From out of the early-morning clouds, the green and purple spacecraft — shaped not unlike a mechanical squid with a giant pair of crystalline dragonfly wings mounted to the back of its oblong, corkscrew-like hull, its segmented metal tentacles slowly moving in the air behind it, with colorful lightning bolts zapping between them — descended in a smooth arc, zooming high over the tops of Boston’s skyscrapers, and then descending as it approached Cambridge, swooping down low over the city’s rooftops and chimneys, and then pulling up again and heading in the direction of the downtown area. To watch it move, one might’ve guessed that pursued some other ship, but late in coming, perhaps several minutes — or more — behind its quarry. The vertically-aligned dome embedded in the forward section of the craft — opposite the end where its nest of flexible metal tentacles worked in the air — would have appeared — to Human eyes — made of some sort of translucent, rainbow-hued glass, almost like a thick soap bubble, and its insides swirled with glowing wisps of multicolored plasma.

  “So. This is Earth, huh? The planet the Aletheiaeon supposedly love so much. Eh. Seen better low-tech civs, seen worse too.” Darmok Anjaladatanagra, of the proud and ancient Shyphtorilaen, a race of cat-like, humanoid Felis sapiens — and the designer, pilot, sole crew-person, and commander of The Renegade Angel — sat at the Helm station on the ship’s bridge and carefully guided her in with one hand on each joystick — one that controlling the ship’s power and pitch, and one controlling her roll and yaw. The Renegade Angel responded instantly to the slightest of touches, her motion through the clouds as fluid and smooth as warm mother’s milk. Darmok smiled. She was eminently proud of herself, and even prouder of her ship. She had slaved over the blueprints for her — and especially the equations for her next-generation engine core — for over a decade, and had fought a ton of bureaucratic red-tape and committees in order to get the funding secured for the dream of bringing her to life, year after year, until finally, the Angel had rolled off the assembly line, as beautiful as any other baby’s birth. And now, Darmok herself piloted the Angel on her maiden voyage — and on her own maiden mission, as well: They had finally granted her what she’d wanted since the dawn of the Third of her Nine Lives: Some time away from her desk job of physics and engineering, and some time on assignment in the field . . . A real, actual mission: To investigate the threat of a Zarcturean invasion of the Off-Limits planet known as Earth, long mythologized as a “special project” of the Aletheiaeon, one they had grown “fond of,” insofar as they were still capable of feelings like “love” and “fondness.” Some thought them long divorced from such emotions; others thought the Aletheiaeon had become love in its purest form, surpassing all negative emotions when they had Ascended to a higher plane of existence hundreds of thousands of years ago. Darmok herself wasn’t so sure they even existed; for the ultimate embodiment of love, the Aletheiaeon seemed to have no problem straight-up killing fools — in fact, whole species of fools — who pissed them off in sometimes minor ways. At any rate, her mission called for her to intercept and “retard the progress” of any “unsanctioned alien activity” on Earth, “to the best of her ability,” and to put paid to such business . . . but to immediately call for reinforcements before making the attempt. Her backup would await in hyperspace, just a com-link way; if she needed them, they would warp back into normal space inside Earth’s atmosphere — and within its gravity-well; a dangerous maneuver — and come to her aid immediately.

  Well, reinforcements can eat my litter box, she thought. I’ll show them. I can — I will — handle this myself. And hell, speak of the dog-star, so shall it appear!

  “Well, well, well . . . what do we have here?” she muttered to herself, as she closed in on her destination. The cybernetic hololenticular implants in her eyes drew her attention to a large, stately building outlined with glowing red lines in her eye-displays, with tiny indicator arrows pointing toward the Zarcturean ship that had already landed there. She throttled back her velocity and prepared The Renegade Angel to land. She set her down about ten yards away from the Zarcturean ship, her foursome of steel-wheeled pods gently crunching into the rooftop’s gravel. Like the Zarcturean ship, Darmok’s The Renegade Angel was far larger on the inside than its exterior suggested, by way of transcendental dimensional technology. However, there the similarities ended. For example, her ship’s engine core — the part she was really proud of — was definitely superior to the other ship’s basic faster-than-light drive: Her engine — which she’d dubbed “the Con-Fusion Drive” — was a device whose reaction chamber contained a rift in spacetime that took the form of a ten-dimensional M?bius loop . . . one wherein multiple parallel universes — which were always supposed to remain parallel and never cross paths — all intersected. The bottom line? It made everyone onboard the ship utterly immune to the effects of Temporal Paradox whenever she flew the ship through a time-warp. In other words, it took a spaceship, and turned it into the ultimate time machine. Now, thanks to Darmok, the Shyphtorilaen had a time-ship that could visit any place or time that the Eidolon had touched — via the agency of the Zarcturean or any other race that had grown malignant and dangerous under their evil tutelage — and then work to uncorrupt, reboot, or “correct” that species’ timeline or evolution, without having to worry about a Paradox Fracture swallowing their world whole . . . and without risking permanent damage to Time itself.

  Darmok shut down the Con-Fusion Drive and the ship’s Antimatter Propulsors, and put the Main Reactor into stasis mode. She then locked the controls to her genetics and brainwaves, so that only she could operate them. She rose from her seat at the Helm, and walked into the Captain’s Ready Room, which sat off to the left of the bridge. She touched a glowing panel there on the wall, and it slid open. There, she beheld what Ops called a “basic Planetside Wanderer’s outfit.” A smallish backpack unit featuring two pulse-thrusters; a long, thick, crimson duster made of what humans might’ve identified as a heavy, leathery material, with readouts and sensors attached to its left fore-sleeve. A dark pair of pants with air-seals at the cuffs and above its utility belt, and a special slit in the back for her tail to poke through, along with a matching, long-sleeve tunic with air-seals at the neck, sleeve cuffs, and waist, with both it and the pants created from a soft-weave poly-alloy — comfortable and stretchy, yet capable of blocking almost any and all projectile fire and completely airtight — along with a pair of bright-red rocket boots that almost matched the duster. Finally, hanging there also, she found her gun-belt, meant to criss-cross around her waist, its pair of Decimator pistols meant to sit on either hip. In the top compartment of the cabinet lay her atmospheric-conversion helmet, with a built-in model of another of her inventions, the Thought-Transilience Transmission Interoseter, and a pair of red, poly-alloy soft-weave gloves with seals at the wrists. An Earthling might’ve pegged her headgear as looking like an ordinary motorcycle helmet . . . albeit one with a glass face-shield in front and a rubber-and-metal seal around the neck, with hoses and bits of tech bolted to it in places, and with a pair of tall antennae stuck on either side. It was the part that wasn’t easily visible — a machine that enabled her to basically perform magic — that would’ve set those same Humans running from her and calling her a “witch” in centuries-past. Hell, it would probably still do that now, even in this time. She adored Humanity, from what she had learned of them on Planet Shyphtor; she also had a healthy fear of their general sense of paranoia and xenophobia, which she had also picked up from her studies.

  She got dressed, adjusted her guns, and then put on the helmet and locked it in place — mostly just as a precaution, as she wasn’t yet positive she could breathe the Earth’s atmosphere. Her superiors had told her that it featured nitrogen-oxygen-rich air, the same as planet Shyphtor, but had also told her that the humans wantonly toxified their atmosphere with harmful pollutants, even though in doing so, they actively murdered their only planet, and they knew it. Next, she put on the red, soft-weave poly-alloy gloves, which featured magnetic grips on the underside, and connected the power-couplings to the tubes that fed from the duster’s wrists. Lastly, she donned the small pulse-thruster unit, and strapped it in place between her shoulders. Then, she closed the compartment, turned, and exited back onto the bridge, then went to the glass elevators that stood in the rear. The doors slid open, then closed behind her. The transparent elevator carriage began lowering itself on antigrav beams, moving through the ship’s lower levels — the mess hall, the engine room, the various storage and landing bays — then through a water-like membrane and the transdimensional bulk, the higher dimensional space between the inside and outside of the ship. Soon, the elevator gently touched down outside the craft, landing feather-light upon the gravel of the rooftop, and its glass doors parted.

  Darmok ventured out, one Decimator pistol at the ready as she scanned the rooftop for movement of any kind, her hololenticular implants aiding her. It looked like the portal into the Zarcturean Visitor’s ship was already open, the Visitor having gone ashore already. The hololenticular implants pointed out a set of fresh, all-but-invisible footprints leading away from the Zarcturean ship, toward the edge of the roof, where they stopped. A helpful blue arrow pointed its way over the edge of the roof, telling her that in its opinion, the A.I. inside the matrix data-slice embedded in her brain thought that the Visitor — or the Human it inhabited — had gone over the edge, because the foot prints continued on the ground below.

  “Hmm,” said Darmok to herself. “Curious. If I were a Human and one of the Zarcturean had stowed away inside me, which direction would I go? And why? No time like the present to find out, I guess. As the Humans say . . . Geronimo!”

  Ravenkroft and Marvin — and most likely, Morganymuae as well — had felt the young fool nosing around in their thoughts the moment the psychic probing had begun. They had sensed him there, in the Builder It Yerself storefront where they presently committed burglary, and in their heads, and they had all three laughed at the boy’s amateurishness. How little he knew of the world he had tapped into! How unsure of himself, how completely out of his depth! “WHO ARE YOU, WHO WOULD KNOW MY THOUGHTS?” Ha! Ravenkroft hoped he’d made the diminutive, self-described little “geek” wet himself; even Marvin — so normally absent a sense of humor — found the whole thing amusing in his own way. But ah well . . . it had been a fun, momentary distraction, but Ravenkroft soon reminded himself that he had more important work to do, such as improving his suit’s weaponry and perfecting its forcefield defenses. And, the task of building something far more nefarious than just a better ray-gun. If he followed through on his plan — to proceed to the relocated FantazmagoriCon and continue his and Marvin’s pursuit of the Jetta-vampire (for study) and of Weatherspark (for the sake of his experiment, and for vengeance’s sake) — then this time, he would be ready for both of them. And, this time, his plan wouldn’t be to kill Weatherspark . . . No. Nothing so simple as that. His ambitions had . . . expanded. He now had the power to transform her . . . into one of the Eidolon, into one of what Morganymuae — née Alicia — had become . . . The complete destruction of everything she was, her enduring essence totally wiped from existence; that would be her father’s punishment for his sins. That would be what he and “Misto” would carry with them, the source of their grief forevermore — or Misto’s at least until Ravenkroft killed him, mainly just to hurt Weatherspark and her father. When looked at that way, the prospect of seeing an extra-dimensional Elder God implanted into Weatherspark was oh-so-much more satisfying than the idea of simply killing her. But it would require more parts than would a simple forcefield generator or a new weapon . . . Granted, he needed those things too, hence why he was here.

  He picked up the third of his five shopping baskets filled with electronic components, and went back to pillaging the store’s shelves. Resistors, capacitors, transistors, diodes. Circuit boards, solder, a soldering iron. Wires, leads, screws, coils, transformers. Various TV antennae, Arduino breadboards, and IC chips and their sockets. After this, he had a Fry’s Electronics, a home depot, and a laboratory supply company to conduct similar raids on, as well as a Walmart stockroom to go picking through later on. He had no need to write anything down; he kept the lists of parts in his head. He would probably end up needing to steal (or “borrow”) a large pickup truck in order to get everything back to his parents’ summer-home. Why spend from Viktor’s inheritance — and his income stream from the Russian Vampire — when stealing was so much easier, and so much more cost effective . . . And so much damn much fun?

  As he pilfered the shelves, his eyes roamed their way toward Morganymuae. Gads, but she was beautiful, her form and countenance an almost Enochian elevation of Alicia’s. Her enormous bat-like wings, with their perfect arcs and sharp angles; her starburst, purple-yellow eyes, and the emerald mysteries they fluoresced with; such perfection . . . a race that knew exactly what it was about when it subjugated and assimilated the genetic codes of lower beings. A race that had given birth to other races, like the Zarctureans — one of whose number he now proudly carried inside himself — in a bid to conquer the universe . . . and the realms of both the material and the immaterial alike. She turned to look at him, and when she did, with those glowing eyes, he knew she could see straight through to his soul, to every nook and cranny of his consciousness . . . except for one . . . that small corner of his mind he kept cordoned off, the place where he liked to hide things, the place he had cultivated that he kept safe from all interlopers, safe from even the probes of the NeuroScape when it went fishing for data with which to build its dreamscapes.

  Presently, Ravenkroft walked between two displays of car CD-players and speaker-sets, each mounted on two adjacent sets of shelves. He yanked one of the stereos out of its display-case, and examined it.

  “Hmm,” he said to himself, “tiny LED laser. Cheaply made, but with some useful components. Sold.” He offhandedly tossed the stereo in the basket, along with its wiring harness.

  Then, a noise behind them. Ravenkroft turned around quickly, only to see nothing. Marvin’s awareness went up as well, the alien inside him instantly suspicious, its senses on high-alert. Morganymuae, as well, looked left, then right, then closed her eyes in concentration, opening her psychic senses to the space that surrounded her. Ravenkroft scanned the front of the store, the door to the back room — from whence he’d come, having broken in through the back of the place — and the shadows that surrounded the three of them. No . . . no one there. Just the wind outside, most likely . . . Yes, just the wind. Still leery and apprehensive, he returned his attention to the store shelves, and to the parts-list in his head.

  Just as he reached for a power supply unit on one of the shelves, a shadow passed over him and the walls, and he froze. He turned quickly in the direction the shadow had fled, but again saw nothing and no one. He suddenly became nervous. It couldn’t be Weatherspark; there was no way she could have gotten here so quickly, and unobserved. So, the question became: Just who had found him here?

