Many times, many places...

01 January 2651

She walked the corridors of the shattered habitat, alone. Many times she had done this, likely she would do so many more times. Past, present, future, all these merged to a single moment, walking down the rubble-strewn corridor.

She was alive, some others were also alive, some others were not. This also was something that had, did, would continue, something she had to work very hard to appreciate in all the complex variations of the state. She was alive, always had been, always would be. Sometimes knowing this took all the fun out of life.

The corridor ended at a T-intersection and she stood gazing down the left side. She knew what was down there. She did not need to look and see. She turned to the right. Also, no surprises awaited there. She turned back the way she came, and sighed as she realized she had already explored that avenue as well. Sulking, she dropped to a sitting position in the middle of the junction, and just sat there.

Alas, this she had also done many times before and would do many times in the future, and this was also of little interest. She muttered a rude word, got up, and stalked off down the left branch of the corridor.

She picked up a piece of broken metal weighing perhaps a kilogram and hurled it down the corridor some meters. She continued walking until she reached the piece, picked it out of its pile of fellow bits of debris, and once again hurled it several meters in front of her. This she did until she had taken turns at several intersection, and she gritted her teeth as she realized she had circled a square block of the ruined habitat and the piece of metal was resting in its original location.

She sat down heavily on a large, jagged slab of torn bulkhead, rested her chin in her hands, and brooded darkly. Neither was this anything she had not done many times before, but she did not care. Her voice from the next universe over was silent, and she frowned at this. Normally, she spent a good fraction of her life arguing with herself, seeking guidance from that older version of herself. Unfortunately, guidance was often useless, since she usually knew just what was going to happen in any given time in the future anyway.

She had wandered this shattered city on Venus for some years, finding its ruined, corpse-filled shell to be more than dreary and peaceful enough to give her a break from the excitement of exploring a universe she already knew like the back of all her hands in her various physical manifestations. It was a delightful place to sulk.

She turned suddenly as a noise startled her. One of the bulkhead doors was opening, and a black-suited female figure stepped through when they had finished their long, grinding journey to open position. She shot to her feet, pressed herself back against the wall, trying to remain unseen.

A moment later, a resonant contralto with a strong European accent crackled over a suit speaker into the murky, liquid atmosphere. "Who are you?" the voice demanded.

"Eidolon," she responded, frowning deeply as she realized she had not foreseen this woman's presence. Or had she? She wore a spacesuit-- something she had little real use for-- so the other did not find anything out of the ordinary about her except her presence. Had she subconsciously decided to don a spacesuit just so this person would not see her true power? Or was it just chance?

"A ghost, hmm," the other said. "I suppose only a ghost would live in this place."

Ghost?

"Yes..." Eidolon said.

"When did you come here? This place was destroyed; nothing could have survived. You had to have come in after the Fire. And if you had come in the last five years I would have seen you."

Not necessarily, Eidolon thought. "Yes, I came some years ago." And this was true.

"No power source. No atmosphere. No food production. Explain." The voice was sharp as a diamond blade.

A sharp wit, this one. Cautious. And arrogant. "I don't have to explain myself," Eidolon said abruptly, and turned away.

The other approached to about two meters distant. "One would think after spending five years in this place you would be dying to talk to someone."

Eidolon did not reply for a long time. "No nosy questions?"

A long pause, then a sigh. "As you wish. But I will draw my own conclusions."

"Fair enough. Who are you?"

"My name is Maria. I used to be a doctor."

Eidolon turned and looked closely, peering into the other woman's helmet. Black eyes in a youthful face stared back at her. This woman could not be more than twenty-five, Eidolon thought. But the eyes were black suns, burning deep into her, probing her. The chin was tilted upward slightly, and this combined with the expression and the probing eyes told her that she was being measured in a manner that only one of many years could manage. "I see. How old are you?"

Maria tilted her head downward in acknowledgement of the question, but did not answer for a long time. "Older than I care to consider. And I sense the same of you."

Had this Maria read her that well? There was no penetrating the space-like depths of those eyes, and the expression gave even less away. "Perhaps," Eidolon said softly.

Maria glanced around the place, lifted her hands, and let them fall back to her sides.

"So. Do we stand here in this graveyard in our suits or do we take this conversation--" that last was barbed-- "to Sa Thauri?"

Eidolon took a second to identify the name as that of a city neighboring Akane, then nodded. "What is there?"

Maria smiled slightly. "Oxygen."

