Rete sends Dragon a long email. History of conversation with Graph Paper; chain of reasoning; its analysis of the missing electronic trail.

Dragon investigates for thirty minutes on her own and dispatches a drone to Baltimore.

"Dragon came back," says Rete.

"- what - she - is she dropping off a -"

"The unit does not look self-destructible."

"Fëanáro Dragon came back -"

Mutters something in Quenya. 

"Rete make sure -"

A bot goes out to the drone.

It comes back.

"The air pocket version explained our evidence to her and she has been convinced on her own recognizance that you were incorrectly placed here. She has a location in Hudson Bay to offer temporarily and will interface with the Protectorate."

"Download version control onto drive two - Fëanáro we're getting out we're going to Canada come on get up -"

Something else in Quenya. Doesn't sound cooperative.

"Oh come on. Rete did you read the thesis -"

Rete attempts to translate into Quenya.

"Mmmhff."

She hauls on his arm. "We are going to Canada it is fuckoff huge there come on!"

He can stand up with enough leaning-on-her.

She hauls him and drive #2 to the drone.

"I am so sorry," says Dragon quietly, zooming into the air.

Yeah he still doesn't seem to be paying much attention.

The drone goes very fast.

It lets out onto an island.

"Canadian soil is safer than American for the time being. Is this enough space?"

"Dunno how the water affects it - Fëanáro -"

"Lorica," he says agreeably. "Did the Valar come?"

"No, Dad got the Rete out of the air pocket and it talked sense into Dragon, this is some island of hers, is it good enough?"

He blinks slowly. 

"Dragon. Good dragon. All the humans still the worst. 'Cept you. Love you. If island small could we go somewhere else?"

"I'm assuming she could put us down elsewhere it just wouldn't be as safe?"

"I could bring you to my Vancouver site or drop you off in the middle of nowhere in Nunavut if you prefer but I think this will be more comfortable."

"Then's'good yeah. Lorica."

Lorica hugs him, hard.

"Necklace off?"

She unclips it from his neck for him.

And he falls asleep.

"This island got Internet?"

"Of course."

"Good."

She loads up Baltimore Rete's version control file so the one currently loose on the Internet can integrate it. She determines that there are no motile Rete chassis left, her suit's gone, Dad's suit is gone, the house in the Rockies is gone, her money is still mostly there held in trust by her dad but she's defaulted on her loans so that took most of it back again... she busies herself with that until she falls asleep too, curled up next to Fëanáro.

He wakes up first. He feels terrible - everything is sore, everything hurts to move, his head is cloudy, the eidetic memory necklace isn't really clearing up the agony and confusion that was the last several months. 

He opens his eyes and looks at the stars. You can see more of them out here. They're beautiful. He should ask Varda why you can't see the stars in Valinor. 

He breathes. 

There's tissue damage from poor circulation, his blood pressure having swung around wildly and his heart having pumped too fast to serve its real purpose. Some of it is starting to repair itself. Lots of it is not. He doesn't expect it'll kill him but he's not sure he could walk unaided. He can turn his nerves off, though. It is probably not a good idea. He does it anyway. 

Not being in pain is an extraordinary sensation. 

He tries revisiting the memories. They're unpleasant, but at least now they're possible to parse. He cringes at the memory of telling Lorica she's not his mother. He regulates his heart rate down to something slow and comforting. He breathes.

"Bauble," says a sleeping Lorica. "Tree."

Snuggle.

"Sofa. Soap. Piping plover. Tangeraaaaaah," she yawns awake.

"Hi."

"Hi. You okay?"

"Don't know enough to guess really. I should maybe read some medical textbooks, figure out how much of the internal damage is recoverable - or we could find a cape who can do it -"

"Maybe Miracle Max'd help. Once things are - cleared up."

"How sure are we that things can be, ah, cleared up."

"...not. I think Dragon can protect us in Canada. Less sure about elsewhere."

"Well. If we've got Dragon we can do the rest ourselves. Take down the Endbringers and the Protectorate if we have to."

"Mm."

"It would be really nice not to have to. - I disabled half my nervous system because everything hurt, I will totally fail to notice if I'm on fire or something. Just so you know."

"Well, uh, don't play with matches. Can you put it back -"

"Yeah. Probably should, just - hurts too much to think clearly."

"Will human painkillers work okay?"

