Saturn's Day.

In case you're wondering about the temporal stuff in here, remember, 4d. Does this fic take place over a week and a day? The answer is both yes and no. The game doesn't really do anything with the potential for time travel inherent in 4d: they could have gone and saved Dr. Leingod, for example.

From Sophia's POV, this takes place over a week and a day. However, most of the days written up in the fic take place in different timelines, especially on Tuesday, when changes in 4d's timeline changed the ES's, which changed 4d… If it weren't for all the powers involved, the level of paradox and cascading timelines would probably have Blue Screen of Death'd both universes. (Divide by cucumber error: please reinstall universe and reboot.) The universes had to be saved before the timeline changes eliminated the people able to save them.

From Luther's perspective, it took place over a few months, since he had to do a lot of actual work and such. During the first few days he was trying not to, so Sunday-Wednesday synced up pretty well. Normally the ratio varies a lot, depending on what's going on in both worlds. He's also building up his reputation as an eccentric/semi-recluse-workaholic in 4d. On the other hand, as the fic summary says, since he's establishing a cover identity he basically has to have a social life in the ES.

I have been unable to locate an official birthdate for Ryoko Leingod. I really hope it's sometime in the summer/early fall.

I have a few references to stuff in earlier chapters in here, especially The Things People In The Eternal Sphere Think It Is Ok To Name Their Kids. Because come on, like PCs aren't giving themselves Mary Sue/Gary Stu names. Destyne isn't a PC, I just wanted something that would point out just how bad Fayt is. And then there's poor Leeroy, who has no idea his name isn't fairly awesome.

Stuff that is not happy stuff happens in this chapter. If you don't want, feel free to skip.

Most people's reaction to a birthday party held in their honor would not be to inwardly sigh and wish they could ask, "Do I have to go?" Well, of course she could ask, but she knew the answer so it really wouldn't be anything more than whining.

The one consolation was that this wouldn't be a real birthday party. The answer to the question, "Why do they have to throw a birthday party for me?" was, as usual, "Because it's a lot easier to reserve one of the event rooms for the birthday of a department head's wife than because a lot of grad students want to get drunk and bond in the face of the impending realization that ninety percent of them are going to become suspicious rivals at best and bitter enemies at worst."

There was an official little graduation shindig for the department, but since they also had this lifetime achievement award honoring former graduates then, it was actually what set this off.

This was a research university. It trained researchers. The galaxy's best and brightest, powered by the raw hunger to know.

And there were only so many positions and so much grant money out there. Oh, any of them could find a high-paying job easily, but no one who was in it for that would ever be given one of the few dozen precious slots. No, it was a university post, a government post, a few cutting edge companies or a wasted life, from their perspective. The former alumni and colleagues they met were on the one hand talent scouts they needed to impress and people who had what they wanted.

Robert's predecessor had trained at another university, and while he'd continued the tradition of having one last fling as people were leaving, he hadn't really grasped the point. He would have held it in Ashton's honor, the way he'd held it in Robert's, and Robert had spent that whole evening, long ago now, with death glares trained on his back, for getting a position here so easily. Normally, people had to spend a few years doing something prestigious as a professor at another university before they even thought about applying for an assistant professorship here. It had rubbed in the fact that this was a competition and some of them were outclassed.

It had been bad enough for Robert, and no one could really say that Robert hadn't earned it. They all knew that he was brilliant, they'd all seen his work. Ashton was good, but he wasn't that good. The rumor was that he'd been picked because the administration had gotten on Dr. Leingod's back again about the fact that this was also a teaching university and the symbology department had an abysmal ratio of classes taught by professors to classes (and discussion sections) taught by grad students (due to the fact that most students needed to go over the same material several times in order to grasp it). Dr. Esteed was doing his best to encourage the idea that Ashton had been picked because he was one of only a handful of them who didn't groan or bang their head against the wall after dealing with the people in the intro courses who could have it explained to them in words of one syllable fifteen times over and still not get it and ask incredibly stupid questions and write bad performance reviews because of their own inability to grasp (what the grad students considered) simple concepts.