  “Hold it! Freeze, both of you — well, all three of you — right there!” commanded a firm, female voice that came from directly behind him. He froze in his tracks. It had been a long time since anyone had gotten the drop on him, or had spoken to him so rudely — save for Weatherspark, of course. The voice continued: “Put your Evangeliojaeger’s gauntlets in the air and turn around slowly, so I can see you clearly. As for you, Ms. Tentacles, put ‘em up. All of ‘em. Nice and slow, now. Nice and slow.”

  He exchanged a glance with Morganymuae. The order was preposterous, of course . . . Morganymuae was a powerfully telekinetic creature, and could, if she wished, use the force of her mind alone to turn their attacker — whoever it was — into a puddle of protein soup. Which begged the question: Why hadn’t she done so? Why did seconds tick by without her vaporizing their assailant? And why did Morganymuae look . . . wait, was that actual concern on the Eidolon-Human hybrid’s face? Frustration? Ravenkroft turned around, as instructed. As he did so, the overhead fluorescent lights in the store all came on, announcing their presence to anyone passing by. Ravenkroft panicked for a moment; if anyone were to see them here and call the authorities, this would quickly become a very messy scene, and would entail a fire-fight with the police; a huge headache he would’ve rather not dealt with, and a potentially dangerous one, too. He swallowed a lump in his throat. There, as he turned to face his captor, he beheld a strange sight: A woman — or, mostly a woman — standing about six feet tall, wearing a crimson-red duster and what looked like black, woven neoprene body armor beneath it, as well as a pair of red, metallic combat boots and woven, neoprene gloves.

  She held a weapon that looked deadlier than any of his own or Weatherspark’s arsenal — it looked like a big flare gun with a small missile-launcher added beneath the main barrel, and covered in tubes, wires, and circuits, all mounted to its large, rounded silver body. Presently, she had it pointed right at his head at point-blank range, and alternated between pointing it there and at Morganymuae’s head. But the most striking things about her were the head and face she sported beneath the glass of the space-helmet she wore. There, her human features blended seamlessly with those of a grey-furred house-cat. She was a true felis sapiens, an actual cat-woman. Her cheeks fell sharply from her pair of tall, pointed elfish-ears, forming almost a triangle that led to a small, soft chin, above which sat her mouth, smaller than but just as articulate as a human’s. Her smallish, grey nose sat at the bottom of a smooth, slightly concave dip in her face, above and to either side of which sat two huge, jade-green eyes with big, rounded pupils in them, pupils that could expand to encompass the entire area of her cornea, or retract to only slivers to allow in less light. Her whiskers stuck out to either side of her face, fine glassy tendril-threads extending from each side of her nose and mouth. The grey fur covering her face almost glistened, as did the whites of her fang-like teeth whenever she spoke. Electronic circuitry covered the top part of the helmet she wore; it was definitely alien in origin, rigged with what looked like coils of wire and various antennae, surrounding a glass hemisphere in which bolts and wisps of plasma danced and arced around a central triad of terminals. Adjacent to that, a small Jacob’s Ladder sat zapping with arcs of electricity that climbed into the air and vanished, one after the other. That must’ve had something to do with psionic energy, Ravenkroft concluded . . . It had to be how she neutralized Morganymuae’s telekinetic advantage.

  Ravenkroft, at a loss for words, queried the Visitor inside of him and the Human-Eidolon hybrid next to him. Now just who or what is this? Marvin, Morganymuae? Do either of you wish to fill me in?

  — This . . . No. It cannot be, sent Marvin. Not after all this time . . . They simply cannot have returned . . .

  — No, Cannot be here, not the Aletheiaeon’ favorite minions, sent Morganymuae. No, not here, not now, not like this! Not on the eve of our reclamation of Earth! Damn them, Aletheiaeon’ favorite pets!

  — Who? Who cannot have returned? Who is this creature? Marvin, Morganymuae . . . of what do you speak?

  — The Shyphtorilaen, sent Marvin, almost spitting the word, as though a curse. Ancient enemies from another world. The opposed us and our expansion to other worlds, a great many cycles ago. Now they have returned, to retard our progress again. But how! How! We thought them all but extinct . . .

  — So you two — both your races — have mortal enemies out there, he thought to both of them. I did not know this.

  — Yes. Enemies, sent Morganymuae. Ancient enemies. These domestic pets of the Aletheiaeon are the ones who sabotaged our ascension to the higher echelons of existence as pure consciousness . . . the ones who trapped us as ghosts, thus forcing us to live between dimensional membranes, in a half-real state where Twizion particles interact only weakly with the dark matter we are fashioned out of . . . cursed us to live halfway between dream and reality! What I would not give to rip her limb from limb!

  — Damn, sent Ravenkroft. But right now, she’s neutralizing your telekinetic abilities? Yes?

  A pause. Then, from Morganymuae, in a bitter tone: Yes. With respect to herself. No telekinetic force I can conjure will affect her, so long as she wears that helmet.

  — I see, he sent back. Let us see how this plays out, then. Perhaps my Human ways can win-out where advanced alien intellects finds themselves lacking a certain charm. No offense to either of you, of course.

  — None taken, thought Marvin.

  — Heh, thought Morganymuae. Let us see some actual results first!

  “I’m sorry,” said Viktor, speaking aloud to his captor, “but you seem to have me at a severe disadvantage, madam. Here you have the drop on me, and I don’t even know your name. Whom might you be, again?”

  “My name is Darmok,” said the Shyphtorilaen, speaking perfect English again. How had she mastered an Earth language so thoroughly, right down to an American accent? She steadied her aim at them, keeping the ray-gun level with his face and Morganymuae’s. “And I’m here to arrest the three of you, and to return you to Planet Shyphtor for trial, and for further study and analysis. Oh yeah . . . I know one of the Eidolon when I see one, bitch. I know my myths and legends well. Never expected to actually meet one of you in the flesh, but I can recognize a cave-painting’s resemblance to you, sister. And never fear: I can totally see the Zarcturean Visitor lurking inside you, Human. It’s right there, clear as day, thanks to my cybernetic, hololenticular implants.” She tapped her right temple. “I can see it, right there, wrapped around your spinal cord. Yessiree, right . . . there. Unless I miss my guess, it’s gone full-on symbiotic with you. Formed a permanent bond with your nervous system. Now, I can attempt to extract the Visitor. Notice I said, attempt. The procedure could potentially kill you, so there is that. But it’s either that, or I shoot you dead right now, along with your mutant girlfriend, and thus call it a day. So, what’ll it be?”

  An uneasy silence passed. Then, with lightning-fast, Marvin-enhanced speed and reflexes, Ravenkroft lashed out and tore Darmok’s gun from her hands. He backhanded her with the fist holding the gun, right into the side of her space-helmet, catching her off her guard and off-balance. He managed to knock her staggering a few steps to one side. The suddenness of the attack seemed to daze her, and a small crack appeared in the helmet’s glass. Ravenkroft wasted no time in pressing his advantage. He took her by the lapels of her crimson duster, and using her gun as a truncheon, he whacked her in the helmet with it. Sparks flew from the gun’s external circuitry, so Ravenkroft discarded it, tossing it to the floor with a casual shrug of his shoulders. There, that would teach her, no matter her species!

  “Now if you’ll excuse me,” he said, and inclined his head in mock-politeness, “I’ve things to do; a machine to build, a battle to prepare for . . . Eh, you know how it is, am-I-right?”

  He gathered up his five shopping baskets — using one hand and his Evangeliojaeger’s four segmented, metal tentacles — then levitated on his repulsivators and zoomed out the back door of the place, rocketed upward three floors, and then landed on the building’s graveled rooftop. Morganymuae fell in right behind him, and rose up beneath him on a column of psychokinetic power. As they made it to the rooftop, Ravenkroft saw what had to be Darmok’s ship: An unsightly, weird piece of machinery that looked like a giant mechanical squid with metallic feeler-tentacles growing out of its backside; a wispy, electric plasma-globe hemisphere sticking out of its forward section; and huge, crystal-and-metal dragonfly wings jutting out from its “thorax,” if it had such a thing. He tore his eyes away from it and looked over his shoulder, and saw the damned cat-woman herself, Darmok, settling down on the gravel behind them. Morganymuae turned as well, and reached out with two of her fleshy tentacles and wrapped them around Darmok’s ankles, tripping her. She fell face forward onto the dirt and gravel rooftop with an “Oof!” and tried to scramble back to her feet. Morganymuae pulled backward and upward, and suddenly, Darmok dangled in front of them, a good four feet off the ground. Morganymuae smiled, showing her fangs. Her purple-and-yellow eyes flashed green as she turned to Ravenkroft and said aloud: “Look. dearest. I caught dinner. Its brains will make a delicacy.”

  “My, my, it does look appetizing,” said Ravenkroft, and grinned a savage grin. “Now, then. You were saying, my dear girl? Something about shooting us and our ‘mutant girlfriend’ dead?”

  “I said, that you’re both gonna die soon, dick,” said Darmok. “You just watch.”

  “I think not.” Ravenkroft whirled around and blasted at her with his left Interphase Pistol . . . but amazingly, she had either read his body-language perfectly, or had super-fast reflexes — or both — because she moved in Morganymuae’s restraining tentacles and dodged to the left and then dodged to the right, both times just as he fired, and he wound up hitting Morganymuae instead. Morganymuae screeched with pain and shot him a nasty look. Meanwhile, Darmok dropped to the ground. She rolled out of the way and sprang to her feet. Ravenkroft commanded his robotic tentacles to drop the shopping baskets and go into attack mode. One of them shot out and wrapped itself around Darmok’s waist. It lifted her up. She fired the thrusters on her backpack assembly, and the tentacle immediately let go of her as the white-hot thrust blasted against its metal segments. Pain translated from their circuitry and flooded Ravenkroft’s mind, and he nearly cried out in agony as the metal of the tentacle warped slightly in the heat. Darmok landed on her feet and came at him, just as he launched another attack: He threw a flying kick at her midsection. His foot satisfyingly connected with her body. She staggered back as he knocked the wind out of her. Good! No sooner did she manage to regain her balance than did he rush at her again, determined to put her down for good. But this time, as he stalked toward her, she smiled — a cryptic smile that made no sense given the context, and that gave him pause — and she moved her thumb over to a small red button mounted to the heel of her glove’s palm.

  “Say hello to my little friends,” she said, grinning savagely. “Twizion particles, asshole! Time for some Hogwarts action up in this bitch!” She pressed the little red button with her thumb.

  Within her helmet, a bright blue light illumined her whole head, and the slitted pupils in her eyes flashed, like twin, scintillating lightning bolts made of neon. Ravenkroft felt his feet leave the ground, as gravity itself simply quit working. Within a five-foot radius, Gravel from the rooftop began to levitate as well, lifting itself up into the air just as their feet lifted off it as well. This caught both Ravenkroft and Marvin — and even Morganymuae — completely off-guard; Morganymuae hissed angrily as she floated upward in the rising sphere of non-gravity, her tentacles having nothing to latch onto or grip, nothing to grasp or with which to secure themselves.

  What . . . what is happening! What is this! Ravenkroft demanded to know. How is this even happening!

  — No. It cannot be! Morganymuae cried out in his head. They cannot have done this, not so soon, it is too soon for them to have this technology! Only we, the Eidolon, and the Aletheiaeon . . . only we can do this!

  — What is it too soon for them to have? What! You’re not making sense! Tell me what they have!

  — They have harnessed the power of Twizion, said Marvin, gasping, as though in awe. The Eidolon . . . You assured us that they could not . . . ! That no one could . . . ! That it was impossible for anyone but the Eidolon and the Aletheiaeon to have done so . . . !

  — What the bloody blazes are you two on about? Ravenkroft demanded again. What are Twizion particles?

  — I will explain in greater detail later, said Morganymuae. For now, we must simply get away. We must get away, before she can use them to even greater effect!

  It was the first time she had actually sounded legitimately worried — genuinely afraid — of anything. And if it was enough to scare an Elder God, then that was good enough for Ravenkroft. But he was too late, dammit-all. Darmok clobbered him with a mean right hook, smashing her fist right into his cheek. He felt the bone there fracture, and yelped in pain despite his attempt at stoicism, with Marvin busy pumping adrenaline and endorphins into his system to help take the hateful sting and ache out of it as it rapidly healed. Darmok followed this with a hard, straight-on punch in the nose . . . a cracking sound, more pain, and then it was his turn to stumble backward a few paces . . . except that in zero-gravity, his stumble was more like a backwards dog-paddle through invisible currents of water, panic settling in as he realized he floated free . . . and that she had a pair of thrusters on her back. He mentally activated his repulsivators and tried to use them to right himself. Blood issued from both nostrils, plus he had a bleeding cut on his lip where the button on her glove had cut him. Goddammit, how embarrassing this was! Morganymuae launched herself toward Darmok upon psychokinetic currents and she attacked; she forked her fingers at the cat-woman and snarled at her . . . and a flashy corona of light appeared around Darmok’s throat, her eyes widening as Morganymuae began to telekinetically choke her to death. Apparently, she could not use Twizion particles and stop psychokinetic attacks at the same time.

