Awake, Awake

by spockandawe

An examination of the life and times of Alpha Rose Lalonde.

You are only six years old when you realize this is not the first time you have been six. Nobody understands, or even really listens to you when you try to explain. You begin counting how many times someone patiently explains that dreams aren't real, or exclaims over what an active imagination you have. The longer you refuse to give in, the more forceful these talks become. You pretend not to notice the way adults whisper over your head about how she's such a bright young thing, but they worry. Finally, you stop arguing with them and let them think that's the same as agreeing.

As you age, you do spend time idly leafing through books and websites, wondering if perhaps you are delusional. Ever since the thought occurred to you that you have lived your life before, you have been perfectly convinced of its truth. By all accounts, it must be false. But it seems so real, a flower slowly unfurling before you, new details and memories that you cannot imagine dreaming up yourself. It is not a discovery of new ideas, but the unearthing of memories that you had only forgotten. Eventually, you decide that even if you are mentally unbalanced, there exists no way to disprove the existence of this other Rose, so for you at least, it may be a private truth.

The memories are your own secret. In many ways, that life is like a book from your childhood. You return to it in your idle moments, turning the pages without needing to read because you know every word and cadence by heart. All that bothers you is how the life ends. New memories gradually bloom out year after year until you turn thirteen. And then you again must wonder if there is something wrong with your mind. While games and friends are not foreign to you, you can imagine no reality where four children are pulled into a video game to create a universe.

You patiently wait for these inventions to fade and the placid existence of other-Rose's life to assert itself. You bury your fantasy books and determinedly read Jane Austen to turn your thoughts to domestic tranquility and home life. You do not appreciate seeing your mother's body. You do not appreciate the way your friend looks at you when he sees what you become. You do not appreciate dying. For the first time you are frightened by your other life.

The strangest part is the conclusion. The scratch. It bothers you, how it loops back around to your life, dovetailing cleanly with your own existence. Is your mind attempting to justify its own delusions by designating you the 'seer of light,' particularly suited to comprehending these parallel lives? Is your imagining of another Rose with fantastical powers an expression of discontent with your own childhood? Is the constant presence of these three close friends merely a projection of your actual relationships and desires onto this fictional universe? You decide that the important thing is that other-Rose found a beautiful, wonderful, brilliant girlfriend and make a note to repeat the experiment.

Time, perhaps, is what dulls your ability to reject these memories. Years pass, and the memories end there. Rose lives her life, enters the game, and resets her universe. Although you have resisted for a very, very long time, you return home from a college party, still ever-so-slightly drunk, and decide to search for Dave Strider. That he exists is the first surprise. You feared (hoped?) that there would be no such person and you could dismiss the memories as mere fantasies once and for all. He is older than you, by several years. What shatters the last of your doubt is the article announcing his first film, to premiere next year: Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff.

You are positively awhirl with excitement. You immediately search for John and Jade, without success. Well. It was simply luck that Dave was so easy to find. Your first instinct is to immediately contact him, but you hold yourself back. Nobody has ever been willing to give credence to your memories, and you must not expect Dave to believe you without proof. If you recall correctly, Dave was a player of time, John of breath, and Jade of space. Your understanding of light is that it at least partially relates to knowledge, which must be the reason you have been able to recall existence as your alternate self. As at least some of these abilities seem to have remained with you across the unmaking of your universe, then perhaps you might be able to use them to discover more about the new lives of your friends, enough to convince them that there is truth in what you say.

Dave is the logical starting point. The fact that you are able to find him on the internet makes him an excellent bridge to redevelop your powers as a seer of light. Once you begin to practice, it all comes very naturally. You can see his present as clearly as your own, and with only a slight effort, you are able to see his past as well. In fact, it is a simple matter to look back upon your own past as well. The contrast between cherished memories and cold facts is not always pleasant, but your growing ability to understand the meaning behind events ameliorates the bitterness to a certain extent. When you are confident, you compose a carefully worded letter and send it to Dave's home address, a piece of information not available online.

