It’s over. Holy crap. I don’t think I’ve ever been more satisfied with any novel I’ve ever written, or more frightened by the sheer size and scope of the universe I’ve created. I’m going to create a cover, back cover, and spine for this story and get myself a couple of LuLu copies, then call it a day. It’s been one hell of a NaNoWriMo 2008.

Final Word Count: 122,861

Graham, Ames and Curie all went over to the bedroom next door – room 308a – and heard Ford scream just before they entered. Graham burst the door open to see what was going on. Ford was holding the foreign device up to his wall, as if it were a sort of sacrifice. Upon the wall, and to his complete surprise, Graham saw a corpus lock. A portal was opening while Ford slowly backed away, frightened out of his wits. “James, do something! This gaping hole came from nowhere!”

Graham looked at the corpus lock and the black mass forming all over Ford’s wall, and was instantly reminded of himself those many months ago in Curie’s shed. Graham froze up, unable to help the lad or shut off the corpus lock. Seeing Graham’s incapacitation, Ames and Curie rushed to help the boy. They took the device from him and tossed it into the portal. Curie shut off the lock, and the portal disappeared.

Ford looked at Graham, who was still frozen solid. “What the hell just happened? You’re a witch! How did you make the box fly like that? How did you make the hole go away, just by standing there?”

“Are you insane? You didn’t see those two people rush about the room trying to save you? I stood still like a coward, I shouldn’t get any of the credit.”

“What are you talking about? You’re the only one in this room, Graham. Don’t play me for a fool; I’m anything but.” Ford stood up and dusted off his suit, then looked for the foreign device. “Now tell me where you moved that box to, so I can have another look at it.”

“Kid, it was sent through the portal. It could be anywhere,” Curie said directly to Ford. When Ford didn’t respond, Curie repeated his statements, but much louder. “Do you hear me at all, kid? Your box is gone! I got rid of it!”

No response. Ford was entirely unaware of Curie’s presence, as well as Ames’s. To Ford – and to everybody else at Harvard University – Graham was the only other entity in that room. For the moment, at least.

The group soon realized what a waste Curie’s efforts had been. The portal reopened after only a short moment of being closed, as if fate willed it open – and something was coming out.

First the leg appeared, and then the rest of the body – a man in a white lab coat, just like the man who had been chasing them in City Square. The man shut off the corpus lock and heaved up the box, which he held in his arms. On the breast of his lab coat was a familiar green, teardrop-shaped symbol. “You’re oppositional, that’s for sure. I give this to you and you toss it right back? I haven’t even had the chance to explain to you the purpose of this marvelous instrument.”

“That’s one of The Collective’s workers,” Curie whispered, not sure if the man in the lab coat could hear him. “What the hell is he doing here?”

“Who are you?” Ford said to the scientist. “Give me back that box!”

“Come, lad. I am the one who gave you this box, in your sleep about a week ago. Think of this as a courtesy visit to let you know what, precisely, I’ve left behind. I am from a land known as Cydia, a world far beyond your own. Now, I am sure you don’t believe me, but I assure you it is true. If you still don’t believe me, you will soon enough. The Cydians have been observing you for quite some time, you and your friends, and you have an agenda that corresponds with ours. You disagree with your society immensely – enough to alienate yourself from all your peers and parents, from everybody on Earth.

“That is why I have given you this device.” He held up the box. “This is not a box. It is not a weapon. It is the answer to the question you have been asking yourself for your entire life. I know you have been asking yourself this, you and all of your companions here in this building. You have asked yourself, ‘How can we escape?’ We want to help you escape. We want to help you leave Earth behind completely.”

Graham listened intently, hushed his voice in fear of the coming words from the scientist. His subconscious told him what was going to come next, but he didn’t want to believe it – he couldn’t believe it, for it sounded too impossible and farfetched to be true. But it was; he knew it, Ames knew it, and Curie knew it. The planet was Earth indeed, but it was not the Earth Graham and Curie knew.

“Prove it to me,” Ford told the scientist. “And shut off that hole thing, it’s creeping me out.”

“It won’t, in time. Mr. Ford, this device is one of several that can help you shape your own fate by shaping your own society. It is akin to a typewriter, I would suppose, but it does not create papers. But I see you have a guest here as well. Mr. Graham, I presume? You stayed behind because you believed Mr. Ford about the device. Good, you will help Mr. Ford convince all the rest that this is all a complete truth.”

