Chloe dipped into her own version of real-time, preparing for her solo stealth infiltration of Area 51. Research mode. Downstairs. Gathering. Processing. Releasing more intelligent agents to fill out the active prep squad that she really should have unleashed yesterday…
::
Each thought an instruction.
A creation.
Little pieces of her will.
::
Research. Modeling.
1:1 render space :: 1cm resolution.
Grid, vector, raster, normalize sources against master
Topography.
Topology.
USGS SDTS.
Extract NGIA. NRO.
Tertiary sources. Global. Extract::integrate relevant GIS. Comprehensive.
Linked constructs.
Metadata.
Physical layer. Adding. Interpolate
Hydrology. Geology. Erosion. Historical modeling.
Plate drift rate:: T-, T+
Survey data. Mineral composition, distribution, mining data. Satellite. Bureau of Land Management. Historical.
::
Seismic data. Global. Historical. Comprehensive. Assimilate. Synthesize ambient echo-sounding. Paint the underground. Detailed.
Run.
::
Weather. Predicted. Current. Historical. Comprehensive. Air currents. Heat distribution. Retention. Snowfall.
Plants. Species. Distribution. Properties. Growth.
Animals. Endemic. Invaders. Thermographic profiles. Behaviors. Migration. Properties. Patterns.
Behavioral layer. Human. Observer movements. Patterns. Anecdotal. Clusters. Sparse.
Extrapolate. Anecdote. Regulation. Legal. Human nature, psychology.
Comfort. Terrain. Roads. Run CA against assumption models.
::
Personnel. Limited data. Not self-advertised.
Placeholder. Facial data. Work backward onsite. (Real-time)
Records. Offline. Secure. Not all. Encrypted. Decrypted.
Xfer rate slow.
::
Contractors. Engineering and test services.
JT3 membership roster - target split, push out, crack in.
Agencies. Laptops. Tablets. Phones. Throughput of distant endpoints = limiting factor.
Push agents to the endpoints for local sourcing, editorial clipping.
Go.
Additive, rolling.
Query limits. Codeword. Phrase. Project nomenclature tables. Historical. Comprehensive.
Background process. Collate. Assemble. Integrate as available.
::
GSA. Device vendors. Contractors. Public records. Comprehensive.
Segmentation. Products. Contracts. Surveillance. Alerting. Spectra. Public detail.
Manufacturers. Suppliers. Downstream. Designers. Assemblers. Installers.
Chipsets. Circuits. Diagrams. Options.
Classified. Target. Unclass. Redistribute. Decrypt.
Redacted. Un-mask PDFs. (dumbasses).
Remainder, statistical word distribution and context analysis. Reconstruct.
::
Active::Passive. Wavelengths. Reflections. Interference. Modification latitude.
Optimal statistical distribution across specific terrain.
Assume unlimited (classified) budget.
Top 100 models. Cellular automata, 1:1 10cm grid; run.
Chokepoints. Gaps.
Surfaces.
Potential patterns of redundancy. Failover.
Filter against pathing, traversability, visibility.
::
Placeholder, devices. Coverage. (Extrapolate, ongoing)
Placeholder, EM mapping. Geometric. Reflex, reflectivity, shape analysis. Drones. (Real-time)
Placeholder, discovery:: actual sensor placement, distribution, thermal, power, signal, visual. Drones/core. (Real-time)
Placeholder, ambient chemical drift. (Real-time)
Placeholder, passive multispectral sensing, mapping, analysis. (Real-time)
Placeholder, ops nexus details (Real-time)
Placeholder, systems access (Real-time)
::
Launch drones.
Autorun. Autocomplete.
::
Let's Fly.
Find me a way through, minions…
::
Distributed, Chloe flew up alongside their tower. Blew past Max, looking out from the rooftop. Chloe did a wing-wag, but Max probably couldn't see it. Not from that far away… Go… She released, shifted. She pulled her attention back. Deeper into the streams…
Airbase detail. Remote sites. Structures. Runways. Roadways. Catalog.
Datamine telco meta, number patterns, switches, spread geo, compile phone list, cluster, compare.
Building, architectural, infrastructural norms.
Engineering, congressional, budget, contractor records
Synthesize
Geodata / metadata content suppliers.
Public:: ESRI, ArcGIS, GEOeye, SPOT, USGS/EROS/NIMA, Google Maps, Earth, Bing, NAVTeq, Autodesk IMS archive, others
Domestic satellites.
Current intelligence caches, domestic. Photos. Maps. Analysis.
Conspiracy sites. Building descriptions. Collate. Disregard.
Historical archives.
Other imaging sources.
Classed networks.
Outside intelligence agency archives::
Chinese.
Russian.
French.
Israeli.
Global.
::
Merge above-ground with synthetic subsurface view computed from global historical seismic data, infrastructure and civil engineering archives. (Comprehensive). Grant primacy to recency.
::
Atomic test records. Echoes.
Tunnels.
Chambers.
Cavities.
Structures.
Connectors.
::
What's there? What's below? Which buildings lead in? A way down. So much. Where should we go?
::
S4.
Papoose Mountain.
Where? East side of the lake bed - nothing visible.
Rotate.
Maps scrubbed? Or camouflaged entrance? Alt: Nonexistent. Invoke herring principal.
Other references, keyed s,4, modifiers related to g, em, propulsion / repulsion.
::
Alt; south, Site 6.
Runway. Vehicles. Fencing. Circle. Structures. Below.
Stable complex beyond the mountain, extending below the lake, running between. Linear accelerator? Or rocket track? Legacy? Shallow. Drops down further on one side.
Lowest furthest point. Dense seismic-acoustic returns.
::
Most bunkery part of the bunkerest bunker…
Closest to the atomic test range…
::
Another possible target.
::
Upgrade ant-bot distribution density for rapid interior mapping:: compressed sensing config, single pixel cameras.
Transport…
Carrier drone transport. Stealth. Active, adaptive.
Self-replicating gen.4 ant-bots, networked. N+10,000
1,000 gen.8 roach-bots, networked. Piggyback.
Go…
::
Good a test as any…
Chloe blinked. Minutes of world time had passed. She'd been directing her minions, digital and drone, building and setting new ones in motion to hunt and gather. She had a lot of what she wanted. The rest would come to the core on autopilot now… Her agents were smart enough to move themselves, follow the breadcrumbs, send back what she wanted. And once the drones started layering in their real surface, structural and interior scan data over her model, she'd have a good idea for where to have Max drop her off - and where they'd end up. Just-in-time delivery…
She headed downstairs.
Last detail before we go…grab the Yeti. If we can make it through the outer perimeter to the main base, that feels like a decent enough beta.
Just need to throw together an appropriate playlist before we hit the road.
Let's see…Die Antwoord theme for this little reboot?
Antidote to that last fuckin' run anyway…
Unintended meaning, but oddly appropriate, from a certain point of view… '
'Mount Ninji and da Nice Time Kid'…
…won't be out 'til later this year, but…since she was nice enough to leave me her library…
Use the album as a seed. Build.