As you wait for a reply, you continue to explore this new facet of yourself. However, the further you stretch your powers, the more you feel a threatening presence overshadowing your existence. You are tempted to dismiss it as the product of an overactive imagination, but considering how true your previous delusions turned out to be, it could be foolhardy to ignore the presence of a possible menace. At first you largely ignore it, but once or twice as your awareness stretches toward this presence, its attention turns toward you, a feeling not unlike dipping your fingers in boiling water. When this happens, you flee back to your body and it takes some hours to dare to venture outside your physical limits again. There are ways to avoid notice that you find through trial and error, but as time passes, you become more and more cognizant that this presence is aware that you exist, and it would like nothing better than to see you dead. Despite your best efforts, you are still unable to find a hint of Jade and John.

You were not entirely expecting a reply from Dave, but his return letter comes in an overnight delivery envelope. His style is outwardly bland, but you remember him enough to recognize the underlying excitement. He believes you. He believes every word you've said. You catch yourself smiling and laughing as you read through his letter over and over. He thought that he was alone when he was unable to find a hint of you, John, or Jade. He'd never thought that you might be different ages, but he guesses he ended up being the old man of the group. He gives you his online handle and asks for yours, but as soon as you open your computer to contact him, you're hit by a wave of uneasiness. Just past the edges of your awareness, you can feel the presence waiting for you to make a mistake. You are reluctant to push too far, but it's simple to understand that catching you this way would be… wiggler's play? Regardless, this mode of communication would be dangerous. You close your laptop and exchange it for simple pen and paper.

You explain yourself in Dave in as much detail as you are able, and try to hide your own disappointment. Communication through letters is better than nothing, and you remind yourself of that often. Once the letter is sent, you return your focus to the improvement of your seer powers. Jade and John are out there somewhere. They must be. It remains difficult to clearly see the future, otherwise you could simply find the point where you meet them and trace them backward from there. The present is too busy to search out the bright points of their lives. It is an exercise in frustration. Finally, although it seems unlikely that she would be born there a second time, you go hunting for Jade's island. As tedious as it may be to comb through mile after mile of an ocean, it is almost soothing to let the emptiness and waves wash over you. It takes you several days to find it, but the landscape is unmistakable. Perhaps in this lifetime you can find a chance to visit Jade's home. It is… off-putting when a flock of tiny, winged bulls burst up from the long grass, circling madly for a moment before swirling away into the distance. You were not aware that any such creatures existed. But, well. Jade never detailed the entire population of her island to you, and these creatures have potentially evolved in complete biological isolation. You can ask her whether or not they are natural as soon as you find her.

You do not find Jade. You find a child, a boy who seems far too young to be exploring a jungle without adult supervision. You linger on him for some time, simply watching him wander and play. This must be Jade's grandfather, so she should also be present as the child's guardian. Jade must know this island better than you, but the alarming numbers of alien predators you spot in the underbrush make you uneasy for the child's sake. Where is she? Your search for Jade becomes increasingly frantic as you are unable to locate another living human anywhere on the island. Finally, your attention is drawn to an urn in the temple. You feel sick. You only allow the barest touch of your awareness to brush against it, but every sense you have screams Jade. You crash back into your body in a dizzying rush and curl into a ball on the floor, gasping for air.

As soon as you still your breathing, you are desperate to find John. Given where Jade…. was, a logical starting point would be John's old home. Although you never knew his exact address, combing through a single city for a person is a much simpler matter than searching an entire continent. The moment you stretch out your sight, though, you are hit by awareness of the presence. It seems unaware of you, but the feeling of it is so strong over the entire city that you return to yourself for a moment to steel yourself before you reach out again. The more you brush against it, the more alien and dangerous it feels. You creep forward an inch at a time, casting about for some hint of John. What calls to you instead is a small girl toddling about an unremarkable suburban house. After Jade you are not entirely. Surprised. But it is certainly not pleasant to see John's granddaughter playing at the feet of his stuffed corpse.

You slump forward as you return to your body, and look down at your shaking hands. They feel as though they are unattached to your body. How remarkable. You feel unsteady on your feet, but you force yourself to walk to your desk, to sit, and to begin another letter to Dave. Perhaps you are not as coherent as you would prefer, but you must communicate to him what has happened. Your handwriting is deplorable, as your hands will not stop shaking. You don't manage to sleep that night. You arrive at the post office exactly as it opens, and pay to send the letter via overnight express.