Truth, Graham thought. VERITAS. Yet he already knew the truth he was about to be told, and it frightened him significantly. “Yes, I am sure I will,” Graham said. “Tell me everything, spare no detail.” Ames and Curie looked on at the show with great interest, no longer speaking or even moving at all.

“I know that you in particular, Mr. Graham, have always dreamt about creating your own world, as has Mr. Ford here. In fact, I’m quite sure that is the very reason you live together – because you dream of forming your own tightly knit community after graduation, somewhere far from civilization. You want to start on your own. It seems impossible to you now, I’m sure.”

“Get to the point,” Graham said, frustrated and afraid.

“Temper, temper. A question for the two of you. Are either of you familiar with the fourth dimension?”

Ford shook his head no. Wanting to hear what the scientist was about to say, Graham also shook his head no, even though he was fully aware of the fourth dimension both as the temporal axis and the fourth spatial dimension. Ford now sat down on his bed and began to listen intently to the scientist, who explained to him and Graham the concept of the fourth dimension. Contrary to what Graham expected, it seemed that the Cydian scientist was discussing a merging of both types of four-dimensional spaces, in effect creating a malleable temporal and spatial array in a deep pocket of space.

Ford was fascinated by this explanation – the most dimensions he had ever studied were three: height, width and depth. That there was another dimension – many others – beyond Earth’s three dimensions intrigued him greatly. He at once jumped for the box, eager to do whatever the Cydian asked of him. But the scientist withheld the box. “This is no toy,” he said. “Cydia does not offer this to you lightly, but because we feel your group has the most potential to create a stable world. Trust your allies and their ideas, and you will b successful. However, disregard the apparent truth, and you will find yourself tumbling through space on a barren asteroid. I cannot come and save you if this happens. All I can do is find another group to take your place.

“You can use this tool combined with a few others, in my possession currently, to jettison your bodies into the forth dimension – from there, you will have Cydian aid in constructing your world.”

Suddenly, Graham’s head began to hurt again. He doubled over on the floor in pain, clutching his cranium, begging for the pain to stop. Everything faded out of existence – Ford, the scientist, Ames and Curie, all gone in a flash of blinding white pain. Curie and Ames rushed towards Graham, but Ford and the scientist didn’t seem to notice any of it’ life proceeded as normal. And soon, life faded into a burst of white for Curie and Ames as well.

Just as quickly as it had begun, it was over. They were still, however, in the dormitory. In Graham’s room. Graham sat up, rubbing his temples. “We’re… still here. We can’t be. It must have been a horrible hallucination.”

“James, what you saw back there – what we all saw – that Cydian was offering one of the devices that spawned the Talos project. Somehow, we’re not anywhere we needed to be – we’re not even in the right time period.”

“If that is the beginning of the Talos project, then why is it on Earth?” Graham spouted. “Talos was Cydia’s project – I thought they started it by themselves? Or are you hiding even more information from us?” Curie remained silent, affirming Graham’s assumptions. “Are you telling me that the founders and creators of Talos were… from Earth?”

“It’s the only reason I was sent there,” Curie said, frowning. “I was a watchdog for the Equation to ensure that the last surviving founder of Talos still on Earth remained alive.”

“That can’t be right. It can’t be me – they think it’s me, those students out there. They think I’m one of them. I’m not one of them, though; I’m not even old enough! How long ago is this, one hundred years? Two hundred years?”

“Calm down. It was not you, and as of right now all of the founders have been killed. Except, I suppose, one – Sir James Graham. James, what was your father’s name?”

“James Michael Graham,” Graham said. “We don’t share the same middle name; mine is Mitchell. I suppose he always wanted me to be a little bit different from him. But I don’t keep in contact with my father; he tore me from his will, he abandoned me completely. The man is despicable – and he’s not over a hundred years old.”

“And neither am I, right?”

Graham was speechless. He thought back, thought about his father, recalling his father’s appearance over the years. He thought of President Ford’s appearance – the Ford he’d seen cowering in his room, making deals with the Collective scientist, did not resemble the Ford on Talos with the cane in the least. His father’s appearance had never changed. Graham had never been a part of his father’s will, he now knew – it had been planned from the start to distance the two, so that Graham would never suffer the same fate as his father. And how well it worked! And now, these men, these founders of Talos, were waiting for Graham’s father to make an appearance. His father, the hundred-year-old Harvard graduate.