Eidolon laughed. This was the first time she had done that in centuries. "Ah... let's go then."

They reached Sa Thauri in Maria's tank some three hours later, three hours during which Eidolon said practically nothing. About halfway into the trip, she sat bolt upright in the copilot's chair as she realized that she had not foreseen this, indeed, she could see nothing of the immediate future.

Maria glanced at her oddly at her sudden movement, but shook her head and returned her attention to her piloting. Eidolon forced herself to relax, and then began trying to read Maria's immediate past and future.

She failed utterly. Maria was a pure, black void to her senses. She sat back heavily, blinking her eyes and trying to process this.

"What are you doing?" Maria demanded, and turned around. Eidolon looked a question at her. "I felt you were doing something. What?"

She even sensed her scan! This individual was an anomaly. Eidolon forced a shrug, and closed her eyes, trying to contact her elder self. She failed, and when she opened her eyes she saw Maria still watching her, a suspicious expression on her face.

This Maria must have psi potential. Beyond that; she must have incredible psi potential. Eidolon had encountered several people over the ages that were capable of seeing the future or reading people telepathically, but none of them were the slightest challenge to her. This Maria person had swallowed her scans like a black hole, and responded to something she should never have even detected. Eidolon sensed incredible danger.

Perhaps it would be best to destroy this person before she wreaked havoc on the universe, but as Eidolon considered this she realized that she would fail in the attempt, possibly fatally. This woman's power was a worthy rival-- possible superior-- even to her own, and she had never known an equal.
And this frightened her.

15 July 2837

Sitting in her cell in Nova Columbus, Eidolon frowned as the computer she was writing on fizzed out yet again. Somehow the Imperial Knights that were holding her (on charge of treason, no less) had cut power to the terminal despite the fact that she was powering it. She scanned the area and determined the source: a low-level, pulsing electrical field that was shorting out the fragile device. With a scowl, she threw the device across the room, bashing it to pieces against the wall, and generated a pen and paper from midair. Let them short this out, she thought angrily, and continued to write, at a speed that would have shocked her cell monitors had their electromagnetic tinkering not also fried the security cameras.

She told a tale of Venus, and her meeting with the powerful stranger; and she told the tale of her time on the asteroids and the colony worlds the Lice enslaved. She told of Triton and the bubble of space-time distortion she felt compelled to leave there, a bubble that would someday allow the entire planet to be moved much as Mercury was. She told a tale of Mercury residents with strange powers, who stole the planet out from under Petresun's nose and now ruled that world six thousand light-years away. She told of a portal between the worlds that she had passed through, but that no one else would ever be able, especially not the corrupt, dirty Empire.

She told a tale of Petresun at last dying in some five months, as two terrible explosions ripped through the Earth, explosions that if they were only five percent more powerful, would destroy all human life on the planet.

This last tale was the one that earned her time in the dungeons, and on the torture racks that for all their sophistication were no cleaner or more moral than Iron Maidens or teams of horses.

She told tales of these as well, and stakes that she had been burned on as a witch in times even more ignorant than this one, times long forgotten by the entire human race. In another year or so, one mind would touch the past, learn of the beautiful culture that had existed on Earth before the Devastation. Her pen moved harshly, angrily over the paper. That history would never be seen by the residents of Earth. They did not deserve it. And by the time those of Earth reached the stars and the fading radio wave front exploding out into the stars, it would be too badly distorted by the interstellar medium ever to be read.

Eidolon got a certain vicious satisfaction out of this. Soon, she would take the last remaining records of pre-Devastation times left on Earth, and flee with them to the stars. The Shadow Dragons and the Stormkeepers each had a cache of archives, the Shadow Dragons in the ancient city of Monaco and the Stormkeepers in several fragments in the Americas, and Eidolon knew precisely where they were. Soon she would escape this place, and Earth itself. And she intended to take the history with her, for what purpose she was not yet certain.

Perhaps Maria would know what to do with it. Or Steel, the Ghost who did not know it yet, who had told her of the Shadow Dragons' records. Or perhaps no one would know, and all Eidolon had to do was get it away from Earth before it was discovered and the knowledge contained there destroyed the human race.

It would set the Ghosts free of their last remaining chains, but the people of Earth were too easily led by madness, as Petresun's reign demonstrated. Ancient madness would be ten times worse.

And Eidolon knew that no human on Earth would be able to extract the sanity from the madness that had died with the Devastation. Eidolon looked into a potential future where Earth discovered its past and tried to reconcile its present with the ancient days, and the blackness in that future terrified her.