Boom!
Let's go, bitches!
Max dropped Chloe off behind a big rock, halfway up the mostly barren hillside, a mile outside the border. Chloe marked the spot on the map with an X before they left. Frozen in time, her active camo still displayed a portion of their rooftop, but it would only take a sec to refresh to the new surroundings once Max let time go.
With Chloe properly staged for her solo run, Max bubbled for the overwatch ascent. She rose up on a captured hemisphere of rock and dirt into the late afternoon sky.
The pale green sagebrush peppered the hillside below, the ground a painted mix of beige, dark brown and reds, rapidly dropping away. The storm clouds were close, over to the west. Maybe a little splash of rain hanging underneath. She could see over the mountains to the dry lake bed in the distance, caught the outline of the airstrips.
It's a lot bigger than I pictured out here. Way more flat and spread out. Lot of ground for her to cover unseen…
Oh. Shit. Unseen…
Ugh.
It occurred to Max that she had no idea how differential bubbles worked with radar. They were new to this timeline, and they hadn't had a reason to test that specifically yet. She took a moment to puzzle it through.
Okay, boundary layer of a volume of frozen time will buffer matter and energy at the event horizon, so no radar reflections… But they'll pass right through this one - prolly with a teeny little time delay, but still. Might ghost back a little? I don't know. I'm not very big either, but the rock at the bottom is a nice solid curving target.
Wrong shape. Crap. That'll be bright as fucking day…
I don't wanna fuck up Chloe's run. Hovering over the top-not-so-secret ultra-paranoid super-base she's trying to infiltrate while standing on a giant radar reflector… prolly not helping with the whole 'stealth' thing.
Okay Max, so what's your plan? Watching over her is part of the deal. Guess I could go back down, try again? This time without capturing a platform? Maybe if I sorta hopped up in the air and bubbled myself? Or jumped off a rock, maybe? If I don't twist an ankle coming down… But what do I stand on? The bottom, or? Right. Cause the edge isn't a thing. The bubble defines a volume…
I mean, okay, think this through. What would happen? Or, better question, what's actually happening? I'm manipulating the existence and position of a local volume of relatively offset time-space… but is my body carried along for the ride inside it? Or is my body the focal point that everything else locks to? Do I move the bubble? Or me? What's my frame of reference here? Am I standing on this rock, or am I carrying the rock and everything else along? That's…a …these are damn good questions. And there's no reason to believe it couldn't be whatever I chose, if I…chose to…choose it…I guess? Eh.
Begs for a quick little experiment though. Chloe's gonna be down there alone, and I can't give her away like a giant dumbass. That would be cheating. Take a few minutes. How much trouble could she get into at the start?
Max broke away. Took herself a couple of miles east of Chloe, out over empty desert where no one would get hurt by the falling rock. And hopefully out of range of any peering eyes. She held position about ten thousand feet up. Took a moment to admire the view. Storm and desert and sun dropping and… Always appreciate the moments, Max. Always…
She restarted the flow of the universe.
Chloe will be on her way now…
Max re-synched the contents of her sphere with the rest of reality. The boundary edge collapsed. After a too-brief Coyote-like pause, Max's stomach leapt up into her throat as her body dropped. She plummeted straight down with the hemispherical slab of rock. Wind rushed past her loudly as the rock kicked sideways, moving out from under her, throwing surface dirt and debris into a cloud around them. It flipped over in the air, edge barely missing her, searching for aerodynamic equilibrium. Wobbling violently. They continued falling together.
Pretty high up. Little bit of time to adjust.
Worst case, I'll rewind-cancel at the bottom and try again.
Need to get away from this stupid rock though… go away, rock! Nothing personal…
She thought to spread her arms on the way down, catch a little air. Drag. Wasn't sure it would do much. She remembered her experiments with gravity last week, had another random thought. Yep. Just a little bit - enough to pull me away from it so I can make a new empty bubble… No need to go leaping off cliffs like a spazmoid lemming. Well, to be fair, they don't really do that either…
Least she'd be a smaller radar target by herself. And she could confirm a couple of her own suspicions about bubble frame and control in the process. The rock first. Her intention was to compress the space directly above her, but at the last moment, she decided to expand some space below her too, for an extra little safety push. Should reshape geometries just enough to sort of tap the brakes on her fall for a second or two. It'll be enough to create a separation from it, anyway…
As she did, everything exploded into total blackness, then bright light.
She knew she'd made a mistake… panic-stopped, dumped back into black. An intense flash of light above her. Disoriented… Off guard. The air in her lungs burst out past her nose and mouth, saliva fizzed on her tongue, sublimating directly from liquid to gas. The moisture on her eyes boiled away without heat. Blinked. The only sound was her body beating in time with her heart. She didn't feel the cold yet. Took her eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness. If she'd had any breath left, the view would have taken it away. At least in the few moments before her vision blurred, distorted as her eyes changed shape. She realized what she'd done.
Closed her eyes against the vacuum, rolled them at herself behind the lids, and quickly established a closed bubble around her. Opened a tiny wormhole inside linking to a spot a hundred feet above sea-level over the Caribbean. Her ears popped as warm evening atmosphere rushed back in, equalizing pressure. She gulped at the scented mix of sea air and…burnt raspberry chocolate chip cookies? Weird…
Her heart slowed. She refocused her attention outside.
With no city lights, with no blazing sun, there was nothing to pollute her view of endless distant stars. With each passing second, she could make out more detail… In one direction, the glowing bulge of the galactic center, partially hidden. Walls of light behind unimaginably large streamers of dark dust… In the other, perpendicular, the bulge of another galactic center, equally close, elongated, arms twisting, distorted…pulled apart…surrounding her.
It took her a moment.
She was witness to the early stages of a merger between two large spiral galaxies. From inside. A slow motion gravitational dance that would join them into one, unfolding over millions of years… She lingered for a few silent minutes, absorbed in the strangeness and immensity.
It's…so beautiful…
…but…
oh man… I think I accidentally warp drived. Warp…drove? …driven? Maybe just 'warped', I guess?
Crap.
But…all this… it means I didn't just leave Earth. Or the solar system…
This isn't the fucking Milky Way…
Damn.
Um. Okay…I have no idea where 'here' is…
or which direction is home…
Chloe appeared behind a dusty rock, crouched. Well, maybe not 'appeared', so much as 'arrived'? Appearance implied visibility. Which was hopefully not the case.
She'd been on their roof a moment ago. Max had obviously done her thing, dropped her off in the freeze. Chloe assumed she was somewhere up above. Probably chillin' in a happy little bubble of climate-controlled time-space, enjoying the fading light, watching over her with amusement… She didn't give voice to the obvious heavenly associations. Laughed in her head anyway.
Closed her physical eyes. Oriented herself in the landscape. Northeastern edge of the wide, dark and complex mountain range between the two distant entrance gates, facing southwest. Far from the beaten path. Twenty miles as the drone flies, and she'd be overlooking Groom Lake in person.
