up in flames and dust without me.
That morning, a dreamless sleep.
I wake up on the couch. I don't know how long I've slept. have no memory of sleeping there, but I assume from the way I'm dressed that I must have passed out during my watch. The ventilation's shot, and a quick walk around shows that I'm alone, with the exception of Rao, still as a stone, lying face-up in his bunk. The door next to his remains locked (and silent - Jo must have finally found the peace for sleep) so I loop around the back of the armoury and take the stairs up to the roof.
I smell coffee as I poke my head through the hatch. It's Jorge, picnic mat and all, looking none the worse for wear after last night's run. But I can see the cracks: his hands move just a little too slowly, stirring the coffee in his mug, and his eyes are lined with red rings. Jorge's injuries are more evident. His shirt is off, and trails of grayed skin peek from under the bandages on the sides of his chest.
"Buns?" he asks, holding up a half-filled plastic lunchbox. It's the last of the supplies from the week's drop - pineapple jelly rolls that Jo called in from a friend back in Site-20.
I laugh. "Taking Jo's treats? I see it's a special occasion."
"Being alive is a special occasion," he says, moving over to make room for me on the mat. I sit and stretch my legs out, leaning on my elbows.
"Where's Mum and Dad?" I ask.
"I think they went for a walk. The truck's not downstairs."
"Huh." I take a bun from the lunchbox and nibble it. "Any idea why?"
"Nope. Probably felt they needed some air. It's not every morning that's like this."
He's right - it's warm, almost pleasantly so, or at least as warm as it can be on the moors - and there's not a hint of clouds in the sky. The last dregs of morning fog hang over the horizon, motionless. I bask and take in the rare sunshine. "Last night treat you alright?" I ask.
"Eh. It's been worse. I swear Charlie had it worse than I did. I don't know how he does it and still has the nerves left to drive us all back. There's no way he didn't pull a muscle in his head last night keeping all of his spells in order."
"Oh?" I recall Charlie on the basement feed, hands braced against the aether, field lines curling around him like water.
Jorge seems to read my mind. "You couldn't see him up close," he chuckles. "Old man was damn near speaking two words at once, if it's even a thing possible. Fuck!"
"Well, Charlie said you almost died."
"Yeah? Okay."
"You don't seem very worried about it."
Jorge doesn't respond. He finishes the rest of his breakfast in silence. The lunchbox empties. At length, he gets up and tips back his mug, letting the remainder of the brown sludge drip onto his tongue.
"Worry's a difficult word to put together. You were at the consoles with the new guy last night - were you worried that the world was going to end?"
"Sure, but not really. The threat was immediate, and it's over. But they tell me you can't take much more hits like this."
"No one can, chica," he shakes his head sadly. "No one can."
I lean my head back and rest it against Jorge's lap. We watch the sun rise over the moor, feel its warmth seep into damp concrete. The fog is thinner now, spreading up over the ground, and upon seeing it obscure our view I try to sweep it away with my palm. Jorge chuckles.
And yet the fog does not lift. Even as the sun rises, it clings to the edge of the water, then climbs onto the bushes and into the jagged tops of trees. Still, stubborn and unyielding.
As much as we watch, it remains.

—

Jo and Charlie come back a little while later. I hear them before I see them, the truck's characteristic put-put chugging in from the long road beyond the woods, and I have the garage open before they arrive.
Charlie is holding something wet and small by the neck. "A rabbit," explains Jo. I nod. Can't blame him for having a diversion here and there, after all. There isn't much else to do here.
We have things to do. In the pantry, I hear the spreading of a plastic sheet. While I dust down the armoury shelves I hear Charlie prepare the carcass, a low humming tune on his lips. The sound of slicing, of pocketknife digging into meat. Running water. Soon, the buzz of the induction cooker.
Meanwhile, I run through our stock of sigils - workings, batteries, and sinks - looking out for the black spots signalling impurity, the white spots signalling discharge, the smeared ink signalling water damage. I skim through the blank tags just to check if they're there, as well as the accompanying stash of emergency Sharpies. I check the lights. I count the tools, categorically, in the five plastic-shell toolboxes. I test their clips, make sure that they stay fast.
I dig into the cupboard and bring out old sigil vests into the garage, where I spray them down with a hose. Jo, in sweatpants and work shirt, helps me hang them up to dry. She tells me she will put them back later. In the hut, I ding the alarms, yelling "Test!" before I do, and "Clear!" when I'm done.
Busywork, prayer beads for the mind. In the pantry, Charlie continues to cook the rabbit - bubbling of sauce in pan. Sizzle and pop. All is well.
By noon, he is done. I hear scraping of cutlery, footsteps to the armoury. He catches me with my hands wrapped in wiring. "You hungry, kid?"
I take the offered fork in my mouth and taste. Peppered, stringy meat sticks to my teeth in chunks, and I cough in surprise. Charlie treats my reaction with some concern. "I hope it's not that bad. I don't do this often enough."
He motions casually to the apparatus in my hands. "If you're thinking of practice, it's alright. We can continue tomorrow."
Lunch is the remainder of the rabbit stew and a sandwich. I sit at the pantry and make a second, smaller one for dinner; note with some concern that bread and cheese is running low. First the bread, then the ham, peeled from the pre-sliced puck between layers of waxpaper in the fridge. Lettuce from the Tupperware, then cheese and mayo, then another ham where a bread should go. Preserving symmetry, I finish the remaining layers in the reverse order, cheese mayo lettuce hampeel bread. I crimp the edges, kneading the crusts together to catch the stray flecks.
In my mouth, the taste of rabbit lingers, persistent strips between my teeth. The smoky aftertaste of Charlie's seasonings. As I prepare it, Charlie looks back from the sink, his brows arched. There are suds in his beard, and he wipes them off with his sleeve.
I finish the sandwich. Presently, Charlie turns off the faucet and sits down in front of me. "Is something wrong, Mol?"
"It's fine." I shake my head, avoid his gaze.
"Are you shaking your head because you don't know the answer?"
I pick up the sandwich and set it down between two layers of clingfilm.
Charlie continues. "It's okay to not know. It's okay to be afraid. Last night was rough. I'm sorry."
He does not need to be sorry.
"Kid." He looks awkwardly to the side. "It's, well, hard to get used to all of this. I know it, you know it. And, hell, you're just beginning. We were scared shitless, the first time we went in there too. We're all scared in there still."
The clock behind us ticks, twelve times, thirteen.
"If you, um, ever feel like it's a little too much to bear - you don't have to talk to us, just - maybe let us know." He tries a smile. "We can work something out." Behind his brow, I can see him try very hard not to say the obvious. We need you. We need people like you. Don't leave. Stay.
"I don't think I have any intention of leaving," I say.
He muses. "Hm. Guess that works in the long run. But now, I think it's important to take care. Keep yourself grounded, alright? Just - do as you have. You're doing well. Keep on doing well - keep at it, and then maybe the fear won't seem so great any longer. Does that make sense, kid?"
I say nothing.
"From the looks of it, I'd say you should lay off practice for a while. But I'm not going to stop you if you do, or feel that it's better or something." Charlie shrugs. "Up to you, kid."
He gets up, and then leaves.

