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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.

Word Count: 115,372

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

Graham’s head hurt. He couldn’t open his eyes; someone had locked them shut. Eye crust. He rubbed it off; how long had he been asleep for? He didn’t remember being on a bed. He rubbed more crust from his eyes, adjusted his vision. This wasn’t his bed. Nor was it his room, or any room he’d ever seen. Inside the room Ames and Curie also slept, quite soundly, and Graham rushed over to wake them up. Before making it to Ames’s bed, he paused and looked out the window. Autumn leaves fell upon a bright grass field. Through the field a concrete pathway split before rushing up to the entrances of several different brick buildings. I’m home, Graham thought, his misplaced sense of time remembering that it had been autumn on Earth before he’d left.

Ames woke up first, after a good shaking. “Morning, James,” she said, looking at the bright sun flooding through the window. “Where’s this?”

“Earth,” Graham said. “We need to wake up Adam.”

Together, the two happily shook Curie awake – he awoke rather frustrated, shooing them away, begging to let him sleep a little while long. “I mean, honestly, we travel in between worlds and there isn’t even time for a nap. Can’t a man have his rest sometime?”

“Not today,” Graham said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do if we’re going to help out those refugees. I suppose we need to figure out where on Earth we are, and where on Earth refugees are going.”

“This building doesn’t look like anything from a more advanced civilization,” Ames said, scoping out the brick room. On the desks in between each bed were kerosene lamps. The desks were made of a dark cherry-colored wood, the floors equally so. The frames for each bed sparkled golden brass. “It actually looks a lot like Talos. What gives?”

“Not every place on Earth is as advanced as you think,” Graham said. “It’s very diversified. We could be in a second world country or something. Let’s get out of this building and look around.”

The group opened the thick wooden monstrosity that was the door, and entered into a common room. Several men, about twenty years of age each, had gathered around a table in the center of the room and were playing cards. Light shimmered through the crystal-clear windows, and a fireplace burned bright, providing warmth to the room. One of the men looked directly and Graham and smiled, motioning for him to join.

“Ey, James, you finally decided to get your ass up! About time, too, we’re neck deep in our game. Care to join?” He held up a hand of five cards. “These are mine, but feel free to draw your own.”

“James, do you know that guy?” Ames said.

“Not at all, but apparently he knows me. Though I suppose he does seem a little familiar.” James walked up to the group and took a hand of five cards, then sat down, prepared to ask them all questions – but they never came up. Instead he became engrossed in their game of poker, as though he’d known these six people his entire life.

“I say if I win, James has to trade his single for my triple. He’s had it too good for too long in that cozy shack.” This was followed by a round of “Here, here!”, to which the next round of poker commenced. Graham, by the end, had lost his room – thought he wasn’t entirely sure what room it was he’d lost. He looked at the other six players; they must have lived in the other two rooms split off from the common room. But he didn’t live there – why would they call any of those his room? Puzzled and looking for answers, Graham continued to play poker, but once he’d won a single game the rest folded, and the game ceased.

“I have class now, anyway,” said the same man who’d invited Graham over to play with them. They walked into their separate rooms and grabbed bags full of books. Ames, frustrated with Graham’s lack of results, walked straight up to the man and shouted to him: “Where the heck is this place?”

He simply walked straight by her, ignoring her entirely. Within moments he and four others had left the room; only one remained, and he called to Graham to hurry up. “You’re not even dressed, and you have class with me. How can it be our senior year and you still haven’t gotten a grip on getting to class on time?” He laughed. “Put on your uniform and let’s go. Chemistry isn’t going to learn itself.”

Chemistry? Graham already knew chemistry; for what reason would he choose to relearn it? The thought that he had been performing reckless actions in his sleep and had made friends with six fellows several years younger than him frightened his already wary mind. But he knew now where he was: It sounded like the portal had taken him to a university somewhere. The people in the common room had clearly mistaken Graham for a similar classmate. Graham looked at his clothing – he was in his usual clothes, the ones given to him when he’d been placed in the fetch. Nothing was wrong, as far as he could see.

The trio exited the building, running down three flights of stairs and ending up in a large quad filled with grass of the same genus Graham had spotted earlier. It was, in fact, the same location Graham had seen out the window of the bedroom. In the center of a quad was a large sculpture, and students had dispersed themselves about the area to study in solitude. To their left, the brick walls surrounding the university broke open, revealing the outside world – its roads, its buildings, its factories and cars.

It certainly looked like Earth.

All of the students on the quad studying were male, hefting textbooks onto their laps and writing vigorously in notebooks. Each of them wore a stern navy blue uniform with a patch located upon the breast pocket depicting a crimson shield surrounded by a wreath of golden leaves. As Graham processed through the courtyard, the students took immediate notice to his lack of dress. “Going to class without a uniform again, Graham?” said one. “Make sure Professor Salathe doesn’t see you like that, or he’ll have your ass,” said another.