Now that she had her array of mobile tech up, the whole of the area was like Vegas to her. Computational reality. A new inverse retina, spanning the entire region. Everything the drones could detect in any wavelength, mixed with the other data layers at the core. Every useful or relevant bit her agents could find…or were still discovering…
She opened her eyes.
The shadowy hillside rose above to broken rocky peaks, leading edges of clouds out of sight beyond. In the other direction, the hill sloped away to the wide valley floor. She took note of the landmarks. Plants. Boulders. Lined things up.
Blinked. Merged the computational god-view with her own eyes and perspective. Tweaked alignment. Felt the momentary flash of vertigo. First time in a while. New space. She looked out through this blended, augmented version of reality, saw everything clearly. Whole.
It was all a question of focus.
Same challenge their security forces had in reverse, really. So much land. So much detail. More than anyone could take in at once. Their response to the wide spaces and limited inventory of human attention had been to create and control a few magnet transit points. Their people could watch and engage those spaces directly. Randomly patrol some of the rest.
Outside of that, on the base itself, across the lake bed and roads and hills, they relied on full spectrum electronic surveillance. There was an outer perimeter, but it defined an area, not a ring. Inside, the electronic blanket was nearly a constant. They'd built a system to focus their people's attention on the exceptions. Alarms, alerts, triggers. Probably some sort of pseudo AI calling the shots.
That meant no alerts, no attention.
Her minions were working on that too.
Before leaving, Chloe used the local core to focus her attention on everything, all at once. A thousand square miles, all inputs. For a brief period, anyway. Long enough to analyze, pick an optimal path through. One that would play to her strengths, limit exposure, and avoid their areas of strength or attention. She had paths to alternates if something unexpected came up. But to start, it landed her here. That jagged line to her destination was all she needed to worry about. It was work from here to travel the path. The worst terrain. Technical. But that was the point.
Ninja.
Their sensor mesh wasn't as dense as she'd expected. Still held a few surprises. More if it was long range, wide angle, hyper-spectral and high resolution. She'd confirmed the mix of active and passive, sight, sound, seismic, movement, energy, with more chemical and spectrometer sensing than she'd expected. Not just detection, but a layer of field-analysis. Some was obviously designed to differentiate. Probably to cut down false positives from wildlife.
They'd made an effort to hide some of the tech, but didn't necessarily need to. Disabling any one device would likely set off alarms by itself, and it would be hard to do without being seen by at least two or three other sensors anyway. Deterrence was as much a part of their security strategy as the array itself.
Her preliminary thoughts about power distribution were only half right. For some sensors, it seemed they pumped power back down the data fibers as laser light. For others, they used long-lasting tritium cells in place of solar or batteries. And many of the sensor end units weren't co-located with their supporting tech boxes. Buried. Probably to cut down on maintenance as much as hide them. More than a few sensors extended above ground endoscopically as a result, so heat detection wasn't as reliable an indicator as she'd hoped in the initial drone passes.
But nature rarely builds the same way people do. In the preliminary sweeps, materials, colors, reflections, straight lines and perfect curves gave away almost every manmade object inside the perimeter. Once blended with the rest of the spectrum, core analysis, data, the sensors were exposed. Mapped. Understood. Cones or areas of detection projected out in her overlay view now. Heat blooms of trucks, sniper nests, people. Their dumb drones overhead. Every threat tagged, every movement tracked. Watchers were watched. Not yet controlled.
Pressure and vibration pads were positioned mostly along roads and trails. A few chokepoints through passes. IR, acoustics, nuclear, biological, chemical…others were a mix. Some distribution was randomized. More were clustered where terrain was most favorable to movement. Smooth spaces. Dips. Valleys. Ridges. Mixed it up. A little beyond current era civilian tech. They'd been at this for generations, operating under black budgets. Still, it was fairly low tech, all things considered.
They'd obviously spent time on it though. Applied a rigorous thought process, a goal-oriented set of rules. Those rules made it almost too easy to reverse engineer the layout, even without her little spies to verify everything.
Tens of thousands of sensors, but far fewer along her chosen path. Chosen for that reason. Not many would pose a real detection threat. The rain, and eventually snow, would be a help and a hindrance to her at some point. There were a handful of sensors further on that she couldn't avoid. She'd work on a plan for those as she moved. Still the best path overall.
She could wait for the micro-drones to infiltrate electronically. Tell the sensors to lie. She'd end up there. But not yet. That would help her, but wouldn't be a good test of the suit. Ops teams might be relying on this design at some point, and they wouldn't necessarily have her other skills.
"The more you know…" she said under her breath.
Seamless now. Shifting POV from herself to any point in space within the sensor bubble in real-time. She could read the brand of cigarette the cammo dude in the truck above the front gate was smoking. Pebbles on the runway on the far side of the lakebed. Careful - spoilers. The first of the ant-bots, imaging around corners, looking for ways inside, down… Huh. Found the chow hall…
She watched herself from above, crouched at the rock. She had the right tools to see. Checked the fit of her body suit, looked for gaps, misalignments. Good so far. This design sacrificed ballistic protection for stealth. Traded the non-Newtonian layering of the other beta design for better thermal masking and the necessary internal electronics to make the disappearing tricks work. Different application, different philosophy of use.
When it was turned off, it loomed like a tangled mess. A high tech ghillie suit. When John first saw it, he dubbed it 'the Yeti'. Name stuck.
Most active or adaptive camouflage designs shared the same basic problems as camouflage in general. Backgrounds changed. And sharp lines or inappropriate contrast would draw the eye. Edges. Reflections. Highlights. Shadows. Movement. If things didn't line up perfectly, or if the light was just so, the illusion could be ruined, giving everything away. And staying hidden in visible light didn't necessarily mean camouflaged in other areas. Spectrum, sounds, trails, movement through an environment…
So her design was simple…she was thinking primitive, but caught herself. Accessible at this point in history without too much nano-fab. That was better.
The soft, feather-light flexible strips that made up the irregular shaggy bulk were both sensor and display. The surfaces of each strip an elegant blend of semi-luminous micro-prismatic faceting and advanced light field optics. As a whole, the suit worked to understand the chaotic light and temperature environment on all sides, sense the position and direction of each nanocrystal face, and reproduce and redirect the appropriate information around the wearer. Not images - information about light and heat. Controlled scatter and Interference painted around her. This left her optically camouflaged from visible through IR, independent of lighting or background. And perhaps more importantly, independent of the angle or number of observers present. And no edge outlines with the irregular shapes…
It wouldn't fool someone standing right there, face to face. Or if she walked right up to a sensor. But with even moderate distance, the wearer simply vanished. Flattened into nothing. Simplicity in chaos. Any errors in the mesh were well below the pixel densities of modern optical CCDs, including the multispectral gigapixel cameras dotting the ridges. The suit should work just fine, as long as she kept an eye on distance to sensors, and kept to her path.
Time.
Wish me luck, Max.
