Everything is complete. The Korean mother and child are united, and I know of no other tasks to which I might be held accountable on Earth. Already I have lingered here long without purpose; I know not why the gods should send me to so foul a place. Unless I have missed the calling of their will, this has proved a futile endeavor, one which can have no bearing on the world to which I so desire to return. Perhap the gods desired that I should aid Cheonha, that doing so somehow aids the Protoss...an errant fantasy, no doubt. Toby yet insists that this is an "alternate universe" to the "Starcraft world", and whether that is true I cannot say.

Here I remain. No one has answered my call. The power cells remain far short of what I need to escape this system, much less this "alternate universe", if truly it is one.

...

Aldaris lowered his hands from the computer console. Every so often he found himself adding entries to his computer log, simply out of habit. There wasn't any point, of course. He just couldn't help it. There was no one to talk to about the secret things going on in his heart, especially not those four humans. They would probably react poorly if they found out what he intended.

Not John, certainly. Aldaris mused without offense. He will not show concern over my downfall. Indeed, he of the four is most likely to see its wisdom.

Destroying his ship wasn't going to be a hasty process. Aldaris couldn't rush it. His first impulse had been to simply blow the ship up, then allow Earth's atmosphere to disintegrate the rest. It was a short-lived impulse. Even assuming the ship was destroyed beyond salvaging anything important, it would immediately signal that something was happening, even if the technologically backwards humans didn't know what. Not to mention it was fairly likely that something might survive both the blast and Earth's atmosphere.

It was far better to destroy a little at a time, the riskier documents and technologies first. As much as the humans couldn't read aiuran, there wasn't the slightest reason to give them the chance to even become familiar with it - the "aiuran" they used in Starcraft was gibberish at best. Aldaris grudged the loss of each thing, because the more he destroyed, the less there would be of comforts before the end.

In the meanwhile, Aldaris couldn't destroy anything important, anything that might aid him in his last voyage to Venus. This trip wasn't a problem; Earth's star was nearby, so solar power would be enough. How fortunate it was that Toby, without the slightest caution, directly answered his questions about about the planets of the system.

Now all that remained was to calculate how much time it would take to get to Venus, and if he could direct the ship to go there - Aldaris was an administrator, not a space explorer. He'd never flown the Juniadros from planet to planet, other than when he helped bring Aiuran exiles to Shakuras, and that was with the help of an interplanetary teleporter. But Aldaris knew the principles of space travel, and plotting a course for Venus wasn't impossible.

It seemed Aldaris would have to simply plan out a trip to Venus, allow the principles of space travel to take all necessary time to get there, and die himself along the way. That was the most disappointing part of the plan. Aldaris had hoped to die instantaneously in an explosion of his ship, but with his inparsynthesis, he would slowly die over time. He might not have the strength to initiate self-destruct on his ship once he reached Venus. Allowing his inparsynthesis to slowly starve him to death wasn't the most efficient way to die, but it was the simplest choice. He couldn't exactly ask Bethany or Toby about Earth poisons without raising even their sluggish suspicions. Aldaris wondered if he had the strength to stab himself, assuming he wouldn't be too physically weak for that, either, near the end.

It had to be done. He couldn't go home, and he couldn't stay. That left Aldaris with only the tedious task of making sure everything he had was destroyed beyond the abilities of human investigation. It was logical to start with the useless things first, the things he wouldn't need to steer the Juniadros into a great orb of acid. He wandered into the lounge, pulling open the storage cabinets and sorting through his papers.

They weren't business papers. Anything from Aldaris' days as Doyen of the Assemblage had already been long since thrown away, as there was no room for it once exile to Shakuras had been decided on, except for perhaps some documents that were hidden in forgotten places in the shuffle. None of that was his real worry. Alas for his own work, which was tucked in carefully sorted folders, large and small according to their kind. Aldaris lifted one of the larger folders and lay it on the table, gently pulling out a couple of the papers inside.

They were his drawings, and not mere artistic expression, either. Aldaris didn't flatter himself much in the way of creativity, but at the least he could turn his memories into pictures. Many drawings were of important places in Aiur, both in public honor and personal sentiment. Some were of great monuments. Many were just landscapes of Aiur's countrysides and beaches. Several were depictions of the great temple on Aiur, standing no longer except on that humble page. The one which he'd worked on in Cheonha's company still wasn't finished.

