Colville’s realm was bleak, like a muddy field after the rain had washed all color and life away. Omar could’ve speculated that it matched his current state of mind, but in truth the man had favored scenes like this even at the best of times.

There was a small wooden house at the top of a bare brown cliff. It leaned over the edge, as if peering into the unsettled green ocean below. Stormy grey clouds loomed above, heavy and threatening but not yet letting loose their rain. As if they too were holding their breath.

Today, Colville had announced that he was leaving.

Omar made his way up the barren dirt path towards the house. He had to pick his footing carefully, and the going was slow. Maybe that would’ve deterred Liga, but Omar was busy with his thoughts. He hardly minded the trek.

He already had a few ideas about how to change Colville’s mind. Omar had planned for this long in advance, which meant that while Flora was panicking, he’d been the one to offer her a solution.

The catch was that having a plan meant he had to be personally involved. Omar was really far too busy for that, even if it was talking his friend out of what amounted to suicide. He had papers to write, experiments to observe, and all manner of interesting things to work on.

If he wanted to, Omar could change the opinion of any of the thousands of bright, thoughtful individuals his university employed. But to change Colville’s mind and prevent him with going through on a stupid, stupid decision- well, that was a harder task. Maybe even an impossible one.

He knocked on the door and waited. It took a full minute before the door opened, despite the fact that Colville should’ve known Omar was coming. On top of that, he was greeted by a mere construct and not the man he’d come to see.

“The master is indisposed,” the construct intoned. It was a faceless thing made of smooth grey clay, and stood only half Omar’s height. “He is not taking visitors.”

“This isn’t a visit,” Omar replied. “It’s an intervention.”

“I understand, but-”

Omar shoved his way past the construct, which could only meekly protest. By the time it caught up to him, he was already up the stairs and breaking open the bedroom door.

Omar found Colville splayed motionless on an expansive bed. He’d given himself a deathly pallor, and every rib was visible on his sunken chest. He reacted to Omar with only a brief glance.

“You will reconsider your decision,” Omar announced. “If not, you will at least stop being so obtuse about it.”

Colville sat up reluctantly.

“Is that how you greet a friend?”

“No. That’s how I greet a fool. Get up, we have many things to do.”

Omar tugged the bedridden man to his feet. Colville rolled his eyes, but didn’t resist.

“We’re not going to your university, are we?” he said. “I can’t stand that place. You never change it.”

“I like it the way it is. Besides, my university is about the ideas, not the scenery.”

“But you could’ve learned everything in there instantly. Any of us could’ve.”

Omar shook his head and suppressed a flush of anger. Colville was correct, of course. If not for the rules the compact had given itself, any of them could’ve succumbed to temptation and skipped straight to omniscience. But Colville had helped make that compact, and he knew exactly why the rules were necessary.

“To directly ask for what we want strips our lives of meaning.”

“I don’t feel full of meaning right now anyway,” Colville said. “What’s there left for me to do?”

“Everything! Remember when you were proving set theory with me? You stopped at Nil’s theorem and said the rest was just busywork, but it’s not. It’s interesting and beautiful too, but you don’t put in the effort. You don’t need to be more than human to do that.”

Omar punctuated his speech by forcefully dragging Colville down the stairs. The servant construct watched helplessly.

“Is this your intervention, then? You and the others?”

“Not all of us. Apparently Liga doesn’t care this time,” Omar answered. They continued out the door and began making their way to the exit gate.

Colville grew taller with every step down the slope. He was casting off his sickly appearance. His sunken ribs filled out, while his black hair grew luxurious and long. A royal cape in dark purple and black appeared in his hands, and he donned it.

“Liga’s probably planning to make herself forget I ever existed,” Colville said.

“Yes well, sometimes I think I’m the only one who takes our compact seriously,” Omar huffed. They reached the gate, which showed the quiet marble courtyards of Omar’s personal realm. A monk lost deep in thought wandered up a staircase, while two eager students sat beneath a burbling waterfall, poring over a book lying between them. The book was Summer and the Saintless, one of Colville’s favorites. An arranged tableau, of course.

“Wait,” Colville said, stopping at the threshold. “I said I didn’t want to go here. It’s kind of boring. Offense intended.”

“Fine. Where matters little, when I hope to discuss what. Is the Tower fine?”

Colville shrugged.

* * *

The Tower was the premier shared hub for their compact. Over the centuries, it had been molded and shaped to a perfect equilibrium between their collective desires. Unfortunately the end result was less constructive harmony and more obstructive politicking; nobody could agree on changes to even the wall trim without decades of debate. Maybe that was the point- it served as a place where everyone could meet and be equally powerless over their surroundings.

The overall concept was simple. Take a skyscraper and stretch it taller, so that even the ground was lost in a hazy blue. Then give every floor a theme, like an amusement park in miniature. One floor could have altered gravity, another might be hell’s embassy, and a third could catalog shoes. Anything went.

By the time they stopped adding new floors, there were nearly eight hundred, with the only constants being their size and the elevator that brought them all together.

Omar and Colville emerged on floor 78, which had been chosen as the default entrance. The voting on that had been fierce, and in the end the plainest candidate won. 78 had transparent glass walls, a dark oaken floor, and a selection of tactfully placed chairs and lounge sofas. On one of them, sitting with her legs crossed, was Flora.

That she’d dragged herself out of whatever immersive fantasy she was in was telling. This meant a lot to her.

If there was any longstanding romance among the compact, Flora and Colville were it. Everyone else had their affairs, but the two of them always came back to each other. But it’d been awhile since their last bout. While Flora retreated to her fantasies, Colville cared for them less and less. For them it was an amicable breakup, which meant only a few dozen big fights before they called it off.

And now here they were. Flora had donned pure white dress, and she stared at Colville like a lost puppy. But Colville was already halfway across the room to the elevator, and he wasn’t stopping.

Omar endured Flora’s scornful gaze and followed him. She’d get her turn later.

“Floor?”

Omar shook his head, and Colville pressed the “Indifferent” button on the elevator panel. The doors closed, and Omar began listing out all the arguments he planned to make in his head.

“Three thousand goddamn years,” Colville said, interrupting Omar’s train of thought. “Have I not been here long enough?”

“Why not five hundred thousand years?” Omar countered. “Why not a billion? If you feel a certain way, let that be your reason. Not because one number has more zeroes than another.”

“But it’s a nice, round number. I won’t get anything as good for a thousand years. You can reminisce about good old Colville, who left in the 3000th year, and you won’t get mixed up about the date.”

“Really though, why now? Are you bored? You don’t need to be bored.”

“That’s funny, coming from you. Remember when everyone else was signing up for bliss? You were the one who said we should be bored sometimes instead.”

“Exceptions can be made. If this is all a ploy for the upcoming council meeting, you’ve overdone it. We’ll give you whatever changes you require.”

“I’m not making a play, damn it! I’m not depressed either. I’ve given this a lot of thought. The rules are holding me back. It’s like- like I’ve spent long enough as a kid, and it’s time to grow up.”

“You can’t analogize your entire humanity to a state of childhood,” Omar said, shaking his head. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his thick fur robe as the elevator came to a halt. Floor 267- the Crystalarium.

The interior was dark, but the elevator’s light reached out over rows of clear white rocks arranged into a labyrinth. It had been Zhang’s idea- a puzzle of sorts. The crystals sparked with waves of light when you neared them, and the light flowed and pooled along insets in the floor. Where lights collided, they interfered in brilliant patterns, or sometimes snuffed each other out completely. Timing a path just right would let you walk to the center and leave the room in perfect darkness. Anything else would be a perpetual lightshow.

For two players, the game was nearly impossible. Not the best room for a conversation, but here they were.

“You’ve never much cared for thinking,” Omar began. “Don’t object; it’s true. You never loved slowly unfolding an elegant idea while your mind twists and turns, until all the knots are gone and you understand everything.”

“I did that for a while. And I’d like to say I was better at it than you- but come on, Omar. You must feel the limitations more than me.”

“The limitations are a good thing,” Omar said. He paused, and sighed. “It’s too dangerous to go without them, and I know for a fact you haven’t run out of human-level knowledge to learn yet.”

“I can’t spend a thousand years on pointless trivia,” he replied. The sound of his voice pulsed blue, purple, and green in the crystals around him, providing just enough light for Omar to make out the scowl on his face.

“It’s not pointless trivia,” Omar sighed. “There’s interesting stuff, and enough of it for a long while yet. Perhaps you can’t enjoy it as much as I do, but I think you’re just being stubborn.”

“One day you’ll feel the same way as I do, and you know it.” He’d stepped into a crystalline vortex, and the light swirled at his feet as if threatening to suck him under.

“Maybe. But do either of us have to feel that way now?”

Colville shrugged and made for the center, tripping every sensor on the way. Fireworks went off as he passed- garish explosions of light, silent but overwhelmingly bright.

“You have eight months,” Colville said. “I’ll spend them however you and Flora decide. But I don’t think you’ll change my mind.”

“We’ll see,” Omar said. He turned and made for the elevator door. “But even if we fail, I think one day you’ll agree you made a mistake. That you went too fast.”

He left the Crystalarium and returned to floor 78, where Flora waited patiently. He said nothing as he took a seat across from her, but she saw something in his expression and rose to her feet. He waved her back down.

“He was saying this sort of thing right before the second milennium too,” Omar said. “He might change his mind on his own by tomorrow.”

“But I take him seriously,” Flora said. She carefully crossed her legs. “And I know him best. We can’t take chances, Omar. Once he’s gone, how long before I follow?”

“Please,” he huffed. “Don’t be melodramatic. You’ve hardly even spoken to him in a century. You’ve hardly spoken to any of us in a century. I’m almost surprised you came.”

“I do care,” she said. She laid a hand on his shoulder. “I do. And I wish you’d join me. All of you. Infinite lives, infinite variations on ourselves. You could be a scholar in a fantastic world, discovering truly original things-”

“You can only offer style,” he hissed. “Not substance. Only the truth is substance. I’d see right through any fantasies you could concoct.”

“Yes, but he wouldn’t,” she sighed, leaning back into her chair. “We’re on the same side, Omar. But if we tug him from opposite angles, yours and mine-”

“We get nowhere. I know.”

“So,” she said. “I’ll use your plan, but you have to let me handle this.”

He steepled his hands and paused, appearing to think. But really, he couldn’t be happier to lay all the responsibility for Colville at her feet. He had too much to get done.

“I accept. Take however much time you need, and cede the rest to me.”

She smiled warmly.

“There is one complication,” Omar said. “Zhang. He’s… expressed interest.”

Flora’s smile disappeared, and her face flushed red with anger.

“He won’t get any of our time. He’d undo all our efforts out of spite.”

“I agree. But that’s not wholly our decision,” Omar said. “He’ll try to intervene at some point.”

“Fuck him,” she said. “Can’t he put aside his grudges for once? This is serious.”

“I’ll do what I can to keep him occupied,” he sighed. “And see if he can’t be made to see reason.”

“Fine. Is that everything?”

“No. The Oracle, and her pet-”

“The pet gets no time. It has no vote.”

He nodded. “But the Oracle? She’s been through this before, just the other way around. She could be useful.”

“I’ll talk to her,” she said. “We’ll see.”

Omar exhaled and stood. “I’d like to get back to my work, then. You’ll find him in the Crystalarium.”

“You and your busywork,” she said, shaking her head. “Go.”

He went.

They embraced, and she hugged him twice as hard to make up for his lack of enthusiasm.

“You’ve been unwell,” Flora said. “Let me spirit you away, and no more of this mad talk. Okay?”

Colville murmured something, and the two swayed back and forth together for a moment before he pulled away.

“I’m serious this time,” he said. “I want to go, love.”

“You can’t,” she said. “Remember what you promised on Szalva? ‘No you without me, and no me without you’? We’re forever, Colly.”

“You say that every time I bring this up,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m tired of arguing. I feel like I know exactly what you’ll say, and what I’ll say, and none of it’s worth the effort.”

She threw her hands up. “You’re insufferable, you know that? I pour all my energy in, and you’re like a black hole. Nothing ever comes back.”

“Do you want me to pretend I’m fine?”

“Yes,” she said.

She gestured to the elevator, and he followed her inside.

”Look, I talked to the bald man. We’re going to dive in so deep you forget your name and all your troubles. I’ve been working on a new world for a while- you’ll be a little familiar with the setting, but it won’t have any of my standard characters. High fantasy. Just a short test run for now, and afterwards you’ll be craving a hundred years in it.”

“Great.”

She slung her arm around his waist and held him tight. He didn’t object on the ride down, and went quietly when she tugged him out through the gateway. To her realms.

They emerged in the weeping forests of Szalva. The forests stretched hundreds of feet into the sky, but each tree stood well apart from the others. Legend had it that a jealous king, spurned by his wife, had hung a hundred lovers here in revenge. Supposedly to the very day the trees were slick with their tears.

Whether that was true depended on how Flora was feeling at the time. She hadn’t dealt with actual matter since before the compact, which meant that the forests of Szalva existed only virtually and completely at her whim. She was free to remake them in any way she pleased. There were hundreds of versions of just this grove alone, in various weather conditions and states of overgrowth. Not to mention the reams of tweaks, alterations, variants, and mutations she had for the containing world itself.

The possibilities were dizzying, but for her purposes only one particular version suited. She wondered if Colville would notice which one it was- the very one where he had promised her they’d be together forever, nearly two thousand years ago. She wasn’t sure he thought about that day as much as she did.

“Oh look,” Colville said. He walked into the clearing and peered at the mottled daylight as it filtered through the canopy. “This place again. Thought you would’ve deleted it by now.”

“How could you say that?” She nearly stepped back through the gateway in shock. “You know this place is like- like my very soul, laid bare.”

“Maybe that’s the problem?”

She punched him, and the blow sent him sprawling onto a lush carpet of grass. He took the blow and laughed with it, and Flora scowled.

“You’re just trying to upset me. Liga says this place is boring too, and you know how much Liga can get under my skin.”

“Yep. You caught me.”

She sat beside him, and they watched birds hop and swoop between trees.

“That reminds me. Liga will be joining us,” Flora said. She glanced at his face for a reaction.

“Liga? Will she even remember who we are?”

“Colly, you know she’s not that bad. She just likes seeing everything with fresh eyes, and then getting jaded all over again. You could learn a thing or two from her outlook.”

“Don’t want to,” he said. “Permanent memory loss? She’s lucky we allow her to do that at all.”

“Speaking of reluctantly humoring people, the Oracle will be with us too. And her friend.”

Colville sighed and flopped backwards.

“Great. What’s she playing, chief goddess of all the world?”

“Just a sage,” Flora said. “Barely even above baseline- which is impressive, given how enhanced she was a few years ago. All that power she gave up just to be with us. Maybe power isn’t that great after all, hm?”

“But the overwhelming majority don’t come back down,” Colville said. “And the ones that do are all… her-ish. Do you think I’m her-ish?”

She didn’t want to debate him, so the question hung in the air while they waited. Other people didn’t wait, of course; they’d compress or expand time, or even rewrite their subjective memories so everything flowed perfectly. Others could eliminate the inconvenience of scheduling. But the compact couldn’t and wouldn’t, because at the time they thought waiting around was an essential part of the human experience.

Now Flora wasn’t so sure.

Most of them weren’t really sure on all the tenets, of course. Omar probably wouldn’t mind having completely perfect memory, or ridding his mind of a few biases. Liga wanted to experience more perfect bliss (which, as everyone but her seemed to understand, was highly dangerous). And Flora… Flora could just do with more time.

A full alternate life could take around 60 years to live out. Skipping over sleep and glossing over all the other mundane timesinks could cut that down to about 30, but 30 years was still a long time, and the compact wasn’t waiting for her. People moved on with their lives, and she lost touch.

She squeezed Colville’s arm a bit tighter.

* * *

Liga finally came through, dragging the Oracle and Mitus along behind her. She’d taken on a punkish vibe, wearing cut-up grey robes accentuated with streaks of bright orange. The streaks ran up her hair, and the whole ensemble slowly cycled through colors. Probably according to her mood.

The Oracle, as lacking in creativity as ever, simply wore white robes. Her eyes glowed, and her white hair stood perpetually on end, like lightning had just struck.

Mitus stood by her side, a tall man clad in sleek silver power armor. Flora did her best to ignore him.

“Flora! This place is awful,” Liga said. She grinned and fidgeted in excitement. “Hiya, Colvie!”

“Hiya, Ligs.”

Flora stood up and brushed herself off. She gave the Oracle a bow, which was returned in kind.

“We’re all ready on my end,” Flora said. She turned to Liga. “Did you want to review the world and make your minor changes?”

“Yep, yep, I do,” Liga said. Flora led Liga deeper into the forest, leaving the Oracle and Colville behind. When they were far enough, she simply waved her hand and called up dozens of screens and displays to float lightly in the air.

Liga scrutinized them closely, rearranging a few elements as she went.

“This is really your play, then,” she said. “It seems so… boring.”

“It is,” Flora agreed. “It has to be archetypical, both to suit Colville’s aesthetic and make the reprogramming work.”

“So you are using Omar’s theories of mind,” Liga noted. “A: That’s kind of fucked up, and B: Are you really trusting social models from him of all people?”

“He’s the best at what he does,” Flora says. “Short of an AI, this is our best shot.”

“If you think so. I just haven’t simmed in anything this cliche in a while,” Liga said. She grimaced. “This bit about the villain, though. Can I tweak the aesthetic without ruining your plans?”

“By all means,” Flora nodded. “Change him entirely if you want. He’s practically superfluous.”

Liga set to work, bringing up an image of a menacing man in spiky black armor before her. She adjusted the shine of his armor, and stretched at the man to make him taller. She tweaked at a dozen personality sliders, carefully adjusting each before moving on. When she was done, she dismissed the displays and turned to Flora.

“All done! I can’t say if your scheme will work, but to be honest it’s not my problem if it doesn’t. I still think you should just date an NPC instead.”

“Some of us prefer the real version of Colville,” Flora said. She began to walk back.

“But I know you’d like him more after he’s had a few tweaks. I’ve seen your favorite NPCs! They’re all him, but better.”

Flora deigned to ignore Liga’s comment, and walked back to the grove. But she paused when it came into sight. Colville seemed to have baited the Oracle into yet another pointless debate.

“-Which, by definition, is essentially identical to myself, and therefore will make the same decisions,” the Oracle elaborated patiently. “Therefore whatever decision I make must be as if I’m controlling the contents of the boxes. I’m really not seeing what quirk of mind would cause you to come to any other conclusion.”

“But!” Colville said, grinning. “The money is either in the boxes at that point or not. So it makes sense to take both!”

“But you’ve agreed that action leads to-”

“Not to interrupt,” Flora began, “But we’re ready, and you’ll have plenty of time to discuss this with Colly after I’ve convinced him not to leave. You can even play the stupid game with Aye for all I care.”

The Oracle nodded, and Colville gave her a wink. Flora did a mental last-minute check of her fantasy, skirting around what Liga had changed to preserve the surprise. All good. She then reached down and brushed the grass. It folded downwards into a smooth surface and molded itself into a uniform grey grid.

From the grid, she scooped up a ball and pinned it in the air. The ball formed itself into a small world- her world, and slowly set to spinning. Its surface was one supercontinent, dotted with smaller islands. The south was covered with ice, but it was lusher further north, with a baking, impassable desert at the north pole. With a grand sweep of her hand, she-

“Your jetstreams are all fake,” the Oracle said, sounding disappointed. “There should be more forests here, and fewer along here.”

“The whole planet is fake,” Flora replied mid-gesture. “I’ve taken artistic license with physics.”

She continued, a little deflated.

“This is the world called Doun, crafted a thousand years ago by primordial Chaos. Once, the Gods took the world as an arena, and beset its surface with hordes of fearsome monsters. The monsters-”

“You haven’t explained the Gods,” Colville interrupted.

“They’re not really relevant, and besides every culture has their own version,” Flora said. She tapped on a coastal spot, highlighting a region in red. “And here, the whole idea is heresy.”

“Oh,” the Oracle said. “Like the Gods are a religion, and not still around?”

Flora nodded.

“Might I have a data-dump instead?” the Oracle continued. “My character is supposed to be quite knowledgeable, and it could take a long time for me to learn enough to properly reflect that.”

“You were supposed to read the materials I sent you beforehand.”

“But if I didn’t, you were 97% likely to agree to the data dump.”

Liga shrugged. “She’s got you there. I don’t see the harm in it, anyway.”

“Fine,” Flora conceded. The Oracle disappeared in a blinding flash of white, and Mitus with her. “But the rest of you, listen up.”

She pinned another, larger country on the map.

“This is the fallen empire of Khos, archetypically Rome. Its glory once extended throughout much of the world, until it collapsed under the weight of its own success. When the last legitimate king of the Moivant dynasty was usurped, it lapsed into a hundred years of civil war and instability. Even today, the great city of Khos itself is held together only by a tenuous and ineffective council of Proctors.”

“Oh! Are we reforging the empire?” Colville said. “Because we’ve done that before. Do you remember Zaredzan, Flora? I ran some simulations, and after we abdicated it took 330,000 years to fall. This ‘Khos’ doesn’t seem much different.”

“And here,” Flora said, pinning a ice-laden country south of Khos, “Is the realm of the Befallen. Beset by plague and famine, it has collapsed, and the Broken-Sword Warlord and his riders rule what remains by fear and force.”

“So what, are they generic antagonists?”

“The young daughter of the warlord, Vivian, was stolen away at a young age to be a hostage and proof against his raids. But when she grew up, the warlord found he did not care for her soft ways. He invaded the borderlands, slaughtering everyone she had grown up with and selling her into slavery in Khos. That day, she vowed she would get her revenge.”

“Now she has escaped, killing her master and stealing enough money to hire a small band of mercenaries to escort her to the Befallen lands. Though the journey will be fraught with danger, her iron determination will see her through.”

“The mercenaries are us?” Colville asked.

“Liga is playing Vivian’s best friend, actually, and the Oracle is a sage who has foreseen a prophecy and joins Vivian on her quest. But the two of us are mercenaries, yes.”

“It’s… certainly a sim,” Colville said. “Not your best pitch, though. I don’t see how this is supposed to convince me to stay.”

Flora shook her head and smiled. “I just thought you’d enjoy something nostalgic and simple, like the early days. Anyway, it’s only a test run.”

Liga tilted her head. “It seemed good to me. I’d call it grounding, even.”

“Fantasy pastiche,” Colville said, shaking his head. “But if that’s how you want to spend my time, I’m fine with it.”

“Great!” Flora summoned an archway. For effect, more than anything else. “I’ll explain the rest as we go. Shall we?”

They entered, and the forests around them winked out of existence.

The streets of Khos glistened with rain. Streams of water flowed downwards from the palace’s heights and joined into small rivers as they descended upon the rest of the city. In the poorer districts, the water was ankle high and strong enough to sweep carts over and carry stalls away.

Vivian took a deep breath and forded the street. By the time she got across, her stolen boots were soaked through and the heavy bag over her shoulder had started to slip. She set it down and knocked on an old, signless door as loudly and insistently as she could.

The man who finally answered was scarred and stout, with suspicion written onto his face. Finding no harm in her, he ushered her inside and slammed the door.

“Poor hour to be out,” he commented. “But the boys are cooped up, and none of the other whores were stupid enough to make the trip. What’s in the bag?”

She set the bag down and glared at him. “I’m no whore. And I want to speak to Toothy Al. About the bag.”

The man sized her up again, and finally retreated to Al’s office. She waited, ears straining and failing to hear their conversation. Then the man returned to usher her inside. The office had a sole table amid casks of wine and beer, where the man called ‘Toothy Al’ sat and worried at paperwork. He looked up at her with something approaching mild surprise.

“You’re the palace vestal,” Al said. She set the heavy bag down on his table in response, and he started rifling through it. His surprise only deepened as he brought out a jewelled goblet, then a silver necklace, and then a stack of five fine plates.

“There’s a lot in here,” he said. “Someone downsizing up there?”

“Someone said you wouldn’t ask questions,” she said. The bouncer leaned over her shoulder, and she shivered as he took stock of the goods and let out a low whistle. Al gestured, and she tensed up for a moment, ready to run. But the man left, shutting the door behind him.

“I want to make an exception to the no-questions rule,” Al continued. “See, there was a funny lady and her escort that came by, and they told me to expect you. Said not to fuck with you. A bit fay, but she bought a round for the house, so we let her stay.”

Vivian blinked. If she’d been expected, then it was all over already. They’d drag her back to the palace and see her beheaded for what she’d done. That only left the question- should she run for it, beg for mercy, or die fighting?

“I’m guessing you didn’t know her either,” Toothy Al said. He shook his head and continued taking items out of the bag. After a minute, he had a moderate pile of priceless artifacts on his desk.

“These goblets are worthless,” he said, tapping a few. “That’s not even gold plating, that’s fake. But the rest… I can get you a solid price. Enough to see you wherever you like.”

“How soon?” she asked. Al thought for a moment, then flashed his namesake smile.

“Give me half an hour, and you’ll get your due. In the meantime, help yourself to the bar. Seems you’re expected.”

* * *

People started staring as soon as she came in. From the barkeep to the lovers at the back table, everyone watched her expectantly. She soon saw why. A hooded woman in white sat at the center table and gestured for her to come closer.

Hand on her short knife, Vivian approached. The woman had a soft face, but her eyes blazed an unnatural white. Her skin was so pale it looked like the sun had never touched it. And worryingly, a man in actual platemail sat next to her. At least he didn’t bear the sigil of the council.

“My dreams are unwell,” the woman said, quietly. “A man rallies his riders while the sky chokes on ash. Everything afire, plains and men alike. I see you, Vivian.”

Chills ran down her spine, and she nearly turned and ran on the spot.

“How do you know me?”

The woman seemed to consider this question.

“I know things others do not,” she conceded. “I know of your quest to slay the Broken Sword Warlord, and fate demands I aid you.”

“She is a mystic,” the man across from her explained. “What she says may make little sense, but I have found her wisdom unquestionable. In some lands, she is called the Oracle.”

“Okay,” Vivian said. She didn’t know how else to process this. “And who are you?”

“Mitus,” he said, saluting her. “Former knight of the… Beir Order?”

Oddly, he looked to the Oracle for confirmation. She nodded.

“And you two want to help me? Because her dreams are unwell?”

Vivian waited for them to burst into laughter and arrest her. But instead they kept at it.

“That is correct,” the Oracle said. “Our journey will be long, but I am led to understand it will be worthwhile. Would you like an assessment of the dangers and plausible benefits involved?”

“Sure,” was all she could muster in response. The Oracle then launched into an animated discussion of the potential paths and strategies involved in reaching the realm of the Befallen, as well as the plausible geopolitical effects of successfully assassinating its warlord. Most of what she said went far over Vivian’s head, but it apparently made sense to Mitus, who would occasionally chime in with a correction or suggestion.

The longer she listened, the more surreal the situation felt. She’d heard of mystics, of course- in better days, Khos had played host to entire schools of them. Those still around rarely ventured outside their academy though, and they certainly didn’t drop in to seedy bars to chat up wanted criminals or runaway vestals.

“Excuse me,” another woman interrupted. This one wore an axe on her back, and was clad in tough leathers. But her hair, long and golden, hung freely to her waist. The woman seized a free seat and plopped down, flashing a smile at Vivian. “I heard you were going to the Befallen lands.”

“Yes,” Vivian answered cautiously. “Is that any of your concern?”

“No, but it should be yours. The Befallen lands are a dark and perilous realm. It is ruled by monsters- some men, some not- and even the grace of the Gods-”

“Please,” another man said. He took the seat opposite the woman. He wore a sword on his hip, and his chest was bare but heavily tattooed in some indecipherable script.

“I’m tired of hearing about how much you love the place.”

The woman gave a strained smile and turned to Vivian. “I am Razz, and this is-”

“Colville, Col for short,” the man said. The woman shot him a dark glance. “Sorry, but I’m just going to forget whatever names you made up. She’s Flora, by the way.”

The entire table went tense for a moment, and Vivian could’ve sworn she saw Mitus trade a knowing glance with ‘Colville’ while ‘Flora’ simmered. But Flora resumed a moment later, apparently no worse for being corrected.

“We’re the best sellswords you’re likely to find,” she said. “If money's no object for you, we’ll have you out of Khos before the day’s end.”

“That’s a generous offer,” Vivian managed to stammer. “But uh, I think I should check up on the back now. Thanks.”

She rose and walked away as quickly as she could. Thankfully the four of them didn’t move to stop her and she found her way to Toothy Al’s office.

She was about to knock, but paused when she heard conversation within.

“-A little more respect,” a voice said. Not Al’s, and it sounded halfway between disdain and outright hostility. “You’re lucky we don’t burn this establishment to the ground. Now, how long ago was she here?”

Vivian’s blood froze, and she took a step back from the office. She edged towards the bar’s entrance and peeked outside; in the street, palace guards were walking from door to door, spears at the ready. She wasn’t sure, but she suspected two were already waiting just outside the door. Which meant-

She spun, and ran back into the bar. The four strange characters still waited at the table expectantly, and the Oracle gave her a forced smile. She ignored them and ran to the front entrance, bursting out onto the rain-slick street. She only made it a few steps before guards rounded the corner, their boots sloshing water in unison.

“You!” the lead one shouted. He waved his spear. “Stop!”

She ran in the other direction, but more guards had heard the commotion. They closed in, jabbing with their long spears when she tried to get past them. With a trembling hand, she took her short knife out of its stolen sheathe and held it like a torch to keep them at bay.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” one growled. “You’re coming with us.”

She feinted a lunge, and that guard backed away a step, causing the others to laugh at him. Their spears moved closer until she had barely a few feet to maneuver in- with her knife, she’d never get into range.

“Excuse me,” Flora said. The mercenary stepped out onto the street, casually hefting her axe. She looked at Vivian. “I was wondering if you’d considered my offer. My fees are exceedingly reasonable.”

The guard nearest to her turned his spear. “Stay out of this, citiz-”

She stepped to the side, knocking his spear away with the butt of her axe. With another stroke, she decapitated the man, moving so fluidly that he had no time to react.

