There really was nothing he could do, in Wheat’s defense.

Word Count: 112,105

Ames calmed down and allowed the man to speak, while Graham stood and listened intently, siding with Ames’s disbelief that the man before them was James Wheat. “This is ridiculous, I know who I am. I can prove it. James, Jessica, you rescued me from the Black District after Ford mutilated my body, and once you’d begun chasing after him Danil and I both attempted to locate out own escape routes. There was another exit to the room – one I didn’t see at first – that led directly outside of the prison and right to the stairwell out front. Of course, there were plenty of knights around, but Danil seemed to be friendly with several. He introduced the knights to me, and we both played along with their game.

“I spent days more in the prison, pretending to help the knights in my new robotic body, so that I could gain enough information to secure my and Danil’s escape from the Black District once and for all. I had, by this time, assumed that both of you were dead, but the robotic body had so many limitations that I could not feel any sadness over your supposed deaths. I continued working for the knights until Danil was able to convince a knight that both of us were in dire need of repair – though how Danil was able to communicate with the knights without speech I’ve never understood. I assumed it was some complex method of communication he’d developed over his years as a clockwork robot.

“I, of course, had the power of speech on my side, though my sentences could never be more than a few shorts words at a time. This new body is so much improved! I am in awe of it, truly. But I digress; Danil and I had finished our conversations with the knights and had successfully scheduled a repair with a repairman outside of the Black District at my insistence that I knew somebody skilled in mechanics and robotics.

“We were both taken outside of the Black District and led to precisely where I’d told them my robotics friend lived – when in reality I was leading the group of knights to Station Q in the Blue District. Station Q had always been known for its great amounts of ammunition, and so I hoped and prayed that Q would be able to handle itself in such an attack.

“Unfortunately, word of Ford’s death had spread quickly. The knights’ propaganda stated that Ford’s death was a malicious murder, propagated by proponents against the development of further technology – one of Ford’s major policies was the increased development of technology, though of course it never actually happened, he would simply say that it did and, proles that they are, everyone would believe him, except those of us in the Railroad of course. Nevertheless, his death brought about several challenges. The knights were now disorganized; it was not apparent at first, but as the days wore by – even long after my visit to Station Q – the knights became confused. Their ranks were suddenly unimportant; the color of their armor meant nothing, as the more argumentative of the bunch (and they are all argumentative and overly patriotic) would begin to oppose their oppressors without the stifling pressure of Ford’s presence to keep them in their place.

“And so I witnessed the entire system fall apart. But about my trip to station Q, of course – they were well prepared, but the knights that travelled with me also had those strange devices we’d seen before. The members of Station Q did not notice who I was – something I had not anticipated. In fact, I had been in my new body for so long that I’d forgotten what it was like to be a human; their reaction to the hulking monstrosity that I was did not startle me in the least, for I was used to it in the prison. At once they rushed to destroy us all, and the knights fought back with their devices, subduing the entire station.

“Danil and I were called to go back, but we both had it in our minds to refuse. Refuse we did, and the knights, once loyal to us, rushed at us with their devices hoping to subdue us as well. But our bulky forms were too mighty for their technology to grasp. Danil and I took pleasure in beating the pulp out of these sad and fallen heroes. In time, Station Q was ours. It became out home, where we lived without food or drink, for eternity.

“However, eternity was short. The disorganized knights were becoming ineffective at stopping crime, and they had ceased arresting innocent citizens altogether. Although this may seem beneficial, it caused the city to quickly run out of its reserve of fuel. With the entire city out of power, food became scarce, and many died. Those in the prisons, I dare say, had it well – the knights were providing them with food and drink until disposing of them in the refueling, but as I said their numbers soon diminished to nothing.

“The most incredible change took place in Lanford once this happened. Without Ford or the knights’ tyranny, the people were left to their own devices. It was anarchy, plain and simple. Danil and I could go as far from Station Q as we liked without causing an uproar, for everybody was much too preoccupied with finding their own food supply. I saw men and women murdered on the streets, then dragged into the steam vents below and burned to keep the steam flowing. You heard that correctly, yes? The people who had so feared capture were now the capturers themselves!