Technically, Aldaris didn't need these things. Drawings weren't going to help him get home, and they wouldn't help him destroy the Juniadros. But they were his memories - his people's memories, of things and places both destroyed and rendered unrecognizable by the coming of the swarm. So many had died, those who had known Aiur best and at its best. If he destroyed these drawings, they could never be replaced.

But where will they go? To the humans? Aldaris bitterly dropped the page in his hand. Shall they keep the memories of Aiur the Ancient, heir of the Xel'Naga?

Aldaris lowered his face into his hands. He could destroy his ship, his beautiful ship that had saved the lives of so many. He could kill himself, or at least damage himself to the point where no one could bring him back. But he could not destroy these pictures. He just couldn't.

Still, knowing that he had to, Aldaris' hands slowly reached for the top of a page depicting the temple on Aiur. It was his favorite picture, and if only he could produce one long, irreversible tear, then he could produce another, then another, and then finally have the will to destroy his entire work, drawing by drawing. It was only the first that was difficult. Aldaris held the edge of the paper with both hands, staring and waiting for the moment when he would finally have the courage to begin.

Blue swirls saved him. Despite the fact that Aldaris could never get the stupid recall unit to stop teleporting people at random, it at least now kept the humans from teleporting anywhere besides his ship's lounge. Still, they had stopped him from committing a great horror, so it wasn't with complete disappointment that Aldaris watched the humans appear.

It was Cheonha, as well as her mother. Aldaris hid his annoyance. Cheonha's mother's face instantly brightened the moment she saw him, like a child seeing her father after a long absence. Her eyes watered just slightly, and how could the Protoss marr a joy like that, recall mishaps or no?

For another thing, the woman looked much better. Granted, she'd only been outside of North Korea for a week. But she was standing with only the help of her daughter's arm. Maybe it was Aldaris' imagination, but her cheeks seemed a little more full as well. He didn't have much time to just look. Once Cheonha's mother saw him, she immediately stepped forward, then fell to her knees.

"Aldarisu sansangneem..."

The woman said other things too, all in korean. But her voice, frail as it was, said enough without needing Aldaris to catch the specifics. She really did cry, and she bowed to him, lowering her forehead all the way to the floor. As she rose she turned to her daughter, and with astonishing ease took on a commanding tone.

"Cheonha!" she gestured to the floor at her side.

"Omma-ni..."

No words, only a firm hand pointing down. Cheonha immediately knelt beside her mother, and they both bowed low to Aldaris, three times in all. Aldaris lost himself. Whatever humilating emotions crushed him not ten minutes ago entirely vanished. Pride took hold, and he graciously considered the humans below.

Of course they are grateful to me. Aldaris rose from his chair, feeling lighter than a balloon. At least in all my toils I have this comfort, that I have blessed the lives of these unfortunate creatures.

Aldaris went to the two women and crouched a bit, gesturing for them to rise. He spoke first to Cheonha's mother.

"Madame," he said, most graciously. "You have no need to bow. Please rise and live well, for that is enough."

As the Koreans rose again to their feet, Aldaris considered his options. As much as he liked Cheonha, he wasn't certain how to deal with humans that didn't speak english well. Probably the recall unit had enough energy left to transport them, possibly without much delaying his trip to Venus. Which meant bringing them both to the bridge.

But thinking is quicker than reading, and before Aldaris could have much of an internal debate, Cheonha's mother started saying things again. Aldaris blinked and turned to Cheonha.

"Omma-ni...," Cheonha tried to explain. "Mother has request...one request. For a meeting. All of us...Bethany, Toby, Statukusu..."

Aldaris winced again, almost visibly this time. He wasn't well learned in human colloquialisms, but he did know "engrish." And he knew he'd much rather be drawing with Cheonha than speaking with her.

Nggh. Moving is crap.

So my dad found me a place to live. He's a real estate agent, so he has connections. Seriously, if you're a young person who needs somewhere cheap to rent, go find an agent. It won't cost you anything to ask, and the agent will probably get a kickback from the renter for his recommendation. Unfortunately for me, due to my status as looking for another job (as opposed to having another job), I don't have the money to get a good place. Well, it is just me - no husband, childen, or pets.

