Max touched Chloe's arm, "Can you put up some of their photos?"

Chloe blinked. A gallery of captured agents settled up against the glass wall.

"So we don't have a ton yet, John. Even with Margaret and her team on Q&A duty. I mean, to be fair, it's only been a few days since we dropped them off, and they have a whole lot of people to process. But we have some new details. For example, we assumed they were all local contractors, but…"

John pointed to a couple of the photos. "I recognize two of these men. Can't place them, but I know I've seen or worked with them before."

Chloe enlarged them a little. "Those two are former SAS. Listed KIA in Afghanistan, 2009."

"Must have crossed paths. Obviously not dead though. Right?"

Their faces decayed, cartoon brains fell out onto the conference table. Chloe zoomed out as they returned to normal. "Yeah, would be pretty cool if they were, you know, zombies or something. No? Okay, so here's the deal… We've got more than thirty of these meat-bags in holding. Only one of 'em is American."

"So, what, this was a UK operation?" John asked.

Pictures glowed brighter in combinations as Chloe pointed. "Nope - that's the super weird thing - those two and this third guy are the only ones from England. The rest are a mosh. All over the board. Israel, Germany, South Korea, Russia, Pakistan, South Africa, Columbia… All the ones we could find are permanently off the books. KIA, MIA, auto accidents, usual covert bullshit… Handful of others we couldn't find records for, but Margaret's notes say they're from North Korea, Australia, Egypt and Brazil."

John leaned back, hands behind his head. "This doesn't make any goddamn sense. All these guys on the same squad? Allies I could see teaming up in a pinch maybe. But…"

Max leaned to one side, folded a leg under her. "It makes a little sense. We know almost every country has their own flavor of 'them', right? And cooperation between friendly ops groups has happened before."

"Yeah, like I said, the allies I'd buy. I mean, it still wouldn't explain motive… But throw in North and South Korea? Israel, Pakistan and Egypt? No way. Even the UK and Russians have been working against each other behind the scenes for years. I'd expect some of these guys would try to capture or kill each other on sight - not bunk up."

Jeremy spoke up. "Would they really?"

"More 'capture' probably, but yeah. There's a lot of bad blood. Even for professionals. Teammates have been killed all around. Some in not very friendly ways, if you believe the stories. And a few of these groups have been political, military and philosophical adversaries for a very long time. Their networks are reflections of the nations and cultures they emerged from after all."

"That's our assumption, right?" asked Jeremy. "That they're all discretely siloed in that way?"

"Well, yeah. It's what we were taught. Experience and data line up behind it."

"But we don't really know, do we? Just asking. Is it too simple? Assuming that everyone is waving their separate flags, and only those flags?"

"It's a lot of experience and data. If it quacks like a duck…"

"…might be an old guy in the shrub with a shotgun. Usual cliche about appearances holds, John. And that's without intentional misdirection. I mean, you look at your basic map for instance. They give each country a separate color as a way to simplify and unify a patch of land, help distinguish it from its neighbors. It's useful to a point, but the map barely represents two dimensions. We know from our own country how elusive that notion of unity is. Demographics, psychographics…overlapping cultures and values. We've got factions, parties, philosophies, economics, race, religion, class, education levels, personality types, national origin, orientation, identity, specific geographies… I could go on. Nations are messy and divided on the inside - to the point where we worry when one starts acting like it isn't. They're made of individual people. So they have lots of competing ideas about how they should be, and how they should align and interact with others. But you don't learn any of that from the fields of color. The map isn't the same as the world."

John fidgeted with the remnants of his tart. "In the field, we have to make assumptions or we could never operate. And yeah, it's often based on incomplete understanding that updates or changes in real-time as situations evolve. The alternative is a thing we call analysis paralysis. Waiting for perfect intel that can't ever exist in the real world…"

"Not arguing that point."

"Then where are you going with this? There's no contradictory thread…"

Jeremy waved his hand at the hovering agents. "Maybe, maybe not. Let me finish. I want to drill into this a little."

John relented. "Alright. Sorry. Your floor."

"Point being - I think we all understand and agree, data isn't always information. And information isn't always complete. And we can draw dangerously incorrect conclusions when we give long held assumptions the same weight as knowledge. At least to the point that we unconsciously discount other possibilities. Updating assumptions in real time means accepting new information and evolving your position based on the new landscape. Like the unexpected cooperation between people we know to have been antagonistic toward each other through the very recent past. We have to understand that our assumptions might be wrong in order to find where our understanding is flawed. Especially if we're trying to understand the underlying truth or motives behind the actions. Relevant example of alternatives, from our own experience. We already know nations aren't the only organized structures of power people have created or used."

He looked around at the room, the building, held up his hands.

"Corporate." John nodded. "Still…"

"Economic engines come in lots of shapes. Companies, industries, holdings, associations, trusts…. They have resources, personnel, leaders and objectives. Alliances and enemies… More importantly for this little conversational detour, economic entities aren't generally tied to any one geo. Or only one. They may wave little flags here and there, but they're up in the atmosphere, above the little squares of land, untethered. Push hard enough on a politician or a journalist, and eventually an army moves. What else? Collective archetypes… Anyone?"

"Religions." offered Jillian.

"Right. They have regional origins, and sometimes global influence. Floating up at yet another level, way above the atmosphere. Hope and control. Carrot and stick. Everlasting hellfire and ascending souls and all that. Appealing to people at a much more personal and intrinsically cultural level than companies do. It's a different vehicle. As systems of belief, they're almost always mutually exclusive of one another, rules of thought contagion and memetic self-propagation being what they are… Strong ties to culture, region, race, and history though… We already know what people are willing to do for their gods. To each other… Or for each other, depending on the god and the perceived level of threat or need or personal filter. It's never just one thing.

"Never mind all the NGOs, trade associations, quasi-cooperative cross border structures like the EU, UN, ICC, WTO, IMF, G8, or cross-military blocks like NATO. Militant anarchist organizations - which always cracked me up a little. Then there are all the organized crime networks, regional, international… Another set of overlays. Leverage, extortion, threats. Then you have the media, or social filtering algorithms, both are used by and against everyone on behalf of corporate interests, governments or religions, depending… And bear in mind that every single one of these is trying to influence the perceptions and activities of people inside the others as well… Affect opinions and…ultimately policies and action. They all have cash. Direction. And that's normal operations, without any undue influence.

"Here in the US, as in many western democracies, corporations and government have created a very co-dependent relationship. John and I are familiar with that world from past lives. It's how power is most comprehensively collected, defended and expressed here. Elsewhere, religion and government co-mingle more strongly, while corporations lack influence. Multiple things, again.

"Regions represented up there pull from a cross-section of those types. Yet here they are, all together.

"Max, Chloe - question for you - why did you two decide to start a company?"

Chloe quietly deferred to Max, who blinked in surprise. She wasn't expecting the question. "Didn't give it much thought beyond 'yes'. It was something we were able to do. To move things forward when we needed to stay out of sight and had fewer options. Thought we could keep our identities hidden, but that didn't work. Seemed like he best way to protect ourselves, and still get some help. It's what we did last loop too, although we didn't know that here yet. It's obviously proven useful for organizing resources and people, pointing everyone at a common goal. The infrastructure for doing it is in place in the western world this far back, like you point out. Service providers, legal, finance, insurance… If you have cash already, you can do most anything. Gives you a layer of protection, recognition by government bodies and other corporations, you can move money around, keep things on the DL if you need to, hiding activities in other paper companies…"

"Understood. Sorry Max - what I should have asked was why did you choose to build a company specifically, and not, say, a religion…or why didn't you simply take over a country instead? You could have done any of them…"

"Well…" she laughed. "I…don't know about that. We wouldn't have done the other two though. It's the one that occurred to us I guess. But sitting here, given the choice between the three, I'd say the direction we took is still the one based mostly on free will and voluntary association. Everyone is here because they understand the truth about what's at stake, and they want to try to help. The idea of tricking people, or taking advantage of their trust or gullibility by starting a fake religion would never feel right." She looked at Chloe. "Same with projecting the kind of force or violence necessary to take over a country. Both would hurt innocent people in one way or another. It just…neither of those are things we'd ever do."

Chloe nodded in agreement.