You do not hear from Dave immediately. You do not hear from him soon. You might watch him to see him read your letters, to see his reaction without being forced to wait for a reply to cross the country, but you are almost afraid to look. You feel as though you have failed, and you do not want to face his disappointment. You don't really want to go looking about the world to find more things that have gone wrong, and for the first time in weeks, you make a serious effort to not be a seer. Instead you read and work in a chair right next to your door, and wait the mailman's daily visits with simultaneous anticipation and dread. After some days, it feels as though the whole thing has been some strange dream and you feel almost able to return to your college classes and believe that they are something important and interesting.

What arrives is not a letter. What arrives is a massive box, one you are nearly unable to lift yourself. Once you've managed to lift it over your doorstep, you open it right there in the hallway. Cell phones. A box full of cell phones with one flimsy sheet of paper resting on top. As much as you dislike to admit it, you are completely bewildered and extremely frustrated. After you told Dave about Jade and John, how can one piece of paper possibly do justice to his feelings? And if he expects you to call him, he has another thing coming. You explained to him just how dangerous it was to contact each other so directly, and what on earth are you expected to do with hundreds of cell phones? Is this supposed to be some grand ironic gesture? Of all the tone-deaf- Rather than read his letter, you go to the kitchen, make a cup of tea, and drink it very, very slowly. When a stray roommate comes in to ask you why there is a box of phones in the entryway, you are able to smile and brush it off as an unusual artist friend's idea of a joke. Once you have finished your tea, washed and dried your mug, and returned it to the cabinet, you go to retrieve Dave's letter.

You are expecting (hoping?) to remain angry, but what he has to say is more sensible than you expected. If this presence is able to track you down through the devices you use to communicate, then what would happen if those devices were destroyed before you could be located? You are somewhat loathe to admit that Dave came up with a good solution before you could, but as you think through the problem, you can find nothing wrong with the idea. But logic is not quite sufficient to convince you. You lay on your bed for an hour with your eyes closed, trying to intuit whether these measures are sufficient to elude the presence that haunts you. You can sense nothing to cause alarm.

Finally, you return to the hallway to retrieve a single phone. Although the top layer is composed of only the newest, most expensive smartphones, the remainder of the box is entirely cheap, shoddy flip phones that you think may have been last produced when you were a child. Ah, irony. How you've missed it. Once you are in your bedroom with the phone, the letter, and a new cup of tea, you can find no reason to delay any longer. You dial the number he gave you, and when it only rings once before he picks up, you are upset that this is all the time you were given to brace yourself.

"'Sup."

You close your eyes and take a deep breath before you can properly find a voice. "It's me."

"Well sure. I've got all kinds of people calling me at all hours of the day of my shiny new disposable phone—"

"Dave. I'm sorry."

"Hey, no. Stop that. It was only my dumbass guess that I was the oldest one. I should have known. I mean, back before, they both had a grandma and grandpa when we had bro and your mom, so it makes sense that they'd be the old ones this time around."

"How much do you remember?"

"Most of it, I think. Though until you got ahold of me I thought I might just be crazy. I think it's because of time. Even if it didn't technically happen because of paradox space, I've lived through it before. Shit, I made worse messes with the time loops back during the game. It doesn't feel much different. Why?"

You bend forward and rest your head on your knees. "I was hoping you might have forgotten."

"Whoa. Nope, stopping the pity train right there. You don't get to take any blame because you've done nothing wrong. I might be down two best friends, but so are you. Why do you think I sent a giant box of phones? So that you could make me feel better about the fact that you just found their bodies? Hell no."

"Dave—"

"Nope. I'm 200% ready for making-Rose-feel-better duty. I sure hope you're planning to talk to me or I'll just wind up dying here, mummifying in my desk chair with a phone clutched in my withered hand, starved to death while waiting for a conversation that never came. I bet I can write up a will with my other hand, leave all my worldly possessions to my good friend Rose Lalonde on the condition that she talk to someone about what's making her sad."