“I can hear them, they’re outside the door, gathering at the table. I’ve got to go and see what they’re doing.”

“James…” Ames said.

“I have to. I have to keep the past right. They expect my father to come out of this door. He’s not here; they need me to leave this room instead. They need someone to complete the history that’s already happened. That’s how we’ll get out of here. Plus, if Talos isn’t created, then… you’ll never be born. It’s worth it, if just for that. We’re going to get out of here, all three of us. I promise.”

Graham left the room, leaving Ames and Curie alone, not sure if he would return from these final few flashbacks, and slammed the door behind him. A shimmer of hope inside of him prayed that everything he’d learned in the last two minutes was false – that he was not playing the role of his father in this twisted game in the past. To settle his nerves, he walked out and immediately demanded to know who he was.

“Everyone… I need to know something, right now. Tell me my name. My full name, no first and last name only bullshit. My middle name, too. Hell, tell me my mother’s name. It will make me feel good.”

“What are you going on about? You’re James Michael Graham. And we’re about to get going,” said Ford. Graham hung his head low. So, it is true after all. Then it isn’t coincidence that all this has happened. There is a reason, and I’m going to find it while I still have time. “We’re discussing the final plans,” Ford continued. “I can’t believe we’re actually going to do this. It’s hard to believe. James, how do you like my fetch? I just got it – yours looks sharp as well. You look tired; we transferred your mind while you were asleep, so you probably don’t know what’s going on.”

“You what?!” Graham said, not acting like himself. He felt his mind take a backseat to a greater entity; his fetch began controlling itself: “This… this isn’t my body! What the hell did you do to my body, Ford? Give me back my body!”

“No! You’re coming with us to Talos, James. We’ve been planning for months, and it is finally time. I’ve been told that the planet is prepared; all we need to do is write a history, so that our world is not a barren wasteland. I think we all know what we want. Davy and I have agreed that we like thing the way that they are. But there could be several improvements, I suppose, to today’s technology.”

“If you’re going to be writing the history, why not just copy Cydia’s?”

Ford laughed, a menacing laugh that reminded Graham of the President Ford he knew from Talos. “If I wanted to copy Cydia, I would have used these tools to take over that planet long ago. I have much bigger plans for this world – bigger than Cydia. Cydia is gracious enough, and foolish enough, to give seven creative souls the tools to found their own land. Why should not we take full advantage and control of the opportunity? We’ve all envisioned the same world. Let’s write it, together. James, you’re the best writer here – I want you to use the typewriter and weave all of us a world to be proud of. I have sketches, as does Davy. I know your vision will be the closest to what we all desire. Scribe us a grand utopia!”

“And don’t screw it up,” said another student. Graham searched his mind – his father’s mind – for the name of the student. Seth Millikan, it was. “If you create a temporally unstable region, the world will collapse on itself and kill us all. The typewriter is nothing to scoff at; make it habitable, put the right chemical compositions into the atmosphere and the ground. Give it the right population.”

“And everything I write will simply come into being on Talos?”

“I doubt it’s that simple. What the Cydians described to Ford – who swears you overheard all of this – was that the typewriter alters the two fourth dimensional states of time and space. Think of it like a slideshow; in the fourth spatial dimension, the individual states of a world exist as four-dimensional slices, like a flipbook. Half of the typewriter’s job is to flip through this flipbook of world states and find the matching world. Its other job is to control the temporal dimension – or the natural fourth dimension we encounter in our daily lives, that of time. So, based on the description of the world, it will fast forward or rewind time to your specifics. I was told that the typewriter is connected to a very malleable point in space, a place Cydian scientists spent eons finding just for this purpose. That they’re letting us use it is puzzling, yet incredible, and a huge responsibility.”

Graham nodded – or rather, his father nodded for him. “I assume at least one of you has a map,” Graham’s father said through his fetch. One of the students pulled out a freshly drawn map whose cartography reminded of Marcus. Graham looked up at the man who had handed him the map. “What was your name again?” he asked.

“You’re acting really strange today, James. My name is Marcus. You should get working; we’ll leave you alone. Let us know when you’ve written up the history. If you need more notes, let me know. The rest of us have divided further jobs for maintaining the world. Ford, give him the box so he can get to work.”

“Right,” Ford said, nodding, and dropped the box on the table, making a grunting noise under its weight. “The Collective would have my head if I broke this. Don’t break it. I have an agreement with them to supply us with technology – in fact, they insisted – so that we can sustain the planet even on seemingly crude technology if we so choose by occasionally supplementing it with their advanced goods.”

