James Wylder, Writer

After the debris had passed, the ship slowed to a halt. Everyone inside relaxed a little.
           "Damn. Too late," said Andros. "Scan for life signs."
           Ms Sardana tapped a question into her keyboard and was given a bleep in a major key for an answer. "Scan positive, Captain. There are people in there."
           Andros' jaw clenched. "Shit. Why didn't they evacuate? We warned them hours ago! What the hell were they waiting for!?"
           The wreckage of Jarrek & Jarrek's spun slowly through space. The lack of oxygen extinguished the fire as soon as it had started, but the damage would cost Centro millions to repair.
           "Captain!" Mr Best cried. "Some sort of huge vessel approaching."
           "The attackers?"
           "Possibly. Should I open communications with them?"
           Andros locked eyes with the young ensign. "WHY would we want to talk to potential terrorists?"
           "Uh…b-because they're trying to talk to us?"
           "What?" The captain checked a small screen in the armrest of her chair to see that, yes, the unidentified flying object was broadcasting to them. "Fine. Open a communication channel."
           "Aye Captain."
           There was a slight pop as the ship's speakers turned on, followed by the chorus from It's Raining Men by The Weather Girls.
           Everyone in the ship shifted uncomfortably as they listened to the transmission. It was far too soon after a potentially lethal explosion to crack a smile.
A few more giant decals of male space pioneers floated by.
           "It's raining men! Hallelujah, it's raining men! Every speci-HELLO? Hello, can you hear me now? Sorry, I had you on hold by mistake. This is Lady Aesculapius speaking. I was in the area and couldn't help but notice the shipyard exploding. Are you alright? Unless of course you were the ones who caused the explosion. In which case…"
           The voice drifted, leaving only the awkward sound of breathing reverberating through the whole ship.
           "…like, I'll stop you. I guess."
           Andros held down a button on her chair. "This is Captain Rita Andros, representing Centro. No, we did not cause the explosion, that shipyard was one of ours."
           "Oh, good! Okay, phew! Well at least-wa-wait. Wait a second." Her voice lowered. "How can I trust you? What if you DID cause the…actually no, that's just tedious. I believe you. How can I help?"
           "You can help by clearing the area," Captain Andros said kindly but firmly. "The explosion came from inside the shipyard. We're going to get in there to rescue the survivors."
           "Ah! Good plan!" said Lady Aesculapius enthusiastically. "I'll get the north wing and you get the south?"
           A moment passed inside Captain Andros' ship. "No, when I said 'we' I meant 'us'."
           "Yeah, I know! 'Us'. You, your team, and me, jumping in to save the day! Got it. See you soon."
           "Wait! Hold on!"
           "Too late," said Mr Best. "She's disconnected."
           “Who the hell is she?” The captain leaned back in her chair. “And more importantly, who the hell does she think she is?”
           Mr Best positioned the ship above the wreckage. The explosion had destroyed the boarding platforms, so their only way into the station now was for the crew to put on their spacesuits and enter via a small service hatch on the roof. Captain Andros, Mr Best, Ms Chandra, and twenty heavily-armed Centro soldiers suited up, and journeyed out into the nothing of space.
           The magnetic clamps in their boots secured their feet to the top of the shipyard as they slowly trudged their way towards the hatch.
           "Ms Chandra," said the captain. "Can you get this open?"
           "Aye Captain."
           She bent down on one knee and reached for the opening mechanism when the hatch flipped open and Lady Aesculapius popped out. "Come in, come in!" she beamed. "You'll let in a draught!"
           The bewildered crew filed in one by one, helped in and down a short ladder by Lady Aesc. Finally, Captain Andros stormed down the ladder, slamming the hatch shut behind her. Unfortunately, she was moving slowly through zero gravity, so nobody noticed.
           Once the hatch was closed, the sound of rattling air vents rose up from silence and a red light in the ceiling clicked over to green. Captain Andros popped off her helmet first. "Who are you and how the hell did you get in here before us?"
           Lady Aesc reached into her frock coat and pulled out a polished blue crystal the size and shape of a tennis ball. "This thing gets me places quickly," she said, tossing it in the air and catching it. "Other than that: hello! Again, my name is Lady Aesculapius; don't worry if you can't pronounce it, you'll get marks for trying."
