The Wyrms of &alon

I felt like a juggler, which was not good at all, considering my shoddy hand-eye coordination. Although Heggy demanding to speak with me face-to-face had definitely come out of the blue, overall, I felt that my encounter with the time-traveling Third Crusaders had gone pretty well, as long as you discounted the unexpected frisbee their description of the time rift had thrown my way.

Unfortunately, I had other matters to worry about—hence the juggling comparison.

Inside the world of his memories, Yuta was pointing at the wide-screen console I’d raised beside the grand old sakura tree, yelling at me in outrage. “Dr. Howle, this is absurd! They’re obviously manipulating you! You cannot let them do this to you! They will strike you when you least expect it! It is not safe!” Standing up, Yuta stomped his socked-sandals on the dirt by the side of the narrow, tiled road. “They played you like…” he turned to me, “what is that musical instrument you told me about, the one you play?”

“The clarinet,” I said.

“Yes! Exactly that!” He nodded, chopping his hand in my direction. “They played you like a clarinet.”

Standing up, I glanced over at Andalon, who was cowering nervously against the tree’s trunk.

“Yuta, please,” I said, “calm down. What are you talking about?”

At this point, the people from Yuta’s memories were beginning to stare. Their eyes widened in alarm as they saw the television console standing beside the street. Broad-hatted guards in Munine armor came rushing down the street. I banished them all with a wave of my hand. The white, fortified walls opposite the stilt-legged hovels turned deathly still.

Closing his eyes, the samurai lord took a deep breath, cupped one hand, and pushed his fist into it.

“You truly did not see it?” he asked, calm and composed once more.

”See what?” I asked.

Yuta rubbed his forehead. “Those ‘knights’, as you call them, will not be in the room when you return for them. I guarantee it.”

“What?” I said, confused. “But… why?”

He narrowed his eyes on me. “They’re going to raid Vernon’s laboratory and rescue their comrade. It’s as plain as day, and you gave them all the information they needed!”

“How? They wouldn’t even know where to go!”

“Ichigo and I navigated the hospital on our own, and we did it while we were at death’s edge,” Yuta said. “They will have no trouble figuring it out for themselves, not with that Karl boy on their side, with his knowledge of your era’s technology. Your countrymen were frighteningly resourceful in my time. You underestimate them at your own peril.”

“Oh…” I said. My expression fell. I deflated like a moribund balloon.

It did not help my confidence that Yuta had a knack for explaining things convincingly.

“Fudge…” I muttered. I pulled at my bow-tie.

“Why do you do that?” Yuta asked.

“Do what?” I asked.

Yuta brought his hand up to his neck and made a tugging motion.

“It helps me deal with stress…” I said, feeling very stressed. Then I sighed, and looked Yuta in the eyes.

“At the risk of being impertinent,” I said, “do you mind if I ask why you’re getting so invested in this? You said you wanted to see the other time-travelers, but now… you’re making this about me.”

“Is this another one of our ‘sessions’?” he asked.

“Maybe,” I replied, “though that depends more on you than anything else.”

“Why does it matter if I point out the knights’ misdeeds?” he asked, crossing his arms.

“In the study of the mind,” I explained, “there is a behavior known as projection. A person is psychologically projecting when they ascribe their own motivations and feelings to others. A person who frequently lies would be projecting if they, say, defended their falsehoods by accusing everyone else of being liars. A jealous man might interpret his rivals’ actions as being motivated by jealousy, even if nothing could have been further from the truth. People do this as a way of coping with feelings and desires that they have difficulty dealing with on their own.”

Yuta pursed his lips. “And you think I am doing this… projecting?”

“Quite possibly,” I said. I placed my hand on my chest. “The knights? That was your fight, not mine. You’re projecting your fear of them onto me. I have no intention of fighting them.” I nodded. “Now, if you want to help me, I’ll be happy to accept your assistance, but not if you’re offering it with unsavory ulterior motives.”

I stood up. “There’s a lot at stake here. I know they killed you, and I know you were on the receiving end of the Third Crusade’s war efforts, but you are going to have to learn to put that conflict behind you. It’s the only way you’re going to be able to heal, and I sure as heck wouldn’t want you to bring your fight into the present. There’s already enough going on right now.”

Inhaling deeply, Yuta nodded. “Fine,” he said, after emptying his breath.

I noticed he was pressing the tips of his thumbs and forefingers together.

That was a hand-pose for Munine meditation.

He calmed himself.