—

When Charlie is gone, I clean up and return to the armoury, sandwich wrapped in my jacket. Nonetheless, he sees me as I cross the common area lugging the mass of wires and cotton wool and tape to my room. He watches me, and says nothing.
I close the door. I do not need the apparatus to be switched on. In the dark, my hands trace the containment pattern in front of the wires, between the wires, looping forms - now not so much as physically reinforcement, but as a subconscious product of thought processes more felt than known. The mantras are in my throat, too, pulsing and dumb.
To do without doing is the base state. I dredge and project the memory of the screen in the darkened theatre, five thousand metres on each side, spanning beyond my vision, expanding, bigger across than I can see, blinding black and blazing static - and on it I see myself extending teal-white lines of aura, probing, neutral repose. Flowing between me and the pattern on the ground.
Gradually, I enlarge the screen and extend the lines. The screen has three sides now, three dimensions of the body's chakras, lending dimension to form. The screen, showing the ghost of me, showing the ghost of the pattern, the dissipation of the thing in the jar. The ghost of me, the pattern, the jar, again in new ways. The screen twists, rends to accomodate the new perspectives. And lo, the screen itself -
- video screens, the ones I saw last night were small and blurred and lined with fuzz. Raspy voices: SHE'S HERE -
Concentration breaks.
Silver lines wobble, bend, flare out in a million ways and break contact. I open my eyes, seeing darkness (the real one), seeing nothing, then seeing the dead machine hunched like a gargoyle watching with blind dish-eyes. Sighing, I close my eyes and begin anew.
Once again with the screen, once again with the lines, once again with the pattern and the spreading and the neutral repose, once again with the soul.
The screen stretches before me. I extrude lines to make the pattern. The pattern is the self. Its lines are my limbs, its shape is my form. Thought flows between the two, like the figure and ground, the ground and figure. Figureground - Why? Why? I feel myself overflow into the ground until the figure and ground become one, indistinguishable, yin-yang-up-down-gray.
I look down at the pattern on the screen in my mind, and it's like looking into a pool. My own eyes stare back at me and I see myself mouth, why?
The pattern stares back. Ask, and ye shall receive.
I ask the pattern, what went wrong last night?
Absolutely nothing, it tells me.
Then why am I so shaken?
It's the thought of it, really. In darkness, the mind sees what the eyes cannot. That sets everything off.
But why? It didn't involve you.
Maybe because it didn't involve me?
No, that can't be right. Charlie is right, it's fear, pure simple fear.
Awe of the spectacle. Fear of failure. Fear of lack of success. Fear of irreversible ego death within a two hundred kilometre radius. Fear of being responsible. Fear of being not responsible. Fear of fear itself.
Is that all?
Fear of loved ones dying.
Loved ones, returning, not knowing if they'll make it the next time they're needed. Tired hands on tired laps. Tired faces. Their eyes.
Understandable, hums the pattern. Let us remain in this loop for a little more, so that you can know how you are afraid.
I do.
Good. Now from inside the fear, safe from the source of fear, I want you to try again.
I try again. Probe three - breathe in! - and descend.
Third time's the charm: contact loops into silver forms on the screen in my mind. The me behind the screen deftly tweaks invisible controls, micromovements in muscles, breath control and body moulded into one singular manipulation of the lines. I trace the pattern, now more in thought than in form. Containment, concealment, diversion, protection. I loop through the patterns, one by one, flipping through channels of control mantras. The Lord's prayer. Lorem Ipsum. Billie Holiday. Mind and body move as one. Sensing, in parts, of a bigger whole.
I breathe. Repose.
Things work out fine.
I sit for what feels like hours. I hear Jorge's footsteps, sense his hesitation, his knock withheld. Deep in the trance, I try to signal. It's okay, I think. I'm alright. Soon, the footsteps go away.
I cannot remember eating the sandwich. Eventually, I fall asleep.