You uncurl a little and lean back against your pillows. "I think I almost smiled there. Ramble for a while longer and perhaps you might manage to produce a positive physical response."

"I'll have you know that Dave Strider does not ramble. What flows from my mouth is only the most elegant, finely-crafted wordplay ever seen this side of—"

"It was awful." He stops talking immediately, and when you close your eyes again you can practically see him in his chair, sitting forward to rest his elbows on his knees as he listens. "I was so sure we'd all see each other again. I feel like there should have been some way to direct the Scratch better, or to change things from here. I should have been able to do better." He starts to say something, but you cut him off. "Yes, I am aware that logically, there was nothing to be done. And in our own time as players, John's grandmother and Jade's grandfather both died early in their lives. It should not have been a surprise."

"If you know it wasn't your fault, what I can I do to help you stop beating yourself up over something you can't change?"

"I don't know." Your tea is going cold as you hold it. "We never got to say goodbye."

He doesn't have anything to say to that. The silence on the phone is uncomfortable, but after so long without seeing him or speaking to him, you can't bear to hang up.

"Their children are here. For the game."

"Shit, really? Grandpa Harley and Nanna Egbert, here to save the world. Oh man, this is more surreal than I thought."

"Well, my intended point was that presumably our children will arrive shortly as well. When we were players, we were all thirteen at the start of the game, but Jake appears to be at least three already."

"Man, I can't think of him as a Jake. He's always going to be Grandpa Harley to me. The essence of Grandpa is built into this boy. No matter how young he may be, he'll always have to be an old man. I'm sorry kid, but we don't appear to have a childhood available for you. You'll have to move straight into middle age. Hey, what's Nanna Egbert's real name?"

"Jane, but—"

"Nope, not feeling it. She'll just have to be Nanna for the rest of her life. Everyone knows that grandparents don't have real names. Facts of life."

"Dave, our children."

"Whoa, Rose, moving a bit fast, aren't you? We're still just kids, got our whole lives ahead of us. I don't even have an ex-wife to pay me child support. No, all I get is meteor baby delivery service, and then that meteor's going to split without even bothering to cuddle me in the afterglow." He pauses for a moment. "It's going to be really weird calling him Dirk instead of Bro. Shit, I guess that makes me Bro now. What do you think, should I start calling you Mom now to ease the transition?"

You sigh and rub your forehead. "Don't you dare. I'm still adjusting to the fact that she won't be my mother anymore. Dave, I'm going to ruin it."

"Why, because John and Jade turned out to be old and died? Because that has nothing to do with it. Actually, old people are really good at dying, I hear everyone tries it at least once—"

"No, because I ruined it before. I was an awful daughter and then she died and she never knew that I was sorry."

"Rose, hey—"He obviously doesn't know what to say. There is nothing to say. Your eyes are burning. "Look, you've got loads of time to work things out, even if the meteor came by with your kid tomorrow. You'll have years before your mom remembers a single thing that happens to her, and you've got loads of time to mess up this whole parenting thing before you need to get it right. Plus, remember that I just got you a giant box of phones. I'll be figuring out how to raise a kid at the same time. Either our double incompetence will make us into the worst parents since Jade got raised by a magic dog and a stuffed corpse, or it'll cancel out and we'll be able to help each other out some. One of those."

You sniffle, just a tiny bit, but smile. "It's going to be the worst parents one. I'm a seer; I know these things."

He laughs. "Should match up pretty well with how they did with us, then. Hey, it's like intergenerational revenge. Sure, maybe it's a bad idea to strife with a little kid on an unguarded rooftop thirty stories up, but hey, it's traditional." You laugh weakly, and can practically hear him smile from across the phone. "I knew it. There's no lady born that can resist Dave Strider's comedy stylings. Hey, Rose, I don't want to push this, but I'm supposed to wake up for a meeting with my producer in… four hours. Are you doing okay? I can stay up if you need me—"

"No, no. Get some sleep, of course. I only needed some time to collect myself."

"And play it safe with that cell. I'm putting this thing down the garbage disposal as soon as we're done. However you want to work it, just make sure to turn it into the device formerly known as phone."

