"How about you look?" Jenn encourages.

Ughhhh that requires sitting up. Sitting up feels like a chore.

She does so.

Slowly and groggily, and sort of just sits there for a few moments before taking the backpack off. It clings to her shirt with a wet sound, and takes forever to detach.

She does manage to get it in front of her, then sort of just pauses, befuddled, before opening the flap and digging past the office junk. 

There's a large square of tinfoil and a jello bag with a little disk in the middle. She hands the tinfoil to Jenn - maybe she'll know what to make of it - and holds the jello bag up. Food sounds nice but that doesn't look appetizing at all, it's all watery....

Jenn immediately starts unfolding the tinfoil. "Space blanket," she says. "Better than nothing."

Maybe Jenn knows what the jello is for, too? She'll pass it over.

"The disks inside. Need to...snap them. They're Heat packs."

"Ohhhh."

She can't really figure out how to do that so she wiggles them a bunch. Then the gel starts to turn into tiny little crystals, spreading out from the center.

It's warm, probably.

Also her fingers hurt now.

"Uhhh there's some more..."

Jenn's managed to get the space blanket under her now. "Conserve some," she instructs. "But get a couple and come over here. There's only one blanket, we're going to have to share."

Ugh Jenn's being so bossy.

Still, Bina gets out a big one and two more small ones, then wiggles over.

Jenn carefully wraps her arms and the blanket around Bina. "I'm sorry, but you look like you might be hypothermic, so, we're going to rest for a while until you're warmer."

"Ughhhh," she mumbles, but does, eventually, start to drift off, until - "Wait, it's not safe here..."

"I know. But- How're your legs holding up? Do you really think you can walk?"

"Yesssss..... No."

"Yeah, me neither. So. We're gonna get some rest right now, alright?"

"......Okay."

She settles, and, eventually, drifts off to sleep.

Jenn hugs her closer, and settles in to a light doze - she's still aware of their surroundings, but sleep will help.

Ant?! Ant!! You bastard, you fucking- Ant!

Bina's fifteen now.

She's got her hair in pigtails - which feels kind of little kid-ish, but it's Lash's birthday and Lash likes messing with people's hair. She's wearing a green glove because she doesn't want to hurt her friends. She used to think that if she took her bandages glove off the botfly would crawl out, but it's not like that, not really, it's already everywhere - or at least the broken places. It's in all her places now, too.

Anyways. She's nervous right now.

They're never caught, but she doesn't think she, Lash, and Sam should be doing what they are now. 

It all started half an hour ago, after the movie, when Lash said her parents never do it.

Which is so gross to even think about.

Sam ran off into Lash's parents bedroom, to look through their drawers, and finds some fluffy pink handcuffs. She goes on and on and on like they're somehow embarrassing or weird or - 

Bina doesn't get it.

Well, she knows this whole thing's about sex stuff. Which is invasive and gross.

But she doesn't get what fluffy pink handcuffs have to do with anything.

Ant could probably fill her in, but Ant is pretty sure ey isn't supposed to be here right now, and isn't sure what talking will do to this memory - it feels different. There's other people here.

"I think they can't hear you, you weren't here, but changing things is bad..." Bina whispers. It's later. Sam's trying to start the factory story, and has overridden Bina's objections. Bina accidentally handcuffs herself to Lash.

Ant isn't sure whether to hiss at Sam or grin at Bina (Bina's being adorable, and Ant can spot people with crushes a mile off...or could? It's a little hard to figure out the right tense right now.)

Ey is definitely not happy that Sam's doing something that clearly makes Bina uncomfortable though.

In the story Sam and Bina are at summer camp. They go to explore an abandoned bakery where supposedly someone burned a bunch of people alive. (Bina corrects it a lot in her head; she'd been pressured by Sam into going, is the main difference.) It's factory-like - wrong and out of place, not fitting with its surroundings. Unfinished.

Like it was waiting.

She wants to stop Sam from telling the story. Something bad will happen if she doesn't. But she can't.

Because she didn't doesn't won't.

(She's fifteen and at a sleepover with her friends.)

(She's thirteen and in a building where no building should be.)

(She's twenty and asleep, held by a stranger.)

(She's twenty-one and speaking to a dead woman.)

Ant is definitely not happy with Sam. (But there's something else ey isn't happy with as well...)

(...And there is something else in this building with them...)

There's a path to the factory. (They didn't question it at the time.)

Sam doesn't say, but Bina notes that the building doesn't creak as they explore it. There's no mice or rats or bugs. No animal droppings on the floors. No raccoons or squirrels. Odd, for an old building.

But she thinks she hears voices. Two, arguing.

(Something flickers in the light as she swings the flashlight beam down a hallway.)

(In the apartment there's sounds outside the door, but she's ignoring them because they weren't there last time and the door will stay closed until two in the morning when Lash's mom pokes her head in.)

The voices are in French, she discovers as they get closer. She doesn't understand French.

(She does now, and what she hears is:

"- realize what you've done? How much entropy have you generated by moving us here?"

"I had to. You went and got yourself laminated all over the walls here. I couldn't filter out your pattern from the rest of this place, there's too much contamination. I had to bring the whole damned factory."

"You know that there will be consequences for doing this, oui? Dire consequences. One cannot simply move several million tons of brick around willy nilly and expect nothing to come of it."

"I am well aware of the situation, thank you. I have an anchor here, and I've forward shifted any resulting temporal shadows out of this iteration."

"You realize that this is not a solution. This is just putting off the problem for another day?"

"Even if there are temporal shadows, the damage to my own timeline would have to be far more severe than it is now for this to cause any serious danger. Even if there are another six or seven loops there won't be any catastrophic damage. I know what I'm doing."

"Oh dear, please tell me that you are not mucking with your own timeline again. This is very dangerous. I warned you not to do it."

"What are you talking about? You never warned me about anything."

"Maybe it wasn't this copy of you who got my warning. Which one are you anyways? I do not think I have met this you."

"I am the fourth one, I think."

"Ah, so that means this mess is all your fault then.")

Two woman. One with a vaguely Parisian accent.

One like her own voice when she's heard it in recordings. But old and tired and so, so worn.

("- metaphor, that's what's important. That's what you still don't understand."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"You said it yourself! This is all about perception, right?"

"Yes, but I meant that on a quantum level. You're talking about some kind of airy psychology nonsense."

"It's not nonsense. It's important. Look, what do you see, when you look into a crack?"

"Crack? You mean a schism? One of the weak points?"

"Yes, yes, whatever you call them."

"I see the waves, broken and frayed wave-forms, like floating piano wires, just like you do. What are you -"

"Ah, but I don't see them that way. To me, at first at least, they looked like broken panes of glass.")

They start arguing about whether to approach the French woman - 

The Sam in the story pauses, well into their argument, after they'd gotten past when the officer had interrupted them - 

"Don't you think we should have been interrupted by the police at this point?" past Sam asks.

Except it isn't the police who are there. Not this time.