The coffee shop, felt Varda, hadn't changed at all. When she stepped inside, the same silver bell rang; the same smell of coffee assaulted her with waves of nostalgia, and the baristas still had that look of both extreme boredom and remarkable efficiency she remembered. She had loved that place.
At the counter, she got her favourite brew — spicy and dark, enchanting. The quark-infused stuff she got at that new place didn't even compare to it. When she turned around to scan the customers, however, she remembered why she didn't come here anymore: Morgan, her ex, was sitting at her usual spot by the nebula pillar, and was looking at her. She had invited her there. The fact that this was no surprise, somehow, didn't make it easier. Without a word, Varda grabbed a seat at Morgan's table.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi," replied Morgan.
An uncomfortable silence hovered like a cloud of dark matter until Varda, Queen of Stars and etc, took a deep breath and said she was sorry — sorry about everything, sorry about keeping Mister Truffles, but she didn't want him to end up at the trans-dimensional pet shelter because Morgan's new flat didn't accept animals, sorry about putting her career before their relationship, sorry about… well, everything. No mitigating circumstances. Sorry. She had been an ass. Morgan had deserved better. She was sorry. And she new nothing could make up for it. And that she wasn't owed any forgiveness just by apologizing. But still, she was sorry.
"Wow," said Morgan. "A true apology. Let me call Lucifer and check if Hell has frozen over at that fucked up lab of his."
Varda took a sip of coffee until Morgan put down her phone. Apparently, Hell hadn't frozen over and Lucifer was thankful for the heads up, as it meant he would need to fix some of his equations. Morgan then asked: "What do you need?"
That simple question hurt. Varda needed — her, she needed them, the way they used to be. But life — or, rather, Varda's own monomaniac career endeavors — had seen to that. Some things had been said, and done, that were unforgivable. So she kept to her plan, and asked instead if Morgan still worked at the Archive.
"You know I do," said Morgan.
"And, erm, would you have recently hooked up Aulë with one of your machines?"
"Yep," said Morgan.
That was so brazen of her it made Varda's blood boil. "Did you know," she asked, trying to keep her calm, "that he was going to use it for an unlicensed experiment on sentients?"
"Yep," said again Morgan. "I knew, and I didn't care. Shit, that's exactly why I lended it to him."
"Did you do that to get back at me?"
"Do you know that the world does not revolve around you, hon?"
Another silence, and Varda asked Morgan if she was still mad about Mister Truffles.
"Of course I am," she replied. "You stole my fucking cat. I could have gotten him back later once I moved again, but you had blocked me on everything and moved yourself. You're a fucking cat thief."
The baristas, at the counter, were making a show of preparing some special order. It probably involved no less than ten ingredients mixed to a underwhelming, albeit expensive, result. Morgan continued to speak, saying that she only showed up because Varda had, somehow, proposed to give Mister Truffles back. Varda braced herself before she answered.
"I need you to take back Aulë's machine before everyone knows about what he did."
"Why, because he forged your signature on the lease I gave him? Because it might bring Varda's little academic career to a halt? Remind me please, how long have you been a PhD? Why haven't you graduated yet? Oh right, because your tenured professor's a golf-addict dick despot, that's why. No one would hire you. No one ever hired anybody who came from Eru Ilúvatar's lab."
"No, I need you to take back the machine because what Aulë's doing is fucking wrong," nearly shouted Varda. She was close to tears. She had had three panic attacks since she had discovered what had been going on. Her whole body was locked in a painful nervous breakdown. Morgan took another sip of her drink.
"Relax," said Morgan. "It ain't wrong, girl. It's bloody fun, that's what it is. How did he integrate the sentients?"
"He gave them awful matching haircuts and put up a perception filter."
"Sloppy, but it'll do the job. Come on, why do you care about these anyway? Two thirds of them aren't even from your lab. You're into terraforming. Sentients aren't your line of work."
A young couple, two tables over, were holding hands. They had that lovestruck devoted expression only those very newly together can manage. Varda neither liked nor understood the wave of jealous violence that nearly overtook her at this sight. Morgan had always been a little too much into sentients, and her aloof clinical attitude had always rubbed Varda wrong. Amongst other things, they gave very different meanings to the words ethical experimentation. The Archive was famous for making their sentients (usually either straight stolen or, in other cases, recreated from partial templates) go through all kinds of hurt that wasn't always alleviated by comfort. The WHUMP (Woe, Hurt, and Useless Maximum Pain) division, in particular, was ruthless.
Varda couldn't even see how Morgan might understand her point of view, so she just renewed her proposition: Mister Truffles would go to her former mistress if only she was graceful enough to run off with her fucking machine and expertly merge the universes back to their original states. Then, the master saves, both original and duplicate, could be fused back together, and the sentients would be left with only a few bad dreams to remind them of their ordeal.