"Clashes with your particular sensibilities… I get that. Although, it's interesting to me that you assumed you'd need to use force to take over a country. Instead of say, charm, or sharing hopes and dreams and plans for a brighter future with the people directly…like you did privately, on a much smaller scale within the walls of this company. Or that you'd need to fool people in order to start a religion. You. I mean… Control time and space, bring the dead back to life, rewrite fate… Here to save the world. A message of hope and salvation? Two distinct sets of the wacky internet fringe semi-following you for different reasons already… You really could walk on water if you wanted to, right?"

"I mean, yeah, when I… I mean… I could, but… wait. …what fringe?"

He stopped her. "Point is, any one of those paths could have been a successful means to the end we all want. Vision, resources, people and direction. Any one would give you that platform. You had the freedom to choose, and this was the direction you picked. Thanks, Max. I only asked to illustrate to everyone that there are multiple paths that would be just as viable for us. Which is certainly true for any variety of them as well. They're out there, and could as easily infiltrate any existing structural type as a means of steering outcomes. Or multiples of them. Doesn't have to be countries exclusively."

Max turned to Chloe. Silently mouthed 'fringe'?

Chloe nodded with a grin. 'Uh huh. Later.'

"Nations…are the most obvious unit we can point to, the easiest to grok. Maybe the most convenient or closest to home for them most of the time. But we can see after only a few minutes of shortlisting that there are multiple overlapping, often blending, structures of power and influence available - all of them interacting at various points, some in open cooperation or conflict with each other. It's messy and complicated, but at the end, they're all made by people, and comprised entirely of people. And each person has their own agenda, background, social, familial and professional networks, wants, fears, needs, and their own unique things going on. They can and do exist in multiple of these power and identity structures in any combination, usually simultaneously."

Chloe looked to Sophie. "Back to what you said before, Soph… Maybe none of this detail shit matters in the end. Maybe it's the wrong fight anyway. It's all just people. They're the ones who decide the future, one small choice at a time…"

I don't disagree in principal, but I wish they'd stop with these not-so-subtle little pushes. Max thought, very privately.

"I don't know about any of that." said Jeremy, "The point I'm trying to make is that there are many power structures, and people are more than just one thing. So it stands to reason our adversaries could also be more than just one thing. Not that they have to be, but that they could be.

Picture might be more complex or nuanced than we think is all.

Not saying you're wrong, John, or that our assumptions about them are all wrong. It may be that the simplest picture is the right one. I'm only suggesting that there's no conclusive evidence for it that excludes any of the alternatives. We should be careful not to feel so certain that what we can see is what there is, or that we're right about what we see. Especially in light of new evidence…"

Emily felt tired. She'd been cooped up for days, and her fingers were starting to go numb. She'd done dozens so far, but her pencils weren't cooperating this morning. The art was okay. Some were sloppier than she liked. Shaky. But it wasn't that. She wasn't sure who was leading. Maybe it was the utter lack of alcohol and smokes, but her coordination felt off. Unconfident. Like she was trying too hard for control when she really needed to flow.

Boredom didn't help. Fingernails were all back behind the safe line.

Mental fidgets manifested themselves on paper instead.

"Shit." She looked down at the new sketch. It was a pretty scene. Forest. Sky. Moon. Pterodactyl. "…scratch. At least draw a fucking AT-AT shooting it down next time…"

She crumpled the picture into a tight wad, tossed it into the open trashcan near the door.

"Three points. Hoosh!"

Lowered her arms, rubbed her eyes, took out another fresh sheet of paper.

Music streamed in the background as she started on the next masterpiece.

Max processed for a moment before retreating into the stillness. She wanted a sec to think about all of this, but without time pressure. It was something…it had been picking at them both over the past couple of years. Big picture. Bigger…picture.

It all looked a certain way… From a certain point of view.

Shells and nested vapor companies and their hired guns were all they'd been able to grab directly. At least so far. Whack-a-mole with empty paper moles. They had limited insights into org charts and hierarchies from John, Margaret, some talents, and a variety of others they'd captured or recruited over time. But it all stopped past a certain point. Surprisingly low level. Operational. Digital paper trails ended in recursive loops. Financing came out of nowhere, went nowhere. Records themselves were suspect.

Beyond that was only individual assumption mixed with common sense. Nothing concrete, and different for each person. Compartmented information, which wasn't all that surprising. Offline transactions and comms. Governments and intelligence communities used it. Terrorist cells were built on the model. Kept anyone from putting together the big picture - shape, scope, motivators, objectives, plans, players, inter-connections, whatever. Too many dead ends. But all aligned. Pointing a certain, expected, comfortable way.

The visible moves all supported a picture of conflict between national interests. An easy mirror to the world.

But it wasn't clear how that lined up with the other bits. All those floaty heads over the table with their different flags… Or even worse, with the meta. Her failed jump back. The shadows. The caves. She had a fragment of memory, and three smudges on a wall. It…wasn't a lot. Thought she'd know more by now.

Knew how it made her feel though…

The way Chloe broke it down, if the shadows were more than a metaphor, there were only three broad possibilities. One, they were a standard, benign feature of this reality - ambivalent, disconnected, no more malice or concern than a distant star. Two, they were uninvolved, but drawn for whatever reason to the inevitable chaos. Or, last option, they were active or passive participants, tainting or influencing events somehow.

Max didn't believe for a moment that they were metaphor, or benign. The placement in the cave, the menace. Their symbolic absence from the wall of a dead world. …the…tearing apart…

…maybe the shadows were metaphors, at least in a sense. She wasn't sure how better to relate to anything about the void anyway. Even 'void' wasn't really right to describe the spaces between. And even 'spaces between' wasn't right… It would be so much easier if I had command of the math to describe all of this. But…even if they were metaphors, they still had presence. And in her one direct interaction, they seemed to have intention. Or at least action or…reaction? Something.

Fuck it. English, Max - 'scary and mean and probably up to no good' is as good a description as any…

Where did that leave them in the end though? Were they causing the car crash, or just watching it? Anticipating it?

If they were influencing events, there was the question of how… 'Why' was less important with patterns and directions this obvious. She didn't have answers. Or…any new information.

Chloe likened it to the practice of inferring the existence of celestial bodies mathematically, based on the observed motions of other more visible bodies in the skies. Which is great if you can see everything else clearly over a long enough timescale. To Max, this was more like…like trying to piece together a puzzle where the picture has been scraped off and all of the edge pieces were missing, and most of the rest were gone from the box, but had probably been mixed with other puzzles anyway. And the box was in another room. But there was a faraway childhood memory of a picture of an old red water mill, so maybe she could jam the pieces together and… …probably get eaten by a hungry bear lurking somewhere inside the house.

Would knowing even help? What could we possibly do differently?

…maybe the shadows weren't connected at all, and their little gang was just…fighting regular, boring old human nature, played out between networks of like-minded, powerful people. Occam's razor.

It was metaphysical question, about a maybe thing they couldn't see directly, and maybe connections to other things they couldn't see directly — so…not very actionable by the extended team. It's why they'd kept it to themselves.

But Max wasn't ruling out anything at this point. They'd only been at this two years. A blink, she reminded herself. Sometimes it took decades of observation before astronomers had sufficient data see what they couldn't amidst the movements of stars…

But…in spending all our time heads down, pouring over data, trying to find these small hidden things… are we missing the point? The most obvious truth, right in front of us?

There are so many brilliant lights shining out there.

…and they're all so beautiful.

She'd reached the point of diminishing returns.

Been down these thoughts before.

Still…nowhere new yet.

Exited the freeze.

Jeremy continued on, unaware his mouth had been hanging open for the past few minutes of MaxTime… "But…let's set all of that aside - say their cooperation would be impossible as strictly state actors. And maybe as citizens or private contractors working for national interests. Let's use the simplest picture. Individuals can often deviate from expectations of a group. Circumstances can change, everyone has a boss…enemy of my enemy and all that? Money also talks. Whatever the case, the proof is in the reality. They were all here, working together…"

"…like some fucked up weird-science UN of bad guys." said Max, under her breath.

"They started on this op more than a year ago." Chloe added, "That's a fast hug for group therapy…"

Jeremy shook his head. "I'm surprised it's taken this long. We don't work for the US government or…any related network organizations. Or any interests beyond our own - which are everyone's interests, but not everyone sees it that way. So there's no protective shadow from the US, if you will. And we don't confine our operations to any set of borders. Why should we expect they would when dealing with us? We may not see ourselves as an immediate threat to every group of 'them' yet… Whatever their shape. But collectively? They might. And that might be reason and motive enough. A lot of our activities have stepped on toes over the last couple of years. And a few of our more necessary innovations threaten some very powerful entrenched industries, with significant financial and geopolitical implications."

