Playing that catchup game after Thanksgiving is fun. I’m frantically trying to end the Cydia arc and begin the War arc by 100,000 words.

Word Count: 91,694

The ship rattled and shook as Variable awkwardly attempted to take off. I suppose knowing and doing are two different things, Graham thought. The glass shards began to pick themselves up and reform into their broken screen counterparts; they flew directly through Variable’s body and reformed where they had once been. Variable doubled over in pain – they had shot through all his fetch’s vital areas. And, as Variable ate, slept, moved and even felt as if he were a normal human, Graham could only assume that a fetch was modeled off of a real human body, vital organs and nerves and muscles and all, meaning that the virtual glass shards would have pierced his artificial liver, lungs, and heart.

He took the ship skyward once he’d gotten a hang on the controls, and the ship pulled out of the garage’s ceiling and sped upward and northeast, towards an object magnified on one of the ship’s monitors. Graham, seeing that the ship had been safely launched, ran back to Ames to make sure she was okay – but she was not. Graham found her, unconscious, lying next to more blood on the wall. The ship’s shaking caused her to fall again.

Graham picked her up and slumped her down onto one of the ship’s cots. “You’d better stay there, too. We don’t need her getting hurt again, not where we’re going,” Variable voice said over a loudspeaker. He’d been monitoring Ames the entire time, and now he was monitoring Graham.

Variable stopped fiddling with the controls and began to pilot the ship far more seriously. Once the ship was high enough to be out of view, Variable let go of all controls and hit the brake, then began ripping the controls out of their sockets and pulled their connecting wires towards him. He ripped off the levels and metallic coatings, and then lifted the artificial skin coating on the back of his fetch’s head clean off.

He put the dense pass of wire’s he had accumulated into the fetch’s artificial brain, and screamed in pain before gaining total control over the ship.

It’s going to be a long ride, Variable thought as the ship sped along into the distance. Country 200 wasn’t a hop and a skip away, and they were nowhere near the edge of the planet’s atmosphere. Country 199 was approximately 400 miles from Country 200. Variable sped the ship along as fast as he could, monitoring Graham and Ames through the ship’s internal computer.

He felt powerful. He was in total control. It was only by utilizing the processing power of the ship in conjunction with his own mind that he was able to successfully pilot the ship, monitor its passengers, and control all of the atmospheric and gravitational stabilizers present on board, along with all the other multi-faceted aspects of keeping the ship running smoothly during transit. His mind and the ship’s were one, if only for this short trip. His strange abilities were finally coming to use. What The Collective has done to countless others will not go unpunished.

Graham could not lay still. The ship was no longer rattling, and this troubled him; such smooth movements were unlike Variable’s piloting. He got up, and replaced Ames’s blood-soaked pillow with a fresh one. The bleeding had ceased, and she would probably wake up soon. It was safe to leave her alone.

Yet, as he approached Variable he became more frightened that the reason the ship was moving so smoothly was because it rally wasn’t moving at all. What if they had been caught? What if Variable had been hurt? These theories were at once dismissed; the ship began to rattle once again, and more violently than before, and Graham wondered if Ames’s unconscious body was truly safe. He made his way down the hall to the control room, where he witnessed the rightful sight of thousands of wires wrapped around Variable’s body, converging into a single hefty mass at the back of his head.

“Variable, what are you doing?” Graham shouted, not expecting Variable to be able to hear him; but the man did, and turned around, the mass of cabled remaining firmly implanted in his head. His eyes had narrowed; his consciousness was clearly fading. Graham walked up and touched him, but Variable’s arm moved to stop him. As Variable turned around, the entire ship shook in space – thankfully, Graham could see they were still moving towards Country 200. But with the spectacle in front of him, he wondered for how long this would remain true.

“Don’t.”

“What the heck is going on?” Graham said, stepping back from the monstrosity.

“Don’t worry. We’ll be where we need to be soon enough.” He turned around to face the monitors once again, not that he needed to, but that he did not want Graham to see him this way. “Get out.”

“No, tell me what’s going on!”

“Get out!” Variable shouted, still facing away from the man. “We’re on course.”

Graham could do nothing but believe the man, and rushed back to make sure Ames was alright – she was still perfectly resting in the cot; the bleeding had completely stopped, and as a result there was no new blood on the blank white pillow. Graham jumped up onto his own cot and tried to sleep, but could not sleep – he stared down at the ground, wondering what he’d gotten himself into, what they would find at Country 200 and why it would matter. Even if Maiya was there, they would gather some slight information; possibly none at all, if they were unlucky. It was all because Variable cared for this woman, that some latent instinct within him had activated – Variable was more aggressive and illogical than ever.