Anyway, I've now got a tiny little apartment. It's not only the first floor of a small, concrete block house, it's also invisible to the street until you pull into the driveway of the house in front. It's this little two story with one apartment atop the other - I have the bottom one - which, when counted with the normal house in front of us, is the left side of a little enclave. A patch of parking area separates my "carriage house" (apparently that's what you call it) from the other carriage house on the other side. Two normal houses and a third that's been separated into apartments line along the street on the front, and a large wooden fence blocks us from the the rear. All in all, it's a nice little area. I call it Bag End, just to be cute.

Cute, however, does not describe my money situation. I have enough money to get through this month, and if I'm really careful, I'll have enough money for next month's rent - but not food. And all of that is assuming that I don't get the gas turned on. Oh, by the way, guess what powers the stove? So between cooking chicken in an electric donut griddle and mopping the floor with a broom, I think I've got this household thing figured out. Good thing I've watched a lot of Cutthroat Kitchen.

Huh, I should get one of my friends to move into the tiny apartment upstairs. That would be cool.

So I'm sitting in my apartment now, looking at the stuff I managed to get over here. The landscape painting from China lies now atop the half of my bookcase that survived the move ($30 bookcase, you see). Once the donut maker is done with my chicken, I'm going to watch some of the Project Runway I downloaded onto my computer previously (no internet now!) and then clean my bathroom. Then I have to juggle how I'm going to handle tomorrow. I have to get all pretty and make an appearance at the bank, so that I look hirable, and then get what little food I can afford at Wally-world and somehow get my coffeemaker back from work. Yay.

With all of this going on, I think of Aldaris' money. It's not a lot, but it would keep me for at least four months. I'm not going to take it, though. Dude is an alien in a world not his own, and I'm not going to take what's his. I mean, sure, the money appeared randomly on his ship when he arrived because of his messed up teleporter, so we don't know who the money really belongs to. Still, when you find a bunch of cash in a suitcase, chances are it doesn't belong to somebody involved only in legal activities. So I don't feel that bad about Aldaris having it.

Bah, I get too easily distracted these days. No longer thinking about anything besides dealing with stress, I turned to my cryptogram book. Man, I love those things. I'm getting real good at them too. Fine, fine, I know this is supposed to be a journal of me hanging out with my best good buddy Aldaris (don't tell him I said that!), but really, the cryptogram thing is relevant. That's what I was working on when Charlie contacted me again.

"Bethany."

"Oh hey, Charlie." I kept working on the cryptogram while I spoke. "Wie gehts, wie stehts?"

More than likely Aldaris doesn't know german, but he either ignored it or figured it out by sentiment. "Bethany, I would appreciate if you had told me before you changed residence."

"Buh? You aren't my dad."

"By the grace of the gods, yes, but if I had known, I would not have spent several minutes wondering if some misfortune had taken you."

Ugh, he's probably referring to that time...that time I'd still rather not talk about. I scribbled more letters onto the puzzle so that I could dodge the awkward. "Uh, anyway, anything interesting happen?"

"Something you will find of interest, yes. Cheonha's mother has requested to meet with everyone. Cheonha seems to have told her everything, but I question how much the woman understands. She seems confused, and part of her believes she has died and gone to some strange paradise."

"That's adorable," I chuckled. "Oh, and her name is Lee Suha. Cheonha emailed us about Suha wanting to see everyone, but I didn't think you would go along with it."

"Ordinarily this assumption would be correct. I have, however, an announcement to make."

"Oh? What about?"

"You will know soon enough. Thursday I will retrieve you, if this is acceptable."

Huh, Aldaris knew the days of the week, did he? Impressive.

"Cool, that's my day off, anyway. I was going to spend it getting this place cleaned up, but nah." I glanced at my puzzle again. I was almost finished with it. Feels good to know I can manage to do something right.

"What is that?" Aldaris asked.

"'S a cryptogram." I answered, tapping the page with my mechanical pencil. "Basically, they take a quote from some famous schmuck, then replace every letter with a different letter. And I'm supposed to figure out what the letters are really supposed to be, based on how they're arranged. This right here is a quote by Henry David Thoreau, some poet from back in the day that people say is classic or whatever. I'm a bit dubious, though, because they also say The Great Gatsby is 'classic'. ...Oh cool, I think I've figured it out..."

I wrote in the last few letters. This one wasn't a hard puzzle, especially since the puzzle had an apostrophe in it. Since this was a cryptogram book full of famous philosophers and writers from a long time ago, none of them use contractions.

"'To maintain one's self on this Earth is not a hardship, but a pastime if we live simply and wisely'." I read. "Uh, okay."

