-A SECOND LATER-
"I'm sorry, what?" B-15 stares at them in consternation. "Loki's ghost?"
"It's not actually a ghost, we're protected from the paranormal here," O.B. corrects. "It's a temporal phantasm. I think. I don't know! I also thought it was confined to R&A and the adjoining workroom, but –" He gestures toward the archway. "It probably just happened out there, too. I don't have an explanation for it yet."
"I didn't have time to tell you, but Miss Minutes sent me something on the way down here. There were a couple reports of strange holograms in the archives over the last month," Casey says. "Not specifically mentioning him, but then again most of the agents don't have any real idea who he is. They just report seeing weird green images that only last a few seconds before disappearing."
B-15's face clearly screams you have ten seconds to explain, though her tone, when she speaks, is calm enough. "When, exactly, were you going to tell anyone about this?"
"When I could prove it wasn't just temporal echoes from what we now know is a massive series of greater-than-lightspeed redline events, in a place that isn't equipped to handle them internally! We've already uprooted everyone's belief system once, I can't just go around telling people to be on the lookout for…I dunno, visits from the Ghost of All Times Future?"
"He's not wrong," Mobius' voice heralds his re-appearance in the archway, hands on hips and clearly a man on a very pissed-off mission. His trouser cuffs are splotched with coffee, and the mug is nowhere to be seen. "But you better have a hell of an explanation for us at least, O.B. What is going on."
"I'm…working on it?"
The analyst's eyes narrow, two unusually threatening points of steel. "Is that a question or an answer."
O.B. shuffles a step backward. "…An answer?"
"Mobius, what happened." Well-practiced at de-escalation by now, B-15 pushes the stool she'd vacated in his vague direction, but he ignores it, gesturing impatiently across the desk.
"It was just a couple of seconds." The tone is clipped and clinical, but there's an edge of something else that hadn't been there before. It sounds suspiciously like hope. "Like O.B. said, kinda like a hologram? But it looked more solid at the edges than any hologram I've ever seen. Didn't move like one either, just stood there."
Scribbling furiously in an empty notebook, O.B. pauses to push his glasses up. "What did it look like?"
"Look like? I dunno, like Loki. In that costume we saw, that last day. Overcompensating horns and all."
"Good, good. That tracks. What was it doing?"
"What do you mean, what was it doing?"
"Well, when he's appeared in here, he just kind of wanders around aimlessly or just stands there staring at nothing. Eyes usually closed."
"Like a ghost," Casey mutters, looking five seconds from crossing himself just to be on the safe side.
"Like a temporal phantasm," O.B. corrects impatiently. "Unable to interact with surroundings, no sight, no sound, no consciousness."
Mobius looks puzzled. "What do you mean, no sight?"
"He spent like, two whole minutes staring at a wall in here about a week ago. Didn't even blink when I waved a hand in front of him and tried to zap him with a NAPSA."
"We are not calling it that."
O.B. shrugs, unperturbed. "Whatever we call it, it went right through him. That's why I assumed it was a temporal phantasm. The definition is literally, a non-corporeal and uncontrolled residual echo of unusually concentrated temporal energy."
"He wrote about it in here," Casey interjects, holding up the bold yellow edition of the recently revamped guidebook.
"Not at length, but yes. The time bubble the TVA resides in probably weakened in a couple of hotspots, after being under that much temporal energy bombardment from the degrading Loom. Blast doors aren't a complete failsafe, they're just designed to slow the entropic process. Pair that with the consolidated aura Loki left behind, and it's not surprising there are echoes of the time slipping here and there."
"Oh." In the one word, the life seeps slowly out of Mobius' voice. "I thought he was looking at one of the new posters, on the wall by the elevator."
"That's probably just coincidental," O.B. says, carefully gentle. "A phantasm has no perception of its surroundings, no consciousness. It's just an after-image imprinted on the fabric of space-time. Like an echo in a valley, it'll just fade after a bit."
"You're sure of that? Because he was smiling at it, and if there's no consciousness, that shouldn't have happened, right?"
O.B. glances at B-15.
"Mobius. Are you sure you're not just, well. Seeing what you want to see?" she finally asks, firm but with no judgment. "It can't be illusion projection, because we re-installed the magic dampeners. And there's no way he could even sense the TVA to attempt a conscious projection, much less hone in on a particular part of it."
"He might not even be conscious in the first place. Do we even know if…" Casey gulps, quailing under the death-glare he receives, and hastily turns back to O.B. "If he's still in there? Like, alive?"