  Darmok’s hands went to her throat. She narrowed her eyes at Morganymuae, and threw both hands out in front of her. She made a warding gesture at the Elder, and a second later, the translucent torus of energy around Darmok’s throat vanished. A flash of light erupted between the two of them, knocking Morganymuae back through the air. She screamed and hissed, tumbling out of control for a moment. Ravenkroft flew toward Darmok, a whirlwind of punches and jabs. She threw up her hands and arms just in time, blocking each attack as it came, the thrusters on her back firing hard, pushing her inexorably closer to him. Halfway through, Ravenkroft felt a mild sense of panic returning. She was good, and committed to the fight; quicker on the draw, and seemingly more determined than even Weatherspark. She managed to get in a good, solid punch to an unprotected area on his side, sending a shockwave of agony rippling through him. As he winced and almost doubled over, she struck again, backhanding him in the head, causing his skull to ring in his helm and tossing him to the side, wheeling in zero-g and causing him to whirl through the air like a toy drone sent spinning out of control. He recovered using his repulsivators, and then blasted toward her at maximum thrust and bear-hugged her, grappling her whole body. He forced her up against the large air-conditioning unit on the building’s rooftop, pinning her there. Darmok raised up her knee and got him right square in the balls, and this time he did double over, letting go of her immediately.

  “Y’know, you really need to invest in a codpiece,” she observed, her tone nonchalant. She reared back her head and space helmet and bashed it into his own headgear, the glass in her helmet fracturing again, the crack in it splintering and growing larger. He reeled backward through the air, and Darmok reversed whatever techno-magic she had done; suddenly, gravity returned. Ravenkroft smashed down onto the gravel of the rooftop face-first, while Darmok merely settled onto her feet. Ravenkroft scrambled to pick himself up, but Darmok beat him to it; she kicked him in the same unprotected spot on his side, right in the ribcage, and he heard a soft crunching noise as the torturous pain spread throughout his body, as though someone had pierced his side with a spear and now twisted it into his guts. Ravenkroft cried out in agony, and rolled over onto his back, grimacing up at her. The bitch had won — for now.

  “Alright, alright! I yield, I yield to your mercy!” he cried, raising both mechanical gauntlets in a gesture of peace. And in doing so, he had just given himself an idea. “To your mercy, have mercy! Please, mercy, if you have any!”

  Darmok stood over him, heaving for breath, blood running from a cut on her face inside her cracked space helmet. She reached into her crimson duster, around to her side, and pulled out a clone of the gun she had pulled on him before, and that he had tossed away. She held the gun on him and said, “You want mercy? Fine. First, get to your feet. And no funny business, or I shoot to kill, asshole.” Almost without looking first, she reached out her hand and appeared to concentrate for a moment. Then came the sound of glass breaking from far below. And in a flash, there came rushing her other gun, the one he had knocked out of her hands earlier. It flew right to her hand, whence she grabbed it and aimed it straight at Morganymuae, who still floated in the air, rudderless. Another bright nimbus of lightning appeared around Darmok’s helmet as she stared bug-eyed at Morganymuae, and a shiny translucent bubble of force surrounded the Elder God hybrid, who beat against its apparently-solid surface relentlessly; each time she did, electrical sparks flew from the barrier surrounding her.

  “Alright . . . alright . . .” said Ravenkroft, and did as she said, slowly getting back up and onto his feet, and then standing before her with his hands raised in surrender, but sure to have his palms facing outward, toward her. He had a plan. “Happy now?”

  “Ecstatic,” she said. “Now — come with me, to the brig aboard my ship. Until I figure out what to do with — ”

  He fired both of the palm-mounted repulsivators in his gauntlets, maximum strength, so that both streams of space-expanding dark-energy blasted at her simultaneously. The force of the twin anti-gravitational shockwaves sent Darmok flying upward by ten feet and soaring about twenty yards away through the air, flying straight off the building’s rooftop and then plummeting downward to the street below, a look of shocked and befuddled surprise on her face. Ravenkroft panicked, and for a brief second, he froze. Marvin signaled for him to move — to speak, to do something; his heart-rate went up, as did his pulse, adrenal levels, and breath-rate — but he remained frozen, gripped with anxiety. The soap-bubble-like force field surrounding Morganymuae winked out, and she dropped to her feet on the gravel rooftop, and once again levitated, coming toward the spot where he stood, vapor-locked. Frustrated, Marvin came forward, and took control. He found himself in little-better shape, panicking and trying to force himself to calm down . . . an attempt that brought him little comfort. All his life, he had heard horror stories about the ancient nightmare-race, the Shyphtorilaen, about what they had come to his world and done to his people. About their merciless slaughter of fledgling Zarctureans, still just tadpoles tethered to the Queen-Mother Mother. About their cruelty and their species-wide mean-streak and their devotion to those ancient enemies of the Eidolon, the Aletheiaeon. To meet one here, of all places . . . to finally see the Devil itself, live and in the flesh — and pointing a gun at the skull that he and Ravenkroft now shared — terrified him beyond the capacity for reason or courage, sending him straight into the realm of madness for just a moment. And so, he gave the one command he knew that the creature Morganymuae — and his commanders — would shame him for once he got back home, if word of it ever spread . . . as he knew it would, as it would echo all across the phantom telepathic net that connected him to his brothers and sisters both here and at home, and because he knew it would be of note . . . Because for the Zarcturean, it was a word seldom uttered in the context of invading other worlds. That word was: Run.

  Ravenkroft — now spurred back into action — together with Marvin, telepathically called for his spaceship to open the transdimensional conduit that led to its interior, and the nearby ship, parked here on the rooftop and cloaked. obeyed him. As it did, Darmok came rocketing back up through the air next to the building, and once more landed on the rooftop about five yards away from he and Morganymuae. The Elder God hybrid fell in beside Ravenkroft as Darmok aimed her Decimator pistol at them and fired, but her shot missed them by mere inches as Ravenkroft ran through the vertical-standing puddle of the conduit’s wormhole event horizon. Morganymuae levitated through, and the two of them vanished into the innards of the Zarcturean ship, the portal closing behind them in the merest razor’s-breadth of time. Ravenkroft once more found himself back in charge of his body — mostly. They had to escape this place . . . had to get back to achieving the primary goals of the mission — which meant stalking and capturing the Jetta Vampire, studying the Misto-werewolf creature, and seeing to the experimental transformation of Desirée “Dizzy” Weatherspark into one of the Eidolon. Those should’ve been his paramount concerns anyway . . . not escaping or dealing with this damnable, freakish cat-woman of the ancient Shyphtorilaen race. Dammit . . . he might just have to bump dealing with that threat — since it was existential and imminent — up to a higher priority. He wasn’t sure of that just yet, though; hell, he wasn’t sure of anything, now. What mattered at the moment was getting the hell away from her and making it back to the Renaissance Regency, the place to which FantazmagoriCon XVIII had begun relocating to after the fire at the Executive East Inn, and where he knew Weatherspark — and her friends, and the Jetta Vampire — were all bound to show up sooner rather than later. And then, once he had acquired both his targets, it would be off to prepare the way for both the invasion of Earth by the Zarcturean fleet . . . and the far more devious invasion scheme of their progenitors, the Eidolon.

  And so, Ravenkroft worked the controls of the ship as Marvin directed him. The ship’s engines roared back into life as it lifted off the roof of the building and climbed into the skies once more, headed for the roof of the Renaissance Regency, the mechanical-squid-like ship with crystal-metal dragonfly wings rising into the sky a few minutes afterward and giving perilous chase, the two ships exchanging weapons-fire in the clouds above the city, an interstellar dog-fight come to Earth.

  Darmok banked in the air to avoid the phase-pulse blasts from the flying saucer ahead of her, and fired her ship’s own plasma cannons at it in return. Damn, but that Human — with whom the Zarcturean soldier had obviously gone fully-on symbiotic with — was a dexterous damned pilot. She sat at the Helm controls of The Renegade Angel — the the ship’s A.I. operated the navigation, astrometrics, and all the other stations — with the tactical controls hacked to run from there as well, and blasted away at the thing on the main view-screen once more. Each of her shots went wild as the Zarcturean ship dodged each and every one of them with impressive evasive maneuvers sharp enough to cut blades of fur. She accelerated, punching the Antimatter propulsors’ output potential, shooting her past Mach 3 at 39 miles per minute, the inertial dampeners canceling out the harsher effects of the g-forces she would’ve normally felt at such a velocity. The Zarcturean Visitor inside the Human didn’t seem to want to leave the immediate area . . . they circled the city a total of two dozen times during their dog-fight; she lost count after time number twenty-five. She cursed out in surprise as she didn’t quite prove fast enough once — then twice — and two of the saucer’s phase-pulse blasts hit home on the hull of her ship. The ship rattled and shook, a volley of yellow sparks erupting from the navigation console, and all sorts of warning lights about structural integrity lit up on a dozen control consoles situated all around the bridge. The A.I. would have to take care of dispatching magnetic maintenance drones to do the repairs, as The Renegade Angel had no other crew aboard her. Darmok returned fire at the Zarcturean saucer again, and managed to break through the other craft’s forcefields just enough to blast a small hole in its rear engine port — a brightly-glowing, rectangular fissure that spread across a third of the saucer’s rear perimeter. A red flash of fire and black contrail of smoke belched out of the wound, but the rest of the engine port merely flickered and remained aglow — hurt, but still steadily putting-out thrust.

  “Dammit!” cursed Darmok. She engaged in evasive maneuvers as the Zarcturean ship fired its rear phase-cannons again, expertly dodging each volley of fire and returning with more of her own. She managed to hit the Visitor’s ship again, the plasma blasts ramming home close to the wisp-filled plasma-globe hemisphere atop the saucer, and causing the plasma-globe itself to explode in a brilliant, fiery display of pyrotechnics and arcing, multicolored lightning. The glowing rear engine port of the Zarcturean ship flickered and then went dark, as more contrails of black smoke issued from the shattered globe atop the ship and the engines themselves; the ship wobbled in the air and began losing altitude, descending over the city in a wide, swooping arc, its pilot apparently only barely-able to control its descent. Darmok followed. Down it went in a spiral, until she saw where it was headed — the rooftop of a large, twenty-story hotel, its majestic lighted signage reading THE BOSTON RENAISSANCE REGENCY HOTEL, with more signage out in front of it that indicated a ritualistic gathering taking place here, one celebrating the Human literary genres known as “science fiction” and “fantasy.” The smoking Zarcturean ship coasted to a stop on the gravel and black-top of the hotel’s roof; the transdimensional conduit opened adjacent to it, and out there came, staggering, the Human whose body the Zarcturean called home. He seemed to walk with a slight limp, and had a nasty, bleeding cut on his forehead . . . but he still wore the same mechanical Evangeliojaeger he had had on before; its segmented metal tentacles even aided him in walking, using their claws as foot-like pods to help propel him along as he rushed toward the rooftop exit that led, presumably, to a stairwell that led further down into the hotel. He blasted open the door using his wrist-mounted ray-gun, and headed down the stairs therein; behind him, the portal leading into his ship vanished, as did the ship itself . . . it wavered for a moment, like a heat-mirage, and then, its cloaking device activated — for the visible effects left no doubt as to the technology at work — it disappeared from view. Well, it disappeared from the naked eye; her hololenticular implants showed it there, still clear as day. Darmok landed her ship about ten yards away from it, on the opposite side of the roof, and engaged her ship’s own cloaking device. A few moments later, she stepped out of the elevator boarding-unit of her ship, her eyes — and their hololenticular implants — watchful for any and every threat.

  She approached the Zarcturean ship. Looking upon it, she sighed, shook her head, and said aloud, “Dear gods, how pragmatically fugly can you get?” One of her briefings back home, entitled “Human Languages: English: Formal, Informal, and You” had been filled with some very strange words with even stranger usage contexts. It was a ruffian’s tongue, vulgar yet clever and sharp; colorful and oddly efficient, though at times bizarrely wasteful. She liked it a lot, and had made a mental note then to try and learn more about it, especially its more “colorful” side. She put her hands on her hips and shook her head again. “What kind of species doesn’t even try to make their ships more streamlined and beautiful? Jeeze . . . what a piece of space-trash. Now then . . . if I were a Zarcturean Visitor, why would I come to this place, of all places?”

  Just then, she felt a stabbing pain slice through her head, like someone had suddenly shoved an ice-sickle through her eye and straight into her brain. She dropped to her knees, short of breath and with sweat beading on her forehead as she fumbled for the controls that governed the Thought-Transilience Transmission Interoseter. She turned the Gain control all the way down from +11 to +0. The pain receded, but did not go away completely. It was directional, as well . . . if she turned to the right or the left, the pain abated. Not all of it, but some. Only when she faced forward — and only when she looked directly at the Zarcturean ship — did it come back in full force. So, that was it: the Zarcturean ship had a telepathic security system, one with a limited kind of sentience . . . it wasn’t fully sapient, but it was alive enough to defend itself, and alive enough to be deadly whenever it chose to be. It would have to be Mind-hacked in order for anyone other than its pilot to get aboard.

  Luckily, one of her electives during her field training had been in a skill-set called “Affinity-Tech Hacking,” which had covered how to hack into systems similar to this ships’ psionic security system. She only hoped she remembered at least part of the mental protocols correctly. Doing so would mark the difference between getting aboard the ship, or getting her synapses fried from within. With a deep breath taken, she sat down on the roof, her legs crossed over one another, and put her hands on her knees. She slowly turned the gain-knob up once more, until she could hear the thing whispering in her head. She closed her eyes, and began to work . . .