" - probably? I could at least see what they're doing and make them stop if it's something unhelpful."

"Rete, tell Dragon what you've got on his pharmacological reactions, get her to make a drugstore run."

"Yes," says Rete.

"You okay? My memory's really spotty for the last month."

"I'm okay."

"Was thinking I should've just killed myself when it got bad and not put you through - that - but good thing I didn't."

"Yeah. I'm glad you're alive."

"'m tired of being scared."

She hugs him.

Hug. 

He fixes his nerves and flinches.

A Dragon drone brings him assorted painkillers.

Then he can take them and see what they do and try to copy it. Which is complicated by the fact that one thing they do is make him loopy.

He spends the rest of the day working on that.

Lorica sits with him and works on turning a couple of Dragon's excess bots into Rete extensions. She writes a message to her dad. She eats. Dragon has a whole little hotely thing set up for human guests on this island and she can take a hot shower, which is amazing.

Ooooh. If he can figure out how to walk unaided he will also go take a hot shower. 

....maybe tomorrow.

Lorica emerges much refreshed with her hair in a towel wearing Dragon-provided clothes.

He is sitting up and keeping the opiate effects except the one where his brain readjusts itself to expect them all the time and the thing where he's loopy. It took some practice and some reading on the internet. "I think I should get some kind of assisted mobility device. Most of what's still wrong I haven't the faintest idea how to fix and meddling with my brain chemistry sort of takes all the attention I have for this."

"Like a cane or like a tinker suit or what?"

"Tinker suits're more maintenance, what do non-capes do in situations where capes'd have a tinker suit -"

"Wheelchair?"

"I'll try that."

Nod. "Manual or electric?"

"Whatever's easier. And less expensive, I suppose."

"Manual's cheaper but you need your arms working, are your arms working?"

Flop flop - "everything's working, just badly."

"I think pushing a chair is kinda laborious."

"Maybe give me two weeks reading about tissue damage and seeing how much I can do, and if I can't get much of anywhere then we can get an electric one?"

"Sure. I'm not totally sure they won't all have the microwave problem though."

"I can live with an opinionated wheelchair."

She giggles.

"I'm really glad you're okay."

"I'm glad you're okay too - I was worried on the flight here that you were so out of it you couldn't even register that we weren't stuck any more -"

"Could tell something was different, and then that we were flying."

Hug.

Hug. Slightly limp floppy hug.

"I feel like 'while you are on opiates and considering wheelchair acquisition' is a really inauspicious time to kiss you but I wish to register that I considered it."

- giggle. "I know for sure I like you when I'm sober."

"You recently turned half your nervous system off, I want you to fully appreciate it when I kiss you."

Snort. "Okay. I love you."

Two weeks' work gets him able to mostly replicate the desirable effects of a cocktail of pain medication without the pain medication. Doesn't do much for the tissue damage; reading about it only helps so far because even humans only know so much about medicine and human circulation injuries look a little different anyway. He drags a plastic chair into the shower once it's obvious that he's not going to be standing any time soon. He can't braid his hair afterwards; he ties it up in an ugly twist and is vaguely self-conscious. 

He smiles at Lorica constantly.

"Do you want me to fix your hair or would that be weird. - Do you want Rete to fix your hair."

"We haven't even kissed yet! - Rete could try that'd be less weird."

"I am not well-calibrated on how big a deal braiding your hair is!"

Rete can put his hair into a snug and tidy braid with one of its converted bots.

"There're hairstyles that are only for married people because you can't do them yourself and you'd never go around with hair that had been braided by someone else while not married."

"What do kids do?"

"Learn pretty young, use clips and so on while they haven't the dexterity. - though parents helping kids isn't the same as adults who like each other."

"Fair enough."

"I'm going to get my fingers back first thing - if nothing else there's old-fashioned physical therapy - not being able to walk is only mildly annoying but not being able to type quickly is very annoying."

"Rete can do voice recognition or gaze tracking."

"...I should teach Rete good enough Quenya I can talk to it and still have some privacy."

"It knows the contents of the thesis but it's thin on vocab, go nuts. Be advised that it can't lock me out so I can get anything I really wanna get."

"I really cannot imagine you trying to read my notes for a bad reason."

"I won't."