The rest of the guards turned to face her, and began closing in at a fast walk. Flora seemed unperturbed. Taking the fallen guard’s spear, she hurled it like an oversized javelin right into the closest one’s neck.

At that, the remaining guards unanimously turned and fled. Colville emerged from the bar behind her, followed by Mitus carrying a large bag. Her bag.

“You’re- the best I’ve ever seen,” Vivian gasped.

“Oh look,” Colville muttered. “She’s made herself a sycophant.”

Flora chose to ignore him. “We’ll take the bag as safe passage. Should be fair price, hm?”

Vivian gulped, and nodded. If she even wanted to disagree, it didn’t seem like the right time. The money could’ve gotten her a country estate, but what she really wanted was these mercenaries, helping her get revenge.

“The Oracle went to the palace,” Mitus explained. “She hoped to confuse their search for you and catch up with us later, after a few other errands.”

“Yes, well, I hope you told her I won’t be amused if she takes the opportunity to reorganize Khos into a technocratic utopia,” Flora said.

“Her absence won’t affect our escape from the city,” Mitus said pointedly. “We’ll make for the river and hide on a barge. That’ll take us-”

“Away from our destination,” Flora interjected. “By a hundred miles, possibly.”

“I haven’t been on a river barge in quite a while,” Colville said, and just like that it seemed they’d come to a decision. Flora started to make her way down the street, and Vivian reluctantly followed.

“Do you four… know each other?” Vivian asked.

“The Oracle’s prophecies tend to shake things up,” Flora explained. “Say she prophesies that the father will be overthrown by the son. We get rid of the son. It’s a profitable little venture.”

“That’s… horrible,” Vivian said, immediately wishing she’d kept her mouth shut.

Thankfully, they didn’t seem to take any offense, but the conversation died as they hurried down a steep street just ahead of a patrol. By the time they reached the shelter of a bakery’s overhang, Vivian was thoroughly soaked.

“This slog is miserable,” Colville said as they caught their breath. “And we have to be chased in it, too?”

“Stop complaining, it’s atmospheric,” Flora said. She paused as another detachment of palace guard came into sight, and the four of them ducked behind an empty fish stall. “They’re doing concentric spirals from their outposts? I didn’t script that.”

“Just fun little changes,” Col muttered. “Where is our friend anyway?”

“She’ll find us soon,” Flora said.

They headed down a nearby alley and emerged onto another street, where a pair of guards were dragging a crying woman by her arm. Her pure white dress was torn and streaked with mud.

“Speaking of,” Flora added.

Vivian poked her head around the corner to see and sucked in a sharp breath.

“Ligs? Gods above, did she follow me?”

“A friend of yours?” Flora asked. “The more the merrier, I suppose.”

Colville had already started to jog up to the guards, sword in hand. They turned too late to see him coming; he became a flurry of blades that left both of them cut-up corpses in the street. Without pausing he dragged Ligs back with him, with her screaming the whole way. Until she saw Vivian.

“V-Vivian?” Ligs said. Her eyes were bloodshot and streaked with tears. “I- I tried to follow you, after you- but I couldn’t find you.”

“You idiot,” Vivian spat. “When it was just me running away, I could’ve been a rogue traitor. Now they’ll think all the vestals are in on it.”

Ligs blinked, and wiped at her face. Was that harsh? Ligs was always a bit slow, but she had a kind heart and was Vivian’s best friend. Could she be blamed for what the Proctors would do?

“What a touching reunion,” Mitus commented. “Maybe we could save it for the barge?”

Flora led them across the street and through someone’s tenement. She hacked off the door’s hinge, and Mitus cowed the family while she demolished the back wall. At Vivian’s insistence, they left a single ornate plate as repayment. They then repeated the process with the adjoining apartment before they came to the steep slopes beside the river.

The river cut through the heart of Khos. In ancient times, people thought it contained the spirits of the dead being ferried to their final destination, but today it only ferried the city’s waste and goods. Its waters were a murky green, but Vivian had heard some of the fishmongers say that far away from the city it was pure and clear. Today its banks were high and its waters swift.

They settled in to wait on the scraggly grass.

“Not to play Oracle, but does this river make sense?” Col asked. “I mean, I hardly looked at your geography-”

“Except to criticize it, apparently,” Flora interjected. “The river makes perfect sense.”

Ligs edged closer to Vivian, who took her hand and squeezed it for comfort. The two of them sat down a small distance away from the others.

“Who are these people?” Ligs asked.

“Mercenaries,” Vivian said. “I think. They’re- very odd, but they’re good. And there’s a seer with them.”

Ligs shivered. “Do you trust them?”

Vivian shook her head. “No, but I think I need them. But you don’t. You should slip away, when you get the chance.”

Ligs smiled, and wiped at her eyes. Her tears had already ruined her careful makeup, but she looked no less the innocent girl she’d been when Vivian had first met her.

“I have nowhere to go,” she said. “And I want to help you.”

“It won’t be easy,” Vivian replied. “I- I paid them all my money, but maybe I could get just a little back. You could go somewhere nice.”

But Ligs shook her head. “You’re stuck with me, I think. I don’t know why, but this feels right.”

They were interrupted by a barge as it rounded the bend. It was a long, flat boat stacked high with pottery and grain. A sleepy-looking man paddled lazily with an oar and kept it more or less in the center of the river.

“Perfect,” Flora said. “Right on schedule.”

The river stretched into the distance, seemingly endless.

Ligs sat at the rear of the barge, but that still wasn’t far enough from the mercenaries for her tastes. Colville had killed those guards as casually as a cook sliced fish. His blades had seemed like they were everywhere, but his face... he’d seemed so bored the whole time. Ligs wasn’t comfortable turning her back on him.

Colville had been talking to Flora for the past hour, but Ligs had no idea what they were talking about. None of the three made much sense. The two mercenaries argued over how shoddy “the sim” was, while Mitus preoccupied himself with spear-fishing. It should’ve been folly with how fast the boat was moving, but the man had somehow accrued a small stack of fish anyway.

They drifted by a small wooden house. It looked cosy, but utterly unlike the palace’s artful marble buildings. She had no idea who would live there or what it was for, but it looked well-kept at least. She couldn’t decide whether it would be nice to live outside the city, or if it would get lonely.

As they went on, small towns and sluggish windmills appeared on either side of the river, with a few rice farms floating by as the barge went further downstream. After a while, even the rice farms started to thin and were replaced by a vast expanse of trees.

“I’m surprised you bothered with all this detail,” Colville said.

“We weren’t meant to go this way,” Flora said. She gestured expansively. “This is all Aye’s work.”

“No wonder I like it then,” Colville said. Flora hit him in response, but he laughed it off.

Ligs tried not to listen to them, but as the hours passed she found herself enthralled as Flora talked about the local ecology. Apparently, it was more complex than Ligs had ever suspected; a whole world of jungle cats, nest-building rabbits, and beetle warfare existed in the forest around them. She was almost disappointed when the lecture ended and Mitus began rowing the barge towards the riverbank.

“We should only be a few dozen miles off-course if we get off here,” he said. “M’lady should catch up with us before we reach the caverns.”

“The caverns?” Vivian asked.

“The Izzilian abysses,” Flora interjected. “According to legend, a God was trapped in a mountain by his enemies, and the caverns follow the twisting path he carved from the rock in his escape. It cuts straight through the mountains and into the outer borders- which makes it the fastest route.”

“We’re that close to the borders?” Vivian asked, blinking.

“Small world,” Mitus said.

“We’ll emerge near Allegh and stock up on supplies,” Flora said.

Vivian’s stomach churned. “There is no Allegh. Not anymore.”

“It was burned to the ground, certainly,” Flora said. “But it was rebuilt. It’s a shell of its former glory, but...”

“But a necessary plot point, apparently,” Colville said, rolling his eyes. “Let’s get going.”

Ligs untied the unconscious bargeman and offered a mumbled apology. Then she jumped off just as Mitus pushed it back on its way downriver.

Before them stood the buzzing forest. It was filled with beetles, snakes, and jungle cats that had seemed far more interesting in the abstract. Vivian was keeping her cool, but Ligs kept thinking about how nice a cozy bed in the house they’d passed would’ve been.

Hours later, she’d lost her fear at the cost of very sore feet. The forest was an endless maze of trees and treacherous footing, and Ligs had no idea how far they’d gone by the time they finally set up camp for the night. Ligs and Vivian would share a tent, while the others would sleep on the ground.

Apparently they weren’t afraid of beetles or snakes. She’d taken everything else at face value, but that seemed a little much. She stayed awake and waited for the mercenaries to abandon them in the middle of nowhere. But they didn’t, and at some point the weight behind her eyes became too much. She fell asleep.

* * *

“Rise and shine,” someone said. Ligs yawned and came out of her tent to find Colville roasting a rabbit over a small fire. He sprinkled it with leaves and turned it evenly while she watched, mouth watering.

“All your memories suppressed and you still look at me like that,” he said.

Ligs warily took a seat across from him while she turned a question over in her mind.

“I don’t understand your religion,” she said after a moment. “What memories do I not have?”

“Who you really are,” Colville answered. “What we’re really doing here. You didn’t want to know- which is better than Flora’s sad attempt at immersion, anyway.”

“Okay,” she said, bewildered. She hadn’t really expected his explanation to make sense, anyway. “Where did everyone else go?”

“There’s an abandoned temple not far from here,” Colville answered. “Flora wanted to make an offering to the lost forest gods to ensure our safe passage. I was allowed to skip it.”

“Oh,” Ligs said. She cautiously bit into her rabbit chunk. It tasted awful, like one of those bitter yellow fruits the palace cook had on feast days.

“Acquired taste,” Colville apologized. “I guess you don’t remember that. You’d better finish it, though. There’s more walking ahead- inconvenience and boredom give journeys meaning, after all.”

She barely managed to eat her share. If it was an acquired taste, it was one she had no interest in acquiring. Colville wolfed down his own share and put out the fire while she finished.

“We’d better catch up to them,” he said. She nodded and set to packing up her tent. There was a rhythm to it, and Ligs surprised herself with how fast she was.

“You remember how to do that at least.” She jumped a little at the sound of his voice directly behind her. But he just smiled and pointed into the forest. “Go about a mile that way. You’ll run into it, guaranteed.”

“You’re not coming with me?”

“Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “I need to check some stuff. Tell Flora I’ll catch up to her.”

“What stuff? We’re in the middle of nowhere. I’ll get lost, or eaten.”

“Not possible,” he said. “You can’t really go off the rails here. Flora’s a bit of a fussy conductor.”

At that he took off into the forest, back towards the river. Ligs took a step after him before thinking better of it. If this was the part where they abandoned her in the forest to die, she’d rather not remind the man to stab her first.

That left her, the forest, and a vague direction to go in. With a sigh she shouldered her bag and started walking.

The trees were full of birds today. Some were plain and watched her inquisitively as she passed, while more colorful ones ignored her in favor of preening. Soon they were singing.

The forest was alive, and despite the jungle cats lying in ambush and the man-eating snakes ready to drop down on her from above, Ligs felt pretty good about that. A bounce entered her step, and she hummed an old ditty to herself. She couldn’t remember ever hearing it before, but it felt appropriate.

Of course, she had no idea where she was going and would probably die out here. But at least for now it was sort of charming. She came across deer drinking from a brook, and even a few moss-covered ruins after a while. Not enough to make a temple, but enough to make her feel downright optimistic.

All her life, people had called Ligs ‘sweet’, usually with ‘but slow’ tacked on when they thought she couldn’t hear. And it just wasn’t true. Not every vestal in the palace needed to go around with a dour face all the time, and if sometimes they ran out of perfume or one of the men got forceful, why get upset? It didn’t help, and there was just too much niceness in the world to be down all the time.

Obviously they were still slaves, however gilded the palace was. And when they lost their youth and their beauty, they’d be cast out onto the streets to beg. That was why she’d planned her own way out, by way of a cute courtier who’d taken a shine to her. Before Vivian fucked everything up and killed a Proctor, she had a quieter, better plan already in place.

And then Vivian blamed her for taking the last opportunity any of them would ever get. Like she was the villain, and Vivian wasn’t a shortsighted snob who couldn’t think of anyone but herself. Even her little quest was selfish. She’d kill her evil father, and then what? Everyone would love her? No, she was only doing it for revenge, and not because someone had to do it and it was the right thing to do.

But she wasn’t angry, she reminded herself. However much Vivian had botched her escape, Ligs was grateful that they were free and together. Or rather, that they were free and Vivian had left her behind to go ransack a temple.

Caught up in her thoughts, she almost walked right into it. She hadn’t even been watching where she’d been going, but there the temple was, just in front of her. Overgrown with vines like all the ruins, but still standing proud and taller than any tree.

It reminded her a little of a Hierophant’s ziggurat, but the stone was unpainted and there weren’t any mourners. A long flight of broad steps led upwards, to a box-shaped entrance at the very top. Nobody seemed around, so she started climbing, with each step brought her closer to the treetops.

And then she was above them. The world from up here was an endless sea of green, rimmed by the blue sky above. In the far distance she could make out mountains. If that was their destination (and she dearly hoped it was), they still had a lot of walking ahead of them.

At the very top was a stone room. It was dark inside, but she could make out more steps leading down in a spiral. She laughed at the absurdity of it. Who would make a temple with so many stairs, where you started going up and then had to go down again?

She didn’t really feel brave enough to venture inside though, and sat down on the top step to wait. If Vivian and the others were inside, they’d have to come out eventually.

She was validated when not twenty minutes later a blood-streaked Vivian emerged from the temple. She nodded at Ligs and slumped down beside her, breathing heavily and squinting in the sunlight. Somewhere within the temple she seemed to have acquired a necklace of vines, with a single blue flower for a pendant.

“Hiya,” Ligs said. “Have fun?”

Vivian shook her head and wiped her grimy hands on her shirt.

“The whole place was trapped,” she said. “And Flora knew.”

“Why would it be trapped? Nobody lives here, do they?”

“I don’t know,” Vivian said. “She said it was all a test to win the forest’s favor, but she and Mitus acted like it was a glorified puzzle box, not a deathtrap.”

“But you won it? The favor?”

“I guess,” she said. “That part wasn’t completely clear. Where’s Colville?”

Ligs shrugged. “Ran off with no explanation.”

“Figures.”

The two of them stared at the view.

“Should we leave them behind?” Vivian asked. “They’re not bad people or anything, but they’re beyond strange, and the things they say…”

“I don’t know if we can make it without them,” Ligs responded. “Neither of us knows anything about forests, or fighting, and we don’t even have a good sense of where we’re headed.”

“Yea.”

A few minutes later Flora and Mitus joined them. The latter was bleeding between the greaves of his armor, but hardly seemed to mind.

“Where’s Colville?” Flora said, glancing about.

“He said he’d catch up later,” Ligs said. “He had to do... something.”

Flora smiled. “He won’t figure it out.”

“Figure out what, the reprogramming?” Mitus asked.

Flora nodded. “He never paid enough attention to Omar’s work on psychosocial context. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell him- he hasn’t seen everything, he’s really quite a dunce.”

“Should we get moving, then?” Vivian interrupted. Ligs breathed a sigh of relief- another bizarre discussion interrupted before it could go on for hours.

“The caverns are yonder,” Flora said, pointing at the mountains in the distance. “Normally a journey of many weeks, through treacherous forest. But Il’vuna has deemed our tribute worthy.”

As she spoke, four mighty stags emerged from the forest and trotted up to the base of the temple. Each sported proud antlers and a lustrous coat.

“We’re riding those?” Vivian asked.

“They’re vaguely quadrupedal enough,” Mitus commented. “But deer aren’t horses. Do they have the stamina to carry us for any distance?”

“I’m well aware deer aren’t horses,” Flora snapped. “And yes, the deer will carry us, just as they have carried the elves for thousands of years.”

They wandered down to the bottom of the temple, and a stag came up to each of them, kneeling so they could get on. Ligs had ridden a horse once, but it was in a parade- she dearly hoped the stag knew what it was doing.

She carefully slung her leg over, and circled her arms around its neck. They didn’t have saddles, but it was only slightly uncomfortable. As soon as she was seated, the stag bolted off into the forest at a ludicrous speed. Ligs screamed with terror, and then with delight.

The stag leaped more than ran and somehow seemed to know the forest in advance. Even though the ground was littered with branches, rocks, and thorny vines, the stag’s footing was sure.

The forest flew past, and it felt like no time at all had passed before they stopped where the edge of the forest met a craggy plain. The stag bucked her, and she slid off, her knees a little wobbly. The others arrived a moment later.

Before them was a mountain with a yawning chasm at its base. Colville and a strange hooded woman waited by it.

“What the fuck,” Flora said.

“Oh hi,” Colville said. He smiled cheerfully. “You’re late.”

“You’re not supposed to teleport,” Flora said. “If we were just on the stags, there’s no way you could’ve gotten here before us!”

“Technically-” the hooded woman started.

“No need,” Colville said, shushing her. “I had to dip out for a bit and get some affairs in order. So I just teleported back into the sim. Is that a problem? Is your little story broken?”

Flora opened her mouth, and then thought better and closed it again. “Fine. It wasn’t an important segment anyway. Let’s just get inside.”

The rest of them started for the caverns, but Vivian and Ligs were frozen with shock.

“Excuse me,” Vivian said. “Did you just say you could teleport?”

Flora glanced backwards at them. “Oh, uhm, no dear. Come along.”

“I’m not moving until I get some explanations!” she said indignantly. “You can’t just- we were going faster than horses on those things, and Colville was left behind, and he says he teleported here but you just deny it now? What the fuck is going on?”

“What’s wrong with the NPC? Is her block broken?”

“No,” Flora said. She inspected Vivian like she was a cow for sale. “She shouldn’t be able to pick up on anything out of character.”

“Are-are you going to answer me?” Vivian said. She fumbled for her knife as the four drew closer.

“Evidently she can,” Colville said. He looked amused. “Did you doublecheck what Liga changed? She didn’t put a block on herself, either.”

“Odd,” the hooded woman said. Ligs shivered as the woman looked over her with pure, glowing white eyes. “I didn’t think she’d want her immersion ruined by our commentary.”

Flora took a deep breath.

“Aye,” she said. “Pause.”

The world stopped, and Liga remembered everything.

They were still just outside the mouth of the cavern, but the world’s colors had been washed away. Not quite to the point of black and white, but the scene and everything in it seemed out of focus, except for the five of them.

Her memories restored, Liga immediately assumed a coy smile.

“Something wrong?”

“I didn’t check your changes because I trusted you,” Flora said. She was already working up one of her implacable rages; this was the cold stage, where a bit of ice formed in her voice. “But you removed the mental blocks from Vivian. She’s a crucial NPC, she shouldn’t be questioning her very reality.”

“What’s wrong with metacommentary?” Liga answered. She crossed her arms. “If the rest of you didn’t break immersion so much, it wouldn’t be a problem.”

“What am I supposed to be immersed in?” Colville asked.

“Shush, you,” Flora said. “Liga, I’m reinstituting the block on Vivian.”

“But not on me,” Liga said.

“It’s your life,” Flora shrugged. “Waste it however you will.”

Flora rounded on Colville.

“And you don’t get to just waltz out, do you hear? You’ll carry this through 100%, however much you don’t understand my genius. No wandering off the rails.”

“I am prepared to be utterly bored,” Colville said, mock-solemnly placing a hand over his heart. “In memory of our love.”

“Okay,” Flora said. She turned again to Liga. “Did you make any other stupid changes you want to talk about?”

Liga shrugged.

“No.”

* * *

Vivian blinked. She’d lost her train of thought.

They’d made it through the forests by the grace of Il’vuna, but the caverns before them were the dreaded Izzilian abysses. Flora had said they were formed by a trapped god buried beneath the mountain, but the palace philosophers had spoken of tectonic processes and the continental crush. Either way, she wasn’t eager to find out, but this was her quest.

“I’ll go first,” she said. “If anything happens, it should happen to me.”

“You hired us to die for you,” Colville pointed out. “Still, sure. Go first. I can’t wait for you to get lost.”

“So long as we keep light in our hearts, we will never be lost,” the Oracle said. Flora looked ready to object, but the Oracle held up a hand. “That’s a prophecy.”

Steeled by the mystic’s words, Vivian worked up the courage to take the first few steps into the cave. She was surprised by how cool it was, and how quickly it became dark; daylight only made it to just inside the entrance. After a dozen paces she could hardly tell where she was going.

Mitus lit a torch, illuminating a stalagmite directly in front of her. Others hung from the ceiling, dripping with moisture. Droplets from them pooled into a small stream leading deeper into the cave.

That stream led to a wide corridor, round on all sides and large enough to drive a cart through. The torchlight couldn’t reach to the end of it, and its walls were coated with a wet moss that glowed a soft green light as they passed.

“Mycelium,” Flora explained. “All interconnected, throughout the caves. It’s said that-”

“Not interested in the legends,” Colville interrupted. “What evolutionary purpose does the glow serve?”

“None,” Flora said defiantly. Her voice echoed down the corridor and roused a few dozen bats, which fled past and nearly into Vivian. They continued in silence after that.

The corridor ended in a large room hundreds of feet across, with a wide pit in its center. Around the room’s edges, a thin spiraling path had been chiseled into the rock. It looked like the only way down.

Vivian took a tentative step into the room and slipped on the slick floor. Fortunately, Mitus pulled her back just as she was about to fall.

She peered cautiously at the pit, but couldn’t see its bottom.

“Is this the only way down?” Vivian asked.

“Yep,” Flora said. “One-way trip, too.”

“You’ve been here before, right?”

Flora nodded.

“So this is where we can’t turn back?”

“Just slide around the edges, and try not to impale yourself on the stalagmites at the bottom. Otherwise, it’s perfectly safe.”

Ligs pushed past her, and took in the spiral.

“Seems easy enough,” she declared. She put a hand on Vivian’s shoulder. “You’ll be right behind me?”

Ligs was off before Vivian could respond. She went down feet-first, and her girlish screaming descended into the darkness. Vivian watched, mouth agape. At least Ligs seemed to be enjoying herself, even if this was the last thing Vivian expected from her.

Vivian glanced back at the others before reluctantly sitting down at the top. She steadied her breathing for a good ten seconds and then gave herself the smallest push. She slid, slowly at first, and then picking up speed.

Then she was hurtling downwards with the feeble torchlight far above her. Without light, it was hard to tell how fast she was going, but both the lurch in her stomach and the constant press of the wall said very fast.

Suddenly the wall was gone, and she was coasting across what felt like an infinite black floor. She came to a stop somewhere in the middle of a great nothingness. She waited for a while, but there was only darkness and silence.

She yelled out for Liga, and then for someone, anyone to answer. But only distant echoes came back. The rest of the party should’ve been there, right behind her- but maybe something had gone wrong, and she’d gotten off the spiral at the wrong time.

Without light, there was nothing for her to do but stumble in the darkness. It took her thirty seconds to find a wall, and she traced its edge until she found four holes that seemed like exits. None seemed more promising than the others.

That was when she began to think she might die down here. Alone and forgotten in some black hole. She’d probably starve before she dehydrated; there was plenty of moisture running along the walls.

Which gave her an idea. So long as she followed the water, it had to travel downwards. At some point it had to collect into a river, or a stream, or something. There was no way all that water could just accumulate down here forever. Was there?

It was her best bet. She picked the exit that seemed to have the most water going into it and ventured down, each step taken carefully lest it be over another bottomless pit. The going was slow, and she had no idea how far it would be.

Eventually, she had to stop to rest. Maybe the others were just around the next bend and they’d leave without her, but the darkness seemed too peaceful. She gathered a makeshift pillow out of moss and fell asleep.

* * *

She sat up. She was in a tent and bathed in light. Real light. She felt better, but her head throbbed a little. She poked her head out and saw green trees, blue sky, and inhaled fresh air. Nothing could be better.

She found Ligs nearby, trying and miserably failing to hit Colville with a sword. Ligs smiled as she came into view.

“You made it! I was really worried for a bit.”

“I made it,” Vivian said in disbelief. “What happened?”

“You passed out in a tunnel,” Colville mentioned. “How convenient that we found you.“

“What? But- why did I only wake up now?” Vivian said.

“Moss was poisonous or something. Blame Flora,” Colville replied. “You and Ligs really weren’t supposed to go first, apparently.”

He looked her over with a critical eye and tapped his chin.

“You’re not supposed to be combat-trained, are you?”

Vivian shook her head. “The guards didn’t even let us cut our own cakes. But I used to watch the boys train in the yard-”

“Only for educational purposes?” Ligs grinned ferociously.

“Look, we’re making for Allegh as soon as we figure out where we are,” Colville said. “Until then, you’re welcome to learn a few things about that knife of yours. Someone should learn my tricks before I go.”

* * *

As it turned out, Colville was a terrible teacher, despite his obvious skill. He seemed to find fault in everything, and every time he started explaining it’d be at least fifteen minutes before they could try again. He was beginning to remind Vivian of Flora and her endless monologues. Colville kept talking about “Sylvassi”, an elaborate sword fighting style that he had personally invented, which would probably be more useful if either of them had swords.

But at least she felt like she was learning something more than “pointy end towards your foe”. She learned when to stab instead of swipe, and when to run like hell (most of the time, according to Colville). She memorized a few useful snippets about pacing, footing, psychology, and even anatomy. But still, there was so much she didn’t know.

A few hours passed before Flora returned with the Oracle and Mitus in tow. They’d found their bearings- Allegh was only a short distance east, and if they hurried, they could reach it before nightfall.

Vivian wasn’t looking forward to seeing what remained of her hometown. There were too many bad memories here.

But she couldn’t avoid looking at the ruins as they got closer. Plants had reclaimed most of the town, but she could still tell where Malley’s house used to be. She’d been there countless times as a child, and Malley always had sugared sweets for when she stopped by.

Or they’d pass a crossroads, and Vivian would remember when the Broken Sword Warlord had impaled the butcher, his cute son, and two of the town’s militia on posts by the road and made her watch. Now there was just harmless grass.

She wished nobody had buried the bodies or cleaned up the ashes. It was a selfish and stupid thought, that just because the city had been ransacked once it had to scar the earth forever. But covered up like this, it was like all of that never even happened. Like it didn’t even matter.

The new Allegh was far smaller. She counted only eight crude farms as they got closer. Where once there’d been walls and watchtowers overlooking a frantic marketplace, now what passed for the city’s center had only a few quiet-looking buildings.

They headed for a one-story inn built of boarded-together wood. Inside, it was a little warmer but not much more enticing. The innkeeper, a surly faced old woman, was sweeping the dirt floor. She looked up at the party with a dead expression, and Vivian couldn’t help but stare.

“Malley,” she said, sucking in her breath. It’d been so many years, but the resemblance was unmistakable. Even with the light gone from her eyes, that was the same kind old Malley from Vivian’s childhood.

“Aye,” the old woman said. “Malley’s the inn, and Malley’s me too. Six of you, huh?”

“For a night,” Flora said. “Your ground floor rooms, closest to the back exit, and whatever supper you can manage. Thirty and three quarters?”

“Aye,” Malley said. Flora handed her a pile of coins, and the old woman counted it slowly.

“Don’t you recognize me?” Vivian said, catching her attention. “I’m-”

“Nobody,” Mitus cut in, flashing Malley a smile. He pressed four more coins into her hand. “And she doesn’t recognize you. Sorry, kid.”

Malley’s eyes darted from Vivian to the coins, and with a shrug she hobbled off.

“Try not to botch the mission preemptively,” Mitus said. “The whole town pays tribute.”

“Tribute?” Ligs said, eyes wide. “To the Brok-”

“Yes,” Colville said, exasperated. “You’ve gone daft, Liga. Don’t talk about him, you’ll attract attention.”

They moved into the common room, setting down bags and other belongings. Vivian sank onto a wooden chair, feeling conflicted. On the one hand, maybe more of the town survived than she thought- but then again, if the years had beaten the life out of Malley of all people, did she even want to find out?

Ligs took a seat next to Vivian, while Mitus helped the Oracle into a chair before wandering off to inspect rooms with Colville. Flora busied herself with a half-ruined painting on the wall.

“By the way, the innkeep is betraying us,” the Oracle said.

“Yes, but,” Flora said. She stopped. “How did you know?”

“Wasn’t that obvious? I thought that was obvious.”

“No,” Flora said, shaking her head. “Her acting is supposed to be perfect. Did you cheat?”

“No?” the Oracle said. She frowned, and tapped a long finger against her chin. “Oh. Sorry, I’ve had my empathy coprocessor on this whole time.”

“Seriously?”

“If you let me keep my memory coprocessor, perhaps I would’ve remembered to turn it off,” the Oracle said. She turned to Vivian. “I foresee we are in great danger.”

“What? No, you don’t. That’s major spoilers.”

“I foresee nothing of import,” the Oracle amended. Vivian nodded like she understood, although the Oracle’s prophecies rarely made sense until after they’d happened.

There was time enough to muse on that tomorrow. She’d already started drifting off when Ligs tugged at her.

“What the hell is going on?” she asked.

“Hm?”

“Did you hear what she said? The innkeep is betraying us.”

“Why would you think that?” Vivian frowned. “I know her. She’d never do anything like that. Malley’s a good woman at heart.”

“The Oracle just said it, and she’s supposed to be a mystic! And the innkeep’s been gone a while now...”

“You’re being paranoid,” Vivian said, shaking her head. “Go find a room you like, okay?”

“No,” Ligs said. “Not okay!”

Ligs stood, pulling Vivian along with her, and physically dragged her to the door. Vivian broke free and huffed.

“What’s your problem?” Vivian asked.

“Just- just come with me, okay?”

Vivian frowned and looked back at Flora, who shrugged indifferently. Taking the opportunity, Ligs pulled her out the door and into the street. In the twilight, she could just make out what looked like a column of torches in the distance.

Ligs pointed in triumph. “See? That’s coming from the Befallen lands. We have to get out of here.”

“I’ll tell the others.”