"The reactor." Chloe said.

Technical drawings, diagrams, schematics and renders filled one end of the room.

Jeremy nodded, "For a start. We shouldn't be surprised by this, guys. Most of us here have seen the trajectories on our way to a full-spectrum post-scarcity society. At least, first plateau, here on earth. Energy is a low-level building block the lowest level of the hierarchy. But one that everything else builds on. It's critical to our plans, and the first real shot across the bow for them. Timing lines up."

"But that's a good thing, right?" asked Jillian. "Eventually solving all the world's energy problems?"

"Yes, of course. Absolutely." said Jeremy. "But there's risk in any truly revolutionary transition. There haven't been that many. Agriculture. The wheel. The printing press. Steam. Flight. Electricity. Antibiotics. The automobile. The internet. The big ones. This is arguably more impactful in terms of quality-of-life improvements over numbers of people."

"Clean energy was one of the best things we could do early to reduce the harm-in-progress." said Max.

"But, to Jeremy's point, we've gone way beyond 'clean' with our first draft." Chloe added. "This revolution is about cheap energy too. And that's super disruptive."

Jeremy took a sip of coffee. "It's why we released general reference schematics to the web a year ago - to send a signal that it's coming. And why we've intentionally gone slow with our biz dev efforts, taking it to tech manufacturers first. Get the public used to the idea, time to absorb the benefits and implications. License the patents for commercial use at a buck a device, which gets us an additional stream of operating revenue…and it's still cheap for everyone else. Meanwhile, being public with it frees us to openly use the design to power our own not-for-profit projects in crisis areas where there are the most immediate triage needs. Clean water production. Food. Housing. Basic services."

"I read the briefing docs and talking points about the research paper, promises on future licensing. The PR team put together the release and pitched stories about the concept last year. Did we finish it? Build one? It was only a proposed design."

Chloe interrupted, "Yeah, uh, nope. We have a bunch of them running now. Another message we didn't push - this isn't even a very advanced approach. Not compared to others we're using. Works, but it's really just a simple load-responsive cold fusion reactor that goes from heat to electricity in one unit. A plausible first leap that's sideways and ahead of existing tech, but…it isn't too outlandish for the current state of science or fab capabilities. So it'll make sense when people see the full spec. I mean, there's prior-ish art, anyway… People have been messing with related paths to cold fusion longer than I've been alive, and there's been some recent independent work in Canada using carbon nanotube forests as heat sinks that go right to electricity… Once we out the design in full, it won't stand out as coming directly from the future or anything… Unlike certain other objects we won't mention… Now…that's less true of the two leaps we'll introduce in the next ten to twenty years. The one based on self-assembled macro-blocks of passive nanoscale collector structures…solid state, asymmetric standing waveguides, blah blah… And the other types that use micro-wormholes with virtual particles or virtual negative energy… They'll be much more interesting to try and explain…" Chloe shrugged with a smile.

Max said with a half laugh, "Sorry - I'm calling it. Nerd-alert…"

"You're a nerd-alert!" Chloe squinted at Max. "And this would be so much easier if we could just come right out and say 'Yup. It's from the goddamn future. Here. You're fucking welcome'."

Max made that face.

Jeremy looked at the clock, picked it back up. "Yeah. So, Jillian, long story probably a little longer so you have some context…within a few years, manufacturers and suppliers will get a handle on these materials and processes. That's when they really start to embrace new design freedoms. Once power generation moves directly into the devices that consume it, computers, phones, lighting, medical devices, refrigeration, HVac, whatever, we'll show how it scales up from there. Robots. Vehicles. Stadiums. Farms. Arcologies. Ships. Rotating orbital habitats. Where we land is no more wires. No more batteries. No more fuel. No need for centralized power generation or energy distribution networks at all. Total freedom, really."

"Followed most of that, but I'm still not seeing why this is bad. Even if it's real now - which someone might have told me earlier, by the way… A few in the popular science press went down this rosy-futures path when we dropped that last announcement. Sentiment was almost entirely positive…"

Chloe threw the breakdown charts up behind her. "With the public and the pop-science geeks, sure. Other comments were super skeptical without access to anything more solid. Which was expected - we kept the prototypes and tech details out of it. But the 'bad' part comes back to pure self-interest, Jilli. Anyone eagle-eyeing us should be able to see the writing on the wall. No need for oil, gas, coal, nuclear, solar, or wind power. Like, at all. Ever. No need for lithium ion polymer batteries. Lead acid. Whatever. Mining, extraction, gone. Which is all great for the environment, people and businesses…"

"Most people. Most businesses." Jeremy added. "For the undiversified, rapidity of change limits adaptation opportunities. At scale, the price of motive energy essentially drops to zero. But price to one is revenue to another. We'd planned to phase this in over time to limit the very real system shock."

Max added, "It's the future, delivered now. But some people still lose. Gas stations. Stockholders take a hit on futures. A few oil-rich countries that didn't invest in anything else have to figure out what to do. Better than the alternative, but not everyone's gonna love this, even with phasing."

Jeremy nodded. "Right. More win of course. That's our plan - everyone wins long-term, once it settles out. Quality of life rises almost incomprehensibly for literally everyone on the planet within a decade. Nations no longer need to compete for energy resources, which means related global tensions should go way down. Energy related pollution falls off the chart. Factory robots, drones, cars, TVs, computers, spacecraft, ships, farm equipment, 3d construction printers, all of it - everything runs clean and free, well…near enough free to start. And when you combine free energy with really intelligent automation, the cost of doing useful work of all kinds plummets. The cost of production, transportation also moves near zero. Recycling too. Energy plus technology is a huge win in that regard. Manual labor. Blue collar. White collar. Doesn't matter. The need for people to do work to survive evaporates once the cost of basic survival goes to nearly nothing. Once we get there, we'll have gone a long way to removing existential worries about basic human needs for everyone. Food. Shelter. Water."

Max looked to Sophie first, then turned to Jillian. "And once basic needs are met for everyone, we can work our way up the societal hierarchy of needs from there."

Sophie said to Max, "Parts of this are sounding almost familiar…"

"And dangerously naive. That's way too many people out of work." said Jillian. "Think we've got public anger at inequity now… What do they all do? What do we do with all of them?"

"Happens anyway." said Max. "Last loop, shit really started to hit the fan by 2035 or so. Stats for unemployment broke down with all the adjustments and qualifiers they tacked on, but it was less than a quarter of the real population working at that point. Robots, algorithms… It was great if you owned a business that used a bunch of them. Bad if you didn't. Most countries sorted out the basic income thing, but it was too little, too late."

Jeremy shrugged. "We keep moving forward, Jillian. No choice. Our way, the anger, riots, economic collapse - none of that happens. Opposite, in fact. There's a second part too though. Unintended but predictable consequences. The cost and survival risk of making new people goes way down. It's a real thing. We expect a huge population explosion. That's the thing to navigate correctly.

"Socially, we'll have to keep up on education, ensure the cultural architectures encourage personal development, provide outlets for creative and productive drives. Ensure people have a sense of purpose, feel secure in themselves, have optimism for their futures. Open access to truthful information, social opportunities, the like. A lot of that is policy work, starting now. Medium-term, working becomes a voluntary choice though, rather than essential. But doesn't have to go away completely. Free time for everyone goes way up as the cost of living vanishes for the average person. Poverty, starvation become terrible relics of the past, even as the number of people increases. There's still a use and need for money, but the cost of food, luxury-quality shelter and amusements diminishes to almost nothing, so it almost doesn't matter.

"New practices, too expensive to even consider under the old energy paradigm, can finally take off. Automated high density vertical farming. Mass scale desalinization of sea water. New construction materials and techniques. Improved infrastructure construction, massive city-building and works projects, all in harmony with nature this time. Turning back deserts, replanting forests and reefs, expanding habitats on land and sea for plants and wildlife. Going up and down - global sub-orbital transport systems, undersea cities that can crack their own oxygen supplies, while providing extra heat and light to create thriving new marine ecosystems. New vertical cities above and below ground light up the night like never before.

"We'll need all of that and more to recover and rebalance with nature as our population balloons. But Max and Chloe have already seen that model work before - self-contained sustainable city-islands surrounded by forests and wilds… Someone ran the numbers, and that model could easily support ten times the current human population on around ten percent of the land, while increasing luxury for everyone beyond imagining — all while restoring and preserving the natural world, reintroducing extinct populations, and so on.