Judging from the negativity that wasn't mine, I figured Aldaris didn't like this quote. "What does that mean?"

"Um," I scratched my head. "I'm not really sure. Thoreau was one of those guys who was all about like, living in the woods and stuff. He did it himself for some years. Or was it Ralph Waldo Emerson? I'm forever getting those two mixed up. Eh, retro hipsters always say weird things, because they think they know what they're talking about."

"Perhaps." Aldaris said, though I'd be shocked if he knew (or cared) what a hipster was.

"Oh hey, Charlie, how come you didn't bring me back to read some more with you? I thought you wanted to improve your written english."

"...That is of no concern at this time."

"Huh?"

"We will meet again on Thursday."

"...Uh, 'kay, see you then."

The wandering orb of negative emotion left my brain, and I let out a sigh of relief. Y'know, Charlie's cool and all, but he's really a downer, and with all the crap that's going on in my life right now, I can't really handle that. Ugh. Even though he didn't say all that much, I'm now suddenly more stressed out than before. I need to check on my chicken, and then I'm doing another cryptogram. On a whim, I looked back down at my puzzle book.

"Maintaining oneself here on earth isn't a hardship, eh?" I chuckled. "I'm not sure my dear ch'ingu Aldaris would agree with that."

Yeah, I don't expect Aldaris' announcement will have anything to do with staying down here on Earth. Oh well. I'll see what it is then. Well, if you'll excuse me, my Asian chicken smells good, so that must mean it's done. Chow time.

I feel weird, though. About everything.

\\\\\

Author's Notes:

- As it so happens, I do know some preferable ways to die. Cleopatra ended a lot of slaves' lives for the sake of finding a way to die that was both painless and left behind a good-looking body. Apparently, an asp's bite does the trick. It's very difficult for me to understand why anyone would admire a woman like this, but for some reason feminists think that this broad deserves to be a puzzle with other women they admire. Bizarre.

Personally, if I had my choice of death, it would be to die in space. Explosive decompression doesn't actually happen, because a person is just going from one atmosphere to none. A change of one atmosphere isn't going to make a person explode. Not that Aldaris would choose that, because he doesn't want to leave a body behind.

- The Assemblage is a group of upcoming Judicator who work more closely with the Templar than the Conclave does. They tend to oversee specific Templar missions, much in the way Aldaris was in charge of Tassadar's mission in destroying the infested human planets. Being the Assemblage's Doyen, or elder, is something of an advantage and a disadvantage politically. As Doyen, Aldaris is both the leading voice of the Assemblage and its highest ranking member.

However, having this position delayed Aldaris' entry into the Conclave, to the point where he had no chance to enter it before its destruction. He personally suspects he was given the position by the political opponents of his father, as a way of keeping him outside. However, Aldaris, trusting the Conclave, accepted his position without complaint and indeed enjoyed remaining closer to those that do the Protoss' outside tasks, so that he could gain more experience before his expected ascension to the Conclave. He really does enjoy working with Templar.

With the events of Starcraft, Aldaris' position ended up saving his life, as he wasn't there when the Conclave was destroyed. As Doyen, he was both the highest ranking surviving Protoss leader, and also an outsider to the Conclave, an advantage in the eyes of the Dark Templar.

"Doyen" is an informal title, and while it technically made Aldaris head of the Assemblage, the Assemblage always had a fairly loose hierarchy, as they existed primarily to carry out Conclave directives rather than their own purposes. Aldaris couldn't actually tell the Assemblage to do anything without the Conclave's backing, though he was responsible for some aspects of organization and could give official opinions on the actions of the others in the Assemblage whenever he wanted. Aldaris is rarely referred to as "Doyen" outside of official documents.

- "Wie gehts, wie stehts" is a german greeting that means something like "what's going on?" I can't remember specifically what it means, but it's basically that.

- Ch'ingu means friend in korean.

Author's Notes New:

- I still do have that electric donut griddle somewhere. It's supposed to be for mini-donuts but they never come out fluffy, so it's really better as just a donut-shaped waffle maker.

- Ugh, I still get the shivers when I think about that time in my life. Things are significantly better now, and in fact they did improve later in that year, but still, it was hard. That year is the main reason why I'm coming back to rewrite this story, as I was so unhappy I couldn't get the story going how I liked. Seriously, the past few years have been hard, y'all.