Morgan downed what was left of her coffee. The cup made a slight clang when she placed it back on the table.
"You're lucky I love that damned cat," she said. "Let's go. I want Mister Truffles before we go for the machine."
Varda loved Mister Truffles too, and she would miss him dearly. But it was the only solution.
Less than an hour of non-linear time later, Varda and Morgan arrived at the lab. Morgan carried an oversized pet carrier from which, at intervals, outraged meows surged. How dared they put him in the box, said the meows. How dared they denigrate such fluffy majesty. How dared they think one would suffer such indignity without complaint.
"Hi, Aulë," said Morgan. "I'll have my prototype back, if you please."
Before Aulë could reply, Varda had hissed back: "Prototype?!"
"Why, yes, hon. I wanted to try it without risk to the Archive's assets."
"Why do you even do that," moaned Varda. "Why do you put sentient saves through an untested machine."
"MEEEOOOOOOOOW," meowed Mister Truffles.
"Can I please let him out," asked Morgan. "I wouldn't want to miss another rant from the ex that you, Aulë, promised I wouldn't ever see again because there was no way you would ever spill the beans?"
Without further comment, an Aulë who was quite embarrassed opened himself the carrier and coaxed the cat out.
Mister Truffles, like all felines in the multiverse, had no problem at all moving through non-euclidean space. Nonetheless, he made a dramatic scene as he left his carrier, complete with tentative paws, curious whiskers, puffed up fur and airplane ears. As the three researchers over him quarreled, he sniffed carefully their shoes. Oh yes, here was Morgan, his old mom that he hadn't seen in a while!
Elated at such a reunion, Mister Truffles rose on his hind paws to his full height and very (very) gently scratched Morgan's pants. He purred like a broken diesel truck when Morgan picked him up and cradled him in her arms as she began to yell. Why was Mother in such a bad mood? Why didn't she praise him and admire him and scratch him right behind the ears?
Mister Truffles was not a cat to be ignored. Actually, he was quite a kindred spirit to Gilderoy Lockhart — up to the dubious magical talent. Mister Truffles was quite the wizard when he wanted to. His favourite spell was called "the disappearance of kibbles," and he needed nothing but his stomach to perform it.
Therefore, Mister Truffles pawed at Morgan's face. It backfired: Mother put him down on a chair. Mister Truffles's tail whipped his flanks in indignation, and he gave a little meow carefully tuned to melt the hardest of hearts. It would have worked if the noise levels had been a little less deafening. It was hard to tell who shouted the loudest.
Since no one took him into account, Mister Truffles decided to explore. This office was a great place, full of nooks and crannies of space-time where random things stood ready to be thrown down. Mister Truffles bit a cable that lead to a whirring machine; it made a noise like a hiccup, and the whirring took a plaintive tone.
What a strange machine it was indeed! It had so many buttons, and twinkling lights, and warm air came out of one side! And when one jumped on it, as one does, one was able to smell a strange smell, too, of the kind that makes one curl up one's lips and fold away one's whiskers in distaste!
Mother appeared to be winning the argument. That was a good thing. Mister Truffles liked Second Mother well enough, but she had never given him the brushy-brushies in the fantastic way Mother did. And the big man he didn't like on a matter of principle.
Oh, but this was taking so long. Why couldn't the other two acknowledge that Mother was right? Mister Truffles was getting bored, and he didn't like when people yelled at Mother. Now that he thought of it, the man's smell was all over the machine — with a whiff of Second Mother, too.
Out of spite, and because Mother is always right (except when she says there's no treats anymore), Mister Truffles squat, crossed his eyes in concentration, and lifted his tail to a perfect 36° to the horizontal plane. The warm and pungent stench of cat urine rose in a cloud of pure statement as golden liquid trickled around and dripped in between casing joints. Some more lights blinked. Some went out. The acrid smell of burnt components drifted along. All whirring stopped. The shouting stopped, too. Until all hell broke loose — and Mister Truffles thought wiser to disappear around a corner of folded space.
Morgan was bent over the machine as if it were a newborn into cardiac arrest. She had flung Aulë's scarf over it to sponge up the worst of the liquid (quantum wool was an extremely absorbing material) — but enough had seeped through. Aulë and Varda, meanwhile, were feverishly removing saves. Morgan tried to dry the memory chips, connectors, everything. She had torn the machine open. To the lay person, it would have appeared to be mostly fine (despite the obvious smell), but her trained eye that could see individual atomic liaisons there was only one diagnosis: the machine — her prototype, her creation — was bust.
"Do you think the saves can be recovered?"
Morgan shrugged at Varda's words. Varda was close to tears.