Graham wanted to turn and yell at the students to tell them he was not enrolled in this school, and they were mistaking him for someone else, but Ames held him back and told him to ignore their childish remarks. The statue, now to his left, caught his eye – a piece of abstract art made of shining brass depicting, well, he wasn’t quite sure what. But the base of the sculpture contained the same emblem embossed upon the students’ uniforms. He ran up to the sculpture and examined it – the piece was by Henry Moore, apparently recently donated. The emblem on the base was the same crimson shield surrounded by gold wreath. Within the shield were three syllables – “VE” “RI” “TAS” – each enclosed inside of a small book-like icon. At the bottom of the emblem was the proudly inscribed word, “HARVARD.”

“That’s impossible.”

“What is?” Ames said.

“I know where we are, but this isn’t that place. I mean, this is not what Harvard University looks like. Not the Harvard I’ve seen. Oh, I should explain – Harvard is a prestigious university on Earth. I’m sure you must have similar institutions on Talos, Jess?”

“Yes, we do. But this is much grander than anything I’ve seen. This looks like too much room to learn in; do people site twenty feet apart?” she said jokingly.

“Not at all; it’s got decent enrollment, but it’s hardly the largest school out there. My father was a Harvard graduate, but I was not – I went a different path. He always wanted me to go here; I’ve visited several times, and I probably would have been accepted if I’d applied, but as I said, it wasn’t for me. But this doesn’t look anything like the Harvard University I know.”

“Perhaps we should leave. I see the exit over there. If we’re at Harvard, that’s not too far off from our homes,” Curie said. “We could probably hitch a ride south and unload at your house, rest for a bit, and then get to work.”

Curie led the way to the exit, but their trip didn’t last long. Graham felt his head as they approached the Harvard gates; it was beginning to hurt. Every step closer became a throbbing pain. Only a few feet away from the exit, Graham collapsed, yelping in pain – he could not go further. Outside cars rushed by, along with their chances of leaving. “Take me back!” Graham screamed, not paying attention to his own words. “Take me back now!” Ames and Curie grabbed a hold of him and dragged his kicking body back into the campus. His headache immediately subsided. When all was said and done, the only phrase anybody could utter was, “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” said Graham, “but we’ve got to get through those gates. I don’t care about the headaches, I’m sure it was coincidence.” But when he dashed toward the gates again, the pain returned, and Ames had to once again drag his body back deeper into the Harvard campus. It was impossible for them to leave unless Graham could overcome the pain – which seemed equally impossible on its own. Yet Graham felt fine inside the campus. He stared outside into the roads and watched the cars go by.

Those cars…

He watched them for a second longer. Their curved, open black bodies. The obviously rich men driving them. Their primitive steering wheel, which jutted out from the floor of the vehicle, ending awkwardly in those rich men’s hands as their feet worked odd controls on the floor. Their wheels, thin and unstable, wobbling around on the road, which was only barely paved.

Where am I?

He looked around at the quad – Harvard Yard, it must have been. His head pains were returning, even though he was nowhere near the exit. He demanded at once that the group return to the dormitory. Classes were ending; he expected he would find his dorm mates huddled around their card game once again. Of course, what he expected was very far from the truth; the entire world was a farfetched mystery. Taking a last look at Henry Moore’s sculpture, he began pacing towards the dormitory.

But it was impossible to enter without the proper key. Unconsciously, Graham reached into his left pocket and yanked out a steel key, stuck it in the lock and opened the door. Graham now stood with the key in hand, the door open before him, completely bewildered. Had the key always been in his pocket? Yes, it had. He carried it everywhere he went. Then, was this where he lived? Yes – he was a student at Harvard University; Room 308b was his bedroom; his dorm mates lived in 308a and c. A single. Nobody lived with him.

Except Ames and Curie.

He held his head again – the pulsating pains were returning. He screamed, yet the entire campus was able to ignore his plea for help. Curie and Ames huddled around him, blocking him from public view while frantically attempting to stand him up and help him up the stairs. But soon there were no stairs, and the entire world faded away in a white blur – the world changed.

When the pain subsided, Graham’s eyes opened and took in the scenery of a hallway lit with spheres of light that reminded of Cydia. Graham spun around, looking every which way for signs of Curie and Ames, and found them right behind him, standing in a trace, unsure of what had just occurred. The hallway was lined with doors, and behind them was a door leading to a staircase. Graham looked at Ames worriedly; they were clearly not on Earth. Graham rubbed his head again, hoping the room was a hallucination; it was not. He touched the cold metallic walls. They, too, were real – as real as Harvard University had been minutes ago.

Graham ventured forth through the hallway, looking for nothing but a portal to Earth. Curie and Ames simply looked at him as he maniacally rummaged through every room in the hall, until finding something: a corpus clock. But nothing else. Was this Cydia? The metallic walls spoke of Cydia, as did the lights, but the corpus clock was a technology found only on Talos. Or perhaps it was indeed Earth, but a building constructed by refugees as a home away from home.

Ames ran up to Graham. “I don’t know what’s going on, but panicking isn’t going to help. Our first priority should be to get out of this building, wherever it is, whatever world it’s in. Let’s go.”

Graham nodded and walked back to the other side of the hallways, where Curie stood waiting. Graham looked intently at the man, hoping that he was hiding one last tidbit of information from him – that he knew precisely what was happening and could explain it all in a few simple words. But Curie shook his head no, reading Graham’s thoughts. He didn’t know anything, either. And when Graham’s head began to hurt once again, Ames and Curie began screaming, “It’s happening again!”