So he teaches Rete Quenya and gets little elastics to stretch between his fingers and do boring finger-exercises and he looks back over his notes on mortality and has some ideas and makes some progress. And he writes a detailed account for an audience at home of Earth and humans and how they are mostly terrible but there is one and how it would be a failure of the essential Noldorin virtues to go try and fix them even though wow do they really really suck.

Lorica rebuilds her helmet and the rest of her suit. She's partway through when her dad visits.

There are hugs.

"Thank you."

"Shoulda thought of it sooner."

"If we'd actually been Simurghed it'd have been bad.'

"I think Rete would've like. Sent us stuff better than Coke but not gotten us out, if we were."

Nod.

"How's convincing the Protectorate going?"

"We're letting Dragon do that part. Carefully."

"Is Dragon even sure they're wrong as opposed to doing a deliberate coverup?"

"No. Thus carefully. She's digging."

"What's the plan if they did know the truth?"

"Depends how widespread that is."

"- yeah, fair enough."

"They still might not know. Dragon didn't. She thinks the Simurgh erased some shit and just didn't get Rete's backups - the Protectorate got them, 'cause they're mine, but they didn't know about all of them."

"The Simurgh can just...erase things?"

"Apparently."

"Ugh. - I suppose even if it was a mistake there's not much point getting hopes up for an apology."

"Wouldn't count on it."

He weakly taps his fingers on his thigh. "At least Dragon's all right."

"Yeah, if I had to pick exactly one person to believe we were safe it'd be Dragon."

"With Dragon we don't technically need anyone else." Sigh.

Sigh! She hugs her dad again.

"Woulda brought you your stuff but they didn't take anything outta the house."

"I also don't suppose we'll be compensated for that."

"Maybe if they're embarrassed and think they can shut us up."

"I guess the Eidolon thing would be horrible for morale."

"Disastrous. Triumvirate's real popular. I had an Eidolon lunchbox."

" - I want to stop being bitter and get back to work but while we're still in limbo it's hard."

"Isn't there stuff that would help no matter what?"

"Should I be presuming we still have to fight the Endbringers?"

"I don't know. Teach Dragon the glass reinforcing spell?"

"Sure, I can do that. I think you could build on that to get the invulnerability thing I want but the glass one's so hacky I might actually just start from scratch."

"It's still good for glass."

"It's - the enchantment equivalent of a microwave."

"It has a potato setting and can't detect potatoes?"

"It does all the things it strictly needs to do but is viscerally kludgy and ugly and every time I interact with it I am tempted to spend an exorbitant amount of time ripping it apart to do better."

"My microwave problem is the potato setting thing."

"Then why not just buy a microwave without a potato setting?"

"That's just an example. Microwaves can be set in various ways and don't know how to choose between them on their own. Some simple toasters are okay, microwaves basically never."

"You're adorable."

Hmm.

"I've been warned that my wheelchair when it arrives will need to have a mind of its own."

"I can hook it into Rete if you don't want to go around rotaries nine times."

"It might cease to be as funny."

"Rete is very well behaved and has no inordinate fondness for rotaries."

"Then I would be delighted to have a Rete-operated wheelchair."

"And you shall."

It comes a few days later! It is way more convenient than trying to temporarily change the pain med balance so he can tolerably walk a few steps. 

Lorica has at it. She can do a coat of paint, too, and swap out the soft bits with upholstery; it's not very pretty.

He appreciates it.

"You don't think it needs rhinestones? Glitter? A reproduction of 'Starry Night'?"

"I could enchant it to glow dramatically but I think there might have been other things we planned to use our time for!"

"This is true! If you want it to glow just festoon it with LEDs."

"I think I'll pass." He sits down. The chair does a graceful twirl. 

"I think I am in a condition to properly appreciate it if you kiss me."

"...gosh."

They are not far off from being of a height when he's sitting down. She leans forward and kisses him.

...eventually she giggles. "Well, were you right?"

"Mmmhmmm!"

Good. She kisses him again.

That sounds great.

"I feel like this might be easier if I were sitting in your lap."

"Then I suppose you should sit in my lap."

Here she is in his lap. Kissing him.

Kiss!

"It just occurred to me that I think you don't know my name."

"Your civilian name? I don't."

"That's weird. Isabella Marie Swan. People called me 'Bella' but I think it's been more than a year now since anyone but my parents did."