“This row-reversal, undoubtedly, would not have happened if some knights had not leaked the details of their jobs, unveiling the secret that burning humans was an adequate substitute for burning coal. But, perhaps most surprisingly, those knights that did spread their tale seemed ashamed of what they’d done. I’d never before realized that these men and women in uniform had a heart and soul, but indeed some of them were righteous and even likeable characters. The follows that transported you three here did so on my command; they are former knights of Alteria, disillusioned with the loss of their leader and longing for purpose. They have joined the Underground Railroad, and this camp has become one of many bases across the continent, but I’ll tell you more about that shortly.

“Not a day passed by that I did not wonder if you two were still alive. Only days after your supposed deaths did strange alien ships enter our humble world, and I instantly thought that only James Graham, the man not from this world, could have something to do with it. However, knowing what a kind man James is, I could not imagine these ships coming from his kin. The only possible culprit was another world – and then I remembered President Ford speaking to you, James, right before Jessica rescued you. He’d been talking about some world called Cydia – and all at once I knew that you all must have been alive and in that world, investigating Ford’s words and the oncoming threat that would shake all of our planet.

“I resolved, therefore, to do some investigating of my own. I had very little time – the threat from Cydia was growing more intense every day, and I knew it had all to do with Ford’s plans to manipulate and destroy Talos. I faced two challenges: Discover where the Cydian threat was coming from, and discover where the Talosian threat still remained. At this time most knights had gone off of their own will to fight against our attackers, completely forgetting, for the moment, about our leaders’ plans to dismantle our world.

“Lanford was the main target of attack, but even Cydia could not predict that the other governments around the world had already begun – and nearly finished – construction on similar cities. One of these was, as you probably saw, Gorom. At the time, President Davy was still alive, and had ordered his loyal knights to destroy Gorom and rebuild it as fast as possible. Teams of thousands and thousands of workers rebuilt the city in mere days. Similar events occurred around the world, but it is becoming clear there is no longer hope for Ford’s demented schemes. The Cydians have effectively demolished that hope.

“Just after Gorom was rebuilt, word spread that the Cydians had captured Davy and were holding him hostage until Talos would refute its sins. The general populace, of course, was entirely lost – they had been oblivious to Ford’s plans, and most are still oblivious to them. But those that became informed were the root of widespread panic that shook all of Talos, and the knights and Railroad conductors that gave accounts of Cydia – both the planet and its people – did not help in quelling the discord.

“Of course, nobody can be sure how many of those accounts were pure falsehood, and I am sure nobody on Talos had ever been to or heard of Cydia before these attacks. But the threat was real enough for everybody to jump to conclusions. Cydian entities were burning and destroying villages with the touch of a single button. They had technology that surpassed our own by thousands – perhaps millions – of years of constant development. And our weapons, as dangerous as we thought they were, did not even pierce their skin.

“I was just escaping Lanford at the time with Danil. The war had pushed us out of the city; it was no longer safe or livable due to increased Cydian occupation. I was stunned by their ability to withstand all forms of weaponry, and when one of them died he simply rose again.

“However, I did not ponder this for long. I had my theories, and I was proved right in time – that these Cydians were dressed in artificial bodies, that their minds were disconnected somehow and located somewhere else. Their bodies, therefore, ere relatively unimportant to them. But Danil and I eventually came in contact with a group whose bodies they cared for, to a great extent in fact. They called themselves the Equation, and seemed to be a resistance group from Cydia.

“The members of the Equation clearly expressed disapproval with the happenings in Lanford and around Talos by their more authoritative counterparts, and it was with their aid that Danil and I were able to successfully escape Lanford. Somehow, the Equation had the means to see through my robotic exterior to the mind within, and they immediately told me there was a solution available that could make me normal once again.

“I followed them endlessly, and they never once betrayed me. They were engrossed in their task of, as they called it, preserving the individual mind. After hearing about the operations going on in Talos, they brought not only several, but thousands of extra artificial bodies with them. It was a relatively painless procedure that removed my mind from Ford’s robotic monstrosity and placed it inside the Equation’s artificial body. When I first moved this hand, when it responded so clearly and instantly to my thoughts, I was so incredibly happy! I barely remembered what it was like to have a real body.

