| Generated by Google AI Studio text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3, with music by MusicFX text-to-audio AI software |
Bariq walks briskly into the room, finally finding his co-parent standing
there with one of her assistants, whispering about something or other. After
they see him, they both smile, make one last exchange, then part ways. He
walks farther in. “Where are they?” he demands to know.
“The kids?” Judy guesses. “I’m sure they’re just out partying with their
friends.”
“I just ran into them in the hall,” Bariq counters. “They haven’t seen
Clavia or Echo anywhere since they left the ceremony.”
“You saw all of their friends?” Judy questions.
“I saw enough,” he replies. “They don’t have many.”
“They have more than you think. Not all of them are from the Seventh Stage,
you know. They have a lot in common with some of the students from the Third
Rail.”
“Judy. The kids are missing.” Over the years, she’s become calmer and more
trusting of their children. She’s allowed them to be young and dumb, and
make mistakes. She teaches them right from wrong, but she has always seen
them as preadolescent and adolescent humans. The reality is that they’re
both unimaginably powerful superentities, and very dangerous. Bariq loves
them, and cares for them, but he has not forgotten how they started out.
They’re both far older than they appear, and he sometimes sees that in their
eyes. They will seem normal one minute, bright-eyed and curious. Then the
next, they’ll slip into this unsettling state of all-knowing indifference.
He has been afraid of them growing up and getting their memories back this
whole time. It’s put a strain on their relationship, and yes, he’s even
worried that this strain will create a self-fulfilling prophecy that leads
to the realization of his greatest fears. He can’t help it, though, because
they really are dangerous, and it doesn’t seem prudent to ignore that.
“What do you want me to do?” Judy questions. “Sick a tracker on them?”
“I want you to take this seriously.”
“I do. They’re sixteen years old, they’re gonna run off and do stuff without
permission.”
“They’re not sixteen, and stuff without our permission could be
blowing up planets or smoking nebulas.”
“That is...quite the imagery,” Judy says, “and is completely unfounded.
They’re good people. You should believe in them more.”
“So you’re not gonna help look for them.”
Judy sighs. “I have Rebecca for the year,” Judy explains. “I’m going to
spend some time with her today. Maybe you should do something for yourself.
How about that woman from the academy? She seemed into you.”
Bariq closes his eyes. “She’s a hundred years younger than me.”
Judy shrugs.
“You wouldn’t get it, you grew up with your soulmate.”
“And then I lost her.” When the main sequence version of Earth was copied
into the Sixth Key, Judy was duplicated along with it. Her wife, however,
Rebecca happened to be in the past at the time, because that was where she
was working. When she returned to her present, the other Judy was
waiting there to greet her. It took a while for them to even find out about
the whole Reconvergence mess. Since then, they’ve established a unique
relationship. Rebecca spends some of her time with main sequence Judy, and
some of it with Seventh Stage Judy, like an odd joint custody sort of
arrangement. It might be unusual, but it’s working for them. And the kids
love Rebecca. They treat her like an aunt. Yeah, she’s technically more like
a stepmother, but she can’t really discipline them since she’s gone half the
time, so they ended up framing it differently.
“Then you got her back,” he reminds her.
Judy concedes the point. After a moment of silence, she thinks of something.
“You know who you can go to if you’re looking for someone. And it’s not a
tracker.”
Bariq is confused for a moment, but quickly gets over that. “We promised to
never go back there.”
“We promise that all the time.”
He sighs. He has a feeling that something is wrong. Echo and Clavia aren’t
just hanging out on a habitable moon, watching the gas giant that it’s
orbiting dominate the sky. They’re somewhere, doing something. It might be
good for all he knows, but it’s not innocuous. It’s not meaningless. He has
to find them, and if that means talking to a certain dangerous prisoner,
then he will. “Don’t tell Cedar.”
“I don’t talk to that guy anymore,” she says.
“All right. I love you.”
