"Wake up, sleepyhead," Vivian's father told her.
Viv's eyes flung open, scanning the insides of her room with panic.
"I can't believe you're 19 and still needing naps like a 5-year-old," he said.
"...did we miss dinner?" she asked.
"It's only 6:30 PM, we've got plenty of time," he told her. "Luc and Nina are waiting in the driveway."
"Sorry, the stress from today got to me," she commented. "Do you mind driving me? I felt like taking my car, but not anymore."
"I got ya," he replied.
They walked down the stairs, out the front door, into her father's SUV. As she began to buckle up, she inadvertently checked her sternum.
"...great," she muttered.
"What is it?" he asked, and Nina's car lights lit up and she drove off.
"...I would say 'nothing,' but I never had this birthmark until this morning," she told him.
"You can testify to that 'til the cows come home, but you always had it from the day your mom gave birth," he said.
"What do you mean, you mean I was right?!" Viv demanded.
"All I have to say is that, from my own experience, I know a hundred percent what it's like to be told my memories are wrong when I thought I knew with absolute certainty," he answered. "Does it matter? Does obsessing over it beget anything useful? You show me if you can prove that it does."
After a relatively quiet remainder of the drive, they parked in an open lot and dined at the restaurant.
"Luc, has today been weird for you?" she asked him as their salad dishes were taken away and replaced with the entrées.
"It's been weird for all of us," he replied. "The emperor turned out to be a frickin' terrorist with mind control."
"No, on top of that, do you remember a different past, even as a dream?" she asked.
"Nope," he replied, shoveling in angel hair pasta with chicken parmigiana.
"I knew that guy," Nina said. "If I had known, I'd have frickin' reported him to the cops."
"You're just casually talking about other worlds like they're real," Luc said.
"...well maybe they are," Viv contested.
"Not here," Luc acerbically spat back.
"Viv," her dad replied, "even if it's true, can any of us even control where we go? No. But when the time comes that our paths cut off from each other's, remember me, kids."
"...Fair enough," she muttered, chewing into a garden pizza.
"Can I ride home with you, Nina?" she asked.
"Yes, but also I have to be home at 9:00 and asleep at 11:00," Nina replied.
The drive home was full of quietude.
"Viv," Nina said. "If there was actually a way for us to change worlds at will... I hope I could see Euphy again."
"Well, now you're gonna be disappointed... because the other worlds I dreamed being in I only left because I fucking died." Viv elaborated.
"...fuck."
"G'night, Nina," Viv said, kissing her on the cheek, stepping out of the car and waving goodbye.
She stepped up to her room, brushed her teeth, showered, and crashed on top of her covers.
And then there was night.
It was like a lucid dream... she thought to herself as she drifted off.
The Geass Directorate has been an abject tyranny, she heard in her dreams. But what do you recommend I do with this interloper, whose life was supposed to be what you called a pilgrimage?
And then there was dawn.
Vivian took care of her morning hygiene, then went to UP's website.
She then called Nina.
"Hey. So, the fall semester is going to be graded as a contingent completion with graded finals optional. Do I have that right?"
"...I haven't even checked the school's website yet. I've been busy watching the news."
"Why's that?" Viv asked.
"The sounds of airplanes and helicopters at my condo kept me up all night," Nina explained. "I live next to the airport, and Euro-Britannian troops for the UFN have been arriving nonstop. Speaking of which, supposedly later this month my other friends from high school are getting flown in from Area Ele-I mean, the USJ."
"...I'm going to take a Calculus test," Viv said.
"Is your grade that bad?!" Nina inquired.
"Yes."
"Well, good luck-"
"You're driving me," Viv added.
"Aw, but you know you're not the only one who hates morning traffic!"
"You'll do it anyways, out of the goodness of your heart," Viv said, neglecting the fact that she had gotten groceries for Nina and cleaned after her cat on a weekly basis in return as she slaved away at their STEM courses. "And because you love spending time with me."
"I would have thought you'd say because I owe you one."
"...I don't have it in me to hold a ledger of debts," Viv said. "I thought you knew me by now."
An hour later, Viv checked her phone.
"8:15... where are you, Nina..."
With impeccable timing, the doorbell rang.
"Hi," she greeted Nina.