If they thought it was bad here, wait until they got out there and found that there were universities that accepted students with IQs under 130 and had these arcane professor-torturing customs called 'breadth requirements.' It was bad enough dealing with science students who were trying to learn a little about a related area or art students who were here for the symbol aspect. At least no one was in the discussion sections who didn't want to learn the material. They weren't even mandatory. If a student flunked because they didn't attend the review, that was their problem.

At least they could comfort themselves with the idea Ashton was going to be doing wall-to-wall classes, scrambling to find time to publish and avoid perishing until The Grant Proposal finally got accepted, at which point he'd be on research sabbatical and Robert would be looking for someone else to teach those classes…

Of course, the reason Ashton had been hired that wasn't a rumor but all but officially confirmed was that he'd been smart enough to let himself be used for babysitting non-students. It was an object lesson, really. You could be the smartest, most reliable person in the world and it wouldn't help you get hired if no one knew that. Professors had codes for when they were asked to write a letter of recommendation for someone they didn't recommend, but not everyone knew everyone's codes. Knowing someone personally or hearing about them from someone whose opinion you trusted was the best way. Making connections mattered.

If they didn't find out that symbologic genius would only take them so far now, it would come as a horrible shock when they finally figured out why they kept getting turned down.

Which was why she had to stand in front of the mirror like this and put pearls in her ears like the standard issue department chair's spouse, the ones that were called Mistresses regardless of gender since everyone knew that anyone who had gotten to where Leingod was had to be married to their passion for discovery, above all else.

Showing them how to play the game, because if they didn't learn how to handle the social scene, host parties, make contacts and so on? If they didn't become their own career manager they'd better marry one.

At least her actual birthday was still a long way off, and the only old colleagues who would be present were ones too tactful to say anything.

About the fact that once upon a time, she and Robert had been what they were still calling a threesome, the couple that was bound together by a mutual passion for research. Once upon a time, she'd been a rising star among the graduate students, an up-and-coming young faculty member.

Once upon a time, people had addressed her by her last name and remembered her first, instead of just calling her Mrs. Leingod. She doubted more than a few of the young ones even knew that she had letters after her name.

Well, she'd known what to expect. She'd never come back from that sabbatical, she'd taken a leave of absence to raise her son, and they'd only held her position for her for so long. She was rusty, and she knew it, and they knew it, and they knew she knew it, the few who remembered her. The ones who exclaimed when they saw her at functions, over how long it had been, had she gone back to doing anything worthwhile with her life…

At first, she'd been one of the Three Date Rule cautionary tales. To get as far as she had and have it be for nothing? She'd wasted over a decade, the university had wasted one of its precious slots on her, all because she'd let her uterus and hormones boss her around and ruin her life.

Much, much better to have them look at her and see a competent social manager and hostess. For the first few years after they'd returned, before Robert had become department head, the graduate students' smiles when they met her were plastered on, a hint of fear in their eyes, in their voices, that this could be them. If they didn't hustle, if they didn't struggle to get ahead, they too might be unable to make it.

To be thought a mere housewife was far less demeaning than to be a fallen scientist.

So she was putting on makeup and dabbing on perfume, wearing a dress and she'd enter on Robert's arm and see if she could spot anyone who had dug up old gossip. Done their homework.

At least Sophia's mother wouldn't be there. She hadn't had to sacrifice her career, and for a few years there Ryoko had come perilously close to hating her, and Robert. Even though she knew what to blame.

Robert was standing stiffly in the bathroom doorway, and Ryoko admitted to herself that part of why she was taking so long with this wasn't just putting on her armor but making him squirm. He hated watching her do this. It made him coldly furious to watch the ones who knew talk down to her, either plastic smiles hiding content or trying to stifle a wide grin and keep from laughing at her.