Graham knelt down on the ground, clutching his head, holding onto it for dear life, until the world once again phased out of view. When the world returned to his vision, his six dorm mates once more surrounded him. He was back in the dormitory; Ames and Curie were behind him, acting as onlookers. Graham turned his head to Ames, but received a swift reprimanding from the same student that had invited him to play cards that morning – or had it been afternoon? Graham shook his head; that wasn’t important.

“Graham, stop spacing out. We need you here to discuss the plans.” The student hefted a large device onto the table, and the rest of the group let out long sighs of praise and disbelief. “This,” he told the group, “is a mysterious device from another world. About a week ago, I started having strange dreams, and in one of those dreams a bodiless man handed me this weird thing,” he pointed to the odd device sitting on the table, “and told me I could do anything in the world with it.”

“Bullshit,” said another student. “You’re always full of it, Ford.”

Ford laughed. “Perhaps I am usually, but not this time! I promise all of you that this technology is one hundred percent alien. I mean, look at it! I wouldn’t even know how to get inside the thing.” He pounded on it with his fist. “I’ll bet it can do something incredible.”

He hit it again. The fans inside of the device whirred, cooling the machine. Several display lights glowed blue; Graham was reminded of the mu guns, of the lights, of everything on Cydia – the faint blue glow that defined a world. “And how might you use it?” said another student from across the table. “Tell me, I’m curious.”

“Hell if I know. I’m sure there must be a button or lever somewhere, if we look at it enough. We’re nearly graduate students, we should be able to figure this out on our own.”

“You’re probably better off contacting whoever gave that box to you. I suggest the local dump. They might have some information,” the lad said, chuckling and smirking at Ford. “James, why aren’t you laughing at him with me? We should be laughing together!”

Graham snapped back into reality. “I’m sorry, I suppose I didn’t find it very funny.”

“You know, you’re acting odd today, James. You woke up late, you didn’t go to class, and I could have sworn I saw you talking to yourself earlier. Are you alright?”

“Perhaps it’s related to whatever Ford’s got there,” Graham said, and forced out a laugh to please the incessant student.

“Absolutely, it must be. Ford, put that thing away – it’s almost dinnertime anyway. We’re all off to the dining hall, yes? We should get going.”

“I’m going to stay behind tonight, fellows. I’d like to examine my device a bit more. Perhaps I can do what you said, Davy, and contact the man who gave this to me. Although I would have no clue how.” Davy laughed. “Stop laughing! This is a serious endeavor. I will discover the giver of this device, just you wait and see!”

“I’m going to stay behind as well,” Graham said to the rest of the students. “I’d like to keep en eye on Ford and see what he’s going to do. I’m interested.” At this, the other students sent him queer looks. “The lad is so crazy, he might jump out his window. You don’t want a scene going on just outside of our dormitory, do you?” At this, everyone agreed, and Ford was left behind with Graham so the two could skip dinner and investigate the device together.

“Why would you stay behind? You’re a bloody moron, Graham. You don’t even believe anything I said about this box.”

“No, I don’t,” Graham said, “but I believe that something else close to you might have some significance. I felt the need to stick around and confirm my theories. Please, do as you were, I need to go prepare something in my room. Take that thing into your room and I’ll come in a moment.”

Graham walked into his room, beckoning Ames and Curie to come with him. “You know what’s going on?” Ames said, sitting down on one of the beds.

“No, but I have a hunch, and even still it doesn’t explain anything. But I want to see what that kid is going to do with that box. It looks Cydian, doesn’t it? If he’s going to figure out how to use it, and it happens to be a Cydian weapon, he could do some serious damage.”

“I’ve never seen a weapon like that,” Curie said. “Hell, I’ve never seen anything like that on all of Cydia. As far as I can say, it’s a completely foreign device – it’s not from Earth or Cydia.”

“It could be from Talos,” Ames said. “Though I’ve never seen anything like it either, and it doesn’t look Talosian.”

“So it’s a device from nowhere. All the more reason to see what the kid is going to do with it, and how he’ll learn how to use it. I’m going to go over there and see what he’s doing.”

“Graham, wait. Before, when you were talking to those students, you didn’t notice anything odd about them?”

“They seemed like normal undergrads to me.”

“They thought you were an undergraduate as well. And, this is more apparent to Curie and I than it is to you, but they didn’t seem to notice us standing right there in the room. Heck, we were speaking with each other, and nobody heard us. Not a word. Graham, there’s something wrong with this place; I’m worried about you. You’re the only one they seem to be able to hear.”

“Nonsense, I’m sure they just thought you were my friends and were being respectful. They clearly think I’m somebody else, and since I can’t leave this place I’ll have to play the part until I can. Now, let’s go see what Ford over there is doing with his box.”

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.”