When she returned to her writing, her hands were trembling.

Eidolon tapped her fingers on the table, then when that did not suitably annoy the man sitting opposite her, began tapping her pen on the table.

This worked: the man glared at her, glared at the pen, and glared back at her. She pretended not to notice.

"Have you reconsidered our offer?" the man snapped, reaching out to grab the pen. He reached it; unfortunately his fingers went right through it. He blinked, and his scowl deepened, but he tried not to let his confusion and anger show.

"Yes I have," Eidolon said, and resumed tapping the pen.

"You have?" the man said, raising his eyebrows in surprise. He sat up and straightened the sash on his police uniform, gazing at the woman with a perplexed expression.

"Yes, I have reconsidered it most carefully. And again I must refuse, because I am not going to share anything I possess with such deceitful and immoral people as the representatives of the Emperor, who is yet more deceitful and immoral."

"You realize, young lady--" Eidolon snickered-- "that such remarks constitute treason and I could have you executed for it?"

Trying to keep a straight face, Eidolon muttered sotto voce, "You tried that, remember?"

The policeman was on the verge of apoplexy and he reached out and grabbed at the pen again. Again he failed and this time his hands banged into the table. He winced, drew them back, and shot to his feet, knocking the chair over. "This is no laughing matter!" he snapped. "I am sure that if you continue refusing to cooperate we will find some way to execute you with finality!"

"Probably," Eidolon said with a shrug, and flicked the pen at the man, just to see his face. The expression was worth it; he stared wide-eyed at his chest as a hole appeared in it, the pen shot through, and the hole neatly closed up again.

The officer left, slamming the sliding door as hard as he could, which was not very hard because of the inertial damping on its runners. As soon as the door closed, Eidolon turned away, went over to the narrow bunk, and sat down.

She closed her eyes, and allowed her memory to drift back into the past, to the day this entire mess began...

10 January 2801

"Eidolon," the voice called, and she quickened her step, nearly running down the street through the pouring rain. The weather in southern California was most hideous this time of year; while not really cold, it was always pouring rain and today it was quite windy as well. Droplets of water slashed Eidolon's face like blades, and she wished for an umbrella or, better yet, to be indoors. No such luck now, unfortunately, and when she tried to wish an umbrella into existence, nothing appeared in her hand.

"Eidolon, if I must chase you into the Pacific do not imagine I will not do so!" the voice snapped like a whip. Eidolon picked up her pace, wishing she was wearing something black instead of powder-blue, so she could blend into the night and have at least some chance of escaping.

Unfortunately, she would not be escaping this pursuit anytime soon, camouflage or no. Nothing would shake her pursuer, because she used senses more than human.

Knowing it was futile but determined to at least try, she began to run, her feet kicking up splashes of water as she stepped in the puddles. The wind blew the spray back into her face, drenching her hair. At least her clothing was waterproof; she would not have enjoyed having to run in soggy clothes. The metaplas coverall was dry on the inside, but the wet, squeaking noises it made were annoying. Again, she wished for an umbrella or something, and her powers failed her.

She ducked into a doorway around a corner, intending to run to the other side of the block and zigzag back around out of sight of her pursuer. She ran across the street, dodging a solitary utility truck speeding though the gray sheets of rain, and turned again at the next corner. She ran half a block down that street, and stopped dead when she bumped into someone.

Maria stood there, her arms folded over her chest, her eyes narrowed and as cold as the rain. Eidolon's eyes widened; it was not physically possible for Maria to be occupying that space; no one could have run that fast.

Eidolon sighed deeply, and shook water off her face. Maria extended a hand and gestured to the building across the street, a small cafe, almost empty. Eidolon nodded slowly, and they crossed the street in silence.

When the had entered and ordered (Eidolon taking coffee and Maria taking cinnamon tea) Maria sat down and motioned for Eidolon to do the same. She sat there for a long moment, then spoke quietly. "I sensed your presence on Triton. At least, your trace. How is this possible?"

Eidolon decided not to ask how Maria could have possibly sensed her presence, on Triton or anywhere else. "I visited Triton about ten years ago."

"With the Cybrids filling Neptune's orbit," Maria said, tilting her head to one side and narrowing her eyes. "I find that interesting."

"Well..."

"Looking at you and feeling your presence now," Maria said slowly, closing her eyes, "I see that you are the same Eidolon as I met on Venus many years ago. Too many, in fact. You do not have an organomech brain--"

"How do you know that?"