She blew an invisible kiss to the sky as she stood. Stepped out from behind the rock, shambled slowly, irregularly, up the side of the first hill.
Max was all turned around. Any sense of scale, distance or direction was blown out here, floating in the black. No recognizable landmarks. No…land…
Could she recognize her home galaxy by sight? If she was able to resolve it from here at all - which seemed unlikely… She'd never seen it from the outside. And it was only one out of two-trillion possible galaxies… and that was just in her region of the visible universe, a little under fourteen-billion light years in every direction. But how far had she gone? That sphere of visibility would center on her wherever she was. And even the observable universe, some ninety-three-billion light years across, wasn't the whole universe… No guarantee there would be overlap. Home could be on the other side of an event horizon, keeping time with the expansion of the universe… Odds are, she'd never see its light at all.
It all looks the same from here.
But assuming she could find her home galaxy, would she know where to find her home star within it? Or the trinary star system that lit their off-world pirate fort? Four, out of a hundred billion swirling stars, ordinary in every way?
Probably not by sight… No maps… No visual markers.
This was so remarkably different from peering into the night sky from Earth. Or Planet Steve. Or even her brief look from their dark cube in the shadow of earth earlier. Every pinpoint was a star… And with two merging galaxies, there were so many, with new hot blue ones forming at the gas-shock boundaries. So clear. So many. And here she was, out floating among them.
…on a Tuesday.
Under her own power, too. She hadn't folded from one bit of space to the next - she'd surfed a goddamn wave of her own making… A warp drive, dragging space itself. Superluminal, but without all that relativistic time-dilation nonsense. It had been less than a second or two. But it took her very, very far from home.
She rotated slowly.
Holy.
Shit.
I mean, WTF, dude… for fucking reals…
Learn something new…
Obviously don't have the field strength thing down yet though.
She startled as her phone rang.
Chloe was hidden there, at the bottom of the rock wall. Smooth, it loomed a few stories overhead. First broken cliff of many. There were several irregularities in the face she'd use to go over. Scouted them out earlier. She'd read somewhere that climbers mostly used their legs. With her enhanced strength, she wasn't finding that to be necessary.
She jumped up about six-feet, slid her hand just inside a small vertical crevice. Cupped, wedged, hanging there for a moment. With that arm, she pulled herself up, kept going. Caught a ledge another couple of feet above with her other hand. From there, she shimmied to the right on her fingertips. Held. Launched upward another four feet to grab an outcropping. She nearly lost balance as a few strands from the suit got between her shoe and the rock face. She recovered, swung back and forth to build momentum. Pushed up and to the left to slip her hand into another crack.
She continued this pattern for a few minutes, from one handhold to another, eventually pulling herself up over the top edge. She stopped, stayed low. There was a thermal sensor not far away. Should be outside detection range, but just barely. She thought about imposing the heat signature of a small deer, but with their level of paranoia, they'd probably already have all the real ones tagged, and would walk this one back to an optical verification or something.
She'd move slow and to the right to ensure she wasn't seen.
Max fumbled in zero gravity, pulled out her phone.
Unknown caller.
Of course it is…
"Um… Hello?"
"Hey Max."
"John?!"
"Far as I know? You sound surprised. Bad time?"
"How…? No, I mean… Sorry… I'm just a little spaced out I guess? Heh. No pun. What's, uh, what's up?"
She chuckled a little to herself. Slowly reached out with her other hand, as if to touch the wall of stars in front of her. Fucking hell that's pretty…
"Just checking in. Thought you and Chloe were going dark, heading to you-know-where this afternoon, but I just saw an update that you popped up in Nassau?"
Max put it together. "Oh… yeah. Phone. Tower. Wormhole. Duh. Yeah. Sorry. No. False alarm…"
"Okay…wait - wormhole? Are you sure everything's alright, Max?"
'Yeah… Thanks for checking in, John."
"No, seriously. Max. Did you get sucked into a wormhole?!"
"No, no. I uh, no, I made one. Small one I mean. I was in a hard vacuum and needed some air. Kinda made an emergency snorkel. Sorry - I know that sounds super 'not-okay', but really, I'm fine. I just miscalculated with something and kinda accidentally ended up somewhere else. …you know wormholes don't really suck people in, right?"
"Max… Vague."
"Sorry. Hang on… um, go to video…" Max tapped over to a real-time feed. John was at a desk. Blinding. She quickly turned down the brightness.
"I can barely see you. Underground?"
"Other way. Hang on…" She switched to the main lens facing away from her. Better camera. "I don't know how this is gonna look, but tell me what you see?"
He squinted at his screen. "What am I looking at? I see smudges of less dark, but it's pixelated and blurry and you keep moving."
"Sorry. How's this?" Max held the phone steady, then carefully released it, letting it float free.
John's face on the screen side of the phone went blank. "Max, is that…"
"Yeah. Not Kansas, I think."
He smiled at the camera, shook his head. "What are you up to? Chloe okay? You guys steal a UFO or something? You don't know where you are, do you?"
She laughed. "No idea, she's fine, no, and…none whatsoever. Could be literally anywhere. Hey! Speaking of 'lost' though, how's Trace? You guys better now? She taking everything in stride, or?"
John laughed. "You want to talk about that now? You're trapped god knows where, and your first thought is to ask how my girlfriend is adjusting to life behind our odd little curtain?"
"Well, yeah. I mean, I haven't talked with you since then. And please - I'm hardly trapped…"
"Sorry… Well she seems, I don't know…really enthusiastic, I guess is a way to put it? You know, Max, sorry — can we talk about this later? You're obviously floating. I'm at one-g… It's like we're in different worlds right now… Then there's the long distance charges…"
Max smiled. "Funny… And fine. Later. I guess I should prolly get back to…whatever it is that's happening out here…"
"You're really weird, Max. You know that right? It's cool. just…keep being you, I guess…"
"Only way I know…"
"Oh, and if you spin back at all, remind me later how funny I was in your time of distress? Like how I helped take the edge off a tense situation, helped you rediscover your faith in yourself, and reignited the courage you needed to find your way home safely?"
"Promise." she laughed.
"Godspeed."
"Smartass. And on that note…"
John chuckled. "Catch you later Max."
"You too, John. Thanks again for checking in. I'm heading back in a few…"
She disconnected. Stared into the distance. She could make out colors a little better now.
God, Chloe's gonna absolutely flip her shit when she sees this… She's back there looking for alien starships, and I think I kinda maybe just became one a little…
Max gave herself a once-over. No real damage from her brief seconds of vacuum exposure. She knew she should head back, but wasn't ready. Not yet. Not until she had a better sense of the accidental movement that got her out here.
She picked a star at random, thinking to head toward it. But there was no way to tell distance, and no way to know which stars were closest. Not from where she was. Not from a single point of view.
She needed to move to a different vantage point, to see which stars moved where. Using her eyes. That would give her a better three-dimensional map of her local area. Motion. Like walking around a tree to unflatten the view of branches and leaves.