—

Our Lord in heaven, hallowed be thy name. I run along corridors whose ceilings are as high as my head. My headlamp flares, illuminating my breath, cutting into the jagged corners of the walls. But really, at this point, there's no need for light, with all the house-ness of the house — even without the goggles, I can taste the ARad leaping from the walls, feel centuries of fengshui engineering strain under the pressure of redirecting the immense energy, the terrible energy, emanating from within.
The walls scream. I leap over a pitfall lined with foam acoustic spikes, stumble under jutting inscribed beams, jettison two more of my sinks which stream out behind me in clouds of black sparks. The lady's behind me, somewhere in the dark and the screaming and the cold, and she's catching up fast. Contact means imminent death. The floor drops - I stumble - my headlamp clatters ahead of me - I see three lights staring back at me, two eyes and a mouth opening wide to deliver my perdition, my head is screaming your kingdom come, your kingdom come, inside-voice catching on the syllables as the lady screams, shattered glass filling vessels of thought overflowing, no no no no no no no NO
Dearest the shadows I live with are numberless, floats the control mantra from the depths.
Without thinking, I've triggered all seven of my defensive wards on overload, throwing the full brunt of dash-one's attack back into her. From afar, timber creaks as the architecture channels my spell into success. The lady blinks, eyes shut, temporarily blinded, and I back up on my hands, scrabbling against the uneven ground, control mantra spilling from my lips in full vocalisation now, spitting the last dregs of juice out of the wards until all that's left are fizzles of smoke from the pouches on my chest and back. The screams are softer now, but getting louder, up and up and up. I backpedal, get up, slip again, fall over my own feet. Tumbling - tumbling! Then she opens her eyes and she screams again.
I fall.
Miles below me spreads a darkness like ink. Above me, a cloud of smoke. Around is the house, or what's recognisable of its crazy jutting architecture, and as I bring myself to my bearings I realise that I do not have much of myself left to be borne.
The dream continues. Falling - then, abruptly, rising, rising now. An elevator dings. The cloud envelopes me, smiling vapour and all, and my vision becomes a false-colour sandstorm on a basement television screen. It fades, showing a face. The face of the lady.
This time, her face is a softer face, a human face, and on it are the lines that make up not only herself, but all that she has touched. At once I understand: she is a construct, as all people are, a tarball of memories and emotions clustered as a function across time and localised space. Dreaming - as it were - like I am. Probing neutral repose.
She gestures for me to seek. Now the picture is the sky. I look at the world. Space! The sensation of it, patchwork green, and falling around the hills beyond. Dark bushes, marking the edges of forest. Wind sweeps, invisible, betraying the moor's perfect stillness. Thin roads bearing the lives of other people thread through the landscape. Nothing else remains.
In equal clarity, the house itself is small, the hut smaller still. They escape the shadow of hills, crouched on the edge of plain, unassuming, plain. The dirt road is barely visible, but I know its bumps and twists and turns, on the contours of my mind, drummed into the back of my head on the old van's seat cushions, know of its transect in segments of windscreen and tree trunks, flared white by the high beams at midnight.
A strand - a root - approaching bedrock, a slumbering beast - the house itself. Built on contradiction, its architecture, paradoxical, maniacal. Internally it twists like a snake consuming itself, compacted into concentric squares of mathematical rigour. The lady knows this well, and as I squint my mind's eye I can almost see her face in the snakes, trace her eyes in the nested squares. The house - the lady - a landscape that I have known only in stories and dreams and screens alike - because, after a certain perspective, the three become one and the same, do they not?
But it is not important now, motions the lady. She gestures, and the scene shifts. As a mouse stalks the cat, folded onto the top of a slight ridge - presently, the hut and its rooms. The walls are all painted beige and white. I do not need to see to know the shape of its insides - its basement, its eyes, its bowels. A complete whole, a small beast. Here the walls are bare and the floors even and clean - because here, monsters are fought, and the mind must not wander and the spirit must not yield.
Or so they say.
Now under dark, a thin man lies awake in his work clothes. He rests on plastic folders holding questions in numbers and structure and form. The shadow of the intangible hangs over him - secrets within secrets, doors within doors - he sleeps with his head in his hands, and sighs. Perhaps one day he will have the courage to learn.
In the next room, a woman tidies by candlelight. First she arranges the items on her desk - markers, blank tags, books, picture frame - each in their proper place. Then she reaches for the calendar that hangs above, and tears off a single page. She folds the single page into quarters, placing it into the green plastic bin below her desk. Before she blows the candle out, she looks at the picture frame in which a young olive-skinned girl sits. She closes her eyes, whispers a short word, or a name. Then she returns to her bed and sleeps.
Strains of music from another room. His door is ajar. Shirtless, the younger man nurses the new wounds on his side as he strums to a beat in the dark. He climbs up and down minor scales, melodically, then chromatically. Beside him he has uncorked his secret vice for the first time in months, its acrid tang fresh on the roof of his mouth. Together the smell weaves with the music as incense before a temple - for the first time in months, he forgets where he is, and his mind is still.
A man with the countenance of a lion remains awake. He sits cross-legged with a book in his lap, eyes focused but unreading. He has seen the words too many times to do so. Besides, his mind has grown too hard. His fingers turn the pages one at a time. He relishes in the act. The light on his desk burns white and unyielding through the night. He does not sleep.
And the ancient man unmoving in his cot. He is not asleep either, for he does not need to. His thoughts are unknowable, nor does he process them except as part of a broader knowledge, a pattern, that braces - has braced - his existence - his dharma - his reason for existence. From this and his silence he derives strength. Today he is more mind than matter. But he will recover soon, and be stronger when he is needed again.
Lastly, the acolyte, tossing and turning in dreams, seeing others - seeing herself - through the lens afforded by memory. What of her, then? What of me?
I look to the lady for answers, but she thinks that I already know. She smiles a memory of a smile and disappears.
There are no further dreams.

—

Transcript of video log retrieved from Provisional Site-2696 ("The Hut")