  At least that part didn’t start off too difficult: The ship’s psychic signature stuck out like a bright pulsar in a field of the corpses of burnt-out stars. In her mind’s eye, it became an enormous, black, castle-like fortress of doom, a stone monstrosity towering over a forest of dead trees and a landscape of used-up, failing farmsteads, the face of its central tower a large, circular, jewel-like window that had a spiderweb-like pattern of ironwork as its frame. Behind and beyond the fortress, the world simply ended; the land came to a cliff-edge, then simply disappeared, fading into a darkness lit by stars which seemed to stretch out into infinity; the sky ended there as well, the clouds above tapering off into nothingness, the blue sky fading into the blackness of outer space. The black fortress — itself blending with the darkness surrounding its other side — glowed with a sickly green light, as ghostly wisps of noxious green power encircled it protectively, their voices whispering arcane spells in forbidden tongues. She stood before the fortress dressed in the sterling steel armor of a bygone age, her only weapons a longsword — which she held in her right hand — a dagger in a sheath on her hip, and on her back, a quiver of arrows, along with a bow with which to shoot them. Her left hand held a circular, convex metal shield, upon the interior of which her mind had inscribed the spiraling, star-like figure of the Novenis Virtutes Felium — the Nine-Fold Virtues of Feline-Kind — the ancient sigil of her race, and upon the exterior of which her thought had writ the sigil of her Noble House, Coven Anjaladatanagra. On her head, she wore a rounded helmet with a barred face-guard. Thus armored, she stood before the black fortress and its giant spiderweb-of-ironwork eye, awaiting the lowering of the drawbridge so she could cross the moat — a thick, black, ichorous pool filled with gigantic, sharp-fangéd eels whose bodies crackled with electric potential. All who came forth to challenge the Dark Knight had to first pass over the drawbridge, and thus cross over into his grimdark netherworld . . . if one could get him to lower said bridge. She somehow how knew that he did so only for opponents he found “worthy.”

  “I come to challenge the Dark Knight for passage through this realm and on through the barriers to the Inner World!” she called out from where she stood. “If he be not a dandy and a milquetoast, then let him come forward . . . and present himself to me!” She waited a moment longer, but no answer came. The only sound she heard was the wind, blowing gently through her fur, the clink of the chains that held up the drawbridge, and the odd call of the odd bird here or there in the sky. Not so much as a whisper from the fortress itself, save those of the wraiths that encircled it, whispering amongst themselves in ghostly, forbidden tongues. She twitched her tail in irritation. She grew tired of waiting. “What am I to make of this, then?” she continued. “Does the Dark Knight not think me worthy? Or is he himself the candy-arsed ninnymuggins that some rumor him to be? Can he not face an honest fight with one such as myself? I, who have faced dangers untold and hardships unnumbered . . . I, who have fought my way here, to his fortress, beyond the Goblin City . . . I, who now demand that the Dark Knight show himself, or let him be labeled a coward and a fool who hides in his keep, afraid of single a Catwoman’s wrath! Come now, Dark Knight . . . surely you jest . . . Surely thou posseseth a backbone, somewhere on thy person!”

  The ground beneath Darmok began to tremble; only slightly at first, then with greater rancor and violence, until the spot she stood upon shook with tumultuous convulsions and she could no longer keep her feet. Cracks appeared below her, and she stumbled first one way and then the other as the earth heaved beneath her, tossing her flailing in one direction, then another, and then, at long last, after a few more minutes of this, finally started to settle down and quiet itself once more. As she grabbed onto a nearby outcropping of rock to help stabilize her so she didn’t overcorrect and fall flat on her face, her stomach lurched to one side and she almost vomited. She plunged her sword into the soil and turned loose of it for a moment, long enough to get a grip on herself and regain her balance. She wiped the sweat from her palms and then renewed her grip on her sword, once again wielding it with confidence. A deep, rumbling voice — so loud that it echoed off the mountains in the distance — filled the air around her as it said:

  “TELL ME, LITTLE ONE . . . DO YOU BLEED?”

  Unsure of herself in the extreme, she screwed up as much courage as she could and responded: “Not . . . not by your hand, I won’t.”

  The voice laughed — a low, thunderous chuckle that sounded like boulders crushed into pebbles. “YOU WILL.”

  “I’m — I’m not afraid of you,” she lied, and swallowed. “Not in the least.”

  “WE SHALL SEE.”

  The drawbridge began lowering itself, the chains that suspended it clinking and clanking, together with the sound of two great wooden wheels turning and creaking on their shafts. As the drawbridge landed on her side of the ichorous moat, she saw revealed within the fortress naught but a dense, swirling cloud of fog that obscured whatever else might’ve lurked inside. She could hear a horse neighing and whinnying, and the steady clip-clop approach of hooves sparking against stone, as though someone approached from far away on a paved road . . . The fog, however, hid any sight of whomever it was. She watched the fog for a moment, uncertain of whether or not to proceed. But just as she had made up her mind to advance, and had taken a few trepidatious steps toward the drawbridge, the Dark Knight fell upon her: He rode out of the fog like a lion tearing after some idiotic human that had dared disturb its territory, riding upon a huge, jet-black destrier, a stallion of immense proportion. His armor was of a polished, gleaming obsidian metal, his cylindrical helmet featureless save for a slit to see through and another to breathe through, the sigil on his right-hand shield a red, inverted pentagram, and the sword in his left hand a strange curiosity: In his hand lay its handle, a metal cylinder of sorts, and from that sprang the blade — a single blazing column made of iridescent scarlet-red light, about the length of a longsword. And, fastened to the side of his mount, he kept a formidable-looking wooden lance. Curiosity or not, she nonetheless intuited that the Dark Knight’s light-sword could both cut through — or kill — damned near anything or anyone in its path. And here all she had was this useless steel beam she pathetically called a “sword!” Why, he could chop her blades to ribbons with such a weapon!

  The Dark Knight’s rode past her, his steed galloping to a point about fifteen yards away, where the Dark Knight reined him in and came to a stop, then turned him around so he could face her. “YOU HAVE COME TO CHALLENGE ME?” More laughter that sounded like rocks breaking. “WHAT POOR MANNER OF JEST IS THIS?”

  She started to respond, but didn’t; there was nothing to say but “yes,” but she feared her voice might crack and give away just how deeply scared she felt, and she had resolved not to give him that satisfaction. Besides — her mouth had gone dry, as had her throat. She licked her lips — also dry — and thought for a moment . . . and then, she remembered something important. She looked back over her shoulder, toward the drawbridge, moat, and fortress, and saw something she needed to see: There, sitting on the drawbridge, stood another of her — a perfect copy of her, in fact, one wearing a crimson duster, gloves, rocket boots, and a helmet with antennae on it — with electrical arcs crackling between them — and with her feline tail curled around her legs, as she sat in a meditative position, her eyes closed and her hands situated on her knees. Her face looked relaxed yet focused, pensive yet peaceful.

  Oh, damn that’s right, I forgot, she thought. This realm is consensual . . . this whole place is a co-creation of my mind and the ship’s “mind,” if it can be called that. I can’t control all of it, nor all of what happens . . . but I should be able to control me, or my avatar. I have at least some say-so over what I look like and can do . . .

  She looked back to the Dark Knight, who still stood about fifty or so feet away, awaiting her on his black stallion, which presently snorted fire from its nostrils as it stood, trotting in a half-circle and then impatiently pawing at the ground and kicking up dirt as it did. The fire gave her an idea, though. She wondered . . . if the simulation she’d gotten sucked into existed in the mind of the ship’s computer and in her mind simultaneously, then it had to be made-up of both sets of ideas about this period of Shyphtorilaen history, and its — amazingly — corresponding period of Earth history . . . including the less scientific and more overtly mystical notions found in the romances of the time on both worlds. Therefore, if she wanted an action to happen here, even if there existed no logical justification for it, she simply had to flip her paradigm, and reframe that action as an act of magic. Of course, she had no idea if such a far-out idea would work at all, and even if it did, the results might be unpredictable . . . However, the premise that this world acted more on magic and intuition than it did on scientific principle was, she thought, a solid hunch to act on . . .

  To hell with it, she thought. She took her sword and plunged it into the Earth again, this time right in front of her, and went to one knee before it, with both hands on the grip in a prayerful position. She closed her eyes again as she intoned, the wind catching her voice and amplifying it, carrying it out to the four corners of the world:

  “Darksome night and shining moon,

  East, then South, then West, then North;

  Hearken to the Witches' Rune —

  Here I come to call ye forth!

  Earth and water, air and fire,

  Wand and pentacle and sword,

  Work ye unto my desire,

  Hearken ye unto my work!

  Cords and censer, scourge and knife,

  Powers of the Witch's blade —

  Waken all ye into life,

  Come ye as the charm is made!

  I ask of you, sylphs of the East,

  To forge for me a mighty steed,

  With intellect of steel, and speed,

  Unequaled but by winds of the West,

  And a light-sword to equal Excalibur,

  With which I can dispatch the best,

  And find myself the Viktor,

  When I face the ultimate test.”

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  “AH, MAGIC,” said the Dark Knight, deactivating his light-sword; the blade of light disappeared, leaving only the handle for him to clip on his belt. “THE LAST REFUGE OF THE COWARDLY, THOSE WHO CANNOT FACE THE WORLD ON ITS OWN TERMS, AND THUS MUST INVENT THEIR OWN.”

  Darmok rolled her eyes. Thunder rumbled in the clouds above as she spoke the words “Come ye as the charm is made,” and the sky clouded over, the clouds rushing over the two of them and casting wild shadows on the country and fortress below as they headed toward the blackness of outer space that lay on the other side. A bolt of lightning struck a nearby tree, catching a few of its branches blaze; a second bolt, right on the heels of the first, severed the tree in twain and half of it fell to the ground in a shower of sparks, but smothering the first fire. The brush around them blew, dust-bunnies whipping past them on the wind, which had picked up considerably. The Dark Knight held his ground, though, and Darmok hers. The ground began to shake again, as though another quake took hold of the imaginary earth beneath her, but she found it easier to stand strong this time, for she became the quake’s epicenter. She took her sword from the ground, and where it had lain, there appeared a crack in the earth, then another splinter, then two more cracks, then a fourth and fifth, with each crack growing larger than the one before it. As she backed away from the cracking earth, she saw a pattern emerging: The cracks formed a round shape in the dirt, about twenty feet in diameter.

  “WHAT HAVE YOU SUMMONED, LITTLE ONE?” the Dark Knight asked in a mocking tone. “A LION TO GIVE YOU COURAGE, PERHAPS? A SCARECROW TO ADVISE YOU? OR, MAYHAP A TIN MAN, TO SYMPATHIZE WITH YOUR PLIGHT? OR, MAYBE, A SMALL DOG, TO REMIND YOU OF HOW INESCAPABLY INFINITESIMAL YOUR EXISTENCE REALLY IS.”

  Finally, at last, the ground simply exploded upward, as though someone had set off blasting charges beneath it — causing Darmok to stumble backward a few paces — and standing there, in the crater that remained, she beheld an awesome sight: A horse, but one made of metal and clockwork, his legs hydraulic and gear-driven at the elbows, ankles, and shoulders, his body made of a steel ribcage and various pipes, hoses, and pistons; the beast’s ribcage lay open to view, a complex assembly, inside of which one could see gears turning, wheels moving, and various lights flashing, as well as vents where steam leaked out of assorted tubes and valves. His head armored head was all of apiece, with two large, glowing blue orbs for eyes, and two pointed satellite-dishes for ears, as well as a mouth that looked articulable, with a dozen tiny motors and dozens of translucent, bendable pieces, behind which she could see steel teeth lurking. His mane looked like a mass of fiber-optic cables, as did his tail, and on his back sat a seat-like saddle — what the Earthlings would have called an English saddle — and there, in a clip attached to the saddle, lay the handle-grip base of a light-sword of the kind the Dark Knight had, this one with a bluish crystal plugged into its bottom compartment.

  And still, off in the distance — and still about forty feet away, keeping his own council and waiting — stood the Dark Knight, calmly regarding her with his expressionless black eye- and mouth-slit, his destrier stallion anxiously pawing at the earth. C’mon, let’s get this over with, the stallion seemed to say with each neigh or whinny.

  The robotic horse turned its head toward her and addressed her. “Dost thou need a lift into battle, M’lady?” it said, its voice masculine and smooth. She would’ve preferred its personality be feminine, but oh well. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, she supposed.

  “Indeed, I do find myself in need of a lift,” she said, inclining her head politely. “But I’m afraid that though the Aletheiaeon have been kind enough to provide me a light-sword and a gallant steed, I find myself in want of a lance with which to joust.”

  “Nay, they’ve not neglected you in your need, M’lady,” said the robotic horse. “Look there, to that fallen tree, the one the lightning hast cloven in twain. Look closely.”

  Darmok looked at the tree, the one that lightning had struck twice in a row and severed in half. Then she walked over closer to it, to get a closer look. There, buried in the center of the tree, right where the lightning cloven it, lay a long wooden shaft the approximate length of the Dark Knight’s lance, and almost in the proper shape of one too, handle and all, connected to the tree’s inner mass via tenuous fibers and splinters of wood . . . as though something had placed it there Ravenkrofts ago, and the tree had grown in around it, and the lightning had done nothing but merely set it free — well, mostly free.

  “COME, LITTLE ONE,” came the voice of the Dark Knight, rumbling in the hillocks all around her. “I GROW WEARY OF YOUR STALLING. PERHAPS YOU SHOULD COME BACK ANOTHER TIME WHEN YOU’RE FEELING SOMEWHAT . . . BRAVER.”

  “I’d pay a pretty penny if he’d just shut the Hell up for a few damned minutes,” grumbled Darmok. She sheathed her sword, unsheathed her dagger, and dug it into the inner wood of the tree, trying to cut the lance free of its prison. It took her about ten solid minutes, but she finally manage to carve all around it and free it from the burnt wreckage of the tree; it felt good in her hands . . . weighty, but not too heavy. It would make for a fine lance. If she’d had the time, she would’ve sanded it down and maybe even tried to smooth it over, maybe paint it with the colors of her House. But not right now. No, for now, she had a Dark Knight to meet in fair combat.