Ford pressed a button on the box, and it opened up – but it was empty. Soon enough, a virtual glass keyboard and screen appeared forth from the unfolded box. A prompt was the only interface on-screen. Suddenly, Graham regained control of his body – and his head began to hurt. He knew that time would jump again, and rushed out of his seat to find Ames and Curie, but they were gone when he opened the door. He panicked and held his head as the world turned white once again.

When everything faded back, he was no longer on Earth. He knew he was now on Talos; he saw sprawling cities in the distance filled with people. Next to him stood his six companions; Ames and Curie were nowhere in sight. “We’ve done something incredible today,” Ford said. “We’ve created a world. This is Talos! This is our land!”

Everybody cheered. “Where are we right now?” one asked.

“I think we’re in my country, Lanford. James, is that right? This is how you described Lanford, right?”

“Looks like it,” Graham’s father said through his body. “I’m glad it turned out well, though I miss my family. Will we ever return to Earth?”

“Why should we? We’re rulers of a planet now – there is no need for our parents. If we ever need anything, Cydia will provide it, or we can provide it for ourselves. Our people, in fact, can provide plenty; they’re brainwashed to think that this planet has been around for millions of years, remember? Heck, the planet itself is brainwashed to think it’s so old! I’ll be they know how to do everything we know on Earth.”

And, as soon as they’d met up, it seemed like it was time for the seven men to say goodbye to each other as they went off to govern their respective continents on Talos. Graham felt his father’s unease; his memories told him that his father remained in charge of the Cydian typewriter even after the planet’s formation. “I’m going to take an air ship to Alteria,” Graham’s father said. “I suppose the rest of you will be off on your own separate ways? Let’s make sure to have constant meetings in the Oceanic Confederacy, so we’re never out of touch. If we’re going to run an entire planet, we’d better do it right.”

“Here’s to that,” Davy said. His voice sounded silent – Graham could barely hear it. The world was turning white again. Scene flew by a rapid pace before becoming completely incomprehensible. He saw his body fly overseas to Alteria in and air ship, and land in a grand palace – it was nothing like he’d wanted, he remembered. Hundreds of years passed by on Alteria; time on Talos moved quicker than on Earth, and the seasons were wild and unpredictable. The land would freeze one day and boil the next.

Graham awoke, now, in a conference room. Sitting around a large table were the seven students turned world leaders, including Graham. The entire building was shaking; Graham fell out of his seat at the table. They were in a lavish room decorated with brass, the ceiling raised no less than fifty feet high, and the table sparkled of highly polished steel and other metals. Fancy, expensive drapes adorned the entire hall. They were completely unnecessary – but that was half the fun of having your own world to create.

After the quake had subsided, Ford stood up. “James, you’re an incompetent fool. Because of your faulty language, Talos is nowhere near stable! We need to increase the stability; you’ll have to rewrite the world. Edit it, do something. At this rate, the planet will be destroyed in a week, and we’ll all be dead. Our citizens are panicking, we cannot have this!”

The entire group stared at Graham, who nodded his head, signaling that he would stabilize the world. But he knew there was nothing he could do – that Talos was a doomed planet. “I’ll do all I can,” Graham’s father said, “but I can’t make any promises. In the end, we might have to abandon Talos.”

“Don’t talk nonsense!” Ford said, cackling. “This is our world. We abandon it when I say so! And we will never abandon it. If you see so fit to run away, perhaps you’d be better off with the menace that is Cydia. Or even on Earth, with those primitive scum.”

“I don’t think you’re being reasonable.”

“And isn’t it unreasonable of you to wish death onto our planet?”

“I’ve done no such thing. But to repair the world is a daunting task.”

“Well, get to it quickly, then. If you can’t find a way to restore balance to Talos, I’ll do it myself. I’m sure after you inevitably fail, I shall find a better – and far easier – way of restoring the planet. You can take a break from leading Alteria; Davy, you should be in charge. You’ve been handling Sarlian well. Yes, I think that will do. James, go to Cydia. Don’t come back until Talos is fixed. You hear me? Don’t come back.”

“You can’t banish James from his own planet, Ford,” Marcus said.