“Danil, too, received a body of his own, a different model so that we could be distinguished from one another. Danil, now able to speak, told me that he had not been in a body for over two years. That meant that Ford had been running this operation for more than two years! There was no telling how many other souls were trapped within those brass skeletons. We made it our mission – along with the Equation – to hunt down and save these poor souls. It was not long before we discovered that most robots in our cities were once human beings, and proceeded to place them all in artificial bodies.

“I have heard countless stories of inexplicable cruelty as a result, but there is no time for me to tell them. We have saved hundreds of people from their cold, metal prisons, and are continuing to save them.

“That is how I came to be here – the Variables, the renegade knights, Danil and I worked to take over this camp. We stormed the area and overpowered the knights that had been running it as an extermination camp, similar to the Black District. It was being used to create a backup power source – citizens were brought here, told that they would be safe from the war, but in actuality they would become victims, burned for more fuel! We put an end to this despicable practice and ran the camp ourselves. However, instead of keeping people inside, we look the people out and sent them away from Talos. As soon as we had settled down and operations were running smoothly, I sent a signal to you, James. Your presence here means that you received it, which makes me more than glad.

“And I think you will be most please to hear this as well. With the help of the Equation we were able to modify the corpus locks, as they were so called, and generate inter-dimensional pathways to your home planet of Earth. We send the refugees there, as there is no war on Earth as far as the Equation can figure. If the person is still trapped inside a robot, we move their mind to an artificial body before sending them off. There are portals scattered about all of Talos, I hear, that have been converted from portals to Cydia to portals to Earth. As such, a good deal of this planet had been evacuated – yet, of course, the Cydians have hardly stopped attacking, and it will surely be impossible for us to evacuate everybody.”

“But there must be something we can do to save Talos!” Ames shouted at Wheat, believing now that he was who he said he was. “We can’t just give up on the planet. We can’t just send everyone away and run from the problem. Cydia wants Talos gone for good; they want to do the entire planet what President Ford did to his country’s people! I won’t accept leaving, not until Cydia and Talos’s leaders back off. We’ve come too far to simply run away.”

“I understand your situation, Jessica, but Cydia is simply too powerful. They’re light-years ahead of us – the knights are fighting back as best they can, but they’ll only be able to hold off the forces for so long.”
“Besides, even if we manage to drive the Cydians out of Talos,” Graham said, “the remaining leaders of each continent will just resume their planet-destroying efforts anyway.”

“That, I’m afraid, would be impossible,” Wheat said. “All of them have been killed. I’m afraid this world is completely without leaders, and hence, without resources as well. There isn’t much that can be done but evacuate – if Cydia plans to destroy us, they certainly have the tools necessary to do so.”

“They said that Talos was originally their project,” Graham said. “That they created Talos only a few hundreds years ago, and that they want to reclaim the space for energy. They nurtured an entire planet just to gain a few years of fuel. If that was truly their plan from the start, there’s nothing we can do to stop them. And we can go to Earth, Jess. I know my way around that place; it’s my home. It’s where I’ve been trying to get to all along – my home!”

“Yes, and can’t you see that I don’t want to abandon mine?” she said.

But she was starting to let go – hopelessness filled her heart, just as it had everyone else’s. Talos, unfortunately, was a doomed land. “Curie, are you going to return to Earth as well?” Graham asked.

“I think so. Life on Earth was far more peaceful. Though I have a duty to the Equation, I’m sure they won’t mind if I stick around on Earth for a little while longer. After this, I’m not sure if they’ll need me. I’m not sure if anyone will need me; after The Collective finishes consuming Talos, I have a feeling their focus will shift to forcing everyone back into the collective; that the secret project we encountered in City Square won’t remain secret for long. I’m not going back.”

“Jessica… you will come, won’t you? And James?” Graham asked.

“I… I’ll go, but under one condition!” Ames said.

“Hah, and that would be?”

“I’d like to move in with you, James,” she said, and smiled slyly.

Graham returned the gesture. “I think I could have that arranged easily enough.” He turned his eyes to Wheat. “And you?”