This wasn't what they'd wanted, it wasn't what they'd dreamed of when they'd gone to study the Time Gate. He'd taken paternity leave after Fayt was born so that she could get back to work right away and undo the damage missing those months had caused. They'd hired a nanny and staggered their schedules.

Then the end of the world had been announced, and they'd made Fayt what he was, and she'd seen it all in one horrified instant as stray symbols formed around him.

They couldn't trust a nanny with an illegal symbiological weapon. They couldn't leave a child with the power of destruction home alone half the time the way the Esteeds could Sophia. Robert needed to stay on top of things, make sure no one was working on a way to detect what they'd done, other projects that could ruin everything. They might have been able to suppress Fayt eventually, but he wouldn't have been sent to first grade if she hadn't been watching him and not seen any symbols appear for over a year and a half. Since they couldn't send him to preschool, someone needed to teach him. The savior of the universe couldn't be an idiot, he needed a mind capable of understanding the power he wielded. That required an early start.

At least he'd been able to start first grade. She might have had to be homeschooling him even now.

It was what had to be done, so she'd done it.

Yet even if she got credit for saving the universe (she doubted it, no one remembered the housewives) there would be no way to make up for the years she'd missed. She wouldn't be able to go back to research, not a real position, not the real cutting edge. They'd already agreed that Robert would get all the credit for the work on Fayt and she would pretend she was just the wife and didn't know much about it, because getting all the credit meant taking all the blame, and once the dust had settled, if anyone of them were still alive, they would still have created a living weapon that could destroy planets as easily as beakers and lab rats. Heroes or not, the government would have to do something.

The Voice had spoken, heralding the end of the world, and it had shattered her world. The brush that swept on powder was a broom sweeping away the shards of her dreams.

It wasn't Robert's fault. He still felt responsible, and frankly, if he hadn't, if he hadn't hated himself for not being able to keep this from happening to her, prevent her from having to ape this stereotype she really would have hated him.

It was masochistic of him, really, not to shuffle his feet or point out that he was ready to go, to just stand there watching her put on a mask, keep up appearances. Because if people assumed she was just another woman who had stopped living her own life to sacrifice herself for a child or a man, then they wouldn't wonder why she'd sacrificed everything. Wouldn't realize that yes, there actually was a good reason.

Perhaps it was sadistic of her to feel fond of him now, watching him squirm behind that poker face. It was certainly masochistic of her to be putting all this on for graduate students and recently-ex-graduate students. This wasn't a real event, just a façade.

Like the makeup. Like Mrs. Leingod. Like Robert's stoic expression as he looked at her, asking if she hated him when she finally turned around. She put her hand on his arm to reassure him. "It's fine. Let's just have fun tonight. Just remember that you're not a graduate student anymore."

Here she was, gently reminding him that he was getting older. How wifely. Especially since she already knew that he wouldn't really listen, and she'd end up driving him home after he spent the evening letting his hair down, being approachable, reliving the days when they had been on that stairway to heaven, every step to their dreams right after the other. Too busy not thinking about now to watch how much he had, or reject people's offers of mixed drinks.

Drowning his sorrows. Well, they'd have to leave early to take Fayt home, anyway.

They really were like an old married couple.

How many years had it been now, since the Voice? Since she'd helped turn her son into a killing machine? How many days until her birthday?

She should have been sad when her birthday came, thinking of another year gone by, one that could never be reclaimed, but honestly, by this point she'd become numb enough it wasn't really more than mildly surprising that she'd made it another year without the universe being destroyed by its Creator or her son killing her.

Wouldn't that be appropriate? The sin of patricide. Fayt's life would be ruined because of this, it would only be natural for him to resent them. To kill his parents for toying with him as they would have killed their own creator using him. Robert was planning to take all the blame. She knew he expected to die, and he knew she knew.