“If he fucks it up, it can hardly be called his. The planet should only be in the hands of a capable, responsible human being. I have the utmost confidence that James will repair the world, but when he doesn’t… I’ve got a backup plan. I doubt Cydia will approve of it, if we’re reduced to that because of James, so be it. If it comes to that, I’ll inform you all of everything. Until then, get the hell out of here, James.”

“Who are you to tell James where to go?” Marcus said, becoming aggravated.

“It was I who first came in contact with the Cydians. None of you ever believed me! If anything, this planet is mine. If James is not meant to be a part of it, then he’ll be the bystander he should be.”

“If you’re going to play it that way, I think I’ll be going as well. If James is banished, then I’m resigning as president of my country.”

“If you resign, I’ll take it for myself. They’re on the same continent.”

“Take it; but I’ll still be there, saving people from your insanity. When it comes – and it will come, the day that people dislike you – the good men like James and I will repair everything you have broken. Even if James poorly wrote the world, your policies will have brought the planet to its knees within a matter of centuries. The world is not your toy, Ford – I was sure that was one of the more important statements that the Cydian visitor made to you that knight.”

Frustrated, Ford stood up from his chair, and punched Marcus in the face. Davy looked at Marcus and Graham, and frowned. It was clear he sided with Ford on this – that although Graham and Davy had spent a lifetime mocking Ford, Davy was of the opinion that Ford was a stronger, more valiant leader.

“Fine,” Graham’s father said. “I’ll take the typewriter and go. If you need me, I’ll be on Earth – living a normal life, under a proper leader. I’m sure Earth has changed significantly. It must be a better place than it was when we founded this miserable planet. Perhaps I will find peace there. But don’t worry; I’ll still try to repair this world. It’s worth it if I don’t have to see you again.”

Graham’s father moved Graham’s body to stand up and leave the room. As soon as he left the room, his head began to hurt once more. He was jumping again. The world blinked – he saw Ames and Curie again, and smiled. Or, he would have if he weren’t in so much pain. The world once again faded into white; Graham could sense that that had been his last flashback event. That he was retuning to the real world – that he would be back on Earth shortly. He could feel it! He felt Ames and Curie’s presence; he felt the presence of a real, stable planet; he felt the presence of hundreds of souls all around him, gathered in present day.

However, when the pain subsided he was not on Earth. But neither was he in the past.

Ames and Curie were right behind him. Graham turned around, surprised, and embraced them both – especially Ames, who’s existence had not been altered through his visits to the past. “I don’t know what I would have done if anything had happened to you,” he said.

“What about me?” Curie asked, jokingly.

“Eh, I’m sure you would have been fine.”

But there was no time for laughter – Graham asked both of them where they had been for the last two jumps. He explained that he no longer felt any head pain, that they were most likely done jumping around history – for now, at least – but didn’t know where they were. Ames and Curie had, apparently, been sent to different parts of Talos relevant to their own history – where they rediscovered elements of their own past. That the group had a common ground now signaled that they were back in present day.

“We’ve been here before,” Graham said. “This is that same hallway. But it looks different. It looks…”

“Older?” Curie added. “This place looks ancient. Let’s check the rooms again and see if there’s a portal here. I can tweak it to take us back to Earth. I’m sure this time there will be one.”

The rooms were indeed filled to the brim this time, but with sketches and useless knick-knacks – with Lamp Spheres and old corpus clocks, with memos and notes and all manner of mess. Every room in the hall completely filled with everything completely useless. Except the door at the end – the only door they hadn’t checked by their logical progression through the hall. A soft blue light glowed through the cracks in the door. It was, in fact, the only sliding door that worked when they approached it – but the room was not filled with knick-knacks like the rest.

It became immediately clear that this location was nowhere near Earth, but had the utmost importance. A man sat at a box, typing vigorously at a desk in a pristinely clean room. Graham froze up; he knew why he had been brought here – and he had been brought here. But before he could say anything, the man sitting at the terminal, typing so vigorously ceased typing to speak. He, however, did not turn around to address the three travelers in his room.

“It’s been quite a while since I’ve felt that presence. Or that one,” the man said. “If you’re here, then you know that I’ve brought you here. All of you.”

“Who are you?” Ames demanded of the man.