“I want to help you,” he said. “I am concerned for your safety.” His expression turned grave, lips trembling. “You are my only chance of seeing my daughter again, Dr. Howle.” He swallowed hard. “I will not let that chance be lost.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. “If our positions were reversed, I’d probably try to do the same.” I nodded. “Your offer is accepted,” I said, with a smile. “Just… try not to lose yourself to old wounds. I should know,” I added, “I do that all the time.”

Yuta smirked. “When I lose my temper, it is never without reason. I am certain the knights intend to mislead you, and that this will put you at risk. I am assessing a threat. Advice can be correct even when it comes from… as you say, projection.”

He was right about that. It absolutely could.

Waving my hand again, I shattered the rest of the mind-world, leaving Yuta, Andalon, and I standing in my Main Menu.

And then—

“—Darn it!” I muttered.

“What is it?” Yuta asked.

“Dr. Marteneiss,” I said.

Closing my eyes, I focused, recentering my consciousness in my physical body, making the me in my mind into a doppelganger, but not before opening a window in my Main Menu to give Yuta a view of the outside world.

I’d walked a good distance from the knights’ room, having texted Heggy that I’d meet her where Wards D, E, and F met out in the big hall.

She came rushing around the corner in a fast walk. She was agitated, and wasn’t doing a thing to conceal it.

“Genneth!” she said.

I walked up to her—well, as close as social distancing allowed.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Why couldn’t we do this over text? Heggy… what’s going on?”

“Tell her you have to go,” Yuta said.

“It’s not that simple,” I said, sticking my hands out.

“Yes it is,” he replied. “Now is the time for action! If I were you, I would ask Horosha’s transformees for aid. Their powers would be a valuable asset.”

“I wish it was that simple, Yuta,” I said, “but this isn’t just about what’s going on in General Labs. You have to understand, what those knights told me has made my theory go belly up!”

“What theory?”

“That description the knights gave about what the rift looks like?” I said. “It doesn’t match what I saw!”

I conjured my memory of the rift I’d seen in the lobby. It played out in front of us, like a window in the air.

“Is that a bad thing?” Andalon asked.

I nodded vehemently, “Yes!” only to bite my lip and recant. “Well… maybe.”

Yuta glowered at me.

“Listen,” Heggy said, “about that stupid idea of yours…”

I stuck out my palms defensively, and shook them. “No, no—we didn’t do anything like that.”

Moaning, Heggy closed her eyes and exhaled. She brought her gloved hand up to her PPE visor. “Angel’s breath, Howle,” she muttered, “what have you done now?”

“Well, I—”

—But then Heggy shook her head, as if cutting herself off. “No no, what am I even sayin’? I hate SNAFUs,” she grumbled, “I hate them so much.”

“Heggy, I’m confused.”

“Listen,” she said, “you and Ani, you were right about what to do.”

“Wait, what?”

In my Main Menu, I ran my hand through my hair. Leave it to me to become overwhelmed even when I had the ability to be in multiple places at the same time!

With a moan, I pointed at Andalon and then myself. “Right now,” I said, “we’re working under the assumption that the rift I saw was a connection to &alon.”

Yuta’s eyes bugged out as he instinctively became aware of the distinction Andalon and I had baked into our use of the words “Andalon” and “&alon”.

I quickly explained it to him, which resulted in him palming his face and shaking his head.

Yuta shook his head. “This is a comedy of errors,” he groaned.

Andalon nodded along with him, not that she had any idea what a ‘comedy of errors’ was.

“We can argue semiotics some other time,” I said.

“I went to try and talk some sense into my brother,” Heggy said, “but to no avail. If there’s even a sliver of a dream that there’s a way to beat the plague, he and his gonna do whatever it takes to see it through, no matter the cost. They’re not even tryin’ to keep this contained. It’s all consequences be damned.” She shook her head. “Now, please, tell me you haven’t gone and made things worse?”

I decided to cut to the chase. “Ani, Jonan, and I have a plan. Ani’s gonna create the distraction. Jonan will guide the knights to GL. They’ve only just been infected, so they’ll have an edge over Vernon’s men. I got them to agree to help, but I have reasons to believe that they might have already left without me.”

Heggy’s head trembled as her eyes fluttered wide. “Wait—what—… why are you here, then?”

“Because you—”

Heggy groaned. “—Just go! Go!” She pulled out her console. “I’ll get in touch with the lovebirds. We’ll try and keep things under control.”

And off I went.

I let a progeny consciousness take the wheel while I made my way back over to the knights’ room, desperately hoping that I wasn’t too late. Meanwhile, I recentered myself into the me inside my Main Menu.