And he still hadn’t told Graham his real name.

This ship shook violently; if they hadn’t been in the air, Graham would have thought there was an earthquake going on. Yet, these violent shakes kept happening with incredible consistency, and they eventually rocked him to sleep.

When he awoke, the ship was stalled. He could feel that this was so, for in his dreams he could feel the thickness of space moving below the hull of the ship. It was a strange feeling, like moving through a thick soup. In space, one must be in complete control of the ship or be crushed by the thick matter around it – in this case, Cydia’s thick atmosphere, able to sustain life at even these altitudes. Graham wondered how people could survive at the planet’s core, where The Collective silently calculated the answers to all life’s questions using the power of nearly every human mind on the planet.

And then he knew: That’s what Variable had done with the ship. The wires connected his consciousness directly into the ship’s mainframe, allowing him to control the ship without needing to pilot it. But was it also the other way around?

Too late. “I see you’re awake,” a voice said from above. “No, no, don’t move an inch. We’re still not at Country 200 yet; I’d say a good five minutes. Relax, don’t fret, and don’t leave Jessica alone.”

The door to the bedroom, which was far more like a chamber lock than a hinged door, slid up from the ground and slammed into place, shutting Graham’s only exit and waking Ames, who had regressed into a deep slumber. “What the hell?” she said, looking at the door. “Did you do that?” She looked at her clothes, touched the tried blood, and stood up. “What the hell happened?”

Graham explained everything, and that he was fearful something awful was happening to Variable in the control room as a result of his complete connection to this ship.

“No. Wait for him to get us to Country 200. Then you can snap him out of it,” Ames told Graham, confident as always. It was these qualities that Graham truly admired about Ames – although she had gotten off to a very rocky start in Cydia, she was now completely adjusted. The glasses had become a part of her life already. By the time Graham looked at her, she was looking at a glass panel, and had determined the status of the ship. All Graham ever truly wanted to do was go back home to Earth – he felt pathetic in front of Ames, someone genuinely attempting to help a person trapped in an unknown land, and he sunk his head.

“Yes, let’s wait.”

Although waiting felt awkward, both knew that they did not interfere with Variable not only because he was taking them to Country 200, but also because their trust in him had risen significantly ever since he’d put on a real face. Whether it was artificial or not didn’t matter – that he simply had one, and honest a true visible face, made him all the more likable. It was easy to see in his statements truth and falsehood as his expression changed; perhaps, they thought, he’d gotten used to making invisible expressions; that his expressions had no consequence, when in reality they said far more than his words.

Graham, however, did not want to wait. He wanted to confront Variable head-on and find out what was going on, for after seeing that hulking mass of tangled wire he was no longer sure Variable was leading them to Country 200 at all, and as the only being capable of piloting the ship, they could all be off to their doom for all Graham knew. And he wasn’t about to let Ames sit idly by while that happened. I don’t know why I agreed with her, Graham thought – but he knew the answer, and so did Ames.

“You don’t have to wait,” Ames said, sensing Graham’s anxiety. “But you’ll probably have a hard time opening that door while Variable’s in control of it. I can’t make you wait, but I can’t break down these sliding doors either.”

“I think I can,” Graham said, and pulled down a glass panel. While typing, he spoke. “I tinkered with this sort of stuff back home. If the entire ship is networked, and in the same network as these glasses, it shouldn’t be hard for me to connect to it just as Variable is. I’ll have less control but—”

Graham stopped talking, and began rapidly tapping floating keys. “Got it! The door should open soon.” And soon enough, to Ames’s astonishment, the door did open. Graham ran outside before it could close, trapping Ames inside the bedroom. Ames went to sleep while Graham ran down the hall, praying that Variable was still sane enough to converse with the man.

Variable was still in complete control of the ship, and Graham could see Country 200 through the glass panels floating in front of Variable’s disoriented body. Without warning or thought, Graham ran up behind the man and pulled as hard as he could on the cables, ripping them out of Variable’s head and causing the man to become unconscious. A lifeless Variable fell backwards onto Graham, and nothing would wake him up. Helpless, Graham watched the terminals as the ship shook violently and began to plummet to Country 200. Graham left the wires strewn about; they were the ship’s bloody carnage of Variable’s selfless attack.

Graham rushed back to the bedroom and unlocked the door, which remained open without Variable to command it shut. Ames jumped up from her bed; Graham was panting rapidly, unsure of what he was just done, but seemed sure of one thing: The ship was about to crash into Country 200, and neither party knew how to stop it.