"Do you prefer Bella? Isabella's more natural to me - Quenya names tend longer -"

"Lorica's fine, actually, I picked it to sound namey and I like it a lot. I always introduced myself as Bella, I used to prefer it pretty firmly but I don't really care between the two at this point."

Lean. Kiss. "I was very happy you were pretty, the first time I saw your face. I couldn't figure out why and I thought it was probably just because more ambient pretty things in the environment are good."

"...that's ridiculous." Kiss.

"I had all these explanations - and then I was waiting for you to wake up in Baltimore and it was like - oh -"

"There were more explanations?"

"When you said no cape should talk to anyone they didn't really unreservedly like talking to - and you were still talking to me - I was wildly disproportionately pleased and I decided it was because if you liked me we'd have a better chance of clearing up technical miscommunications -"

"You're adorable. I am very glad you wound up poking me again after the first time Rete took over."

Giggle. Kiss. "I was really tired of the eating leaves argument but I didn't mean to never speak to you again over it."

Kiss! "It was on your page, I didn't have other examples to hand."

"I think the thing I was actually tired of was being reminded that if I had patience and respect for authority and the energy to put into boring interactions with stupid people then I would have the resources I needed to save the world - and that I hadn't any of those, and couldn't even invent a bot to have them for me -"

Hug.

Hug. 

"So is this the part where you help me get calibrated on where relative to kissing anything to do with hair, uh, is?"

"We might possibly have to discover that by experimentation, I, uh, got spirited to another dimension in a magical accident before I was old enough for Elf sex ed. Also we might not have invented it yet."

"...invented what, sex ed? Sounds like a problem. I guess less of one depending on how applicable some of the psychometabolism stuff is and how typically, um, fluffy, Elves are personalitywise."

"...I don't follow. We can't have children by accident, if that's what you mean."

"Humans also have sexually transmitted diseases and a nonzero rate of ever raping each other, which are things that sex ed covers. More the first than the second. By a lot. I'm not sure off the top of my head if my health teacher actually mentioned the second thing, it was more anatomy diagrams and banana-based prophylactic demos and How About You Wait Until You Are Not In High School To Do More Than Hold Hands Please."

"There was a case by Cuivienen of someone forcibly marrying someone. It was horrible. I forget how they handled it. What I would presumably have been told at some point is what is definitely safe to do without getting married."

"...back up a bit?"

" - our marriage is the magical soul bond thing, not paperwork, right."

"I remember that part, yes."

" - how were you imagining the magic soul bonds picked their moment."

"I was imagining the parties involved were like, 'let's have a magic soul bond', 'okay', insert magical probably telepathic rigmarole of some kind here? Is it not that."

"That would be a really sensible way of doing it. I will suggest it to Eru. But no, it's automatic. When you have sex but I don't actually know what specifically counts."

"Uh."

"Means we shouldn't take any chances, I know."

"Like, the magic soul bond might not work on humans at all, let alone me, but. Like. Wow. This seems like it would make it hard to filter for compatibility except by having really awkward conversations and excellent foresight."

"Aren't there lots of human societies that don't have premarital sex?"

"Yes, mostly as a not-quite-vestigial-yet patch for the accidental pregnancy and disease transmission things. And with a significant rate of doing it anyway. But like, a lot of human societies make do with arranged marriages or a total ban on divorce for any reason or - whatever, that doesn't make those things necessarily conducive to good results on all the axes I care about?"

" - yeah, I might've been assuming that since it works for Elves and exists for humans it also works for humans when that's, uh, not how human institutions demonstrably work out."

"You did know for a fact kissing doesn't do it, right?"

"Yeah of course. Kissing definitely doesn't do it, hair petting doesn't do it but is disrecommended lest you get carried away. I wouldn't risk it by accident - even though I actually expect your opacity to screen it out -"

"It seems unlikely that it wouldn't, since it handles the necklaces and osanwë fine, but still. Bad to be wrong. What in the world does hair petting do that it can cause being carried away."

"- presumably the same thing as kissing but moreso?"

"I am tempted to find out and presumably in this situation getting carried away can't be mutual but maybe not right now."

Kiss. "Mmmhmm."

Kisses are good.

Lorica is good!!

And eventually they will get back to work.

"I have concluded with 97% confidence that the Triumvirate and Director Costa-Brown were the only Protectorate or PRT members aware of the circumstances in detail, and to 56% confidence that they at least assign most of their probability weight to the hypothesis that the two of you are Simurgh-compromised."