"But of course. And, Dave—We probably should not talk for long, or often. Despite these precautions, given enough time, I think she would find us."

"She? You always said 'it' before."

You hesitate for a moment. "It feels like a she."

"Hey, you're the one with the mystical seer powers, not me. Even if you can't call, write me soon, okay? We need to catch up asap."

"Certainly."

When he hangs up, you want to do nothing more than lie in bed, turning the conversation over and over in your head. Instead, you force yourself to rise and take care of the phone. You lack a garbage disposal that you would trust to do the job, so you delicately disassemble the phone's components, lay them out on your balcony, and take a hammer to them. Just for good measure, you submerge the fragmented electronics in water before throwing them away. When you return to bed, you sleep soundly.

As mundane as it seems, you make the effort to press on with college. Your work never strained you to such an extent as to affect your free time, only now instead of spending all your time curled up in an armchair reading or writing, you spend a portion of it curled up in an armchair practicing with your seer powers. You watch Jake and Jane grow. Dave's movie is released, to critical and popular acclaim. He writes to you that if the next one is a success, he might land a multi-film contract to fully explore the world of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. You write to him about Jake and Jane, and although he won't say as much, he is anxious for his bro's arrival as you are for your mother's. Even though you attempt to disregard it, increasing awareness of the presence's attention is a constant pressure on your life. Dave writes to you that he can't tell you his sources, but he has a name: Betty Crocker. Her Imperious Condescension.

Your first reaction, you must admit, is skepticism. But you have grown more adept at avoiding her notice with months of practice, and your focus turns to attempting to learn as much as possible about her. You research her on the internet, and make an effort to confirm or deny every rumor, no matter how unlikely, via your seer powers. What seems most bizarre is that everything your powers can tell you indicates that she is not of this planet. It alarms you to realize that John's granddaughter is not Jane Egbert, but Jane Crocker, and you worry that her influence will corrupt the child, possibly jeopardize the future of the game.

Eventually, your curiosity gets the better of you, and you make a gamble. Even if she can sense you in the present, perhaps you can watch her in the past without drawing her attention. You trace Jane back to the day of her arrival, and this is the first time in this lifetime that you see John alive. You trace him slowly backward, lingering over the details of his life, and it is almost as if you got to know him yourself. She's there too. Inhuman and strange, whatever rumors you may have read online, none of them do her any justice. A troll, but where the trolls you knew in your previous life were no more than mild annoyances, everything about her screams danger. You are suddenly very glad that you did not overreach yourself in the present and draw her attention.

You jump to her arrival on Earth and watch from that point forward. She is cruel to her children. It is unsurprising to see that Jade left as soon as she was able, but you are astonished that John stayed with his adoptive mother. John's life you already knew, and you race forward through his career as a comedian, founding his own happy family, aging, up until his death when Jane's meteor came to Earth. Then you go back and watch Jade. Her life is quiet, on her island, but you can see just how much she hates the Condesce. You learn, with Jade, that the Condesce fears Lord English, and just the awareness of the name sends a shiver down your spine and you know, you know that it would be foolhardy in the extreme to attempt to learn more.

It is rather delightful to watch Jade provoke her mother, and her methods are wonderfully inventive. You half-expect Jade to die as John did, so it is a lovely surprise to see her climb down into the meteor crater and retrieve Jake. However pleasant it may be to watch Jade raise her child, you cannot forget that her death must be painfully near, and the anticipation is agony. It is the Condesce, in the end. Almost anticlimactic. One stab and it's over. You force yourself not to look away. You may have feared and resented the Condesce before, but for the first time, you hate her. You leave as Jake discovers his grandmother's body, and flee back to the present.

You are driven to find out more about the Condesce. It becomes the preoccupation of your life, learning all you possibly can without giving her enough information to tell her where you are. Dave warns you to be careful, but you constantly push the limits of what is safe. She is aware you exist. She is aware Dave exists, but given the sudden success of his movies, she is reluctant to kill such a popular public figure and jeopardize her own standing. You risk one of your rare phone calls to warn Dave not to provoke her, and you can practically hear the shrug in his reply.