  Darmok situated herself upon her robotic mount and adjusted her metal shield and helmet. About a hundred feet away from her, stood the Dark Knight on his eager, fire-snorting steed. The Dark Knight had proved to have magic of his own, the hypocrite. Only a few moments before this, he had held up a hand and clenched it into a fist, and the wraiths surrounding his black fortress had come forth and summoned a hundred foot wooden rail from the ground, stretching it from one end of the “jousting field” to the other, with the Dark Knight aligned on one side, and with Darmok aligned on the other, and with each of them at an opposing end. All around them, erupting from the ground, Darmok saw there arise ghostly pavilions packed with the souls of the dead, their green-glowing, phantasmal specters matching their corpses’ various states of decay: Some had faces half-eaten by worms, others had misplaced an eyeball or a nostril, or their lower jaw, or had gaping holes here and there in their heads, faces, or bodies, or rips and tears in their burial garb, from where rats or wild dogs had gnawed at them. Some had broken necks, from where the executioner had hanged them, whereas fire had burned — even all but consumed — others, while still others bore burns from boiling oil or acid, and others still looked as though tortured to death. Darmok tried to avert her eyes from their piercing gazes, eyes that hated her for living while they had all died, glares that wanted more than anything to see her blood spilled, set in heads that featured minds that knew nothing but eternities of pain, and thus, had forgotten most of what they had known in life, save for how to inflict their pain upon others.

  Well, she thought, if he can do it, I can do it, too. The ghostly pavilions the Dark Knight had raised stood on his half of the battlefield, on his side of the dividing railing. So, Darmok closed her eyes, and concentrated on her side of it, visualizing what she wished would happen, what she needed to happen. She had little hope of such magic actually deciding the outcome of the tournament or joust itself . . . the hard-coded rules built into the sentient Zarcturean ship’s “superego” would likely determine that, just as the Dark Knight was a projection of its ordinary identity, its “ego,” if it had such a thing. As she concentrated and focused all her will on the concept she hoped to manifest, she heard the ground begin to rumble again, and just as she opened her eyes, she saw them: Five great, wooden pavilions that formed a semi-circle around the field, all of them empty of people, rose up out of the muddy ground like upended, ancient shipwrecks come unburied during a sea-storm, tree roots and stumps overturning and snapping, breaking over the top of the pavilions as they came up out of the soil. And there, streaming into these seats from all directions, all over, as though from nowhere and everywhere at once, came commoners and lords alike, though the commoners stood on lower ground, closer to the action, and the lords took their appropriate seats in dedicated viewing boxes and balconies, all decorated with the vibrant colors of their various Noble Houses. They all gave a cheer as Darmok waved to them from her electromechanical mount, who pranced around prettily, showing off the power and majesty of his form, gleaming in the light for all to see.

  “So what on Shyphtor do I call you?” she asked, stroking the mechanical beast’s mane of fiber-optic cables.

  “My name, once upon a time, was Widdershins,” said the positronic-clockwork unicorn. “I suppose it can be so again, here.”

  “Widdershins,” she repeated, and nodded. “I like that. What does it mean?”

  “In an old Earth-language,” he replied, “it means ‘counterclockwise.’”

  “Ha! And with you, being mostly clockwork. How ironic.”

  “I do believe that’s what my creator was going for, yes. If you want to be really on-the-nose with it.”

  Just then, trumpets sounded, signaling that the joust had begun. Both Darmok and the Dark Knight took their positions on the battlefield, on either side and at the far ends of the dividing rail in the center. Darmok lowered her suit of armor’s face-shield, and she lowered her lance, pointing it toward the Dark Knight, whose horse once again snorted fire at her. This was it.

  The trumpets sounded again — and they set off. The Dark Knight’s horse galloped toward her, his lance lowered and his shield before him, his steed at full run, just as Widdershins galloped forward as well, Darmok situated atop him, her lance also lowered and her shield also deployed.

  WHAM!

  The Dark Knight’s lance struck her shield — it felt like someone had slammed a spaceship into her chest, blasting the wind out of her in one sudden explosion and nearly tossing her from Widdershins’s back, the only thing saving her a firm grip on the reins — but she regained her balance at the last moment and managed to remain mounted as their paths crossed and she wound up on the other end of the field. When she reached it, she turned Widdershins around and then, they galloped back the other way . . . lance down, shield up, just as the Dark Knight came at them again. Her chest burned and ached under the armor; it felt like she had fractured something . . . or several somethings. It was hard to breathe; no, it hurt to breathe; it ached to breathe. But she had no time for pain. This time, her lance struck the Knight’s shield, right in the center of its red, upside-down pentagram. The vibration traveled up her lance and rushed into her body, almost knocking her out of the saddle. The Dark Knight’s lance struck her shield as well, but only on the very edge . . . though that nearly spun her off the top of her mount due to the colossal force with which the two connected. Neither shield gave nor broke, but instead each’s lance skipped off the other’s. The Dark Knight quickly regained any balance he might’ve lost — the blow seemed not to have upset him at all — and his mount galloped onward. Damn! They criss-crossed paths again, and once more wound up on opposite ends of the field, where they each paused for a moment, steeds prancing, each one sizing up the other; Darmok’s arms hurt and her body cried out in agony and protest against the punishment. Then, the Dark Knight spurred his mount onward, as did Darmok Widdershins, who this time seemed to put an extra kick of speed into his charge . . . an accelerative boost that a flesh and blood horse would have a hard time putting forward. Darmok aimed her lance carefully, right at the center of the Dark Knight’s shield, holding onto it for dear life and trying to lock her arm in place, forcing it to stay true with every ounce of strength that she could. The lance connected with the Dark Knight’s shield full-force, and —

  So too did his lance with her shield, unfortunately. As his lance rammed into her, she felt herself go flying backward through the air, the wind rushing past her, and she landed on the ground with a loud thud — the armor smashing into her backside and, of course, with an agonizing rush of pain in every limb, as well, her body quaking with the impact. The Dark Knight reined his mount to a stop, dismounted, grabbed the grip that remained of his light-sword, and powered it up. The shining blade of scarlet-red light WHOOSHED as it appeared in the air above the hilt with a crackling hum that pervaded the air around it, and he approached her. Darmok scrambled to her feet — not an easy task while wearing heavy armor, but once she managed to turn herself over and push herself into a kneeling — and then a standing — position, much easier — and raced toward Widdershins to retrieve her own conjured light-sword. She grabbed it and fumbled with it for a moment, unsure of how to turn it on. She finally found the switch on the side — and made sure that she hadn’t accidentally pointed the business-end at herself! — and activated it. A bright, blue-white-glowing blade of light emerged from the other end. The grip remained light as a feather in her hands. She had never fought with such a weapon as this, not even in her training for the mission on Shyphtor. She knew how to handle a sword . . . but much of that lay in knowing how to handle the weight of a sword, how to balance it properly, how to manage it. This had no weight at all, hardly. She hoped she didn’t sever her own arms or legs with the damned thing.

  Sensing movement behind her, she spun around, light-sword at the ready, and sure enough, it collided with the Dark Knight’s light-sword in midair — he had been ready to strike her from behind, the coward! She reared back to strike him with her blade of light, but he parried the blow and blocked it with his light-blade. So — the light-swords could cut through anything, except each other; those were the rules. The two light-blades slashed through the air again and again, meeting and blocking one another time and time as the two of them battled for supremacy, the light-swords locking together at the hilt now and then, the sound of their energies sparking against each other like the sound of rusty nails drawn across slate. First Darmok would lose ground then gain it, a foot or two at a time, then lose three or four as she backed up under the relentless assault of the Dark Knight’s flurry of moves. She would lunge, he would parry. She would move in with a swipe or a slash, and he would dodge and counterattack. He was a much more advanced swordsman than her. She got the feeling he merely toyed with her, playing with her, humoring her. And that made her angry on a personal level . . . which made all the difference in the world. The anger burned inside her like a slow-building fire, smoldering at first then breaking into a roiling hell-storm. At the last, he forced her to her knees, with her holding her light-sword over her head in order to deflect his killing blow. He raised his light-sword over his shoulder to swing it around and slice it into her while her sides lay unprotected, but she surprised him: She went for her old-fashioned metal dagger, retrieving it from her hip, lunged forward, and jammed it into the perforation in his armor that lay between his upper and lower leg — right into the soft tissue of the knee. The Dark Knight cried out in agony and dropped to one knee, then dropped completely, still clinging to his light-sword. Darmok pressed her advantage: She got up from where she knelt, towered over him, and put her light-sword to his throat.

  “Yield to me, sir,” she told him in a grim voice, huffing and puffing for breath. She’d barely had time to breathe between the bustle and eruption of blows and parries, the dodges and lunges they’d taken at each other. “Yield to me, now, and let me pass through your fortress to the Inner World I seek. I mean you no permanent harm . . . I only wish to pass through.”

  The Dark Knight only chuckled, deactivating his light-sword for the moment. “YOU THINK YOU HAVE DEFEATED ME? ’TIS BUT A SCRATCH. ’TIS MERELY A FLESH-WOUND.” He reached up and took off his helmet. Darmok gasped at what lied beneath it: She beheld a twisted wretch, a deformed monster; his bald head gleamed a bleached white, and there lay purplish gray circles under his eyes . . . and all over his head, someone had cruelly implanted machinery, circuitry, and wiring. He had a camera for one eye, the other full of anguish; gold and silver capped his teeth. He reached into the lining of his black, obsidian-colored armor — between the place where his cuirass met his pelvic piece — where he kept a small leather pouch hidden, filled with three smallish, glass vials. He pulled one out. Inside of it, there bubbled a bright purple liquid. He uncorked it with his thumb, put it to his lips, downed the elixir, and then laughed. His voice echoed all around them, coming from every corner of the world, or so it seemed: “YOU THINK YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN CONJURE MYSTICAL ITEMS FROM THE NETHER-VOID, LITTLE ONE? BEHOLD: A HEALING POTION DOES ITS WORK!”

  And with that, he grabbed for his helmet and put it back on — there came a sealing noise, like a vacuum sealing — and rolled over quickly to get out from under her light-sword. He hurriedly sprang back to his feet and reactivated his own weapon, falling into a fighting stance before her yet again. And so, Darmok took a deep breath, and attacked. She lunged at the Dark Knight, who parried the blow — of course — and who then counterattacked with a sideways swing. She spun out of the way, and the battle continued.

  Long ago on her world, a traveling bard named Jobért Rordan, a prolific scribe, a favorite in many a king’s court, had tried to write down all the various motions and moves of the arts known as fencing and sword-fighting, and had attempted to give to them poetic names, such as Avalanche Crushes The Climber, Buck Prances In Winter Streams, Cornstalk Kisses The Harvest Moon, and so forth. Before she could complete her training, Darmok had to memorize about sixty of the buggers — and their names — and she’d had to pass a test on them, as well. Now, here with the Dark Knight, the virtual avatar of the Zarcturean ship’s security system, in this consensual dreamworld of sorts, she executed Cornered Cat Lashes Out, a maneuver that relied on three quick strikes at one’s opponent done in quick succession, meant to catch off-guard and disorient.

  The Dark Knight countered with a version of Frond Shelters The Nest, a move designed to deflect a flurry of quick strikes with one overarching move. They continued on like this for another few minutes, hacking and parrying, lunging and swiping . . . and then came the Dark Knight’s use of Blacksmith’s Hammerblow, a tough move to execute, but one of immense power, designed to overwhelm one’s opponent and force them into submission, cornering them and overpowering them, literally forcing them to their knees.

  Once down on one knee, Darmok answered his next blow — Fire Strikes The Elder Tree, meant as devastating finishing move, a downward, stabbing strike part-lunge, part-almost-sacrificial-bludgeon — with a defensive move called Porcupine Shows His Quills, a move where one could forcefully knock away one’s attacker’s blade with a sweeping sideways blow, even from a weakened position, surprising them with one’s rally at the last. She took advantage of his surprise and rose up from where she knelt, striking back hard with Dagger Cuts The Skin, a series of swipes and forward lunges designed to put him on the defensive and force him back, back, and further back still, forcing him to defend and deflecting any possibility of attack, until finally she had him on the ropes, so to speak; he countered at the last with a spin-around-and-attack, in a move known as Brisk Wind Stirring, swinging his sword around in a wide, arcing move, intending to behead her.

  She ducked out of the way just in time and then executed Scorpion Strikes Only Once . . . a single quick lunge at his gut. And, amazingly, it worked: Her light-sword slid right into his abdomen. She shoved it all the way in. It sank through his body until it emerged from the other side, the sizzling sounds and charnel-smell of cooking meat now wafting through the air. The Dark Knight’s face — though she could not see it — was, no doubt, at this moment, a perfect portrait of both surprise and agony. The Dark Knight fell to his knees, his eyes wide, smoke issuing from his mouth, nostrils, and ears, his light-sword dropping to the ground and deactivating. He then fell over, dead at Darmok’s feet.

  “‘Little One,’ my ass,” she said with a smirk, and kicked the Dark Knight’s corpse over, just to make sure he was dead. Just to make even more sure, she raised her light-sword, and then beheaded him, his lopped-off cranium coming loose and falling over onto its side in the mud. She then deactivated her light-sword, and clipped it to her utility belt, and walked away from the grisly sight. She turned toward Widdershins, and asked, “Well, now what? Is that it? Is the Zarcturean ship’s security system turned off, now? Can I board her, yet? And what about you? Where the hell did you come from, anyway? From me . . . or from the ship?”