"He's alive," Mobius snaps, one hand punctuating the sentence on the desk with a very loud thud of emphasis.
"We don't have proof of that."
"We have readings from the tree!"
"We have indistinct readings of a tree-like structure, that seem to be coming from somewhere in the vicinity of the end of time, yes. But we have nothing to compare them to, and without a standard of measure, readings have no meaning. They're just there.
"I can't tell you if he's still alive, or even still aware of anything, because there is no precedent for this, no standard for comparison. The best I can tell you is that there's a massive power source inside the structure with a continual tachyon discharge stronger than I've ever seen, and it shows no signs of weakening or fluctuating. It's completely static."
"So he's alive!"
"Or he's in some kind of dissociative hibernation, or worse, just turned himself into an infinitely powerful, self-sustaining temporal battery," O.B. replies bluntly. "I can't in good faith promise you he's alive, at least as we understand the concept, Mobius. I'm sorry."
"Then these images we're seeing really are just ghosts."
"Temporal phantasms, Casey." O.B. sighs. "But yes, that's the most likely explanation."
"He's alive," Mobius repeats, both hands on the desk this time and leaning into O.B.'s personal space. "Lokis are survivors, all of them. I should know!"
"You should," B-15 says, putting a hand on his arm, which tenses painfully under the touch. "But I don't think you can be objective here, Mobius."
"Of course I'm not objective! But this isn't actually personal, you guys. I had you look into this for a reason, O.B. Part of that was because we need to know exactly what happened, in as much detail as possible."
O.B. peers skeptically at him over his glasses.
"I'm serious, we all need to know. Because if I'm right, we could have a mighty big problem on the horizon."
"Bigger than a multiversal war full of genocidal Timely variants?" B-15 asks, eyebrows raised.
"Not exactly."
-FIVE MINUTES LATER-
"Okay, talk to me. What is going on with you, Mobius." B-15 sets a new coffee cup down in front of him, and then pulls out the small chair catty-corner and settles into it, arms folded loosely on the formica tabletop. "You've been acting strangely ever since you returned from the Timeline. Did something happen while you were down there?"
"No." Fingers skim the lip of the cup in an absent, anxious gesture.
"You don't sound really sure about that."
"That's just it, B. I'm telling the truth – nothing happened." His eyes dart upward to hers for a moment, and then he looks back down at the cup. "Nothing at all."
She realizes in that instant, what the phrase actually means, and why he came back. "Nothing at all, good or bad," she says, not really a question.
Mobius shrugs, silent.
"It's not for everyone. Making a life, finding a purpose, down there," she adds, slow and cautious amid the deathly silence. "And you're not the only one who thought they wanted it and changed their mind, you know."
"I guess."
"There's no right or wrong choice here, Mobius. The important thing is that you have a choice, now."
"Do I, really?" He shakes his head, as if divesting himself of some strange memory, and scoots forward just a bit. "But this isn't about me. I realized something while I was down there. And it could be important."
She reaches out, and clasps his wrist briefly. "So talk to me. You spent how long down there?"
"Little over a year in Earth time. Bought a house on the beach, kept an eye on what would have been my family on the timeline once in a while, traveled a bit. Tried new things. Bought a laptop. Watched a lot of people. Learned to swim. Read a bunch of books about sharks. Stopped swimming after that." He clears his throat. "Re-learned a whole lot of things I probably knew once, and just lost in a memory wipe somewhere along the way. Spent most of my time in a library the last few weeks. Made some realizations."
She feels a sinking sense of dread, the stomach-twisting fear of even more unknowns. "What did you realize, Mobius."
"Do you know how gods are created and sustained?" he asks, seemingly off-topic and almost pensive.
"Not particularly," she replies. "I would assume by some source of immense power, like an infinity stone. Or maybe another god."
"That's how they're created usually, yeah. But not how they're sustained, according to almost everything I've ever read." He leans back, fidgeting with the coffee cup. "They usually maintain that power through belief."
"You're talking about faith? Worship?"
"Whatever label you want to give it. It's all through Earth's mythological and religious history, and I'm guessing develops in sociological parallel through other planetary civilizations, too. Religions are founded on faith. And when people lose faith, when they stop believing, their deities start to lose power."
The knot of dread turns into a tighter snarl of anxiety. "So you think at some point, that'll happen to Loki."
"You think it won't?"
"Mobius, anyone who was involved in this whole thing believes in him, even if they didn't at first. It's kind of hard not to, now. And it'd take a lot more than an impending temporal war to change that. Even if most of the TVA don't really know quite what happened, they're being retrained. His influence is everywhere. I don't think you need to worry about us losing faith."