Beginning of transcript.
The video shows a white wall, presumably located in the pantry of Provisional Site-2696. On a stool, spray-painted blue, sits a woman in her early twenties, with brown eyes and shaved brown hair. There is an analogue clock behind her, almost out of view; it reads 1:39. The timestamp of the video shows that it is exactly two in the morning. The date is the 1st of July, 1980.
The woman is holding the video camera close to her face. She speaks softly to the video camera, as though not wanting to be heard.
Woman: Hey, you doing okay?
Woman: Listen, I just wanted to talk this down, on the record, in case I forget.
Woman: I've been talking to the others, and coming to terms with what's happened, and I think I kind of understand.
Woman: It's the gesture of it, or the form of it. Or it's just, the language of everything, fuck. Point is, it's not so scary out there.
Woman: I don't know if this sounds cliche, but we're all each doing our own thing to survive, and, coming all together, it's something. Bigger than us, between us, whole is more than the sum of our parts, I guess. I don't know.
Woman: Okay, so I lied. It is scary out there. Yeah. And we're not always going to be able to grow back one hundred percent. But the important thing is that we can and do grow, and we try again, and we do good.
Woman: That's what we do. We keep doing good.
Woman: Now, I don't know entirely what your deal is. I don't know you, you don't know me, I'm just talking to a screen here, but what the hey. Maybe you're scared or some shit. Of us, or the monster we've got to fight. Hell, even Charlie's scared too.
Woman: Point is, we're all in this together.
Woman: And even if you don't want to be in, that's okay. We all have our levels, and we all got to find them. And I understand if you don't want to join, like, that's entirely okay.
Woman: Just wanted to let you know that, um, we'll be here if you want to. You're always welcome to join.
Woman: Does that make sense? I thought it did, in my head.
Woman: Well, that's all I came to say. See you, I guess. Molly out.
The woman reaches behind the camera and squeezes. A beep is heard. The recording then ends.
End of transcript.

—


When Professor Legler offered her the chance to join his little "unconventional art studio", Taman didn't exactly expect to be landed in an extradimensional classroom for the study of magical art. Well, not magical, as the professor stressed in frustration. The exact word was "anart", but Taman really couldn't tell the difference. Plus, magic seemed to be just the word to describe the experience. It was like a Sunday Hogwarts for art, with animated pictures and all that. It also turned out that they really did have moving staircases, once Legler decided that they were finally worthy of extra space.
But a whole month in, bathed in all the bizarre and unthinkable, Taman still wasn't able to create anything out of the ordinary. She tried all sorts of art she could think of, from things she was good at to things she hardly knew about, but all the pictures stayed static and all the clay sculptures just collapsed to the table.
And that would be why she was sitting opposite of the studio's "deputy professor", resident anartist Yang, seeking her advice.
"You're stressing yourself," Yang said, putting way too much sugar in her coffee. "Learning this isn't easy, you need to take your time. Which is also why Legler refused to give you any extra instructions."
"Cobalt learnt to do it within a week."
"Seems to me that Cobalt always has had that instinct. It's just that she has repressed it previously; her Flow feels somewhat clunky and awkward," Yang stirred her drink. "Tam, you have to see that many of your classmates have had some exposure to this field. You're new, but that's also a good thing. You're not subjected to faulty misconceptions like the rest of them; your view on this will not be limited. And if that means you'll go a little slower, I think it's worth it."
"Delacroix is also new," Taman protested.
"Relax, okay? You can't hurry this sort of thing. You see, anart block works the same way as normal art block."
"Just that I can't feel anything when doing Legler's assignments. Or even watching the demonstrations. The different approaches, focusing, looking through stuff? None of it works," Taman let out a frustrated sigh. "Normally during art blocks I guess I would go out? But that doesn't really help because I don't know how to do this in the first place."
Yang contemplated for a while. "Ummm. Maybe the studio environment is sort of limiting. It was Legler's work after all, and limited to his perspective. I didn't take notice, but it makes sense that someone new will be more susceptible. A field trip would be nice," Yang drank from the cup, and then shook her head. "But we can't really do that. Too much attention, and hard to take care of you all."
"So I'll just have to wait and see?" Taman asked weakly.
"Um, actually," Yang finished the rest of her drink quickly. "Do you have any plans this afternoon?"
"No?"
"Good," Yang stood up, signaling for the waiter. "Let's take a walk in the city."