  “I’m not really sure what comes next,” said Widdershins, with genuine uncertainty in his voice. “No one has ever defeated the Guardian program. I would suppose that you — or anyone else, really — can enter the ship safely now, and that the foggy black fortress there — ” He jerked his head toward the fortress behind him. “Is now no longer impregnable, for it represents the ship’s mind, its programming. As for me, and where I came from?” He chuckled. Darmok could have sworn that he smiled at her, then, as he said: “The Aletheiaeon move in strange and mysterious ways, Darmok. Sometimes in inscrutable ways, and we cannot always fathom their thinking. All we need know is that there is a reason they do as they do, and that their actions do serve logical ends . . . even if we cannot comprehend what those ends are.”

  “Sounds a lot like the whole ‘gods’ crap to me,” said Darmok. “Just wrapped in a different package. You’ll excuse me if I don’t fall on my knees and start professing my thanks to their ‘holiness,’ the Aletheiaeon. Myths, Widdershins. Myths and legends, that’s all that stuff is. At least that’s what I think when the lights are on.”

  “Well, I suppose it does sound a bit religious and wibbly,” he said. “But there’s a twist with this line of thought, you see: Unlike the ‘one god’ or the ‘gods,’ plural, all of which your elders lied to you about when you were a child, the Aletheiaeon are very much real, and are finite beings of finite power and perception; they are limited and can make mistakes. They also don’t know everything. They were once like us — or at least, like you. Real. Corporeal. Physical. Beings of the flesh, so to speak . . . and unlike the Eidolon, they have not forgotten their heritage . . . nor their legacy. Nor have they forgotten their duty to those they left behind in the physical realm. They acknowledge that they need you, and that you need them. Now, then. Awake, Darmok. Awake from this self-induced dream, and board the Zarcturean ship. Go now with grace and courage, and know that ye are Watchéd o’er where’er thy road through Time takes thee. Go now, and rescue one of the Special Ones who is in danger.”

  “What’s a ‘Special One?’ Who the hell are — ?” she asked, genuinely curious. She had never heard the term before. “Special Ones?”

  “You’ll know them when you meet them,” said Widdershins. “Trust the Aletheiaeon, Darmok. Trust the Aletheiaeon. Now, go. Go now.”

  Dizzy landed The Fangirl on the roof of the Renaissance Regency, the tires colliding with the gravel with a bumpy thud, the shocks and struts bouncing as they touched down and she shut off the engine, which let out a whining, revving-down sound. Gadget let out a long, slow breath of relief — as did everyone else — extremely glad to once again have settled on some form of solid surface.

  “Please-a, ladies and-a gentlemen, return-a your tray-tables and-a seat-backs to their full-a, upright-a positions,” said Dizzy in a faux-Italian accent. “And-a thank-a you for-a flyin’ Dizmeister Airlines. Watch-a your step as-a you disembark.” The doors of the car all popped open. Dizzy sighed. “Gadget dear, I shall require your assistance once more, if’n you don’t mind, good sir.”

  “Huh?” he said. Then, the realization of what she meant dawned on him. “Oh, yeah! Right! Hang on a second.” He got out as Buffy, Jetta, and Viktor all exited the backseat, weapons in hand. He crossed over to the front driver’s side door, with the suitcase-compressed Evangeliojaeger in hand. He set it down by the car’s fender, then reached in, and put his arms around Dizzy. Her perfume smelled potent and spiritous, almost woozy-making, and the feel of her, the weight of her in his arms, became the definition of awesomeness and bliss. He did his best to pull her up and out of the car, all too aware of her breasts pressing against him, and then helped turned her around, still holding her up from behind. He tried to breathe through his nose so that she couldn’t hear his tremulous . . . well, breathlessness at holding onto her from behind like this, their bodies so close to touching. Her hair smelled wonderful.

  “Accio Evangeliojaeger!” cried Dizzy. In a flash, the suitcase-compressed Evangeliojaeger exploded into life. It popped open vertically, then expanded horizontally, and unfolded twice — once horizontally, once vertically. From inside it, the two metal gauntlets emerged, detached with a ratcheting noise, and levitated on tiny glowing repulsivator beams toward Dizzy’s arms and hands, where they glided smoothly into place and then locked on, clamping down over her skin and extending small cables, pipes, and tubes toward future pieces that came flying up from the suitcase now, enveloping the rear of her arms. Then came the metal serpent of the mechanical, centipede-like spinal reinforcement, which flew around and locked onto her back, shoulders, and neck; then came the boots.

  “Er — Gadget? Could you . . . lift my right leg for me?” she said. Nervously, gulping down a few butterflies, Gadget did as she asked, gently, grasping her leg just above the knee and moving it for her. The right repulsivator boot flew in and locked into place. “Now the left one,” she said. Again, he did as she bid, and the left boot flew at her body, then spun around and clanked into position. As did the rear armor and actuators that went on the back of her legs and extended upward toward her buttocks, the wires and cables attaching themselves to each other, the suit’s many gears and wheels locking together seamlessly, the various parts falling into place as smoothly as butter over popcorn at the movies. Lastly, the suitcase almost gone, all its parts used up, came the motorcycle helmet, which settled onto her blueberry hairdo and lit up from within. Now fully rigged into her Evangeliojaeger, Dizzy stepped away from Gadget, and turned around to face him. “Thanks,” she said, and pecked him on the cheek.

  Gadget had to actually put forth real effort in order to stop himself from grinning dopily and turning an even deeper shade of red. “And now I have to ask something else of you, something that I really don’t want to ask, seeing as how it worked out earlier . . .”

  “No!” said Buffy, marching up to Dizzy and poking her in the metal chest-piece. “Don’t you dare ask him to do that again. Don’t you dare. Can’t you see he’s had enough of being the bloodhound on this hunt? If we want to find the alien, I suggest we look around a little. We’re looking for Ravenkroft, right? So if we find him, we find the alien. Simple enough.”

  “You make a good point,” said Viktor, piping up, “but time is of the essence, my dear. If we do not find Ravenkroft soon, he and the alien will carry out at least one of their plans, and the Earth is doomed either way.”

  “Yeah,” said Jetta. “That thing inside him is planning an alien invasion, Buffy. And if Gadget using the Helm is the only way we can find it and shut that plan down, then Dizzy’s right — we need to go with that. Besides. Gadget’s willing to do it. Aren’t you, Gadget?”

  Gadget gulped. He paused for a moment and looked into Dizzy’s eyes, and saw in them the faith she had in him. “Yeah,” he said, “I guess I am willing. It’s okay, Buffy. I’ll be fine.”

  Buffy shook her head, and folded her arms across her chest. “Well, whatever. Don’t come crying to me when you get an aneurism, though, okay? Just remember what that thing did to me.”

  “Well from where I’m standing,” said Dizzy, “it gave you awesome pyrokinetic powers.”

  “Shyeah,” said Buffy. “Well, they’re not all they’re cracked up to be, believe me.”

  “Uh — guys?” said Gadget, adjusting the Mind-Weirding Helm on his head. He couldn't believe that they couldn’t see what he saw. Maybe what he saw had to do with some kind of psionic technology that his Helm allowed him to see through . . . or maybe it was something he could see because of his being bipolar and his brain chemistry being generally weird. Or maybe it was that the illusion couldn’t fool only certain rare people. Whatever it was, it was kind of funny that the others were so oblivious to it. “Hey,” he repeated. “You guys might wanna know about this.”

  “Might want to know about what?” asked Viktor.

  “Yeah,” said Jetta. She took a few steps toward him, and noticed him looking back and forth. “Why, whadda you see, Gadget?”

  “The Zarcturean ship, for one thing,” said Gadget. “Right over there, on the left side of The Fangirl, about ten yards that-away.” He pointed in that direction. “And over there . . . is another alien ship. Radically different design . . . completely separate concept. It looks more advanced than the Zarcturean ship, which is mostly just a fancy flying saucer. No, this one looks . . . much more high-tech; if I had to make a guess, I’d say it’s from a species who’re more advanced than the Zarctureans. You mean you guys can’t see either of these things?”

  “Nope,” said Dizzy, looking to either side. “They must have some sort of psionic-interfacing cloaking devices, or something. But, wait. Hold up. Back the frak up a second. It just sounded to these ears like you just said there were two alien ships . . . two ships, from two species.”

  “Well, yeah, duh,” said Gadget. “Of course that’s what I said. There’re two ships, from what look like two different species.”

  “Oh that’s just frakkin’ great,” said Dizzy, rolling her eyes. “That’s just what we need! Another troublesome alien running around down here. And also at our con. Jeez, what is it with con this year being a gorram alien magnet? Just seems kinda weird. I mean, I’m glad the con is popular with the extraterrestrial crowd — couldn’t be happier about that — but does it have to attract all the neighborhood cosmic dicks?”

  “We don’t know if the other alien is hostile,” offered Viktor. “Who knows — it might be on our side. The two ships are parked opposite one another; that’s all we know. We don’t know if they arrived together, or if one pursued the other. I suggest we keep an open mind.”

  “Our minds are gonna be open alright,” said Dizzy, “as in, ventilated by laser blasts if we’re not careful. But aside from that — and aside from the hee-yuge risk involved — I say we saddle up and storm that frakkin’ Zarcturean ship right the frak now, and get my friend and mentor Misto back from that gorram alien monster. That’s what I say.” She activated both her wrist-mounted Interphase Pistols; Gadget heard them charging from where he stood.

  “Whoa, hang on just a tick, Diz,” said Jetta. “In case you didn’t notice, we’re short two people — Misto and Mystikite. Right now it’s just me, you, Viktor, Buffy, and Gadget here. And none of us are at full-strength. Not one of us got any sleep last night nor any this morning. We need to find Mystikite, convince him to come back and help us with this, and we need to get some serious shut-eye before we try anything of this magnitude. No, really, listen to me, Diz . . . If we go up against this thing now, with the condition we’re in . . . we’ll lose. It’ll slaughter every last one of us. We can’t take it on just now. We’re not strong enough. None of us are. This is the kind of thing you tackle when you’re at your best . . . not when your batteries have almost run dry. We’re tired, Dizzy. And hungry. We all need to just settle down for a sec, and take a break for a while.”

  “That creature,” said Dizzy, walking toward her and poking her in the chest with one robotic finger, “has my best friend tied up and captive somewhere! And that’s if it hasn’t already tried to dissect his big, fat, black, physics-professory ass! I have to get him back. I have to try. Like, yesterday. There is no other option. None whatsoever. Either I do it with your help, or I do it alone, but I’m goin’ in there, regardless . . . and I’m gettin’ Misto back, one way or the frakkin’ other. Now either you help me — ”

  “We will help you, Dizzy,” said Gadget, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. “But she’s right. We’re all tired and wiped out, here. We’re all exhausted. We could use a good night’s — or at least a few hours’ worth — of sleep. So here’s what I say. I say we all go downstairs and check ourselves in, and get to our suite, if they transferred a room reservation for us. Then, we hit the sack for a few hours. Then we get up, and see if we can find Mystikite. He’s bound to be here somewhere. Then we come up here, and we go on the attack . . . And we go aboard that ship and we do whatever we have to do to get Misto back, no matter what, no matter how big a risk it turns out to be. And then . . . well, then we find and destroy this thing, before it calls down the thunder of a full-on alien invasion force and wipes out all human civilization in the process. Sound good to you?”

  Gadget gulped. What had he just said? What the hell had he just committed himself to doing? Dear God, had he just committed to getting into a knock-down, drag-out fight with Ravenkroft, the guy who had just kicked his ass telepathically? He thought he had.

  Oh well. No going back now.

  Dizzy stood there for a moment, breathing heavily, staring at him, tension and anger in her expression . . . but then seemed to soften a little. She nodded her head, and blinked a few times. “Yeah,” she said, avoiding eye contact. “Yeah, that sounds good. Sounds doable. Workable. We can do that. But we need a way to make sure the monstrous thing doesn’t sneak down into the hotel and kill us all in our sleep.”

  “Okay. Easy-peasy,” said Buffy with a shrug. “We’ll take turns on watch duty. I’ll even take first watch. Viktor can relieve me, say, after two hours.”

  “Sounds good enough to me,” said Viktor. “Though I’ve no idea what I’m supposed to do if Ravenkroft or the alien attacks. You’re the one with the Evangeliojaeger and he’s the one with the psychotronic defense device.” He jerked a thumb in Gadget’s direction.

  “Well, wake one of them up,” said Jetta. “Or get me up. I’m the one with the strength of twelve mortal men, remember.”

  “Well yes, I suppose there is that,” said Viktor.

  “Well then,” said Dizzy. “Now that that’s . . . er, uh . . . been decided . . . let’s head down and resume attending con and get to our new suite, shall we? Yo. Dudes. Viktor, Gadget. Help me get everyone’s luggage, if you would, good sirs. I don’t think the bellhops here do ‘rooftop’ service. Be nice if they did. Oh well. It’s just as good that they don’t, I guess, seeing as how if they even set eyes on The Fangirl, I might have to wipe their memories.”

  “Y’know, it’s weird,” said Gadget, and laughed nervously. He picked up one of the suitcases from the rumble-seat on the car’s rear-end, between the two large thrusters. “But I never really know if you’re joking about stuff like that.”

  “Joking about what?” said Dizzy, who blinked at him in surprise. “I’m bein’ serious here. You watch your ass, buster, or I’ll wipe your memory.”

  “Nah, you wouldn’t really do that,” he said, laughed, and then stopped suddenly as he actually thought about it. “Uh . . . would you?”