"I know that, and you know that," is the quiet reply. "But if the TVA is out of sync with the flow of all time…there's no possibility that he knows that."
Oh. Her eyes widen at the implications.
"He can't see us. Sylvie, I'm guessing, and when we leave the TVA for a mission on the branches, maybe he can look in, I'm not sure? But that's all, and that's not gonna be enough forever."
"Mobius…"
"That's why I was hoping O.B.'s phantasms were more than just residual afterimages. If he's found a way to somehow see into the TVA, there wouldn't be the same scale of problem. I thought maybe he'd found a way to override things. Duplication casting, and all that."
"But that doesn't seem to be the case."
"No. So we're back to having a problem. Whatever deities exist on Earth, there's no one down there, at least on that particular timeline branch, who believes in this particular god, much less a 'god of time,' or whatever his final form is now. Just in general, there are fewer and fewer people every year who believe in anything, at all. And they definitely don't worship any deity but their own personal interpretation of one."
"So as soon as enough time passes, there won't be very many who even know the truth," she says quietly. "At least no one that he can sense, on any timeline."
"Yeah." Mobius shakes his head. "I know it's probably a long way away. And I know I'm acting under personal bias, I'm not an idiot."
"You're one of the smartest people I've ever met," she agrees, and is a little tickled to see his surprise at the unexpected compliment. "But…?"
"But if a multiversal war is around the corner, we're gonna need him, aren't we? And we'll need him at full power, whatever that means. Based on what I saw while down on the timeline…I don't see how the current situation is indefinitely sustainable, at the rate of growth we're going to keep seeing. It's a scaling problem."
"Mobius. We don't even know if that's actually still him in there. He could just be a – a being of raw power now, like O.B. said."
"Maybe. And maybe he's just become a sort of self-fulfilling, personified Time Stone, I don't know. I just…I don't think so. I don't feel like that's the answer." He takes a long drink of the coffee, and put the cup back on the table, a trifle unsteadily. "I have to believe he's in there somewhere."
She sighs, and doesn't bother to contradict him.
"And yes, I'm biased," he adds with a helpless shrug. "If he's still alive, I don't want him to be stuck there all alone, at the End of Time, losing what humanity he might possibly have left under the onslaught of…whatever he is, now."
"He made a choice, though."
"Is it actually a choice, if it's the only option left?" Mobius asks, with a sweeping gesture. "I saw the time-slipping, up close and personal. It was painful. Can you imagine hundreds of years of that? Watching everything fall apart again and again, and again and again?"
"I don't want to imagine," she agrees quietly.
"The temporal mapping just confirmed what I figured happened. He didn't want this. He had the power to walk away at any time, and honestly, I wouldn't blame him. But he didn't. He did the hard thing, the impossible thing, for us. For all of us."
"For all time," she murmurs.
"Yeah." He picks up the coffee cup again, and stares down at it for second. "So I guess I just spent a lot of time wondering…does it really have to be all time, always?"
"It seems to be set up that way, both at the beginning and when he changed things. Where would we even start changing that?"
Mobius raises an eyebrow over the rim of the coffee cup.
"What are you up to."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"You're a bad liar, Mobius."
"Well, we can't all be Loki, now can we. So do you wanna hear my grand plan or not?"
"Ugh. I'm going to regret the rest of this conversation, aren't I."
His smile is very, very small, as if it's completely out of practice and not quite up to speed yet. But for all that, it's full of mischief.
"Oh, yeah. You may need a slice of pie."
-A LITTLE MORE LATER, BUT ALSO AT THE START-
"Wait, wait just a doggone minute." Hopping along the top of his cubicle divider, Miss Minutes jumps to perch on the polished desk-top instead. "So…your proposal, which I was stupid enough to submit to the Council on your behalf yesterday."
"Yes, ma'am." Mobius's patient voice is muffled in a file drawer.
"I thought the phrase 'satellite office' meant a secondary TVA sittin' on a timeline branch! Not buildin' one from scratch, smack in the middle of the Void! What are you thinkin', sir!"
"The murder clock is right," B-15 points out. "Literally no one would think you meant something that ridiculous. And it is ridiculous."
"See, that is not my fault. I'm an analyst, and one of the best this place has ever seen, if I do say so myself. You should expect fine print, and lots of it," Mobius fires back. He hauls a stack of folders out of the drawer and finally locates the correct one, well-camouflaged under two reports from Requisitions. "Wait, here it is. See? Already ratified by the council. All three phases of it."