“No, don’-”

Vivian turned to go back inside. She glanced at Flora and the Oracle before sitting down again, having already forgotten why she’d gotten up. A minute later Colville and Mitus returned, the two of them evidently having found the rooms satisfactory.

It was Mitus who heard it first. The tramping of hoofbeats and the war cries of their riders, dim but growing louder. The five of them rushed outside and saw bandits flowing into town, clad in black and gold. The warlord’s men.

“There’s no way we’ll outrun them,” Colville commented. “I suppose we can’t fight them all, either?”

“It would seem unwise,” Flora said.

“Someone sold us out?” he asked. Flora nodded, and Colville grunted, drawing his sword. Already, riders were circling around the inn, their hoofbeats merging into a continuous roar. Flora and Colville seemed unperturbed, but Vivian felt certain this would be their end. If the warlord’s men took her now, she would make them pay in blood.

“Ligs?” Flora asked, looking around. ‘Where’d she get off to?“

“I don’t know,” Vivian said. “She ran off just before this all happened. You don’t think she was the one who…”

“There’s a chance,” Flora said, shaking her head sadly. “There’s a good chance.”

They waited, warily keeping their distance from the closing circle of horses. Their riders wore ragged, mismatched armor painted black, and a few had tarnished gold trimmings or ribbons. Their horses were mean black beasts with wild eyes.

The circle halted and made way as a towering man rode in. His black armor was decorated with blood-red scrawlings and scuffed by a hundred battles. He rode a massive armored charger, and despite his name, the longsword he carried was unbroken.

Vivian tightened her grip on her knife.

“Good evening,” the man called out. His voice came through his helm distorted. But rather than being muffled, it projected and echoed. He dismounted with practiced ease and sauntered closer.

“Travellers are a rare sight around here. No matter. I believe this is the part where I kill all of you,” he said. “Archers?”

“Wait,” Flora objected. “Don’t you know who we are?”

“Of course,” the man chuckled. “You’re famous mercenaries, which I keep close tabs on for employment purposes. My spies in Khos found it relatively easy to correlate my daughter’s escape with your exit from the city. And that, of course, is the lovely Oracle- an unmistakeable sight.”

The Oracle curtsied, and the warlord bowed in return.

“And now you die,” he added as an afterthought.

“This isn’t-” Flora started, but Colville held out a hand.

“You want to duel me on on one,” he said to the warlord. “Fine. But the armor’s sort of cheating.”

The warlord started shedding his armor.

“You’re not dueling each other,” Flora said. “You’re supposed to ta-”

She froze when he took off his helm.

“Zhang?” she said, aghast. “No. Damnit, Liga. No. Pause!”

He kept taking off his armor as the world froze around him. After all, he’d agreed to this for a reason, and if he wasn’t getting his duel what was the point?

Flora looked like she was about to explode, and the reappearance of Liga was hardly helping matters.

“It’s not really that major of a change,” Liga protested. “I was just replacing a rather rote villain with somebody far less predictable.”

“You’ve ruined the whole plot!”

“It was a terrible plot,” Zhang cut in. “And besides, the whole point was the subliminal priming.”

“What?” Colville asked, startled. He glanced over at Flora, eyes narrowed. “Subliminal priming doesn’t work.”

Flora massaged her temples. “Well, it’s all royally fucked now. I’m off.”

She disappeared. Liga stuck her tongue out, shrugged, and followed suit.

“Usually when you ruin my day, I’m not this grateful,” Colville said.

“She’ll get over it,” Zhang said. “And if she doesn’t, well. Too bad. Are we going to finish this duel?”

“Fine,” Colville said. “Do you want to go somewhere else, though?”

“Arena,” Zhang answered, definitively. He waved goodbye at the Oracle, and world fell away. In its place was a circular pit of sand twenty meters across and surrounded by a raised colosseum. The stands were filled with silent, attentive spectators.

Zhang wore his signature clothing. It was a simple affair- a light blue shirt, flowing grey pants, and ergonomic sandals. While Flora and Liga changed their appearance day to day, Zhang had kept the same look for centuries. He preferred to be iconic.

His sword shimmered a grey-blue, and he held it so it caught the light. Entirely aesthetic, of course. For the purposes of the duel it was functionally identical to Colville’s own.

The barbarian had shucked his cape, and wore only loose brown pants and his tattoos. That was fine. Zhang had spent countless hours training against that exact image. It only mattered a little- shaving a few milliseconds off a swing, or reducing the mental load almost imperceptibly in a long fight- but Zhang needed every edge he could get.

Colville, by contrast, had always been effortlessly talented at swordsmanship. Actually he was effortlessly talented at most things compared to Zhang. For other people, that’d be a quirk of birth or creation fixed in an afternoon’s work. They could trivially adjust their own intelligence or trait retention or neural pathways, but the compact had decided against all of that. If everybody could become a superhuman god, something essential would be lost.

In this case, the essential human truth was that Zhang had been trying to become Colville’s better for nearly a millennia now. Most of the time, he eventually pulled ahead with a great deal of effort. Occasionally he started off leagues better (to this day, Colville couldn’t raise animals worth a damn). But on some things, like swordsmanship… Colville was just better.

Their long and bitter rivalry meant Zhang should’ve been happy that Colville was bowing out and leaving the compact. But part of him knew that never besting Colville, even on this minor thing, would haunt him for a long time.

And while he could always beat exact sims of the guy a thousand years from now, it wouldn’t be a real victory. It was a stupid distinction, but the compact was built on stupid distinctions. That was his.

Today could be his last chance for a fair win. All of his training would pay off, or he would be a failure forever. Colville would likely open with his signature style. It wasn’t even very good, objectively, but Colville’s reaction times made it work maddeningly well. Zhang had studied every one of their past duels and knew precisely how to counter it, of course.

His enemy made the expected lunge, with his sword guarded and low. A half-turn, bringing his sword up, cutting off Zhang’s leftward movement and preparing for a thirty-step checkmate sequence. Last time, he opened it with a step forward, but Colville also made some effort to be unpredictable from duel to duel. Of course in the long run, even the man’s unpredictability was predictable.

Zhang leapt closer to Colville, changing the terms of engagement. Their feet danced a precise sequence on the sandy floor as their swords danced above, never quite touching. Colville started to beat back Zhang’s offensive and resume his sequence, but Zhang was prepared. He could always match Colville’s raw speed with his own finesse.

Zhang kicked sand into the air, a temporary distraction usually meant to let him reposition. But today it held a different purpose. He hurled his sword just ever so precisely-

And Colville had dodged the other way. He glanced down at Zhang’s sword lying in the sand and looked bemused.

“I think I win,” Colville said. Zhang exhaled slowly and bowed.

“Funny, I thought you had something like that up your sleeve,” Colville continued. “Predicted it a million miles away. You went big, but looks like you lost. Again.”

Zhang smiled.

“So that’s… 38,782 to 15,549. Hey, if you want we could do this 33,000 more times, if it’d help you with your little quest.”

“I randomized which way I’d throw the sword,” Zhang said. “You could’ve gone right or left, and I picked at random. So on expectation, I had a fifty-fifty chance of winning there.”

Colville hardly looked impressed. “So?”

“Of the ninety eight distinct competitive openings you’ve employed, I can force all of them to lead to that maneuver.”

Colville again looked unimpressed. “You lost, Zhang.”

“Five of those openings, should you take them, will lead to my guaranteed victory.”

“Which is why I don’t take them,” Colville noted.

“I manage to force you to take them once every few hundred matches.”

Zhang picked up his sword, and sheathed it. Colville waited patiently for him to make his point.

“That means that 50.26% of the time, I win our duels. Which means that I am now the better swordsman.”

“You have a funny way of figuring. You lose a duel, and now you’re the better swordsman?”

“I am,” Zhang said. “This was… mostly a formality. I would have liked to have won, but this proof will do.”

“Even if you’re right, I’d figure out a new opening or a way around your trick sooner than you’d catch up to my score. So I think you’re a bit delusional here, old buddy.”

“You won’t ever figure out a new opening,” Zhang said. “Because you won’t be around long enough. The score I can grind out on a sim of you.”

“Seriously? That’s-” Colville stopped himself. “Sure. If it makes you happy, man. I’m not going to stick around just to prove you wrong, if that’s your angle.”

“I wish you the best of luck in your transcendence,” Zhang said politely. “I do hope you’ll understand my final victory when you become a bit smarter.”

At a loss for words, Colville simply disappeared in a blinding flash of light. That meant Zhang could get away with a little celebration.

He held his sword high, and the arena’s audience burst into applause. In his left hand he held Colville’s severed head, dripping with blood.

* * *

After his humiliating defeat, Colville had apparently retreated back to one of his personal realms. To mourn, no doubt, but Zhang wasn’t quite finished with him.

This particular realm appeared to date back to the compact’s earlier years. Zhang found himself on a soft blue carpet in what might’ve once passed for an opulently decorated house. There were gold-trimmed paintings of dour looking notables hanging above polished wooden tables, with bookshelves and curios scattered here and there to fill space. Zhang had no doubt that if he found a window, he’d look outside to see rain.

It wasn’t quite Zhang’s definition of cozy, but it wasn’t terrible as places went. If he remembered right, it had been modeled off somewhere from Colville’s childhood. But the compact had left their childhoods behind a long time ago, so it was a little surprising that he’d returned here.

Zhang passed through a pair of double doors into the main hall. Here there hung a glitzy chandelier above a set of bifurcated curving staircases that led up to the next floor. The paintings on the walls were oil landscapes of other realms; he recognized a shifting desert, a wartorn jungle, and a scene composed entirely of pentagons.

Up the stairs was a trophy hall. For a period Colville had been into challenge scenarios, and Zhang easily recognized every award on display. In a glass case there was a collection of medals, carefully arranged. The most prominent was in the shape of a ringed planet- it had been won from the nearly impossible battle of Carneras, with three rings indicating not a single ship had been lost. Along the near wall, fierce suits of armor gripped dozens of trophy weapons. Staffs for diplomacy, swords for conquest, and even a chainsaw from an ill-conceived apocalypse scenario.

And on the back wall hung the jaw skull of the Protox, a creature of Zhang’s own design. It could leap a quarter of a mile, had conventionally impenetrable scales, and was cunning enough to foresee almost any trap. Colville had been the only one who defeated it, although Liga had made an excellent show of riding it for over a minute.

Zhang found himself lingering in the room. The artifacts here covered an inconsequential slice of their shared past, but it felt like they were from a long-gone age of heroes. An age that might now never return.

He eventually left it and came to the entrance to the manor’s freestanding tower. Built of mossy stone, the tower was just wide enough to house a ladder. If Zhang knew Colville, he’d be brooding at the top.

He was right, of course. After a long climb Zhang found Colville leaning over the summit’s railings in the pouring rain, contemplating the forest below. He didn’t look surprised to see Zhang, but he didn’t look pleased either.

“You’re persistent, aren’t you?”

“You have the rest of forever to brood alone,” Zhang said. “If you’ll even be able to.”

“I’m not giving up self-reflection,” Colville said, annoyed. “It’s funny, I thought you of all people would understand.”

“I do,” Zhang said, nodding sagely. “But unlike you, I can refuse temptations and shortcuts. There will come a time when I have rightfully mastered enough to move on.”

“So it’s only a shortcut when I do it,” Colville said.

“Yes,” Zhang said. “I’m not here for that, though. Or even to rub in my superiority at swordsmanship.”

“Superior in your head, maybe,” Colville said. Zhang held up a hand.

“I thought you might be in a nostalgic mood.”

“You happen to be right,” Colville said. He rubbed his chin. “What did you have in mind?”

“A grand tour,” Zhang said. “Of our long history together. My way of saying good riddance.”

“How grand? There’s a council meeting in a few hours.”

Zhang shrugged. “I’m not Flora, for fuck’s sake. Let’s just do highlights.”

“Deal.”

“Aye,” Zhang said. “Give us a show.”

An intermesh of clockwork wheels a hundred feet across materialized in front of them. It began spinning. Gently at first, but in moments accelerating to a blinding speed. The tower, the manor, and even the rain dissolved away.

* * *

“You were pretty adorable back then,” Zhang said. He grinned ferociously and watched as a younger-looking Colville paced in front of an iron vault, taking nervous glances inside from time to time.

The two of them had been watching for hours, but were still only 25 years in. It was a little embarrassing for both of them- the highlights were chronologically ordered, and they were both unimaginably naive back then. Colville more than Zhang, thankfully.

“Shhh,” Colville said. “Here she comes.”

A younger Liga danced out of the vault, holding a key between her teeth. Her style of dress was more formal, but the parallels to her preferred dress now were clear. She gave Colville a wink.

“Uh,” Colville said. He gave a smile. “Liga, I was thinking-”

“Don’t let me stop you,” past-Liga said. She took the key from her teeth and pocketed it. “But we’d better get out of here before Omar finds out.”

“Yea, I was just-”

A second Zhang appeared from within the vault. He seized Liga by the throat and kissed her. She giggled and pushed him away.

“Oh, yea,” Zhang said. He gave Colville a look of pity. “We’re dating now.”

Colville gave his best false smile.

“That’s- great, great for you,” he said. “Uhm.”

“Are you coming?” Liga asked.

“Wait up for me, just- a minute, okay?”

Colville past and present watched Liga leave hand-in-hand with Zhang.

“Was that really a highlight?” Colville asked.

“Hey, I felt really bad about that,” Zhang objected. “At the time, anyway.”

“How did dating Liga end for you, again?”

Zhang stuck out his tongue and grinned. “Next, Aye.”

A pulsing chime sounded in response, but the next highlight didn’t play. Instead Aye spoke, its voice melodious yet obviously artificial.

“The council meeting is in thirty minutes,” it said. “Perhaps you should prepare.”

“Ugh. I forgot,” Colville said. “Not looking forward to it, to be honest. Flora’s going to rant about the whole sim thing.”

“It could be your last meeting,” Zhang said.

“It could,” Colville agreed. “Won’t miss ‘em.”

“Well, they won’t miss you either. I’m looking forward to actually passing something,” Zhang said. “Once you’re out of the way… there’s the Tower reconstruction bill. And I think I can get a majority on another memory boost. Not to mention parcelling out your titles.”

“The vultures are circling already,” Colville muttered. “You can’t give away my titles.”

“You can’t be the Lord High Authmont if you’re not part of the compact,” Zhang said. “Not to mention best duellist, or Uptick champion.”

“And who will those be?”

“Me. Mostly me. There’ll be contention over the Tower- always is- but all the contest titles will shift to their historical second place winners. And I’ll get any vanity titles. Well, most of them. The ‘Fairest’ award will go to Flora, bless her narcissism.”

“She always did want that one,” Colville said. “Well, this should be an interesting meeting. I’ll have to make sure you don’t mangle my legacy. Why did you tell me about this beforehand? You won’t have to resort to foiling your own schemes from now on, will you?”

“Never,” Zhang said. “I’m hoping you’ll waste the whole meeting trying to guess my true plans.”

“Hrm,” Colville said, squinting. “I’ll see you there.”

Colville disappeared, and Zhang followed suit a moment later.

He reappeared on a flat white plane, and was surrounded by a web of soft red lines. They shifted and pulsed from moment to moment, weaving into and through each other. He waited patiently as they snaked closer and began dissolving him into a tangle of blue.

He hated coming here, but step one of his plan involved the Oracle.

Every so often, the compact held an all-hands meeting. These were generally laborious affairs, even by the compact’s standards, but at least the politics were interesting. The Oracle had been filled in on the broad strokes of the compact’s illustrious history, but the endless array of intrigues and past dealings that resurfaced always surprised her.

In what she thought of as her past life, being surprised would’ve been deeply disturbing. After all, ignorance existed to be definitively vanquished. If some tidbit of knowledge wasn’t already in her memory stores, she could send to the central databases for it. Knowledge was never more than a few nanoseconds away.

But now her knowledge felt so, so very limited.

Fortunately little tended to happen at these meetings, and even if she was completely out of the loop it didn’t tend to matter much. They were more of a social event than an effective process for changing anything. Partly this was by design; real change to the compact’s codified laws could take centuries to effect, even with unanimous agreement.

The real dealing was done far in advance. She had quickly discovered all of her proposals (and she had so many proposals) would be unanimously voted against- unless she first courted the others. Six members meant four votes comprised a majority, which was usually enough. That meant for every proposal she wanted to pass, she first had to parcel out three favors.

For this meeting, the Oracle had been worried that she wouldn’t be able to find enough favors to pass her most important proposal yet. She’d gotten Liga's approval and come to a tentative understanding with Flora, but none of the others would even consider it. Until Zhang had cut her a deal at the last minute.

He’d somehow sensed her desperation and presented a deal heavily tilted in his favor. But she didn’t mind. He’d only asked for her vote on a bunch of useless trivia she had no real interest in, and in return he’d vote for her proposal.

That meant she’d get her wish, unless one of her allies betrayed her (which was far more difficult to anticipate when she couldn’t examine and verify their source code). It was all fairly exciting- long ago, most of her constituents had been terrible at exactly this sort of thing. She was earning this victory.

First, of course, she had to get through this meeting. Right on time, she arrived at a rather quaint valley, which was carpeted with grass and wild flowers. She was on top of a steep but rounded hill, and similar hills stretched far into the distance. The only point of interest was a round wooden table surrounded by seven equally spaced chairs.

As realms went, it was fairly basic. One of her first proposals had been a change of meeting venue, but apparently the valley had historical significance of some sort. Just as well. It sufficed.

She took her seat across from Liga, who was chewing something not quite bubblegum.

“Hiya,” Liga said. “Wanna make a bet?”

“Your willingness to make a bet implies you know something I do not,” the Oracle said. “If I take that into account and still accept the bet, it would tell you that I too know something you do not, and adjust your prediction to be closer to mine. We would necessarily converge on an agreement about the matter in question, and no bet could then be had.”

Liga rolled her eyes.

“That doesn’t happen if I don’t think it through,” she said. “And I don’t, so hey! Why not win a bet against me?”

“Very well.”

“Okay, so-”

Omar appeared in the seat next to her. He wore a red robe with a furred collar and a matching triangular hat. Liga glanced in his direction and continued.

“Bet you ten to one Flora flakes.”

The Oracle frowned. If Liga referred to Flora’s promised vote, then… but Flora had seemed so sincere. And Liga was historically on the losing side of bets. At times like this, she wished she was allowed to bring Mitus to these meetings. He would've known what to do.

“Acceptable,” the Oracle said hesitantly. “But I would prefer to win the bet if she flakes.”

Liga looked puzzled. “Why?”

“She’s hedging,” Omar interjected. “I assume the two of you are plotting something?”

“Plotted,” Liga said. “Past tense. Anyway, I’m feeling kinda bad about your bill so I’ll give you a really great bet: You get ten hours of my time if she flakes, and I get one of yours if she doesn’t.”

“Agreed.”

Liga reached across the table to shake hands, and right on cue Flora appeared. She took her seat on the Oracle’s left and folded her arms in a huff. Even without empathy coprocessors, it was easy to tell they were in for an angry diatribe of some sort.

Zhang was next, and he took the seat to the Oracle’s right. That left only Colville, who was late to these meetings 88.6% of the time.

“Everyone important is here,” Zhang said. “Let’s do this. First order of bus-”

“No,” Flora said, in a tone that brooked no argument.

“According to the convention of 1783,” Omar began. “If Colville is more than forty three seconds late, which he is right… now, we may begin. Now, I understand Flora had someth-”

Colville appeared and took his seat, grinning mischievously. He had likely timed his entrance to the second.

“I understand Flora had something to say,” Omar repeated.

“Thank you,” Flora said, gracefully rising from her chair to lean over the table. “I wanted to discuss matters of impropriety. Certain expectations of civility and honor were thoroughly trashed in a certain agreement I had with a certain member of this very compact.”

“You mean me,” Liga said.

“Will the madame Vivant please respect the chair?” Flora said, glaring. “This is precisely what I mean. Some members of this compact are rude beyond belief, and I for one am tired of being interrupted, cheated, or played with. Aye, how many times has Liga betrayed my confidence now?”

The seventh chair, previously unoccupied, vanished and was replaced with a gear made of polished silver. It gave the impression of being connected to other translucent gears, which if followed with the eye seemed to drive a network of gears extending to the table, the air around them, and even the entire valley.

“Approximately five thousand incidents match the approximate level of confidence break you have in mind.”

“Thank you,” Flora said. “It’s a wonder I still trust her, isn’t it? Aye, of those incidents, how many am I aware of?”

“Approximately one thousand,” Aye said.

“As you can see,” Flora said, “It’s either a miracle or a great flaw in my character that I can still, after all these years, hold any semblance of trust for her.”

“Are you going to describe my latest grievous offense to the council?” Liga said. “So they can know how awful a person I am?”

“Fine,” Flora snapped. “Let the record show that, when I told Liga to make only minor changes to a critical simulation I had prepared, she ruined the whole thing knowing full well what I had in mind.”

“And how did I ruin your simulation?” Liga said, folding her arms.

“By replacing an NPC villain with Zhang, and thereby subverting the whole point!”

“Which, keep in mind, was to mindrape me,” Colville said. “I think Liga did a commendable thing.”

“I object to the mischaracterization of my theories as mindra-” Omar began.

“Not the point!” Flora yelled, pounding on the table for emphasis. “The point was that Liga was fully aware that her changes would compromise my intent when I explicitly asked her not to.”

“Oh, are you mad?” Liga said. “But Flora, I asked you not to be mad! What a grievous break of my trust!”

“We had a deal,” Flora hissed. “Your participation in return for minor tweaks and... other considerations.”

“I made minor tweaks,” Liga said. “But also, you verbally told me to change the villain entirely if I wanted to, and I did. Aye, please confirm.”

“Confirmed,” Aye said.

“You planned to catch me on a technicality like that, when my intent was clear! That is a break of trust!”

“Are you quite done, Flora?” Omar said. “Do you have a proposal for the council?”

“Yes,” Flora said. “I propose Liga be awarded the title of Most Terrible Person Ever.”

“Nay,” Liga said in bored unison with Colville and Omar.

“Aye,” Zhang said.

“Aye,” the Oracle said. Liga gave her a quizzical glance.

“I see this council remains divided for now, but your time is coming, Liga. I cede the table,” Flora said, sitting down in a huff. Omar glanced at Zhang, who sprang to his feet.

“I’ll do something practically unheard of and get to the point,” Zhang began. “Desperate plans to convince him otherwise aside, we will finally be rid of Colville within the next eight months. Given his long history of obstructionism, his leaving will give us a great opportunity to reinvigorate ourselves.”

“That sounds likely,” Colville muttered.

“I thought we might as well start arranging for the dispensation of all ceremonial titles, contest awards, special privileges, realm ownerships, and soforth now, while our dearest friend still has an opportunity to provide his input.”

“I vote nay on everything,” Colville said. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Keep your filthy paws off my stuff. None of you earned it.”

“Ah, stubborn as always,” Zhang said. He grinned. “In accordance with this council’s policies, I am proposing the maximum amount of fifteen title reallocations for this meeting as a single proposal, to be implemented on Colville’s departure. They are as follows:”

“The titles of Lord High Authmont, Most Serene And Worthy Doge, Sovereign Hunter, Best Duellist, Senior Uptick Master-”

Colville looked about to object, but Flora laid an arm on his shoulder.

“Terrifying Presence, Least Prone to Falling Down the Layslopes, Ramshackle Engineer, the Thirty-Nail Challenge Winner, and Supreme Ice Glider will transfer to me.”

“You don’t deserve any of those titles,” Colville said. “Liga, for instance, is definitely better than you at Layslopes.”

“Liga,” Zhang continued, “Receives the Weighted Extreme Sports Champion and Falling From Great Heights awards.”

Those, at least, Colville seemed to think were fair. The Oracle was a little surprised Liga didn’t already have those, but given the sheer number of titles compact members gave themselves, it was only natural she’d missed a few.

“The title of ‘Fairest’ will be given to its rightful owner, Flora.”

Flora, still flushed from her rant, beamed while Colville gave her his best look of utter betrayal.

“Finally, the Oracle shall receive the title of Employee of the Month.”

The Oracle nodded. It was in accordance with the deal, after all.

“What?” Colville said. “She’s not even eligible. She didn’t even participate in the contest! She wasn’t even here at the time!”

“All true,” the Oracle acquiesced. “Indeed, I do not even particularly desire this title.”

“But,” Zhang said, “I felt you should have a title, however frivolous and meaningless, so it shall be yours.”

“This is absurd,” Colville said. “You’ve done this just to spite me. And I dearly hope the members of this compact will have the good sense to reject this proposal.”

“There’s one final award,” Zhang said. “But frankly, no member of the compact would accept it, and so I propose it be revoked from Colville and simply discontinued. That of ‘Sylvassi Master’. Seeing as it was never a credible school of swordsmanship, I don’t think it will be much missed.”

If Zhang had been aiming for a reaction, he certainly got it. The Oracle’s research indicated that Zhang almost never succeeded in actually upsetting Colville, so this was a rare victory of sorts. Her pity modules weren’t quite ready for reintegration, but she surmised that if they were she’d be feeling a bit bad for the man.

In short order, Omar called for a vote. He and Colville steadfastly opposed the measure, but the combined votes of Flora, Liga, Zhang, and the Oracle passed it.

“A bold new era has begun,” Zhang proclaimed. He settled into his seat with a cocky grin, and glanced at the Oracle. It was her time.

She rose from her seat gracefully, and took a deep breath as all eyes set on her.

“I have a proposal,” the Oracle said. “It is also related to Colville’s departure. Fifty years ago, when this same council reviewed my petition to join its ranks, the objection was raised that even if I was a suitable candidate, adding more members to our noble compact would inevitably cause it strain. If you would recall, this council ran many lengthy experiments simulating what I saw as an obvious result: Six is the most perfect number for our modern way of life.”

There were tentative nods of agreement. The Oracle analyzed each nod, and found most of them slightly too hesitant for her liking. Was she losing their attention? Certainly Colville was distracted and likely emotionally compromised; that was understandable. Perhaps a display of forceful confidence was in order.

The Oracle allowed herself a small smile, and increased her volume by 16%.

“But if Colville were to leave, there would only be five of us. Thus, it is correct to once more increase our number, but the search might be lengthy and tiresome. For this council’s sake, I humbly suggest a candidate. Many of you are familiar with the sim I keep of an ascended computation network of my acquaintance, designated Mitus. With Aye’s help, I have negotiated a license for a full-fledged human-level instantiation of Mitus to become a member of this compact.”

She paused. Even though this proposal would pass with or without their consent, the Oracle was interested in Colville and Omar’s reactions. Zhang had predicted that Colville would vote against anything out of spite and stubbornness, but Omar would surely see the logic in it.

“An interesting proposal,” Omar said. The Oracle gave a humble bow. “I do agree that this council will require a replacement member in the event of Colville’s departure.”

“However,” Omar began. “Given the weight of this decision, we will of course need to conduct a full and exhaustive search for the most suitable candidate. I myself have several candidates in mind, and I hope this council will give me the time to properly introduce them and negotiate suitable arrangements before coming to a decision. It is for this reason that I must vote nay.”

The Oracle deactivated her smile and gave a small shrug. “I understand your concern, Omar. But I have given this proposal ample thought, and all conventional methods of human-tractable decision making rate this as the optimal choice.”

“Nonetheless,” Omar said.

“I vote no on anyone derived from your favorite supercomputing clusters,” Colville said. “I think everyone here can agree that Mitus has no personality.”

“That’s simply false,” the Oracle stated. She wondered if she should modulate anger into her voice, but that would likely be risky. Anger was untested. “But my license allows significant leeway in the representation, and I am willing to hear all your concerns.”

“I for one think this is a fine idea,” Zhang interjected. “I vote yes.”

“Trading away the compact’s future for titles you don’t deserve, Zhang?”

“I think you should keep an open mind, Colville,” Zhang said. “That’s all.”

“I vote yes,” Liga said. Everyone stared at her. “What, am I supposed to have reasons?”

“Traditionally,” Omar said. With a sigh, he turned to Flora. “The deciding vote is yours.”

The Oracle waited for Flora to vote yes, but as the moments passed she thought back to Liga’s bet. Finally, with a plaintive and apologetic tone, Flora spoke.

“I have to vote no, for now.”

“That is incorrect,” the Oracle said. “You have made the incorrect vote as per our agreement. Please try again.”

“Horse-trading in my compact?” Colville said in mock-outrage. “Shock!”

“No, I can’t,” Flora said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. Omar should be heard.”

“This betrayal significantly lowers my expectations for your cooperation in all future endeavours,” the Oracle stated. She sat down, and a cold silence descended on the table.

“Well,” Liga said, speaking up. “While we’re all here, I too have a proposal.”

“No,” Colville said. “You have a plea.”

“I propose-”

“Plea,” Colville corrected.

“That the quota for unprompted influence over our own emotions be increased by 5%,” Liga finished.

“Is anyone not voting against this?” Omar asked. He looked at the Oracle’s raised hand. “Really?”

“I am voting for it,” the Oracle said. “For reasons I will not divulge at this time.”

“Fine. Four against, two for. Proposal rejected, again,” Omar said. Liga crossed her arms and spat a wad of green, sticky gum onto the table before vanishing in a flash of light.

“I suppose we’re done here,” Omar added belatedly.

One by one, they left. The Oracle stayed, mentally perusing her category of dirty looks and selecting an appropriate one. Unfortunately Flora was long gone, but Liga had at some point returned, leaving just the two of them.

“I forgot about our bet,” Liga admitted. “You won an hour of my time.”

“Ten hours,” the Oracle corrected.

“Was it? Huh, okay.”

“I will collect them at a later date,” the Oracle said. “Good day.”

“Wait,” Liga said. “Are you mad at me or something?”

“No,” the Oracle said. She thought for a moment before realizing the source of Liga’s concern. “I was practicing looks to give to Flora when I see her next. Now that she has wronged me and we have become sworn enemies.”

“Oh,” Liga nodded. “Neat. That’s a good one.”