Yuta deserved my full attention.

“Do not waste time going to their room,” he said. “They will have gone to the security office to collect their weapons. If you can, see that you get there before they do.”

I’m on it, body-me thought.

“Right now,” I said, “I need to understand the rift. If the rift I saw really was a connection to &alon—and it sure as heck felt like one—why in the world would it appear in the past?” I said.

Now it was Yuta’s turn to be confused.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“Where the fungus goes, &alon goes too, bent on stopping it. If there were any traces of the Green Death in the knights’ time, it would make sense that the knights would have seen the &alon rift; she’d be there, in the past, just like she is here in the present, fighting the fungus—”

“—the darkness!” Andalon said, nodding her head,

I waved my hand. “Same thing. Darkness, fungus, whatever you want to call it, the whole point is stopping it. So, considering the knights’ descriptions of the rift matched the one I saw in the lobby, either the rift wasn’t a connection to &alon like I thought it was, or there’s something else going on that I’m not yet aware of.

Yuta stuck out his hand, as if imploring me to stop. He grimaced, squinting his eyes in confusion. “Wait… the disease can travel through time!?” he asked, dumbstruck.

I nodded. “Most likely, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Andalon started hopping up and down. “Mr. Genneth! Mr. Genneth! Andalon has a think!”

“Go,” I said, with a nod.

“Maybe the rips were the same, but the k’niggies didn’t sees what you seed because they’re not wyrmeh.”

“That…” My jaw went slack. “That’s actually a really good point,” I muttered.

“Is it even testable?” Yuta asked.

I thought for a moment, and then nodded. “Yes,” I said. “Yes it is.”

I conjured up my memory of the rift in the lobby for a second time. I froze the playback right when the rift appeared.

“When I first saw the rift,” I said, “my wyrmsight was active. In order to see what it would look like to an unassisted human eye, I just need to…” I focused. “There!”

It was like muting the sound on a video, only wyrmsight instead of sound. “I’ve just peeled away the sensory layer my wyrmsight was contributing to the memory.” I rewound the memory with a twist of my wrist. “Now, we’ll see what it looked like to the average Joe.”

We watched the memory play out.

“Uh, Mr. Genneth, where’s the rifty?"

I put my hands to either side of my head. “By the Godhead.”

“They’re different…” Yuta said, awed.

The rift I’d seen was all but invisible to what remained of my human eyes. Without the benefit of wyrmsight to elucidate it, the rift left just the barest patch of mirage-like quivering in the air. Even here, viewing the memory freeze-frame, it took a moment to ‘see’ it. Had I not known where to look, I might not have noticed it at all, least of all if I was in the middle of a battle.

Yet, with my wyrmsight on, the rift glowed like a strobe light on overdrive.

“Fudge,” I said, softly—then again, much louder. “Fudge!” I looked at Yuta, and then at Andalon. “They’re not the same!” I said. “My rift and the knights’ rift? They’re not the same! Or, if they are, they’re so different that the difference itself is worth worrying about!”

A shiver ran down both of my backs—the mental, and the physical.

“What does it mean?” Andalon asked.

“I…” My voice trailed off. There were several possibilities, but, the most likely—the simplest—was…

Beast’s teeth, I thought.

I sighed heavily. “I think the most likely explanation is that the rift the knights saw was that…” I gulped. “It’s the fungus tearing through time. Maybe it’s branching off into alternative timelines? Isn’t that how time travel works? Is our present changing because the past has been re-written? I—I…”

“This sounds very scary,” Andalon said.

I nodded in agreement. “Thank you, Andalon, for stating the obvious.”

“Perhaps they were mistaken,” Yuta suggested, “and the fungus had struck the past.”

“Hmm… that would explain why the disease seemed to appear everywhere at once, simultaneously,” I said, only to shake my head. “Wait, no, that doesn’t make sense either. If you changed the past, the alterations to the timeline would immediately ripple through to the present.” I looked at Yuta. “That’s how it works, right?”

“Dr. Howle, I may have traveled through time, but that does not mean I understand it.”

I shook my head. “Great, now things make even less sense. I need to talk to the knights, now! I need to correlate all this information, or I’ll have no freaking chance of understanding what’s going on!”

“What about reinforcements from Horosha?” Yuta asked.

I shook my head. “There’s no time!”

Yuta, Andalon, and the Main Menu fractured and dissolved as I dismissed them to the void and plunged back into reality.