           "You clearly don't understand the seriousness of this," Andros snapped. "I'm leading this mission to rescue survivors from a major attack against this shipyard. I don't have time for civilians."
           "Oh, well you see I'm not a civilian."
           Ms Chandra rolled her eyes. "Nobody ever is."
           "No, I'm actually quite good on my own," Lady Aesc continued. "I've even been known to sneak myself safely aboard shipyards while avoiding detection from high-ranking Centro vessels."
           Captain Andros' eyes narrowed.
           Lady Aesculapius' smile broadened. "Listen. We're on the same team here. You need all the help you can get with this and I'm in a position to give it. It's my moral duty as a citizen of the universe to do what I can when I can."
           Andros thought for a moment, and eased off. "You seem genuine. Alright, maybe we need someone with a…'ship'…as good as yours. Stay close. And put on one of these." She took off her backpack and pulled out a gun vest.
           "Uh…why?"
           "Because you're now Centro's responsibility and I don't want you getting shot. You're going to need to take off your frock coat to get the vest on."
           "Oh, well in that case I can't," smiled Lady Aesc, holding her lapels. "I have a rule: frock over gun, always."


           Following Captain Andros' orders, they split into three groups to sweep the shipyard for survivors. Mr Best and Ms Chandra each led a group of soldiers while Andros led the third. Lady Aesculapius accompanied Andros who, in her own words, didn't want to let Lady Aesc out of her sight. Fortunately for her, this was made easy by Lady Aesc's insistence on running ahead of the group to check every doorway and fork in the corridor first.
           "Will you PLEASE, get behind me?" asked Captain Andros through gritted teeth.
           "Nah, sorry," Aesc replied. "If we run into anyone it's best if we approach them in the order 'me, you, eight heavily armed soldiers’. Break them in gently."
           A siren of repeated descending notes echoed in the distance somewhere. Occasionally they found oxygen masks dangling from the roof that at first glance looked like some sort of alien creature.
           "So," started Lady Aesc. "Good thing you were in the area when the shipyard exploded."
           "It wasn't luck," Andros explained. "We were given an anonymous tip. Male voice, deep, but using some sort of scrambler. Said one of our shipyards in the area was about to be hit, so we came running. Wish we could've got here quicker."
           They entered an area of the shipyard that was in complete darkness. The power in this part of the station must have been knocked out in the explosion. Following Captain Andros' lead, the soldiers all switched on the small torches on their vests and pushed onwards.
           "Any theories about who did this?"
           "A few," Andros admitted. "Centro has enemies, particularly on Mars. They probably don't appreciate having a Centro-owned shipyard floating near Martian space."
           "Oh! Is THAT what that planet is?" asked Lady Aesc, nodding out the corridor's octagonal window to the rusty planet on their left.
           Captain Andros didn't get the joke, but stopped when she saw Lady Aesc's look of genuine wonder. "Well of course that's Mars, what other planet could it be?"
           "Um, literally any other brown one?" she replied, as if she were insulted by the question.
           "There are only…" Andros counted in her head. "…Three, maybe four planets in the system that could be called 'brown ones'."
           "Well if I knew straight away which system I was in it'd make guessing a lot easier, wouldn't it?"
           Captain Andros stared at her. The two lines of four soldiers behind her traded looks. "Who are you?"
           Lady Aesc smiled. "I’m from the Firmament. I go to some places and fix some things and do some stuff. Occasionally. Work permitting. What's through here?"
    “What’s the Firmament!?”
           Lady Aesculapius opened a door into some sort of control room with a high ceiling, screens showing different angles on rooms across the shipyard, and one very surprised man.
           "Oh, hello there!" said Lady Aesc.
           Andros and her soldiers piled into the room after her and raised their weapons.
           "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Don't shoot!" He was a dashing young man with dark curly hair, a darker leather jacket, and a t-shirt with black, grey, white, and purple stripes, arranged in the asexual flag, with the slogan 'Ace Pilot' written across it in a garish pink 1980s script font.
           "It's okay, he likes puns!" announced Lady Aesc. "Stand down everyone."
           The soldiers (inexplicably) lowered their guns and the captain stepped forward. "I’m Captain Rita Andros, representing Centro. We alerted this shipyard to a bomb threat hours ago after receiving a tip-off. Why the hell are you still here?"