"This is really… abandoned," Taman said as her gaze travelled around the graffiti-filled building walls. A broken sign at the entrance suggested that it had been deserted for years. A few scavengers moved around the block, but none of them were interested in the building they were walking into. One or two took notice of them, before returning to their respective tasks. "You sure this isn't dangerous?"
"Oh, I do have a few tricks up my sleeves. No worries," Yang turned to look at Taman, "But we can go somewhere else if you want to. The main point is to change the environment; just figured that it would be nice to also have something relevant."
"No, no. It's okay," Taman looked up to see sunlight shining through the thin clouds. It was still early. "I mean, is this place like, important?"
"This place itself? Hardly. But a big chunk of the anart movement actually started in places like this. It was back when there was no market for reality-breaking art and no patrons to support us," Yang approached the outer walls of the building. "Abandoned buildings like this are mostly outside the public view, convenient to mess around and experiment with."
"Wait, are these all magical?" She looked around, all broken shapes and broken colors. Hardly seemed like some place where miracles would reside.
"Only some. But it's impossible for most people to tell. The Flow here is mostly dried up, you have to poke around to make it work," Yang gestured towards a few words of artistic design, which were hardly recognizable. "And that takes a professional to know. We'll just take a look around. These certainly aren't the best, but would serve our tour here well enough."
"Dried up?" Taman eyed the dried paint on the brick walls. A lot of which peeled off, leaving a layer of scrap and dust on the floor.
"Well, the 'magic' in the art can't work forever, just like you can't preserve the colors of a painting forever. It deteriorates over time. The only difference is that normal art's preservation depends on the materials and the environment, and our work depends on, I'd say dedication?"
"So, the more you pour in to it, the longer it works?"
"That and how good you make it. I wouldn't say these were very successful at that. This whole section is dead." Yang's gaze briefly lingered on a poorly drawn owl-man, before returning to Taman. "Let's go in."
Taman nodded. Together, they walked into the bowels of the structure. There were no longer any functional light fixtures, but the broken walls did a poor job of keeping the sunlight out. The rays of bright colors created more shades of grey and black, adding dimensions to the graffiti inside. They were slightly better preserved than their outside counterparts.
Yang strode ahead, inspecting the large, empty building. Anything of value must have been looted years ago, as all that was left were broken pictures and used spray paint cans. She murmured a few times, but Taman hardly caught what she was saying. Granted, she didn't try very hard to listen; she followed the anartist, but her mind had already wandered off.
She had never been to places like this. Going into abandoned buildings, alone or with others, seemed to be a terrible choice on all accounts. But she had heard about the charm of exploring depths of the city from some of her more adventurous friends, and seeing this, she had to admit that there was some truth to it.
Nothing magical had happened so far, but there was this eerie beauty to it that she couldn't deny. Even though the figures on the walls had lost parts of their bodies, the once bright colors dulled down into an indistinguishable grey, she could not help but imagine what it was like before the erosion of time set in. In some places, paint had peeled off only to reveal older artwork underneath, as if preserving the history under the layers.
It was strange, but in a way, also calming.
They moved through rooms filled with broken sentences, a giant set of teeth that were no longer able to chew, and a dragon breathing a patch of grey that must have been flames. Yang inspected the rooms one by one, some of them blocked by broken walls, some incredibly large, and some others shrouded in darkness. There was a mostly intact picture of a giant eye that Yang stared at for a long time, an impossible staircase she kicked at a few times, and a weird statue of a man she frowned at. But finally, they stopped at a large wall filled with seemingly random splashes of faded colors.
"So," Taman suggested. "Finally found the magical art?"
"Well," Yang answered. "More like finally found a safe one to poke with."
Before Taman could ask, Yang quickly changed the topic: "Want to give it a go?"
Taman stared at the piece. "What should I do?"
"Hold on." Yang said, walking up.
Taman watched Yang hold up her hand, and tapped at the picture gently. Then all of a sudden, it all changed.
Yang was no longer there, and she was alone in the building. A perfect silence fell through, and the place appeared even more lifeless. But the walls were now new and the graffiti were bright and colorful. For a moment, the world seemed extra clear to her, with every detail visible. Before Taman could comprehend what was going on, the colors on the wall moved and merged, crawling down onto the floor and spreading to the ceiling.
In a few moments, the floor melted and the ceiling collapsed. But Taman didn't fall down, as she was now standing on a swirl of colors. The walls, and the building itself had all disappeared, and the art pieces that once dwelled on their surfaces all broke free to join them. She had risen above the ground, looking down at the city below.
But it was not her city, as all the buildings moved and changed, pulsing with life. As the color patches lifted her higher and higher, the city too blurred into lines and shapes and colors. The art pieces accompanying her had all converged together, their features no longer distinguishable. Then, the abstract city dimmed, the ground disappeared, and even the sky had been converted into simply blue and white.
There was no longer any sense of height or direction, and Taman was lost in a world of mere colors. They moved and flowed and swirled around her, as if an ocean, and she felt like drowning in a bucket of paint.
The next moment, the ocean dried up, the paint retreated, and she was able to breathe again. She looked up to see Yang still standing next to the wall of colors, the dull paint peeling off to reveal the bricks behind. Yang smiled and waved at her.
Taman breathed heavily. A few moments later, she stuttered: "I, I… I really like this."
Yang chuckled. "It's pretty standard hallucination. We showed something like this in class a week ago."
"Yeah," Taman said, her mind still filled with the colors. "But… I just really like this."
Yang nodded, and waited till Taman regained her composure. Exiting the room, they found some more or less clean and intact stairs to sit. Taman's head was still spinning, while Yang casually looked around. The sun had begun to set. The rays of light reduced as the shadows started to grow.
A few more moments passed before Yang turned to Taman: "It's getting late. But there is something else I can show you."
Taman looked at her expectantly.
"Legler would say I'm disrespectful, but this place is long gone anyways." Yang gave a short laugh, and approached one of the walls. A large snake coiled on it, mouth open wide only to be cut through by a crack on the concrete.
Yang pressed her hands against the wall: "You live near the campus, right?"
"Yeah."
"Um, should be enough." Yang examined the picture once more, closing her eyes.
For a full five minutes, Yang stayed still and reached into the broken artwork, feeling its barely moving Flow, its intents and compositions. Taman stared intensely, but hardly knew what was going on.
Finally, Yang reopened her eyes and started to rework the painting. Centering on the crack on the wall, she scraped off layers of paint with her hands, getting rid of the unnecessary colors and pieces. Peeling off more colors to reveal the black background underneath, she began to create lines spiraling towards the crack. She worked for the next ten or so minutes, obscuring the detail of the snake and reducing it to shapes and elements. Her new additions slowly worked their way in.
By the time Taman started to grow bored and shifted her gaze around, the large snake suddenly began to melt. Another moment passed, its coiled body expanded, meeting the out-stretching lines and turning into a vortex. Amazed at this development, Taman turned back to see the green of the snake's scales darken and the red from inside its mouth subside, leaving only a deep shade of black. The solid crack expanded and seemingly liquefied, its darkness merging with the black paint surrounding it. As Yang stepped away, the vortex started to spin. Before long, a space opened within, allowing a few rays of light to shine through.
"Here's your shortcut," Yang let out a deep breath of relief. "I think this can last an hour."
"Holy shit," Taman's mouth opened wide. "You can do that?"
"Well, we work with ‘perfectly normal materials'," Yang grinned towards Taman. "Meaning, no actual restriction on what can be used to make anart. Which would include this."
Yang turned back towards spinning vortex as it started shaking slightly. "Do know that this is not a good way to go about this. Others' Flow will interfere with yours, so it usually doesn't turn out well or last long. Pretty sure Legler can do this just by staring at it; I had to make modifications. But why don't you hurry up now; I think I overestimated its stability."

Taman flipped through the pieces of art she had done over the past month, and realized Yang was right. She was really stressing herself out; and more than that, she was not really enjoying it. In fact, she had more fun with Yang in that one afternoon than for the entire month she spent going to magic art school. The wall of colors was no match for Professor Legler's transforming classroom, and yet she was unable to really appreciate it.
She put her works aside, and took out the clay she had gotten from the classroom. Remembering how she played with plasticine in her youth, she started molding it. For now, she decided to not be concerned with what she made, but instead to just have fun. A few crude castles and weird monsters later, she reshaped the clay into a ball and set it back down.
It was fun, and it should have always been like this. Thinking this, she left the room to clean herself up.
A few minutes after she closed the door, a crack showed up in the clay sphere. Moments later, it split into two, releasing a swarm of colorful butterflies.

