Chapter 13: Type-A Personality

I wasn't sure if it was the effects of temporal travel or another source, but I was beginning to lose track of time. The days ran into one other. There were days with Lightning. There were days without. There were days in between that I wasn't quite sure how I'd reached. She'd described Valhalla as timeless. Tallies and check marks couldn't keep the hours within reach for her. Living outside of my timeline was beginning to carry the same displacement.

I'd expected that, like Claire, Lightning would be a solid, tangible, tetherable point in the shifting world around me. She wasn't. This fact was made clear every time we were in the Director's presence. Today, he'd chosen to ask her a series of questions about the differences between using Time Gates and the Historia Crux, and whatever the hell it was that we did. The questions had become so involved that he'd led her away to his laboratory to run some tests while Alyssa and I sorted endless digital files.

Becoming a figurehead had left him paranoid. He'd wanted no one besides his assistant to handle the files that he'd physically brought from the past. There really wasn't a need for his meticulous attention to detail. Alyssa and I had only found a handful of documents so far that had been altered in the 400 AF Academy Archives. Nothing major, only updates. Yet, I was painstakingly assigned the task of comparing the data. I'd been sure he'd just given me busy work, until she had clarified that no, she'd been expected to do it long before Lightning and my arrival. The Director's expectations tended not to match the abilities of his colleagues.

We'd been working in her office, which was adjacent to the Director's, when I must've cracked my knuckles in boredom one time too many. Or maybe I'd grumbled. Either way, my frustration at the menial task had made itself known. Alyssa shut off her screen and looked up at me.

"I've been spending all this time sorting these, but I'm still not entirely sure what the letters stand for. What the hell is a Type-A Classification?" I asked.

Alyssa grumbled at a pitch that resembled a chipmunk chittering. "Haven't you been listening?"

"No, not really." There was no use pretending that I'd absorbed anything that she or the Director had ever said.

"This has been my life's work, and only now you're telling me you think it's just as worthless as the dufuses on the thirty-third floor think it is." She took a calming breath and shook herself out.
"Each type corresponds to a specific sort of paradox. For example, you'll see that the most abundant is Type-A. Those are what Serah and Noel deal with."

I stopped typing and tried to actually listen.

"Sometimes they're called a 'grandfather paradox.' This is the simplest type. It involves changing something in the past. This affects the future, so that the future you return to...is now a different future entirely. However, it has specific subclassifications like the Type-A1. These types involve changing the past to a degree that events of even going back into the past are now impossible. Ex. Someone goes into the past, and affects their parents meeting. They then cease to exist. Fizzle out into nothing. These are the hardest for us to trace and for Serah to rectify. Since we don't know what initiated them, we don't know how to stop them. They result in enormous temporal rifts that cover entire cities."

I vaguely remembered a document about how the entirety of Oerba had been sucked into a void. Thankfully, Serah and Noel had cleared it up. Now that I had a tiny bit of understanding, I wondered what might have caused it. I'd probably never know.

Alyssa smiled and then cocked her head. "My favorites are the Type-B. You should be familiar with how they work."

"I wouldn't have asked if I did."

"Type-Bs are paradoxes that involve casual loops. Someone affects something in the past, which then results in the future event that initiates the past event." She must have noticed the blank stare I was giving her. "I gave you that uniform you're wearing. I gave it to you in the 'future.'" She made sure to use air quotes to signify 400 AF was 'the future.' "You wore them in the past, where I saw them. I never would've made them the exact way they are if you hadn't already shown me them. And you would've never had them to wear and take to the past, if you hadn't already gone back. We exist within this 'clothed loop'." Then, she laughed like her joke hadn't been stupid. "The more common name for the Type-B is a 'bootstrap paradox.' No one knows how the loop starts. But they are harmless in comparison to the Type-A. Basically, Type-A's create branching timelines. Type-B's don't. I like to think they are proof we exist in the one true timeline." There was a quick twitch in her lip before she bit at the inside of her cheek. Something about the statement made her nervous, like she needed it to be true. But that it might not be. "The Director disagrees." There was a quiet that took over the room. "Come with me," she offered. "He keeps the good stuff in here."