Frantically, they both moved to the control room and attempted to wake Variable with whatever resources they could concoct – eventually, it was simple water the woke him up, or the shock that came from dousing so much water onto his partially mechanical body. “I suppose Cydians don’t swim, do they?” Ames said.

“They don’t anymore,” Variable said. “Why the hell am I on the ground?”

“No time.” Ames and Graham picked him up and ordered him to work the controls or die – the Country 200 port was less than half a mile away, and the ship was speeding steadily towards it with no signs of stopping without a pilot. Variable’s eyes opened wide at the sight of the port closing in so fast, and he immediately reached for a lever that didn’t exist. “Where in blazes is my brake?” Graham pointed to the mess of wires on the ground. “Impossible. I didn’t do this, did I?”

“Yeah, you did. Better find the one that controls the break.”

“But I don’t even remember… ah, never mind. There’s no time to quarrel about it. The level is the thick red wire there; it’s good to have knowledge on your side at times like these.” Variable picked up a thick red wire coated in some strange cloth that sparkled in the fluorescent light of the ship’s control room, and as if by instinct shoved it into the open area in the back of his head. The ship immediately slowed down and prepared to land, eventually safely stopping in the Country 200 port – with only the use of the brake cable. Variable then pulled the cable out of his head, and Ames and Graham stared at him, hoping for some explanation. “Well, the ship is smart enough to know that it’s landing!” Variable shouted.

But Graham and Ames looked angrily back – they felt rather ignored, and were not being fed the answers they desired. Both wanted to know what possessed Variable to rip apart and take control of the ship; how he did it and why. These questions, unfortunately, had no answer – for Variable had not even been aware that he’d done such things.

In fact, after being questioned consistently for a few minutes, Variable became quite peeved and ceased talking. Yet the group quickly made up in order to focus on the daunting task at hand – navigating Country 200, a gargantuan metal monstrosity, in a timely enough manner to find Maiya before someone else did, unless the latter had already happened, which only made the situation that much more dire.

The ship had stopped in between two docks on either side of it, leaving the three travelers to exit on the right side of the ship and walk along the long dock to a more reasonable standing area. Although the dock was fenced off quite well, all three were afraid of falling off and plummeting many miles to the core of the planet.

Country 200 was bleak, dark, and uninhabited. Dust had gathered over the country, contained in a single enormous city, over the several hundred years it had remained dormant, and as such every step Graham, Ames and Variable took kicked up a lovely could of dust that choked them and caused them to pause. When the dust cleared, Graham could see that, like the buildings not far off, the ground was made of a black metal – possibly steel, possibly aluminum or titanium, but that didn’t matter. What Graham found most surprising was that the country was not in orbit, but rather hovered just where it was, and as such Graham was able to look off the edge of the country and witness the planet of Cydia scooting along beneath them. Some cities moved at a rapid pace across the Cydian atmosphere, while others were almost as still as the country itself.

Variable led them forward, not entirely sure of his way around, not having any other choice. Graham and Ames followed obediently, completely lost and choking on caked up dust that had been brooding for hundreds of years.

The city itself was in complete disarray, and buildings were packed to tightly together that the three travelers had to turn sideways and pull in their guts in order to move forward. Eventually, they began entering buildings and crossing pathways between them. Graham and Ames began wondering where in Country 200 they were going – and whether or not someone would be waiting for them there.

“There’s only one place on Country 200 anyone would ever go, and it’s the only place still active as far as I know,” Variable told the group. “City Square.”

“City Square? There’s another one?”

“There’s one in every city. The same building, too, all built for one purpose: travel, shipping and administration. That’s why the portal was in City Square back in Migard. There’s one here, too, but I doubt it’s active, and I doubt you would rather have ended up here instead of on Migard. But if Maiya’s situation has anything to do with your appearances, then I think we’ll find something interesting at Country 200’s City Square.”

While in an open space – one of the few across the country – Graham and Ames saw it; a gigantic structure that rose into space, far larger than the City Square he’d seen back on Migard. The City Square from Migard did not reach as high as it initially looked; if it had, Graham would have undoubtedly been able to see its roof looking off of Country 200’s edge. Yet they were so high up he could see nothing except the silhouettes of a few islands, and no City Square buildings.

Variable continued to lead them towards the City Square building of Country 200, through the dust and grime of the deserted city. Together they kicked around decrepit old objects not worthy of anyone’s attention, past or present, and broke countless pieces of furniture – and even several walls using the mu gun – in order to clear paths that would hasten their journey to City Square. Graham and Ames were fatigued, but Variable was sprightly as ever due to the incredible stamina of his fetch. He broke down a door with his bare fist and felt no pain – a change Graham thought was strange, considering that shattered virtual glass caused him the utmost pain back on the ship.