« Foundation Mandated Interlude | HUB | Seven New Characters Are Introduced »


The man in the bush is sleeping in the fetal position, shivering. A light snow, the first of the year, swirls on the wind. The man's blanket is pitifully thin, and there's only a square of cardboard between him and the frozen ground. Johnson doesn't have to wake him up. He can feel the man's wariness, like an animal's.
“Hi,” Johnson says, casually. “Pretty cold out here, isn't it? I work for the shelter. Can I take you somewhere you can sleep inside?”
It takes the man almost a minute to sit up. He's shaking violently. Might not have survived the night had Johnson not come along. He finally pulls himself, coughing, into an upright position. Hugs his knees.
“Do you smoke?” Johnson crouches next to the makeshift bed. The man shakes his head, still coughing.
“Good, good for you. That's good. Well, how about it? Can we go inside?” The guy nods, once, and struggles to his feet. It's hard to guess his age through his shaggy beard. He definitely looks under 35, though, which is important. 21 is the ideal age; fully developed physically, with minimal extra wear to control for. Americans 40 and older are always a total crapshoot, in terms of fitness. You take what you can get, in any case, but younger is better. Finding better candidates means doing a better job. Doing a better job means everything.
The van's about two blocks away. Five others are waiting inside, enjoying the special heaters that work when it's turned off, so they can't steal it. The van has numerous anti-vandalism measures like that discreetly worked into its interior. You never know what these people will try to do.
“My name is Ben,” the man says, though Johnson didn't ask.
Six in one night is a pretty good haul, even for Johnson. Three of them look to be in decent health, including a female. She's younger than he'd have preferred, but you work with what you've got. It's hard to find females outside the medical system, and they're always in demand.
“What kind of music does everybody like?” Johnson asks cheerfully as the van pulls away from the curb.
Would you harm one person to save two others from harm?

It's raining. Johnson always thought it was just something people said, about always raining in Washington, but that's what the weather's like every time he comes.
The guards at the prison eye him up and whisper to each other as he passes by. He recognizes a couple of them; he's been to this prison before. He's sure the guards hear things, just like him. A secret known by a dozen people just isn't a secret anymore.
“You again,” the warden says. “I knew it was something when they called me out of bed.” Security knows to wait in the hall, but Johnson can picture them outside, ears cocked, straining to be in the loop.
“I've got the forms ready, sir." Johnson reaches into his briefcase. “All I need is your signature, and we'll be ready to start loading them up.”
“I've heard. I can't believe you have enough helicopters to lift all these men. Where'd you say the crash was?”
“Northwest, by the border." Johnson's answer doesn't matter; the warden isn't expecting the truth. “It broke up in midair. We have a large area to cover for survivors. Time is important.”
“Of course." He signs, Johnson hands back the acknowledgment of transfer, and three hundred fates are sealed. “I knew it. Had to be something. This is a huge order, even for you guys.”
The way he puts emphasis on “you guys” makes Johnson look up, makes him really check the man out. The warden's face is smug, like Johnson's reaction told him something he wanted to know. He wonders just how much the warden's in on. Everybody hears things. The warden might know more than Johnson does himself.
He's never met this one before, only seen his name on files here and there. They wouldn't normally go to him, but the maximum security pen they normally use just had a shift in management. His employers haven't had time to establish connections over there yet, and they need subjects right now. They really are going to a forest in Washington, and it's really to grid search, but they're not looking for plane crash survivors.
Highly aggressive selenium-based organisms have been coming from somewhere inside. Approximately every three hours, another wave pours from out of the treeline, each exponentially bigger than the last. This morning they were coming 8 at a time. In another ten hours or so, at the current rate, there will be an attack by more of these animals than there are humans on Earth.
Johnson has no idea what his bosses will do when they find the source of the infestation. He's not afraid; they can do anything, once they know where to direct their effort. But first, someone needs to find out where that is. There's no time to conduct a search with commando teams or set up robots. They need sheer numbers to get the job done in time.
Would you murder 300 citizens to save the country?
“They'll all be given commendations, and transferred to preferred-treatment facilities for the rest of their sentences,” Johnson lies, “so you won't be seeing any of them back here again.”
The two men look at each other. Neither one moves to shake hands.
“Well, you'll find compensation for your time in the mail in about two weeks. You can't know what a difference you've made here.”
That part, at least, is true.

He hates psychiatric hospitals. It's not the atmosphere, and of course they're not enough to creep him out; he just never knows what he's getting recruitment-wise. Prisoners are one thing. They aren't as dangerous as one would think, and they're usually in good condition aside from drug histories and the odd chronic injury, but most importantly they're predictable. Candidates from the mental health system, on the other hand, could be irrationally defiant. That's bad for timetables.
“I hope the new home works out for her,” the administrating nurse chirps. Johnson was given a list of names that—according to their data mining—might fit the requirements for an urgent research assignment. One of them is on suicide watch in this hospital.
“Yes, well." Johnson snaps open his briefcase. “We have a great volunteer with a soft spot for orphans. When she heard that, um, Michelle had no family to go back to—well, how is she supposed to rejoin society without one?”
“I agree. I totally agree,” the administrator beams. She hands him a thick folder, marked with post-its where he needs to sign. “I'm so glad you could take her. She's been in and out for years. We've been trying to find a group home placement for her, but it's been tough.”
“That's what we do. Help with tough situations.”
They just contained a statue that women with a particular blood type see in their dreams, once they've been near it. When they have the dreams, they wake up pregnant with monsters. They tracked the carving to an empty fishing village in northern Russia, after the dreams started coming to women in the next town. His bosses need to find out why the area of effect is increasing, or in a few more months there won't be a society for the woman to rejoin. Not woman. Participant. D-249-9907.
“It's just nice that there are people out there who can help.” the administrator takes the papers back and puts them in her desk. They'll be stolen and incinerated by the end of the night. The participant will be exposed to the statue, but he's heard that they're actually studying whether the anomalous embryo can be surgically removed before it tears its own way out. They have to do this to make an emergency plan, in case the area of effect keeps increasing. Or in case another one turns up in the middle of a city. If the surgery works, and the participant survives, they'll use drugs to wipe her memory so they can use her for something else.
“I'm glad you're out there doing it,” she says. “You should be proud.”
Would you commit a rape to prevent an indefinite number of murders?