She didn't know if she would stand next to him and say that it was her fault as well, list the contributions to the project she'd made, how she knew enough about symbological genetics, even now, to make another one like Fayt. That she was just as dangerous as Robert. That whatever her son suffered was just as much her fault.

She did know that when she was younger, she would have insisted on it. Demanded credit for her own work, demanded that they acknowledge that she might not be Robert Leingod but she was still a genius in her own right.

Perhaps it was raising children and watching year after year of innocent grad students start to learn about the real world that had made that pride seem so petty. They were fighting for their lives. Whatever got the job done. Better to be underestimated than overestimated. If the Creator knew they were a real threat, they wouldn't have this chance.

Fayt was already in the car, excited as always. The parties that weren't formal dinners were always fun for him, because half the time people got into one-upmanship or started telling jokes and there was food and a floor show. A few of the professors had gotten symbology licenses and Ashton wasn't the only Expellian, so at some point someone would end up providing a light show with a little more than just parlor tricks involved.

While someone randomly draping themselves on you wasn't a rare occurrence at this kind of party, normally they either put their hands over your eyes and asked, "Guess who?" or did it later in the evening, mildly tipsy and high on fellowship. Well, desperately simulated fellowship sometimes at this time of year, especially as word had trickled through the grapevine and everyone else had started telling themselves that they were not jealous of Ashton's good fortune and he was still their friend.

What Sophia had said about him and friends was still nagging at him. It really wasn't fair to think of them like people back home. They were trying so hard not to be vicious sharks, and he needed to remember to think of their occasional strategems or losses to temptation as cute instead of actual threats to his position that needed to be terminated with extreme prejudice.

Hmm? "Cassandra?" He wouldn't have remembered her perfume if it weren't for the accidental conjuration incident with the flower, when he was figuring that out… a couple days ago, from her perspective. "Third date already?" The invitations for formal (and fake formalish) things always included date, and sometimes not bringing one was an invitation for people from other departments to crash in your name. He wondered if anyone in sociology was researching the complex rules of party attendance (free food!) and favor-cashing, but no, they'd know better than to give the game away.

"I'm here with Leeroy," she said. "Or maybe I should make this the third date. I'm going to have to take a raincheck on the botanical gardens tomorrow, anyway. Interview."

"Oh?"

"Interview." She put her finger to her lips, a silent hush.

"On short notice like that?" Something hush-hush on short notice? "That's wonderful." Either she was almost a shoo-in for something or she was getting her clearance boosted.

"Either that or I'm in big trouble." Her smile as she half-shrugged indicated probably not. "Maybe Wednesday?"

"Can't. The intro staff-fighting course doesn't start until next month, but I have to run through some things with the assistants and we got assigned the new volunteers from the med school for some alleged reason."

"They'll get more practice when it's amateurs that are hitting each other with sticks," Cassandra said.

"That's why I said alleged reason. Anyway, it's the students from the community who are most likely to sue if anything serious happens, like an instructor not blocking a bad blow or a rookie medic healing the resulting broken bone up wrong, and being in charge of the class means I'm liable too." Joy. "I can do Friday."

"There's a catered event for the vice-chancellor Friday." She patted him on the shoulder. "I like you, but I like the little white-and-dark chocolate strawberry cheesecake bites more. Raincheck?"

"You're right, I can't compete with that." He mimed heartbreak. "Raincheck." They were both on limited stipends, after all.

How had Leeroy met someone in Applied Biology, he wondered as she waved bye for now and wandered off to say hello to someone else. He'd already been snapped up by a starship design firm with a year to go, for crying out loud. Not much for the soft sciences, or even the squishy.

Leeroy… he really needed to remember that the name wasn't funny here.