Now that you know what to look for, you are terribly aware of the Condesce's increasing hold on the country. It enrages you how calmly the nation accepts that a baked goods company ought to have so much power. More and more, you become anxious to know when your children will arrive. Jane and Jake are already five. If your session is any guide, there may be as few as eight years until the game commences. As difficult as it is to see the future, you push yourself. Even a gain of hours or days is knowledge worth having, and you must believe that you are constrained only by the limitations you place on yourself.

Dave's movies become increasingly bold. You hope that perhaps the general public is too obtuse to comprehend the meaning of his themes and symbolism, but you know that she must be aware. No matter how you warn him that it is dangerous, he brushes you off and says that some things just need saying. You may be in a poor position to disagree, as what of your time is not taken with schoolwork or attempting to see the future has lately been dedicated to the composition of a novel. It is the culmination of all you can learn and intuit about this world, the previous world, the game, and the Condesce. You understand why Dave tells you that some things just need to be said. The symbology you use is intentionally obtuse, and you must expect that the true point of your writing will go largely uncomprehended, but you want to send a message. You are the master of passive-aggressiveness, it is you. The novel is accepted for publication in your final semester of college, and you are barely a month out of school before it tops the bestseller charts.

Your income from Complacency of the Learned is more than enough to furnish the purchase of a large, isolated estate in the mountains of New England. Once you are settled in, your first instinct is to reward yourself with a break. Perhaps a nice long trip out to the West Coast. Perhaps a dramatic reunion with an old childhood friend. Perhaps— You sigh and indulge in a phone call instead. It would be too dangerous, especially after your novel was such an unexpected success. Dave is disappointed, but he understands. His latest movie seems to have earned him some… unwanted attention as well. Both of you are terribly worried that there has still been no sign of your children. Now that college has been removed as a distraction, you divide your time evenly between working on your next novel and pushing how far you can see into the future. Jake and Jane are seven, and Dirk and Roxy are nowhere to be found.

It takes too long. It isn't until after your second novel is published and you are outlining the third that you make real progress in looking forward. No sign of your children for a month, a year, two years— Perhaps you panic, just a little. You struggle further and further ahead, ignoring the increasing pounding in your head as you push too far. Five years, ten—There is still no sign of your daughter, but the awareness of your own life suddenly winks out. The recoil as you snap back into the present makes you reel, and for a moment you think you may be ill. You can't accept it. You move forward in time again, slowly and carefully feeling your way through the years. Nothing, nothing. Jake and Jane enter the game as might be expected, but Roxy and Dirk aren't there. They aren't anywhere.

You shuffle through your house and pour yourself a drink half blind as you continue to comb through the time. This is why you and Dave exist in this iteration of the universe. You are present to be guardians. This is why you exist. But no, back and forth through the years, and your lives move on, childless, until flaming out in a sudden, violent end. In the face of all logic, you refuse to accept it. You push on further, stubbornly, ignoring the hole in the world that should hold your and Dave's lives. It takes weeks, but you push long past the limits of a reasonable human life expectancy. Centuries past. Even the horrors of what the Condesce does to the planet are dulled by your preoccupation with finding your mother.

It's far, so far in the future when you finally find them. You had nearly despaired as the individual glows of human lives winked out one by one, and indeed, all that remains is these two bright spots in a desolate world. It hurts to look this far into the future, but you linger for as long as you can manage before sinking back into the present. You sit in your chair for a long moment, your head in your hands as you try to collect yourself. There's nothing for it. You call Dave.

You aren't ready. He greets you several times and asks if you're okay before you finally manage to make your throat work. Even then, your words are barely intelligible. "We won't be parents."

"Well, hey, if you want to get technical I'm going to be 'Bro', but whatever you call us, we'll be parenting—"

"That's not what I'm saying. I mean that we'll die. Long before Roxy and Dirk ever arrive."

"…Shit."

There's an uncomfortable silence. You force yourself to speak again. "Dave, I'm so sorry—"

"Whoa, nope, gonna have to cut you off right there. The rules are no beating yourself up for events you aren't responsible for. Rose, you're seeing things that are going to happen anyways. It's not your fault"

You squeeze your eyes tightly shut and try to regain control of yourself.