Word Count: 108,433

The other knights, who had been standing around lazily, did not stop their activities, and in fact seemed hardly startled by the woman standing in front of them. When she didn’t leave, they all pulled out their mu guns and prepared to fire – but Ames was prepared as well. She reached into the air and pulled down a glass panel, then began searching for a network on Talos that connected the mu guns with one another. When she found it, she immediately began tapping on the virtual keyboard, and struck quickly. Flabbergasted, not knowing what Ames was doing by waving her arms about in the open air, the knights attempted to fire their mu guns in hopes to shock her with a large jolt – but nothing happened.

“Yeah, sorry if those don’t work,” Ames said, tossing the glass panel away.

“What did you do to our weapons?” one of the knights asked, suddenly beginning to fear the women who could disable his “magical” weapon.

“Well, you see, those devices are very complicated machines, and I’m a very complicated engineer who just wants to be let into the city. If you’d like, I can make them backfire. I’m sure you won’t survive, so you’d best save yourself and let me through the gates.”

Weaponless, the guards had no choice but to oblige – and under her false threat of turning their own weapons against them, they were scared enough to oblige quickly. Ames saw the men scatter in front of her and run to the gate controls, primitive levers on a thick control pad. For the first in her life Ames was looking at Talos’s level of technology with real perspective. She had spent so much time in Cydia that we was now numb to the technological achievements of Talos; everything felt much more primitive than she remembered.

The large gates to the city slowly creaked open; countless gears rotated through millions of times with every inch the gate moved. Before it was even entirely open, Ames squeezed her way through and caught a glimpse of the inside.
It was certainly not Lanford. In fact, Ames wasn’t sure what city it was at first. There was only one apparent district, an outer ring surrounding the familiar power plant at the center. Another prison, no doubt. The city itself, however, did not match Lanford’s layout to any degree at all, indicating what a rushed job building the power plant must have been. The governments of Talos knew that they were running out of time – that Cydia did not want them leaving their designated place in the universe. This rapid construction was a last-ditch effort for the Talosian leaders to get what they wanted before Cydian forces overwhelmed them – a world all their own.

However, the city, while renovated from its original form, seemed greatly dismantled. No care had been taken in transforming the city into the Lanford capitol it now so well resembled, as if the golden rings had simply been dropped on top of the buildings, crushing them underneath their massive weight. Nothing had been spared – buildings were burned, destroyed, and broken down. Several rested directly underneath the two district rings, one providing the outer gate, and one providing a barrier between the livable area and the power plant. It was a disaster, a mess.

Short was her stay in the city before Ames saw blood on the ground. She stopped and ran her finger across it; the blood was old, dried, probably belonging to someone flogged by the knights. She could only imagine what kind of fight the citizens of this city had put up attempting to drive the knights and the construction work away.

Then, she saw the sign – the welcome sign with the name of the city. She was in Gorom.

The city hardly even resembled Gorom any longer. She hadn’t seen a single living person; Gorom was a bustling city in the Confederacy that had the resources available to expand out into a metropolis. Clearly, that had been the original plan – but now, it was all but completely ruined. Not a soul lived outside anymore, a stark contrast when juxtaposed with Ames’s first visit to Gorom, and to Marcus, who sent her to Lanford via the Underground Railroad. She imagined Graham going through the same process. Finding Marcus, if it was possible at all, was the best thing she could do, she decided, and began moving forward with cautious feet.

Along the way, she passed more dried blood on the cobblestone streets, and turned her head to look away. So much blood, so much terror and turmoil – was this the future of her homeland? Had she done nothing to stop it, travelling and working with Graham? Her entire life, as far back as she could remember, was spent running from the government and those wretched knights, but it had never escalated to such a global affair. In her absence the situation had worsened exponentially. When a cadaver appeared on the side of the road, its limbs dismembered and skin burnt to a crisp by electric shock, she knew this was not simply the work of the Confederacy, the joint territory and organization controlled by all nations on Talos.

Something so horrible could have only been done with Cydian technology. And although the knights were in possession of mu guns, a device that emitted an electrical charge this strong – strong enough to blacken the skin of a man – had never been in their weapons repertoire. The thought that Cydian forced might already be nearby frightened Ames, and when she saw, down the road some ways, a navy blue knight dismembered and burnt in the same fashion, her fears were confirmed – Cydian forces were in Talos, wreaking havoc.

Then the tanks outside of the city were not because Gorom was off-limits to outsiders, but because the city had become a massive quarantined area. It was a battlefield; possibly one in a much larger struggle for control of the planet’s dimensional placement. And from the looks of it, Talos was losing.

Remnants of the tram that had ferried citizens to and from Gorom’s entrance gates exaggerated the city’s dilapidated condition. Ames began darting down the road, around the single district circle that had been so carelessly formed. If anything, it was the Talosian governments’ rush to build these gigantic inter-dimensional jet engines that left them so susceptible to attack and utter defeat. She was ashamed of her world for lacking the ability to defend itself – Cydia had the upper hand; Talos was, for all intents and purposes, helpless against the might of their advanced technology.

Knowing the threat, why was she so compelled to remain in Gorom? She could not bring herself to turn around; she had known too many people in Gorom, had so many experiences at this place so long ago. She wanted to find someone – anyone – still alive. And so she continued through the city, searching for any sign of life, breaking into homes that had long since been blown up by bombs, set alight by fires, yet still partially stood.