"The traffic's gonna be batshit crazy at this hour, and I'm sorry, but I slept in and there have been military vehicles on the highway," the bespectacled chemist explained.
"That's okay by me as long as I'm not feeling stress in the morning," Viv added.
"Well, I need coffee. Did your dad make any?" Nina asked.
"Yes, but he poured it out before going to work," Viv lamented. "We have Behemoth Energy Drink with L-theanine, though."
"I'll have to take that, because without caffeine I crash miserably," Nina explained.
On the road, Viv witnessed firsthand the military convoys that Nina was talking about, which without semantics could be mistaken for an invasion.
"...dozens of humvees," Viv said nervously.
"And, if you haven't noticed," Nina added, "They're all most concentrated around the airport."
When they finally arrived, they saw two vehicles of university cops on campus and one humvee parked one lane across.
The soldiers were carrying weapons of war and commanding the police officers to discard their weapons.
"This is our job, though! We keep this school from having crime and domestic violence!" a policewoman explained.
A gruff French-accented European with a rifle in his arms replied "And now the peacekeeping is our responsibility."
"Give it a rest, Irene," a policeman said.
"...kay, bye. I won't force you to stay here," Viv said.
"Oddly this isn't the most stressful situation I've ever been in," Nina reassured her.
"Well, love you, sis. I'll be done in about 30 minutes, so come back then, okay?" she said, closing the door on her.
She made her way up the staircase toward the administrative building.
"You there," a stubbled soldier with lambdacism shouted.
"Me?" she asked.
"Your tattoo, it's not legal to put it there."
"It's not a tattoo, it's a birth mark," she answered, her face turning flustered.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I thought it was illegal. Getting it on purpose is illegal in the Middle Eastern Federation."
"Well, it's not here. And I was born with it."
"Your face is turning red. Were you afraid just because I am armed?" he said.
"Well, in this city we aren't used to being around foreigners with lethal authority over our life," she said.
"Neither were we when your army was in mine," he contested. "But murder is murder. I think that goes anywhere. Just be thankful that your town doesn't have our Knightmare Frames stationed in it. Yet."
Viv treaded into the administrative building stomping her feet, waited in line for the office receptionist, and submitted her form for an academic remedial exam.
She then, on the way around a corner, knocked her forearm into a 6-foot tousle-haired man.
"Sorry," she said.
"We're okay," he said. "We didn't mean to disturb you, but we do need to talk."
Her eyes widened.
It wasn't a dream, she fixatedly stressed.
"Who are you?!" she muttered. "How did you do that to Luc? And could you stop saying 'we?!' It's not normal."
"...Call me Shin," he said. "A word, please?"
They stepped out and walked behind the building.
"Who are you and how did you do that?!" she demanded.
"You don't understand your importance yet. It's not what we did; it's what you did."
"What?! How?! What are you?!"
"...I don't even know, myself," he said. "But you are the only real person here. The lens of God."
"What does that even mean?!"
"Okay, look. We're a spirit that got detached from our human body. On the timeline we were originally from—dead, just like you were," they explained.
"What do you mean I'm the only real person?!"
"Everything else comes into existence only because you are alive to be the observer of it," he postured to her. "But you once were part of us."
"Huh?! Agh..." Viv suddenly attained a physiological state of crippling migraine.
"The body itself is an interface for the soul," they added. "We're really going to have to explain everything again, aren't we?"
"Who's Sanguine?! Why did he say he was my brother?!"
"He was trying to make you believe he was. He is a manifestation of entropy, of reality's substance and light tending towards uniform darkness. In other worlds he was known as the force of Vanitas: Darkness, Emptiness... Hell. He exists to unmake and cannot live where the Truth prevails."
"What truth?!" she demanded.
"Just think about it. The fundamental one that permits the creation of the world. It's the reversal of entropy: how there was ever non-uniform substance and light to begin with."
She was racking her brain for answers.
"Sanguine is the invention of absence from presence. This, is presence from absence."
"...the Big Bang," she said. "But what does this birthmark mean?!"
"It means the story of your origin is deceptive. This whole world is a mask of the real one from which your soul fled."
"And Saya?"
"...she is your genetic template."
"Template?! I was...engineered?!"
Shin nodded.
What... am I...