"I know. I was presiding over the council, before I went on that mission and got dragged down to O.B. and a brand new mess," B-15 drawls, leaning against the adjoining desk and crossing her arms. "You had her submit it literally 60 seconds before mandatory break time, and we all trusted you enough to just wave it through without discussion after skimming the summary."
"Why, you sneaky, connivin' little man!"
"Go away, you." Mobius shoos the little orange menace off his desk, using an empty file folder like a bulldozer to aim her at the nearby shredder. She promptly falls off the side of the desktop with a dramatic huff and vanishes.
"You signed it, though," he adds, glancing slyly over his shoulder. "It's on permanent record now, in triplicate and stamped by the judges themselves. I have the council's full 'blanket permission to begin preliminary workforce drafting and diversion of any required funds, physical surveys and construction to be initiated at my discretion.'" He ruins the admittedly impressive flow by grinning shamelessly and adding, "No backsies."
"Mobius, honestly. Did you do anything down there on the timeline other than dream of unbridled chaos?"
His cheeks flush slightly, but she can't tell if it's indignation or something else. "Of course I did!"
"Because it sure seems that way."
"I ate my dinner first before moving on to dessert, thank you. Wrote out that proposition for Resources, to help everyone make an informed choice about the Future without disturbing any of the branches. See, I learned all about these things called timeshares, right, and they're probably a scam on earth in most cases, and definitely a scam on other planets, but the idea is sound, and it wouldn't be that hard to implement something similar. Find places across the timelines where hunters and agents can take a few weeks, acclimate to time passing, see if they really want that life, give people a place to mentally or physically decompress. Observe what we're protecting once in a while, before getting back to work. Might help with the turnover rate, if nothing else."
"You spent a year on the beach, studying business leadership and Norse mythology, and came up with a temporal timeshare plan."
"Hey, I learned to how to make something called a mixtape, too. But yes." With a dramatic flourish, he holds up the file folder, which is nearly an inch thick and covered in colorful sticker notes. "That was the Past. Soon as I came back to the Present, I started working on this." He gives it an enticing little shake. "Come on, you know you want to be involved. Take a look."
She snorts, but accepts the folder, and starts flipping through it with the deadly honed accuracy of someone who's read far too many such files in the last few months and can summarize nearly any length of text on sight now.
"All right. It's not completely ridiculous," she finally admits, because it does actually look like he's thought this out as well as any other analyst's major project might have been. In fact, it looks like…
This looks more like a decade of work, feverishly crammed into a quarter of that time, the usual period it might have taken the average TVA analyst to come up with something of this scale. Schematics, outlines, roadmaps, calculations and diagrams, cost analysis, operational procedures, resource allocation, asset protection.
This is the product of at least weeks, probably much longer, and he's thought of nearly everything. Dozens, possibly hundreds of details they probably should have considered before now, and just haven't yet, immense damage control and a host of traumatized TVA agents being the first priorities of this new regime.
Actually, it is ridiculous. Ridiculously amazing.
"Mobius. How long did this really take?"
A wry little smile, and he waves off her pointed look, leans back in his chair with an obnoxiously loud creak. "Not hundreds of years," he finally says. "But long enough."
Long enough to think of…, well, everything.
Game plans for the dangerous variants they just can't safely (or humanely) keep imprisoned indefinitely in memory cells within TVA walls; an actual reformation program, based in the Void, with failsafes to keep them there if the program fails. A roadmap, to offer Loki variants a version of the deal their Loki had been given, all those months ago: help hunt down HWR in his various incarnations, in exchange for a tentative truce, shelter and protection from Alioth in the Void. Long-term maintenance plans to keep the monster well-fed, by pruning minor branches that were already dying anyway, empty universes, abandoned buildings, that kind of thing.
Blueprints and coordinates for smaller outposts hidden away on strategically placed primary branches, in the event that the TVA ever becomes collateral damage in the multiversal war to come. Evacuation plans and escape routes, for agents and temporal prisoners alike, in that worst-case scenario.
A backup proposal to protect the Tree, a layer of defense for all times. Even more contingency plans, none fully realized but in a solid infancy, to eventually replace its power source, potentially with a branch-specific Time Stone for each, enabling them to siphon off and divide the required power at least on occasion. A notation in the margin documenting the branch Sylvie is currently living on, and the best time to reach her when they need to call in a favor.