"You still there?"

"Yes, of course."

"Look, I could already feel how little time I have left. It's time. It's what I do. There was no way it's long enough to go from getting a baby to him entering the game, so it's not that much worse to hear that I'm missing the baby train entirely. Can you tell me what happens? Let me guess, some poor soul gets double baby duty and gets to curse our names for all eternity. Man, I wouldn't want to deal with raising a Strider. Thankless job. No matter how difficult your mom might be, my bro must've been one hell of a nightmare child. You know, now that I won't be there to hide weapons in strange places when he isn't looking, I think I'll have to leave him a lifetime supply of shitty swords as his rightful heritage."

You shake your head. "No, I am afraid that won't be the case. And although we may miss the baby train, it does appear to be because we arrived four hundred years too early."

"… No way."

You summarize the intervening centuries for him, skimming over your mutual deaths, before detailing the arrival of the last two humans on the planet, your children. Although calling them your children might be a stretch at this point. "I'll never get to fix anything. Dave, they're going to be so alone." You're trying so hard not to cry, but your breath is coming too fast and Dave can hear it, and it just makes you want to cry even more—You shut your eyes and press your lips together, forcing yourself into stillness. Dave is saying something, but the blood is pounding too hard in your ears for you to hear him.

"—Rose, hey, are you okay? Fuck, Jesus, of course you're not okay. But are you there? Rose? Shit, fuck the consequences, I'm buying a plane ticket out there right now. You can pick me up from the airport, or I'll just pay a taxi to take me out into the wilderness, either way—"

"Dave."

He pauses, breathless, but you can't find any further words.

"Rose? I want to meet you."

You want it too. Your heart twists painfully in your chest, and you want it so badly. "We can't."

"Fuck 'we can't.' It doesn't matter anymore, okay? It's not like I've got long left to live, and I wasn't going to drag you down with me, but it sounds like you're equally screwed either way. We don't have children left to worry about anymore. I'll fly out there, or you can fly out here. You can't let me see you like this and expect me to do jack shit about it. Let's do this."

"No. We can't. Even without Roxy and Dirk. There are things left that we have to do. If we act precipitously, it will only doom our timeline."

"You're killing me, Rose. Not even if we were sneaky about it? I'll just run away from home and ninja my way up to your bedroom window in the middle of the night—"

"She'd know, Dave. She'd know. And that would be enough to ruin everything."

He sighs, hard. "I do want to see you. Before it's all over. We're working on a bit of a deadline you know."

"I am aware. It may amuse you to know that we do, in fact, meet our ends jointly. We'll take out her most powerful servants and face her together."

"Well shit," he laughs, "I can't think of any better way to go. Now. Can you tell me anything about my bro?"

It's enough to distract you from your writing, straining yourself to see everything you can of Roxy and Dirk's lives. You spend hours curled up around a cup of tea, just watching them grow. You pass everything along to Dave. The volume of your letters to him exceeds the writing you put into your own novels. You're so proud when you write to him, 'She strifes with fistkind and rifles.' Every so often, the guilt washes over you again, and you drink too much and call Dave. Even at his busiest, he always makes time for you. He's the one that has the idea that even without being there to raise her, you are equipped with the perfect skills to provide for her across the centuries.

It's a wonderful revelation. As well as your books continue to sell, you have more than enough money to purchase everything Roxy could possibly need. You take your time and carefully consider everything you give her, painfully aware of the less-than-ideal motivations you attributed to your own mother, horribly afraid that she'll think as poorly of you. At least—At least she and Dirk aren't quite as alone as you'd feared. They spend a great deal of time talking to Jake and Jane, and the four of them are as close as you could have hoped.

It is difficult to watch all the attempts on Jane's life without intervening, even if you know all of them are doomed to failure. On the day that Jane enters the game, you travel to her house to observe. Although Jane will and must enter the Medium, you cannot believe that the Condesce will let her go so easily. In the moments as Jane's house disappears, the air sparks and stretches, and a massive red spaceship blooms into existence over the city. A tempting target, but this is neither the time nor the place. You stand and observe, taking in your fill, and only when you feel the pressure of her attention begin to turn toward you, then you abscond.