“Unfortunately, I’ve got to stay here. I have a duty to everyone on Talos right now, as do the other conductors running other camp operations. We’re getting every innocent person out of here, and we’re not stopping until the operations are complete. I can’t leave – if that means going down with the planet, so be it. And Ames, stop your blubbering; it’ll be fine if you all get out of here as soon as possible. Don’t worry, I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.”

But they all knew that as soon as they stepped through one of the many portals around the camp that they would never see or hear from Wheat again. Ames called him a bloody moron, sacrificing his life in such a manner when he could travel to Earth with the lot of them. But all he said in response was that he’d convinced Ames to go back to Earth with Curie and Graham, and that was all he needed to feel reassured.

“There are ten portals around this camp. We keep the place filled with robots so that nobody of real power can suspect anything, and we guard the area with knights for that reason as well. If you’re all ready to go, I’ll take you to one of the portals.”

“Let’s get going, then. I’m anxious to get home, myself. Once we’re there we can help the refugees on Earth. I’m sure they’ve got their hands full,” Graham said.

Ames was reluctant to budge. Graham wrapped his hand around hers, and she walked easier while Graham told her all the good she could do helping her fellow citizens on Earth – that her home wasn’t being destroyed, because her home had little to do with buildings or technology, but rather it was the people around her that defined her home, and those people were still around, simply relocated. This comforted Ames as the group approached one of the portals, positioned inside of a back alley between buildings.

“This looks just like the back alley that girl I saw in Gorom ran into. There was a portal there?” Ames said.

“Most likely. Somebody set up portals in Gorom before its demolition – but I don’t know who set them up, or even when they were set up. If someone was still alive over there, they probably made use of the portals to get out, even if they didn’t know where it led. Though the notion that somebody was alive in Gorom is preposterous; that city was purged and evacuated weeks ago.”

“Are you sure you’ll be alright?”

“I’ll be fine. Stop worrying, you were never the worrying type.”

“It’s grown on me since I met him,” she said, pointing at Graham.

“Meeting someone like him would do that, I suppose. James, I should have believed you from the beginning, but it’s too late for apologies. Take care of Jessica. Heck, everybody take care. As soon as I can leave Talos, I’ll catch up with you – but for now, get out of here before you’re killed. I’m sure this place won’t be safe for long.”

“He’s right,” Curie said. “If anything, the Cydian armies are probably setting up the equipment needed to fully consume Talos as we speak. I have a feeling they’ll be modifying the inter-dimensional jets present in each of the major cities inspired by Lanford. That gives this place a few days at most. We’re likely to catch quite a bit of chaos going on on Earth. We should help those people.”

“Right. Take care, Wheat,” Graham said. “Make sure to survive.”

“Don’t worry about me. I always make it through. I made it through Ford’s treatment, didn’t I?”

“Touché, my friend. See you on the other side.” Graham turned around and faced the black mass crawling out of the brick wall behind him – it was the largest portal he’d seen to date, discounting the portal at the bottom of City Square, which he never actually saw due to his blackout. Without fear he rushed through the portal to his home world, praying that – at last – he had found his way home. Ames waved goodbye to Wheat, who responded by practically shoving her through the portal in jest, at which she responded by slapping his arm and walking calmly through the writing black mass.

“Whoever gave you that has great taste in fetches,” Curie said.

“You certainly do,” Wheat responded.

Curie laughed. “Is it that obvious that I’m controlling multiple bodies?”

“You’re a terrible actor,” Wheat said, and the two men laughed together.

“Don’t die,” Curie said. “I’m shutting down my other fetches once I get to Earth; I’m tired of living this way. I’d like to be a human being for once. I mean, it’s been hundreds of years. That’s just too long… too long to be without humanity. But I want to see you again. So don’t die.”

“I can’t make any promises,” said Wheat as Curie turned towards the portal.

“I know, but you can make plenty of lies,” Curie said, and stepped into the portal.

“I know,” said Wheat, alone in the alley. Once Curie had gone, Wheat stepped up to the corpus lock and shut it off. “But there’s nothing I can do.”