"That's before we get to the massive rotating orbital habitats in space… Assuming Chloe doesn't have plans for artificial gravity floating around in her head somewhere. Or did that just get solved?"

"Huh. Let me get back to you on that?" Chloe said.

"Yeah. Even without… Using current materials and slightly more advanced tech, we could probably make habitats up to about twenty miles in diameter, and as long as we want. With some of the graphene fab techniques on the horizon, they could have the land surface area of continents wrapped inside larger ones. Could link up to form larger structures, or remain independent. They'd balance living space and food production with a lot of nature… Parks, forests, seas… We could easily support trillions of trillions of people, in extreme luxury, in orbit around the sun… Others would inevitably go off in search of new stars. It's a new beginning. Not just for us, but for all life here.

"Energy is that big a keystone for the future. There is almost no concern with this kind of clean energy abundance. It's one possible path, but transformative in so many ways we still can't fully predict. Once people get a hold of this at scale, they'll make it their own anyway."

Jillian stopped taking notes. "That all sounds amazing. And I can feel your passion for it. Which will play really well if I'm allowed to ever go public with any part of this… But back here on earth, when do we isolate the 'but…' that explains the past week? Jesus, I mean, that's all something to fight for, not against. What kind of morons…"

"Sorry, Jillian. My turn to wander off. I get excited about this. And I agree. But uh, Max mentioned it briefly. There are other things we can predict as well. All of them are short term effects, but real. The economics of energy shift - or perhaps 'evaporate' is the better word - dramatically and quickly. Too quickly for everyone to adapt to. New opportunities are created elsewhere, but in the meantime, there are millions of jobs, entire national economies and political dynasties dependent on resource exploitation. Oil and gas alone are a six-trillion dollar a year industry. Jobs, taxes, ecosystems of suppliers and services. Centralized energy wealth has given some fairly small groups control over larger captive populations. We take five to six percent of the world's economy off the table, just 'poof', and people are going to notice. Some will object. Strenuously. The ones who lose don't necessarily care about the benefits - or the thousand percent we add to the global economy through increased…well, everything really, in the first few years. Long term, everything changes. Taken in concert with our other efforts, the world becomes positively unrecognizable in half a century. Maybe sooner."

"So this was ultimately about oil?" asked Jillian.

"Yes and no." said Jeremy. "It's implication. Disruption. Power. Everything on our to-do list screws with someone. Nearly everyone by the time we're finished. We don't try to solve everything at once for that very reason. Anyway, all of them have supply chains, lobbyists, influence somewhere. That's just the legitimate business and political side. But then you take these networks of influence, floating above it all, skimming the cream, used to getting their way… They're the real problem. And this is symbolic to them. They see a wave of disintermediation coming, and they'd normally think how can they buy it. How can they shut it down. Buy the patents, monopolize it, turn it to their advantage, whatever. Or how do they kill everyone, and set it all on fire if that doesn't work. That's been their playbook. And it's worked well. A great many wars have started over a lot less. Except, now they can't do any of that. Not with us. Not with her." He motioned to Max. "There's no easy way around Max."

Sophie smiled, said quietly, "A nuclear bomb. In a field of thorns…"

"They can't buy her. They can't kill her. Going after people she cares about doesn't seem to work out so well for them. So they're stuck in place, and the train is coming at them fast… only now they see that they're all standing there together."

Jillian asked, "So what the hell was New Year's even about then? Seems a bit…I don't know…Don Quixote…"

"Desperation. Ego. Hail Mary. Probably the first of many more attempts to come. With what's at stake for many of these influence networks, they have a lot of incentive and very little to lose. And when you're facing real destruction, your definition of 'pawn' and 'expendable' and 'acceptable collateral damage' starts to get more expansive. Same with your definition of 'ally'. So they thought they could capture her maybe. Hold her alive indefinitely, perhaps? It was something to try. And if they couldn't, they could at least show their bosses, whoever they are, that they're doing that much."

"Why the international team, though? Why not use local contractors?" asked Sophie.

Max knew Sophie could see his thoughts. She's probably asking so Jillian doesn't feel like she's the only one… She's smart, but hasn't been as inside on this yet…

"Well, we don't know them well enough to know. Not specifically anyway. Maybe a signal to us? Or it's possible this gambit didn't involve the US power structures at all."

"Would international interests be allowed to operate on US soil independently? They'd have been detected, right?" Max asked, taking Sophie's lead.

"One scenario says you tied their hands here at home. We've certainly reduced and disincentivized their talent pool, so it's also possible they don't have eyes the way they used to. Or, again, the structures may be more varied or subtle or different than we think. Whatever the case, this gives the locals arm's length deniability if it failed, but everyone benefits if it had worked. A hedge maybe. I mean, we won't really know until Margaret has more time with them. Assuming any of them knew anything more than the operational orders."

John shook his head. "Something's missing. The American. What's the story with James Andersen? Who is he, and how does he fit into all of this?"

Jillian stopped. "James Andersen? The James Andersen? Boston? New York?"

Chloe threw up his photo, bio information, transcripts, public photos, social graphs, texting history, company logos. "One and the same."

"An old colleague of mine worked for one of his startups for a while. He's got an interesting profile. What's he doing in the middle of this mess?"

Ariel rotated the hand-sized holo-sphere, pushed in to zoom the computational reconstruction of the port hovering over her workstation. Changed angle with her other hand, scanning the rows of containers already on board. Where are you, CCGU 741594 5?

Her last floor wrapped up on Sunday with the safe return of the science nerds, their samples and the escort team. Should have taken a few days off, but she liked volunteering personal time for some of their side-missions. 'Liked' was maybe the wrong thought. They weren't always happy endings. It was more gratifying to her than hanging out in bed, binge-watching television.

This was important.

She scanned the last of the containers on board the ship. Not finding it, she rotated back and around to look at the trucks queued up for the lifter. A few blank spots in the image. "Dave, could you move D3 about fifty meters counter-clockwise? I think she's driving off axis again."

A voice from behind her, muffled by the control booth. "Sorry. Okay. Should resolve now."

"Got it. Cool. Thanks."

There were supposed to be three. Different colors, different container owners, all the docs were air. But linked to the same network of smugglers. At least, according to the details and photos they'd gotten from a frustrated local police investigator.

These smugglers moved things for a lot of customers. They weren't an internal part of the trafficking organization that most of the floor was after in one way or another. Paid off the workers at the docks, the ship's crews in some cases. Especially on the smaller ships like this where it would be nearly impossible not to hear them once they were underway.

The investigator had apparently hit a wall on interviews and surveillance. And more recently, had trouble getting access at all. Harassment complaints to local politicians, usual bullshit. And there wasn't really any help internationally without official requests and direct evidence. And more paperwork. So he'd gotten in touch. Unofficially. File drops.

None of it mapped directly to MCCP or any subsidiaries, and the locals sending in requests for help didn't usually ask too many questions. Sometimes it was a department, other times it was a single person. Word went around in certain circles that when there were no options left, sometimes there was an option left. What came back to them after was usually a digital package. Surveillance, communications, IDs, messages, conversations, video. Most of the evidence the locals would need to see the big picture and push through on their end. They couldn't always act on it directly, but it gave them enough for closed door meetings with the higher ups. Parallel construction of new by-the-book evidence. Whatever. They helped.

But this whole op had been a little different. Tips came in from four separate cities in as many countries to start, all eventually linking back to the same trafficking group. Spanned at least three continents, and hundreds of people on payroll. Once it was clear the scope of the investigation was bigger, needed proper coordination, they took over an idle floor and divided up the work. They'd since made a friend on a human rights subcommittee at the UN. Insider referral from their friends working disaster relief. The ones with copies of the disaster lists… Ariel didn't know his name, but he'd help coordinate international law enforcement when the time came. Easy way to shift the credit, keep their name out of it.

Ariel rotated again.

This minor group had only been added to the mix today. She'd made the hard decision to follow the containers. Learn anything they could about what the operation looked like on the destination side, ID the intermediaries or buyers if possible, anything else they could learn or connect to the larger efforts. It was a risk. Leaving them in place. Hopefully they'd have something they could take to the destination authorities, if there were any. Enough to get them to stage a small rescue, anyway. If not, she'd think of something else.

So it was just the two of them. Ariel guiding, watching. Dave, piloting a few drones for her. On a floor full of volunteers working small ops together as part of a larger effort to shut the whole thing down, end to end.