Maria lifted a small scanner that she held in her palm, and Eidolon rolled her eyes. "So, it is very odd that you are alive now, over a hundred years later, and still appear youthful. Explain."

"I need explain nothing--"

"You do when I die and I feel your presence when it happens!" Maria snapped, her voice angry but quiet. "I want answers and you have them. You will provide them now."

Eidolon leaned back in her chair and leveled a scowl at the other woman. "Be careful how you speak to me," she said softly. And then she blinked. Where had the automatic angry response come from? She never held her power over anyone else, and certainly did not possess a trace of the arrogance that would have been necessary to make such a comment.

"I speak to you as I must," Maria said, leaning forward infinitesimally. "Do not believe arrogance impresses me, nor evasion, because such are my domain. Now, explain. Please."

Eidolon's mouth worked for a moment as she bit back a rude reply, then she leaned back. "You would not believe me if I told you anyway."

Maria smiled patiently, as though Eidolon were a particularly promising candidate for her secret asylum for the feebleminded. "Some months ago, I sat naked on the surface of Triton breathing vacuum and wiping liquid nitrogen off myself as though toweling after a shower. Explain to me what 'unbelievable' is."

Eidolon sighed. Was she speaking with a madwoman? She studied Maria's face, seeing only annoyance and a desire for her questions to be answered. "Alright. A few years ago I visited Triton to see if there were any survivors, and to write some poetry about the place. I left behind some kind of space-time bubble--"

"How?"

"I am a goddess," Eidolon said flatly.

Maria tilted her head, smiled faintly as though humoring Eidolon's madness. "Continue."

"I don't know why I left it there; I just knew it would be needed someday, that it was important."

"Do you know how Occam's Razor applies in this situation?" Maria said flatly.

"Yes," Eidolon said, and laughed softly. The comment struck a nerve in her quirky sense of humor, and she shook her head, grinning. "We're both candidates for the funny farm and should pack it in now."

Maria nodded. "Fortunately, having seen as much as I have, I no longer believe in Occam's Razor, and I can sense no falsehood-- or insanity-- from you, and thus must believe you."

"Thanks."

Maria took a sip of her tea, winced and glared at the cup as though wanting to spit the stuff out and hurl it across the room. "The question then becomes, what do we do about this situation? I am dead; my body and brain are both apparently frozen beneath Triton's surface. I have no idea where my current self came from, and I do not really believe in an afterlife..."

Eidolon stiffened. "Wait. Your brain is still down there?"

Maria shrugged. "I detected its transponder signal as I left, yes."

"Then you're maintaining your consciousness-- how?"

"I came to ask you that,"

Eidolon whispered something in an ancient language that she did not even know the translation of, but seemed to fit. "Then you are as powerful as I. How can this be? You were born human--"

"You were not?"

Eidolon winced at the precise question. "I don't remember."

Maria nodded slowly, and, as though sensing Eidolon's troubled thoughts, drank the rest of her tea and rose. "I apologize for troubling you. But I think you have answers of your own to seek."

"Yes," Eidolon said, and as she spoke her next words, Maria said them in unison with her. "We will meet again."

"On Mercury," Maria continued in a whisper.

They stood there watching each other for a long moment, and Maria nodded in understanding. She bowed her head once, then turned and left.

Eidolon watched her go, the walked out into the rain and wind. "On Mercury," she echoed, and for an instant, she felt the searing sun on her face instead of the cold of the rain.

14 January 2838

Eidolon watched with disinterest as the new commandant for the Nova Columbus prison burst in with a number of gun-wielding thugs aiming emp rifles at her.

She wished she could just flick her hand and blast the lot of them out of existence-- well within the scope of her power-- but she was bound by the ethical constraints that had always controlled her behavior. She could not be killed, but she could be imprisoned, or broken, because she was incapable of releasing her power to defend herself. Even now, when she could blow the reinforced titanium wall down like tissue paper, she was forbidden: to do so while the Emperor was still alive would be to doom the men guarding her to death for failure. If she escaped, they would suffer at the hands of the Emperor...

Or perhaps not, she thought as she heard the alarms blasting through the city in the brief time the doors were opened. Eidolon slowly rose to her feet.

"Sit down!" the commandant snapped, punctuating his statement by jumping forward, planting a hand in her chest, and hurling her back into the bed. She winced as her head bumped into the wall, glad for the pillow that just happened to be in that particular place at just that right moment. "We need to have a little discussion."