“That I shall answer in a moment. But you are Jessica Ames, an engineer working in the Talosian Underground Railroad, yes? And next to you were have Adam Curie, a watchdog for the Equation. And finally… well, I’m sure he knows who he is. Ah, hold on just a moment.” The man resumed typing; his fingers tapped keys so rapidly that none of the three could be sure he wasn’t simply pressing one key ad infinitum. But words appeared on the terminal and around the room on separate terminals. He moved his hands high up in the air, and with a gigantic sweeping motion brought all the terminals towards him. “I apologize, I found an instability.”

“In Talos,” Graham said.

“There are so many,” the typist said, out of breath and fatigued.

“You were the one who sent us through the past, weren’t you?” Graham said, feeling filled with a greater sense of knowledge by simply being in the typist’s presence. “You used that machine to alter the portal we went through. You changed history with that machine – you’ve been changing history all along, for all these years. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“Hrmf,” the typist said, smirking from in front of his terminals. “Now that you know who I am, this is much less fun than I imagined. But I won’t play games with you – you are correct. Using the power of this device, I have manipulated Talos’s history for hundreds of years. I am sure your next question will be about the war, which is the other reason why I’ve brought you here.”

“You brought me into Talos.”

“I’ve altered all of the portals on Talos…”

“…you set everything up…”

“…so that they would go to Earth…”

“…and put all of your responsibilities on my shoulders…”

“…but made the Underground Railroad believe that they had done the job on their own.”

“…so that you wouldn’t have to death with leaving your own planet for dead, dad!”

The typist froze, and pushed the terminals away. He rotated his chair around, exposing his face. It was the same face Graham had known his entire life – it was his father, there was no doubt or question in his mind. At this he broke down, and began to cry; although he already knew the truth, he could hardly handle it when faced with the situation. “You did this to me. You put me through everything. Why would you do that to your own son? Why would you abandon me that way? Did you want me dead, not just out of your will?”

James Graham Senior looked down at the floor, ashamed of himself. “I had no choice. You have seen how Ford acts – he is a menace that I could not deal with alone, and his actions brought upon the complete destruction of Talos. I couldn’t do it alone, James! I had avoided involving you in any of this for so long; when I returned to Earth, when I abandoned Talos, I swore that I would never involve you or your siblings in any of this. Your sisters have already established a comfortable life; I could not take them away from that. But I needed help. You, my next-of-kin, were the only being alive close to the Equation. You could help me! I wrote it in at once and brought you to Talos.”

“You’re despicable.”

“You have every reason to hate me.”

“That’s not why I hate you. I hate you because you’re lying to me, dad – you brought me into Talos because you knew my nature was to solve problems; that, inevitably, I would solve your problems. You didn’t want to fix your own mistakes. That’s why you left Talos – not because of a disagreement with Ford, but because of a lack of willpower and sheer homesickness!”

James Graham Senior could not look up at his son. “You’re right. But my fingers are weak, and my life has been far too long. I’ve done many great things in my life, son – don’t think I’ve spent my entire life wishing I could stop working. I spent many years in Talos doing great things. I invented the Lamp Sphere and the corpus clock, items that transformed a generation of Talosians. I’m incredibly proud of my work. But after so many years, I can’t go on. Talos has reached its limit – and now that Ford’s plans have caused Cydia to grab hold of the planet and consume it, there’s nothing left I can do.”

“You’re… you’re that James Graham?” Ames said, stepping forward. “Impossible, he died centuries ago!”

“I didn’t die; I simply left. After I left, I bought two fetches – one for Earth, and one for Cydia. You are in Cydia right now, because I wrote that you should come here.”

“Then write us out of here, dad.”

“James…”

“Why didn’t you simply write out the end of the war? Why didn’t you write away Ford’s plans? If you had all this power, why not use it? Instead, you used your son as a proxy for your plans. You lied to me for my entire life. I’m in a fetch now because of you! You hear that? Adam tells me I’m immortal! You seem so happy with your similar situation.”

“I never wished that upon you. That happened on its own. And I cannot simply stop wars, change people’s decisions, or make miracles. Writing is not easy, and it is time consuming. This device, first and foremost, is Cydian – it won’t rewrite any Cydian interference. I can’t affect the war. And it cannot affect the future, so I could not change Ford’s plans until it was all too late. But I didn’t put you through all of this for that.

“When I returned to Earth, everything had changed. I was sure that it was paradise. I met a beautiful woman, whom I had three wonderful children with. Yet, at the same time, I was bound to my duties as Talos’s typist – Cydian entities trapped me in this building on Ford’s orders, trusting him over me, presumably because they wanted to sustain Talos long enough to consume it.”