She pushed a little. Couldn't tell if she'd moved. The distances were so unimaginably vast. And stars would be so far apart… She pushed a little harder. Small movement, but too fast. Jerked. The stars flipped to different positions, but it was more like a stutter or a jump-cut. Not smooth…
She remembered that she was dealing with light years between stars, so as she moved around in space, they'd appear to be in different places, depending on how far each was from her at the start and at the finish. She'd never see things as they really were right now - only as they'd been when light left them. Where they'd been… And that would change as she drew toward some stars and away from others.
Not like moving around a tree, exactly. More like…moving through overlapping light shells. She'd only ever get a distorted, time-dependent view of where things were. But knowing that… She needed to see them move. That would give her a way to make sense of it. Predict. Learn how things related to each other over relativistic distances… A new way to see her adopted reality. And for that to work, she needed smoother movements… Curves.
Don't jump, Max.
Flow…
She could hear Chloe's voice in the back of her mind. Her blue Yoda. Coaching across multiple timelines… Lessons were often variations on a theme. Trust yourself. Let go of fear. Let go of control.
Somewhere along the way, Max had gotten better at learning, too. Things came so much faster now. She wasn't entirely sure why. Maybe she'd walked free of the thoughts holding her back… Moved beyond fear. Self-doubt. Worry. Of any sense of the impossible… At least when it came to her own weird relationship with this universe. With the things she could do. She'd mastered so many new skills in this fresh timeline alone. Refreshed timeline… Embraced her curiosity with the confidence that nothing could go wrong, that no bad could happen, and there was nothing that couldn't be undone… She experienced reality free from concern about permanent consequences. Immortal, with all the time and space in the universe… She knew she was advancing so much faster than she ever had. Accelerating… toward what?
She took a deep breath. Cleared the cluttered thoughts from her mind.
Alright, Chloe… Without thinking too much about how, she focused only on what she wanted to have happen.
She picked a bright point to be her center pivot. Starting slow and picking up speed, she rotated the universe around her chosen star like it was one of Chloe's holo-models. Intellectually, she knew she was the one following a curving circular path through space, in a warp, while facing a single star. But in the same way it was easier to visualize stopping and starting the universe, rather than altering the motion of her path of intersection along time-like dimensions she couldn't see, it was easier to imagine she was the one staying in place while she barrel-rolled the universe around a star in front of her. Her point of view. Relative. Simplified things.
She felt the energy building up again - like static at the edges as she warped. That brightness. Radiation. Particles trapped. She altered the shape of the warp bubble in real time until it went away. Oscillating the outer edges of the wave, shedding, cutting through, rather than trapping. No dead spaces. No particle vortices. No more static. No more light. Kept rotating.
Turned out, her radius from the star wasn't too large. But the rotation clearly showed her the relative positions and movement of stars around it. She was on her second full orbit when she reversed the rotation. Easy as jogging time. She switched to another axis. She could see it now. Had a sense for the time-distance displacements and distortions. How it looked. How they moved. What it meant. Where things ended up versus where they'd been when viewed from a different place. It was a little like walking along a flowing, turbulent, but clear creek. There was a pattern to the movements of light in there that made sense in four dimensions.
She pulled the star to her. Stopped. Point of view again…for whatever reason, it really was easier to make it all go when she pictured it that way. Felt more natural. Godmode. NoClip. She laughed. Had the hang of it now.
This is…so incredibly fucking cool!
Reminded her of a dream she'd had once…
The star she chose was about the same size in the sky as the moon or sun when seen from Earth. But that still didn't give her a sense of distance. Didn't know how big it was. Seemed reddish, but it was…a star. Very bright. She didn't look directly into it. Thanks for the pro-tip, Don't-Look-into-the-Sun Worm…
Didn't really matter exactly how far away, she thought.
She couldn't make out any planets in the glare.
Because you're stationary… Keep up.
She rotated everything around the star, looking for any close-in reflections. Orbital blips. Any small points that hugged in close. Could I train myself to notice? To feel them from this far away? What is 'far away' in my context? …my 'other' context?
She shifted axis again. Caught one. Half the distance she was. Pulled it to her.
Circled around it. A few hundred miles above, at least.
No atmosphere. It was larger than earth. She could feel that, now that she was close. Mostly rocky world. Craters. Sun blasted. Reds and browns. No signs of water or clouds. No feel of a magnetic field.
She descended to the surface, floating a few feet above. Dirt. Dust. The occasional shattered flat rock. A lot like Luna, only in reds instead of grays. Glassy rock powder. Not much more to see.
Hey, random planet. What should we call you? Sorry - 'Steve' is already taken. 'Bob', you say? You seem more like a 'Robert', but okay…
Bob's barren surface made the desert back home seem like a jungle of life in comparison.
Back home. Chloe. Right.
I've got this for now. Should get back…
She looked up into the black sky of an empty world. Even this close to a sun, she could still make out the twisting arms, the pulling and blending of so many more stars beyond.
After a final look at her newly discovered galaxies, she shrugged, folded back to earth. Above the desert she'd left. She knew the place, even if she didn't know the linear direction. Her universe centered on Chloe. Always orbiting Chloe…
Hey sagebrush…
Miss me?
She noticed her orientation in the bubble. Still free-floating in the center I guess… Long fucking way for that answer… Shit… She laughed, unlatched, repositioned herself within, let gravity pull her toward the bottom. Let her wormhole collapse. She sat cross-legged on the inside of the curved lower boundary. Or am I pulling the lower part up to me? It's all relative. Portals, Max. Do I even need the bubble? Is it too weird to think I could move myself around without it? Especially now? After that? Why is 'with it' any different? It's just more volume, mass… Does it actually do anything at all? Besides life support and keeping bugs out of my teeth, I mean? Could…wait… can I fly?
She saw something move, breaking her thoughts.
A hummingbird rocked up, paused outside her bubble, spun in a circle around her. Flitted away.
So Chloe knows where I am at least… It's her time. Don't be shellfish, Max. Let's…uh…save this line of thought for a non-radar evading moment…
She moved back to where she'd released Chloe. Looked down, couldn't see her anywhere. Fewer than ten minutes had passed since dropping her off. Wouldn't be far. Max still had the map in her back pocket. Beyond the X of the drop-off point, Chloe had inked-in her path, calling out time markers near certain points. Chloe's best guesses on where she'd be, when.
Max would try to stay overhead as much as possible. Safety net. As long as there was nothing for her to see, there was probably no problem… And she figured that if Chloe knew where she was, that was enough.
Max rose up off the floor, floating free again. Centered. She rotated her body, facing down. Given the airspace she'd be floating through, she was sensitive to the idea that she might need to account for some additional minor levels of stealth. Just to make it as fair as possible. She didn't think the boundary layer would reflect energy, but she wasn't sure.