           "Because we get alerted to 'bomb threats' all the time," he replied. "We thought it was just those crazy cultists wanting attention."
           An excited "ooh!" escaped Lady Aesc. "There's a cult? I love a good cult. Do they wear robes? I'm Lady Aesculapius," she said, extending a hand.
           "Jason," he said, shaking it. "Jason Jackson."
           "Not Jason Jarrek? As in 'Jarrek & Jarrek's'?"
           "Oh, no," he said with a smile, "I just work here. The owners take the bomb threats seriously. They evacuated first."
           "They were smarter than you," said Captain Andros. "Who is this cult? They've threatened the shipyard before?"
           "Yeah, yeah, started a few months back. Every week, like clockwork, we'd get a threatening transmission saying they'd blow us all sky high if we didn't stop what we were doing."
           "Are they enemies of Centro?"
           "They're enemies of common sense," Jason continued. "They call themselves 'The Apophenites'. Buncha crazies who believe all of space beyond the solar system is an illusion. Like all the stars are just some big matte painting done by the gods, or something."
           "'Apophenites'…" Captain Andros repeated, curiously.
           "From ‘apophenia’: humans’ tendency to see meaningful patterns in random data.” Lady Aesc explained. “Looking at dots in the sky and seeing Perseus and Leo, that sort of thing.”
           "They're against space travel and want us to stop repairing ships and stuff," said Jason.
           Andros looked into his exhausted face. He had a few days stubble and slight bags under the eyes. "Right, so when you said 'crazy' you actually meant 'crazy'."
           "I've been trying to keep track of everyone still onboard from here," said Jason, indicating towards the cameras. "Problem is, the explosion took out the power in sections of the station so I can't see everyone. I'll need to round them all up somehow."
           "Easy," said Andros, taking a seat at one of the screens. "We'll just use the tannoy."
           "Wait!" Jason and Lady Aesc cried at once.
           Andros froze. "What? Why?"
           "The explosion came from inside the shipyard and we didn't see any ships leaving," said Lady Aesc.
           Andros thought for a moment. "So whoever did this might still be here." Slowly, she stood up from the seat. She turned to face Jason. "How do we know it wasn't you?"
           Jason was suddenly reminded of all the guns in the room. "M-me? But, I'm helping you!" He raised his hands again. "I AM helping you, aren't I?"
           "Yes, but what if you're only helping us to get on our good side? What if…" her voice trailed off. "Actually, Lady Aesculapius, you're right: doubting people who are clearly goodies IS tedious. I believe you."
           Jason exhaled as he let his hands drop. "You do realise I'm employed by Centro too, right? Which reminds me, I’m counting this as overtime."
           "Can you show us one of these threatening transmissions?" asked Lady Aesc.
           "Sure." Jason moved over to a terminal on the wall and started scrolling through files. "I have them all saved. A new one every week, like the shittest vlog ever." He selected the most recent file and pressed play.
           The video started. "People of Jarrek & Jarrek shipyard."
           Lady Aesc's first reaction: "Robes! I called it!"
           Captain Andros' first reaction: "I know that voice."
           The screen showed a thin pale man, whose grey beard was his only visible feature under his dark red hood. He stood behind a desk like he was giving a lecture. "Humanity's drive to colonise the stars came from a base need to conquer that which is not rightfully ours. When we should have been focusing our time and resources on improving life on Earth, we escaped Earth in pursuit of infinite fresh starts. But instead of continuing forever, chasing the supposed expansion of the universe, we decided to set our own limits and remain within our own solar system. Why? Why limit ourselves if there truly are no limits? Because space travel was never about granting genuine benefits to humanity, and was merely based on the cultural idea of space travel as a marker of progress. A signifier of civilisation moving along its expected course. I offer you this final ultimatum: cease your enabling of the eternal lie of space travel or we will be forced to do it for you.”
           "That's…that's the guy who tipped us off about the attack." Captain Andros turned to the others. "Why would he give us warning about what he was going to do?"
           "And why would he wait until the moment your ship arrived before doing it?" added Lady Aesc.
           Captain Andros started bleeping. She reached for her wrist and pushed a button. "Ms Chandra."