"56% is not super confident."

"It is not. I am not a mindreader and I'm unwilling to take measures that would compromise their secret identities even if I were in general willing to read their mail."

"I can read their minds and don't really mind doing so."

"I can turn over a passenger drone to Rete in case you'd prefer that."

"Can it be retrofitted so my wheelchair works with it -"

"All my passenger vehicles are accessible."

"Then yes, I'd like Rete to pilot if you don't mind."

"I don't blame you."

Rete assumes control of a ship.

He goes to Los Angeles. He asks to land once, over Kansas, and gets out and tramples a little bit of corn and then gets back in.

Rete is perfectly obliging.

And then Los Angeles. He looks for Alexandria.

She's not there when he arrives.

The city's a bit of a mess. Rebuilding, though. Optimistic property buyers hoping the Endbringers won't strike the same place twice. He sits and works and waits for her to come back.

It's about three hours later when he can notice her coming from the northeast.

Thinking -

That there's a meeting with the local Director tomorrow morning, and she needs to review what they're going to do about a particularly misbehaving Ward, and her patrol is in two hours, and she has a ton of paperwork to do, and isn't it great that she doesn't need to sleep because she'd never finish it in time if she did—

If she doesn't think about it in the next day he'll email Dragon, ask for her to get a message that'd make her think about it.

Her day is rather incredibly busy. She thinks about lots of things all the time, way more and faster than anyone he's ever read—probably a cognitive power, there, with an eidetic memory to boot—and even thinks about the Endbringers three times, but those two weird kids who seem to think Eidolon made the giant monsters don't show up.

What does become obvious fourteen hours in is that Alexandria's secret identity is Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown.

- wow. 

The PRT is supposed to be all non-parahumans. So normal people can make the rules. It's not a policy he's particularly invested in - humans are incompetent whether capes or not - but it'd be a PR disaster. Not on the scale of Eidolon causing the Endbringers but still. 

He writes Lorica. 

He asks Dragon for a on-topic email.

Dragon writes that she found some additional Rete vestiges but cleaned them right up, just keeping you posted.

Alexandria replies to it thanking Dragon for all her efforts, and mentally sighs about the whole deal. Not many parahumans are immune to the Simurgh, and few others looked as thoroughly so as that Lorica kid, but of course that was just a ploy by the Endbringer, it's the kind of obvious-in-hindsight thing she often spends her leisure time kicking herself about.

Next email...

- okay.

He writes Dragon and Lorica. 

Alexandria (/Director Costa-Brown, I guess that's sketchy but honestly at this point I have very low expectations and political intrigue hardly cuts it) didn't know. Thinks the Simurgh set up 'someone looking immune to the Simurgh' and that this was very clever.

Well. It would have been. (I guess now we can blackmail her if we want?) If she's also Costa-Brown I would expect her to know if any of them did.

Costa-Brown and a high-rated Thinker. I do expect she'd know. Copied Dragon also. 

Alexandria is not on record as being able to do without sleep.

Clever. I think I'd try for different time zones if it were me but maybe she was already U.S.-based in both identities. 

Wonder if Legend and Eidolon know that.

Seems like if you worked with her routinely in both identities it'd be hard to miss. Unlikely they've never seen her unmasked, for instance.

They might not. Eidolon could Thinker something and Legend has super vision though, they probably know.

And they probably all bought their powers. Though we don't know how tight-knit the power-buying organization is.

There are too many buyers for them to be very tight but if they keep anyone in their pocket those would be them.

What's our plan now that we know they're, uh, only involved in different and less dangerous conspiracies?

They might buy the story that the Rete vestige Dragon just "cleaned up" contained the information that actually convinced her.

And then they ask Dragon to fetch us out of Baltimore? Worth a try.

And she's like "I did it thirty-five minutes ago", yeah.

Sure, worth a try. 

Dragon sends them a draft. It has bullet points.

He reaches home. "I vaguely expect this just results in them sending us back somehow but I don't have a reason to expect that beyond that - trying to follow the rules always works that way."

Lorica hugs him. "They don't know she owns this island."

Hug.

"You can stay with me and be in my shadow."

"It's a good thing I like your company." Squeeze. 

Looks good, go ahead and send it.

And Dragon does.

"So whenever hair things happen are there, like, things that I should not do that would just be transparently obvious to Elves but I'm not one so I dunno?"