The food was brought out mercifully quickly (both Leingods knew why the students were here), and then the wandering-around-with-plates and drinks began in earnest. He had to remind himself not to powermingle, just say hi to a few people and grab another chair before anyone noticed that he'd barely touched the wine. Possibly giving the people of the Eternal Sphere higher alcohol tolerances had been a mistake. It meant they brewed, distilled, whatever, stronger stuff. Rigging up the biofeedback necessary to 'be' tired when his avatar should be tired, so he didn't make the mistake of being chipper at 6am or anything equally OOC had been complicated even with Sophia's help, and the first time he'd indulged in social drinking he'd assumed that his limit would be the same and gotten drunk when he should have been perfectly fine.

Meh, it wasn't as though having a reputation as a lightweight was a bad thing. Most PCs made use of the fact that they didn't get drunk in order to impress people and have fun at parties: the fact Ashton was a semi-wallflower because he did would indicate that he wasn't a PC, if he screwed up enough that anyone took a serious look at the character. It was even on the lists of how to tell if someone was another PC that floated around the net.

Nope, sticking to the soft drinks.

Speaking of which, he should warn the new guy.

Fortunately, by the time he was dragged over to where the others were gathering to be egged into doing tricks, Professor Ackermann was doing it for him. "Know why the rule is that if you do a trick, they bring you a drink?"

"Why?" he asked, looking slightly intimidated by the fact this was the Professor Destyne Ackermann, author of countless books etc. etc. If he didn't get over that quickly, he was going to be stammering through his first semester. People who did their undergrad work in the back of beyond were often amusing like that.

"Partially, it's as payment and to replenish our energy. Mostly, it's to get us drunk," Ashton chimed in, moving his chair so that he had a clear view of one of the punch bowls. "In the hope something funny happens."

"Like anvils," call-me-Destyne-since-we're-colleagues-now agreed cheerfully.

He raised an eyebrow at her. "It's not funny if it's your foot that gets smashed," he informed the kid. "Of course, that was me. You don't need to be as paranoid as I'm going to be."

"You hit your foot?"

"No, I hit a piano." He winced: that had been expensive to repair. "Anyway, you don't need to be as paranoid as I'm going to be. It's become a running joke. You'll get used to those." The university was full of odd traditions.

What? "That implies that you can spike drinks and not die here."

Destyne nodded. "It depends on the party and what's going on. Also what it's spiked with. Sealed bottles and cans are always fine. At frat parties, it's seriously illegal." And one-on-one and other situations where people might be at risk. "Trying to get the competing symbologists drunk is a tradition, part of the informal contest we're having." On planets where it was easier to get licensed, often they'd have the winner of each round take a drink as a handicap, for example.

In his world, where people could be allergic to alcohol or all kinds of things, the casual attitude they had here towards adding alcohol (in small quantities, by local standards) or other substances of the fun or harmless prank variety would get people killed.

"If you tell people not to, then it's rude," Ashton added. "You're new, so people are going to want to get to know you. Fair warning."

"In vino veritas?"

Destyne waved that off. "More like how you act when drunk, sleep-deprived, angry or hung-over. That's very important to know about a potential lab partner."

"Start already!" The person who yelled that was both safely anonymous and probably in another department.

"How did you get licensed?" Ashton wondered as Destyne led off with the smoke rings and tigers to jump through them. She did that every year.

"The symbols? I've had them on me since I was a child. My world only recently joined."

"So… two reasons for them not to license you."

"License?"

"The Federation's a little nervous about symbology users. We're heavily armed all the time, and this is the capital. Old Earth itself. The homeworld, the… You know, all the touristy stuff. I get nervous looks in the streets, but they can't really refuse to allow Expellians to immigrate here, it would be begging for a huge civil rights lawsuit. The Federation will make adults jump through hoops and go through background checks before they'll even consider allowing them to put symbols on their bodies, and someone from a planet that's not central Federation? There's a lot of military research at this university. A lot. What made them let you in? Are you a prince or something?"

"Close. I'm not, Father is. Our country is a principality."

"That explains it." Wow, yeah. It would take something like that.