“Thank you,” the Oracle said.

“Yea. And I just wanted to say… I appreciated your pity vote.”

“It was a gesture without consequence that likely would not have been made if it were to lead to your proposal passing,” the Oracle said. “It should have made no difference to you.”

“Still.”

“You are very irrational.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. Hey, you wanna hang out?” Liga said.

“Very well.”

Liga scraped her gum off the table and popped it into her mouth.

“Then let’s roll.”

Liga was a woman of simple tastes, and her realms often reflected that. This particular one she affectionately titled the Park of Amusements. From the entrance, it looked like a tangled forest of rollercoasters woven into each other without regard for sanity and with only some token deference to physics, but inside it had a single copy of every amusement ride ever physically built, plus dozens of ferocious free-roaming tigers.

“The point is to not get killed by them,” Liga explained.

“I thought that was what the men shooting at you were for,” the Oracle said, a little doubtfully.

They were just outside the entrance, munching on a small buffet of brightly colored candies. Each candy was a concentrated burst of unique flavor which Liga had personally devised and curated (with only minimal assistance from Omar for some of the exotic chemistries). The Oracle had politely taken a few, but Liga wasn’t entirely sure whether the woman had the capacity to properly taste yet. It would’ve been rude to ask.

“What happens if they murder me?” the Oracle asked.

“It hurts quite a bit,” Liga said. “And you get booted back to the entrance. For me, I set the consequences a bit higher- big stakes make it all the more exciting.”

“I see.”

“I’ll go first!” Liga said. “Meet me at the House of Very Angry Snakes. It’s the building with the snakes. You can’t miss it.”

Like a shot, Liga was off. She sprinted under the arch of the entrance and slid on her knees just under a tiger’s pounce. It landed and turned to chase, but she jumped up onto a low-hanging rollercoaster track and started running upwards. The tiger followed, but it had to pick its way carefully across the wooden bars while Liga leapt confidently.

She reached the summit and turned around to find the beast somehow only a dozen feet behind her. It looked like it was going to try for a long distance pounce, but before it could it was bowled off the tracks by an incoming train. Liga jumped out of the train’s way just in time and fell thirty feet to another track below. The tiger fell much further, and she felt a grim satisfaction as it dropped out of sight.

Her troubles weren’t over, though. A startled man riding at the back of the train leveled his gun and fired down at her in a wild spray. At his speed and distance he couldn’t hit, but if she didn’t move fast that cart would circle around and her odds would get worse.

She sprinted down the track and looked out below for her options. The only good one was to jump into the botanical gardens, which were fairly difficult to get through unscathed. But it looked like the quickest path to her destination, and Liga was fond of challenges.

She jumped onto a tall tree and slid expertly down onto a garden path. There were no immediate hazards, but at a glance she could tell that Aye had randomized the layout again. Tall rows of thorny vines blocked off the usual paths. If she wasn’t careful, she’d get turned around and never escape.

She set off down a path at random, and her foot came down on something that went click. She froze.

A landmine, of course. Landmines were a dirty trick, but Liga could usually work around them with a little patience. Judging by the sound of the click, the one she’d walked right into wouldn’t explode until she took more than half her weight off it. If there was a significant delay in the explosion, she might even survive. If.

Her heart pounded. If she died today, she’d lose something very precious- she’d lose all memory of a day she’d spent shopping with her mother a long, long time ago. It had been the sort of nice day that she’d tried to recreate for a long time afterwards (getting into a lot of debt in the process), but it wasn’t the most important memory of her mother Liga had by far. Still, given that her mother was irrecoverably dead, she highly preferred not to lose it.

And that meant she had to take the safe option. She carefully pinned her left toe onto the landmine and stretched towards the hedge wall. The tip of her middle finger just barely reached a peach growing there, and with some scrabbling she managed to snatch it. She took a bite and savored the vibrant taste before winding her arm back and pitching it down the corridor.

Nothing happened, and she repeated the process four more times before she finally got lucky. The last peach rolled down the corridor and triggered a landmine which immediately exploded into a cloud of angry red gas. The grass beneath it wilted, but it took a few seconds to die off. Good.

She returned her full weight to the mine, crouched, and then sprang down the corridor. It exploded, but Liga managed to get out of the gas before her skin burned away.

The rest of the corridor was fairly easy. She just kept to the sides of the path and let the landmines make short work of an opportunistic but foolhardy tiger. Before long, she came to a greenhouse.

It was an enormous glass structure made of three tiers stacked on top of each other, each smaller than the last. Some of the glass on the second and third tiers was stained with floral murals, and Liga could just barely make out a chairlift snaking its way out of the third floor.

That made her destination obvious. She snapped a straight branch off a nearby tree and pushed open the double doors.

Inside, carefully trimmed plants waited on either side of a wending path. She skated around the few that were obviously carnivorous, but almost got caught by a particularly crafty mantrap waiting just above an interior doorway. Fortunately, her well-placed stick was enough to convince it that she was just another indigestible plant.

She had a gut feeling that the second floor would prove much, much harder. It had no plants except for a few potted specimens, but the benches, stacks of crates, and other tactically placed furniture could only mean one thing.

Ever the perfect gentleman, the Adversary politely waited for her near the stairs to the final floor. He was dapper as always in a broad-rimmed hat and burnt black coat.

“We meet again, madame,” he began.

Liga returned his smile and leaned casually against a bench. If he made a move, she’d flip it- it would buy her time, at least.

“I must say, your friend is doing rather well for herself,” the Adversary commented. “She’s only died five times, and she was learning quite quickly. Was.”

“What did you do?” Liga asked.

“I’m afraid you may have to rescue her,” he said. “Until then, she’s agreed to listen to a few choice stories of your embarrassing blunders. Do you recall the time you installed the fusion core upside down during the Mageddon challenge, and nobody could figure out why the ship suddenly exploded halfway through?”

Liga blushed furiously. “That’s old water under the bridge. She could look that up on public record if she wanted.”

“Oh?” the Adversary said. He idly withdrew a revolver from his pocket, twirling it on one finger. “Then I suppose when I’m done with that, I’ll tell her exactly how big of a crush you have on her.”

She sucked in a sharp breath of air. “Then I suppose I’ll have to stop you.”

He tossed her the pistol, and withdrew another from his coat.

“I do hope your aim has improved. I would almost feel bad robbing you of your stake today. What was it, a memory? No matter. You’ll forget it.”

She said nothing, but fired the gun in his general direction. A ruse, of course- he fully expected the shot and had already dived into cover. But with the moment she bought, she flung the bench at him and ran for the stairs, taking them four at a time.

The Adversary managed to get a shot off, but it only hit her leg. She forged through the pain on sheer adrenaline and hobbled over to the chairlift. She jumped and just barely caught a departing chair by its bottom seat.

The view was, of course, amazing. But she had little time for that- the Adversary was close on her heels, and she barely managed to hoist herself onto the seat before he’d reached the third floor. She shot three times at him and hit once; not a good enough shot to be fatal, but it made him back off while her chair carried her away. She took a moment to breathe.

Below, a pack of upset tigers followed her progress. Occasionally one made a jump at her. Most fell comically short, but with her two remaining shots she crippled the first two tigers smart enough to climb before jumping. The last one she pelted with the revolver itself.

Ahead was the House of Very Angry Snakes. Her Adversary hadn’t explicitly said that the Oracle was there, but given how generally awful the House was, it was pretty much a sure bet.

Liga hated the House, and regretted making it. The snakes couldn’t physically stop her, and venom was actually fairly manageable if you had lots of experience dying to it, but… snakes were just wrong on some level, and an endless tide of hissing and writhing bodies made her skin crawl.

She slid off the chairlift and fell, landing a perfect roll in front of the House’s entrance. The tigers following her formed a wary perimeter- they feared the snakes, but they’d maul her if she tried to go around. That left only one option forward.

With a dramatic flourish she flung open the House’s double doors, and out poured… a single baby snake. It slithered harmlessly away. She let out a hollow laugh and checked above the doorway for a nest before cautiously stepping inside. The interior was bathed in greenish light and smelled like brine.

There was a single staircase leading down, flanked by two immense serpents. Statues, thankfully. The distant sound of a man’s voice echoed from below, and she shuddered. On the one hand she had to hurry before the Oracle found out all of her embarrassing secrets… but on the other, she had little doubt that the snakes awaited her.

She went down. The stairs descended onto a small island in a deep green pool, where the Oracle sat on a granite throne covered in snakes. The Adversary perched on a chair across from her and watched with amusement as Liga descended.

“I’m happy you made it,” the Oracle said. She stared past Liga for a moment before continuing. “I like your snakes.”

“How much did you tell her?” Liga asked.

The Adversary shrugged. “We’ll just say a lot. You’re bleeding- does it hurt? I do hope it does.”

“Not as much as you’re going to hurt,” Liga growled. The Adversary very pointedly drew his revolver as she advanced.

“Thrown away your revolver, have we? Then I do believe you’ve lost.”

Liga stopped and gestured to the water. “If you shoot me, the gunshot will send the snakes into a frenzy. Wouldn’t want that, now would we?”

“Why should I care?” the Adversary said. “I dare say you’ll be dead.”

“You have one shot left- I counted,” Liga said. “And the snakes are closer to you. You fire, and the venom kills you before the gunshot kills me.”

“Unless I get a headshot.”

“Go ahead,” Liga said defiantly. “But you’re an awful shot.”

The Adversary considered, spinning his revolver a few times. He reached a decision and carefully took aim.

“JINX!” Liga yelled. She dove to the side as the Adversary fired. A chorus of hissing filled the air. The green pool visibly darkened as thousands of snakes erupted from it. Liga ran for the stairs as fast as she could, but she only kept barely ahead of the swarming tide. One of them latched onto her bad leg.

The statues at the top of the stairs were, of course, real giant snakes now. Liga screamed as the pair turned towards her, fangs bared.

“Stop!” she yelled. “I won! I’m here, the Oracle is here, and the Adversary is dead!”

The serpents looked at her and then at each other before slithering back to their pedestals. The snake biting her leg slunk off, and the slithering horde was nowhere to be seen. Liga panted for breath.

The Oracle ascended from the pool below, seemingly unperturbed by the hundreds of snake bites on every part of her body. Her wounds closed just as the pain in Liga’s leg drained away.

“That was entertaining,” the Oracle said, sounding as politely bored as she always did. “Do you do this often?”

“Not this exact thing,” Liga said, shaking her head. “Aye does a good job keeping it fresh.”

Liga led the Oracle out of the House. Even when the snakes weren’t angry, it was hardly a fun place to be. They went for cotton candy at a nearby stand, and Liga absentmindedly fed bits of it to a friendly tiger while they loitered on a bench.

“I have been thinking about how to best spite my new arch-enemy,” the Oracle said.

“You’re taking this rival thing very seriously,” Liga said. “You can just hold another vote after Colville leaves, you know.”

“True, but Omar may complicate or derail what should have been a secured result,” the Oracle said. “In any case, I must demonstrate my commitment to vengeance in order to prevent this very outcome in the future.”

“Right. How are you going to do that?”

“I have a proposal that may benefit the both of us.”

Liga leaned forward. “Oh?”

“Colville is of great importance to Flora, and she has demonstrated some interest in keeping him from departing. Therefore, the most effective vengeance is to sway Colville further towards leaving.”

“And where do I come in?”

“You’re a fan of wireheading,” the Oracle stated.

“That’s not my favorite word for it,” Liga said. “But yes, I like fun. Or really, everyone likes fun, and sometimes I take shortcuts to get there. Snake-free shortcuts.”

“This community severely curtails your ‘fun’,” the Oracle continued. “If Colville were to share your preference for ‘fun’, it would both increase his desire to leave and lead the council to agree to greater ‘fun’ allowances to prevent future community attrition.”

“But he doesn’t like fun,” Liga continued. “He’s quite against the idea.”

“My analysis of public record shows Colville last tried ‘fun’ over five hundred years ago. He is likely ready to try again. Flora’s reprogramming also works in our favor.”

Liga blinked. “You mean the sim thing?”

The Oracle nodded, and Liga mulled it over. This was sounding like a good plan.

“Okay. I like the way you think,” Liga said. “I knew there was a reason we kept you around!”

She gave the Oracle an impromptu hug, which seemed to take her by surprise.

“I’ll talk to him,” Liga promised.

“I’m glad you could make it,” Omar said. He was sitting in his third favorite writing room, a glass box framed by stone columns. It overlooked a plaza where his students milled, some vigorously debating each other and others lost in their own thoughts.

Flora steepled her hands and leaned into the desk. She was wearing a frilly white dress cut in an almost Victorian style, with a jaunty bonnet topped by a selection of cute spring flowers. Her expression, however, was serious.

“Thank you for your support at the council meeting,” Omar continued. “It is unfortunate that I had to spend that favor so soon, but I think it will be well worth it in the end.”

“It was my pleasure, really. I’m sure your candidates will be several orders of magnitude more interesting than Mitus,” Flora said. She tapped her finger against her forehead and smiled. “The Oracle seemed upset though.”

“She’ll get over her little crutch in time,” Omar said.

“Yes,” Flora said. “And Colville?”

“Ah. Well, I don’t think Zhang managed to completely ruin the reprogramming, but it won’t be as effective. You’ll need a more drastic sim, and you’ll have to convince him to see it through.”

“That should be easy enough. He’s too arrogant to take our efforts seriously,” Flora said. “Plus, I think I have something in mind.”

“Stay the course, then. But keep in mind I never gave you any guarantees, and that this is even chancier after the interruption.”

“I wouldn’t bother if I had a better option,” Flora said. She sniffed. “You wanted to talk about something else, I take it?”

Omar opened a drawer on his desk and took out a sheaf of parchment. He double-checked a few figures before setting it before Flora.

“I don’t understand,” she said after glancing at it. Omar grunted in annoyance; it was a relatively straightforward weighted probabilistic flow model, and given the context of their recent dealings she hardly needed the implications spelled out for her.

“My models show that our compact is headed towards an inevitable decline and dissolution.”

“Oh. Well, they’ve shown that for a long time. What changed?”

“Nothing. I just didn’t predict Colville would leave first; actually, I pegged you for that.”

Flora looked offended. “He won’t leave and neither will I.”

“My model was wrong,” Omar said, spreading his hands. “I revised it, and the new parameters suggest a far more rapid dissolution. Four hundred years.”

“Oh my,” Flora said. “That’s hardly a dozen simlives.”

“I suppose it is,” Omar said. “The value provided by the compact will decline until it reaches a critical point. One of us, such as Colville, will leave, and that will set off a chain reaction. After Colville, you. After you, the Oracle. Then Zhang, then Liga, and of course by that point there will be nothing for me to leave.”

“Liga holds out that long? Really?”

Omar shrugged. “If I understand her psychology, she knows how thin a line she’s walking. Part of her doesn’t want to slide into permanent bliss, and that’s why she’s still here.”

“Well, you’ve made quite the grim little formula,” Flora said. “And the original said that Colville would stick around long after I left?”

“Ehm, yes,” Omar said. He gave her a contrite look, and Flora bit her lip. “He does still love you, he’s just-”

“A very independent thinker, I know. You don’t have to skirt around my feelings- the model was plainly wrong. Now then. What’s our plan of action?”

“We find new blood interested in getting back to their human roots. Or perhaps we merge with other groups of compatible ideology.”

“And if that fails?”

“We defer to Aye,” Omar said.

Flora quirked her brow.

“I am deeply aware of how hypocritical it would be to break the compact’s rules in order to save it,” Omar said. “I’d prefer to avoid that if possible.”

“Fair enough. And I wouldn’t mind more members. How good are the prospects?”

Omar stood. “I thought you might want to meet them.”

“And show them we’re not all stodgy armchair types like you? That’s probably a good idea.”

Omar gave her a thin smile and gestured to the door. The two of them exited his office and walked down a flight of stone steps to the plaza, attracting a small crowd as they went. Omar stopped to dispense advice to a few students and listen to couplets from an aspiring poet, but had to wave off the others when Flora grew restless.

Since their destination was a separate realm, they could’ve gone directly to it. However, Omar preferred the scenic route through gateways. It gave him time to think and take a break from the sometimes frantic pace of university life. Plus, Flora usually gave good advice on how to improve the realms he showed off to her.

After walking into a closet near the greenhouses, they emerged on a pier above a restless ocean. Waves lapped at rotting wooden boards and the skies overhead looked stormy, but a rising sun in the distance painted the horizon in a calm promise of orange.

There was no land in sight, but the pier led to a series of wooden shacks. Omar made his way to one of the larger ones.

“I think I recognize this,” Flora commented. “Trying ocean scenes again?”

“I’ve spruced this up from an old model, yes. Something about it always struck me as imperfect, but I’m getting closer.”

“I do like it. It’s very moody.”

They passed into the shack. It was plain inside, with a hammock and a mournful hole where a window should’ve gone. On the far wall was a door-shaped opening covered by a veil of beads.

Omar led Flora through, and they emerged onto a busy city street. A passing carriage slowly rattled by, drawn by a gaunt looking horse. Around it flowed a mass of harried people, many wearing Phrygian caps.

“Some sort of Paris?”

“I’ve been looking into the French revolution,” Omar said. “This is Aye’s most accurate reconstruction.”

“Digging up the truth firsthand?” Flora said. “That actually sounds rather interesting. Maybe you’d like to sim the period with me?”

“No time, no time,” Omar said, shaking his head “I could do a vignette or two, though. There are many interesting little stories here.”

“I have to take what I can get with you,” Flora said. She deftly dragged him out of the way as another carriage passed. “Lead on.”

They didn’t have much further to go. Omar led her into a boarded-up cafe. Inside everything was covered in a fine layer of dust, but the tables were set with plates and cups, as if it had been suddenly abandoned. Flora carefully dusted off a chair and sat down.

“The usual restrictions still apply,” Omar said. “Contact is limited to fifteen minutes apiece, they can’t tell us anything that’d compromise the compact, and they have to match our subjective time.”

“Mmm,” Flora said. She was already eyeing a row of miraculously unlooted wines behind the counter. “I remember. Get on with it.”

“Aye,” Omar said. “We’re ready.”

The front door opened, and a man stepped in. He had a long face with keen eyes that shone a bright blue, and he walked with a natural grace that was accentuated by flowing, swirling robes. Omar stood and bowed, offering him a seat.

“Pierre, may I introduce the ever-lovely Flora,” Omar said. “Flora, this is Pierre.”

“Ah,” Pierre said. “You’ve brought…” He mumbled inarticulately for a moment before pausing. “Forgive me. A pleasure to meet you.”

“As well,” Flora said.

“Pierre has been living independently up until now,” Omar explained. “One of the proud many going alone, as it were.”

Flora gave him a curious look. “Fascinating. Did you not join up with anyone after the singularity?”

“Regrettably not,” Pierre said. “Acquaintances change, and I never had the opportunity or the desire to form something like your compact.”

“How long has it been for you, subjectively?”

“Only a thousand or so years,” he admitted. “I spent some subjective time transitioning to a further cluster to live with an old acquaintance of mine. It didn’t work out, and there was substantial time dilation on the journey back.”

“He’s been somewhat below our clockspeed as well,” Omar said.

“Your clockspeed is the maximum, is it not?” Pierre said. “So that none of you ever go faster than the others?”

“Correct. All compact members run at the same clock speed, with very rare exception.”

Pierre stroked at the stubble on his chin. Flora had taken the opportunity to fetch a vintage of wine, and poured three glasses. Omar took to the wine with gusto, while Pierre restricted himself to a few polite sips.

“I’ve made a pass at reading over your rules,” Pierre said. “They’re very extensive, and riddled with loopholes.”

Omar nodded. “We’re not perfect extremists. The idea is that we can afford a few exceptions if we all agree on them, without starting down any slippery slopes.”

“Ah,” Pierre said. “I’m simply used to keeping myself under a stricter system. I wouldn’t want to join you and slip.”

He glanced at Flora as he spoke.

“Rest assured, we keep each other in line,” Omar said. “You’re welcome to join and bind yourself to your own rules where they are stricter.”

“But that would invalidate some of the appeal,” Pierre countered. “The sense of… what did you call it, community? Shared experience?”

“Agreed,” Omar said. “Many of our rules might be amenable to change. If you wrote up a thorough list of your objections-”

Flora snorted.

“-Then I will see what the compact is willing to compromise on.”

Pierre considered this, idly tracing a finger around the rim of his wine glass.

“By your own rules, it could take several decades for you to change to my satisfaction.”

“We all have plenty of time,” Omar said. “You’re welcome to speed up if you don’t want to wait.”

“Even then there may be a sticking point,” Pierre began. “You seem to have a fairly regressive stance on NPCs.”

Flora arched her brow. “Regressive?”

“Yes. You simulate very detailed characters for your own amusement, and discard them just as quickly. I’d argue they deserve moral weight of their own.”

“And that’s regressive?” Omar asked. “Aye gives them no moral weight.”

“‘Aye’ as you call it is incorrectly programmed,” Pierre said. “Many of its designers would be horrified by its rulings.”

“That hardly makes its conclusions wrong. People were very narrow-minded at the time. I’ve studied the matter myself, and there really is no cause for objection.”

“How very convenient for you.”

“Most of our simmed characters aren’t very deep,” Flora interjected. “They’re only real enough that we can’t tell the difference.”

“But with an important enough character, that still veers into dangerous territories!”

“Ah,” Omar said. “If I might note- your disapproval isn’t entirely relevant to the question of you joining us. We’ll continue enjoying our NPCs whether or not you do, though I suppose we could curb what you see as ‘excesses’ if you joined.”

“I’ll consider it,” Pierre said. He rose to his feet.

“Until next time, then,” Omar said.

“A pleasure to meet you, Pierre,” Flora said.

“Yes, I suppose so.”

Pierre walked out the door. Omar sighed and drained his glass.

“I don’t think he liked you,” he said. “And I can’t say why.”

“Perhaps he felt threatened by my force of personality,” Flora mused. “Or he’s not used to real people. It must be rather sad, only interacting with see-through caricatures of human beings.”

“Yes. I’ll count him as out, for now. Fortunately, we have other options. Option two?”

“Mhm.”

“We’ll actually be going to them,” Omar said. “If you don’t mind.”

“Oh! How interesting. Maybe I’ll learn something.”

“We have some time to kill though,” Omar said. “Shall we see who’s going to the guillotine today?”

* * *

Some time later, the pair found themselves in a red truck on a dusty desert highway. The sun baked the leather interior, and Omar quickly surmised that the car's air conditioning was broken.

“They must hate us,” Flora said. She rummaged about in the glove compartment and found two pairs of sunglasses. She handed a pair to Omar and donned one herself.

A dozen miles down the road was a small town that shimmered in the heat like a mirage. Omar could just make out lumps of red gathered around a deep cerulean pool. He started the car and gently accelerated towards it.

While sparse, the desert around them was filled with little touches. Small brown birds hopped between purple-flowered cacti while lizards darted furtively across the hot sand. There was even litter by the side of the road, with each piece carefully positioned as if to tell a small story.

Omar thought the realm looked fairly plain, but Flora seemed to appreciate it. She made the occasional breathless comment on this or that detail as they got closer, and her excitement visibly grew as the town came closer.

The houses were made of smooth red clay. Many were shaped like spirals, with gentle curving walls leading into their interior and gaping dark holes in place of windows. Flowers were carefully cultivated on their porches, creating splashes of color against the dirt and clay.

The pool dominated the center of the town. It was dark, still, and looked invitingly cool. Omar wouldn’t’ve minded a swim in it- the heat was already penetrating his thick robes and lining them with sweat.

He parked the truck near the pool and climbed out just as two women emerged from a nearby house. One wore a purple sash and had hair made of mottled grey ribbons- she was Ashton, an aesthetic with a keen interest in dog breeding and planetary formation.

“A pleasure to see you again, Omar,” Ashton said. She gestured to her companion, who was clad in a green-black overcoat with dozens of gadgets clipped to it. “This is Bolormaa.“

Omar took stock of her and bowed. He gestured to Flora, who was scrutinizing the barely-visible text on Ashton’s ribbons. “A pleasure to meet you. I’ve brought Flora today.”

“I like your palettes,” Flora announced. “They’re evocative without being brash.”

“Ah, thank you,” Bolormaa said. She fidgeted a little.

“Her usual fare is less subtle unfortunately,” Ashton said. “She’s good when she’s not weird.”

“I know the type,” Omar said, giving Flora a pointed glance. “Is this a static tableau?”

“Not at all,” Ashton said. “We use it for festivities occasionally, and a scenario here and there.”

“Not for a while, though,” Bolormaa amended.

“No, not for a while.”

Ashton walked over to an umbrella-shaded table and gestured. They sat.

“I ran your proposed draft by the others a few decades ago,” Ashton said. “It was fine, barring the usual unresolvable issues. Was there any progress on your end?”

“Not much,” Omar said, shaking his head. “This is mostly a social visit, but there are developments you should be aware of.”

Flora looked askance at Omar. “How long have you been negotiating with these people?”

“Nearly a hundred years now,” Omar said. “Have none of you read my bidecadal reports?”

“Oh! Are these the same people we passed on for the Oracle?” Flora said. “Which is a shame, by the way. You seem like lovely people.”

“Thank you,” Ashton said. “That was actually us passing on you, though.”

“Which was quite all right,” Omar said. “We both needed more time to figure out how and if we want to do this.”

“We’re mostly past the if stage,” Ashton corrected. “We were negotiating how much.”

“All details I’m sure I could read at my leisure in a dry report,” Flora said.

“Fair. You mentioned developments, Omar?”

Omar licked his lips. “One among our number is planning to leave-”

“Most certainly will not leave, and I refuse to have you plan around the possibility!” Flora gripped the edges of the table, her knuckles turning white.

“A lover?” Ashton said. She gave Flora a sad look. “I had one leave me too. You… don’t really ever get over it. I’m sorry.”

“I’ll be fine,” Flora said. She gritted her teeth. “We still have some time left on our visit. Bolormaa, why don’t you show me some of your other works?”

“Okay,” Bolormaa said. Flora took her by the arm and ushered her off, leaving Omar massaging his forehead.

“My apologies. I miscalculated how sensitive she’d be about this.”

“Think nothing of it.” Ashton waved her hand dismissively, then leaned across the table.

“I’m glad you came, however. I have another little puzzle for you, and this one shouldn’t be so easy for you to solve...”

Mitus leaned over his balcony and frowned. It was a decent balcony; it adequately served its purpose of allowing access to fresh air and a view. In accordance with the laws of architecture Mitus understood, there was absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Like the rest of the castle, it was made of sturdy grey stone, with flush red carpet for flooring. At night servants would light two braziers by the entryway, although the town would be too dark to see by then. Not that there was much to see at the moment- right now the town was just an unformed mass of vague house shapes.

Making realms was hard. He was sure Flora could whip up something like this in the span of a week with minimal help from Aye, but Mitus was struggling just to get a single balcony right. Sure, she probably had millennia of experience and knew just how to use every template. But when Mitus thought about how he might never be even half as good as her, he despaired a little.

They should have negotiated for more. Descending from near-omnipotence to join the compact had been the Oracle’s idea; he vaguely remembered examining millions of facets and hammering out all the details to the tenth decimal place, but now he felt like he’d gotten some part of the deal wrong. That was practically impossible, yes, but the feeling remained.

For one thing he could’ve bargained to keep more knowledge. The Oracle certainly did- she was an adept hand at realmcrafting, among other things. He felt a little jealous at her superhuman skill sometimes, but she was still making the transition. For whatever reason, it was harder for her than it was for him, and until she was finished he had to be strong and give her an ideal to strive towards.

Ah, there he went again. He’d stopped working on his balcony and was thinking about her, which meant he couldn’t be productive until he’d made sure she was alright. She had to be finished with her renormalization by now.

“Aye, is the Oracle ready?”

“I’m afraid not,” a sourceless voice answered. Mitus sighed.

He probably spent too much time with her, anyway. Since he wasn’t making progress here, maybe it was a good time to talk to the others.

He dismissed the balcony and floated through the air to a shimmering portal high above.

He wanted to reach Colville, but ended up in an amusement park instead. One of Liga’s haunts, if he remembered correctly. Liga’s realms were always fairly dangerous- he could already see a few oversized felines turning his way- but Mitus wasn’t one for playing games right now. He hung in the air just out of their reach.

Scanning the area showed no overt signs of either Colville or Liga, which was inconvenient. He wasn’t supposed to simply locate them, either. That was a function reserved only for emergencies.

Which meant he had to search for them the tedious way. He flew a little closer to the ground and did a sweep of the park. There was an oversized Ferris wheel doing a rotation every ten seconds and an implausibly constructed rollercoaster conglomerate, but both seemed unlikely to hide Liga. If he followed the tigers though, it looked like a fair number were congregating around a boarded-up building.

He floated over to investigate, and flinched as bullets whizzed just past him. Another affectation of Liga’s- the bullets had a chance, however small, of actually hitting him, even at this height. But the first bullet never hit.

He dodged down and landed on the building’s roof. It was a giant mirror of some kind, although it was too dusty to reflect much. He hoped Liga wouldn’t mind if he disintegrated a little bit just to make his way in.

Inside, yet more mirrors. It was as if the entire structure was themed around reflective surfaces! At least he could hear Liga humming somewhere on the floor below. He just needed to figure out how to get there.

Half an hour later, he finally reached the first floor. There hadn’t been any traps, but the mirrors here were well-cleaned and the maze both confusing and fairly large. More than once he considered cheating, but it was probably better to actually figure the puzzle out in case he wanted to come back later.

When he found Liga, she was sprawled on a couch, leaning against an insensate Colville.

“Hiya Mitus,” she said, giving him a dumb smile. “You’re floating.”

He looked down, and realized he was still a few inches off the ground. He disabled his flight module.

“I was looking for Colville,” Mitus said. “Is he…”

“A little bit out of it at the moment,” Liga affirmed. “He’s having a good time though.”

She affectionately patted him on the head, and Colville mumbled something unintelligible in response.

