"It needs to be a specific planet, and you need to build the thing on a separate planet - and not this one - so it'll have to go through a gate. The target planet has unknown atmospheric conditions and other features as of right now, but it's an alternate Earth so it has a known size and so on. It is in fact very important that it not know what hit it. If there is a way to go from the opening of the gate to the destruction of the planet in no time flat, I want that."

"It'll be on a timer. Open the gate right as it's about to go off, chuck it through, run very fast. Time delay is limited only by your sense of self-preservation."

"The to-be-destroyed planet does not currently have a gate to it. They take varying amounts of time to settle under non-flat conditions and there is a risk that the reason I want the planet destroyed will make a nuisance of itself as soon as the gate settles. How do your timers interact with effects that deal directly with time?"

"Never been tried, I wasn't exactly volunteering for that kind of thing while on the run. Got to be time from the machine's point of view, though."

"I have a thing that stops time. Do your timers all work the same way, could we engineer a small test?"

"Sure. Go get the thing, I'll have a timer run down in thirty-five." She runs back to the site of the explosion.

Promise goes and gets the thing from where it's preserving her spare tech. String Theory is at least not allowed to make any very large explosions.

"Just in time. Quick, turn it on." The mass of wires doesn't look like anything in particular, but it probably does something that might not be "explode."

Promise puts the time-stopper in place and switches it on.

"Brilliant. You plus one of these plus an approximately unlimited supply of whatever you need, on a habitable deserted Earth, and you can make something that can fall through a gate as soon as the gate is ready and wreck a different Earth on the other side?"

"The planet itself is actually incidental. There is something on it I want dead. I would like to do as much damage to that thing as possible."

"And the way you picked of killing the thing was to destroy the planet it's standing on? Not that I'm complaining, mind."

"It is very big and needs to be very dead and there is nothing else on its planet."

"Give me a week. I can do it in less, but something tells me a backfire would be extra bad this time."

"Extremely bad. Although that is also why you're working on an even more uninhabited planet. You can't start right now, we have to get you where you're going first, but when there's a gate there I'll let you know. If you have a preliminary requisition list email it to me."

"That works too. Thank you," Promise says wryly. "String Theory, you may go with her and build the described device within described parameters."

String Theory follows Contessa through the door, looking happier than most people ever are.

She's easily findable in Hawthorn, chatting with some of the least repulsive Kept.

"Quick question," Promise says. "A private one."

"Sure. What's up?" Noelle leaves and approaches Promise.

"First of all, no is an acceptable answer. But: something extremely large and resource-intensive is coming up. It might disappear quietly, it might turn out not to require anyone in particular, it might not be an issue - but - if it is the case that a particular person's power is essential for something very big and very important, are you potentially willing to make backup copies?"