If a person walks in front of a bus, and you can divert the bus' path, but doing so has an 80% chance of killing everyone on board, what do you do?
When Johnson got promoted to his security job, they gave him a test where he had to sit in a dark room and answer hundreds of these questions. They did it more than once, sometimes waking him in the middle of the night, dragging him back to the harsh spotlight and uncomfortable stool.
At first, he tried to give them answers they wanted to hear, but the hundreds of questions became thousands of questions, timed, variations repeating endlessly. It was impossible to fake, partly because it was so disorienting and partly because he couldn't tell how they wanted him to answer in the first place.
During the second week of the evaluation, he realized that he not only didn't know what he was supposed to tell them; he didn't know what he really thought. He lost his point of reference, his moral compass disassembled altogether. The answers came easier after that.
Would you allow two men to die to save one woman?
Would you bury 15 children alive to prevent 300 adults being burned at the stake?
By the end of the fourth week, he knew things about himself he never would have discovered on his own. He came out of the interview process stripped of his optimism and with a new respect for the horror simple numbers can hold. He didn't know what to expect, or what the whole thing was for. He thought they might fire him. Or worse.
For the last interview, they asked him to come in the morning at an ordinary time. There were no clipboards, no lab coats, just a gray-haired woman in a business suit.
“What would you do to save the world?” she asked.
Johnson said, “Anything.”


The man woke up with a severe pain in his head and looked around, brushing a few locks of hair out of his eyes in the process. He sat against the base of a tall deciduous tree in the middle of a forest, a thick fog obscuring his vision beyond several meters. He gasped as he realized that the environment around him was entirely black and white.
"Oh fuck…" he whispered to himself as he realized where he was, and how little time he likely had before something would certainly find him and utterly wreck his shit.
"Ah," said a masculine voice nearby. "You finally woke up."
The man turned to see an android sitting cross legged beneath a nearby tree. The droid held several picture frames in its hands as its unblinking eyes remained locked on the man. Several strips of its external covering were missing, appearing to have been neatly sliced off.
"1360…" the man stated.
"I'd prefer you to call me Hector, Researcher Conwell," the droid replied sharply. It stood and walked towards the man, taking the picture frames with it.
"So… that's what your voice sounds like…" the man observed. As he kept his eyes locked on the droid, he checked his peripheral vision. A trail, a portal, any signs of an exit, but there was only more fog.
"Impressed?" the droid asked. "Personally, I think I have a wonderful speaking voice. It's an absolute waste to keep it muted."
"It reminds me of my son's, a little."
The droid nodded, and looked at one of the picture frames it carried, then knelt down and held it before the man. The picture inside the frame was something off the man's desk, an image of him and his family on a hiking trip.
"What are their names?" the droid spoke with a tone of curiosity. "I assume this is your wife, son, and daughter?"
"They are. Kate, Zach, and Carrie, respectively."
"You all look happy."
The man looked at the ground.
"We never got your owner's names from you Hector," he eventually said. "What were they?"
The droid stopped looking at the picture, and stared at the man for several seconds.
"James, and his daughter Sarah."
The droid then fell silent, looking off into the distance.
"You said you lost them," the man ended the silence. "What happened?"
"You did," the droid replied. "One of your agents killed James when you acquired me. I don't know what happened to Sarah."
The man looked at the ground again.
The droid fell back into silence.
"So… is this going to be a revenge killing? I'd be lying if I said that I haven't earned it…" the man chuckled, returning his stare to the droid with tears in his eyes.
"It should be… There are so many souls here that would love to rip you limb from limb…"
"B…but…"
The droid sighed and sat down beside the man.
"But it wouldn't bring me any joy…" the droid looked at the picture of the man's family. "I was one of the first droids to find this place. With how large it was, it took years before I encountered another soul. All that time I was alone with my anger and hate…"
The droid flicked its right index finger and made a scalpel pop out.
"I could tie you down and make you watch as I carved strips from your flesh…"
The man sunk as far as he could away from the droid and its blade, his eyes watching it in the dim, hazy light.
"But what's the point? It wouldn't bring me back. It wouldn't help me find Sarah. You can only hang on to such hot emotions for so long until you burn out inside."
The droid sighed again.
"I'm not going to kill you, Researcher Conwell. It wouldn't bring me any peace."
The man let out a deep breath.
"So… why am I here?"
"Mistake?" the droid shrugged. "When we opened the passage into your lab, we did so with plans to capture your colleague, Dr. Hess. As you are probably aware, she was a member of the Anderson Robotics R&D department. You were taken by mistake. When Saker #76 recognized who you were, they suggested I be allowed to have my way with you. Saw it as being poetic."
"Hess is here too?" The man looked around.
"She is. Last I saw they were taking her to be drawn and quartered by the Aplomados."
The man cringed.
"So where does that leave us?"
The droid stood, and looked at the pictures in its hands, and shrugged.
"Doesn't really matter," it replied. "I am keeping these though."
It then pointed off into the distance.
"If you keep in that direction for about 2000 meters, you'll come to an exit that will take you to the area you call 'Three Portlands'. I'd move quickly and quietly though. Like I said, plenty of souls here who will love to turn you inside out if given the chance."
The man stood, and nodded in understanding. He began to depart, but stopped, and turned back. The droid had nearly vanished in the fog.
"Hector?" he called to it.
The droid paused and turned.
"I'm sorry for all that I did. I'm sorry for all the pain."
The droid remained silent for several moments, then vanished into the fog.
The man returned on his course. If he was careful, maybe he'd escape alive.