Eidolon blinked when the man turned the chair at the table around and straddled it, leaning over the tall back and regarding her with deep interest.

"You predicted the Emperor's death," he said. "You knew what would happen today. I want to know how."

Eidolon spoke softly, her strong but quiet contralto muffled by the pillow she held in front of her like it would shield her from the emp rifles. "A star died six thousand years ago."

The man stared at her, impatience written on his pudgy, hostile face. "Yes, and some antimatter explosions popped off in the Andes, and the Sahara desert. And the Emperor was last known to be hiding in Peru, right underneath the smaller explosion."

"He is dead then?": Eidolon said in a curious tone.

The commandant's lips compressed into a thin line. "How did you know?" he demanded. "Were you in league with the assassins? Where did they get the antimatter for such an explosion?"

"There is no antimatter," Eidolon said softly, her thoughts somewhere long ago and far away. "There is only mind."

With that, she threw the pillow as hard as she could at the commandant. This startled him and he jerked backward, falling off the chair and knocking the table over. As the guards leapt to assist, Eidolon jumped to her feet and leveled a burst of destructive energy at the door, blowing it down. The two panels ripped loose from the wall and clattered against the wall on the other side of the corridor. By the time they fell to the floor and settled there, she was already out the door.

15 February 2651

Maria sat down in the crawler's cabin and motioned for her guest to come forward. Eidolon nodded, stood in the door to the cabin for a moment before taking the copilot's seat. Maria turned to look at her, frowning as she noticed that she wore no flash suit.

In the event of a cabin leak, a flash suit would save one's life long enough to get into a properly-armored scarab suit. The ninety bars of pressure and seven hundred kelvins of temperature the Venusian atmosphere would shove into the cabin would turn an unprotected human into goo in seconds. A flash suit would allow the wearer to escape with little more than a few broken ribs. All Venusians would wear them whenever they were in a vehicle or other bubble of fragile armor, and they kept their scarabs close at hand.

Eidolon seemed intent on committing suicide, Maria thought sadly. Maria herself followed standard safety protocols to the letter, and it had saved her life on a couple occasions in the eight years she had lived on Venus. Eidolon seemed to enjoy taking risks. Maria had never seen her wearing a flash suit, and she had simply nodded dismissively when Maria had showed her where the emergency oxygen masks were stored. When Maria had angrily demanded why she had so little interest in her own safety, she'd shrugged.

Maria had then pressed her against the wall and informed her coldly that placing herself at risk also placed Maria at risk, because in an emergency Maria would be obligated to go to her rescue as well. "If you do not care if you put yourself in danger, do you at least care if you endanger me as well with this foolishness?"

Eidolon had mumbled an apology and promised to be careful.

But she still wasn't wearing a flash suit.

As Maria piloted the vehicle over the rolling hills that characterized most of the terrain in Beta Regio, she tried to draw out some information about her companion. As usual, she came up empty-handed; when faced with any question that might give Maria some idea of who she was, she changed the subject quickly and started talking about how beautiful the ruddy landscape was. Maria did not press the issue, and after awhile she sighed and returned her full attention to her driving.

Halfway through the trip (to a nearby ghost town that had some atmospheric converters they needed) Maria stopped the vehicle and gazed thoughtfully northward to the mountains ahead. After watching the nearby Maat Mons for a few minutes she sighed.

"I think that mountain is up to something," Maria said softly. "I'm going to skirt it's eastern face..."

Eidolon looked at the mountain, a dormant volcano that had seen no activity in a million years... or so it was believed. There was activity in the fiery heart; pressure was building up within its magma chamber and the plug of rock on top prevented a normal eruption. Shortly, the lava and gas would explode and the mass of stone would be unable to contain it. The discharge of pressure would rip the side of the volcano out... and the weakest section was the western face. Maria seemed to know it, and was trying to avoid the danger.

But it would not be enough. The blast of atmosphere pushed forward by the blast would bounce off the cliffs to the west, and as thick as the atmosphere was, there would be more than enough force in that ricochet to roll the crawler end over end. Neither of them would survive that.

Eidolon stared at the mountain for a long moment, then said softly, "brace yourself." Maria looked back at her wildly, her arms automatically wrapping around the arms of her chair.