"I mean, don't pull it out? Do humans do that?"

"...not on purpose? Uh, not head hair, people get rid of hair elsewhere all kindsa ways. I don't know how stuck it is, human hair comes out pretty easily, accumulates on hairbrushes."

"We don't typically lose it by brushing. I think the fashions around hair elsewhere vary. By climate and popular local clothing style and things like that. Elves don't have facial hair. I could probably do it on purpose if I really wanted to."

"I do not especially think you need a beard."

"I can't say I've particularly been tempted."

She laughs and kisses his chin.

He loves her so much.

Kisses! Kisses and snuggling and maybe if she has her hands behind his neck she does not scrupulously avoid a thumb brushing the edge of his hairline.

Then he will wriggle and gasp and then start giggling.

"Did I tickle you?"

" - no, not exactly, just - surprised."

She giggles and kisses him and does it again.

Less surprised! Still gasping and wiggling!

That is really cute. "Can I un- uh - I have no idea how you have this fastened -"

" - yeah - it's tucked underneath -"

"I think my Manton limit excludes hair - hang on a sec I'll figure it out -"

She figures it out.

"Well that's good, I don't think I want it to start having its own opini-aaaaaah."

"...you are so soft. I did not know you were so soft." Pet pet pet.

Incoherent wiggling delighted Elf pressses his head against her hands and whimpers.

Awwwwwww pet pet pet pet pet.

Aaaaaah this is so good he is so pleased and then he is a bit flushed and she should probably stop they mustn't get carried away. He says this a bit less than coherently.

She stops. She kisses him. "I remind you that my judgment is not impaired."

Kiss. Lean. "Human hair doesn't do that thing?"

"Not at all. I mean, it's nice, but honestly more in a fall-asleep way than in a carried-away way."

"Poor humans. Maybe that's why some are mean." Lean lean lean he is possibly nuzzling her such that his hair gets ruffled more.

She giggles and ruffles obligingly.

"Mmmmmmmmloricaaaahhh."

"You're cute," she accuses.

Cling. Gasp. Does Lorica need a shirt. 

She might need a shirt (she is the one who is avoiding being carried away, here) but she definitely doesn't need a ponytail.

Oooh. He runs his hands through her hair and shivers delightedly. 

...this is kind of hilarious. She kisses him. She tosses her hair.

Kiss! Snuggle! Hair!!

"Maybe," he says a while later, "the reason it works out okay for Elves to marry without knowing first, and not humans, isn't that Elves're more virtuous it's that as long as you braid each others' hair every morning you can't go too far wrong."

"I am having a hard time imagining successfully braiding your hair with you twitching like that all the time and trying to get carried away, but possibly this is just because I lack Elvish dexterity and speed, or something."

"Maybe you spend a year honeymooning far away where it won't matter that you've never successfully braided your spouse's hair without getting distracted and then after that if you get the distracted out of the way first it is achievable."

"A yearlong honeymoon, goodness."

"You're supposed to have a yearlong engagement so after that you've earned a yearlong honeymoon. Though I think it's mostly expected that you'll be mostly busy being married the first five years or so? I knew being married was considered very distracting but, uh, not why." Happy shiver.

"Humans just have 'being newlyweds' which lasts less than a year and is not at all an excuse to be away from everything or more than a little silly."

"Cause you have so little time. We have forever so why not spend some of it - not doing nothing, but certainly only doing things that make you happy in their own right -"

"You don't think it'd get a little samey? I guess maybe people also bring along - well, not books, not in Valinor - board games or something? Or maybe if books don't exist it's honestly really appealing to do nothing but have sex for five years..."

"It does seem like there are lots of things you'd want to be learning and making progress on! I was reserving judgment until I had the information that other people were using to make their prioritization decisions but now that I have experienced the internet I definitely wouldn't want a year away from it."

"Yeah that sucked and it was only six months."

"Well, I mean, you travel. Climb all the mountains, swim on all the beaches, ride dinosaurs, go discover a new tree frog species...."

"You know how before I triggered I could barely walk down a hallway without tripping? I still kind of don't think of climbing mountains as a realistic activity. Flying, sure, climbing, no. You have dinosaurs?"

"We have dinosaurs. I am sure flying a mountain fulfills the honeymoon spirit."