Life is less enjoyable without Jake and Jane to distract you. Once the final Complacency of the Learned novel is completed (and you are daring enough to dedicate the book to John Crocker and Jade English), you have very little to occupy your time. Your agent presses you to write further novels, but you see no purpose in doing so. Complacency of the Learned will be your legacy. You wile away your days watching Dirk and Roxy grow older, writing to Dave, and purchasing everything you imagine Roxy might ever possibly need. Maybe. You direct the construction of a very strange combined warehouse/home, with some very strange building specifications that would be simply impossible if you weren't so willing to spend so much money to get your way.

You direct Dave to a particular apartment building in Houston that you can guarantee will survive the coming flooding of the earth, and the two of you spend extravagant amounts of money filling these homes with everything you'll never be able to give your children yourselves. You even wrap certain gifts, labeling them '4th birthday,' 'Christmas 2406,' and the like. You remember how your mother enjoyed alcohol, and although you feel torn, you acquire some excellent, expensive liquors that will survive the intervening centuries. Although you cannot quite condone how Roxy drinks to excess, you cannot condemn her either, considering the world you leave her to grow up in. You compose a few delicately worded letters on the theme of alcohol not being a solution to her problems, but tear them all up when you begin to fear that she'll resent you for attempting to control her life. You perhaps panic a little when you realize you've never really understood what children like and fill an entire room with stuffed animals before you catch yourself. You purchase racks of rifles, every kind you can lay your hands on, with ammunition and the tools and manuals to repair them in case of damage.

You do feel a little better about your own parenting skills when you see how Dave is equipping his apartment. You thought he was joking about the legacy of shitty swords. And you privately decide that your own excesses in the realm of stuffed animals are more understandable than his massive collection of bizarrely sexual puppets. To each his own, you suppose. As the Condesce's control over the planet because less and less subtle, you both buy or steal every piece of alien technology you can lay your hands on, and stash them in your children's homes. The present that makes you the most nervous is the inclusion of a boxed set of your books, complete with the dedication: 'To Roxy with love. From Mom.'

When Donald Glover is assassinated in the middle of his Academy Award acceptance speech, you know the end is near. While you are on a plane to the capital, you are distantly aware of Ben Stiller's death in the distance. Dave promised you over and over that he trusted your warnings, and that he'd escape before the Condesce could catch him. He's making his way across the country as well, and both of you just have one remaining errand to take care of before finally seeing each other in person.

The High Chaplain barely poses a challenge. Even without a memory of the monsters you fought during the game, you can hardly imagine that he could ever have threatened you. You exact revenge for his crimes, and the feeling as his presence winks out of your awareness brings a smile to your lips. It takes only a moment of concentration to ascertain that Dave's battle with the presidents is barely beginning and make your way to a quiet little coffee shop. The blood on your skirt will probably stain, but at this point it doesn't matter much, does it. You text Dave your address and settle down with a book.

When he does arrive an hour later, his clothing is drenched in a simply astonishing amount of blood. You lift your eyebrows without saying a word, and he just shrugs and grins. Strifing with swords gets pretty up close and personal, he says. He ignores the stares and whispers from the other patrons and briefly absconds to the bathroom, before coming back in a fresh shirt and pants. You smile and extend a hand in greeting, but instead he pulls you up and sweeps you into a tight embrace. After only a moment's hesitation, you wrap your arms around him as well. Although you know exactly what will pass this evening, in this moment you are reunited. The years of letters and too-short phone calls seem horribly inadequate, and it is some time before you break apart and sit down.

You may have only hours left together, but you savor them, lose yourself in the conversation, and cherish this time together. As the sun begins to sink, you both reluctantly rise and begin the slow walk to where you know she is waiting. His sword is in his hand and your grip is tight on your needles, but you feel strangely relaxed you walk along, shoulder to shoulder. When you see her standing there, all horns and hair with the power rolling off her in waves, you give each other one last smile and step apart. The end is near, and you know all too well what the outcome of this fight will be, but in these last moments, you find yourself content.