At last she found someone – or could have sworn that she did. After inspecting a home she heard footsteps outside. Mimicking those footsteps Ames ran out of the house to see whom it was, and caught a glimpse of a young blonde woman dashing down the street, apparently running from something. She turned a corner into an alley and disappeared.

Ames gave chase at once, but could not catch up with the girl. When the alley gave way to a dead end, she gave up. Yet she did not want to believe it was a hallucination; her gut told her that it could not have possibly been a hallucination, that there was meaning behind this girl running down the streets. She had gone somewhere, somewhere far out of Ames’s reach.

Tired, she trudged down Gorom’s roads until she reached Marcus’s half-destroyed map shop. Opening up the door, she expected the worst.

She would have remained relatively calm amidst all this gore and destruction had Marcus’s body not remained inside the shop after he’d been killed. But the Cydians, in their collective wisdom, had left the body slumped atop the sales desk next to the cash register. His body, seeped in dried blood, was covered in gunshot wounds. The entrance to his storage room, where Ames knew he kept his newest potential recruits to the Underground Railroad, was burst wide open. Written on the brick walls of the storage room was the word “EARTH” in white chalk, hastily scribbled for whomever could read it.

Whoever had killed Marcus had also raided that room, but Ames lacked the nerve to look for more dead bodies. Seeing Marcus’s body and the open room behind it forced painful memories to resurface in her mind. Unable to withstand the trauma of this scene, she rushed out of the room. There was nothing left for her to see in Gorom.

Curie was having trouble keeping watch on Graham’s body. Tanks and air ships continued to pass them by, and it was only a matter of time before somebody stopped and asked them why the two men were hanging around. Curie hoped Ames would return with word of a hospital in the distant city, but knew that even if the hospital admitted Graham there would be no proper treatment for an illness caused by his fetch. And so, with hope, Curie continued to wait for the consciousness of his long-time friend to reattach itself to the fetch’s mainframe.

It happened just as Ames entered into a visible distance. Graham’s fetch suffered a bout akin to a short seizure; Curie heard a shocking noise, and Graham regained full control over the fetch without fatigue or loss of motor functions. Boldly, Graham stood up.

“We’re in Talos? Is this where the portal led us to?”

“No exactly,” Curie told him. “You were unconscious a little bit too long. We ended up in what looked like a shipping facility a ways up the mountain. I carried you here while Ames went out that nearby city to find out where we are. It looks like she’s coming back now.”

Graham observed the surrounding area, looking at the glimmering golden city and a large black cloud hovering over in the distance a ways away. His head began to shift back and forth quickly as he searched for clues; he saw the tracks of a large locomotive on the ground next to the city. He saw a small house below the black cloud in the distance – even further than the city. Close to the ocean, perhaps.

“We’re right next to Gorom!” he shouted. “This is the Oceanic Confederacy. That makes sense – a portal would be here if all the world’s nations collaborated with The Collective. Yes, we must be nearby Gorom, but where is it? That looks like Lanford, not Gorom.”

“You don’t know that,” Curie said. “You don’t even live here, or on this planet for that matter. Wait for Ames to come back.”

“But that cloud of ash and dust is unmistakable. I remember choking on it, waking up to a mouthful of soot when I first gained consciousness in Talos. That’s Vanessa’s house.”

“You don’t mean…”

“No, not her. I haven’t seen her since you all moved away, though I suppose they’re back on Cydia? I hope you haven’t dragged them into all of this.”

“The only person I dragged into this was Vanessa. The kid… he was just a computer simulation. An empty fetch.”

“Smart fetch, then.”

“Yeah…” Curie said, feeling ashamed to have lied to Graham for so many years. “Listen, I should have told you about all of this sooner. Although my career troubles were real, it was completely untrustworthy of me to keep everything a secret from you. But I had reasons. I still do. I hope you understand that and can forgive me for hiding so much from you, because I really had no other choice.”

“Don’t think anything of it, Adam. Whatever you are, whatever your real name is – that doesn’t mean anything to me, as long as your intentions are still right. And so far, you’ve done nothing to convince me otherwise.”

Ames approached the group. “That’s Gorom,” she said, looking at Curie and then at Graham. The sight of Graham not playing the role of a slumped over unconscious mass of artificial skin and bones made her jump backward, exclaiming, “You’re all right! Thank goodness!” She immediately embraced him. Graham tried to push her off to tell her that everything was just fine, and that there were more important matters at hand, but she wouldn’t let go. Graham gave in until she decided it was time to release him.

“Ames, I think something happened to Gorom while I was unconscious. You have to tell me what’s going on – right now. What did you see when you visited?”

“The entire city is guarded by knights and tanks, and the inside is a complete wreck. It looks like there might have been a battle within. I saw several knights completely torn apart via methods no weapon from Talos could have executed, which makes me think Cydian forces are already invading. If that’s the case, we might be in a lot of trouble.”

Graham’s heart sank. “And… Marcus? We must return to the city, I have to see him!”

Ames shook her head and choked on her words. “James, Marcus was murdered.” At this Graham turned around and pounded his fist on the cliff, cursing the heavens.