She planned to hang right at the edge of the cloud bottoms, so any errant reflections off her own body would match up with the cloud layer. More likely to be dismissed. Didn't know if they were tuned to resolve things as small as drones, or just big things like planes. Guess we'll find out… She tweaked the external shape of her little bubble of reality, opting for a mix of flat angles, biased down and toward the airbase. If there were radar reflections from her body, this might intercept and move some of them away at an angle before they hit her, rather than back to the source. Or not? Keep her cross-section small, if there was one. She didn't know if any of it would help.
She masked her heat as best she could from below by playing with flow rates in another angular paper-thin layer hugging the first. Turned off her phone. Didn't want to take any chance that her presence would be detected, risk artificially inflating Chloe's retry counter.
As she floated on, Max shook her head.
Sometimes, when she stepped back, it caught up with her a little.
She smiled at the absurdity of it all…
This day. Here. Out there. Time travel and UFOs and tech-invisibility and synthetic butterflies from the future and color changing hair and personal fucking warp drives and… I mean - I was just in another galaxy… another. fucking. galaxy.
…galaxies, I guess. for now…
Whatever.
Shit's so not normal…
Chloe had been at it for a few hours. The early rain gave way to snow. Time and altitude. She was navigating a very specific three-dimensional maze. Fluid over obstacles, she moved through a mix of walking, ducking, climbing and occasionally even crawling in halting shadow-steps like an iguana. Estimated she'd covered about half the distance over the mountain range. The light was long gone, but whatever. It was such a small slice of the spectrum anyway.
The trip exposed a weakness in the lower edges of the Yeti though. Picked up mud and dirt. Interfered with the optics and the redistribution of heat and light field information. She stopped a couple of times to clean the worst of the cruft from the strips. The rain and eventual snow minimized her exposure to sensors, but it was worth noting all the same. Next rev, she'd try a negative electrostatic charge. A small chemical tweak, and the charge would self-generate with the friction of movement. She filed the thought away.
She was feeling good about her chances. Made good time. No missteps, no alarms. The terrain along most of her chosen route was irregular and highly verticalized, which made sense. Difficult, unforgiving terrain wouldn't be anyone's first choice - so it was least watched. Why she'd chosen it. The landscape wasn't presenting any problems for her. Two years ago, she'd have collapsed in a ditch within the first ten minutes. Five, realistically.
A mile back, she'd encountered the first anticipated problem along her route. An unavoidable motion sensor crossover. There wasn't a good way around them. It was a coincidental chokepoint in her way. But there wasn't a better option. Still the best path. If she'd gone forward through it at regular speed, she probably would have tripped one of the two against the background snow. But she was patient. Spent twenty minutes rotating the two distant sensor mounts, slow and smooth. Opened a three-foot gap she was eventually able to pass through. TK for the win…
She'd made it to the mid-range. A few inches of snow over dark rock. A see-saw of ups and downs in a sort of wide, irregular plateau. Sharp crumbly peaks between shallow sand and grit gullies, few hundred yards apart. Even the sagebrush were sparse up here. She'd seen a few tracks in the snow, but no animals to speak of.
Erosion exposed the folded red and brown sedimentary layers that had once been a rolling flood-plain, and millions of years before that, part of a sea floor. Some rocks lay exposed, scattered, cracked and broken from repeated heating and cooling. She scanned around for any fossils, as much for Max as her own curiosity. Didn't seen any in her immediate area. Too much snow, not enough detail. Continued on. LIDAR sweeps kept her low, behind sagebrush through this section.
After another two hours of hard terrain, she was near the lake-end of the mountain range. She didn't have line of sight to the basin yet, but watched a pair of F-16s take off from the main Groom Lake runway complex in her head. They turned, vectored north, but stayed fairly close to the deck, just below the cloud line. Further back, right before dark, she'd watched one of the passenger jets depart. White, single red stripe along the side. Regional ATC had it tagged as Janet-13. Headed for McCarran.
Aside from those two take-offs, it had been pretty quiet. Midweek January storm in Dreamland… She'd kept an eye on the skies. Max was rolling with the clouds, a thousand feet above and a mile behind.
Chloe passed some old rusted mine equipment, then dropped back down to crawl behind a shallow ledge, bypassing a nearby ridge-top camera. Optics wouldn't pick her up, probably. But no reason to take chances. She'd made it this far. Been good about updating the cube every twenty minutes or so too, just in case.
With the darkness, the air temps fell into the high twenties. She'd been running at a reduced body temperature for a while, but there were limits to masking with high differentials. If she'd been wrong about this winding line, or there was even one missed IR sensor, she'd have had no chance of passing undetected in the cold.
As she moved, she followed the progress of her ant and roach-bots. A small adaptive-camo drone had successfully scattered them across the main base before she started the run. Continued over Papoose Mountain, dropping more over the general area where the S4 facility entrance was rumored to be. If it existed at all? Finally releasing the remainder over the fenced in area defining the security perimeter for Site-6, a dozen miles further south. That was a wildcard, but Chloe had a feeling. It was outside the 'shoot to kill' high security zone that defined Area 51, and was completely visible from public roads. Close, but not entirely obvious. It's how she'd do it. Then again, could as easily be nothing. She'd know more later.
Roaches were doing their own thing. Assigned to interior scans of buildings and tunnels, mostly. Some ants scouted, others foraged for resources, made more ants. The copies then went off by wing to scout. Or make more copies if they found a good material cache. She was hoping there really was some sort of central control or surveillance ops center somewhere on the base itself. If just one scout could find it, replicate and start on the links and fractal antennas, she'd own it.
She was banking on that before attempting her descent to the valley floor. Climbing up and over, she wove through the nets of sensors, out of view. But coming down the other side, there was nothing. A long, wide, gentle snowy slope. She'd be completely exposed. Nowhere to hide from human eyes. She had a sensor path. Optics or thermals from the base or overhead drones wouldn't be the immediate problem. The dark trail of footsteps through the thin snowfall would be enough to give her away if anyone was scanning by eye.
She just needed to make it across the dry lake bed to the base proper. She'd be super fucking happy with that. Then Max could pick the cube up, wind back, and drop them right where they needed to be. She'd hopefully have the location of their security operations center confirmed, the test data from the Yeti, and the satisfaction of knowing she'd been able to infiltrate to the base by herself.
Home stretch.
Max wasn't able to find Chloe at all with her camouflage active. And once they lost sunlight, she couldn't see the terrain below her either. Just the lights from the base, the cars back on the main roads, and the air-glow on the horizon from Vegas when the clouds let it through.
She'd popped back home shortly after sunset to pick up some night vision glasses. They looked like ordinary eyeglass frames, but there was something with graphene and transparent nanocrystals on opposite sides of the glass that made it work. Self-powering, converted a wide band of infrared directly into visible light. Different application of the same base materials they'd used to make the holo-displays. But…fewer lasers or something.
When she got back, she still couldn't see Chloe. But everything else was nice and clear.
She floated on for hours, stopping the world every hour or so to come down, stretch her legs. Careful not to leave footprints in snow. Went back home once to feed Emo and raid the cupboard for snacks. Took a short nap in the freeze. Phone still off, she looked at her LCD frog watch. Nearly 10PM. Chloe would be nearing the edge of the runway any time. According to her map notes, anyway.