"One down." she said. Third truck back in line. She switched to thermal to verify the sad truth. Human cargo. Tagged the segment for the core. Started a folder for the police investigator who tipped them off.

Ariel studied the glowing figures, some prone, others leaning against the sides and back. More than twenty. She whispered, "I know it doesn't feel like it right now… but you're not alone. I promise you're not forgotten. Hang in there… not leaving til you're all safe…"

Chloe gave the overview. "James Andersen. Grandson of William Andersen, the founder of Elemental Dynamics. He's a high achiever. Family money. Mid-thirties. Smarty pants. MBA, PhD. Economics, physics. Entrepreneur. Sold his surveillance tech company to a defense contractor when he was in his twenties. Investor, VC, partner in a 2-billion-dollar hedge fund, sits on the boards of an investment bank and half a dozen enterprise and consumer tech startups. Politically connected through the DOD and members of a number of subcommittees. He's our bridge to The Device. And odds are, he was our show-runner on the ground."

"He seemed to be the one directing things that night, for sure… But when I chatted with him in a few of the timeline stubs, he seemed mostly terrified." Max sipped at her coffee innocently.

Chloe chuckled, continued while tossing up related images. "Okay - synthesizing everything I could piece together from Margaret's notes, the raw interviews, public records, Parker's team assessment, and the portion of documents we've digitized, this machine - started out as cold war stuff. James Andersen family history. TL;DR version - the US government funded a metric shitload of strategic research after World War II. Imperial shitload, maybe? Doesn't matter. Some of it was more fiction than science, went off into very obvious dead ends. Money was flowing though, so why not, right? James' grandfather, William, started his aeronautics research company after getting out of the US Army Air Corps, right about the time it became the US Air Force. He had a short but distinguished military career, made a few friends in Washington along the way. While other orgs were working with relocated Nazi scientists on jets, nukes, rocket engines - what would later feed into ICBMs and the space program… "

"Project Paperclip stuff." said Jeremy.

"Uh huh. …William was on a homegrown research project, operating in parallel, working on less conventional propulsion technologies. One of dozens, by the way. The budget really was astronomical for the time. This device appears to be the sole reason Elemental Dynamics was created."

Max asked, "But gravity? Magnetics? Like this? That bugs. How'd they get there? Seems…super advanced for the 1950's. Or now. Or a hundred years from now, even."

Parker spoke up for the first time. He'd been so quiet, Chloe almost forgot he was there. "That's the twenty-billion-dollar question. And…we don't know. But you're right. This is out of place. It shouldn't be here. Don't get me wrong - Tesla was way ahead of his time too. It does happen - some big non-intuitive leaps are made out of sequence by lone brainiac thinkers. But we don't think that's near the case here. William Andersen was a pilot, then a businessman, not an inventor or scientist. And experimentally, this device works like an incomplete copy of something whole. Look, here - there's no sign of iteration, no sign of design evolution or wrong paths taken. They just built it as is, right where it sits. But it couldn't have worked. Not then. The control systems were all analog. Manual. The energy draw was enormous, which they sorted out, but it would have been impossible for them to tune the harmonics in real time. They couldn't have done anything useful with it. The overlapping fields are too self-reactive. The structure of the device is there, but they had no way to control it. And without initial control, they wouldn't get to the insights needed to understand the necessary structural design to build in the first place. Closed loop. It would be like…an industrial deep fryer appearing the fossil record of the Cambrian explosion. There's just no way you could get there. We could be wrong, but team consensus at this point is that this was reverse engineered. And they didn't have the ability to replicate, or maybe even understand, all of the science or tech involved. Doesn't appear that they ever did get it going in a meaningful way. Although as Chloe points out, they were paid very well for their efforts over a great many years."

"You…you don't think we have another time traveler?" John scowled.

Chloe shrugged. "Nah. Come back to why in a minute. But The Device was mothballed for like, forty something years. Bout a year ago, they warmed it up. Replaced the old analog shit with digital controls. All of it. New sensors. Feedback loops. Software. That's all new. The generator, the tuning, Parker's team is still going over everything - but we think its function has been modified from the original intentions as well. They were trying to create repulsive forces back in the day. But James' team flipped it in the upgrade. Went for attraction instead."

Jeremy looked surprised. "This was originally intended as anti-gravity? They were working on anti-gravity propulsion back then?"

"Unsuccessfully, but looks like."

Jillian asked, "Why haven't we heard of this?"

"Classified, probably? Tech dead-end? Dunno. I mean, there have been lots of small scale experiments done with levitating frogs and chilled superconductors and stuff, which all look pretty cool. And the occasional hype about positive antigravity hints or whatever. But nearly every one had serious problems with the experimental setup. Errors in the control environments, couldn't be duplicated, outright fraudulent data - or most common, the results were within the margin of error for noise, or didn't account for something obvious. Magnetic repulsion, ionic winds, temperature, air density shifts… Anyway, funding for this research project dried up in the early 1970's. Way before any of those attempts. William Andersen struggled on for another year before shutting everything down. Near as we can tell, the land has been in the family all these years. Forgotten. Hiding in plain sight." Chloe cleared the air of all images.

"It's really hard to believe no one noticed an entire industrial block was just sitting unused for decades." said Jillian.

John said, "There's an entire philosophy around blending in. People, buildings, whatever. At a certain point, things just become background. A street few people drive down is a street few people think to question. You'd be surprised what's behind some of the forgotten unmarked service doors of the world…"

"This still feels like way more questions than answers." Max scrunched her face. "If they didn't design it, where the hell did it come from? We didn't see anything like this last loop."

Chloe swiveled, tapped Max's leg with her boot, smile on her face. "I think we have ourselves a mystery, Scoob."

"You're enjoying that a little too much, Chloe."

"I haven't gotten to the good part yet."

"What's the good part?" John asked.

"This little shit-show of a week hasn't been a total bust. We have two clues. Well one clue, two sources. Whatever. Pointer, maybe. One was left in the margins in pencil, from one of the digitized docs from the old project days, and one was a fragment Margaret managed to lift from Andersen's brainpan. Guess he's been meditating to avoid their listening in, but this floated up anyway. They cross over each other with the same grid reference."

Max swiveled to face Chloe. "Well, what? What's the clue? C'mon…"

"A location."

"A location for…?"

"Dunno. But it's gotta be important. Might explain the tech. Might have more network intel. Not sure. But it makes a lot of sense when you think about it, and it's close enough for a drive. We might wanna follow the breadcrumbs old school on this one, Max… You and me. Just like old times?"

"Chloe? …why do you look so happy about this? What aren't you saying?"

"I'll give you a hint. It's northwest of here…"

"Oh. …Oh - goddammit, Chloe. …Fuck me. Really?"

John laughed.

Sophie's face showed concern.

Jeremy was a blank.

Parker looked a little jealous.

Jillian looked around, confused.

Chloe swiveled back and forth in her chair, grinning madly.

Max squeezed the bridge of her nose with her fingertips. "I know. I know. Top of your goddamn bucket list. Fuck. Fine. Whatever."

Chloe jumped up. "Yes! It's gonna be so much fun Max - I promise! Okay - we just need stop in at the S4 facility… Mountain? Whatever. It's just south of Area 51. But…while we're there, we should, you know, poke around. Loot some crates and stuff, maybe? Never know what we'll find. Might even be a pool?"

Jacob shuffled the drawings around on the leather surface of his heavy wooden desk. He looked at one, then the next before pushing them all back. "What am I looking at? What do you all think this means?"

"They might be moving him around." said Ted, the senior analyst. "One interpretation."

He picked up one of the drawings again. "This one here. A desert." Picked up the next. "And here, it's clearly in a pine forest." Then a third. "And this one with the ferns. Water. Mountains… But no roads, no structures, no landmarks… Is he in a blimp?"

"These are representative. There are nearly a hundred more, drawn over the past few days by four separate specialists. No two seem to be alike. They're capturing what they see."

"There has to be something. A pattern?"

"Well, yes. There are patterns in each, but they're not helpful to the end of giving us his location. This one here…" Ted turned over a drawing of a sea in moonlight. "It's obviously night, there's a storm on the horizon, and we have wave patterns and the shape of the coastline - through perspective, of course, but easy enough to extrapolate a rotation. We've looked at the angle of the moon in relation to time of day when it was drawn, for approximate latitude. Ran a global search for the fragment of coastline shape and cloud patterns on the night side, and…it's all coming up empty."