           "Uh, Captain," Her voice sounded panicked through the already stuttering communicator grill. "We've got a problem!"
           "What is it, did you find anyone?"
           "We've found some people, yeah, but…the ship."
           "What about it?"
           Jason tapped Captain Andros on the shoulder so she could join him in staring out the window.
           Andros and her team stood in silence as they watched their ship slowly drift away from them.
           "You know," Lady Aesc started, "for a cult who hate space travel, stealing a spaceship is kinda hypocritical."
    Andros turned to Jason. "Does this station have enough power left to take out that ship?"
    "Even if it did, we wouldn’t be able to. It’s Centro-owned and still broadcasting its clearance codes. Our security system won’t register it as a threat."
           The screen crackled. It wasn't immediately obvious that the video had changed. It showed the same man wearing the same robe. But now he was sitting in the command chair of Captain Andros' ship. "Thank you, Captain, for answering the call to help your delusional slaves. We will put your vessel to great use. Oh, and do not worry about the rest of your crew. My disciples are safely escorting them to the escape pods where they will be jettisoned into space. Directionless. Floating forever. Goodbye."
           The video feed ended.
           "Shit." Andros watched as a shimmer of escape pods were jettisoned from the ship. "Well, at least they're safe. We can use your ship to go get them," she said, turning to Lady Aesculapius.
           Lady Aesc was still looking out the window. "I don't think lacking a ship is our problem. I'm more worried about how well-equipped Centro ships are."
           "Uh, Captain…" One of the soldiers beckoned for Andros to look.
           The ship was slowly turning. For a moment she thought it was coming back, but it stopped when its side faced the station. A moment passed as it hovered, motionless. Two small flashes of light came from the ship's underside. The flashes became two points of light streaking through space towards the shipyard.
           Her blood ran cold. "HOLD ON T-!"
           Impact. The station rumbled. The window shattered. A siren wailed through the shipyard and the room flooded with red light. A pre-recorded voice spoke. "Warning. Oxygen Level: Critical. Warning. Oxygen Level: Critical." The voice slowly faded out as the air left the room.
           Everyone held their breath and the railings to stop themselves being sucked out the window.
           Lady Aesc thought fast. She reached into her pocket to retrieve the blue crystal ball she showed Andros earlier and over-arm threw it out the window.
           The ball shot out into space. As soon as it had cleared the station, it started to grow. Quicker and quicker as it got bigger and bigger. Soon it was visible from the other side of the shipyard. Then it was visible from the retreating Centro ship. Then it was visible from the surface of Mars.
           In moments, the little crystal ball had returned to its normal size, comparable to a small moon.
           The new source of gravity in the sky, complete with its own atmosphere, brought Jason, Lady Aesc, the team of soldiers, and Captain Andros crashing back to the ground, gasping in the new air.
           Lady Aesculapius jumped to her feet and dusted herself down. "Ah, home sweet home!" She squeezed herself through the freshly unglassed window and walked out onto the blue crystal ground outside.
           Captain Andros' mouth flapped open when she saw Lady Aesc walking on solid ground outside. "But…we're in space!"
           "We were," agreed Lady Aesc. "But that was a like a whole second ago. This is my Factory of Crystal. It's my ship. And THERE," she said, pulling a brass spyglass out of her inner coat pocket and snapping it to its full length, "are your crew."
           She looked up into the darkness of space to see a shower of escape pods caught in the gravity of the fully expanded Factory. Like distant rain, they crashed down onto the crystal surface.
           "Good thing these modern Centro escape pods are designed to withstand crashes." Lady Aesc took her eye away from the spyglass and collapsed it back into her coat. She turned to Captain Andros. “Right?”
Andros nodded. Lady Aesc climbed back in through the window as the door to the control room opened and an out-of-breath Centro officer emerged.
           "Captain!"
           "Ms Chandra." Andros grabbed her shoulder. "Breathe, everything's under control."
           "What happened? The whole station shook like we'd hit something and now we're on a planet?!"
           "I'll explain later," said Lady Aesc. "Right now, Ms Chandra, you need to go out to that cluster of escape pods," she said, gesturing out the window, "and collect your crew. Round everyone up into this weird new building I've created and we can see about getting them home."