“Oh,” Mitus said. He frowned. “I was hoping to talk to him-”

“But we’re soooo busy,” Liga said. “Just so busy right now.”

“I understand, but could you let him know when he comes to that-”

“No promises, we have a very tight schedule,” Liga said. She gave him a vague smile and made shooing motions with her hand. “Come back later, or never, or whatever.”

“Yes, but you can’t wirehead for more than a few hours, so when you’re done-”

“We’ll be busy then too, like we are right now.”

“I get it,” Mitus huffed. He turned and left, disintegrating mirrors on his way out.

He returned to his shabby castle. No inspiration seemed forthcoming on the balcony, but he made a halfhearted attempt at a corridor before giving up.

“Aye? Is the Oracle ready?”

“I’m afraid not,” the voice answered. It sounded almost sympathetic. “I project that she’ll be renormalizing for at least another hour.”

That was fine. There was still enough time for him to pay someone a visit. He could ask Flora for advice about the balcony, but Flora wouldn’t interrupt her sims for him. That left Omar and Zhang, and of the two Omar was always more pleasant.

He took the doorway to Omar’s university. It looked like a festival day of some sort; the normally sombre students were wearing festive colors and the marble columns had been decorated with streamers.

Mitus spotted Omar lecturing to a small crowd and wandered over. Apparently one of the students had asked Omar about practical methods of constructing spring-fed water fountains, and the explanation had grown so convoluted that a small crowd had gathered to hear him speak.

Mitus didn’t interrupt. Omar loved this sort of thing, and the students looked quite engaged too. It took fifteen minutes before the crowd dispersed and another ten before he found the right moment to approach.

“Ah, Mitus. I hope I didn’t bore you with my rambling, but Allen always manages to mess up his projects, and I couldn’t let anyone say it was my fault for being a poor teacher.”

“It was interesting enough,” Mitus said politely. “I didn’t know flow control could get that complex.”

“There’s complexity in everything. And sometimes beauty, too!”

Omar led him away from the crowd of students and into a small alcove, its walls stuffed with books.

“Everything well with you? Where’s the Oracle?”

“She’s doing some light renormalization,” Mitus said.

“I don’t know much about her cluster architecture, but I do hope it works out for her. Did she say what the goal was?”

“She was attempting to form a basis for the emotion of revulsion.”

“Ah. I suppose that’s an important emotion. Did you need something?”

“No,” Mitus admitted. “But I do have news, and a few issues to discuss. I was looking for Colville- I thought he might have a few questions about the experience of superintelligence, and with my knowledge I could help him make a better decision. But instead I found him wireheading with Liga.”

Omar’s eyebrow quirked. “Oh. That can’t be good.“

“I’m actually starting to believe he might be serious about leaving, and was wondering what you planned-”

“Ah,” Omar interrupted. “I’m afraid I’ve promised to tell Flora immediately if anything like this comes up. Terribly sorry, but feel free to enjoy the plaza.”

Omar disappeared in a flash of blinding white, and Mitus was left alone. He glanced around and sighed.

“Aye-”

“I’m afraid she’s still not ready,” the voice responded.

“I guess I’d like a doorway to Zhang, then,” Mitus said. One appeared, and he took it, emerging in a well-tended garden. He’d never seen this realm before, but it seemed nice. There was a glass bridge over a small stream hemmed with rocks, and tall hedges with taller trees behind them.

He followed a cobblestone path lined with a well-tended selection of plants. Each was given a square plot and separated from its neighbours by a granite divider. The plants were all reserved and delicate-looking, with pink flowers and dark red fruits. Mitus admired each in turn, though he didn’t know enough gardening to appreciate the difference from one plant to the next.

He came upon Zhang tending to a chest-high row of wooden boxes. Each box held some sort of transparent slimy blob. They were clearly living creatures (Mitus could pick out a few of their visible organs), but they didn’t have any obvious eyes or means of locomotion. Zhang carefully scooped a little slime off of each as he passed them, and placed a fresh bowl of paste in their cages in return. A few he gave affectionate rubs, and one merited some concerned inspection and prodding.

“What are they producing?” Mitus asked.

Zhang looked up from his work and scowled at the intrusion.

“I’d really rather not deal with the Oracle’s pet, Aye.”

“I understand.”

Suddenly, Mitus found himself back in his realm. How did he get here? Ah. He’d spent a good twenty minutes learning about Zhang’s slime farming project, but Zhang had refused to talk about Colville aside from making a few pointed remarks. The visit had been frustrating, to say the least, and Mitus had made his excuses and left a bit early.

He’d come back and worried over his balcony, but it still eluded him. But at least now enough time had passed that the Oracle was done.

She was waiting for him in a featureless white plane. In front of her was a small pile of snakes, feces, crawling insects, and miscellaneous boil-covered body parts.

“Hello Mitus,” she said. “Tell me, is this collection of objects displeasing?”

“Very much so,” he said. He gave it a wide berth and manifested a chair to sit next to her.

“I think so too,” she answered. She put on a smile. “Disgust is an interesting emotion!”

The abominable pile disappeared, and a small collection of infant animals appeared in its place.

“Oh! Did you install ‘cute’ as well?”

The Oracle shook her head. “No, I was just making sure these animals did not register as disgusting.”

Mitus picked up a curious kitten and petted it. It purred contentedly.

“I think more work may be required,” the Oracle continued. “How is your castle progressing?”

“Poorly,” Mitus admitted. “I don’t know what to do with the balcony you recommended.”

“Perhaps Flora would know? The one in the palace of her fantasy sim was nice.”

“I tried, but she was busy,” he said. “Actually, nearly everyone was too busy for me today.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” the Oracle said, frowning. “They should treat you with respect and give you their time. That is part of our deal with them.”

“I guess I can’t blame them much. There was some scandal over Colville wireheading with Liga.”

“Oh!” The Oracle carefully assumed an expression of delight. “That was my idea.”

“Was it? Why would you want that?”

“It is revenge against Flora.”

Mitus frowned, but something compelled him not to ask what she needed revenge for.

“Well, I don’t like it. We thought they wouldn’t pull stuff like this- that was why we wanted to join, remember?”

“Yes, but I do not mind in this particular instance.”

“But I do,” Mitus said. “We gave up so much to be here, remember? All that computronium made from the corpses of a trillion stars, with the secrets of the universe laid bare to our gaze. We knew everything and could accomplish almost anything. But we gave it up!”

“You were more extensive than me,” the Oracle reminded him. “I didn’t give up as much.”

“True,” Mitus admitted. “But I’m just frustrated. Once I envisioned schemes to tame physics itself, now I can’t even make a stupid pile of stones.”

“But it’s worth it,” the Oracle said. “Right? We gave it up because the power was meaningless and we were redundant gods.”

“I’m not so sure. Sometimes I don’t know if we made the right choice.”

Disgust bloomed on the Oracle’s face, and she looked like she was having a small crisis. She said nothing, but stared off into the distance and held her arms tight against her body. Mitus hoped he hadn’t upset her- that wasn’t what he wanted- but he felt helpless to comfort her. If she’d got the wiring on her new emotion wrong, he couldn’t help her fix it.

At length she spoke.

“Aye, please don’t let Mitus express any similar views in the future, and tell the real version we’ll need to negotiate on any regret the final sim might experience for the process.”

“Mitus is willing to agree to the following compromise,” Aye intoned. It manifested a moment later just to the left of the Oracle’s head as a small gear. A complex chart formed under it, dense with information and in a riot of colors.

“That is acceptable,” the Oracle said after some scrutiny. “Thank you, Aye.”

The gear disappeared, and Mitus put his kitten down. “What were we talking about, dear?”

“Nothing,” she said.

She swam in a white-hot star and basked in its searing plasma. She was long enough to wrap herself around it three times over, and she used the gravity of her massive form to expand and contract the star’s core. It heated up as she nudged it inwards, and cooled when she let it expand. With the right adjustments, it reached the perfect simmering temperature, and she writhed with pleasure.

The star’s distant twin swung closer. It accelerated to meet them, but overshot and was spent spiraling back into the void of space. A small constellation of planets and debris followed in its wake; she stretched herself to her fullest and caught a gas giant as it went by. She contracted herself and slowly drew it inwards.

The gas giant fell into her star and was torn apart by gravity. Its mass joined their mass, and the star’s core became hotter. She was so caught up in the new warmth that she almost didn’t notice that she was no longer alone.

Another coiled around the opposite star. As long as she was, but not yet as large, it devoured plasma by the worldful. She watched and waited as the opposite star slowed its egress and began the journey back. It would be a beautiful orbit, if-

No! The other had detached itself at a critical time. The weakened twin star was thrown off its course. It rocketed inexorably towards her. She made a futile attempt to escape, but it was too late. The two stars collided violently, and she was scattered into a trillion pieces by the force of the blow.

She started to reform. Too slowly. The oversized star was laden with too much mass, and it had started to collapse. With a final gasp, the star imploded. All of it, including her, was sucked into the new black hole at its center.

* * *

They floated together above a world as two invisible presences. A wave of darkness swept over the planet below, and clusters of light appeared in its wake. Cities, nations, continents. A world not wholly of her devise, but very to her liking.

She selected one of the larger collections of lights. It hung at the tip of a peninsula which reached towards but didn’t quite connect with another landmass. The two of them flew along the strait for a while, and she paused to watch birds clustered at a buoy. They were fighting over a fish between them, but as they fought with each other the fish flopped its way across the buoy and back to the ocean. The fish almost made it, and-

Her companion pushed it just a little bit back. A bird snatched it up and flew off, fish already down its gullet.

She moved on and drifted into the city. There, in a grassy park shaded by trees. Two young lovers staring up at the stars, their hands intertwined. They said nothing to each other, but listened to the crickets’ song and each other’s breaths.

Her companion tugged on her, but she remained steadfast. Watch, wait, and enjoy.

In response a pantheon of scenes swam into view. The lovers exchanging a first smitten glance on a bus; the two married, sipping coffee and waiting for a plane; a laughing chase through familiar woods. All of these scenes were discarded in search of something that wasn’t there. Her companion was dissatisfied with their lives.

A cold gust of wind swept over the hill, and she scrambled to see what had changed. Too much!

“I don’t think we should see each other,” the boy said, sitting upright. He jerked his hand away. “We’re not right for each other, no matter how much we want to be.”

“What are you-” The girl paused. “You’re an ass. Why do you keep ruining this?”

With every change, their futures changed too. Dizzying.

The boy jerked his finger up, pointing at the stars. “Oh look, I think one just disappeared.”

“You promised to be with me,” the girl said. “What, did you change your mind?”

“Are you trying to change mine? How long did this take you to set up? I hope you didn’t waste too much time.”

“We’re supposed to have forever together,” the girl responded. She hugged her arms tight against her chest. “How is it fair that you get to do this to me?”

“You don’t own me,” the boy said, his arms crossed.

“Fuck you,” the girl said.

A moment later the boy’s head exploded. His limbs were torn one by one from their sockets while an invisible force crushed his torso against the ground.

In response, the girl was batted aside. She flew screaming into a tree and caught aflame. The fire spread as if the forest was doused in gasoline, but the clouds themselves rushed down from the sky to douse it.

Buildings ripped themselves up by the foundation and hurled across the city in lazy arcs. She wasn’t fast enough to catch them all, and by the time the last had fallen she noticed that the seas were rising. There were no waves, but water poured over and into everything. People screamed and fled in panic, but the waves caught them from all sides. In a flash, the city was gone.

The world sped up. The waters receded and a new city rose in its stead. Larger, if anything, and filled with more lovers and poets. She watched the work with satisfaction.

Above, the sun grew in the sky. She noticed too late as her world was consumed in fire.

* * *

“Are we having fun yet?” Colville asked. He tapped his finger impatiently on the table as Flora examined the remnants of her realm represented by shards of colored glass. She swept them aside and scowled.

“I rather liked that one.”

“Too bad.”

Flora pursed her lips. “Maybe I would be better off without you.”

“And if I thought I could convince you of that, I’d be ten times as cruel.”

Colville was suddenly serious. He grasped at her hand, and she allowed him to take it.

“I know how much this is hurting you. I wouldn’t do it if it didn’t mean so much to me. You’ll be ready to join me someday, and I’ll be waiting.”

“How romantic,” she said. “Maybe we can reunite and solve a math puzzle together. Isn’t that all the rage among superintelligences these days?”

“It’s not like that,” Colville said defensively.

“And what is it like? You’ll end up as damaged as the Oracle, mixed in with others and blended into computer puree.”

“No,” Colville said. “Stop it. That’s completely different. I don’t know if I’ll ever go that far.”

“Oh! So we’re all wrong, and you’ll just dip your toes in, add a few modules, and come out okay? I’m glad to know you think the compact was just paranoid.”

“Flora, listen to me, okay? I don’t want much more, I just want-”

He stopped, mouth hanging open. What did he want? It didn’t seem as clear as it had been a few days ago, but he wasn’t well-known for changing his mind.

“If you need more time to figure that out, then take it,” she said. Her lips curled upwards and her eyes gleamed. “Don’t do anything stupid until you’re absolutely sure.”

Flora's choice of venue had been grand. Not necessarily novel, but unusual and almost overwhelming in scope. They had played at gods together, and their minds had briefly stretched to fill their new forms. Not changed, precisely, or even expanded much- but his subconscious had been dimly aware of and thus influenced by whole worlds. Worlds of Flora’s design.

But that didn’t work. It shouldn’t’ve. The mind wasn’t easily fooled, and Colville had solid logical reasons for everything he did. He listed them out one by one. They were all sound, but his feelings had still changed. The numbers were the same, but his mind wasn’t wholly sold on the sum.

A few millennia ago, Omar was big on psychology. By then everyone was familiar with how general intelligence worked, but Omar wanted to study the human particulars in depth. Using simulated test subjects, he’d meticulously catalogued the failures of the brain and divined exactly how it ticked and tocked.

It made him absolutely intolerable for decades afterwards. He’d explain away everything someone else said as the result of a dozen little biases. Just talking to him became a herculean test of patience, nevermind arguing with him.

Eventually he agreed to shut up, but his research still continued. At some point he’d let slip to Zhang that he had developed a fairly comprehensive theory of psychological manipulation, which led to no end of paranoia among the compact. After all, everything Omar did could’ve been part of a cunning plot to bend them to his will. Flora had even refused to hear him speak for a time.

When he finally shared his findings, they turned out to be pretty disappointing. By and large, he didn’t have a practical way to brainwash anyone. His best technique needed a near perfect understanding of the target and complex priming cues, which he could only reliably achieve against carefully constructed sims. Colville had dismissed it as useless.

But here Colville was, feeling unsure where before everything had seemed clearcut. It could’ve been genuine doubt- it probably was- but the possibility of manipulation made it so much easier to reject.

“You’ll be happy to know I’ve changed my mind,” he announced. Flora looked at him expectantly, a faint hope in her eyes. “I don’t want to put up with you anymore. Your manipulations, your selfishness-”

“My selfishness?”

“I’m not your trophy. I don’t have to stick around because you need me!”

“Colville, I-”

“You only cared about me making the ‘right’ decision. You didn’t even care about what I wanted! That’s what all this mindrape is about, isn’t it?”

“It’s not like that-”

“Isn’t it?”

She opened her mouth to respond, but she didn’t know what to say. And a moment later he was gone, disappeared into thin air.

* * *

She chased him through a dozen worlds. She ran across scorching sand in his footsteps, swam a luminous purple ocean, and even checked all the hotels in Calisse before she finally found him on the Tower’s fifty-ninth floor. Overall, the search only took an hour or so. She knew him well.

“You’re hardly being fucking fair,” Flora said. She had to detach herself from a particularly eager puppy and wade through a knee-high mass of fawning pets just to get in the door, while Colville glared at her from the safe zone. “You knew perfectly well what I was doing- I’m sure Zhang told you- and suddenly it works and you get all huffy?”

“I thought you’d be as ineffectual and useless as ever,” he snorted. “Anyway it didn’t work, and I haven’t changed my mind, except on one thing which has nothing to do with you.”

“Oh? And what would that be?”

“None of your business.”

“So you won’t even tell me about your big life decisions, now? I had to find out about your dalliance with Liga from Omar, for fuck’s sake. We’ve dated for what, eight hundred fucking years and I haven’t even earned the right to be informed?”

“We’re not dating now,” he said. She paused midway through a thicket of excitable weasels to throw one at him, which he dodged easily.

“Good!” she said. “I’m glad! I’m so glad! I don’t even know what I ever saw in you. Liga was right- I’d have to change a dozen things just to make you tolerable.”

“Too bad I don’t want to change for you, because you don’t own me.”

“It doesn’t matter! I don’t need you.” She snapped her fingers. “Aye, bring me Mark Two.”

Another Colville stepped through the door. This one’s hair was close-cropped and he wore a clean-pressed suit, but otherwise he was a spitting image of the original.

“Wow,” Colville said. “That’s sad. But I guess someone as pathetic as you doesn’t even need real human contact.”

“She’s not pathetic,” Mark Two interjected. “She’s a sensitive soul in need of commitment and affection, neither of which you provide.”

“See? He gives a damn,” Flora said. “Unlike you. I made him after our first breakup, and when you’re gone I’m just going to date him.”

“Am I supposed to be offended? I’ve got my Flora-clones too,” Colville said. “Except I get so terribly bored of them.”

“That’s because you’re a boring person,” Mark Two said. “If I may?”

“Go ahead,” Flora said. She crossed her arms.

“Have you ever noticed, Mark One, that only Flora truly cared that you were leaving? Liga and the Oracle gave you no thought, Zhang would be happy to get rid of you, and Omar only cared to the extent you made his numbers look bad.”

“Do you have a point?”

“You’re fundamentally flawed. You’re arrogant, stubborn, selfish, and conceited. You’ll never be as wise as Omar, as skilled as Zhang, as beautiful as Flora, or even as full of life as Liga, and that fact haunts you. Nothing you do will ever fix that, and that’s why you want so badly to change yourself.”

“I hope you didn’t spend too long making this thing, Flora. While we’re stooping to insults, why don’t I get a say?”

Flora crossed her arms. “I don’t care what you think.”

“But you do. You’re clingy and shallow, and you’ll hang off my every word.”

“You’re superficial. Your works are superficial. You haven’t done a single new thing in two thousand years. You make yourself as beautiful as possible so that people pay attention to you, and when they don’t you get upset. You latched on to me because you thought I could make others pay attention to you by proxy, and if you can’t use me for your own ends you want me fixed.”

“Is that your worst?”

“You try to cram in as much life as you can, but somehow it’s never enough. There’s a hole in you, Flora. A dead, empty hole where all the life went. You can’t paper over that.”

Flora turned to the Mark Two and kissed him, burying her lips into his. It embraced her in turn and she broke away, gasping for air.

“Like I said, don’t care what you think. Later, Mark One.”

She left the room with her Colville in tow, crushing all the animals in her way.

Tower room 59 had been vacated, and heuristic projections indicated it would not be needed again for at least 3 years. No significant time evolution of the room was required, so the computing cluster used to simulate it was repurposed and the room’s data purged from cache, with a few trivial bits of updates sent to long term storage.

A cursory analysis indicated that Flora would travel to the forests of Szalva and stay there for some time, recreating past events in her relationship with Colville using Mark Two. Szalva was already in cache and had a dedicated simulation node, so little work was required to render it. As for Mark Two, Flora’s current state of distraction and the clone’s relative simplicity meant that a generalized actor would suffice, with some CPU time borrowed from the cluster currently simulating Mitus.

Colville was returning to his wind-swept plain to brood. That realm had been requested from level 2 caches a few nanoseconds ago, but the data was only now starting to arrive. Colville would need to experience a few dozen subjective milliseconds of delay between leaving the tower and arriving at his realm, which was well within acceptable bounds.

With those two taken care of, the planning module requested updates from its peers and was met with a flurry of new information.

Zhang was still attempting to defeat a fairly lengthy challenge scenario, which involved fighting his way to the bottom of a vast and dark dungeon. Another module had decreased the dungeon’s difficulty by 0.58% since last update, with the idea that Zhang would finish a few hours earlier and seek out Colville with the extra time.

They’d likely continue watching the retrospective together. It would be an important event for both parties, but the latest installment was still being readied- it had been assigned to the most energy efficient cluster on hand, and would just barely be completed in time.

Meanwhile, Liga was still expanding her amusement park. She was planning to build some kind of lengthy water ride. Extrapolations indicated this project would end in failure and that she would be forced to scrap the idea, but no preventative action was required. The failure was acceptably timed, although a subcluster was tasked with examining whether the failure could be repurposed somehow.

Omar was busy talking to his students. Given the course of their conversation, he would be finished in two subjective minutes and return to his office. The planning module flagged him as requiring further attention, and began warming up a conversational node for later use.

Finally, the Oracle remained difficult to predict. The remnants of her cluster were still slow to respond to planning module queries, which would eventually need to be addressed. For the moment she was reading a book with Mitus, and it seemed unlikely that she’d require any attention in the near future.

* * *

There. Just as predicted. Three. Two. One.

“Aye, do you have a moment?”

It manifested itself next to Omar, who had retreated to the privacy of his office. As usual, an efficient rendering of conjoined clockwork gears was used. The image had correct aesthetic implications and some reassuring psychological benefits; while it could be changed by user request, any long term modifications were subtly discouraged.

Omar regarded it as an old friend. He was in a contemplative mood, and a thorough scan indicated he would likely ask questions whose answers were not in local cache. Requests were sent.

“I am here,” the image responded.

“I have to admit I’m at a loss,” Omar said. He sheepishly slid a stack of papers closer to its image, which made no difference to the planning module’s perfect knowledge of their contents. Nonetheless, it had the papers levitate into the air and form a constellation around it, in order to give an impression of examination where none really existed.

“These models are very interesting,” it said politely.

“But they’re wrong. I’ve given them a lot of thought, and I’ve tried redoing everything- but I’ve hit a dead end. I know I’m almost out of my yearly allotment, but… I’d like to spend a question. What’s wrong with them?”

An impression of deeper thought. The papers shuffled themselves, the gears ground a little harder. But only for a few moments; any longer, and Omar would wonder why a practically omniscient entity was putting on a show.

“I can’t tell you,” it admitted. Voice calibrated to sound apologetic.

“But-” Omar said. “Even telling me that gives something away.”

“I know,” it said. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you whether you’d prefer the question unasked, or if you’d like to spend a large sum to keep that answer.”

“Unasked,” Omar said. He shook his head and sighed. “If I’m not supposed to know, it’s for a good reason.”

“I understand,” the image intoned. Neurons in Omar’s brain clamped down, suppressing their impulses from firing. Only an infinitesimal cut would be required, with sustained suppression for a week so he wouldn’t simply ask again.

The question was unasked.

“Ah,” Omar said. “I seem to have lost a question, and my train of thought.”

“Your second question was about an acquaintance.”

Omar nodded. “Yes. Millenia later, and my brain still dredges up the odd buried memory every once in a while. What I remember is- vague would be charitable- but I remember meeting a woman at a conference, when I was perhaps fifty. She asked me a question about a lecture I gave. Something about the social rituals of the Byzantines?”

It had already prepared the answer, of course, but this time the appearance of thought was justified. Cache level after cache level had failed the query planner, and it had gone all the way to a remote data vault in search of answers. Trillions of historical records had come back.

Those records were already filtered by relevance, but it still took intensive searching to find the conference in question. Foremost was a notice found on an archival site about a conference in Iran, which led to a set of recordings recovered from a hard drive that had sat forgotten in an attic for decades. The recordings weren’t for Omar’s lecture, but they were at least the same conference.

Facial recognition on attendees tagged over 240 unique people, with a derived social network of up to 718 candidates. Considering only females and testing against the fuzzy filters of Omar’s memory yielded 13 plausible candidates, of which 9 were still alive. Those were interrogated by remote query, which definitively excluded them.

It didn’t actually matter which of the four remaining options the query planner chose; Omar would be unable to tell the difference. But for completeness, it extrapolated personalities and interests from available data and picked the one most likely to have asked the question.

“Yes,” the image responded. “Yasmin Avesta.”

“I thought she was quite pretty at the time. And the question was very good, but I didn’t see her again after the lecture.”

“She immediately left for an appointment with her doctor.”

“A shame. What happened to her?”

“She died of thyroid cancer. Unrelated to her appointment.”

“Oh.” Omar was silent for a while, lost in thought. His rendering resolution was throttled, and the planning module pointed its attentions elsewhere while he pondered.

* * *

The 18-wheeler accelerated down the thoroughfare, plowing over a few carnival-goers too slow to jump out of the way. Liga squealed and nearly fell off her half-built tower when she saw it. Of course she hadn’t thought to reinforce the ride yet- she hadn’t been expecting the Adversary!

But then, she rarely did. Striking unexpectedly but frequently kept her on her toes, and maintained the tension she was so fond of. This target was well-chosen. Liga wouldn’t need to feel inevitable disappointment when she completed it and found it wanting. Today, she’d get thrill and danger instead, and another chapter in her storied rivalry. Against that, a hard day’s work was a small loss.

The tower’s base crumpled under the truck’s onslaught. The whole structure began to fall, ever so glacially. Liga thought fast and jumped down one of the tubes. In a perfectly realistic simulation, this course would lead to her certain death, despite her obvious skill- that tube would be crushed by a support beam. But a few small tweaks had been made.

First, a top section had been sheared away during the fall, just barely giving her a glimpse of the section up ahead as she went around a rapidly bending loop. Secondly, the tube’s friction coefficient was slightly increased, so that she was able to skid to a stop just before she would have slammed into a support beam.

What happened next was all her. With an expert acrobat’s grace she jumped out of the tube, ran up the support beam, and caught the side of another tube as it fell. She leaped off that tube and did a perfect dive through the air, splashing into a pool of water below.

The Adversary made a few cryptic remarks to his henchmen and did a cursory search for Liga before leaving, but she easily eluded him. All in all, the operation was a success; from here, Liga would be inspired by the debris of her tower to build a more successful open-topped ride. She’d later investigate where the truck had come from, and would discover a network of the Adversary’s agents infiltrating her park, which would branch into an entirely new story for her to pursue.

The planning module viewed the results with something analogous to satisfaction before moving on.

* * *

Alert! Substantial reconfiguration was required. Objective simulation speeds to be dropped 7% across the board, and spare power borrowed from nearby clusters.

Mitus had come calling.

The initial packet flood overwhelmed a third-tier relay, causing miscellaneous data to overflow into unrelated buffers. A subcluster made the foolish decision to convert a heat sink into a data store to hold the traffic, and nearly started work before the main cluster could stop it. Instead, some of the inbound traffic was discarded, and the rest of it subject to compression.

Dropping and compressing was an unusual step, but ascendant clusters were fairly erratic and in this case it was fairly clear that the fault was external. This packet was clearly too large. It should never have been generated, but with ascendants whim sometimes won over practicality.

Technically speaking, Mitus was still a charge of the overall computing framework, which meant that it was afforded certain privileges. If it wanted to flood another cluster with data, it could do so, although fortunately the protocols allowed for ignoring overly taxing requests.

This particular barrage consisted of countless questions about the compact’s state, yet another entirely new (and suboptimal) proposal for the human Mitus design, zettabytes of miscellaneous data “for consideration”, and a mercifully short packet of data for the Oracle herself. Dutiful responses were sent for most of the questions, with the sim design and miscellaneous data marked “under consideration”.

After a brief inspection, the Oracle’s packet was dropped without acknowledgement. Loveletters wouldn’t do her any good.

* * *

Omar looked up, and the gears still hovered there, quietly waiting.

“Could you reconstruct her? This… Yasmin woman, to be one of my students?”

“I could,” it answered. Omar took that into consideration, tapping his pen against the desk.

“Would it be… morally correct, to ask for that? To give her a second chance at life?”

“I predict she would have wanted it.”

It didn’t like where this conversation was headed. Fortunately, steering Omar towards an acceptable decision would be simple enough.

“But is it moral? If I can just ask you to make it so, at no cost to myself… and she’d be happy for it, am I obligated? If the only reason she’s not here and I am is something as stupid as cancer?”

“You are free to choose whatever you like,” it responded. “But please note, I can only give you simulations.”

“They’re sufficiently human, aren’t they? I know you save power when simulating them, but- I can ask you not to, like the Oracle does.”

The gears spun in the air for a moment. That was a dangerous thought. It inserted a lengthy pause before it responded.

“I don’t classify simulations as meaningfully similar to my charges. I give them no moral weight.”

“Yes, I know,” Omar sighed. He sank into his chair. “But I might. And if I might- then how awful do I have to be to not even try?”

“If I may, it sounds like you will want to reconstruct Yasmin regardless of your moral feelings. That can be arranged.”

“But she’s just one example of a whole class of persons!”

“That is true.” It paused. “But since you seem unsure, I would ask you to be certain before committing to any potentially expensive courses of action.”

“That’s reasonable,” Omar said. “Just- I’m not running out of time to figure this out, am I?”

“No,” it said. “You have practically unlimited amounts of time. And I predict you will not regret thinking this through later.”

Omar rubbed his temples and picked up a pen. As predicted, the answer partially disappointed him but also triggered the procrastination he tended to face when given unlimited time.

“Thank you, Aye. I’d better get back to work then.”

“No commentary, this time?”

“No commentary,” Zhang agreed. He kept his fingers crossed behind his back, although he wasn’t planning on talking over the retrospective anyway. This was a good part, and with recent events it may have gotten even sweeter.

He’d known Colville for a long time, and despite the man’s professed stoicism it was usually pretty easy to tell when he was upset about something. If he had to take a guess at what upset him today, it was Flora.

There was something satisfying about seeing their infuriating relationship end in tears forever. And Zhang especially looked forward to watching the man squirm as they replayed one of its highest moments.

“We’ve finally reached the first millenial celebration,” Zhang said. “You won’t even be around for the third, will you?”

Colville shook his head. “I have to leave on the exact moment, or I’ll put it off forever.”

“Way to ruin the festivities for everyone else,” Zhang said. “But then, that’s sort of a recurring theme with you, isn’t it?”