An instant later, several cubic kilometers of solid lava were converted to energy in a blaze of violet light. As Maria looked back at the flash, she froze solid in her chair.
The gas exploded upward through the volcano's newly-cleaned throat, forming a perfect fountain of spraying red lava that umbrellaed outward in the thick atmosphere, falling back down on the volcano's flanks in a symmetrical shower of fire.

The shockwave was minimal, just a brief, gentle rattling. Maria blinked a few times, then looked back at Eidolon, who stood, her arms folded over her chest as she leaned lazily against the bulkhead, regarding the erupting volcano with a faint, self-satisfied smile on her face.

14 January 2838

Eidolon ran down the narrow streets of the Knight's compound on the outskirts of Nova Columbus, toward the setting sun. Behind her, guards were pouring into the streets, waving various weaponry and shouting at each other. Eidolon hoped her shield of invisibility would hold long enough to get her past the barrier and into the city proper; there she could find a place to hide easily. She looked down at her arm, noted that it was indeed still transparent, and ran on.

A mechanical growling sound startled her: metal rubbing metal. She looked to her right and nearly tripped in her surprise. She was transparent in visible light, but apparently not in ultraviolet or infrared.

A turret, mounted with dual fusion cannon, was turning toward her. She looked down the barrels of the massive weapons looking like malevolent eyes staring at her, laughing evilly.

"Not again, not again," she whispered as the weapons' magnetic impellers spread wide, and a ball of pure fusion fire began to form in the middle, like a golden pearl held in a gigantic hand.

Twin fireballs burned past her, exploding violently as they struck the ground not three meters behind her. The shockwave knocked her to the ground and she lay there a moment trying to catch her breath. She looked up suddenly, her body arching as she craned her neck up to watch the fusion cannon cycle to their prefire phase.
"Uh-oh."

The cannon fired again, and this time their aim was true. She stared into the raging hearts of the pair of fusion fireballs as they bore down on her, entranced at the surreal beauty of this latest death.

The fireballs seemed so complex, so rich with life, so unpredictable. She watched a particular flare of a sub-explosion spark and shoot off of the fireball on the left, marking the death of an airborne insect perishing in the flames. An instant of radiant fire, incredibly beautiful, then nothing.

The fireballs reached her, and she gasped as an intense heat, like Mercurian sunlight, prickled the skin on her face. White light blazed, blinding her in the same instant it impressed itself on her mind, in the same instant that she felt her death.

It was like pure light, burning her away like a candle, engulfing her mind and body in a slow but inevitable wave. One last thought: here we go again...
And she surrendered to the light, and the beautiful death it had in store for her.

20 May 2855

Dreaming, she lay in cryosleep on the ship of darkness. Outside, in what some shortsighted people would call the real world, her friend maintained her vigil over the sleeping torchship Farsight, working to bring the vessel and her friend to the center of the galaxy. Alas, even Maria's awakening powers could not simply kick the vessel into the shimmering red starclouds of the Core with one step, so the journey would be accomplished by slowly traversing chains of wormholes, a long and tedious process.

Eidolon did not care. This gave her time to dream, time to get it right.

You already have, her other self said in an amused tone.

Eidolon sighed. "I keep getting toasted by that turret."

The legacy of the Devastation is stored in the ship's archives, isn't it?

"Well yes, but I haven't succeeded in obtaining it yet. It's there and I put it there, but I haven't yet. You know how it is."

Mmm. Intriguing paradox, is it not?

"Yes it is... and you sound like Maria. Stop it; that's scary."

Maria does not exist in this universe, the voice said, and it was laced with sadness. If she did we would not have this mess.

"And I would not have been burned to slag by an MFAC turret, what is it now...?"

Sixteen thousand four hundred twelve times, came the dutiful response. Be glad you at least forget the last death each time your new one approaches. At least this way you get to experience it without all the other memories ruining the surprise.

"That's morbid."

Who could look at the mess these four tangled universes (?) has created and not be? And Devastation's Legacy was never lost here. I envy you.

"Why?"

For living in a universe without the Legacy. You must remove it. You must.

Eidolon could not imagine any universe worse than one where she had to die meaninglessly sixteen thousand times chasing some old books.

Then she remembered the pain and the desperation in her double's voice, sighed, and was lost to the dream again.

01 January 2651

She walked the corridors of the shattered habitat, alone. Many times she had done this, likely she would do so many more times. Past, present, future, all these merged to a single moment, walking down the rubble-strewn corridor...

-Mercurial

Copyright © by Ghosts of the Antipode All Right Reserved.

Published on: 2004-06-16