Once Fayt was done advancing his future scientific career (he didn't know what he wanted to do yet, so he was being precocious at everyone, even if it actually was just because he was curious), he and Sophia came over and the competition really got started, even if Ashton had to bow out early because Destyne had more experience and the new guy knew a lot of flashy tricks. Well, politics.

A little before midnight Dr. Leingod came by to collect Fayt, having got to the point where it was clear that he was being determinedly cheerful.

He hated it when he got like that. It made him feel guilty and he had to hide that he knew that there was a reason the man was acting that way. At least Robert had only looked at him long enough to nod, a bit unsteadily, before folding his arms on the back of Destyne's chair and watching the new one, who had already been dubbed Prince, the poor guy, conjure a firebird.

"Fayt?" Ryoko leaned down a bit, closer to his level. "Time to go."

"But Mom…" Fayt pouted.

"No buts. Time to go. Sophia and her father are going now too." Sophia had been cheering on Professor Ackermann, or all three of them, really.

"But they haven't got to the funny part yet!" Fayt said petulantly, not moving when Ryoko took his arm and tugged on it, until he grabbed it back. "Let go!"

"Fayt, stop that. I'm surprised at you." Ryoko might have been willing to get Robert a cab home and stay a little longer if Fayt had wanted, but she wasn't going to reward behavior like this. Fayt was an even-tempered boy, he hadn't thrown a tantrum in years. If she was still a scientist, she would have wondered if that was a side effect of subconsciously trying to control his power. Glaring at her like this, moving like that? "What's gotten into you?"

Luther was frankly wondering the same thing as he looked at the scene. The only reason he could think of for Fayt to actually be angry at Ryoko was that she'd embarrassed him again earlier in the week. One of these years, Fayt might figure out that Ryoko actually was trying to keep him from having close friends or becoming popular at school. He'd probably think that she was just too clingy when it came to her baby or something. Ryoko could act, Luther acknowledged. Still, Fayt had reason to resent her, not that he could possibly know the half of it.

Luther's eyes widened in shock as Ryoko grabbed for Fayt's arm again, more firmly this time. Discipline was one thing, but she had to know what she was manhandling-

"Leave me alone!" Fayt cried, and it was only in hindsight that Luther realized that he'd sounded childish. No, not just childish. This was the way he'd sounded years ago, when Luther had first met him, the age at which they'd started experimenting with him and Sophia's abilities.

Profanity was entirely inadequate for what happened next, and pausing to say it, or even think it, would likely have been fatal.

He felt Sophia, who had also seen it, grab on to him and Fayt, which would have been a better idea if it hadn't kept Fayt from being frozen along with the rest of the guests, and the planet, as the symbols finished manifesting. Or would freezing Fayt in time have stopped it?

No.

Overriding Sophia's tap of his own root access didn't stop it. Nothing he could do would, after all.

Fayt's power was designed as the counter to his. Even as the boy, the symbiological weapon, stood frozen, the symbols that were his power flared and focused and struck.

He'd expected error messages. For the Eternal Sphere to notice that something wasn't right. That something was gone. That an NPC program, no, a person had just been not deleted (sent to the recycle bin, he had precautions since it would be odd if the other programmers couldn't do something so basic), not killed and queued for reincarnation according to the algorithms he'd set up to try to create some kind of fairness, but was just gone.

No error messages. No nothing.

No dispersal of data that he might have backtracked, recalculated, pieced together. No…

Under other circumstances he might have said, "I knew it." Fayt had gotten the backups. They'd tested him on objects and small animals: Luther had extra precautions for people. Briefly, he considered trying to travel back in his own universe's time. He could ask Sophia to try… No, that would get her hopes up and it wouldn't have a prayer of working.

Fayt's power was the one Dr. Leingod and the others had focused on.

He couldn't ask Sophia if there was anything she could do. That would give her the idea that she was expected to do something, that she had a prayer of doing something, and then she'd blame herself. Part of him thought that it would be better, in the long run, for their survival, for her to feel guilty and hate herself than for her to hate him for failing (apparently it was a kid thing, to think that the people they looked up to could do anything, and that meant that when they couldn't it could mean that they just weren't trying, or were refusing to), but Sophia couldn't hate him. That was part of how her power worked, she understood others too well for hate.