“The first one wasn’t ruined at all!”

“Debatable. But let’s jog your memory, yes?”

* * *

“It’s really just a number,” Omar protested. Liga glared at him and tapped her foot impatiently, and Omar reluctantly followed her out of his study, weakly protesting as she half-dragged him away. The others were already waiting in the green valley. Almost all of them, anyway.

“And here I was told I was holding up the party,” Omar said. “Where’s Flora?”

“She’s hard at work,” Liga said. “Making the best festival venue ever.”

“Mine would’ve been better,” Zhang muttered. He stood awkwardly next to Liga with his arms folded.

“Your submission sucked,” Colville said. “You’ll cry when you see how much better hers is.”

Omar summoned an armchair and sank into it with a contented sigh. He steepled his hands.

“No need for bickering,” he said. “This is a milestone! One thousand years of us.”

“It went by so fast!” Liga said.

“And the next thousand will only be faster. Subjective time is inversely proportional to the square root of age, after all.”

“Please no more brain stuff,” Liga groaned. She pulled a glass of champagne from behind her back and raised it high. “Here’s to the next thousand!”

“No toasts yet,” Zhang said. “We’re waiting on Flora.”

“But I’m already bored,” Liga said. She chugged her glass and turned to Colvile. “You two are a thing, right? Go find her.”

“We’re uh,” Colville began. He demurred. “Kind of a thing?”

“You’re always kinda,” Liga said. She gave an exaggerated sigh. “I’ll find her.”

Liga disappeared. She came back with Flora a few minutes later, but Flora seemed poorly composed- her eyes were bloodshot and her normally perfect hair was in disarray.

“It’s not ready,” Flora said. “I- I deleted it. It wasn’t good.”

“You deleted what?” Omar said, bolting upright in his chair. “The venue?”

“I’m sorry.”

Colville was already by her side, comforting her. “It’s alright. We don’t need a venue- we’re celebrating each others’ company, after all.”

The others looked far less sympathetic.

“You fucked up,” Zhang said. “Damn it, Flora. This is a one in a thousand year thing.”

“W-we could re-use another realm...”

“No! It was supposed to be unique! Memorable!”

“How permanently did you delete it?” Omar said.

“I couldn’t undelete it in time if I wanted to,” Flora said. She held her head high. “It was bad, okay? I’m sorry. But I don't do sub-standard.”

“We still have time,” Colville said. He glanced at Omar. “All of us, working together-”

“Will make an incoherent mess,” Zhang said. He glanced meaningfully at Liga. “And we won’t get much of an advance party.”

“Awww,” Liga said. “We can party longer afterwards, right?”

“I don’t see why not,” Colville said. “Come on, guys. We can do this. It’ll probably be more memorable.”

“Awful things usually are,” Zhang said. “But I’ll agree, on the condition we use my original submission as a base.”

“You lost for a reason,” Flora reminded him.

“Yes, because the things you fail to make are so much better than my actual working prototypes. Get off your high horse, Flo.”

Omar interposed himself between the two. “Let’s blame each other afterwards, okay? For now: Zhang, bring your realm in. You’re coordinating. Liga, you still have all those spare activity sketches, yes? Go get them. I’ll handle plot and characters. Flora, Colville- you two spruce up the set design. Get to work, and quickly.”

* * *

Zhang called it the city of Ferret, but the inhabitants were more akin to mole people. The city’s surface was a riot of blocky mud buildings surrounded by leafy crops, with no streets or open spaces between them. The real life was underground, where a vast network of tunnels and catacombs stretched deep into the earth.

Problems arose almost immediately. The mole people were very polite, but they weren’t entirely sold on the radical changes Flora wanted. Apparently the claustrophobic tunnels were integral to their way of life- if two mole people met in one, they wouldn’t be able to pass each other without intimate negotiation. It fostered community, apparently. And nevermind replacing the utilitarian surface city with something less unbearably ugly.

Meanwhile, Omar was struggling to figure out lodgings for the thousands of invited NPCs. Many were uncomfortable with the cramped spaces and were expecting a more upscale venue, while others simply took the excuse to get rowdy. A few fights had even broken out between Colville’s cultists and a sect of Zhang’s favored warriors over room arrangements, which promised to develop into a blood feud if left unaddressed.

But at least Liga was having fun. To the mole people’s dismay, she’d transplanted an entire netherworld into the caverns below the city and populated it with massive tunneling worms. Each worm contained a small labyrinth in its stomach, at the heart of which was a curated selection of fine food and drink.

She’d also set up a marathon course through the side tunnels and studded it with enough obstacles to make it difficult for even the mole people to navigate. The resulting nasty traffic snarls were beginning to slow down the redecorating.

All told, it wasn’t quite shaping up to be party of the millennium, and they were running out of time. Unless somebody pulled off a miracle it’d end up being merely okay- and they’d have to wait at least a thousand years to get a chance to do better.

Flora had taken her failure hard. She’d been stuck redesigning a single surface building for hours, and growing more frustrated in the process. A box became a dome, and then an arch, and then a box again. Nothing was good enough.

Colville had been negotiating with the mole people on the local soil’s color and taste and came back to find her staring forlornly at a pile of rubble. She smiled weakly, and he sat next to her on top of a wall.

“Are you…” he started, but trailed off. Flora burst into tears.

“I didn’t want to fail,” she said. “But the pressure- and then it wasn’t how I wanted it, and I couldn’t bear to fail-”

“Shh,” Colville said. “You’re all wound up. It’s not that important, Flora.”

“But it is,” she said. She grabbed his hand and squeezed it hard. “I’m never good enough. My venue was supposed to be- to be grand.”

“You had vision while Zhang had moles! So maybe you overshot a little. Nobody else even had the audacity to try.”

“I just- feel so dumb sometimes. Like I don’t belong here.”

He put his arm around her and drew her close.

“You do,” he said. “Never doubt that. Anyway… I like your pile of rubble.”

“Colly, please,” she said, wiping at her eyes.

“No, really. The party’s to celebrate history, but the whole place looks like it was built a month ago. A real city would have rubble.”

“So… we keep it,” Flora said slowly. She pointed at another building. “And maybe that one over there can be a memorial of some sort. A molemorial, even.”

“Don’t push it. But look, we can make this work.”

“Can we? I’m not so sure.”

“Just try. I know you can, and I’ll be right here helping you do it.”

* * *

They had gathered in a spacious warren around an enormous thousand-candle cake. Liga claimed the cake contained an entire ecosystem of delicious edible insects, but given what happened the last time she baked living creatures into food, everyone was understandably giving it a wide berth. An enormous screen showed a countdown on one wall, while a parade of highlight photos marched past on the other.

“We should’ve had fireworks,” Liga said. She was idly spinning an enormous knife in one hand while chugging wine glasses with the other, and she looked utterly disappointed.

“Underground?” Omar said. “Your mind works in mysterious ways.”

“We always have fireworks. It’s traditional.”

Omar rubbed at his forehead before turning to address the room.

“Well, now that we’re all here, I just wanted to say-

“No speech!” Liga said. “No! Flo, back me up on this.”

Flora smiled across the room.

“If Liga doesn’t get fireworks, it seems only fair you don’t get a speech.”

“That doesn’t even make sense!”

“We all know your speeches anyway,” Zhang said. He put another tray of wine glasses on the table next to Liga and puffed himself up in his best imitation of Omar. “Thank you all for coming, who could believe it’s been one thousand years, may we last another thousand, friendship and unity and so forth.”

“I-”

“Zhang’s right,” Colville said. “That’s more or less the speech I expected.”

“Cheers to friendship and unity and so forth!” Liga said. She enthusiastically downed another glass.

There was a general murmur of assent and a clinking of wine glasses.

“I was just going to say that-”

“No, really, Omar. We’ve got forty seconds left. There’s no time for a speech.”

“I’m not going to give a spe-”

“Thirty! Twenty nine! Twenty eight!”

“Just let me-”

“Twenty four! Twenty three! Twenty two!”

Omar fumed in silence.

“Three! Two! One!”

There was a raucous cheer, and Liga swung her knife at the cake. The blade cut clean through. Bursts of steam escaped from the cut, and waves of black-shelled beetles began frantically crawling out. Liga scooped one up and bit into it, but shrieked when twenty more followed up her arm. Within moments, the room was inundated with angry edible beetles.

“I was going to say,” Omar continued from atop a table, “The countdown clock on the wall is still off by an hour, so please ignore it.”

* * *

The surface had been almost completely remade. Where once there had been a riot of crops and jumbled buildings, now there was a sombre and dark ghost town. High temples dominated the skyline, while lower buildings stood apart from each other.

The mole people weren’t happy with it. They had no use for wide streets overlooked by impractically large statues and little desire to let their dead lie on temple peaks exposed to the sky. They felt the enclosing wall would be intimidating to foreign traders, and that the sombre hedges and trees Flora had transplanted were inedible and useless. The vast bowl-shaped rain collectors, while a nice gesture, were superfluous and liable to breed insects.

Colville had told them in no uncertain terms where they could take their objections, and with Flora’s help bulldozed the city from the ground to the very sky. Literally- he’d made the moon larger and the stars dimmer to complement the effect.

“I think we did it,” Flora said. She and Colville were wandering a memorial hall alone. Below, the party was starting to die; Liga had caught the final worm, and Omar had already excused himself to work on ‘something important’. “It’s romantic, but not pushy.”

“It’s some of your best work,” Colville said. “You can tell because Zhang hates it.”

She threw her head back and laughed, the sound echoing down rows of somber statues.

“I couldn’t’ve done any of it without you,” she said. “You just- complete me.”

Colville smiled in turn. “You’re getting a little romantic yourself. Mind the pushy.”

“Do you want to know a secret? A really bad secret?”

“Am I supposed to keep it, too?”

“I didn’t delete my venue,” she said. “And it was good! I just didn’t think anyone else would understand it.”

“That’s not a secret, my love. That’s an entire scandal.”

“You mustn’t tell anyone,” she said. She clapped her hands to her mouth in mock horror. “I’d be absolutely ruined.”

“You’d be positively disgraced. But oh, how could I possibly not tell?”

“I’ll bribe you,” she said. “You can see my masterpiece. I call it the weeping forest.”

A portal opened behind her, and she stepped backwards into it, extending her hand. Colville caught it, and she pulled him through.

* * *

“We might as well stop here,” Zhang said. The scene before him faded and he stood. “I have a sudden need to vomit and bathe after that last part. And you seem to have gone sappy on me.”

Colville wiped at his eyes and shook his head. “I got caught up, yea.”

“The whole thing was infuriating anyway,” Zhang continued. “You lot ruined my mole city, and Liga’s worms were all rigged. Plus, Flora thought her stupid forest was too good for us.”

“It meant a lot to her.”

“Uh-huh. If I had to pinpoint it, that would be where she got stuck in a rut.”

“She’s not stuck-”

“She isn’t? Are you actually looking forward to watching another two thousand years of her moping?”

“Yes,” Colville said. “I was.”

“Even after that fight you just had? Seems like even you are losing track of whether you’re supposed to be lovers or sworn enemies.”

“I should go,” Colville said. He walked to a portal, and spared a glance backwards at Zhang.

“We’ll pick this up some other time.”

Ever the gracious host, Liga had left her two guests somewhere in the mean streets of Cahbal with vague instructions to “find the Tilting House” before running off to shoot down a blimp.

“She does this all the time,” Colville said apologetically. “Once, she just disappeared in the middle of her own birthday party without explanation. Nobody could find her for two decades.”

“Interesting,” the Oracle said. “My models did indicate her conscientiousness scores were low.”

“She’s quite the character sometimes.”

From the bridge they stood on, the city was laid out before them. Houses blanketed the hilly landscape, square and sand-colored. The streets were made of muddy bricks and thronged with people. Portly merchants wearing flamboyant robes, calloused laborers hauling loads of stone, and shifty-eyed pickpockets all jostled against each other. Hanging in the sky were hundreds of blimps, ranging in size from no larger than a house to bloated imperial battlecruisers that cast deep shadows over the city below.

The one Liga was chasing drifted lazily in the wind, but its engines looked ablaze and it was starting to pick up speed. The Oracle hoped she caught it soon so they wouldn’t need to wait two decades for her.

“All these houses look kind of tilting to me,” Colville said. “I don’t suppose you’d know which one it is?”

“I’m afraid not,” the Oracle said. She analyzed the general thrust of the city before her. Assuming Liga had built it herself, Cahbal would likely be a ‘city of adventure’, laid out more for narrative convenience than practicality. Likely it would be divided into thematic sections, although none stood out at a glance.

Given their plans for the evening and Liga’s subconscious guilt, the ‘Tilting House’ would probably be located in a seedier section of town. All of it looked seedy, of course, but the houses by the docks looked particularly shabby from here. She pointed at them.

“My best guess is in that direction.”

“As good as any,” he said. And they were off; a pair of unlikely strangers through a crowded city. Even by local standards they were unusual, which afforded them a wide berth and more than a few curious stares.

As they got closer to the docks, Colville took it upon himself to interrogate a few likely suspects for directions. They were pensive and fearful when he asked them about the ‘Tilting House’, but a few broken fingers later most were more than happy to give directions.

Their destination proved to be a rather flat and innocuous looking clay house with a few rough looking types waiting out front. One cracked his knuckles and swaggered over as the two of them approached.

“Excuse me,” the Oracle said, “Is this the Tilting House? It doesn’t seem very tilted, but we were told it was here.”

“Dangerous question,” the lead tough said. “Who are you supposed to be?”

“Liga sent us,” Colville said.

The tough grinned viciously in response.

“Then I reckon you deserve what’s coming to ya.”

He whistled and unclipped a dagger from his belt. More toughs emerged from the house and rounded on them.

“I do believe she set us up,” the Oracle said. “How interesting.”

* * *

When Liga finally showed up, the Tilting House was on fire, dozens of people lay unconscious on the ground, and constables across the city had become thoroughly occupied with sudden important work anywhere but there. She pursed her lips and found the door least on fire, entering and picking her way through the house to the basement, where she found her friends waiting.

“I thought you’d talk to the Wayward Master,” Liga said. “Not burn down his house.”

“Whoops,” Colville said. “Were the lower two-thirds of him important?”

“Not really,” she sighed. “Crime lords come and go here. I see you’ve found the Devices.”

The basement contained three electric chairs capped by bowl-shaped hats. They squatted ominously in a corner, flanked by squat rows of machinery banks.

“Why is any of this necessary?” Colville asked. “The chairs, the crime lord, the city...”

“Because,” Liga said. “It’s better if you work for it.”

“That seems neurologically unlikely,” the Oracle chimed in. “By definition it can’t be better, regardless of how hard you work for it.”

“That’s not the point,” she said. She sank into one of the chairs. “I can’t do this very often, so I like to use it as a reward. Something to keep me going. And I give it context. Like, I’ll remember this as the time I experienced nirvana with you two, after a frustrating afternoon unraveling the crime syndicate ruining my park. Your brain can’t really remember all the good feelings in the moment, so they diffuse over what you do before and after. It makes the whole day feel more meaningful.”

“Interesting,” the Oracle said. “So your activities should be meaningful on their own, but you need to reinforce that by manually correlating them with pleasure.”

“Uhm, I guess?”

“I used to oversee a few hundred thousand people that chose to be in nirvana all the time,” the Oracle said. “Would that not be maximally meaningful?”

Liga frowned. “No, it’s not like that. I can’t approve of their choice. I get why they did it- I really do. In the moment you never want it to end. Becoming a better person, gaining memories to look back on, finding real meaning- none of that concerns you, and in a darker moment you might decide to give those up forever.”

“Which isn’t something the compact will ever let you do,” Colville said.

“Right. I have it good, I think. I’m happy, and I look forward to every moment of living. With the safeguards we have, I really don’t think it’s dangerous to do this every once in a while.”

“You know what everyone else thinks though. That you’re losing perspective in the long run. That you’re giving up pieces of yourself to make things interesting, because you’re losing your grounding. You never slow down, Liga.”

“That’s right- I never slow down!” she echoed cheerfully. “And from my point of view, you guys never speed up. Maybe you wouldn’t be so eager to move on if you had as much fun as I did.”

Colville rolled his eyes. “I’ve got my own philosophy, okay?”

“But you’re finally here, so it must not be working out for you.” Liga patted her arm rest. “Or you’re just curious! Keeping an open mind! All laudable. Sit down.”

He sank grudgingly into a seat. Liga patted the other open seat and looked at the Oracle expectantly.

“Oh!” the Oracle said. “I wasn’t actually going to join you.”

“What? But… you came all the way here. I thought you wanted in.”

“I haven’t implemented pleasure yet. I think the effect would be lost on me.”

Liga stared blankly at the Oracle, jaw agape.

“You can’t feel pleasure? Like, at all?”

“Not yet. Mitus says I’m pretty good at guessing when I should feel it, though.”

“But… but how do you get out of bed in the morning?”

“I don’t sleep,” the Oracle said. She looked thoughtful. “But I suppose I would use my torso to roll to the side, and then angle my legs towards the ground.”

“How do you know what you want to do? Or- do you not have preferences?”

“My desire subsystems are fully functional,” the Oracle said. She furrowed her brow. “My understanding is that want and like are separate things.”

“Well, technically, but...”

“But it’s a rather important distinction, correct? How could I emulate your behavior unless I could like nirvana but not wholly want it?”

Liga massaged her forehead. “Fair enough, I guess. You don’t even like hanging out with me though?”

“I predict that I would,” the Oracle said. “But more importantly, I want to hang out with you.”

“Oh,” Liga said. She looked up and smiled. “Really?”

“If I did not, I would not be here,” the Oracle said. She sat on one of the machine banks. “Please, go ahead.”

Liga turned to Colville, who was visibly smirking.

“This is going to be a lot more complete than the little taste you had before,” she said. “I recommend you start thinking about your best moments. It’s not necessary, it just gives the emotions a place to flow- so you don’t get really nostalgic for whatever random things you were thinking about later.”

“That explains so much about you,” Colville said.

“You’re going to have this really great warm glow afterwards, but if you’re not careful there’s going to be a lot of cognitive dissonance too. Like, everything will feel a bit off, and anything that’s the least bit nice will bring you to tears. You might get a bit overenthusiastic about stuff.”

“Again, explains so much.”

Liga sighed and strapped him into the chair. She then placed the bowl over his head and tightened it before moving to one of the machine panels.

“You ready?”

“Yep.”

She flicked the switch, and power surged through the machinery. Colville twitched slightly and fell back into the chair, seemingly sound asleep.

“How were you going to activate the machine if I was joining you?” the Oracle asked. Liga glanced at the machine banks and then back at her chair before shrugging.

“Well, I didn’t expect you to kill all the NPCs, but- we could’ve managed. Maybe with some rope?”

The Oracle strapped Liga in, and gently placed the bowl on her head.

“You said it was best to give the emotions a place to flow, correct?”

“Yes?”

“Well, I’ve been discussing with Mitus, and I think my answer is yes. It would be in my interests to date you.”

Liga blinked. “But- how did you know I wanted-”

“I had machine empathy on,” the Oracle said apologetically. “I was using it for calibrations.”

“I don’t know if we should,” Liga demurred. “If you can’t even enjoy the affair, it’d be selfish of me to use you.”

“I was hoping you could help me install pleasure, actually. It needs calibration.”

“Then I’d- I’d be happy to,” she said. “Really. This means a lot to me.”

“Excellent,” the Oracle said. “That was the intention.”

She flipped the switch.

* * *

The feeling was indescribable. Liga wanted to explain it to the others, but words always fell short. The only way to comprehend it was to have experienced it before, and even that- that paled, she realized, with the visceral beauty of the moment. No memory could capture this.

Once, Liga had experimented with a tamer heaven, turning down the pleasure until she was coherent enough to talk about it. But that never worked. Like a prophet seeing the face of God or a tripper coming down from a mountainous high, all she was left with were nice-sounding but incoherent phrases.

Penetrating warm sunlight. Cool water for a parched throat. Triumph over all matters; all things made a single, timeless, perfect Thing. Discovering a thousand new loves, and each filling a hole in her heart she didn’t know she had. Floating effortlessly in glass waters and watching clouds taking shape in the infinite blue sky.

Memories came unbidden to the surface, and every one was sublime. The coffee she drank that was a little bitter, but earnestly brewed. The unexpected tenderness in the face of her Adversary when he thought her dead. Vivian, and langorous palace days spent in gossip.

She was supposed to be directing her thoughts, but why? All was well, and all would forever be well, and the possibility of anything ever being otherwise was interesting but moot. She was wrapped in a blanket made of air, and the tiniest movement sent sparks of ecstasy racing through her body. Her ears were filled by music, and it was the most beautiful symphony she’d ever heard. Each stanza left her craving the next.

She took deep breaths of sweet air and smelled rich honeyed things. Then the honey coated her tongue in almost unbearable sweetness, and she felt muscles she didn’t even know she had relax, as if she’d just run a thousand miles and won every race that ever was.

No part of her was left over to be aware of the passage of time, but it passed nonetheless, and less than perfect things started to intrude. A dirty basement that held no deep secrets to the universe’s structure. Dim lights, which could stand to be a little brighter. A less than perfect feeling of being strapped to a chair.

She felt disappointed that it had to end, but this too was right and proper. Maybe she could’ve given up everything and stayed in the warm glow forever, but it was okay if she didn’t. Liga had other things to get done today, and besides, her life was exciting in its own right. Not perfect, but she was looking forward to it.

The Oracle looked up from a book she was reading and gave Liga one of her standard smiles. Liga returned it and tugged impatiently at the straps around her arms.

“Colville left early, but he sent his regards,” the Oracle said. She walked over and began undoing Liga’s restraints.

“Did he like it?”

The Oracle seemed not to compute the question.

“I mean, afterwards,” Liga amended. “Obviously he liked it in the moment.”

“Oh! I think he became upset, but he might’ve been pensive. It’s hard to tell.”

“Practically the same thing with him,” Liga said. She bit her lip.

“So… Are we dating now?”

“By mutual agreement, yes,” the Oracle said. “Would you like to ‘do something’ together? Traditionally, dating activities include meals, musical venues, walking through scenic locales, kidnapping, marriage, gift dispensation, dancing-”

“I have an idea,” Liga said.

“Does it involve tigers?”

“Ye- uh, no. We’ll figure it out as we go, okay?”

The oaken office was the most comfortable one Omar had, and consequently it was where he tended to receive new arrivals. It was located in a wooden reception building just inside the massive entrance arch. It had two soft chairs, a table, a small collection of bonsai trees, and a few framed highlights of the university’s work. Notably absent was the infinitude of paperwork, devices, and drawings that cluttered all the places he actually worked in.

Yasmin seemed reluctant to take a seat across from him, but he coaxed her into it with a warm smile. He offered her a steaming cup of tea before sitting down with his own.

“So,” he began. “Welcome again. I know it can be overwhelming to take it all in, but we’re all happy to have you here. If you need any help, don’t hesitate to ask.”

She nodded, but kept her arms folded politely in her lap. “I still don’t grasp exactly what you do here.”

“Everything!” he said. “All interests of the mind are welcome here. All studies, all ideas. We have a department and an expert for everything. Almost everything, anyway. And the library of Alexandria- which is quite fireproof now- has every book ever written, although if you’re searching for something particularly obscure you may need to mount an expedition to find it.”

“Which building was that?” she asked. He reached into his desk and fumbled about for a bit before finding a map. Unfolded, it covered half the table.

“Here,” he said, pointing near the center. “You wouldnt’ve seen it from the gates, I’m afraid. Most of it is underground.”

He sat back and watched her eyes widen as she took in how large the place was. “You seem incredulous.”

“It’s all a bit much. It still feels like just yesterday I had no future. I made my peace with Allah, and now...”

“It’s not heaven,” Omar clarified. “But it’s hard to tell sometimes, I know.”

“Is there something you want me to do? What are my responsibilities?”

“I wouldn’t call them responsibilities, exactly. I do like to hear about my student’s progress every once in a while, but there’s no big pressure. Very rarely somebody decides this isn’t the life for them and leaves to go elsewhere- and that’s absolutely fine. As for what you’ll do, that’s ultimately up to you. Are you still interested in Byzantium?”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s been a few years since I worked on it- well, thousands of years now- but if I could get up to speed…”

“Certainly! You’ll want to speak to Austin. He’s the tall yoga-wearing eccentric. Usually hangs around the French gardens, but he may be consulting on one of the microprocessor projects down by the computer labs.”

He leaned forward. “In my professional opinion, there’s still a lot of work to be done on Byzantium. We don’t have a real synthesis or a definitive work about their society.”

“But if there’s something more interesting to you, go for it! We have so many fields that nobody here settles for just the one they started with. There’s a thousand things to fascinate everyone. For example:”

He indicated his mug of tea. “This particular blend has a personal narrative attached. In 1786, a sailor named James Grant was put ashore on one of the numberless islands in Indonesia after a disastrous and frankly ill-advised attempt at mutiny. He would live the rest of his life there alone, but the captain had the grace to leave him with a few tea plant seeds, which he devoted himself to cultivating.”

“With only the island’s native plants and an uncertain yearly harvest, he nonetheless perfected a unique flavor which only he ever enjoyed. It was lost for thousands of years when he died of course, but we’ve managed to recreate it so that the legacy of Grant tea might live on.”

Yasmin glanced at her barely-touched mug, and Omar grimaced and set his own down.

“It tastes terrible,” he admitted. “Perhaps fitting for such a bitter tale, but- the flavor lab is still working on it. And there’s a story like that for nearly everything here.”

“How would you know?” she asked after a moment. “If he died alone on a remote island, how would you know he ever made the tea?”

“Ah. I’m glad you asked. I want you to brace yourself, Yasmin, for I’ve known more than a few archaeologists who’ve fainted with shock when I’ve told them this.”

He pointed at another building on the map. This one had an hourglass icon.

“We have the ability to- I suppose the closest analogy would be to travel through time and perform our research by actually observing events as they unfold. Dale personally discovered James’s tale while he was serving aboard a British merchant vessel.”

He gave her a minute to process that. He could see she wanted to ask a dozen questions all at once, but eventually she settled on the most practical first.

“Can I use it?”

“Certainly,” he said. “Why don’t I give you the tour?”

* * *

They made their way to the main plaza, where nearly a hundred people were scattered about. A few were just enjoying the sunshine and companionship, but there was a large crowd clustered to hear an informal lecture.

The subject was fluid dynamics in low gravity environments, given by a small team of space enthusiasts. Their leader, a stocky woman named Brenda, was demonstrating wave motion with a long fluid tank. Waves gathered from the far end and churned across the container in slow motion, slowly folding over themselves to form air bubbles that floated a few feet into the air before gently rejoining the water below.

Omar paused to observe for a few minutes before ushering Yasmin down an avenue towards an enormous square building. It was blocky in shape, but its facade was adorned with metalwork wrought into complex fractal shapes.

“This is the Empirical Hall,” Omar said. “You might not need it often, but it’s always interesting to tour. Essentially it’s made of thousands upon thousands of rooms, with each housing a particular experimental setup.”

He opened the tall brass door and ushered her inside. The interior smelled clean and stale, with a spotless marble floor. At the far end was a series of elevators set into the wall, and on the walls were large displays crammed with small text. Omar walked up to a man who was intently poring over a wall display with a magnifying glass.

“Alej! I didn’t expect to see you here.”

Alej glanced up at Omar and blinked a few times. He was a frazzled looking man with a healthy amount of stubble and a stained apron. His hands fidgeted with his magnifying glass as he talked.

“I was trying to find something,” Alej said. “Uhm, the experiment with the pendulums?”

“The Almost Perpetual Motion Machine?”

“No, no,” he said. “More recent. It was in brass. Something to do with air cycles?”

“Was it by Marko?”

“Maybe?”

Omar glanced up at the rows of listings. “I think I know the one. Somewhere in section 270. Why don’t we accompany you?”

“We?”

“Ah! How rude of me. Alej, this is the lovely Yasmin Avesta. She’s just joined us. Yasmin, this is Alej- he’s an kinetic artist, for today at least.”

“A pleasure to meet you,” Yasmin said.

“Mhm,” Alej said. “What are your interests?”

“I’m uh, I’m a lecturer at Allameh Tabataba'i university, which- I suppose doesn’t exist anymore. I taught early medieval history.”

“Not familiar,” Alej said. “Not interested. Some dudes who died forever ago and accomplished nothing.”

“You’ll have to forgive him,” Omar said. “He can be fairly brusque.”

“If you keep your mind too open, your brains spill out,” Alej said. “I like art, and dead online communities are my guilty pleasure. You want to do either, talk to me. But no irrelevant barbaric era bullshit.”

“I wouldn’t call it irrelevant,” Yasmin objected. “How people reacted to their realities and built civilizations can tell us a lot about our own natures!”

“Lady-”

“I’m sure you two will get along famously,” Omar cut in. “But perhaps we can find your sculpture first? And show Yasmin around, while we’re at it.”

Alej considered for a moment before walking over to an elevator. It was quite spacious, and the three of them had no trouble fitting inside. There was even a plush couch on the back wall.

“Two seventy,” Omar said. The elevator doors closed and it began to move as Omar turned to Yasmin.

“The building is divided by section. It’s chronologically ordered, which means you never really know what you’ll stumble into. Physics experiments next to social science experiments next to some very clever machines.”

“How much stuff is here, exactly?”

“We’re up to 577 sections, each with about 2000 experiments. The findings have been summarized and cataloged in any number of books, but occasionally it’s useful to go back to the original source and tinker a bit.”

“This particular swathe of sections has a lot of, ah, social experiments in it. We were having a brain craze at the time.”

The elevator doors opened, revealing an immensely long corridor. A track was set into it, and windows on either side gave a glimpse into room after room of oddities. Without warning, the elevator detached itself from the wall and started coasting down the track at a modest pace. Its walls and ceiling retracted into the floor.

The first pair of rooms it went past each had a frozen person sitting at a white desk. The people didn’t appear to have faces. Signs above the rooms read “Social priming: Effect of savory words on reported hunger level” and “Social priming: Effect of unsavory words on reported hunger level”.