“And you don’t think you’ll be released once Talos is destroyed?”

“No. I think I’ll be killed, or forced to join The Collective. In which case, I share the opinion of Mr. Curie – I’d rather die. Mr. Curie was sent to Earth with me when I left Talos. Adam was an odd fellow; he had the strangest ability that no other Cydian had – the ability to feel objects within the augmented reality world, which can be a particularly painful experience since the glass panels break so often. After his first visit to Earth he realized that the glasses didn’t work there, and immediately escaped Cydia to be stationed on Earth. His job was to watch me, but I told him that wasn’t important at all. So I sent him to watch you; you were the most important piece of the puzzle, James.

“You’re the only one who can stop this machine and allow me to fully relax from my work. It must be a blood relative, as far as I know, to disable the machine that activated it. But I’m not in my original body anymore. You, on the other hand…”

“I’m in a fetch too, dad. This isn’t my original body.”

“James,” Curie said, stepping up to him, “do you really think I put together a fetch that fast without using parts from your own body? At least a third of that thing is made of you.”

“James, you can deactivate the typewriter. Push one button.”

“Make a portal to Earth first, dad. I want you coming with us.”

“There’s already one set up. Third door on the left. I’ll deactivate this fetch as soon as everything’s done; I can’t deactivate it until then, anyway. The security system won’t let me. The power switch is over there; press it quickly.”

“Why quickly?” Graham asked, but his father wouldn’t respond. He walked up to the button – positioned on the side of the wall – and pressed it lightly with his finger. A glass window popped up with a loading bar; it was scanning his DNA fingerprint for a match with his father, who had begun commanding the typewriter over one hundred years prior. When it was complete, the shimmering pristine walls of the room began to collapse, revealing a plain dirty steel wall underneath. The pristine wall folded itself up; the terminals around the room disappeared, and Talos’s history was at last left to fate, and not to James Michael Graham.

Just as that happened, the entire building began to shake. An explosion rocked the right side of the building.

“Get out of here, now! The typewriter had formed a protective shield around the building. With the war going on, and Talosian forces now in Cydia, this building is bound be caught in the crossfire. I’ll see you on Earth, James, Jessica, Adam. Wait for me there.”

“But you’ll be destroyed if you stay here!”

“Don’t worry about me – I’ve got a fetch on Earth I’m using. I’ll be fine. You get out of here! And son,” he said, “thank you for setting me free. And goodbye.”

Graham looked at his father’s sad yet jubilant face, and knew something was amiss. But there was no time – missiles and projectile weapons were striking the building at every corner. The structure would soon collapse. Not wanting to leave his father, but fearing for his life, he ran out of the room with Ames and Curie. They made their way to the room he described – one of the rooms they had clearly checked before for any sign of a portal. Lo and behold, a black mass now rested below a corpus lock on the wall.

“That’s incredible,” Curie said. “There wasn’t one here before when we checked. We’d better get out of here, and fast.”

But before Curie could run through the portal, Graham stopped him. “He lied,” Graham said.

“What?”

“He lied about having a fetch on Earth. I haven’t seen him since I was a child. I’m certain of it – he was lying to protect me. He really is my father, after all. Trying to protect his kid. Idiot!”

“We can’t stay here, though,” Ames said. “We have to get out of here now – there’s no time for speculation, even if he is your father.” The building shook even more rapidly – half of the building was blown away, including the typist’s room. “We’re going to die if we don’t go. Curie, get out of here! I’ll drag him in.”

Curie nodded and dashed through the portal, while Ames grabbed a hold of Graham and pulled him in with her. They made it through the portal just as the entire building collapsed upon itself – down, down onto the surface of Country 200 where it once stood. The world turned to darkness, engulfed once again in that beautiful ebony, one last time.

* *  *   *    *     *      *       *        *          *          *         *        *       *      *     *    *   *  * *

When Graham awoke, he was in Curie’s shed, sprawled across the floor, back on Earth. Wrapped tightly in his arms was Jessica Ames, still unconscious from the ride. The corpus lock was turned off; the portal to Talos was gone. All that remained was a door with a lock inside, a bunch of stairs leading to nowhere, and a room with a typewriter. The page on the typewriter still had “Hello, I am your friend.” Written on it, as well as the other phrases Graham encountered just before his adventure began. He shook Ames awake.

“We’re here. Earth.”