"What about this one?" Jacob turned it around. "This mountain range - what mountains are those? Surely…"

"The topography doesn't map. It doesn't seem to be anywhere. There is a certain level of artistic interpretation or impression with this technique. They're not photographs."

This should be working. Troubling. But father warned them. We could have subsided for a few generations. Tolerated her. Resumed in sixty or eighty years, once she died of natural causes…

"Sir?"

"Sorry. Keep looking. And keep me updated? The possibility that Andersen's approach would fail, and that he might be captured alive and tortured to death was the only feature of this particular plan I liked - but it doesn't help any of us if we can't learn where they're keeping the insufferable jackass."

"Of course, Mr. Wallace. There is one…other interpretation, but…it's not a popular one for rather obvious reasons… I'm actually reluctant to…"

"Out with it."

"Maybe the moon is important? I mean, I'm sure it can't be…"

"Are you suggesting they have him in a moon base, Ted? Really? A moon base?"

"Like I said, it's not a popular interpretation… But it is the only common recognizable element in these drawings. Maybe it's symbolic. We'll…keep on."

"Well, look, I know there's a limit to how hard we can drive them, but see what you can do. They're our only source of leads right now. He's trained, but it's only a matter of time."

"We'll underscore the importance of accuracy and velocity with each of them."

Max wanted a small headache. Not really, but she felt like she should have one for effect.

Jeremy said, "That sounds like something you two are probably best suited for. The less I know…"

"I think I'm with you on that one." agreed Jillian. "Just…try to stay out of the news? Or jail?" She looked down as her phone buzzed.

Chloe laughed. "No promises. But seriously, we'll be careful. Just need to blaze in, look around. Maybe find some data, some tech, some clue that leads us to someone higher up the asshole chain? A name, a company, anything. Won't know what we're looking for til we see it. Don't worry about us. We'll be like ninjas. They'll never know we were there."

Jeremy changed topics quickly. "Less I know, less I need to lie about to the grand jury. Oh - and one final item from me before we break. I know this is unfortunate timing Max, but we have a rare window of opportunity in Ecuador shaping up between 9:15 and 10am local tomorrow. Orbiting spy-sats will be clear, leaving a handful of older geostationary cameras to mask against. Our precogs agree with NOAA for once - there will be an unexpected cloud cover at sunrise that obscures visible wavelength for just under an hour. Everything syncs up. If you can mask the infra-red and accelerate, we could take Skywatch live tomorrow…"

"Is everything in place?" Max asked. Be good to get her up and running…

"Yes. Contracts are signed, everyone's onsite, ready to go. All volunteers. Four-mile perimeter. Supplies for about two years, although it should only be a ten-month burn to completion."

"Chloe? Can we do the Area 51 thing tomorrow afternoon maybe? I should really…"

"No - totally. Go. Who knows when we'll get another alignment."

"Cool. I should pop down there this afternoon to double-check with the folks on site. Pep talk sort of thing, maybe?"

"You'll be back though? Today, I mean?"

"Yeah. 4:30 maybe? Oh, right!" Max looked at John. "Shit. No, totally. What time are we all getting together with Trace?"

"About then I think." said John. "If she cuts loose earlier, Chloe can keep her entertained with me, right? Please? Help?" He smiled.

"No prob, dude. Happy to help entertain and indoctrinate Her Princessness, now that she's over the wall. Well, will be, anyway."

Max rolled her eyes. "Don't torture her, Chloe. She's friend, not food."

"What? I'm nice. I am."

John shook his head, squinted in a silent 'no'.

Jeremy moved to wrap things up. "Parker, Jillian, John, we'll take up action items with everyone in the staff meeting?"

Nods.

"Okay then. I'll see you guys on seven in 5?"

"Thanks everyone." Max called after them.

As Jeremy and Parker filed out, Jillian pulled Max and Chloe aside. Looked at her phone. "Sorry, this just came in. I know it's probably a 'no', but she claims she knows you two from school? Thought I'd give you the option."

Chloe looked at Max, back to Jillian, shrugged. "What's up?"

"Sorry. Interview request. From a blogger, media intern at the Journal. New York. Normally, this would go in the spam folder, but she said you were all old friends. Juliet Watson?"

Max went still. What the fuck?

She stared at Chloe. "She's…alive." she said simply. "I thought…"

"Blackwell Juliet? Wow. We're really bad at this whole 'people' thing, Max."

"Jeez. No shit. Um, yeah. No. Set it up, Jillian? Fly her out, whatever?"

"You've got it.'

"Holy shit. Wait - did she say what it was about? Not that it really matters…"

"Interview later this month, story live in February sometime. That's their usual lead… 'We'll get you a full briefing doc ahead of time, but she's looking to do a profile piece on you two and MCCP."

Chloe frowned. "As cool as it would be for you two to catch up…that's not something they'd usually give to interns."

John waved on his way out. They waved back.

"No, of course not. It's an obvious bait and switch." Jillian said casually. "They'll hook you with the personal relationship, then send along an experienced grizzled cynic to 'supervise', who will end up running the interview. It's generally accepted that you two don't grant Q&As. So, she's probably using the connection to advance her career, and they're using her as a way in to you."

"This should be interesting…"

"She's alive though. Fuck. Why didn't we know that, Chlo?"

"We have been a little busy I guess…"

"I'll keep you both copied on next steps. Happy to do some practice Q&A if you… yeah. That was dumb. Disregard…" She laughed, turning to leave. "I'm late. Have fun in Ecuador, Max." She closed the door to The Fishbowl, leaving them alone.

"Juliet. Huh."

"No shit, dude."

"Be nice to see an old friend." Max leaned into Chloe, gave her a playful kiss. "Okay, so moving on to other topics… Like…morning, sunshine."

"Hey doll. Should have woken me up before you left." Chloe wrapped her arms around her.

"You two just looked so cute. I couldn't."

"Free for lunch later?"

"I'll have to check with my personal assistant…" Max gave it a beat. Looked up. "Yeah. I'm free. You?"

Chloe smiled, shook her head. "Nope. I have friends."

"Ouch." Max pulled away, fake-pushed Chloe. "You suck."

Chloe laughed, pulled her back. "Well, I mean, you're my friend, so…not a lie…"

"Nice save. Ass."

Chloe shrugged, batted her eyes. "Wasn't it?"

"Maybe I should jump to the staging area sooner rather than later. Make sure I've got everything right, everyone's really on board. That way, we can have lunch, and I can hang here this afternoon to make sure you can't torment Tracey unsupervised."

"I'm so fucking nice to her! Why does everyone think I'm mean?"

"Chloe…"

"Whatever. I have to scoot too. Nap or something."

"Now you're just being lazy."

"Jealous? And you can take that up with our new racing team."

Max leaned in again, tiptoes, hand to the back of her neck, gave her a longer kiss. "I'll see you at lunch."

Chloe held her eyes. "Save you a seat."

Max lingered. Shook her head. "Back to work. You're distracting me."

"Uh-huh. You first."

"You first."

"What? So you can stare at my butt, perv?"

"Hey! But, maybe guilty a little. Same time then?"

"Fine. On three."

"One…"

"Two…"

Chloe faded as the conference room gave way to a warm ocean breeze and a wall of green trees. "Three…"

Chloe cracked open the fridge. "Hey, Michaels, beer?"

"Yeah. Please."

She grabbed two green bottles from the door. Flipped the caps off and into the air with her thumbs as she walked back. Both landed in the sink. She held one out for him before falling backwards onto the overstuffed leather chair. Boots up on the end of the coffee table. Sunset over the mountains beyond the glass.

John downed half the bottle, leaned back. "Thanks."

"She'll be fine, dude. And if she's not, who knows? Maybe there's a way Max can go back and…"

"No, I'm sure she will. But we both know that's a crap reason to redirect an entire timeline. Especially with so much shit going on between."

"If it would make a difference, I'm sure she'd be willing to run through again. She's done more for less. I mean, we might end up that way anyway. Sophie seemed to think it was a good idea to put Alena in the spotlight, but we still don't know where the fuck that's gonna land. Knowing what we know now, Max could easily skate back and end all of this quietly. Take everyone out of play before the party."

"Like it never happened. I know. She does enough rescuing already… You both do. But don't forget there was that note. Some version of her knew in advance, and chose not to intervene too directly. There was a reason."

"I don't know. Like, I get it now, more than I ever could have before. But sometimes it still breaks my brain a little."