A pity that didn't apply to herself.

Part of him was wondering if he could cover this up. Tamper with her memories or something, but he couldn't hide that a connection had been severed.

He'd expected that Sophia would be tugging at his coat and asking him if he could bring Aunt Ryoko back, but from the way she stood there she already knew, didn't she. Because he knew.

He could create something to take her place, to fill that gap in their lives, but it wouldn't be her. Just a placeholder.

For a moment there, he'd thought Fayt had been drinking from the cups on the table by Ashton's chair, the ones he'd refused to touch. That it was his fault for not warning him that not all alcohol was icky and bitter the way Fayt still thought wine was. Or that Cassandra had been invited because she'd been dabbling in one of the less legal aspects of applied biology and someone had thought it would be funny to literally drug the punch. Or someone had tried to… Well, better conspiracy theories than thinking that Fayt had just up and decided to do this. No, he knew the boy better than that.

It had been so hard for them to make him lose control of his power for the tests. Perhaps that was because of the power itself, in the same way Sophia's power had shaped her, Maria lived in a constant state of flux and, well, he'd already been obsessed with making things long before any genetic tampering. Although who knew, really.

That way lay paranoia.

The thought of trying to approximate her, of trying to force a new soul into that mold, treating it as just a replacement made him sick enough that he had to wonder, although that might be Sophia's feeling spilling over from the way she was crying now. He'd absently opened an arm for her, still staring at where Ryoko had been.

Did it count as mind control when he didn't really mind? He might have been uselessly in shock right now, otherwise. Or desperately trying to set up programs to search and find, trying fruitlessly to revive her and putting his fingerprints all over everything and making people wonder what he was up to that was slowing down all the servers. No, it was probably because of Sophia that he'd known instantly just how gone she was.

That could have been him.

It was supposed to be him.

He was the reason they'd given Fayt this power, tested him and drugged him until they found a combination that would force him to use it, breaking his mental control, and a combination that would keep him from getting angry. They'd tapered him off that one, one of Ryoko's projects, but the damage had been done.

At least it was only drugs and chemicals. That he could fix. If Fayt's own power had gone to war with him, if he'd had to struggle for control, the power of destruction loose in his own brain? No, Fayt had too much control of himself for that.

That was why they had to make damn sure that Fayt never found out about this.

Hell. The things they'd dosed him with… It was a mercy the kid wasn't braindead, even if he was a denizen of the Sphere. A tribute to their competence. How much they'd studied up on what they were doing. How much care they'd taken of their son.

They'd done everything they could, to protect their son from what they'd done to protect him.

It still hadn't been safe.

There weren't medications for this kind of brain damage in the Sphere. It didn't happen, people were too resilient, what didn't kill them made them stronger.

They'd just wanted to make him stronger. Wanted to make him survive what was coming.

This was entirely his fault, for not being able to find another way.

Although he couldn't blame himself for not anticipating this. No one had, no one could have. He was an artist, not a doctor.

Although fault or not, he knew damn well that this was his responsibility.

He'd have to start by deciding how much he was going to violate his principals by forcing another sentient being into the role of Ryoko Leingod (he'd have to look up what he'd done to make Mirage suited to her role without actually controlling her mind). No, he'd have to start by waiting for Sophia to stop crying, he couldn't undo the freeze until she was up to it. Then he'd have to try to adapt the medicines his search function had pulled up (for once he was glad that there was really no worthwhile research to be done on his world other than obscure diseases) for the Eternal Sphere.

He'd wanted to make this up to Ryoko. Apologize later, when it was safe, find some way for her to live her life over again, like Robert and the others, so they didn't have to suffer anymore because of fear and racism, because of… Because of the fact he might be their creator but he wasn't all-powerful. Because he'd had to deceive and terrify them in order to have a chance to save them.