Safeguards in the event Alioth fails in its imposed guard duty, or is enchanted by a being of powerful magic, eager to assume that elusive throne at the End of all things. A small orange sticker note on page 74, reminding them to retrieve and either reform or reset Ravonna Renslayer, if she's survived.
A list of known Loki variants on lesser important branches, who might be persuaded to assist the TVA in the right set of circumstances or for the right price. Critical analysis of the best times and locations to enlist their assistance on those branches.
Diagrams and blueprints for the creation of a secondary TVA. An observation post in the midst of the Void, to monitor the timelines and assist the primary hub. Protected against Alioth and temporal incursions, but only partially protected against magic. At the end of time, yet not completely out of time.
The Head and the Tail. A first line of attack and last line of defense, working in continuous, unbroken tandem against what is to come. One hidden from time, and one hidden amid its ruins.
Symbiotic synchronicity, reaching from The Beginning to the End, and back to the Beginning.
She shakes her head, a little awed at the extent of the proposal. He's certainly lived up to his name.
"You know this will take years to set up, Mobius. Maybe decades, or even longer."
"I know. But however long it takes…we have the time now, don't we?" he replies quietly. "He made sure of that. I'm not gonna waste it here tied to a desk, or working a 9-to-5 on the timelines. He wanted us to live, B. Not just survive."
Personal motivation's clearly a big factor in these plans; but that's not necessarily a bad thing, she thinks. They're well past the rigid regime of He Who Remains and the All-Seeing-But-Never-Seen Timekeepers, who demanded detachment and compliance under threat of being literally torn from every thread of existence.
Mercy could not partner with law, chaos did not collaborate with order. Never the two could meet, or the Sacred Timeline would fall.
But not anymore.
Now, the two can peacefully co-exist, or possibly even more.
The silence breaks when he clears his throat, a little awkwardly. "So? Whatcha think?"
"Mobius, this is…truly impressive. But I can't." She sighs and closes the file with a thwack of finality. "We are gearing up for war. I have to oversee the council and recruit generals for the multiversal task forces. There are thousands of He Who Remains' variants we have to locate, categorize, and start tracking, we still don't have a perfect system in place for transplanting the hunters and agents who want to return to a timeline…I can't take on oversight of a side project, not of this magnitude. Not until we're stable again, and maybe not then."
"Yeah, I didn't suppose you could," Mobius mutters, a little glumly. "Can't blame a guy for trying, though. I don't think anyone else in this place is gonna take me seriously."
"Hey. Look at me." He looks up, and she hands the file back to him. "You do know that I'm not Renslayer?"
"Well, yeah? But –"
"There's no power imbalance here, Mobius. This isn't a dictatorship, or a cult, or whatever we want to call it, anymore. And you've earned a seat of respect on that council." A faint half-smile. "Even if you manage to be late to every single meeting. In a place where time stops, which is certainly noteworthy, to say the least."
"I'm not a big meetings guy..."
"My point is: You don't answer to me, and you don't need my oversight." She puts a hand firmly on his shoulder. "Maybe it's time you took control of something big, for a change. Be a special agent and take the lead here."
"Psh. I'm just a regular guy. On the Sacred Timeline or otherwise." The words are quiet, almost wistful, as he absently traces the green sticker note on the front of the file.
"Loki didn't seem to think so. Pretty sure he thought you were the most important human in the universe. And given what you did for him, how you changed him? I think he might have been right."
Mobius shuffles more rapidly through the papers, pointedly not looking anywhere near her, but color steadily creeps up his neck, right into his ears.
She tries, mostly successfully, not to laugh, and it only comes out affectionate. "I'm not blind, Mobius. And if you're right, and he is this new God of All Time…his word is a kind of gospel now, isn't it? Maybe you should trust it."
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, okay. Literally the god of lies. God of stories." It's accompanied by a snort that has zero derision in it, only a sort of dreamy wistfulness.
She squeezes his shoulder. "So go prove to all of us that this story isn't over yet. Every god needs a human intermediary, don't they?"
Mobius finally looks up at her, genuine curiosity in his expression and something like a fire burning in the back of his eyes. "You really think I can do this?"
"If you don't get get yourself eaten by Alioth before you can get the safeguards implemented…actually, yes. If anyone could pull this off, it can and should be you."
"Thanks, B."
She leaves him then, illuminated in the light of a solitary desk lamp. Buried in requisition forms and diagrams and scribbled notes and broken pencils and a half-dozen empty cocoa cups, a scattered whirlwind of paper chaos framing his feet.
And if she sees a sudden glow of green linger ghostlike on the back side of the cubicle before vanishing, well.
That's another story, isn't it.