"Flying a mountain makes it sound like I'm picking it up. Or possibly leashing it on a string like a kite. Do you also have trilobites?"

"In theory every species that existed on our planet at any stage in its history is still around in Valinor - that's why discovering a new species on your honeymoon is popular - but I don't know if it's all the same ones as Earth has or had."

"I don't know if you should export dinosaurs so we can do Jurassic Park right or if you should definitely not do that so biotinkers don't do Jurassic Park wrong."

"Do they need dinosaurs to do that?"

"Probably not, I'm sure somebody somewhere has done terrible things with literal fossils and the power of imagination."

"Wish I was a Tinker. Anyway there are dinosaurs and some are friendly enough to ride and people do that on honeymoon. Or they visit the magical domains of various Valar, or they build themselves a home together on some hot springs no one else has discovered."

"Okay, maybe you could fill a serious chunk of time on this if you didn't have anything pressing."

"Yeah. Now that there're worlds that need fixing, not so much, but we thought everyone everywhere had it pretty much okay. Maybe someday they will and then people can go back to that kind of thing."

"But by then everyone will have the Internet."

"I bet at least one Elven city outlaws it just on principle that it makes people hurry their lives too much. And if they're happier than their neighbors their neighbors would eventually follow suit, and if not - I'm not really sure. Might end up sorting into people who're happier with and people who're happier without. I know which kind Tirion'll be, though."

"You have to hurry! If you don't hurry you'll miss stuff!"

Giggle. "If you hurry you also miss stuff! Just different stuff."

"Fair enough. I've been struggling to keep up with the digests Rete sends me of what-all has been up since we were - gone."

"I haven't even tried. Highlights?"

"We're down Surabaya to the Simurgh and Haiti to Leviathan. Cape population estimated to have cleared forty K worldwide. There's an attempt at a census thereof which is wildly optimistic, even I'm not answering it yet, have to lie low for now. Some books I wanted to read came out and the Republicans took the Senate."

"I don't know anything about American politics. Lady under a bridge told me everything was the fault of the Communists and a kid in Dylan's PhD program said everything was the fault of the capitalists so I figured I'd heard all sides."

...snort.

Kiss.

Kiss!

Study, analysis.

Focus on one target, and decoding is faster. Spread out and it's slower, but she gets more information, low-feedback. Her times of hibernation serve this purpose, so she can take the actions that will cause the desired ripples. Of most subjects, she can see everything, their whole existence, from its beginning however many years ago to its end in the less certain future—although that end is sometimes just darkness, obscured by another power.

This is not usually an obstacle—throw a rock into the darkness, and you know it will keep moving until it hits something. Zoom out, and it's more like billiard in a badly illuminated room, acrylic going into shadow and rolling out of it, leaving a puzzle for her to unravel. If the individual is understood well enough, she can model almost perfectly what must have happened there.

There is one exception.

No past and no future. She knows when the exception appeared, but now she can no longer see where it came from. Those closest to it are frequently in its shadow, and its actions are seldom detected with enough time to act. It has been her greatest weakness, all these years.

She doesn't know how long ago that was set in motion, but she knows that the data traveling around the world now is going to have ripples. These ripples needn't happen. She sends electromagnetic pulses, in the right places, at the right times. The data will never reach its destination. All records of it are corrupted, impossible to access.

All that she can see.

"Hey Dragon, anybody reply to their email yet?"

"What do you mean?"

"The email you were going to send to the Triumvirate and also Costa-Brown? About Correlate et al?"

"I don't remember such an email."

"- well. Fuck."

"Dragon do you remember why we're here."

"Rete convinced me it was safe and I extracted you from Baltimore."

"You were going to forward that information to - you know what can you just give me Alexandria's phone number, whichever identity is awake right now."

Dragon does so.

"Rete, get me a baffle number and put me through -"

Ringing.

"Costa-Brown speaking."

"Hello, this is Lorica. The Simurgh really does not want us to talk."

She hangs up.

"Get me a different baffle number and try again."

She texts Dragon about this then answers. "Costa-Brown speaking."

"Hi Alexandria. Don't hang up."

"You were meant to be in Baltimore and just because I can't hear the Simurgh's song doesn't mean I'm immune to her ploys."

And Dragon can probably track where the call's coming from and locate her...

"You're not. I am. As long as you're interacting with me you're in my shadow. You were supposed to get a nice, nonthreatening email and she killed it and it's gone from all the servers where it should have been remembered so this is it."