“Goddammit, Wheat! Why did you tell me all of that?” he said, his fist pounding with pain from hitting the cliff. He massaged his hand with his other hand and faced the group, wondering the purpose of his old vision.

“Wheat? Adam, did we get another message from Wheat while I was gone?”

“No.”

“I did,” Graham said, causing the other two to look at him. “At least, I think I did. It might have just been a dream, it might be nothing, but he knew we would be nearby Gorom – he knew we’d end up in the Oceanic Confederacy! He told me to find Marcus, but Marcus is… he’s…” Graham stopped and bit his bottom lip, withholding any further words afraid to utter anything that would worsen the group’s situation. After a few seconds, staring at the tanks moving around in the distance, he released his lip. “We’re not safe here, are we?”

Nobody in the group knew. Nobody in the group responded – there wasn’t any time. Before Ames could state that they were safer on Talos than in City Square, a tank came rushing towards the group at an incredible speed. Hoping to avoid it, the three travelers made their way around the cliff side, but the tank followed them. When at last there was no escape, the hulking vehicle paused, and its top hatch opened up. A golden knight appeared from inside the tank. Ames pulled down a screen and keyboard, prepared to disarm his mu gun if the knight tried anything.

The knight, however, did nothing but speak. “Get in the vehicle,” was all he said.

Graham, Ames and Curie responded with a silent “no” – they stood there, staring at the knight, knowing that giving the man and his cohorts inside of the tank one wrong answer might result in their immediate elimination. And with no Collective on Talos to return to, Graham feared his consciousness and the consciousnesses of his allies would be forever lost if such were to occur.

“You either get in, or you die,” the knight said. “I’m not here to hurt you. You’re all obviously confused; you should not be outside alone. All cities are in lockdown right now. It is my job to gather up stragglers and transport them to a save place.”

Ames couldn’t stand the lies. “Safe?!” she shouted, moving up towards the vehicle. “This vehicle is save, but your kind are the last I’d ever expect to help normal, healthy citizens. You despicable monsters pride yourselves in maiming and hurting others in the name of your country. Your people killed my closest friends, and I can never forgive you. Tell me why I should go with you – I implore you to try and convince me!”

Overhead, and air ship suddenly began dipping towards the ground. Smoke rose high into the heavens and the zeppelin-like balloon of the air ship exploded in a burst of flame. The culprit of this destruction was a strange aircraft several hundred meters away. It was not apparent how, but by some means this distant aircraft had swiftly removed the air ship from the sky. The golden knight motioned his arm at the wreckage, and then pointed to the strange aircraft that had shot it down. “That is why,” he said.

“That looks like a Cydian aircraft,” Curie whispered to Ames and Graham. “If those are here, then that means The Collective has complete and unfettered access to Talos now.”

“We’ll get in,” Ames said immediately.  “But don’t try anything. I’ve beaten up my fair share of knights, and my opinions haven’t changed.”

All three climbed a ladder on the side of the tank and entered its hull. The hull was made of a thick black metal that reminded Graham of the metal used to create buildings on Cydia, but he thought that it must be impossible for Taconic Slate to be on Talos, unless Cydia had been sending it to Talos for its own purposes.

Or had Cydia made the tank? Suddenly, Graham wasn’t sure which faction was carrying him and his companions to safety. He began inspecting the walls nervously, hoping to confirm that it was simply black steel and not Taconic Slate. Not everything on Talos could have been built with Cydian technology, he thought – there must have been some part of the tank built off of original innovation from Talos’s great minds.

The pipes, perhaps, but those were made through metalworking techniques clearly stolen from Cydian descent.

All at once he snapped back – why was he worrying about this? The inside of the tank was bare and dark; there were several seats and a dashboard, but no screen or window to see where one was going. Ames pulled down a screen to see what was outside of the tank; somehow the knights did not need a virtual window to navigate around in this vehicle.

“You’ve sure become adept at using the glasses,” Graham said.

“I learned quite a bit during my short stay in The Collective, before Adam put me in my fetch. I even learned how to disarm Cydian weaponry – at least the mu gun. The knowledge just flowed into my mind; I didn’t want to see anyone hurt by those wretched devices anymore, and I suppose The Collective responded to that want by supplying me with the necessary information to execute an action to fulfill the want.”

“That sounds quite a bit like my experience.”

“Oh? What sort of information did The Collective give to you?”

“Ah, it was nothing special. Nothing useful like how to disarm a weapon, though I suppose with enough tinkering around I could figure that out on my own. In fact, forget I said anything. None of it was really important anyway.” Graham never mentioned that the information he received explained their entire predicament, and ultimately unveiled the nature of Cydia’s involvement with Talos. But Ames was obedient – it was not a minute later that she did indeed forget he’d said anything, and simply sat quietly.

Then, she broke the silence. “I saw someone in Gorom. Someone alive.”

One of the knights reacted to this: “Gorom is sealed off; everyone inside was either evacuated or killed. And how did you get inside anyway? But no, it’s impossible that anybody was still inside.”