Max was eventually met by three hummingbirds. They seemed insistent, racing ahead, then back, then darting ahead and waiting. So she followed. They brought her to the northeast corner of the runway. About fifty feet off the edge of the tarmac, a little way into the dry lake bed. She set down, dropped her bubble, crouched in the cold snow, waiting.
Rustling. "Pssst."
Max looked around.
"Pssst."
The other way.
She felt a tap on her shoulder. Smiled and whispered into the darkness, "Hey love. You made it!"
Chloe kneeled beside her in muddy climbing shoes, black cargo pants and a grey tank top. Her face picked up some of the amber lights from the runway. Soft glow. Hair was a mess, plastered to her head. Her camo suit was bunched up, fluffy under one arm. She leaned in, snow crunching under her shifting weight, pecked Max on the cheek. "Of course. You know who you're talkin' to."
"You have control, or are we about to be super popular?"
"Oh, please. Dude. I wouldn't have brought you down…"
"Checking. Have fun?"
"Uh-huh… I mean, it was painstakingly slow going in parts, but yeah. Actually I did… I feel like I just beat the hardest obstacle course ever. Sorry it took so long though. But thanks for the air support."
"Yay. And, always. You know that. Um, so what's the plan? You want me to spin back with a cube, or…?"
"Nah. They're all blind as fucking bats. Well, blind as bats who can see everything except us, and who don't know they're blind, I guess? Whatevs. No need. I'd rather not lose the minion infiltration progress-bar if we don't have to. Maybe pop us home for a few? Kinda feel like I need to shower and change. Grab food? Then we'll come back?"
"I'm on it."
Max folded them back to the penthouse. Kitchen. Chloe dropped the Yeti on the counter, cracked the fridge and grabbed a beer. Max hopped up on the counter. Chloe backed into her, leaning as she took a sip. Her skin was still cool to the touch.
Max hugged her from behind, legs wrapping around her, warming them up. Max whispered close, "I'm really proud of you, Chlo… I mean, I'm always proud of you, but you know what I mean. You just infiltrated one of the most secret and secure military bases in the world. All by yourself. No alarms, no nothing. You're a total stealth ninja badass, you know?"
Chloe turned her head a little. Hand on Max's knee, she leaned back again. Shrugged. "I know."
Max laughed, chin on her shoulder. "So glad it's not gonna go to your head…"
Chloe turned, kissed Max on the nose, pulled back, locked eyes playfully. "You gonna be ready for phase two? Or are you all sleepy like a lamb chop?"
Max shook her head. "I'm good if you are."
Chloe laughed. "A'aight. Shower. Change. Food. Bail?"
"Cool. Need help?"
"Need, or want?"
"Either."
Chloe took Max by the wrist, walking backward, pulled her off the countertop toward their shower.
Max followed. "Good answer."
Chloe woke to the smell of waffles, bacon and coffee. Morning. Shit. It was only supposed to be a quick nap after… Had to be Max clanking around in the kitchen. She sat up and stretched. No Emo, either.
She threw on a long flannel shirt, wandered out toward the kitchen, buttoning the bottom two. Leaned against a wall. See how long it takes her to notice.
Max had her back to Chloe, hovering over a sizzling pan, vent whirring quietly overhead. Max with her bedhead, t-shirt and baggy PJ bottoms. Chloe leaned her head against the wall, watching Max make them breakfast. She'd already finished the waffles. Stacked on plates, still steaming. An assortment of cut fruit next to the whipped cream dispenser on the marble island. Along with glasses of OJ and a full pot of coffee.
Max let out a quiet little yell. "Hey! Ow! No, silly… come on. down. here…" She reached down with both hands, gently and carefully detached a climbing Emo from her leg, moving them both away from the stove, kissed him on the nose. He squeaked. She caught Chloe out of the corner of her eye as she bent to release him near his other food dish. Smiled warmly, "Hey. Morning, sneakypants. Here…warm beans." Max filled a coffee cup for Chloe.
"You're so my hero. This smells amazing. Could have woken me up though - I would have helped. Didn't have to do all of this by yourself."
"I never, ever feel that way." Max leaned forward into Chloe, kissed her neck, pulled back, held out the mug smartly. "I was awake anyway. Figured the smell would tease you out of bed." Chloe took the mug. Max did a jaunty little half-spin, returned to the Pan of Morning Happiness. Pulled out the last few strips of bacon, placing them between the top two folds of paper towel on the tray. Looked back over her shoulder, "Hungry?"
"Marvin."
Chloe took a stool on the living room side of the island, while Max put a pile of bacon on Chloe's plate. Sat next to her with her own.
Between bites, Chloe frowned, said, "Guess we didn't exactly make it back there last night."
Max sprayed some whipped cream on her waffles. Made a surprised-face as an air pocket splattered. She side-eyed Chloe, "That's totally your fault." Decorated the pile with fruit. Strawberries and banana, with tiny chunks of peach. "I was ready to go. You're the one who pulled us off mission."
"Come on dude. Not totally my fault. All I did was pull you into the shower."
Max gave her that look. "Which…took us off mission. See? Totally your fault."
"I don't remember you protesting? And no - don't you fuckin' dare." Chloe eyed her over the rim of her cup.
"I wouldn't… Promises."
Chloe popped bacon into her mouth. "So…uh…daylight run?"
Max nodded, sipped juice. "More people around to ask questions. But easier to blend I guess?"
"Cool."
"We'll need uniforms after all, or?"
"Had some fab'd last night. You know, when it was clear you were gonna be a giant distraction and stuff."
"Me?!" Max laughed, feigning innocence.
Chloe nodded. "Uh-huh. Anyway… Uniforms are done. Downstairs. Makes most sense for us to go in as base cops I think. Security Forces. Some people call 'em SPs? Whatever. Officer ranks, but appropriate for our ages. …You know what I mean. Low, but technically above all of the enlisted peeps. As long as we look like we know what we're doing, they shouldn't fuck with us too much out walking around."
Max cut into another waffle. "K. Are we exploring, or do we have a destination in mind?"
Chloe leaned on her elbows, coffee cup in her hands. "Little of both. Mini-mes kept working after we left. Was able to go through a lot of the base systems overnight. Technical orders, operating procedures, training and security manuals, shit like that. Updated the base map, so we know what's where for the most part. Least who has responsibility for what areas. Some gaps though. I aim to aim for at least one of those, just to check it out. Oh, and I also came up to speed on current military law, regs, training, and expected behaviors and stuff. So I could either give you a debrief and you could rewind, or just follow my lead and we'll be good."
"Fun. Do I need to learn how to salute or anything?"
"Nah. We're going in as officers."
"Not known for saluting?"
"Widely known for being terrible at it."
"Ah. So we just throw on uniforms and blend with the natives then. That simple?"