“Love you too.” They are the twins’ parents, but they aren’t married. They
have never had any romantic feelings for each other. In fact, their
relationship started out pretty rocky. They were chosen to negotiate
together during The Rock meetings specifically because they didn’t always
see eye to eye. That’s not how it was for every duo at those talks, but it
wasn’t uncommon either. Over time, as they’ve tried to raise these kids
together, their connection to each other has strengthened, and
love is a decent enough word for it. She has Rebecca, and he has his
consorts, but they always try to be on the same side, even when it’s hard.
He walks out of the room, and down the hall to their personal Nexus, which
will take him indirectly to where he needs to go. While his target is a
prison, she’s not in a typical locked facility. It’s too risky to leave her
anywhere with people on a regular basis. She’s too charming and beautiful.
She has a way of getting into people’s heads, which they take measures to
combat with psychic wards. Because of the need for distance, if she needs
anything, it’s up to her to provide it for herself, using whatever she can
find where she’s being kept. That’s not a lot, but she doesn’t seem to
need a lot, so it appears to be okay. And she’s gotten more over the
years. Bariq would normally ask one of his kids to transport him there
remotely, but since they’re the reason he’s deigning to go this time, that’s
not an option. He takes the Nexus to the nearest space station, and then a
personal pod the rest of the way. It’s slow, but that’s the point. If there
were too many ways to get to the penal planet, there would be too
many ways to get off of it, and that’s not an option.
The prisoner has extraordinary extrasensory perception, allowing her to know
things without experiencing them, or being around. Even where she is,
trapped and alone, she knows what’s going on everywhere else, even back in
the original universe. That’s what makes her such a big threat, and why she
can’t ever be allowed to leave. Unfortunately, she appears to be immortal,
so keeping her in place might be an eternal responsibility. She has taken a
particular interest in their family, as would be expected of someone in her
position, driven partially by their repeated visits for information, and
sadly, even advice. They’ve used this resource far more often than they
morally should. It’s just too tempting. The issue is how much she likes it.
She loves the attention, and it gives her a sense of power that she doesn’t
deserve. Bariq prepares himself at the entrance. The walls are a hundred
meters tall, and this is the only way in or out. It’s not guarded by anyone,
but a satellite in geosynchronous orbit keeps constant watch over it. He
holds his hand up, and motions for the AI to open the door for him, which it
does.
He finds the prisoner in the courtyard of her home. Again, it’s not a normal
prison. It’s actually a pretty nice place to live at this point. She even
has a pool, which she is using right now. Without any clothes on. She knew
that he was coming, so it’s not like she’s been caught off guard. “Oh my,”
she says in total false modesty. “My king, you’ve arrived. I’m afraid I’m
totally unprepared.” She speaks with a hint of an accent.
Vaguely transatlantic, Judy once deemed it. The prisoner climbs the
steps out, holding her arm and hand over her privates, but not doing a very
good job of it. At the moment, she has given herself the appearance of Judy.
Sick bastard.
“Take off that face, Effigy,” he demands. When the Reconvergence happened,
and the main sequence was copied into the Sixth Key, most time travelers
weren’t around. They were warned that it would happen, and given ways of
protecting themselves, often by simply skipping over the moment entirely.
Effigy was a prisoner in a different place on Earth, and had been for many
centuries prior to all this. The theory is that whoever put her in there
died, or completely forgot about her, so now there are two of her, just like
everyone else there.
“Is this not pleasing to you?” She sounds innocent and naïve, but it’s all
an act, just to screw with him.
“Go back to normal.” This is a loaded command, because her real form
is an intimidating white monster. She’s literally not human. They call her a
Maramon.
“Do you really mean that?” she asks.
“Yes.” Intimidating is a strong word when it comes to Bariq’s
constitution. She doesn’t scare him, and her true appearance doesn’t change
that.
“Very well.” She transforms. “How can I help you today, Your Majesty?”