She rubbed here eyes and blinked. “Really? About time.” Graham laughed, and kissed her, both their bodies still flat on the floor. She returned the favor, and they stood up smiling. “So, Earth is a box, eh?”

“Not exactly,” Graham said, opening the door to reveal the suburban paradise outside. Freshly mowed lawns, quaint, quiet homes, a semblance of belonging – this was Earth. This was peace. Ames was overwhelmed with joy. “My house is just there, across the street.”

Curie exited his house and found Ames and Graham standing outside the shed, taking in the fresh air and view. “Good news, guys – we’re not going to have much work to do. Seems like the Equation has been handling everything from the start. They’ve hooked refugees from Cydia and Talos up with United States identification and citizenship papers. They’ve even all got homes – most of them, anyway. It seems like Talos was relatively small compared to Earth, so there’s plenty of room and nobody will be noticed. James, you and I can both get back to our normal lives. And Jess to her new life, I suppose!”

“No, we’re not done yet,” Graham said. “Jess, my house is probably unlocked. Go wait there for me, would you? I’ll be there in a while, after I do some final chores with Adam.”

Ames left, eager to explore her new home. She seemed well-adjusted already.

“What is it you want, James?”

“Let’s get rid of that damned shed.”

Curie laughed. “Right now?”

“Right now. I never want to see that corpus lock again, or anything else pertaining to Talos. Except Jess,” he said, laughing. “I think I’m fine with seeing her.”

The two men gathered axes and implements of destruction and walked to the shed, which still stood proudly. “There’s still no power, is there?” Graham asked Curie before he began chopping away at the flimsy plywood of the shed. “I sure hope the economy is alright.”

“I’m sure that it isn’t, because there’s still no power. One of three things will probably happen to Talos now that it’s under Cydian control: it’ll be consumed, destroyed, or blocked off completely from the rest of the universe. Since Talos was the cause of all Earth’s problems, I’m sure once it’s gone Earth will go back to its normal state. We’ve just got to give it time.” Curie watched Graham hack vigorously away at the shed. “James, I have a question to ask you, before you completely dismantle this thing.”

“Yeah?”

“You know, if I pulled some strings back on Cydia, I could probably get The Collective to give you the necessary equipment to rebuild Talos. You know, from the ground up – start your own world and do it right this time. It wouldn’t even have to be called Talos, and I’d make sure it wouldn’t be a pawn of Cydia’s horrible intentions. But I can’t do it without the portal, and I’m not about to hunt down the refugee’s portals. They could be anywhere.”

Graham stopped chopping and thought for a moment, but the decision wasn’t too tough to make. “I think I’ll pass,” he said. “If my father’s actions have taught me anything, it’s that I’m already on the most perfect world there is; the one I was born on. I wouldn’t give up Earth for anything. Now come on, help me destroy the lock and typewriter.”

“Why the typewriter?”

“I don’t like them anymore.”

Together, the two men spent hours dismantling the entire shed. Curie hacked apart the corpus lock while Graham destroyed the typewriter, and at the end of it all there was nothing but a pile of dust and rubble beneath their feet, a symbol of everything they had done and encountered during the last several months. The cold winter air breeze by them, signaling to Graham that it was time for him to get inside. He thanked Curie for everything, and reminded him that they’d be neighbors for eternity now that he was living in a fetch, to which both men smiled. With a hearty goodbye, Graham rushed into his house to escape the cold, and spend time in Ames’s company.

Ames was waiting for him on the couch nearby the front door. His desk hadn’t changed a bit – everything was still a complete mess. He sat down next to Ames on the couch, and the two embraced and shared a kiss. “Thank you for doing this for me,” Ames said. “For giving me a home.”

Suddenly, Graham was struck with inspiration. He stood up and began dashing about the house, looking for any paper he could get his hands on. It was difficult fumbling in the half-darkness, lit only by light from the windows, but he eventually returned to Ames with several sheets of college-ruled paper and a ballpoint pen. With much haste and excitement, and to Ames’s amusement, he shoved all his supplies off his desk and slammed the paper down onto it.

“Writing a story?” Ames asked.

“It’s kind of my thing to do during blackouts. At least, it is now.” Ames smiled and walked over to his desk, looking over his shoulder at the story about to form on the page. And with Ames as his muse, Graham was finally able to think freely, his mind uninterrupted and his thoughts unabridged. With vigor and spirit, he touched his pen to the page and let the worlds form in front of him.