John lifted his beer. "To fucking time travel."

"To fucking time travel."

Max said goodbye to the moonlight and hello to the sunset.

She could hear them faintly on the other side. Changed out of her shoes first. Don't need to track Ecuadoran mud all over the house… She was a little late, but it couldn't be helped. Had to go back down again after meeting Chloe for lunch. An hour for prep was too optimistic. She pulled on a fresh pair of socks, glanced around for Emo before heading out to join their friends.

"He's keen to get a better view, I think." Sophie said, giggling. "Hello, Max."

Those facing the other way turned to see her. "Hey. Is everyone good? Need anything while I'm up?"

"We're good, Maximus. Grab whatever and come on over."

"Tracey and I only just arrived. Chloe was introducing us to your new kitty." Sophie said. "He's a climber!"

Max laughed. "Many things are true. That is certainly one of them." She couldn't get a read on Trace yet, but if they just got here it meant she was probably still in the middle somewhere.

She walked around the coffee table, gave Hector a hug, and sat next to him on the other sofa. "How was it?"

"Good to be home for a while."

"Weirdness mostly gone?"

"Mostly. Yeah. It was nice. Chill. I mean, it's still a risk, you know, but I was careful."

"Just a matter of time."

"I hear that."

"Hey Trace." Max reached across, held out her hand.

After an almost imperceptible pause, Tracey took her hand, held a stare. Gradually let both go.

"How are you doing with all of this?" She'd try direct first. Max knew she might have to navigate this part a few times to get her through.

Tracey took a moment before attempting an answer. Emo let out a long squeak after climbing to the peak of John's knee. Tracey smiled, shook her head. The tension dissolved with their laughter. "I'm afraid I'm with the kitten on this one." She finally said, with a soft laugh.

"Welcome to our weird little club, Tracey." Chloe said with a smile.

"You're all very much insane. You do know that, right?"

"Oh, completely. But…we're mostly friendly, and…we have cake?"

"But really, Trace… I know it's a shit-ton of weird. Are you doing okay?"

She took her time to respond. "It's all obviously very, very impressive - what you've all managed to do, to…build. The minds…people you've surrounded yourselves with. The work being done. It's truly important work. I had no idea. This is so much larger than I thought. More substantial. I had a remarkably different impression, of you two in particular, before all of this. Unfair. Undeserved. And for that, I'm very sorry. I just…how could I?"

Chloe shrugged at her, tossed back a swig. "We're cool."

Tracey turned to John, halfway to whisper. "And I…I feel like I owe you an apology too. I've been feeling sorry for myself this past weekend. So disappointed in you for behaving this way, confused, hurt. I still don't know what you've been doing, but I have an idea now. I can't fit it all in my head. But…what could you have said to me before today that would have made it make any sense at all?"

John took her hand. "I'm sorry too. Does it make any more sense now?"

"Yes. No. Maybe? Not at all. If I'm being honest, I still don't really believe half of what I've been presented with today. It's part of the hazing, right? Maybe the reality of what I've seen makes up for all this crazy packaging? I don't know. You're all lunatics. Maybe I'm crazy too. Maybe it doesn't matter what I believe or don't believe? Or…"

Max interrupted gently, said in a soft voice, "Maybe it doesn't matter. But you don't need to struggle with it either. Here." She stood, held out her hand to Tracey.

John nodded, let go. Uncertain, Tracey slowly rose to take Max's hand, glancing at the faces around her.

"Be right back." Max folded them to the roof above, cold hit skin as the last of the natural light faded behind the mountaintops.

Tracey froze, then quickly threw Max's hand from hers, took a big step away, turned in a circle, eyes wide. "What…?"

Still softly, Max explained, "It's okay. You're fine, Tracey. I just moved us up to the roof."

"But how? What did you do to me? Why don't I remember…?" she was still turning.

"Not like that. Remember. Earlier today - they told you a little about the things some of us can do, right? That was one of them. Just a quick teleportation. We moved maybe thirty feet."

"Holy shit, Max?! This is real? That was real?! What in the fucking fuck?"

Max nodded. "It's real, Tracey"

"But…"

"It's okay. Look, you needed to know he's not delusional, being here. None of us are. We thought it might make it easier for you if you could see for yourself. It's not always his choice to be away. Sometimes, the things we're all dealing with really are life and death. You're important to him, and he's important to us. So we're trusting you with something few people outside these walls get to see."

"Max, I…"

"Do you trust me?"

"I…I don't know. I don't know what…"

"It's okay. Just know that you're safe. Nothing bad can happen. I promise. Nothing has changed. …Here. Please. Take my hand again?" Max reached out. Tracey looked numb, but she took it.

Max took them into the light. A hot white sandy beach, diving under turquoise water in the bright sunshine. The smell of salt, small ocean waves breaking gently. Down the beach, a few vacationing families, umbrellas, beach towels and coolers. Children played in the water, splashing and laughing. Behind them, a dense palm forest.

Tracey let go, fell to her knees. She reached down to take a handful of sand. Raised it up as grains streamed between her fingers. Her eyes scanned out to the horizon and back. Up to Max. Wonder.

"Maldives." Max said. She took a handful of sand herself, threw it out into the breeze. Froze a thousand cubes of time around grains of airborne sand. Some rotated, others tumbled. She made space between them. Rotated half of the cubes clockwise around a common point, the other half counterclockwise. Tracey turned to look at the trees behind them. Back to the cubes. She didn't say a word.

Max released the sand grains back to normal time. Tracey smiled as they fell. Looked to Max.

"What am I seeing? I…don't…"

"They'll come. There's one more thing I'd like to show you before we go back, if that's okay? But you have to promise not to say anything about it to anyone. And don't try to find it on your own."

Tracey nodded.

"You, of all people, might like this…"

The sunny day faded into darkness. Cool air. Shit. Flashlight… …shoes. Improvising, Max opened a very small wormhole ten feet above them, the other side half a mile further up. Rotated the direction of the sphere, while sunlight and blue sky and reflected earth poured out to illuminate the cave.

Tracey scanned the room. Her eyes finally fixated on the blue orb above…

Max took a few steps, touched the wall, whispered a small greeting.

John shrugged. "I hope she doesn't take her to the moon first. I don't want her head to pop."

Hector asked, "She say where she was going, Sophie?"

"Not to me. But it's Max. She'll find a good path."

"I'm curious how many paths it's going to take. How many times do you think we've relived this conversation already?"

"Why, you gettin' deja vu Hector?" Chloe winked.

"That was funnier the second time, Bizarro Smurfette."

John felt the burning as he spit beer out his nose, fell forward. Laughing, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve, dabbed at the table. "Dude, you gotta warn me…"

Even Sophie laughed on that one, covering her mouth.

"Fuck all of you." Chloe saluted them with a majestic pair of migrating birds.

Hector just nodded, leaned back, smiling, smug.

"Okay…gotta admit, that was quality, dude…" Chloe shook her head, laughed. "You've been sittin' on that one for a while, haven't you?"

Max and Tracey appeared in the open space halfway to the kitchen. John leaned around, arm over the back of the sofa.

"That was incredible!" gushed Tracey.

Hector noted "Still has a head. Good sign."

"Oh, the places you'll go…" whispered Chloe.

John asked "Where'd you guys get to?"

Tracey rushed over to John. "You'll never believe, well I guess maybe you would, but it was amazing! We were on the roof, then on a beach in the Maldives, then in this beautiful cave with these paintings of animals and plants and…she showed me pictures of alien birds on her phone, John! Alien. Birds!"

"I think she blew a breaker." Chloe got up.

Hector shrugged. "Prolly get her a beer?"

Chloe was already headed to the kitchen. "On it."

"You guys do this every single day? How in the world…"

"Breathe, hon."

Chloe tapped John with a green bottle. "Here. Feed her this."

"Has anyone seen Emo?" asked Sophie.

Hector looked around. "He was just here."

Two hummingbird drones flew around the room. High and low.

Tracey watched them both. Squinted. "Wait… There are…"

Chloe sat back down. "Under the dining table."

"Got him. Thanks Chlo." Max picked up Emo and walked back over to the group.

Tracey looked from face to face. "But… hummingbirds…"

"Here, take a sip."

"John - it's all real! Everything they said… it's…holy shit."

Tracey leaned back into John, beer three. "…then it was that little girl? Not you?"

"Alena, yeah. I just took the fragments out. She did the hard part."