Graham and Ames had underestimated, clearly, the meaning of “abandoned.” Even in an abandoned country Graham expected to find one person – even living alone, sustaining him or herself somehow – but Country 200 was truly empty. It was already incredibly dark in the city, and the light from the mu gun was their only true source of light.

At once, the ceiling of a building collapsed. Variable, as if by instinct once again grabbed the mu gun and activated a function that coated the entire group in an umbrella of blue light. The pieces of ceiling navigated around the blue light, and the trio was free to continue moving onward across the rubble, their steps making noises the country hadn’t seen for all those hundreds of years of dormancy. Concerned of their whereabouts, Variable pulled up a map visible on Graham and Ames’s glasses.

“We’ve got a ways to go, but we can make good time. It’s not going to get any brighter around here, and if someone has Maiya then we must make haste immediately! I’ll keep the mu gun handy – these buildings look utterly ancient. Like it or not, another one is bound to collapse as we make our way to City Square.” Variable examined the map close. “Hmm, there appears to be a light tram nearby. We should go have a look, in case it’s working.”

Ames and Graham nodded, and they continued forward, exiting out of the building they had been inside and out into roads of tolerable width. Not much further along did the decorative stairwell of a light tram station catch their eye, and the two rushed ahead of Variable to get a closer look at the station. Sure enough, there was a faint blue glow emanating from within. Above the light tram station glowed a green light; looking closer, Graham saw it was The Leaf hovering above them, watching their every twist and turn about the city. The Leaf was scattered all about, the one living object amongst thousands of millions of dead carcasses.

Graham led the way down into the station, following the light of the blue glow. Country 200 must have been, at some point, a bustling metropolis – possibly before the advent of The Collective. It must have been appealing, to be so close to space and the stars. But what Graham didn’t know was that it held much more than a pretty view.

They found the light tram deep inside the station after passing countless broken down stores and shops. Graham felt it was odd that so many lights inside the station had been turned on, and by whom he did not know – but that lights were on indicated that somebody must be around. The light tram, as well, was already activated when they reached it.

“Is it supposed to be active and running like this?” Ames asked Variable.

“I… I don’t know. But I doubt it’s a good sign. Quickly, we should ride it to City Square. Maiya is close, I can feel it!” Variable dashed into the bulge of light and disappeared, but was not followed so closely behind by Graham and Ames.

“He’s lost it,” Ames said. “I’ll bet this isn’t even the right path.”

“Well, what is the right path?” Graham asked.

“Don’t know. That’s why I’m going after Variable, and I’d suppose you’ll be doing the same thing for the same reason. But if we could just trace the mechanics, we might be able to learn whether or not…”

“Jessica, there’s a map over here. Variable took the right path.” And with that, Graham rushed into the bulge of light, followed by Ames, who sighed and wished they could find one small detail about Variable that was untrustworthy – some slip-up he must have made along their journey. But since their ousting of his betrayal at the greater Equation’s apartment complex, Variable had been utterly obedient and friendly – from putting on a face to leading them through an abandoned district. Why was it so difficult for Ames to believe that, in a dilapidated land such as Cydia, one person could be so trustworthy?

She wasn’t used to such things. She was used to – and perhaps partial to – life on Talos, where trusting even those closest to you could prove a grave mistake; this constituted her move out of Station A and into Station F with Graham. There was something about Graham that she trusted, but she didn’t know what it was, and by her nature she tried to overanalyze the situation until she’d figured it out. And throughout all of her time spent with Graham, she still could not identify what it was that made her trust him – what made her believe his crackpot story about traveling between worlds in the first place. But because of it she was now in a far distant land; she had brought about the suicide of Lanford’s president; she had forever changed the construct of her own world, and now she was with Graham trying to change the construct of another.

But why did she trust him? She couldn’t trust Variable – she believed many of Variable’s statements, but she did not trust him.

They left the light tram, still not entire sure where they were, listening to Variable’s distance running footsteps. Together they dashed through the muck and debris to catch up to Variable, who had begun sprinting through the station in order to more quickly reach City Square. The darkness was only partially illuminated by their glasses, and unlike Variable Graham and Ames tripped over debris attempting to catch up to him, calling out his name and asking him t slow down if he could hear. All of it in vain; Variable was too entrenched with the prospect of finding Maiya to listen.

Does that make him untrustworthy? Ames thought as she sprinted over black and dusty debris, choking on the spray of muck. Graham, who was in much worse shape than Ames, fell behind, causing Ames to double back and move with him. Luckily enough, Variable began walking slowly once he’d left the station – but only because he now stood directly in front of the entrance to City Square and was hesitant to enter. Ames and Graham approached him angrily, but he showed no signs of remorse; his mind was as lost now as it had been in the ship. These blackouts seemed to happening with increasing frequency as they approached City Square.