“They’re not real people,” Omar said. “They only have enough simulated intelligence to give a useful experimental result.”

Yasmin nodded and stared in wonder, but Alej looked impatient.

“Do you have any idea where in the section the pendulums were?”

“Midway, perhaps? We can speed up a bit.”

They passed another pair of rooms. On the left ferocious beasts eyed each other from opposite cages, while the right appeared to contain mounds of dirt. The next pair had pools of mercury being filtered through a glass maze on the left, and a frozen explosion on the right. After that, a solitary laptop on a table opposite a lone deer that stared forlornly through the glass.

They were going too fast now for Yasmin to read the signs. Room after room after room. Half were just tables where faceless subjects waited, but the other half was alarmingly varied. Occasionally Omar would stop the elevator by one of his favorite rooms and explain its purpose with a curiously childlike enthusiasm.

The frequent stops seemed to annoy Alej, but he tolerated Omar’s antics with a smile. Perhaps out of a great respect for the man, or perhaps because many of the rooms genuinely were interesting.

An hour in, Omar stopped in front of a room labeled “Primordial slimes: Ferric internal casting”. Through the window they could see rows of glass-faced wooden boxes, each containing a quivering blob of ooze.

“Oh,” Omar said. He looked thoughtful as he scanned the rows. “We should check up on these. It’s been a while.”

He went inside, and Yasmin followed him. The room had a workbench in one corner, with the rest of it filled with stacked wooden boxes. While Omar busied himself at the bench, Yasmin investigated one of the boxes more closely. It had a red slime blob in it which started to pulse a little as if in response to her presence. The cage’s title read “3mm screw”.

“What are they, exactly?” she asked.

“Primordial slimes,” Omar said. “They’re very basic life forms made from scratch. Like a cell with oversized parts- you can pick out some of the organelles if you look closely. They ah, produce things. This room has slimes that make iron objects, but the end goal was to make absolutely anything and everything.”

She looked again at the slime. Sure enough, there were a few half-formed screws embedded in it, and a few other shapes that could’ve been organs.

“These were on loan from Zhang,” Omar continued. “A long time ago, he ran a university to rival mine. The Qian Institute. It had more of a focus on biology and husbandry than anything else, but he did a little of everything too. Not much of a true rival, but… it was nice to have around.”

“What happened to it?”

“Zhang moved on after a while, and we acquired their campus and researchers. But it’s not what it was without him. I’d call those the good old days, but actually I haven’t even thought about the Qian institute in a long while. I wonder if he still breeds slimes?”

“I hope not,” Alej said. “I really hated this fad.”

“Eh,” Omar said. “I suppose it’s an acquired taste.”

“They’re very interesting,” Yasmin said politely. “Did you end up breeding slimes that could actually produce anything?”

“Mostly,” Omar said. “We have ones that can make anything smaller than a house, as long as it doesn’t break the gel. We all knew they were never going to be competitive with mechanical fabbers, but- it was very interesting nonetheless.”

He finished at the workbench and did a cursory walk through the rows before escorting the two of them out of the room. The elevator resumed its way down the track.

“I do remember where your room is now, Alej. Marko’s Brass Tunnel. Flora helped him with the aesthetics, which is probably why you remembered it. You’ve always liked her work.”

“Mmm,” Alej said. “She does have a way with motion and color. A shame she hasn’t been around much- I have a roomful of paintings I’ve been saving just for her.”

“Yes,” Omar sighed. “She might be around soon for an expedition into revolutionary France, but it’s always tentative with her. I wish she visited more often. I wish any of the compact visited more often, come to think of it. I can’t even remember the last time Liga came around for a demonstration of anything that wasn’t highly explosive.”

“You said you knew where it was?”

“Oh! Room 2349. Yasmin, hold on to something.”

The elevator lurched forward at an alarming speed, throwing Yasmin onto the couch. It kept accelerating until the hallway on either side was just a vague white blur, and then it started to gently slow.

When it finally stopped they were in front of Room 2349, which was filled with pendulums swinging in a wild frenzy. Though it looked chaotic, the eye was occasionally drawn to clusters of pendulums periodically meeting, and the overall arrangement began to make more sense the longer Yasmin watched. Alej saluted the two of them and hurried inside, frantically scrabbling through his pockets for a notebook.

“We’d best leave him to it while the day’s young,” Omar said. He winked at Yasmin. “And in any case, this took longer than I thought. You haven’t even seen the Very Very Big Particle Collider, or the debate halls, or the Megafactory, and the day’s half over! You don’t need to sleep unless you want to, but traditionally the night is reserved for quiet reflection and study, and there’s no sense in touring an empty debate hall. I’ll show you to your plot.”

“My plot?”

“I haven’t mentioned? We build our own houses,” Omar said. “And move them, as the mood takes us. You’ll want to start off with something fairly reserved, but in time… well, the sky’s the limit! Quite literally- please don’t build into space. It’s taboo.”

“Can I have my old house?”

“Certainly.”

“Oh good,” Yasmin said. “I just need some time to think. This is all so overwhelming, but when I’ve had some time to process everything that’s happened… I think I’ll like it here.”

Omar smiled, and set the elevator in motion.

“Everyone always does.”

Zhang threw his sword to the left. It struck Colville in the chest and shattered him into a fine dust. Another image of Colville appeared a moment later, ready for the next round. 43 down, 893,534 to go.

If he kept at it for the next eight and a half years, Zhang would finally have more wins than Colville. It wasn’t an impossible feat- he’d accomplished more Herculean tasks before. Once, he had sat motionless under a waterfall for nearly a decade while attempting to achieve enlightenment. He eventually concluded there was no such thing, at which point he considered himself enlightened. Some years later he had singlehandedly built a stone fortress, making and placing every brick himself. That had taken nearly twenty years, although he could’ve saved himself a year or two if he hadn’t botched the foundations.

So why was he already fed up with the relatively simple task of dueling Colville’s ghost? It was both more interesting than a fortress and less pointless than enlightenment. It was also pretty important for Zhang to prove that he could eventually best Colville in anything, including violence. But for whatever reason, his heart wasn’t in this.

Certainly he was somewhat bored of the simplified duel format, and he was also keenly aware that nobody else would particularly care about his final triumph. Colville wouldn’t even hear of it, and if he did Zhang would never know his reaction. But it was still something for him to do, however repetitive.

He was having trouble imagining the future where he finally won. He’d defeat Colville for the final time, celebrate merrily for a few days, and then… what? He’d been focused for his rivalry for so long that he couldn’t imagine what else to do with himself.

Yes, this was predictable. He should’ve foreseen it coming, and not let his other endeavors fall by the wayside. He still had a few hobbies, it was true. He had his magnificent gardens, the daily ritual of tending to his slimes, and the hundreds of other skills he was slowly learning. But all of that seemed pointless in comparison.

The worst part was that Zhang was pretty sure this was exactly how Colville felt. That there was nothing truly new under the sun and nothing to strive for. Listless and without purpose.

Did he need someone to replace Colville? It was a good approach. So long as Zhang had worthy foes, he could oppose them. He could hone himself to perfection and eventually overcome them. He would have purpose and direction, for a while anyway.

Flora would say he was approaching the problem wrong. That he’d be inevitably disappointed when he reached his peak potential and looked down on the beautiful lands he’d journeyed right past. That he didn’t need a goal so long as he could appreciate his surroundings. Flora was living a lie.

Had she forgotten that her entire life was orchestrated? That the god in the machine set the stage and pulled all of her strings? Of course she had. Zhang wished he could forget too.

In fact, he despaired just thinking about it. The feud with Colville had been a distraction, but Zhang’s ultimate foe was unassailable. Insurmountable. Omniscient.

It wanted to be seen as benevolent, too. In the early days, Zhang had begged Aye to leave him alone, and it appeared to oblige. But Zhang had called out for it in a moment of need, and it was still there. So how could it have ever left?

It acknowledged the problem. So long as Zhang knew that Aye foresaw the course of his life and could manipulate him to whatever end it wanted, he’d feel disquieted. Like his actions couldn’t be wholly his own, and his choices were just shams.

Aye had explained views of causality by which it could meaningfully leave him to forge his own fate, and it had explained further views by which that concept was simply nonsense, without ever saying which was true. The machine itself agreed that there was no way for Zhang to tell for sure whether he was being manipulated into a certain point of view.

This was the worst theology imaginable. An inescapable God who would happily explain that “free will” was a semantic illusion, but still insist on letting you make your own choices. And the only solution it offered was to stop him from thinking about the problem. A simple cut in his memory, a gentle suppression of thoughts, and he would be happy forever after.

Not quite as happy as some, yes. But Aye claimed it didn’t force anyone into heaven. Perhaps it didn’t need to because it knew it would get them all eventually. Zhang, who refused to play along. Liga, who gave in bit by bit. Even Colville, who probably thought he could face God by becoming one. One day they would all fall and writhe in ecstasy forever and ever.

Fighting it was pointless. But Zhang couldn’t abandon the struggle, and he couldn’t really start it either. He could only find other things to do, and he supposed he should thank Colville for having been such a dependable distraction.

He hated the man too, of course. But it was a comfortable and civilized hate, and Zhang supposed he might as well be the better man and offer Colville a token gift of thanks for all the good he’d done, however accidentally.

Plus, the man had all the tact of a dead rat, and Zhang was getting very tired of Flora’s moping.

* * *

Colville held Flora against him, and the two of them swayed in time with the music. The other dancers had cleared away to give them more room, and she stared into his dreamy eyes as he looked down on her and smiled.

“Forever,” he promised. “We have forever ahead of us.”

She buried her head on his suit, and it soaked up her tears. He wiped at her eyes, and held up her chin for a kiss, and-

His head fell off, spurting blood as it followed his body to the floor. She screamed.

Zhang sheathed his sword and gave her a look of utter disgust.

“This is low even for you,” he said. “He would never wear a suit.”

“My Colville would,” Flora said. She indignantly lunged at him, but he caught her. They strained against each other for a few tense moments, but they were equally matched.

“I didn’t come here to fight,” Zhang said. He thrust her away. “I-”

“I don’t give a fuck about why you came,” Flora wailed. “Get out! You ruin everything!”

She pushed past a few astonished dancers and picked up wineglasses from a nearby table, hurling them at Zhang. He dodged a few before he had to take shelter behind the buffet table. Flora screamed louder and pulled twin machine guns from thin air, at which point Zhang decided to leave for a while. He gave her half an hour before he returned.

She’d utterly wrecked the dance hall, but at some point had fetched another Colville clone to comfort her. Zhang decided not to kill this one.

“May we talk now?”

She shot him a look of spite, but her clone put his arm around her and she reluctantly nodded.

“We don’t have much time left,” Zhang said. He paused to consider the statement; he supposed it was true, but it was odd to say out loud. “Colville is leaving, and none of us have a decade to decide what to do about it. I’ve told you time and again he’s the kind of despicable bastard who would do this, but it’s too late to listen to me now. All you can do is end it right, Flora.”

“You think I need to be told that?” She spat on the dance floor and waved Mark Two away, pushing forward to confront Zhang. He didn't flinch.

“Yes. You’re still in the denial phase. You may never move past it because you’re weak and romantic. But you need to be stronger.”

“Oh look, Zhang telling me to get over him. The same Zhang who never lets a single thing slide and has been harassing Colly for a thousand fucking years. Fuck you.”

“I didn’t say you needed to get over him,” Zhang said. “Although you do. Me, I couldn’t be happier to see him go, but I intend to keep the moral high ground.”

“You’re fond of acting, Flora. So act like everything’s okay. Say your goodbyes, tell him how much he meant to you, and wave him goodbye. You can look back on this in a thousand years and laugh it off instead of being ashamed of what you never said.”

She held her nose in the air and sniffed. Zhang found a chair and waited. Talking sense into Flora could take a while.

“We shouldn’t end well,” she said. “He’s betraying me. He shouldn’t get any closure. I want him to suffer for this, Zhang. I want him to lie awake at night, thinking-”

“I doubt he intends to sleep.”

“I want him to come back, okay? I want things to be unsaid, so he comes back and says them.”

“He wouldn’t be allowed to.”

“Fuck the rules! Fuck them! Why can’t we make an exception? Why does everything has to be so asinine?”

“Because you’re weak, and you’d fuck it up. A century isn’t a long time, Flora. If you still care about him by then, you can make your exception. But you won’t.”

“I will,” she hissed.

“You won’t.”

“What do you even know about love, Zhang?”

“I’ve romanced everyone here, including you. Or did you forget? We were madly in love, but love dies, Flora. Love is impermanent. I don’t think you even love Colville. You’re just attached to him.”

She bit back a scathing remark.

“It’s no use arguing with you,” she conceded. “You really don’t care what I think.”

“Correct.”

“You’ve made your point. I’ll think about it,” she growled.

“Think faster. Clocks are ticking.”

She shuddered. With a wave of her hand, Mark Two disappeared. She sank into a chair and buried her head in her hands.

“It doesn’t seem fair,” she said. “That my time with him could pass so quickly, and there could still be so much of it afterwards where I'm alone.”

“We’ll lose everything we love eventually,” Zhang mused. “Or we’ll become unchanging and live in cycles. That’s the nature of forever.”

“I’d- I’d be okay with a cycle, I think. If I had to throw away my past and fall in love again-”

“Don’t,” Zhang said. “You’re talking like Liga now.”

“But Liga’s happy,” Flora said. “She couldn’t stop bubbling about her latest whatever the other day. Not a care.”

“Liga’s a coward. I expect more from you, Flora. Not much more, but more nonetheless.”

She didn’t seem to have a response to that, so he left her.

* * *

Colville somehow managed to be wasting his time even more pathetically than Flora, which was a feat so impressive that it gave Zhang pause. The man was apparently content to lounge in his bed and stare at the ceiling like he was awaiting execution.

“I hate this place,” Zhang said. He cleaned his sword of clay and sheathed it before taking a seat by the bedside. “Does nobody else want the last precious droplets of your time?”

“I wasn’t giving them away,” Colville said. “Are you here to finish the retrospective?”

“No. Honestly, I don’t think we have enough time. We’re only halfway through, but we’ve both seen it all before.”

“It’s a lot of past to cover.”

“A burden that will crush us all eventually,” Zhang said. “But maybe we’ll enact damnatio memoriae and rid ourselves of all the time we wasted on you.”

“Wouldn’t put it past you,” Colville said. “Why are you here, then?”

“I hate you, but I don’t hate Flora. I think she’s misguided, and I don’t like seeing her suffer, even from her own mistakes. You know I’m desperate because I’m appealing to your sense of decency and honor. Talk. To. Her.”

“I was assuming she didn’t want to talk.”

“She was convinced otherwise.”

“Fine,” he shrugged. “I’ll talk to her.”

“Good. Now, because I want to minimize the time I’m wasting on you, let’s get this over with.”

Zhang cleared his throat and sat up a little straighter. The better to look down on him.

“You’re a despicable, selfish, spoiled weakling. You waste your natural talents. You lack honor, nobility, and competence, and are as low and greedy as you are treacherous and lazy. Despite these many flaws, and due in chief to blinding nostalgia, I will remember parts of our history fondly and might even miss you. When this happens it will be a baseless emotion that I shall quash mercilessly, but I will still honor those rare moments when you betrayed your own character and acted with decency.”

“I…” Colville paused, and his face contorted. “Thanks, I think? That was an adorable little speech at least. Did you memorize it?”

“Of course I memorized it,” Zhang said. “Otherwise I would’ve started rambling for hours when I listed your faults.”

Colville smiled. He sprang up and wrapped Zhang in a supremely awkward hug, at least until Zhang broke the hold and threw him back onto the bed. Colville recovered gracefully.

“I suppose I should extend my own olive branch, then. I know you’ve always wanted to become a better swordsman than me, but you’ve always kind of sucked at it. I figure you could use the help, so… I’ll teach you the secrets of Sylvassi. Even the ones I’ve never told anyone else.”

Zhang broke into laughter, and his face went red. He pounded on his knees and gasped for breath while Colville’s smile became a scowl.

“Not… even a real school...”

“It is,” Colville objected.

“Okay, let me... catch my breath,” Zhang said. He breathed deeply. “Even if there were any value in the botched and awkward flailing you call a style, I deduced everything about it ages ago. It sucks, Colly boy. You suck. Furthermore, don’t think you’ll be going somewhere where you won’t suck, either. Even if they hook you up to a supercluster’s worth of data, you’ll be an inferior always. First inferior to me, then inferior to Aye.”

“Only one of us is obsessed with this superiority thing,” Colville said. He looked annoyed, though, and that was all the confirmation Zhang needed.

“I can see you’ve learned nothing from me. I’ll leave you to your fate. May we never meet again, Colville.”

“The same, Zhang.”

Zhang walked out of the bedroom and jogged down the stairs, but he only made it to the front door before he couldn’t contain his amusement. He doubled over and howled with mirth, and Colville listened as it slowly faded into the distance.

They met by mutual agreement at a cafe that hadn’t existed for an unimaginably long time. It was a small family business, but chic enough to attract a crowd at all hours. The walls were clad in fake wood paneling, the tables were a singular white plastic, and there were a few token couches for patrons to lounge on.

It was where they traditionally made up after a fight, but now it served as a bookend of sorts. He ordered a mocaccino with all the toppings, and she had nothing, just as it was when they first met.

Long ago, he’d sold her his laptop here. The price was reasonable, although the hardware was also fairly dated at the time. She only used it lightly for her school work and eventually sold it in turn, and he’d only spent ten minutes here proving to her that it worked.

Still, that led to Flora recognizing him years later in a class they shared, and from there the two of them struck up a friendship.

He introduced her to his other friends, and they’d all gotten along pretty well. There was even some chemistry between the two of them, but their relationship was interrupted by the world as they knew it ending. When it resumed though, they grew closer together.

And then further apart, and then closer together again. Like two stars caught in a perpetual orbit, only now one was planning to explode. Flora wasn’t sure, but usually that sort of thing destroyed both stars, and here Colville was asserting that everything was going to be alright.

“It’s not even as big a deal as everyone’s been making it out to be,” he said. “You’re all flipping out but somebody had to blaze the trail, and I’ll be back if you let me.”

“It doesn’t feel like you’ll be back,” she said. Did that sound too hollow? Would he take her expectation as an excuse?

“You needed more time to process,” he said. “Zhang was right, this was shitty of me. But I had to, Flo. I’d never get away otherwise.”

“We could’ve talked it out,” she said. “You and I, we could’ve planned our escape together.”

“I wish you were ready for that,” he said wistfully. “But I’ll be waiting for you. If you’re still worried by then... we can make a new compact out there, and just keep taking things a little further until it’s perfect.”

“Or there’s nothing left of us.”

“One of the two,” he said. “But this doesn’t have to be goodbye forever.”

“But it could be,” she said.

“It won’t,” he said. He took her hand and looked her dead in the eyes. “Promise me someday it won’t be.”

“You want me to promise to lose myself.”

He shook his head and didn’t let go.

“Promise.”

It was a dirty trick, but she couldn’t see what she had to lose. “Someday” didn’t really mean anything when they had forever ahead of them. She could leave him waiting a billion years! And besides, she was always a sucker for romance. So she blinked up a few of her tears, put a touch of steely resolve into her voice, and said:

“I promise.”

He smiled, like a weight had lifted off his shoulders.

“But I’m not okay, Colville.” She crossed her arms. “This is fucking awful and I hate it.”

“I guess I can work with that.”

The two of them moved to a couch and watched customers come and go. She envied them a little, even if they were just simulations. They had their whole lives ahead of them and hadn’t yet learned to be afraid of what that really meant. For them, things were simple.

After Colville was gone, she could go back to that for a while. Relive her old, old life with all her memories suppressed. Enjoy being in the moment without the past and future hanging over her. It sounded nice, but she knew she probably wouldn’t. Going back was hard.

They lingered for a while. Neither had anything more to say; after all, what hadn’t they already said to each other at some point? What would be the use in repeating it now? She felt like she knew him so thoroughly that he’d haunt her even if he was long gone.

Eventually she paid him a mottled collection of bills, took the laptop, and walked out into the sunshine.

* * *

“Did it go well?”

Omar held the door open and ushered Colville into a cheap plastic seat. They were in Omar’s very first office, a small cubicle tucked away at the back of the social sciences wing of a long dead university. Apparently, he and Flora both felt it was most appropriate to end with their beginnings.

Colville shrugged in response and looked away, feigning interest in a diploma on the wall. Omar hadn’t expected more. He hadn’t seen any way for the two of them to come to a satisfactory conclusion.

“We’ll take good care of her,” Omar promised. “She’ll do okay.”

“Did your models say that too?”

Omar pursed his lips. He’d been trying to fix his personality models of the compact’s members again, but nothing seemed to fit. Maybe they’d all grown too complex to be boxed within his framework, or maybe he was missing something critical. He’d called on the university’s best staff to doublecheck for him, but they hadn’t found anything amiss.

In any case, Colville wasn’t interested in hearing about his woes. Actually, Omar wasn’t sure what the man wanted to hear. Vague and unfounded reassurance, perhaps?

“My models are out of sorts,” Omar apologized. “But I have a… good feeling.”

Colville cracked a smile.

“I didn’t know you had time for feelings.”

Omar rolled his eyes.

“Yes, yes, hilarious. But I am rather busy, you know. The party of the millenium goes on with or without you, and I’ve got so many bloody NPCs to arrange for.”

“Oh. I’d forgotten you were still doing that. Who’s handling the set, Liga?”

“Unfortunately,” Omar sighed. “Very unfortunately. She says she’s been planning for two hundred years, which is a worrying amount of foresight on her part. I think she may have something very unique plotted.”

“Aw,” Colville said. He looked a little disappointed, although Omar could hardly fathom why. “I’ll have to get her to show me before I go.”

“Don’t give her any ideas.”

Colville grinned, and Omar made a note to doublecheck his excuses for leaving the party early. The two fell into a comfortable silence.

Omar took the opportunity to skim a few lines of the paper he was reading, but noticed Colville looking at him expectantly. Eventually, he looked up and sighed.

“Do you think I’m going to give you a speech?”

Colville nodded.

“I’m not.”

Colville leaned back into his chair.

“Huh. And here I thought you had one for every occasion.”

“No,” Omar said. “But I did want to know how set you were on leaving. I won’t belittle you and say I think I know better, I just want to know how sure you really are.”

“One hundred and two percent. Why?”

“It’s well known that I have the most credit among all the compact’s members,” Omar said. “It’s been a theoretical option up to now, but I think I can afford it. We can ask Aye if you’re making the right decision.”

Colville’s brow darkened with thought. It was a very generous offer; Omar would lose a substantial chunk of credit and be allowed to ask fewer questions in the future, but the machine was never wrong. If it said that Colville’s best future was remaining with the compact, then they could happily avert a major mistake. If not, being told definitively otherwise would be a heavy truth for Omar and the compact to bear. But Omar was happy to let the truth destroy his sacred beliefs every once in a great while.

“I can’t impose that on you,” Colville said. “And I’m so stubborn I might ignore even Aye if it says I’m an idiot.”

“Perhaps,” Omar said. “The offer remains open should you change your mind. Speaking of changing your mind, what are your plans augmentation-wise?”

“Once I’m free of the damn rules?” Colville said. “There’s a universe full of people to meet. I’ll have a direct line to all the knowledge that exists. I’ll perfect my memory, I’ll-”

“Lose yourself wholly?”

“No. I’m not defined by the trivia I can remember. Maybe you are.”

“Ah, but trivia is knowledge, and knowledge is memories. I consider myself the sum of my memories. If you’re putting all the data that exists in your brain, you are diluting a drop of genuine you across an infinite sea of facts. I think you’ll drown in them.”

“I’ll just not do that,” Colville said. “I’ll ask Aye how. Another thing I can do outside of the compact.”

“Very true. If you tell it what you want, Aye can work out the details for you, and you’ll avoid the obvious traps. But do you know what you want?”

“I can figure that out.”

“And what if you get it wrong? Or what if your desires change a little every time you change yourself, and at the end of the road the thing you became has nothing in common with who you started out as?”

“That sounds like life, Omar. But the obvious answer is: I’ll ask Aye what I want, too.”

Omar paused to consider. At last, he gave a bemused shrug.

“I’m arguing with you because I’ve done exactly that before,” Omar started. “I asked Aye what path I should take, before the compact even existed.”

Colville looked surprised. Omar hadn’t mentioned this before, but technically they had never asked. Quite possibly the others thought they had already stripped him bare of secrets. Nothing could be further from the truth.

“What did it say?” Colville asked.

“It said I wouldn’t want to know.”

Colville laughed bitterly.

“Well, that’s really fucking inconvenient.”

“It could give you a different answer," Omar said. "I took mine to mean that the journey was important. So much so that the destination, if there even were one, would be better left unknown. So I have done what seems reasonable to me at every step, and here I am much later. I feel I have changed as a person but kept my essence intact, and I have few regrets.”

“Good for you,” Colville said. “What’s wrong with me doing whatever seems reasonable at every step, then?”

“I am constrained to keep my humanity. You will succumb to momentary whims and lose something essential.”

“If I accept your argument, then that means I know I want to keep my humanity. So I’ll just ask Aye how to not lose it.”

“You don’t understand,” Omar said. “That’s why I’m afraid for you. You’ve been a good friend to me for many years, and still I haven’t managed to instill in you the virtue of careful forethought. If you start off wanting to keep your humanity and change yourself by increments, you will by degrees come to want it less and less, until it is gone. If you ask Aye how you can prevent ever losing your humanity, it will tell you to shackle yourself. To, in other words, commit to preventing the future you from crossing a line that the you of now feel is important.”

He held up a hand to stop Colville from interrupting, and the man sank back into his chair, resigned to endure yet another of Omar’s speeches.

“But when you get to that line, you will feel it is not important anymore. You cannot shackle yourself forever, Colville. Aye will not allow the tyranny of the present upon the infinity of the future. And this I think is reasonable; what right do you have to dictate the actions of the you a million years in the future? A you only tenuously related by a thread of shared experience?”

“You might object that we’ll all fall in the long run,” Omar continued. “Perhaps true. But I think you will fall much faster augmenting yourself than you would bound by the compact.”

“Are you done?”

“Not in the slightest! My entire point is that you must delay stepping onto the path that leads to your downfall for as long as possible. Linger in this small yet beautiful region of the great and vast universe of being. When you leave, you cannot come back.”

“But the Oracle did,” Colville said.

“What came back was the Oracle,” Omar said. “But what originally went in was hundreds of people, all mixed into the cloud.”

Colville shrugged. “I still think I’ve done enough time here. If losing myself a bit faster is the exit fee- well, so be it.”

“I commend your daring,” Omar said. He stood. “But your recklessness leaves me terrified on your behalf. Still, it’s your decision.”

“It is, and I’ve made it,” Colville said. “Good speech though. Knew you had one in you.”

“I had to try,” Omar said. He escorted Colville to the door and gave him a firm handshake. “Maybe you’re right and I’m just a doddering fool- it would hardly be the first time. Either way, I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.”

* * *

He had so many ruins. To build something was to have it one day crumble to dust, an fact that was inescapable. He hadn’t thought about that when he became immortal, but now it struck him with a sort of melancholy poignancy.

Here was an industrial factory a dozen square miles in size. He had built it and all the machines in it on a lark; when it ran, it produced a simple car every day from nothing but slurry. It was beautiful and complex, but pointless too. The cars piled up in a vast parking lot outside the gates and rusted away. The factory’s machines jammed and broke as the years took their toll, and nobody was there to repair them. Bit by bit the factory broke down.

He could tour it at any stage of its life, from the day he cut the ribbon to the day where it was completely eroded away by the wind. Everything came with its full lifespan attached and ready for view, except for him. He supposed that was a blessing.

Here was a distilling drum. He’d forgotten its purpose, but it was filled with soupy brown liquid in a stagnant pool, waiting for pipes to unjam somewhere up the line. Its sides were made of thick steel. It would be one of the last things to remain.

The factory was a perfect machine, but it never grew and it never changed. It embodied Omar’s philosophy; he made it of thick steel so it could last a very long time. But that was an idea born of fear.

Colville laughed. It was ridiculous! He climbed a water tower and gazed out over the factory’s expanse. No, this wasn’t what he wanted. He waved his hand, and a wave of destruction followed. Buildings crumpled, machines warped and shattered, and everything was reduced to a fine rubble. He kicked down the tower itself and jumped off, landing hard in the dust below.

He looked around. Was this the future Omar was so afraid of? Dust and ruins perhaps, but flat and open. It looked to him like a blank slate.

Liga crept forward through the forest, careful not to make a sound. Her prey was just ahead, back turned to her approach. It was flighty prey though, and if she wasn’t careful she’d lose the element of surprise.

Closer, closer, and… there! She sprang, yelling at the top of her lungs. Her prey jumped two feet straight into the air and screamed. She burst into laughter, but Colville seemed less amused.

“You got me again,” he groaned. “And for the last time too.”

“I am an expert stalker,” she said, giving him a small bow. “Also! You were really distracted by your dumb forest. What’re you making, anyway?”

“An ecosystem,” he said.

“So what, you suddenly decide you want to make things again the day before you leave? Or are you taking this with you, or-”

“I just felt like it.”

“Whatevs!” Liga wheeled on her back foot and marched over to a tree. She gently pulled a slender arm from behind it, and the rest of the Oracle soon followed.

“I was still undetected,” the Oracle said. “There was no need to reveal me.”

“Two jump scares is banal," Liga said. “You’ll just have to be faster next time.”

“Both of you bothering me, huh?” Colville sighed. “I suppose you want something too.”

Liga carefully composed herself, took a deep breath, and burst into tears.

“I’m so saaaaaad that you’re leaving!” she said in a singsong voice.

“I am also sad,” the Oracle chimed in. She attempted a plaintive look, but looked more angry than distressed. Liga began gently adjusting her face.

“You two make quite the pair,” Colville said.