“I saw her! A young blonde girl, running about. She turned a corner and disappeared. Don’t tell me I’m seeing things, because I’m definitely not seeing things. She was real, and she somehow escaped the city.” She turned to Graham, “You believe me, right? She was probably a Cydian, in a fetch or something.”

“I believe you, but I haven’t exactly been there for myself. Right now, I’d just like to know where we’re going. This doesn’t make much sense – the knights have never done anyone favors before.”

But Ames already had an inkling from the start – the knights were particularly sloppily dressed, and it seemed like one of the knights driving the tank wasn’t sure how the armor came on and off, and continually struggled with the metal gloves. Yet the tank ran smoothly – how did they know where it was going if they couldn’t even put their armor on straight? But Ames knew, either way, that these knights couldn’t possibly be real knights; no, they were conductors of the Underground Railroad, most certainly!

She reached for one knight’s helmet, planning to rip it off and expose him as the Railroad worker he was, but the man knocked her arm away harshly. “Don’t touch me, or I won’t hesitate to subdue you.”

“You’re weaponless.”

“I’m covered in Talos’s strongest metal,” the knight said, and immediately Graham thought of Taconic Slate. “You are not. Do not be afraid, we’re taking you all to a safe place where the enemy cannot harm you. You can remain there for the duration of the war; you will be provided with rations and clothes, and when this unholy mess is over you will be released.”

“And who decreed this,” Ames said, “President Davy? He’s not the type to give a damn about Alteria’s people.”

“President Davy was murdered several weeks ago,” the knight said, “by the alien forces. Since then we have pooled all of our resources into protecting the land and fighting off the enemy, and we are doing well. Victory is in sight after these long weeks of battle, and Alteria’s populace is stored in several safe locations, waiting for myself and the other brave knights to finish fighting this war. Victory is not far out of reach, I can assure you.”

The knight ceased talking and made a sharp turn, which tossed Ames, Curie and Graham about the cabin of the tank. Ames mind, however, had already been tossed by the news of President Davy’s death. Davy was one of the six – five, discounting President Ford – leaders that governed the different continents of Talos. They had been ruling as long as Ames could remember; thinking back to her childhood, she had seen their faces growing up, and their faces as an adult. And now she was watching Cydian operatives slowly exterminate each one. Who would be next?

They must have been a good distance away from Gorom when the vehicle finally stopped and the knights forced them out. “So much for being hospitable,” Ames said as she climbed out the top of the tank. Immediately she breathed in the thick fumes of factory smoke, and saw directly in front of her a walled community filled with people. The walls extended out farther than Ames could see, but she was quite sure it was circular and encapsulated and grandiose amount of people – more than the sum of the Gorom escapees and the populations of the surrounding towns combined.

The trio was unloaded and shoved into this temporary village. They were told by several knights guarding the area that it was a refugee camp, and that the area was under the full and constant protection of the knights of Alteria, even in the absence of their President. The last remaining organization forces at work on the continent had gathered together to build and sustain these camps so that “the hardworking citizens of Alteria could outlast the enemy forces.”

Inside the camp, business seemed to be as usual – life went on unchanged, at least as viewed by outsiders such as Graham. To him, it looked as though Gorom had not been destroyed, merely shifted over to a safer location away from the battlefields, or rebuilt with slightly cheaper materials. But they were the same roads, the same homes, everything the same except for the lack of stores. Right nearby the entrance was a building dedicated to rations distribution, though nobody was lined up to get his or her food for the day. In fact, the doors looked as though they’d never been opened. But they must have been – somebody had to eat.

Overhead they could still see air ships flying off into the distance, armed to the brim with steam guns and large missiles, prepared to unleash the full force of their might on the Cydian threat. Ames wondered if they were fighting on orders from a President, because she knew from Ford that none of them had any interest in protecting the planet or its people, or if the fighting was happening entirely on its own due to the people’s will to want to drive away a genuine threat to their existence.

But if that were so, the Oceanic Confederacy would have been overthrown long ago.

Curie voiced that he thought something was strange about this camp. “These people seem a bit too tired to be walking around. That, or their movements look calculated. Look at that woman, there – every step she takes is just as perfect as the one before it. It’s odd, though I’m sure my suspicions aren’t grounded at all.”

Ames couldn’t see why so many people had agreed to come here. Even if it was safe from Cydian attack, it was not safe from the knights. The entire area could have been an extermination camp for all anybody knew – or didn’t know, God forbid – and Ames was not prepared to rescue more citizens, watch more citizens die. She had never forgiven herself for Wheat.

As they walked around, Curie became more suspicious of the camp’s validity. The population density declined significantly, and eventually there were no people at all. The size of the camp, apparently, was not dependant at all on how many people were being brought into it. It was much larger than the population it accommodated.

They traveled back to a more populated area and began asking people where they were meant to sleep, but nobody would respond to their questions – nobody spoke. Graham grabbed the arm of one man, but the man shrugged it off and grunted, then continued walking along the road. Graham tried asking another citizen, but he was again shrugged off. Nobody would speak with them. In time, Graham wasn’t sure if anybody even knew how to speak. Even so, he pressed onward, hoping to find somebody with some knowledge of how to live around the camp.