Variable popped back into sanity. “What’s going on? How did we get here?” He looked at Graham and Ames, who said nothing, and turned his head away. “We’re here, then. But we were just at the light tram! James, Jessica, please tell me what happened.” Neither responded, afraid that they would find nobody knew the answer.

Unlike the rest of Country 200 – or any city for that matter – the City Square area was surrounded by luscious artificial landscaping, still green after all these years. In fact, the entire City Square building was well maintained and completely spotless. Not a construction defect in sight; not a bit of dust floating around; not a flower misplaced or step cracked or chipped. City Square was pristine, perfect, an example for the rest of Country 200.

And yet there was nobody left to set an example for.

The trio began climbing the stoop, and once again Variable trumped them in physical endurance. Graham thought back to the City Square building he’d been tossed into back when he’d first arrived in Migard. The buildings had similar architecture, yet this one was extravagant, lit up with millions of lights shining from inside the building. The entranceway was more akin to an entrance gate; large enough that a small bus could have travelled right through it, and the base of the building was wide enough that a thousand people could have stood shoulder-to-shoulder and just reach the length of one side. The stoop, which trampled atop the virtual landscaping, reminded Graham of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s famous stairway, making it only more painful on his legs to climb.

Someone, however had already opened the entrance, or had been foolish enough to leave the entrance askew.

Inside the building was a magnificent holoflourescent flooring that lit the entire lobby. Graham immediately rushed towards the middle of the room, afraid that there was an endless drop at the ends of the room, which were fenced off and did not approach any wall. He was correct, and Variable approached these drops with great interest, wondering where to they led. “This does not look like any City Square I’ve ever seen before. I’ve made countless trips to Migard’s, but never has one been and grandiose as this. I’ve always through of Country 200 as a mere tourist attraction back in its heyday, but I never imagined they built something like this just for tourists.”

“I don’t think they did,” said Graham, pointing upward. In the place of a ceiling, several containers were being rushed back and forth by hundreds of robotic arms of similar build to those Wheat had been dismantled by in Talos. Graham wondered how Wheat was doing – if he was holding up the possibly rampant destruction happening now in Lanford.

Variable had seen these containers before – at Maiya’s house. But he had never seen the robotic arms, and despite his brief stay in The Collective he had no knowledge of their existence. Although it could have been data entered into The Collective after Variable’s fleeting self-imposed exit from the network, none of the three travelers were so sure this was the case. A light elevator positioned at one end of the room provided access to the upper and lower floors of the endlessly tall and deep City Square. Graham, working up the nerve to look down, saw a deep violet void engulfing more containers. The void extended down endlessly, just as it had in Migard, and Ames pulled him away from the edge of the room.

“Don’t get yourself killed yet. You still have to get back to Earth, right?”

“To be honest, it hasn’t even crossed my mind. I’m more concerned about Talos – nobody on Earth is immediately threatened like on Talos.”

Variable laughed in the distance. “I will take this elevator to the floor above and scout about. There shouldn’t be any activity in this building; Country 200 was supposed to be dead. That its active is indicative that we are not the only three people here. Be on the lookout, and hold your guns close. I doubt whoever is here will be friendly knowing we’ve discovered their operations.”

With that, Variable disappeared in a burst of light to the floor above, leaving Ames and Graham alone to explore downward. Once again the feeling of freefalling overtook Graham as they descended down into oblivion. Each floor, like on Migard was not distinctly square shaped – the floors were dangerously designed, but fenced off at their edges. The floor below was a wide rectangle, and did not stretch to the walls. Looking down, Graham could see that no floor ever stretched to the walls; instead, this empty space was used to transport objects inside the containers by the robotic arms.

Several containers flew downward, right past Graham and Ames. Inside, Graham saw several brass pipes. Another container whizzed by – there were at least a hundred mu guns contained within. “Jess,” Graham said, “this is it.”

“What is?”

“This is where the technology has been coming from, I’m sure of it! Look inside the containers.” Brass piping, steel ore, mu guns, armor for knights – it all rushed by them in countless containers. Variable was entirely oblivious to it, for he knew nothing about Talos, but to Graham and Ames it was plain as day – whoever was in this building was a part of the operation to send technology Talos-bound. Variable, however, noticed something much different: In the floor above, he saw not the Cydian’s technological injections for Talos, but the frozen bodies of inactive fetches, neatly shuffled around that floor and all the subsequent floors above.