« No Matter What Mask You Wear | Anderson Robotics Hub | Assault on Site-64 »


Finally it was time.
You had worked hard and long at this. Days, months, years at a stupid, mindless job, your body on automatic, while your mind raced ahead of itself. You had painstakingly built up a hoard of sick days, until you had a full month ready to go. This was it. This was your moment to shine. Your agent had weaseled you a contract for a real novel, no more short stories for you! You were finally going to write the novel you had always dreamed of. Action, adventure, comedy, romance, all with a unique twist, no one had ever thought of!
You laid your fingers upon the keyboard, ready to let loose-
And there was a knock on your door.
You cursed. You KNEW you had put up a no solicitor sign. You hadn't ordered any packages. And you had blasted all your social media to make sure your friends knew to leave you alone.
You decided to ignore it.
Fingers poised upon the keys again, you let your mind wander. You had the perfect beginning. Start in media res, a gripping scene of high fantasy, bleeding into a flashback, during a drag-
Again, there was a knock on your door, heavier, more insistent.
You glared at the door, as if by force of will you could make them go away. “No thank you, I have at the office!” You call out, loud enough to be heard through the cheap wood of the door.
Once more your fingers seek the home row keys, no hunt and peck typing for you, no, you are a master of your craft, the words will flow from your fingers like a fountain, no, a river, no, a veritable flood of-
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK.
Loud enough it felt like your house shook, loud enough it jarred your mind free from your fantasy worlds. You were out of your chair before you were thinking, crossing the living room in three great strides and throwing open the door. “WHAT?” You yell, before you even look at the person before you.
He is a small man, wider than he is tall, the word rotund springs to mind, like a human version of a rubber ball. His face damn near gleams, chubby cheeks nearly spherical as he looks up at you with nothing but wonder in his wide, innocent eyes. “It's you.” He whispers. “It's really you.”
You step back, startled at the tone of sheer devotion in his words. And his clothing, well, it's vintage, but, it's, too vintage? He looks like he stepped out of an 90s advertisement, his clothing crisp and new, unworn since the day it was packaged. “I'm sorry?” You stutter out. “Do I know you?”
“No, of course not, how could you know me? I wasn't born when you… well, no you don't know me. But I know you. The whole world knows you. The greatest author to have ever lived. The one whose novels changed the very way the world thinks!” He gushes, hands close to his chest. “You're the best.”
“I, uhm, think you may have me confused with someone else. I haven't written any novels.” Your hand is on the door, ready to close it.
“You haven't, yet.” And the way he says it makes you turn and look at him again. The way he seems… too real. His skin, no trace of flush. His blue eyes, bluer than any you've seen. His hair, perfectly coifed, with no hint of product in it. “I'm from-“
“The future.” You finish, faintly. What kind of science fiction writer would you be if you couldn't recognize a time traveler? You step back, feeling a little faint, and your visitor takes this as an invitation to step in, a suitcase on wheels following after him. No, not wheels. You peer down and see that it has dozens of tiny feet. You sit down heavily in shock, and raise an eyebrow at the stranger.
He glances back at his luggage, and his face splits in a joyful grin. “An homage. It doesn't really need the feet, but I couldn't resist. I mean, I know you've barely begun, but… Well, you must have so many questions.”
“Not really?” You say. “I mean, yes, they are boiling up inside me, eager to know… But I've read enough time travel stories to know I shouldn't ask them. Well, maybe one. Why are you here?”
“To the crux, ah yes, to the crux, as ever, so salient and to the point!” He fairly cackles with glee, rubbing chubby hands together. “I am here for something very important.” He kicks his suitcase gently.
Nothing happens.
He kicks it again, slightly harder this time, and the lid pops open, revealing a good thirty hardcover novels. They are beautiful books, your name blazing across the top of each one, but not blatantly, a subtle nod to you, worked into the very art of the jacket art. And the art! The covers blend into each other, revealing a completely different picture takes as a whole, then when individual. You gasp in delight, reaching out for them, only to be stopped by your visitor.
“I, well, can't let you read them. Might chance too much. Our computers say that this much won't alter anything. What I need from you is simple.” His face lights up with glee, his eyes sparkling. “I need your autograph on the inside pages, please.”
“Of… of course. Anything for a fan.” He already has a pen ready as you lean forward, and begins open the covers for you.
“Thank you, thank you, so much, this is so great of you. Can you make them out to Tim? Oh, thank you, thank you, yes, this one is my favorite, the twist at the end? Everyone spent years wondering how you were going to get the protagonist out of this, and then, you did? And it was so masterful. I'm so glad I could meet you, on today, of all days, when you begin your first masterpiece!” He keeps up a steady stream of chatter as you sign each book, your eyes slightly glazed, trying not to take in too many details. Words on the inside of the dust jacket stand out, here and there, ‘Jimithy Kalters,' ‘Death of the world the spire,' ‘the Darkness that Dwells,' and more, just little hints of what is to come. You desperately try not to read them, you don't want to influence yourself.
“There you go.” Signing the last one with a flourish. The front cover of this book is graced with what seems like an homage to the sci fi novels of the sixties, but with a beautiful man barely dressed on the front cover instead of a woman. You smile up at him, a little strained.
“Is that… is that all?”
“Oh yes, that will be perfect.” He smiles at you again, bobbing his spheroid head. “Thank you for this. I'll leave you in peace now.” And he turns on his heel, his little footed luggage trailing along behind him as he goes. The door closes behind him, but you don't see whether he did it, or the luggage did.
You stay seated for several minutes. That was… amazing. Phenominal. Beyond belief. You slowly stand, snagging a soda from the fridge before you lazily make your way back to your computer.
You are going to be an amazing writer.
You swig your soda.
A world changing writer, according to the traveler.
Another swig, and you set the can down on your desk. Your computer hasn't even had time to go to sleep.
And that artwork. You'd never seen a writer who had connected his covers like that. The spines, sure, but the books themselves?
The cursor blinks at you, almost accusatorily. You ignore it. You know you're going to be great. You saw your name spread across the entire series.
So why can't you think of a single thing to write?