Curie was having similar luck, and he was beginning to know why. “James, Jessica, this is a little boy.” Holding onto his arm was a harmless little child whose wide eyes looked up at Ames, and then at Graham. They were filled with innocence, and Graham was filled with sorrow for the young lad imprisoned in this refugee camp, wasting his childhood sitting out a war.

Suddenly, the boy screamed. Curie hand gripped the boy’s arm and swung him in a circle high above his head, gathering force that he used to harshly bash the young lad onto the road below. “What the hell are you doing?” Graham said, reaching for Curie to try and stop him – but the deed was done. The boy had already hit the ground hard when Graham reached Curie. “You’ve probably killed the kid!”

Curie paused and looked at the child on the ground in front of him, and then at Graham, rolling his eyes. “Are you so sure? Look for yourself.”

The child made no more noises; his body simply moved, picked itself up, and walked away, without another word.

“H— he’s not real…”

“Surprisingly, he’s the same model that I used for my son on Earth. Well, not the same model – this one is decidedly dumber. I’m inclined to believe that this entire camp is filled with artificial bodies, simply wandering without purpose. That’s why nobody is gathering rations; these bots aren’t ever going to eat anything.”

“Then what happened to the real people?”

Providence would have Graham’s question answered – from afar, an unknown voice yelled, “They’re gone!” A man was running along the road, attempting to catch up with the trio. He looked as if he’d been following them throughout the camp; he was significantly dusty and dirty, and his disheveled blonde hair signified a man who had been working tirelessly all day long, outside of the stalking. “Jessica, is that you? I thought for sure Ford had killed you! This is incredible, I can’t believe it!”

“Excuse me?” Ames said, stepping back from the strange man, who was trying to embrace her.

“Oh, my sincerest apologies, I haven’t even introduced myself. Or should I say re-introduce? Ah, either way, it’s James Wheat you’re talking to, in the flesh. Or as close to flesh as it gets around here.”

“That’s impossible, get away from me!” Ames said. “James Wheat was a dear, dear friend of mine – don’t you dare mock his name by impersonating him. He’s hardly even a man anymore, I don’t see how you could have the nerve to try.”

“Who’s this Wheat fellow?” Curie asked.

“I was the conductor of Station A of—”

“Shut up!” Ames shouted, and stepped in front of the man so as to block him from everyone else’s view. “He was the conductor of Station A of the Underground Railroad, and was captured and very nearly killed by President Ford and the knights of Lanford. Therefore, it’s impossible that this impostor is really James Wheat. He was mutilated into a mechanical abomination. His body was completely destroyed. And that,” she stepped away from the man’s body, “is not even what his body used to look like. They’re mocking us with this camp. The Alterian administration clearly knows who we are and what we’re up to—”

“Stop it, Jessica,” Curie said. “Don’t be so paranoid – let the man speak his case. If he has one, that is. I’m interested in hearing about it.”

Word Count: 103,396

Graham couldn’t believe that the bullet had gone through the scientist’s fetch. The man had been bluffing in hopes Curie wouldn’t shoot him!

The room was silent now, but not for long – all three travelers knew that within moments there would be more people seeking out their location, and it was only a matter of time before all of them were captured and forced into The Collective. To this effect, it was their immediate decision to flee City Square.

“But what about Maiya?” Graham asked before they left.

“She is gone, undoubtedly merged with The Collective completely after this long. Unless she’s found her way into a fetch, which I doubt, then there’s nothing any of us can do. We must go.”

Graham smiled. “You’re not much different from the Adam I used to know after all.”

“I’m still a terrible author. I don’t know why I picked that as my profession! Writing was truly never my calling,” he said, and ran towards the light elevator.

“Wait!” Ames said. “Don’t go anywhere just yet. I have a feeling they’ll have guards stationed at the ground level. We should go elsewhere – any other way out of here is better than ground level. I know we can’t just jump out the building, but—”

“Talos,” Graham said.

“What?”

“We can go to Talos. The shipments on the lowest floors are going somewhere, because they sure as hell aren’t staying in City Square. We hitch a ride on a few of the containers through a portal to Talos and we’re home free.”

“That’s crazy. What if we don’t survive the trip? Last time we were both knocked out – I want to go home to Talos just as much as you’d like to go home to Earth, but risking our lives to go back to a dangerous place is madness. We should solve the shipping problem and stop the containers from going through the portal, if anything. That’s what we came here to do.”

“But you heard the man. Even if we stop the shipments, Talos has enough materials and knowledge to do it all alone. It’s beyond our control now, Jess. If there’s any hope of saving Talos, we’d need to convince the world leaders not to destroy it, and then subsequently convince The Collective that it doesn’t need to eat the damned planet to stay alive. Jessica, he said Cydian forces are already in Talos – there’s probably going to be a war. I’m sure not everybody on Talos is going to be like Ford and run away. We need to get people out of there.”

“There aren’t enough portals on Talos to do such a thing.”

Graham knew Ames was right, and could offer no solution. He initially thought that they could gather several corpus locks from the building and take them to Talos with him, but The Collective had shown him that they were all broken with the exception of the much larger shipping porta