She led us into his office and walked straight behind his desk. After pulling a utility knife from her chest pocket, she began messing with one of the drawers. With some tricky hand movements and a couple of grunts she popped open the lock. I immediately recognized the bottle.

"Oerban tequila? Where did he even find that in 400 AF?"

Alyssa appraised me by raising an eyebrow. "Oerban? I swear you always come up with the strangest things. Even more so than Serah and Noel." She spun the bottle and I realized it had no particular label on it. "This is the stuff the Director's dad liked. Never said where it came from. I can't imagine it's Oerban as that place hasn't been populated in centuries."

"The plants it's distilled from only grow in the Oerban desert," I supplemented as I took the alcohol and downed a swig. "Yep. At least he has taste in liquor."

Alyssa put down the shot glass she'd found and grabbed the bottle back. "Bottoms up," she said as she chugged several mouthfuls. She closed her eyes and made a low whistle. "He's not going to be too happy with us. In one of his odder requests, he packed an entire case of the stuff in the time capsule. But the stress and workload has been getting to him. I believe he only has one more bottle after this one."

I relaxed and sat in the chair he kept for visitors while Alyssa sat in his personal chair and propped her feet on the desktop.

"You pretend that his weird little tendencies bother you, but you still put up with them. Why's that?" I asked.

"The man's a genius. There's none like him. Not even you, no offense. There is no one I could learn more from. But his assistant, seriously? I have the same number of degrees and equal experience. But why is he Director? One word. Nepotism. If his daddy didn't start the Academy, he wouldn't be in the position he is." She sighed and took another swig. "But I want to be involved in his research. Anything below this level, it couldn't satisfy me the way this does. So, when I applied to work with him, as a partner mind you, he was like, 'sure, I need an assistant.' And all his staff were like, 'great! Here you go.' I didn't have a damn say in the matter."

"I'm sure if you brought it up with him, especially now that he's only an honorary Director, he could address your position."

"What's the point? The damage has already been done. I've been humiliated. But I like your optimism, kid."

"Alyssa," I stood up and patted her on the shoulder. "You really do need to talk to him. I'm an idiot who misses a lot of signs. I'm oblivious. Or maybe I'm just single-minded and I don't care whose toes I step on. Like I almost killed Snow. Thankfully I didn't, because my fiancé wouldn't be too happy if I'd murdered her brother-in-law." I made myself crack up in drunken giggles.

"You're engaged?" Alyssa coughed and then began her own round of laughter.

"Oops, I've been trying to keep that a secret. Don't tell." I placed my finger to my mouth in secrecy.

"The Director is twenty-six and has been single since the day I met him. How did a dork like you get shacked up at nineteen?"

I sat back in my chair. Pulling my glove off, I showed her my scar.

"I didn't have the fate of the world to worry about in my timeline. So, I was able to focus on other things. Since she's older, we agreed there was no point in wasting time. The fact that we loved each other was all that mattered."

Alyssa closed her eyes and frowned slightly. "Is that why he's so focused on saving Vanille and Fang? He's in love with one of them. Sure puts a damper on our research if the fool was doing it out of some misguided crush instead of sincerely caring about the future."

I had to cover my mouth as I resumed laughing. "Fang and Vanille are a couple. He couldn't break them apart if he tried." I smiled at Alyssa, trying to ease her worry. "He really is just worried about the fate of the world. And you needn't worry about his love-life. I fell for my partner because of the time we spent together. It wasn't some immediate love at first sight type of thing. And it appears to me that the only person he's spent any significant time with is you."

Alyssa began blushing and waving her arms around in disagreement.

"Hah! So there was another reason you hated not being his equal."

"It's a cliché isn't it? A man and his assistant."

"Like I said, talk to him."