He’s not going to once more argue the point about him not being a king. It’s
exhausting, and there is no way to win. She could deny the existence of
light if it served her agenda. Logic and reality were irrelevant concepts,
as was perception. “You know where my kids are.” It’s not a question.
“I do.”
“Are they safe?”
She smiles. “They’re safer than you are.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that your greatest fears are coming to fruition. They are
realizing how powerful they are, and they’re learning to exercise their
independence.”
“What. Does. That. Mean?” he reiterates.
She waits a moment to respond. “If I’m going to help you, I need something
in return.” She always does. That’s why she has this swimming pool, and a
breadmaker. And an actual parachute made out of gold, which they only agreed
to give her because it’s too heavy to fly.
“What is it this time?”
She looks around with a feigned frown. “Here I am, piffy on a rock cake. I’m
nice and sweet, and everyone loves me...but I’m so small. The rest of
the cake is bland, and boring. It deserves more of me. It deserves more
piffy.”
“Honestly, I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about. What is a
piffy?”
“Nobody knows.”
He lets out an exasperated sigh.
She mimics him. “General Bariq Medley, always so frustrated. If humans still
had heart attacks, why you would have died centuries ago.”
“Get on with it, what do you actually want?”
“A mirror.”
“No,” he answers. He doesn’t know why exactly, but they have been told that
she is not allowed to have mirrors. Sure, there is such a thing as a time
mirror, which is a temporal object designed to view—or even access—other
points in spacetime. But you can’t just turn any mirror into a time mirror.
That’s mostly just what it looks like on the outside. There’s all sorts of
technology and temporal magicks hidden in the guts. But in a world of time
travelers, they can’t take any chances. She can presumably indeed give a
regular mirror temporal properties.
“Oh, it’s just for my vanity. I have no one to talk to when you’re gone.”
She exaggerates her frown, but a little too much. Her face is warped enough
to throw her into the uncanny valley. Even white monsters don’t usually have
this creepy of a face.
“So you’re going to talk to your own reflection?
“That’s my business.”
“Isn’t your reflection right there?” he gestures towards the water.
“I told you, I’m a piffy.”
“I still don’t know what that is.”
“It’s too big, I need a smaller mirror. I don’t care how it’s designed, just
so that it can sit on a flat surface on its own, and is too small to fit
through if it were a window.” That might sound like safer specifications
than the most dangerous time mirror would have, some of which can be stepped
through as portals, but no means of reaching across space and time is worth
what she might do with even only an ounce of freedom beyond the confines of
this one corner of this one celestial body.
“As I said...no.”
“Then you will never find your children.”
“You are not my only avenue.” He turns around to leave.
“No tracker can find them either,” she insists. “They are...beyond their
sight.”
He looks back with a bit of a smirk. “A decent tracker can find anyone in
the universe. If they’re beyond that, they’re in another universe.
They’re in Fort Underhill.” He turns around again, and begins to walk away.
“Not...Fort Underhill,” she clarifies. After he turns to face her again.
“Not Salmonverse either. Not even Ansutah.”
He narrows his eyes at Effigy. “A new universe,” he reasons. “That’s what
they’re doing. They’re building one, just like Hogarth did. I knew it.”
“I never said that.” She’s either realizing that she has said too much, or
this is all part of some dastardly plan, and her upset demeanor is yet
another ploy.”
“Either way, I know who to talk to now. You’re not getting your mirror.” He
turns away for the last time now, determined not to let her change his mind.
So he can’t see, but he can hear that she’s turned back into Judy. “Stop!
No! I’m so lonely. Don’t go!” There’s a pause before he makes it back over
to the wall. “Daddy!” She sounded like Clavia just there. He knows that it’s
a trick. It’s easier to see that when you’re aware of the extent of her
powers. Still, it’s hard to ignore, and he has to fight his instincts. It
takes everything he has to open that door, and leave.
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