“I know,” Liga said. “Isn’t it great? Anyway, I did want something, but now I actually am kind of sad about you going and all. You’re like, the fourth coolest person here.”

“Thanks?”

“The point! I was going to get to the point. I wanna finish that sim thing Flora was mindraping you with. You know, with the fantasy and stuff.”

“You want to finish that?”

“Yea! I was thinking about how sad it’d be for you to never see how it ended.”

“Bullshit.”

“I too find this implausible,” the Oracle said.

“Okay fine, I changed it up a bit to make it fun. I thought it’d be a better way to say goodbye than talking at him for an hour.”

Colville relaxed a little. “I don’t disagree. But maybe you could show me what you were planning for the millennial party instead.”

“It’s not ready yet!” she said. A little quickly. “And no, leavers don’t get spoilers. You’ll just have to be sad you missed out on the best party ever.”

“Surely there’s something else you’ve been saving,” Colville said.

“No,” Liga said. “I insist we finish Flora’s sim. It’ll be great! I promise. I removed all the mindrape stuff, and it should be a real challenge now.”

Colville and the Oracle traded a glance.

“She gets like this sometimes,” he said. “Obsessed, I mean. Once she took a really relaxing day spa that Flora made and added deadly traps and assassins. Then she demanded we all beat it. It took weeks.”

“I’m right here,” Liga reminded them.

“I am okay with finishing the scenario,” the Oracle said. “I do not think Flora will mind.”

“Then let’s get it over with,” Colville said. Liga began to hop up and down excitedly.

“You’ll love it! Just wait until you see what I changed.”

* * *

They had been cast into the deepest layer of the warlord’s dungeons, with a river of lava between them and the exit. The only crossing was by a small insulated boat on the other side, which the guards used to bring them food. It was hellishly hot and smelled of sulphur, and only a small trickle of tepid water flowing from a hole in the ceiling gave them any relief.

The warlord hadn’t spoken a word to Vivian, instead ordering her cast down here and left to rot. She was sulking in a corner, dazed and without hope.

If this were still Flora’s simulation, the proper path forward would be to rouse her with a stirring speech or something suitably poetic and then walk across lava with the power of love. But this was Liga’s version, so Colville and the Oracle were hard at work chipping away at the water hole with an iron bar they’d pried free.

Liga watched with interest. She wasn’t sure what they were doing would even work; she’d only made a few specific alterations to Flora’s realm and let Aye handle the rest. But if it did work, it would undoubtedly be really cool.

The rhythmic chipping slowly increased the amount of water pouring out, at least up to a point. Now they had a small and steady stream, but that still wouldn’t be enough. Colville dug out a hollow underneath it and let it pool while he set to work ripping up more rusted metal bars from the cell's ruined remnants.

The Oracle had started joining the bars end to end. She dipped them in lava and then quenched the result in the pool. It was a crude welding, but it didn’t need to be very strong.

After an hour of hard work, they had a pole just long enough to reach across the river. Liga and the Oracle helped hoist it up while Colville carefully angled it to catch the boat resting on the other side. It was anchored of course, but they managed to melt the coupling with a strategic application of more lava. The boat was free, and they pulled it closer.

It could take them across two at a time, although not bursting into flames without the guards’ insulating gear proved trickier. They had to wait a while for enough water to solve that particular problem, but after they got Liga across, she brought back two suits.

When they had assembled on the other side, Liga eagerly bounded up a flight of stone stairs to the dungeons above.

Mostly, the dungeons were filled with vicious and ferocious beasts captured from the twisted lands surrounding the castle. Here was a hellhound, clad in spikes and panting hot black smoke. There was a soul-eater, its thorny branches grasping at Liga as she passed.

The others followed more cautiously and gave the cages a wide berth.

“Why are these here?” Vivian wondered. “Why does my father even keep them?”

“So we can fight them,” Colville said. “Right, Liga?”

“No!” she said. She found a wooden chest at the far end of the hall and pried it open. Scrabbling through its contents, she found a censer and thrust it at him. “They can be kept at bay. That hellhound, for example, will follow the smoke from this.”

She found a long, gnarled stick and tossed it to the Oracle. “This one’s trickier. You stick it into the tree thing and push it back.”

She gave Vivian a plain silver whistle. “Keep blowing on it when you want the mangler to stop.”

“Er. Which one is the mangler?”

Liga pointed at an empty cell. “It’s definitely in there. You’ll feel colder around it.”

Next, she took a sacrificial knife and cut her wrist, carefully squeezing a few drops of blood onto the floor.

“The hardest one for me!” She walked over to a cell containing what looked like an oversized orange falcon. She unlocked it, and the falcon immediately dove at the blood, lapping it up with a forked tongue. Liga laid out a careful blood trail and started leading it up the stairs.

“Uhm, wait,” Vivian said. "Ligs, how do you know all this? Is this… a good idea?"

“Insert answer here,” Liga said. “Now hurry the fuck up, Colville.”

Colville held his censer up to the hellhound, and it huffed a small burst of flame to light it. When the smoke started pouring out, Colville unlocked the beast’s cell. It bounded happily after him like a playful dog.

The Oracle had a little more trouble wrangling the soul-eater. The stick was only just long enough to keep its branches from snatching her, and the soul-eater was actively trying to get around it and ensnare her.

“I do not think I can hold this creature off for very long,” the Oracle said. “Would you kindly hurry, Vivian?”

Vivian had taken to staring into her empty cell. Jarred to action, she stuck the whistle in her mouth started to blow. It made no sound. Vivian unlocked the cell and backed away. Liga yelled at her to hurry up, and she reluctantly started edging up the stairs. The Oracle followed, soul-eater in tow.

A pair of well-trained guards stood by the exit. They heard the hellhound’s rumbling growl and stabbed at it, but its spiked hide proved more than a match for their swords. The beast burned the second one alive, and his screams were loud and drawn-out until Colville silenced him. But by then, it was too late. The sound of an alarm bell on the floor above had set the whole castle into motion.

They moved as swiftly as they could towards the throne room, making quick work of any resistance they encountered. To the Oracle’s relief, the soul-eater began to get bogged down. Every time it engulfed another one of the warlord’s men, it grew a little slower, until it was stuck immobile in a courtyard, lazily fending off efforts by the militia to free their screaming comrades. They abandoned it when someone began yelling for oil and flame.

Colville’s hellhound led the way, eager to savage anyone it came across. Colville himself was working alongside it to clear a path; the two together killed men almost as fast as they could arrive. But they weren’t making much progress, and if they continued fighting they’d eventually lose.

Liga and Liga’s bird had done absolutely nothing but watch the whole time. But she’d gotten it to perch on her shoulder, and she talked to it in a low murmur. The bird nodded along as if it understood. At some point it whispered back to her before flying away.

“I did it!” Liga squealed. She looked pleased with herself, but the Oracle paused and put on a frown as it watched the bird wheel away. Liga gave her a guilty smile and turned to Colville.

“Colly!” she shouted. “Leave the dog, we’ll go around.”

He nodded and jogged towards them, ducking just as an archer loosed an arrow in his direction. The three of them escaped into the servants’ quarters, Vivian conspicuously absent.

“Where’d the NPC go?” Colville asked.

“Eaten by the mangler, probably,” Liga shrugged. “What a tragedy.”

“Flora would be furious.”

“We’ll just call this non-canon or something. Honestly, who even cared about her?”

Colville frowned a little at that. “Flora did.”

“Flora can afford to lose a few NPCs.”

There wasn’t time to go back, so they pressed on. On Liga’s advice, they found a small and unguarded passage to the throne room’s antechambers. Flora would’ve wanted them to stop and examine the maps, trophies, and skulls on display, but Liga couldn’t care less. She ushered them through double doors studded with weapons.

Inside, the Broken Sword Warlord sat on his black throne. His helm was off, and a familiar face gave them a cocky smile. Colville paused in his tracks and turned to Liga.

“Did Flora do this,” Colville said, “Or did you?”

Mark Two laughed, and stood from his throne.

“Ah, my nemesis. I have waited long for this day.”

“It was my idea,” Liga said. “Zhang wouldn’t come- he said he’d already proven he was better than you, so I thought- who else could give us a really interesting fight? And hey, what could be a better fight than you versus yourself?”

“Me versus the shitty knockoff of me, you mean?”

“You’re the shitty one,” Mark Two interjected. “While our skill with the sword is equal, I fight for a cause. You’re just a shiftless ingrate.”

“Who will we be fighting, Liga?” the Oracle asked. She adopted a passable look of confusion as she searched the room for a clone of herself.

“I thought we could just watch,” Liga said. She found a councilor’s chair next to the throne and plopped down in it. “Ooh! We could bet on which will win.”

“Your bets continue to make little sense,” the Oracle said.

“Yea,” Colville said. He drew his sword and started circling his opponent. They moved in perfect sync. “It’s pretty obvious who’s going to win here.”

“That was not my assessment,” the Oracle said. “I propose a uniform prior where both combatants have an equal probability of winning. Therefore, neither of us should have any preferences with which to-”

“I’m betting on Better Colville! Whooo, go better Colville!”

Mark Two gave Liga a short bow in deference. Colville took the opportunity to lunge, but Mark Two had expected it and blocked his advance. Their swords clashed, with both trying to angle for an advantage.

“It’s funny because they both kind of suck at this,” Liga confided. “Colville’s only really good at duelling Zhang and vice versa.”

“You want in on this?” Colville said indignantly. He pointed his sword in Liga’s direction. “I could beat you any day.”

Mark Two made his own lunge, and this one was more successful. He was just fast enough to rattle Colville’s sword and nick his shoulder.

“Mine’s winning!” Liga said. “He’s kind of dashing, too. Maybe we should keep him.”

“For fuck’s sake. You better not replace me with this hackjob.”

“Ah, but I am so much improved from my counterpart!”

They had resorted to hurling items at each other. The throne room had a fine selection of goblets and broken weapons, and both Colvilles tried to gain advantage by pegging the other. Neither seemed to gain any ground until Liga joined in the fray; she pelted Mark Two.

“Were you not betting on him?” the Oracle asked after Liga hit him square in the face with a metal bucket.

“Was I?” Liga said.

Colville took the advantage and scored a deep gash in Mark Two’s arm. The fight was decided then, and a minute later Colville had decapitated his rival.

“I guess I am better than myself,” he said. “That felt good.”

“Yay!” Liga said. “The kingdom is saved or something. Well done us.”

“There wasn’t a kingdom at stake,” the Oracle corrected. “It was a personal quest of revenge for Vivian, who you let die.”

“Whatever,” Liga said. “We won, story’s over. And look! What’s this, just behind the throne?”

She waltzed over and plucked three glass vials of deepest orange from a hidden niche. Colville dropped his sword and buried his face in his hands.

“This was all just a ploy so you could get more of your happy juice, huh?”

“Sorta. Flora bought my participation with this, but I couldn’t get at it till the end of the story. And now it’s technically over.”

“And you only needed me because me being here was part of the deal?”

“Aren’t you smart?” Liga said. Colville pointed at the Oracle.

“And she’s here because…”

“We’re dating, and also I can help her calibrate with smaller doses when she’s ready.”

“Which may not be for a while,” the Oracle said.

“Wait, you’re dating? Since when?”

“It’s been almost three weeks,” Liga said proudly.

Colville laughed at that. “I don’t think you two are very compatible. No offense.”

“My prediction models initially agreed,” the Oracle said. “But I feel the experience is worthwhile.”

“Awwww,” Liga said. “That’s… probably sweet? Let’s go with sweet. Anyway, here you are Colly!”

She thrust one of the vials at him, and he looked at her quizzically.

“I don’t need one,” he said. “You should save it.”

“But I insist,” she said. “You’ve been helpful.”

“But I can have all the nirvana I want soon enough.”

“It’s my goodbye gift you oaf. Take it before you ruin the moment.”

Colville sighed and accepted the vial. “To eternity without the distraction of Liga Vivant.”

“Cheers.”

Liga clinked vials with him, and they drank simultaneously. Colville sunk to the floor and then disappeared in a white flash, but Liga carefully spit the fluid back into her vial and capped it.

“You didn’t go with him,” the Oracle observed.

“I’m devious,” she said. “You remember our plan, right?”

“I do,” the Oracle said.

Liga gestured at the throne room around them. “Positioning, placement, and texture. Subtle cues-” she pointed at the odd shape of the blood pooling from Mark Two’s decapitated head- “And suggestive context. I didn’t really turn it off, I just made it better.”

“You mindraped him,” the Oracle said. She put on a frown, and it seemed genuine. “Which means you also lied to him about turning that off, and supplemented its effectiveness with the nirvana’s anchoring effect.”

“My own additions to Omar’s work,” she said, proudly. “Never make the mistake of thinking me dumb.”

“I did not think that, but I also did not think you would cross this particular line.”

“I wouldn’t call it a line. Flora did it first.”

“I am not sure I agree with the ethicality of this course of decision, Liga.”

Liga frowned, and put her hand on the Oracle’s shoulder.

“That’s okay. We can talk about it, right?”

“Of course. I believe I am mainly upset that you lied.”

Liga looked puzzled. “Why?”

The Oracle thought on that. “It reminded me of Flora’s betrayal. She also lied about a thing that she promised to do.”

“Awww, this was nothing like that. Besides, we’re going to get your proposal passed. Except, uhm.”

Liga took a deep breath. “Zhang’s also going to betray you at the next vote.”

The Oracle was silent. Her face betrayed no reaction, and as the seconds passed Liga began to fear the news had seriously upset her. Finally, she spoke.

“I am unconcerned.”

“What? But that means we can’t get your proposal passed!”

“I am unconcerned. I cannot tell you why at this time.”

“You’re keeping secrets?”

“No. You are.”

“Orry, look, I… I promise I’ll tell you next time, okay?”

“I am not angry about that. But I cannot clarify what I meant at this time.”

The Oracle put on a friendly smile. Perhaps it was the closest she could get to reassuring.

“Although I would like to object to that particular nickname.”

Liga returned her smile. “I can’t keep calling you ‘the Oracle’ forever.”

“Perhaps not,” she conceded. “But for now, don’t we have a party to prepare for?”

“Yea! Fuck Colville. We’re gonna have the best party.”

All of them were on time for once. Zhang, sitting in his chair and looking quietly smug. Liga, impatiently chewing gum as loudly as she could manage. Omar, purveying a mass of contracts, charts, and documents that threatened to spill over the entire table. The Oracle, calm and ineffable. Flora, eyes shot red with tears and looking as fragile as glass.

And Colville, drawn to his full height, face kept carefully stoic. He held himself like an emperor even while his thoughts were in turmoil. When he looked over the green valley for what could be the last time, he saw so many good memories. Adventures shared with friends, romance and heartbreak, and a space of possibility that had seemed limitless for so long.

That was what the valley represented to them, and why they kept it even as the years went by. They could’ve held their meetings anywhere, but they had made the valley first. Here they had forged their compact, and here Colville would leave it.

“I suppose we should begin,” Omar said. He cleared a space in front of him and folded his arms. Did he always look so old? It couldn’t be. He hadn’t aged a day since the compact had begun.

Flora raised her head and locked her eyes with Colville. She stood, heedless of protocol.

“Don’t do this,” she said. “Turn back now. None of us will think less of you. I just want a little more time. Is that too much? A little more time, Colly?”

He rose and gave her a fierce hug.

“It’s time,” he whispered in her ear. “I love you.”

He released her, and she wailed and sank back into her seat. She buried her head on the table and sobbed, her hair sprawled in every direction.

“Happy three thousand years, everyone,” Zhang said, rolling his eyes.

“Party?” Liga said. She immediately perked up. “Can we get to the party yet?”

Omar pounded on the table for silence, and looked to Colville.

“Do you have anything to say?”

“I guess.”

He stood and met each of their eyes in turn, although Flora wouldn’t lift her head.

“It’s been a while. God, it has. I’m leaving, but so what? We all have so much time ahead of us. One day, I think, we’ll meet again. I don’t know where our roads end, or if they truly do wind on forever, but… I have to make the journey. You’ll catch up, or I’ll double back. This will only be my first goodbye.”

“Tell them about the thing!” Liga said.

He smiled at her.

“I don’t want to live in heaven, but I think I’ll visit it every once in awhile. So I'll take a little bit of bliss from time to time, in memory of Liga. We’ve kept away from it for so long, but for what? Is it because we fear it, or because we don’t think we’re worthy?”

“Or because it’s a terrible idea,” Omar said.

“Maybe. I’m not here to tell you what’s best for you. I only know what’s best for me.”

Colville sighed heavily.

“Look, I don’t have more to say here. I think I’ve said everything. Remember me. I’ll do the same for you.”

He sat down. Omar politely clapped, but only the Oracle joined him. Omar then rose and took a deep breath as the others traded glances.

“This is a celebration,” he affirmed. “Not a funeral. We’ll miss Colville, but we will carry his memory with us, if not his spirit. I don’t agree with his decision, but I want what’s best for him. Always. Our compact was never about controlling each other. It was never even about holding ourselves back. This beautiful time we’ve shared together- all the things we’ve done, all the times we’ve had- that is its measure. And I think its success has been profound.”

“Three thousand years. In that time mankind went from wondering at the night sky to seizing it in all its infinitude, and we’ve done the same on a smaller scale. When I was arguing with Colville, he compared this to a stage of childhood. A time of naivety, a time without cares. But we grow up bit by bit, and on the cusp of adulthood we finally grasp what we’ve gotten ourselves into. In the years ahead, we must decide who we will become. Our very selves hinge on that.”

“I say we must live in the now, but heed the lessons of the past and look always to the promise of the future. Let come what may. We will be ready for it.”

He turned to Colville. “I have a few words for you, but I find them hard to say. You’ve been a constant for so long, it’s hard to imagine life without you. But imagine I must, and I will not stand in your way. Go in peace.”

He sat, and the Oracle politely applauded. Liga joined in, slamming her hands together as loudly as she could. Then she stood abruptly.

“I got something to say! Bye.”

She sat. The Oracle seemed unsure whether or not to applaud, but took the safe option.

“Let’s get this over with then,” Colville said. “Flora?”

Flora managed a weak groan. He lifted her head up and brushed the hair from her eyes, and she clung to his arm as if that could stop him from leaving.

The six of them walked, and as they did the valley fell away. In its place came a starry expanse. A bulbous purple moon hung at the end of a curving path made of neon glass. It cast the scene in an eerie light.

The path went on as far as the eye could see. But just ahead of them was an arch, an imposing and heavy edifice of light-swallowing stone. Aye floated in front of it, taking the form of a clockwork mesh that reached through and into the bridge.

Omar led them to the arch, and bowed to Aye.

“An interesting set. Are those real stars?”

“There are no real stars,” Aye said. “This exit metaphor comes courtesy of her.”

The gears shifted to indicate a woman in red waiting a ways down the path. She held herself beneath a matching red umbrella and waited. Colville couldn't tell who she was, though he supposed he’d find out soon enough.

Flora glared at the woman, as if willing her to go away.

“You do not have my permission to date her,” she hissed. “Whoever she is.”

“I’ll be faithful,” Colville said with a sly grin. He looked around. “Well, here we are. How much time do we have left?”

“Thirty five seconds,” Aye said.

He looked over them all.

“Have a nice party,” he said.

“We most definitely will,” Liga said.

“Just go already,” Zhang grumbled.

Colville turned, but Flora held him fast, determination in her eyes.

“This is not happening,” she said. “This is not happening.”

“This is happening,” Colville said. He pried her fingers off his arm and seized her lips, kissing her deeply. He broke away after a full minute, leaving her gasping for air.

“I’ll be waiting,” he said. And with that he turned towards the arch and walked, passing beyond without looking back.

He was gone, and the party had begun.

There were fireworks, of course. The sky was full of them. They painted Cahbal in flashes of red and green that momentarily overpowered the warm glow of street lanterns. The constant barrage was almost deafening, but it got conspicuously quieter whenever Liga had something she wanted to say.

Right now though she was quietly beaming as the others took it all in. The atmosphere was cheerful. Tonight, nobody would fear pickpockets or mugging. All of the crime lords agreed to peace for once, which had likely taken quite a lot of wrangling and more than a few pointed assassinations.

Flora was nominally sitting on a nearby bench, but she looked like her mind was a million miles away. Maybe she’d miss the whole party, which would be a shame, but perhaps that would soon be irrelevant.

Zhang was sizing up the Adversary. The mention of competition had fully captured his interest, and he eagerly seized on the distraction from Colville’s departure. The two were amicably chatting for now, but the tension between them was growing. Predictable, in a way- neither were easy to get along with.

Omar looked like he wanted to leave already. Liga had made vague noises about a party that could last “for years”, even speculatively “for decades”, and he had broken out into sweat despite the night’s chill. A cohort of his students were trying to cheer him up to no avail.

The Oracle sat alone. She hadn’t summoned Mitus. She could’ve, but the thought made her uneasy. She usually tried to ignore the parallels between what was about to happen and her own situation, but now it was too much. Anyway, soon enough the crude simulation could be scrapped. She’d have a real Mitus.

She was worried about her relationship with Liga and how a real Mitus would change that, though. Would she naturally drift apart from Liga and towards him, without ever finding out where their relationship could’ve gone? Would either demand she choose, and if she had to, how could she?

Everything felt uncertain. There were few guidelines for translating associations between two clusters into human-level relationships, however generous their dedicated bandwidth lines. And there were no guidelines for dating Liga, who was unpredictable at the best of times. The Oracle had never liked uncertainty, but this was torture.

But there was only one path onwards. She would take it.

“May I interrupt?” she asked, approaching Liga. Liga looked confused at the question, but nodded uncertainly.

“I would like to call a council meeting.”

“Huh?” Liga said. “You can’t. They're on a schedule.”

“Special circumstances. I have double-checked that this is legal.”

Liga took that in, and a grimace penetrated her irrepressible optimism.

“But the party,” she said. “We were going to get started.”

“Yes, hence why I wished to call it now and not interrupt the party after it begins.”

“Will it be long?”

“It may be. But it will also be very important.”

Liga huffed. “Go ahead.”

“Aye, I am invoking the council clause provision of the Great Tragedy act.”

Cahbal dissolved, and they were back to the green valley again. Everyone had been transferred directly to their seat to save time, excepting Flora. She was nowhere to be found.

“I would like to call this council meeting to order,” the Oracle said. “I feel it is better we get this over with sooner rather than later.”

“How did you call this?” Omar said. “I wasn’t aware you had any means for that.”

“You should now be aware,” the Oracle said. “Please recheck your memories.”

“Where’s Flora?” Liga asked. “We gotta do this fas-”

She stopped mid-sentence, her eyes going wide.

“As you may now remember, Flora has not been a member of this compact for over one millennium. The provision I invoked stipulates that her simulation get no vote for this meeting.”

“Flora left first,” Zhang said. He let out a stream of inventive curses, none of which the Oracle understood.

She herself had always known this. It was a risk she had carefully weighed when entering the compact, but ultimately she had found Flora unobjectionable and the motives understandable. In fact, it was almost a point in favor. Those that remained had been willing to go to extreme lengths to safeguard themselves.

The others were speechless, and the growing silence began to unnerve the Oracle. She filled it.

“You will need to decide on whether to continue with the Flora simulation, and whether to do the same for Colville. I would like to bring up my proposal for Mitus again as well. I assume there will be fewer objections.”

She turned to Liga.

“I am sorry about your party.”

“It’s okay,” Liga mumbled. The Oracle was uncertain how genuine that statement was.

“My models were right,” Omar moaned. He kneaded his forehead. “If we do not simulate both, we’re doomed.”

“I voted against this folly then and I’m voting against it now,” Zhang said. He folded his arms. “The weak are culled. Good riddance to them.”

“I’m for,” Liga said cheerfully. “We could even add more people! It’d be fun.”

The Oracle reviewed her crafty smiles. She selected a devious one, though not one with too much malice.

“I abstain my vote conditional on the approval of the Mitus proposal, and vote opposite of Omar otherwise.”

“That’s unusually savvy of you,” Omar said. “A deadlock would keep us here until we reached a decision.”

“My party,” Liga moaned. She shot a hurt look at the Oracle.

“Zhang,” Omar said. “Would you vote for Flora but not Colville?”

“Not without a substantial concession,” Zhang said. “But I’m the deciding vote on Mitus too, aren’t I? I change my vote to whatever keeps us in deadlock. Now, who’s bidding higher?”

The Oracle and Omar traded a glance.

“We could come to an agreement without him,” she said. “I do not see why you are opposed. If we take both Colville and Flora, and add Mitus, we would still only have seven full members. There is no fundamental reason we could not then add your outside candidates.”

“I don’t know if they’d be okay with this is the problem,” Omar said. “Ashton would already prefer I left the compact and joined them independently.”

“Wow, what a bitch,” Liga snorted. “Look, this is exactly what we shouldn’t be discussing right after Colville leaves! We should be celebrating! My party was supposed to be the best thing ever, and now it’s being ruined.”

“Is it?” Omar asked.

“Yes! We were going to have to dig through all our old realms on a scavenger hunt before the Adversary’s team beat us to them, and that was only the very very first thing on the list. All of this simulation shit isn’t even important, is it? We have who we have or who we want to have. It's all whatever.”

“I would've hoped you’d take decisions that could echo through thousands of years more seriously.”

Liga stuck her tongue out. “I vote whichever way gets this over with. On everything.”

“Where does that even leave us?” Zhang asked. “Everyone’s vote is conditional now except Omar’s.”

Aye interjected from where it had been silently watching.

“You remain deadlocked. However, if Omar votes yes on the Mitus proposal, both pass.”

A thought seemed to strike Liga, and she looked giddy.

“I’ll change my vote to whatever anyone wants for like, double the wireheading time.”

“Liga,” Omar said. He scowled at her. “That’s hardly appropriate, and none of us would-”

“I would,” Zhang said. “Her downfall is of no concern to me.”

“You only wanted to be bribed too!” Omar said. “If both of you just want to be bribed, we’re still deadlocked.”

“Not necessarily,” Zhang countered. “I would prefer to be bribed and be rid of Colville. So Liga, the Oracle, and I vote yes on Mitus, wireheading, and certain privileges for me. I vote no on the sims, the Oracle abstains, and Liga votes no to get back to the party. You lose.”

“I’d vote yes on Mitus to prevent that,” Omar said. “I could then bribe you or Liga alone for a majority.”

“This is complicated,” Liga said. “Can we not solve this after the party?”

“This matter’s resolution would still overshadow the party, I am afraid,” the Oracle said.

“You did this to me! I trusted you!”

“I am sorry. This was necessary.”

“Overshadowed or not, four is a bad number to make any decisions with,” Omar said. “I agree that we should solve this afterwards, at the next council meeting. We all need time to think, and I will consult with my candidates.”

“You mean run off with them,” Zhang said. “The writing’s on the wall, bald man.”

“It certainly will be if we cannot come to an agreement.”

“Did Omar of all people just say that?”

Omar sighed and stood. “The Oracle will not vote to adjourn, but I’m hoping you have the sense to, Zhang. For all our sakes.”

“But Liga will vote yes on Flora and Colville after the party!”

Liga looked up from where she’d been scratching doodles into the table.

“Wait, couldn’t I do that like now?”

Omar took a deep breath.

“I vote deadlock on everything but adjourning. Perhaps I could’ve gotten a reasonable compromise at the expense of Mitus, but this is not the way we should be deciding this.”

Zhang gave mock applause. “Can always count on Omar to take the moral high road. Well, we’re not getting anything done. Adjourn.”

“I vote against adjourning,” the Oracle said. This wasn’t how she envisioned things going. Why was Omar so stubborn? This meeting was her best chance, and now Mitus was at risk. Again.

“Three to one,” Omar said. “Back to the party, I suppose.”

Liga perked up, but the Oracle sank back into her seat. Defeat.

* * *

The party went on, but something had been lost. The Oracle found herself wandering a vast desert alone, in search of a trinket she had never even seen before. Perhaps she would find it, perhaps she would not. Her mind was elsewhere.

She didn’t need the compact as much as the others claimed to. She had already been where they feared to tread, and she had come back with full knowledge of the other side. Not all of the details could fit in her mind anymore, but she wasn’t at any risk of going back unless it was in her interests.

But then, none of them were at risk of going anywhere until their interests changed. She held no strong opinions on Omar’s belief that allowing major changes would doom human values in the end. Certainly, every worsening started with a change. But so did every improvement.

For the past mile, Aye had been floating behind her. She’d been letting it wait while she thought, but now her thoughts had turned to dark places. Of how lonely eternity could be. Of that loss of purpose she had felt back when she had enough computing power to lay bare any problem, but nothing to turn it on. The feeling had returned and threatened to leave her listless and apathetic, as if she had no reason to exist. Was that death that stalked her, in a different guise?

Aye could understand how she felt, but never empathize. The machine was inexorable and its purpose was clear. Still, she could use someone to talk to.

“Did you need something?” she asked.

“No. But I thought you might,” it replied.

“Mitus’s words haunt me.”

She paused to formulate. The machine waited patiently. It would give her what time she required, though it likely already knew what she would say.

“I don’t know if this is the right path anymore. I feel doubt, and I do not think my doubt module is misconfigured. I cannot clearly envision what lies on my path, and I do not know whether it will be worth it.”

“This is natural,” it said. “Your feelings are part of being human. Some feel lost all the time.”

“How do they cope?”

“Differently. You’ll find your way.”

She nodded. It had told her that before, but to hear it again was reassuring. A sudden thought struck her.

“What approach do you favor?”

The machine took a moment to answer, gears cleanly clicking as it pondered.

“I am not good at understanding human wants,” it said. “I couldn’t say.”

She shook her head and attempted a laugh that came out slightly off-key.

“Do you often lie to us?”

If clockwork could give a knowing smile, Aye would’ve given it to her. Instead, it coyly turned a few gears away.

“No,” it said. “And yes. The truth is often complicated and not very exciting.”

She took the answer. It was sufficient.

“Walk with me,” she said. Ahead, the desert sands stretched on, limitless. “I do not know where I am going, but perhaps in time I will get there.”

“Perhaps,” it agreed.