  Dizzy smiled mischievously and cocked an eyebrow at him. “Maaaybe. Maaaybe not. Depends on how much you impress me, boy. Now — -whoop’sh! — ya, mule, ya! Git a move on. Git!”

  “Ah shit. I’m freakin’ doomed, ” he muttered to himself, just loud enough for Dizzy to hear, and then offered her a smile. He joked, of course, but part of him really did feel that way. It was strange, he thought, that he always picked stubbornly-independent, highly-intelligent women to become romantically obsessed with . . . it was as if he had a thing for falling in love with girls who had no real need of him, and therefore, whom he had no chance with to begin with, and who therefore presented no “threat” of success. As if he was, subconsciously, sabotaging his own chances of finding love by way of his choices of crushes to in the first place, and therefore, always remaining safely within his comfort zone — as sad a place as it was, its walls made of rejection, at least it was a known hell — and thus never having to grow beyond it. Man, he really hated his own psychological makeup, sometimes. Worse yet, he hated that he understood it as well as he did. Oh well. At least he was in touch with himself well enough to know what a loser he was in the “potential romance” department; he found that it helped to keep any delusions of star-crossed destiny in check.

  Together, they made their way down to the twentieth floor stairwell entrance through the entryway on the roof. Dizzy noted that it something had blown it off its hinges.

  And all at once, they re-immersed themselves in the culture and zeitgeist of FantazmagoriCon. Gadget couldn’t help but grin. His heart still felt heavy from Mystikite’s departure — his absence stung like the bite of a venomous snake every time Gadget realized his best friend wasn’t with him, which was about every five minutes or so — but the general atmosphere of deranged yet lighthearted fun and mischief that permeated the Con did help lighten the burdens of his soul a little. Only a little, but still . . . every little bit was worth its weight in gold-pressed latinum. Since it was still early morning, there wasn’t a lot going on. The dealer’s room had closed up and wouldn’t reopen until midday; the gaming room had mostly shut down, and likewise wouldn’t reopen until around noon. The jam session was long over — he wondered if Dizzy was good enough with her guitar to maybe join in once it restarted later on; he also wondered if she could sing — and most if not all the Room Parties had quieted down and turned into sleep-overs . . . or orgies that had themselves long since turned rolled over and gone to sleep after the good parts were over. In other words, the con was mostly dead right now, save for the five of them wandering the halls with their copious amount of luggage.

  They got on the elevator and Dizzy pushed the button and they waited as the elevator car lurched into motion. Man, did he ever feel tired, worn-out, and as though someone had beaten him with heavy clubs. When the doors opened again, they stood across from the hotel reception desk, where a young woman sat wearing a pair of headphones, and jamming to what sounded like Weird Al Yankovic.

  “Er, ex-squeeze me, miss?” said Dizzy to the girl, who had her eyes closed and half-muttered, half-lip-synched the words to the song “Dare to Be Stupid.” Dizzy reached forward and lifted her headphones off one of her ears. “I said, ex-squeeze me, miss!”

  “Oh! Hey! Sorry!” said the girl, grabbing back her headphones and taking them off. “Yeah, sorry. So sorry. What can I do for you?”

  “Er, we were gonna stay at the Executive East Inn for the duration of the Con,” said Dizzy. “We did have rooms there. They did — ” She pointed at Gadget and Buffy. “And she did — ” she pointed at Jetta. “And I did.” She jerked a thumb at herself. “But now, we obviously don’t, since the whole place caught on fire. We heard something on a robocall about a special, online ‘FantazmagoriCon Room Voucher’ — ”

  “Oh, yeah,” said the girl. “Don’t worry about it. I can look you up, I think. Do any of you have the credit cards you originally used to reserve your rooms?”

  “Uh,” said Buffy. “Well . . . I do, since I’m the one who paid for our room.”

  “Perfect,” said Dizzy. “We only need one suite for all of us, since it’s just use five. So, you can do the honors, Buffy.”

  “Gee, thanks,” said Buffy. “I’m really touched.” She rolled her eyes and handed the girl behind the desk her credit card. The girl swiped it, and typed in a line or two of data, copying from the card.

  “Mmm, okay,” said the girl. “Here ya go.” She slid a card-key across the desk at Buffy. “Room numbers 217 and 219, second floor. One suite, two rooms — four beds total. Looks like someone’s going to have to double up.”

  “Viktor?” said Jetta.

  “Er, yes?”

  “You’re taking the couch, if there is one. Failing that, it’s the floor for you.”

  “Dammit.”

  “No, it’s okay,” said Dizzy. “Viktor can have one of the beds. Gadget and I will double-up.”

  “Um, we, uh — we will?” said Gadget, his eyebrows going up. His stomach transformed into a two-ton lead weight that promptly fell toward an immense gravity-well that had suddenly formed somewhere near his feet.

  “Sure,” said Dizzy, and smiled at him again. “I mean, why not, right?”

  They made their way back to the elevators, still lugging their bags and computer equipment, and pushed the button for the second floor. The thing that really sucked was that he couldn’t even properly enjoy the moment — though the butterflies in his stomach had just become World War II-era dogfighters and presently strafed each other with gunfire — because he felt so damned tired. Drained, as a matter of fact. As though someone had strapped a pair of electrical cables to his brain and tried to use him to jump-start the matter-antimatter reactor intermix chamber onboard the starship Enterprise. He also trembled ever-so-slightly . . . but that had nothing to do with tiredness and everything to do with Dizzy’s casual, offhanded follow-up question of “why not, right?” Which she’d said while smiling at him.

  Finally, they made it to the room. Dizzy unlocked the door with the keycard, and they ventured inside, with Buffy flicking on the lights. She tossed down her bags, and Viktor and Gadget sat the computer equipment on the small table in the corner. Dizzy wheeled her steamer trunk into place in the corner. Jetta set her luggage down, and collapsed onto the nearest bed. Buffy sat down on the bed opposite her, took off her boots, and laid back.

  “UGH,” she said, and took a deep breath, and then let it out. “Thank the GODS for fluffy bedclothes and comfortable mattresses. Seriously.”

  Jetta took off her shoes and rubbed her feet. “Yeah, no shit! I feel like I’ve walked for weeks. By the way. If I’m going to go to sleep here, during the daylight, we need to get a tarpaulin or something to completely cover that window over there. I don’t want to wake up as a big pile of dust.”

  “Right,” said Dizzy, nodding. “Well, just call room service in a minute or two and have them bring up a big blanket, or something. No big deal.”

  “I think I’ll take one of the beds in the next room over,” said Viktor. He scuttled across the room, opened the door that led to the other half of the suite, and disappeared behind it. Gadget, despite himself, yawned and stretched.

  “So,” said Dizzy, turning to him and grinning. “Only one bed left. And it looks like it’s down to just us two. I don’t know about you, but I am legitimately pooped. And you . . . well, I gotta be honest. You look like death warmed over, dahlink. You’ve got dark circles under a pair of bloodshot eyes, your shoulders are slumped, your brow is all furrowed, and your smile looks weary, like it’s trying to hold up under a total avalanche of stress. Buffy’s right; you especially need rest. C’mon.” She took him by the hand, and led him into the other half of the suite. The door clicked closed behind them. Viktor had already fallen asleep on the bed closest to the window. The lights had dimmed.

  “Seems a shame to go through this rigamarole with the suit yet again,” she said, “so soon after just putting it back on again. But ah well. The last time I wore this thing to bed, I woke up with bruises in places I didn’t know you could bruise. Do me a favor and catch me if I fall the wrong way. Depulso Evangeliojaeger!”

  The Evangeliojaeger obediently did as she bid; it detached itself from her body, piece by piece, folding itself into smaller pieces, the gears unlocking from one another, the motors whirring, the wires and cables snaking their way away from each other, unhooking from where they hooked together and retreating, the spinal column peeling away, the pieces that held her limbs folding and collapsing. Within a minute and a half, it had all of it retreated into the large metal chest-piece and armored, flexible cuirass, which then poked outward and collapsed onto the floor and folded up further, back into the suitcase design, just as before. Dizzy teetered on her feet, and Gadget rushed to catch her from falling forward, but she waved her arms and instead fell backward onto the bed, laughing. She took off the motorcycle helmet that contained the SQUID receptors, and laid it on the bedside table.

  “Ah, that’s better,” she said, and breathed deeply. “You ever wonder how these places get these beds to smell so nice, despite tons of different people constantly using them, some of whom — by sheer process of elimination — probably smell like month-old jock-itch?”

  “Uh yeah, actually. I have wondered that.” Gadget laughed a little, his heart thundering wildly and his hands shaking as though he had early-onset Parkinson’s disease, and then laid down on the bed next to her. He swallowed a huge boulder made of nerves and dogfighting biplanes armed with machine-guns. Her hair smelled wonderful.

  “Just don’t hog all the space, okay?” she said, and rolled over onto her side, closing her eyes, resting her head on her hands.

  “Um, don’t worry, I — I won’t,” he said, his voice almost shooting up an octave at the end. He took off the Mind-Weirding Helm and placed it on the table next to the bed. He turned over on his side so that he faced the back of her head.

  “Oh, shit,” he said, just realizing what he’d forgotten. “Hang on Diz, be right back.” He got up, went in the other room, apologized to Jetta and Zoe for making noise, and dug around in his suitcase until he founded them: His pill bottles. He opened each one and dug out the right amount of each drug. Risperidone, Cogentin, Topomax, his morning cocktail for several years running now. He slammed the pills back, and dry-swallowed them. Ugh. Salty and bitter, as always. He put the bottles away, closed the suitcase, and went back and laid down next to Dizzy again. He let out a long sigh as he got comfortable on his side again.

  “Can I ask you a question?” said Dizzy, and turned over to face him.

  “Uh, sure,” he said, instantly nervous.

  “Why do you want to be normal?” she asked, gazing into his eyes.

  “Wait — huh, what?”

  “You heard me,” she said. “Why do you wanna be normal? A Mundane?”

  “Well, I mean . . . I don’t, I guess,” he replied. “I mean, have we not hung out together? I’m not a Mundane, am I? Or at least not trying very hard to be. I never really struck myself as ‘trying to be normal or a Mundane.’ Last I checked, I didn’t exactly hang out with ‘normal’ people, and I liked it that way.”

  “No,” she said. “That’s not what I mean. A minute ago. You got up to take your meds, didn’t you.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “That’s what I mean. Your meds. Why do you take them? They make you normal.”

  “Uh, I take them so I can enjoy some degree of peace and sanity, that’s why.”

  “Hmm. I see. But with your Mind-Weirding Helm . . . Y’know, if you put that thing on, say, while you were in a manic phase, the psionic power you could wield . . . would be tremendous. Colossal. You could easily overpower every human mind here, at this hotel right now, every force of will here assembled. You could be a god for a little while. Imagine what you could do with all those minds slaved to yours.”

  “Yeah, for as long as the mania lasted,” he said, and chuckled mirthlessly. “Which is the problem, y’see. When the depression came back — which it always does — every person whose mind I had connected to would probably become some flavor of suicidal. Thanks, but no thanks. Besides, that’s wrong. To enslave other people’s minds to my will would be grossly immoral. Crude. A show of brute force. That’s not who I am.”

  “Ah,” she said. “If it were me, I wouldn’t take the meds. In fact . . . it was me. Several years ago, before I came back here from Nevada. The base psychiatrist gave me a once-over at dad’s urging. He wanted to know if exposure to the . . . to the saucer-ship’s engines had . . . affected me. They found that it had, in fact. Told me I had developed a rare neurological condition, and that I would have to take meds for it. I asked if doing so would dull my creativity, my . . . ‘singular creative genius’ as my teachers called it. They said it was likely that it would. So I refused. I said ‘no.’ Tell me Gadget — do you find that the meds take away from your . . . ‘singular creative genius?’”

  “It’s . . .” he trailed off, staring into her wide, searching, emerald eyes. He shook it off; they were friends, and that was that; had she any other desire — other than just to talk — she would’ve let him know, right? He was positive of that. Well, mostly positive. Sort of. He guessed. He licked his lips, and continued: “It’s . . . it’s complicated. I mean, yeah, I guess they do. A little. Somewhat. Sometimes. But it’s a trade-off, right? I take the meds so I can live a halfway normal life; if I have to sacrifice a little of my ‘giftedness’ for it, then so be it, I guess.”

  “People like us aren’t meant for ‘normal lives,’ halfway or any other way,” she whispered, sighed, and smiled mischievously. “People like you and me are meant to do great things, Gadget. Terrible things, perhaps, sometimes . . . but great things, nonetheless. Things the Mundanes will never understand.”

  “What is it with you and ‘Mundanes’ anyway?” he asked. “And here I thought I was bitter.”