"So now she's internet famous for all the wrong reasons… And…regular famous too, I guess. Unreal. I…I should thank her. The implications of this are staggering. I mean, medicine alone… curing diseases, healing people beyond medical help… People who need transplants, my god, why are we not staffing our trauma centers with people like her?"

"Well, we're still very, very rare." said Sophie. "Healers even more so."

John added, "I've worked for organizations in the past who've exploited people with talents like that for their own ends. They'd only ever documented a hundred to a hundred-fifty worldwide since sometime in the early 1900's. But practices like that pushed a lot of other talents into hiding. Our best guess now, it's anywhere from five hundred to a few thousand worldwide, but we still don't know for sure."

"Maybe we should start a Facebook group after all?" volunteered Chloe with a smirk.

"You actually qualify now, Chloe." said Hector, tipping up his beer.

"Yeah, but that's totally different. I wasn't born with mine."

Tracey paused. "Wait - you have powers too?"

"Yeah, you were kindof out of it. I should have said. When I pulled the bullets out, I didn't exactly use my hands." Chloe lifted her beer off the table to her lips, hands free.

Tracey just stared. "Jesus." She looked at John. "Anything you want to tell me?"

"Nope."

"No lurking superpowers?"

"Nope. I'm no superhero. I just work for them."

"…with them." corrected Max.

"And I don't know… he kindof is. I mean, if you can call Batman a superhero, John definitely qualifies. It's all training and toys and tech, but…" said Hector.

"You know, you're right. We should totes get him a little honorary flappy cape or something!"

John rubbed his eyes. "You guys aren't helping."

"I have two conflicting thoughts." Tracey said.

"That's so not weird around here."

"With what you can all do - why do you bother with any of this at all?"

"Fun fact. Superpowers don't automatically make people sociopaths." Chloe volunteered.

"Sorry. I'm not being eloquent. Not what I meant. Everything you're doing with your company - I mean, go. You're going to change everything, as you should. But I meant why do you bother with these little games you play in secret, with these little network people or whatever. This back and forth bullshit. New Year's party crashers. Why haven't you put all of this out in the open? Why doesn't everyone know about all of this already? The public, I mean. About them, about you?"

"I like her more and more." said Sophie.

"Hate to say it love, but…we didn't pay her or anything."

Max shook her head. "I really, really don't wanna do a fucking podcast."

"Or better yet - why do you allow them to exist at all? My god. With what's at stake? If that's all really real too? Max, with a fraction of what you alone can do, you could truly take over tomorrow. Rule the world. Just say it is, and it's so. Anyone who disagrees with the plan gets moved to another world or…something. I'm not saying you should, but I'm saying you could. I mean, at the very least, to hell with these pissants and their spanners. This is the future of the whole entire world. You should just come out and tell everyone. Shout it from the rooftops. Make it bright. You're playing subtle and there's no reason to. You could go anywhere in history; you could go anywhere in time or space. I mean, why fight from the shadows? Shine a light on these fuckers for everyone to see. Then kick their arses off this globe. Why play this little game at all? You can perform miracles, for fuck's sake. Sorry, I mean…you're…proof. You're the answer to everything people have been asking basically forever. You showed me a picture of bird with four wings. From another world. On your bloody phone. Are there other worlds with life? I didn't know. But you took fucking pictures like it was a Saturday at the beach."

She caught Chloe smiling as she sipped her beer.

"Then there are the things you can do. Travel through time? I can't fathom…those soap bubble cube things? Why are you even paying taxes? You're near enough a god on Earth. All you have to do is say it. Prove it. Show them what's going to happen. Who's responsible. You'd wake up to billions of followers tomorrow."

Max sighed, resigned. "Why does everyone keep saying that?"

"It's probably true for any of you. You could own this world if you wanted. There's nothing anyone could do to stop you."

Max took a sip of bubbly water. "And that's exactly why I won't do it, Tracey. This isn't about me. It's about you. Them. Everyone. Sophie shared an idea with a few of us recently. That this might not be won or lost with powers alone, exactly. Hearts and minds of people, I don't know. Maybe being out in the open would help. Maybe it would create more distractions. I gave it a shot once and had really mixed reactions from people. But I know for sure that if we can help people where they can't yet help themselves, and help them steadily expand the areas where they can help themselves over time… It's a better way. Taking over, not so much. Too much work anyway. And…I'm not sure I'm really the answer to anything. I'm just one person. A very old person, maybe. With a few tricks. Okay fine, whatever. But, even if we went that way, it would be better if it was Chloe. She's got the brains for it."

Chloe put a hand out. "Hard pass. Brains don't equal wisdom. Still working on temperament. I'm…I can't fucking believe I'm saying this out loud, but…I'm not a good fit for Supreme Galactic Overlord either."

Sophie touched Chloe's arm. "That might be one of the wisest things I've heard you say. You might still be on your way."

"Trace, power does bring responsibility." Max said. "It's why we're working so hard to try to help. But…it also has to be self-aware. And others-aware. Has to understand and even embrace limits. None of us here have what you might call a super-respect for authority. We've all seen how that goes wrong. And I'm thankful we don't, cause it means that none of us wants to be the authority either. We're sharing this world with everyone else. They should get a say. And feel like they played a part. If we can manage down the damage the bad guys can do while we help the rest grow into what they could be, that's mission accomplished I think. Least for me."

Max looked over to Chloe. "I just…want a quiet, normal, boring life. That's all any of this has been about for me. We had it once. Twice, I guess. Now I'm trying to get back to a world where we can chill, where everyone else will be okay too. You know?"

It became quiet for a moment, each of them with their own thoughts.

John raised his bottle.

Each slowly raised their drinks as they noticed.

Eyes met. Nothing spoken.

Max lay in bed, scratching Emo between his ears.

"He's super tuckered out. Nice job, Chloe."

"The power of drones." Chloe came out of the bathroom, went over to the dresser and opened up the bottom drawer. The one full of Max's fuzzy socks and PJs. She walked over to the bed, picked up Emo. "Who's the sleepy little monster now?" She made a little nest among the socks, kissed him on his head and set him down in it. He curled up into a ball almost immediately, purred quietly. Little paws doing their thing. She lifted a PJ leg over him like a pink blanket before returning to Max. "What? What's wrong?"

Max sat up. She didn't know how to say it exactly. Just stumble it out. "I want him up here with us."

"But he loves…loved the sock drawer. That was like his…what, like his third favorite thing?"

"I know, but that's where we trained him to be. We didn't know then. Not yet. About the healing I mean. The first time. It's one thing…I've always regretted it. If we'd known, maybe we could have kept him closer more. That's all it would have taken, I know it. Maybe he wouldn't have died so young. I mean, we have a second chance with him, Chlo. I didn't… I…don't want to lose him again is all…" She felt the sadness behind her eyes. "Not when we just got him back…"

"Oh my god, no, baby… I'm so sorry… I meant to say something sooner. Shit. He's fine. He's gonna be fine. No…" Chloe walked across the bed on her knees to Max, brought her up into a hug.

"I know more than last time too, Max. He would have died that first day if we hadn't been there. You, I mean…you know what I mean. Look, I ran a few tests over the weekend. His kidney problems…they're congenital. If he hadn't died that day, he wouldn't have lived more than a year on his own. If it hadn't been for you. Even though he slept away from us, all that time you spent with him…it extended his natural life like seven times…"

"So it would totally work again, right? Only if he sleeps up here too…"

"Yeah, Max. It would work. Falls off at the inverse square of the distance and all. So anywhere within five or six feet would be okay. I can go get him if you want. But that's what I'm trying to tell you. He's gonna be fine either way. This time, it's maybe my turn to help him a little."

Max pulled back. "What do you mean?"

"I remember losing him too. And I…well, I sorta gave him his own little army of repair dudes. That's their whole entire job - keep him healthy and strong and good. And…all that's left for us is the keeping him happy part."

Max kissed Chloe, rested her head against her shoulder. Let out a little breath. "Have I told you how much I love you?"

"Every day…"

"Good."

They held like that for a minute before Max slid out from under the covers. She went over to the drawer. Hey, fluff. Carefully scooped him up, brought him back to the bed. "He's still a kitten. He's…only just beginning. I want him with us. Just for a little while. But…we'll leave the drawer open, just in case he decides he wants it?"

She lay on her side, big spoon to Emo's little spoon. Chloe behind her, kissed the back of her neck softly. Whispered in her ear, "You're a good kitty mama, Max."

"You too Chlo…"