"I don't know. Come on, let's bring them to the Archive and hook them to something."
Aulë put all the saves in a briefcase, along with the three worldbuilds. He was mumbling in his hipster beard.
"They were so close," he said. "Little Celebrimbor could have saved everyone at Hogwarts, happily ever for everyone after after the second sim year. Sirius Black could have lived. And Lockhart had Annatar wrapped around his little finger. And poor Steve. And Elrond. You know I hadn't even checked his logs? I don't even know how he did in Hawkins. And now…"
He blew his nose. Even big, burly, Aulë, was tearing up. Mister Truffles had been caught and unceremoniously imprisoned again in the carrier. He meowed. No one answered.
The Archive was located some way from campus. It had its own campus, in fact, full of mismatched buildings; their architectural styles ranged from the futuristic glass tower to the small cottage with a garden of flowering proton-trees. Morgan ushered her guests (they definitely couldn't be called her friends) to a mid-size structure that could have been a hospital, a supermarket, or an old bunker. Or a church that had once been turned into a gym, perhaps.
Morgan asked around in a low voice until someone gave her a card and she unlocked a room where several simulation machines stood.
"Each can run a single universe at a time," she explained. "They're a bit old, but they're our most reliable stuff. It's our only hope at data recovery."
First, she loaded Hawkins, Indiana, and immediately shook her head. "The universe's kaput. Just let me download a standard Hawkins save so that we can check the sentients."
Varda said she didn't knew there were standard universes.
"Well, they're more of mainframes," explained Morgan. "Sketches. You guy own the canon universes — ours are bootleg, and made for subcreation, so there's a few key differences. For a set universe, you get the basic rules, and people then work on that: either fit it to another standard, and the result in called an Alternate Universe, or tweak canon, and these are called Fix Its. Take your Celebrimbor, for example. You can decide that Middle Earth is, in fact, a coffee shop — so there's no magical rings, but let's say special coffee flavours with strange powers. And then, when you put the characters in, they automatically adjust to being baristas and clients. Then you program the plot, and you get a rough outline, just enough to get the sim up and running. If you work with sentients, you can leave them to their own devices and just check the logs to see what they're up to. Partial saves are a bit more work, because integration isn't that seamless, and they need more of your input."
Varda replied that it was interesting, and that she regretted not having asked about this while they were together. She was lying.
A little ding — standard Hawkins had finished downloading. Morgan inserted in the machine the saves of all the sentients that had been there when the accident happened. Nancy — dead. Will Byers — dead. The Demogorgon, alive. Elrond — dead as a doornail. Mrs Byers, the Chief, Jonathan, all dead. Amongst the humans, only Eddie Munson had made it.
"Shit," said Aulë, as he took back Eddie's save. "Can we chuck the monster? Poor guy doesn't deserve to stay alone with that thing."
Without a word, Morgan crushed the pins on the Demogorgon's save and threw it in the nearest paper bin.
Next up was Hogwarts. The universe somehow worked, but was too buggy to make sense (it did have quite a few continuity problems from the onset), so Morgan downloaded another mainframe. It was bigger than the Hawkins one, and took longer, but no one found it in themselves to make chitchat.
Celebrimbor was alive. Varda let out a little cry of joy. Still, losses were high: Albus Dumbledore, Hagrid, Harry Potter, all the house elves and most of the students had been wiped, or damaged enough that euthanasia would be a mercy (although Morgan whisked away a few of them to give to a friend who ran Cthulhu mythos universes). But Madam Pince had made it, too, as well as Hermione Granger and, somehow, Severus Snape.
Eregion was the least damaged universe of the three, and could actually run without too many problems. Although it wouldn't hold to any long term changes, it was still enough to test the character saves.
Gilderoy Lockhart and Steve were both alive and kicking. Aulë cheered, and Varda gave him a high five. Not that she cared much about these ones, but he seemed quite invested in their relationship. Unfortunately, Galadriel was too mangled to function, and so was Annatar. Little Celebrían was all right, however, and so were most of the background sentients.
In the end, the pile of functional sentient saves was bigger than any of them had dared hope. Varda wondered aloud what they should do with them.
"Not my problem," replied Morgan. "Most belong to your lab to begin with, and the others Aulë plain stole, which makes them his responsibility, too. Now, if you please, I'll keep the damn cat and show you the door."
Hearing this, Varda protested hotly. Morgan had promised to integrate the sentients back into the primary saves of their own universes.
"It can't be done, darling," snarled Morgan. "I could have managed with intact saves, but these have been traumatised by cat piss, won't ever be clean, and there's no way I can merge them back."
From another room, someone asked loudly why Morgan needed a Katniss Everdeen save.
"Cat piss," she shouted back.
The someone managed a very small oh, and disappeared back into the background.