If you recognise it, it's not mine.
It was easy, in the end.
Sifting through time, pulling at exact moments like loose threads, weaving them into a single place in the system. Like a pen drive, the information was downloaded into the computer. They arrived slowly, one by one. But eventually they were all there.
The children and the woman were surprised, but not angry. They had been here for longer, and they accepted them without questions.
Sometimes they looked for people, waiting at the gate where everyone arrives. Sometimes they come. Sometimes they don't. Most people focus on being. Being here, being normal.
Justin waited for Roger, and didn't know whether to cry or not when he didn't come.
Small children follow Mary, Mother Mary, and she automatically takes care of them.
Brianna runs and runs as if she'll never stop, searching for her lost powers.
Caine waits by the gate, for someone he seems scared to see, for Drake, for Diana.
Jack is convinced he's in heaven, in this huge computer system.
He's not far off.
Nobody here is alive.
They all know that, most remembering the fire, the bullets, whatever was at that one second of time he pulled out and plugged into the system, before he was gone in the blaze of glory.
Nobody here is dead, either.
Because he did it.
All by himself, Little Pete is keeping the Gaiaphage, lost and scattered into shadows, out of the library, out of their dreams.
One last miracle, hidden behind the blaze of glory.
He saved them.