And now she was dead. As dead as his grandparents were, because there was no afterlife in his world. Despite everything he'd done for his children one of them, one he'd been watching over personally had just died, not gone on to the next life but died right there in front of him, and all he could do was sit here uselessly!

Why did he think he could do this, again? Why did he think he could pull this off, why did he think that he could save any of them?

No, he knew the answer. Because there was no one else. Because he had to. Because if he failed it wouldn't just be Ryoko.

All of them would be wiped out, every server and disc wiped clean.

He really couldn't tell Blair. She'd try to help, and this was what happened to people who got caught up in this.

As a general rule, it's not a good idea to fuck with the brain (the exception, of course, being when it's already messed up and the idea is to mess it up in a less bad way). Hallucinogens… consuming LSD can be described as enjoying watching the pretty colors of the funeral pyres of your burnt-out brain cells. And the damaged parts generally remain damaged. It's possible to suddenly have a flashback and start hallucinating again years after taking LSD.

Because even if they didn't go and save Robert Leingod, Ryoko Leingod should have been much more of a resource than she was. While this is fic character death, it's not game character death: the Ryoko of the game was the replacement Ryoko, an entirely different person.

Immense godlike powers are extremely dangerous. There's an anecdote about someone asking George Lucas why Luke's hand got cut off, and his answer was that that's what happens when people fight with swords. If you give this kind of power to anyone, especially children, someone's going to get hurt.

And I already had Sophia's and Maria's powers do… very creepy stuff that I hope conveys the fact that they're damn scary. Sadly, Fayt's power isn't something that can partially destroy something, or have it not actually be that bad. The point of this chapter is that yes, the genes are just that goddamn powerful and dangerous. Dr. Leingod is a genius and he was out to kill an eldritch abomination. As the game showed, the genes were overkill. Serious, serious overkill.

Saturn killed Uranus, his father. So, he was cursed to be killed by his son, Jupiter, who was therefore cursed to be killed by his son… Except Minerva/Athena.

My apologies for all the red herrings in the fic. I wanted to create a bit of normal life/fog of war, set up all the blatant foreshadowing but not have it be quite predictable/controllable. Luther is having to deal with life as the admin of the Sphere/Owner of Sphere Company, Ashton the young soon-to-be professor with colleagues and contacts… and his responsibilities as the Creator and dealing with three young AI with powers comparable to those of gods. He may be recently ex-human himself, but power doesn't necessarily come with any idea how to use it, forget omniscience. The Omniscient Morality License trope is being averted here. It's not very nice to lie to people and allow them to be terrified, but he's just doing the best he can. And frankly, he's put himself in the most danger of all. In the game, remember how the party came away with the impression that basically the only reason the 4ders were being mean was that they thought they were things, and all the ones who realized they were people were nice and helpful, and the Creator was kind of nuts, so this wasn't exactly normal? Whearas the real reason 4d should have had a problem with the Sphere was because they were people, and hence dangerous? He's using himself as the lightning rod, setting himself up as the target/villian of the piece, because otherwise, 4d's government would have gotten involved, and it really would have been humans vs. AI, the AI convinced they needed to wipe out humanity just to survive.

So Dr. Leingod's target is him, specifically, and then, well, there are a lot of people in 4d who care quite a bit about the Sphere, and not all of them are going to be as patient about it as Blair. I'm sure series fans can think of a certain person who will in fact try to kill him. And that's on top of what will happen if anyone finds out what he's really trying to do. In trying to save two universes, he's basically put himself in a position where everyone in both universes will/could want him dead, either because they think he's trying to destroy the Sphere or they realize that he's actually trying to save it (and betraying humanity).

Think about the fact he thinks it's too dangerous to have anything to do with Maria in terms of that. Two universes out to kill him: acceptable risk. Maria: unacceptable risk. The genes are serious business.