  “It’s not bitterness,” she said. “It’s fact. See, us nerds, geeks, and fangirls, we’re the intellectual Other. Because way deep down in our brains, there’s something different going on from what’s in Mundanes’s minds. There’s a part of us that never embraced the social homogenization process that their society likes to call ‘growing up.’ They — the Mundanes, I mean — associate what they call ‘maturity’ with this thing they call ‘reality,’ which is really just a narrowed-down set of ideas that they privilege over other ideas. And they love their ‘reality.’ And they treat anybody who questions their privileged reality as the Other — the scorned, the left-out, the misfit. And we, the misfits, can't help but hate the ashes their world tastes like, every time our 'real lives' force us to swallow a big ol' bite of it. Something deep in the core of who we are rejects their realm of limited ideas. We dream of dragons, starships, time machines, and aliens . . . of fantastic futures, of gods beyond the ones you hear about in churches . . . and of worlds other than this one. They dream about banging porn stars, fantasy football brackets, and getting promotions. Honorable pursuits, I guess — money and a place on the social totem pole — but ultimately meaningless. Boring. Mundane. Take a look at the past twenty-five years of scientific, technological, and philosophical progress, and name me one major player who wasn’t a geek, a nerd, or a dork, or some other kind of social Fringe Event? When has a quote-unquote ‘normal’ person ever shattered the boundaries of human understanding? When has ‘fitting-in’ ever gotten anyone written into the history books? The Mundanes — the true Mundanes, mind you, the empty ones with no magic left in them, the true Muggles of the world — they know this. They never speak it, but they know it, deep in their bones. It’s why they attack and Otherize us when we're kids . . . why they insult your masculinity, Gadget, or attack our maturity, and randomly call guys like you ‘fags’ or poke fun at you for being a virgin long into adulthood . . . Makes ‘em feel more existentially secure, like they somehow matter more than they actually do — which is, of course, not at all. Well, I say it’s high-time we toss ‘em kicking and screaming out of their nice, comfy slave-chains that they wear in Plato’s Cave . . . Help them wake up from the self-induced Sleep they call their dominant paradigm of ‘reality.’ Hell, if you ask me? Freaking the Mundanes isn’t just fun . . . it’s a frakkin’ moral imperative!”

  Gadget laughed. “Well, at least we know how you really feel. I have to admit, you put into words the way I’ve felt for years. Maybe I’m not as hard-core about it as you are, but, yeah. I feel where you’re coming from on that.”

  “Like I said,” she said. “People like you and me, we’re meant to do great things. Perhaps terrible things, yes, but still, great things, nonetheless.”

  “Oh yeah?” he said. “I was gonna say: Define ‘great.’ Hell, I can’t even properly woo someone. Case in point — you. How is that supposed to work, anyway? The whole ‘wooing’ thing, I mean? I’ve never wooed successfully. I’ve wooed unsuccessfully. Done that lots of times. Doing it right now, in fact. But never actually did a decent woo-job on someone. Well, once. With Jetta. And with her, I wasn’t even attempting any wooing. In fact, I’m fairly certain that I was the wooee in that situation, and not the wooer.”

  “Please stop deriving words from ‘woo,’” said Dizzy, and smiled at him. “Besides. You woo just fine. You guys, though, you’re all the same. You all think you deserve a ‘chance.’ Well what if you don’t? What if you’re not entitled to a ‘chance’ with me just because you’re male and I’m female? What if you don’t deserve anything with me, and you’re incredibly privileged that I let you get this close to me at all? Something to think about, is all I’m saying. Food for thought.”

  “Well, why don’t we?” he asked. “I mean, look at the men some women date. Losers. Assholes. Abusers. A guy — a nice guy like me — we get the impression that in a world like this one, we deserve a reward just for being decent human beings.”

  “Yes,” she said, “but, you don’t get extra credit for just meeting the basic criteria of decency.”

  “Oh, yeah, well . . . I guess that’s true,” he said.

  “You guess that’s true . . . or that is true?” She smiled at him.

  “Uh, okay. That is true.”

  “Good boy. Glad I finally got one of you to admit that.”

  “Well, I mean, you kind of forced me to — ”

  “No, really. Thank you. For admitting that. Hearing a guy say that is like . . . it’s like therapy for me. Boys have besieged me asking for my hand since I was old enough to know what it meant to have boys besieging me. And every one of them wanted me for what I was — the geek girl of the group turned into ‘somebody’s girlfriend’ at long last . . . the un-winnable maiden, won . . . the untamable shrew, tamed. The wild thing, domesticated. None of them wanted me for who I was. And all of them thought they deserved a chance. None of them asked for a chance. They just assumed they deserved one. Thanks for admitting that — that chances aren’t ‘deserved.’”

  Gadget wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t help but feel his heart start to plummet and go crashing down into his stomach, an ice-pick buried in the soft muscle there. He let out a sigh and closed his eyes.

  So I’ve struck out, once again, he thought. Every. Damn. Time. I. Even. Try. It always ends. The same way. He took in a deep breath and let it out. So, said he inner critic, now what, Romeo? Indeed, now what did he do? He had a clear choice, here, and knew it: He could either opt to be “just friends” with her — God how he’d come to loathe hearing those two words, “just friends” — or he could bail on her entirely. The second option seemed downright wrong and potentially deadly. But still, the words came out of him despite his best effort to keep them from doing so, and with a sarcastic edge on them he didn’t like hearing himself employ. “Well, I guess it sort of goes without saying, then. The cat’s sort of out of the bag, now.”

  “What goes without saying?”

  “That I’m — well, that I was — rapidly falling in love with you,” he blurted out, and immediately felt himself turn bright red and regret saying it. Thank the gods, he thought, that the lights are low and she can’t see me blushing.

  It was Dizzy’s turn to sigh. “Gadget,” she began, “listen. I know you’re lonely. And I know just how lonely, too. Believe me, I’ve done the same things you have. I’ve also laid in bed at night, wide awake, staring at the ceiling, and wondering why the universe has decreed that I’m to be alone . . . why I feel more like an alien dropped off here and raised among savages rather than with my own kind on some faraway planet somewhere where I actually belong. I’ve also people-watched couples holding hands and wondered, why am I by myself? Is it my giant brain that keeps me apart from them, or something else, something that’s wrong with me? And I’ve also gone to the movies by myself and thought: Am I missing out on something fundamental? Or is the whole ‘dating’ thing just an overrated primate mating ritual, a made-up racket for suckers and sentimentalists? And just like you, I can never come up with any solid answers for these questions. But I do know this: In order to be in love with someone, you have to really know them. We’ve known each other for a day. You don’t love me. You think I meet a series of qualifications, and you think I’m hot. And I am flattered. And honored. That you’d choose me, that is. But the thing is, I’m just . . . not really attracted to you. You’re cute, yes. But you’re not . . . I mean, I’m not . . . well . . . it’s hard to explain . . .”

  “I understand,” he said, but truthfully didn’t. He’d had this problem before. Jetta had thought him attractive; but she hadn’t thought him anything else; that had been the problem. She’d left the apartment the day after they’d had sex, a year or so ago, and he’d not seen her again until just the day before this. So what was it going to be, then: Was it going to be either a series of mindless sexual liaisons with women he had no real, deeper interest in, or was it going to be a lifetime of being “just friends” with women he truly, down deep, wanted to be with, but who didn’t want him in that special, crucial way?

  “But like I said,” she replied, “I am flattered. And honored.”

  “Well, I dunno. Honored? That’s maybe going a bit far.” He chuckled, and rolled his eyes, trying to downplay the ache he felt in his chest, the colossal disappointment and hurt that he felt at yet again being shot down, turned down, rejected. “I appreciate the compliment, but really . . . I’m nobody special.”

  “Whoa, wrong,” she said, and cupped his cheek in her hand. “Invalid data. Does not compute.”

  “Well, I’m not,” he protested. He really wished she wouldn’t touch him like this if she wasn’t going to follow it up with anything more intimate. It was pure torture. But a good kind of torture, he supposed.

  “You’re a brilliant inventor. You’re brave, courageous, kind, highly intelligent, clever, and sweet. Being even one of those puts you way above ninety-percent of the planet’s surplus population, in my book.”

  “Yeah. Too bad I’m also crazy,” he said, and looked away from her; he didn’t want her to see how much he’d meant that, and how much it hurt to admit it to anyone. For as long as he could remember, he’d had to take medication to remain stable, sane, and “normal,” even when he’d known it would, in fact, dull his creativity and take the edge off of his intellect. But he’d done it because he couldn’t stand the alternative: The mood swings, the anxiety, the brief episodes of paranoia and sometimes, even delusional thinking; the constant nervousness, the obsessiveness, the racing thoughts, the insomnia. Those tended to take the edge off his intellect even more than the meds did; and, they were destructive, to boot. The psychological aftermath of an episode of mania, where all the colors grew so blindingly bright, and the valleys of devastation that were the periods of depression, wherein all became black and hopeless, all became grimdark and decay; those were the real threats to his “singular genius,” as Dizzy called it, as they threatened to end it, along with his life. But that didn’t make the cure any easier to deal with than the sickness itself. “And the problem with crazy,” he continued, turning to face her again, “is that once you’re labeled, you’re labeled. Once they slap that sticker on you, the one that says ‘schizoaffective, bipolar type,’ like mine does, doors get slammed in your face. Girls don’t want to date a ‘psycho,’ and employers don’t want to hire one. And if you act-up or act weird — and believe me, I can act really weird sometimes — you get a reputation going, and not always a good one. For instance: There are a few professors at school who dread seeing my name on the roster for their classes, because they know — they just know — that they’re gonna have That Guy in their class . . . That Guy who always has his hand raised, and who always has something — and usually something off-the-wall and batshit crazy — to add to the discussion.”

  “Hey, now. If I had That Guy in my class,” said Dizzy, “I would treasure his presence. Finding students who have something to say — sincerely, and who have really thought about it — is like finding veins of gold running through the rock of a dried-up coal mine.”

  “Well, you’ll make a good professor someday.”

  “Thanks. I intend to.”

  “Really? You’re going into teaching?” He arched an eyebrow at her. “All the technology of the whole universe at your fingertips — alien tech from the stars at your beckon-call, with you making breakthroughs left and right because of it, and patents for new Gadgets coming out of your ears — not to mention a burgeoning career at your dad’s big company — which you’re gonna own lock, stock, and barrel someday — and you’re gonna go into teaching?”

  Dizzy shrugged. “Hey, it’s a noble profession. Morchatromik U has already promised me a position whenever I finish my doctorate. People say prostitution is the oldest profession. But I don’t think so. I think the oldest profession is teaching. After all — somebody had to fell the first wooly mammoth, or the first saber-toothed tiger. And then they had to show someone else how to do it. Somebody had to make the first fire. And then show someone else that, too. Cave paintings — the first instruction manuals, and the first comic books, combined into a single art-form. You’re welcome, anthropologists.”

  Gadget laughed. “Y’know, I think coming here this week — to con this year, I mean — is probably the best decision I made in a long time. I’m really glad I met you, Dizzy Weatherspark.”

  She grinned at him again. “I’m glad I met you too, Gadget Gadgorak Prime. You’re an okay guy. And don’t worry about Mystikite. I’m sure he’ll come back to us. Eventually. Before this is all over, that is. I’ve . . . got a feeling about him. I don’t normally put much stock in stuff like that, but I’ve got this vibe that tells me: We’re going to win this thing with this alien, and he’s going to be part of it. We’ll suffer losses. But we’ll win. You’ll see. You just wait, and see. In the end, we’ll win. We’ll lose some people, but . . . we’ll win.”

  “Well. That’s certainly a comforting thought to go to dreamland on.”

  “Yeah, I hear you. Tell me a story instead.”

  “Huh?”

  “Go on,” she said, poking him in the shoulder. “Tell me a story. A fun one. Dad always told me stories when I was little, and it always helped me go to sleep. Especially if I was keyed up and nervous. Go on — it doesn’t even have to make any sense. Just a story. Any story, of any kind.”

  Gadget thought for a moment, thinking through ideas. Then, he hit upon one, or at least the skeleton of one, and smiled. “Okay, I’ve got one. Though this is more of a description of a situation than an actual story. But here goes. Once upon a future, in one parallel universe, we meet the Vulcans in the year 2063, in Oklahoma, when Zefram Cochrain flies his experimental warp ship past the speed of light for the first time and the Vulcans decide to investigate our planet. In another far off — but parallel — world, we miss the Vulcans because Zefram's experimental ship failed, but we do meet the Centauri 100 years later in 2163, and after them, the League of Non-Aligned Worlds, the Dilgar, and then the Minbari. And in yet another parallel universe, we never make it as far as either event, because in the year of 1984, a parapsychologist named Dr. Ray Stanz accidentally summoned Gozar the Destructor in the form of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, who, once loosed upon New York, accidentally stepped on the Highlander, Conner McCloud, who thus wasn't around to inherit the Prize instead of the evil Kurgan. The Kurgan — once he had defeated all the other Immortals and inherited the Prize himself — took control of humanity's future and sent us down the dark, dismal path that George Miller envisioned in his classic film, The Road Warrior. From there, a grim fate ruled over the soul and imagination of mankind, until one day, a madman in a blue box — brandishing a screwdriver as his only weapon — showed up, and decided to set things to rights . . . by going back in time and ‘fixing’ Dr. Stanz's proton pack technology so that when someone crossed the streams of the weapons, it would cause a complete particle-flow reversal within the transdimensional corridor that connected our realm to Gozar's realm, and thus destroy the conduit between the two. He also may have gone further into the future — and into multiple other futures — and screwed around with the plasma injectors onboard Zefram Cochrain's famous warp ship, the cosmic destinies of a man named Jeffrey David Sinclair and the messiah-figure the Minbari knew as ‘Valen,’ and just to be sure, he might've also given the Highlander McCloud a bad case of the flu so that he wasn't hanging about when — if — Mr. Stay Puft got loosed upon the streets of New York. However, since none of this actually happened to us — since we avoided these tragedies altogether, and since we all live in a universe where they did not occur, and can never know of any other outcome other than the ones we already do — it can be safely assumed that the madman in the blue box was successful, and that he is as real as you or I . . . Or as real as any legend can be, and still survive the weight of the fate of the world resting upon it. The end.”

  For a while, Gadget just laid there, watching Dizzy sleep. He wasn’t sure of when exactly he himself fell victim to the Sandman; nor when his consciousness crossed the border between realms.