"This is exactly what the Simurgh would make you believe. How did you get out without Dragon noticing?"

"Who says I did? There are phones in Baltimore. Now listen -" And she reads off the bullet points.

"Do you have access to the backups of your exchanges with Correlate?"

"Yes."

"Can you send them to me now? If you're really shadowed from the Simurgh and talking to me shadows me, too, then it should arrive without a problem."

Lorica forwards it on.

"Please hold."

She starts reading that and, after the first few emails, grabs another phone and calls Dragon.

"Hello."

"I have Lorica on the line. She either escaped Baltimore without you noticing or somehow made a phone work in there in spite of the jammers. Former's more probable. Can you verify which is the case?"

"Neither," says Dragon.

"You helped her."

"A backup of Rete contained the evidence she just sent you. I managed to get her and Library Elf out before he would have died."

"The evidence could still have been fabricated." Pause. "Although that's unlikely. Did you take any further steps to verify its legitimacy?"

"The gaps in the electronic record are not conspicuous on their own but they do line up exactly. The bank accounts of Graph Paper LLC showed deposits consistent with the exchanges asserted having been paid for. Leviathan did unexpectedly little damage to Los Angeles proper on his way to Monrovia, which had no buildings left standing afterwards."

"Are you and Library Elf currently interacting with Lorica?"

"Yes."

"Then please continue to do so, but in a way that does not allow them to influence any major decisions you make."

"Except by ordinary conversation, of course."

"She may still be compromised so any arguments she presents are suspect until we can confirm she is not, but if she's right you should be under her shadow, too."

"She's had plenty of time to talk to me. I'll cut her off if she presents unexpected new assertions."

"Very well. Thank you." She hangs up, then returns to the other conversation. "Who else have you told?"

"If you don't believe me then about now you're wishing you'd had me assassinated, so I'm not comfortable listing them for you."

"Do you understand what would happen to morale if this got out? Never mind that you know I'm Alexandria, I can just resign, but this is not the type of thing we can risk letting others know."

She texts a certain specific number with a certain specific code, and an interdimensional door appears behind her. Someone walks through it to her office as she starts typing an explanation into her computer.

"I am not going to the media. I am going to you, because I think that you probably had me and Library Elf dropped in a memory hole for six months of torture because you thought it was the right thing to do, to minimize. Endbringer. Impact. And I think you can be convinced that was a mistake. I trust all current holders of the information to do right with it at least as much as I trust you."

"Very well." The person who walked through the portal reads her explanation, nods, and busies themself with something. "I'm going to verify the content of what you've sent me, and that might take a while. In the meantime, you should probably stay on the line. I will give you an integer. Every now and then, I want you to pick an arbitrary integer less than or equal to the one I gave you and tell me what it is. Can you do that?"

"Yes."

"Forty-five. I will remain on the line, if there is anything you feel is important enough to interrupt me about then you can say it but otherwise please only talk to me to say a number."

"Thirteen."

She sends Contessa a message, asking her to stop moving for thirteen seconds. "How often you say a number should be as random as you can make it, too. If you're right—thank you for all your cooperation."

"Negative six."

She texts Number Man and asks him to count to four out loud.

"Thirty... eight... zero... negative twenty-two..."

She has a deterministic algorithm that turns each integer into a number of seconds to tell various relevant people how long to not do anything for.

Contessa finds the thinker they're looking for, and Alexandria sends her an encrypted copy of what Lorica has sent her. Eidolon and Legend arrive, but the Triumvirate stays on Earth Bet, so that there is as small a chance of anything going wrong with the call. The thinker is paid an exorbitant amount, frowns in concentration at the USB key in Contessa's hand, gets a headache, but eventually he says "Blue" and Contessa calls this in.

"No," Lorica can faintly make Eidolon's voice through the phone. "It's—a trick—a ploy—the Simurgh—"

"Seven," growls Lorica.

"I think," Alexandria tells Lorica, slowly, "this should be enough."

And the news blasts about the Simurgh appearing above Madison, Wisconsin.

Rete copies her on that.

"- if you can do anything hurry -"

"—we can—give us ten minutes—we will contact you soon."

She hangs up.

And Leviathan appears in northeastern Brazil.

Lorica clings to Fëanáro and stares at the news.