"That's the plan. Open if you have other ideas. Either way, we're already in their systems. Local and national. We're official and everything. Service and salary histories, full background checks, TS-SCI security clearances, medical records, biometrics, assignment orders to Edwards, with their TDY records coding us for Groom Lake. Oh, and the minions found a few sample ID badges and security keycards in the dorms, so I mocked new ones for us that should pass. And open nearly any door. I mean, our bosses technically don't know who we are or have any memory of us if it comes to that. But we own several of their security systems, so…"
"Slacker. Not all of them?"
"It's not monolithic. There's overlap, but defense contractors run area security, Air Force Security Forces run base security, alongside defense contractors and the CIA, depending on where, exactly… They coordinate, but… It's all compartmented, even onsite. Some hangars, buildings or land areas are military only, some are contractor only… Some are off grid, off any networks. Deep black. Underground shit. They have security, but it's not tied to anything else. Makes sense I guess. Good news is that our access cards and codes will work for most areas. Bad news is that the uniforms alone will set off red flags in other places off the base that we probably wanna snoop out."
"So, we'll need costume changes…"
"It'll be just like role-play. But…you know…with more people and fewer naughty bits exposed…"
Max rolled her eyes, said sternly, "Eat your breakfast…"
Max was pretty sure she looked ridiculous. She remembered playing dress-up together when they were kids. Raiding their parent's closets. A lifetime ago and…not that long ago. Looking at herself in the mirror now felt exactly the same.
Make-believe in clothes that didn't fit right. Only this time, it was combat boots, oversized baggy camouflage… ABUs, Chloe said. Right. Lingo… Her hair was pinned up under her dark blue beret. Standard issue Beretta M9 pistol in a holster on her right leg. A dark blue bar on each collar designating her rank. Left arm patch with 'SF' in big dark letters.
Chloe went downstairs to one of the armories to grab herself a walking-rifle. She'd be back.
Max examined herself in the mirror again. Nope. Lame.
Let out a breath. Closed her eyes.
Stretched this way then that to feel where it wasn't right. Muscle memory. Came rushing back. Careful…
With expert movements, she reached under the shirt to her hips, pulled the web-tabs at her waist to the rear until they were tight. Unfastened the two button tabs near the small of her back. Adjusted them one more in, pulled and folded, cinching her top tighter at the waist. Crouched. Untied, then re-laced her boots, leaving the top ring empty. She used the extra length to wrap around the top an extra time, tied them in the back, crossing three times instead of one before making the double-bow. Pulled the roll at the bottom of the pant legs over the top of her boots, adjusting the velcro stretchy band inside, covering the lace loops. She stood again, eyes still closed. Stretched. Better. Pulled down on the bottom of her shirt, adjusted a strap on her leg holster, pulling the top of her sidearm in a little tighter. Grabbed her sleeve ends from inside with her hands, she popped them out and down. Sleeves fell right above the knuckle of her thumb.
There.
That would be better.
She opened her eyes, looked at herself. Adjusted the peak of her beret. It was better. Everything fit properly. Razor fucking sharp.
She stared at her reflection. Lingered too long.
Suddenly a little too real.
Brought it back. That old melancholy pushed through her from behind like an ocean swell. She realized this was the first time she'd been back in a uniform…since…
Unwanted memories.
No.
Not now.
Along for the ride.
…since…
…the last uniform was stolen. Owner dead, hidden in a closet. Not exactly the same. Started out just as shapeless. She'd made it work for her then too. The first movement. On repeat. Became rote. In darkness. Desperation, exhaustion, crusty nostrils from the near-constant rewind-nosebleeds at the end of far too many extended photo jumps. Mid 22nd. Things were well and truly fucked. Rule of law varied by province. Changed hands so often, it was hard to keep track of which were safe.
They'd made a bad call. Maybe just bad luck. Got separated. Open air market in a bombed out city square in what used to be Colorado. So fast. A few minutes of inattention cost them so goddamn much…
So many tangled loops.
Twenty years to find her, another sixty to get her out before they could…
Not. FUCKING. NOW.
Lost in the crash of the wave.
She stayed too long.
Swept up, tumbling inside.
Reliving.
Turning over old horrors, old stones that never changed.
Chloe. How many times… how many left behind?
Old guilts resurfacing.
Never really went away…
Enough, goddammit.
Enough anger.
Enough fucking darkness.
I don't want to go that way.
A sound at the doorway brought her all the way back. Eyes refocusing, she saw movement past herself, through the mirror. Chloe came in with a rifle and a goofy smile.
Contrasts. Shiny.
This…felt like play. Maybe that was the difference in the end. Maybe that's why she'd felt so much like a kid before. Part of her was much closer to childhood than any of that. Maybe it was simply because she could. There was no reason not to, really. She was back at the beginning of history. More powerful, more herself than she'd ever been. Same with Chloe. They were together, they had a plan, and they had so many people dedicated to helping them. All of them. They were gonna change everything that went wrong last time. End all of the useless bullshit before it can ever start.
It wasn't that nothing could go wrong, so much as nothing could go wrong that couldn't be fixed.
That was the real difference now…
She took a breath.
It's what she said to herself before, floating in the middle of nowhere.
We're beyond permanent consequences here…
Could that really, finally be true?
That future's in the past. Sideways.
But no longer possible.
Another 'never again' that will never be…
You wouldn't make the other choices anyway.
Doesn't matter.
She doesn't remember.
And none of the rest even exist yet…
Calm.
She's okay. You're okay.
Breathe, Max.
You're…allowed to feel happy.
She knew all of that, of course. But reminding herself explicitly was a way to try to break her mood.
Direct herself.
The uniform thing caught her off guard was all.
Should have expected…
Would take a little time.
She reached up, tilted her beret ever-so-slightly off kilter. Doesn't need to be perfect.
Reverse-Chloe gave her a nod.
She was dressed identically. Same uniform, but with a single brown bar on each collar instead of blue. She carried it well. Looked legit. Strawberry blonde hair in a tight bun at the back of her head. Same sidearm, but carrying an M4 rifle on a sling now. The way she filled out the uniform, carried herself, she looked professional. It was part posture, part attitude. She played older somehow. Max was more 'confident, but relaxed' in a low key sort of way. Eagle-eyed though. Watching everything. Old habits.
They'd take Chloe seriously. On the base. Prolly assume that Max was fresh off the plane, under Chloe's wing. Suited her just fine…
"Why so serious, doll?" Chloe asked, looking at Max's screwed up expression in the mirror. "Still wanna go?"
Max relaxed, shook her head. Turned away. Toward her Chloe. Felt herself smile. A real one. "Sorry. Just fell into a little funk. Old wounds. Coming out of it. I'll…be okay."
Chloe, concerned but respectful, "Would a hug help?"
Max whispered, "I'd like that. A lot."
"Hey…" Without another word, Chloe tossed the rifle on the bed, wrapped her arms around Max, pulling her close.
Max held on tight. So incredibly thankful to have her.
So incredibly thankful for all of their second chances.
Sometimes more.
Keep paying it forward…
All you can do.