           "What about my ship!?" cried Captain Andros. "We can't let an insane anti-space travel cult fly around the universe in a Centro ship! Why would an anti-space travel cult even steal a Centro ship in the first place?"
           "Probably because it's a Centro ship," said Lady Aesc. "They might not have targeted you for any political reasons, but Centro still has power and influence regardless. That, and Centro ships have automatic security clearance for all Centro-owned sites. They probably have some plan to use it as a Trojan Horse. Go from shipyard to shipyard, destroying them all."
           "We have to stop them!"
           "We could," said Lady Aesc. "Or we could just wait a minute."
           Andros tried to read Lady Aesc's plan on her face but was getting nothing. The soldiers shifted slightly as they checked to see if they'd missed anything obvious.
           Meanwhile, Lady Aesc looked like she was standing in a elevator, waiting to arrive on her floor. She made some popping noises with her lips to fill the time. "So…did any of you watch the latest sports?"
           A positive murmur spread amongst the soldiers.
           "I hate the new manager."
           "Ugh, tell me about it!"
           They all grunted in agreement and Lady Aesc nodded. "Wasn't it crazy how that one human did the ball thing?"
           Some of the soldiers sighed while others merely shook their heads in silent disgust.
           The ground shook. A deafening explosion boomed outside.
           Jason grabbed the railing to keep himself upright. "What the hell was that?"
           Lady Aesculapius smiled. "All good spaceships can escape the gravity of something the size of a moon, but not without considerable effort. If a body the size of a moon were to spontaneously appear in the sky there wouldn't be enough time for the crew or the onboard systems to react. This way please."
           She wandered out of the room. It took half a second for everyone to leap into action and follow.
           She led them back the way they'd came, through the station, up the ladder, and out the hatch in the roof. The magnetic clamps in their suits didn't feel the need to engage when they stepped out onto the top of the shipyard. Together they looked out over the crystal landscape. The pale blue landscape, dotted with glowing stalagmites and mountains on the horizon that glistened in the sun, was punctuated by escape pods. Everyone was looking beyond them however at the colossal Centro ship, which had crashed far in the distance, its nose buried in the Factory's surface.
           Jason looked at the others. "So, that's it? Is it over? The ship crashed, the cult leader guy is dead?"
           "No," said Lady Aesc. "Modern Centro escape pods are designed to withstand crashes. So are modern Centro ships."


           The doors to the command room slid open. The man in the red robes sat in Captain Andros' chair with his back to Lady Aesculapius, but the sound of her arrival made him cock his head slightly to address her.
           "Have you assessed the damage, disciple?"
           “Yeah, you’re gonna need to get a guy in for that.”
           He whipped around at the sound of her voice. "You aren't one of my kin."
           "No, no, they're all being subdued by soldiers." She walked around the command room until she was in front of him and pulled her bottom lip into a sarcastic 'uh oh!' face. "The soldiers are here for you too obviously, but I decided to run on ahead and give you a proper chance first. Nobody else here will. After all the damage to Centro's property you've done, I wouldn't be surprised if…uh…" She made a vague winding gesture with her hand. "…Queen Centro herself didn't come down here. Her majesty can get awfully cross."
           The old man smiled. His bottom row of teeth were all far too thin, more animal than human, but he wasn't as terrifying as the hood made him seem. There was a twinkle in his eye that made Lady Aesc think he might have been a sweet grandfather to someone somewhere. "You are giving me a chance? To do what? Surrender?"
           "You didn't kill anyone when the shipyard exploded," said Lady Aesc.
           "No. My kin made sure of it. Everyone was out of the way when we detonated the charges, and we made sure Centro's rescue ship was already on the scene first."
           "And you ejected Captain Andros' crew out into space rather than kill them."
           "Of course," he said, with faux offence. "We are not savages, you know."
           Lady Aesc casually approached the chair that had belonged to Ms Chandra and tried to turn it around to face the man in Captain Andros' seat. She tried again with more effort before realising it was bolted to the ground. Accepting defeat, she lifted up the back of her frock coat so she could get her leg over the chair and sat in it backwards like a cool substitute teacher, folding her arms on its high back and resting her chin. "Hurting people clearly isn't your goal. You want to spread fear and panic so people stop travelling through space - which obviously isn't going to happen, let's be real - but, I don't think you lot are totally irredeemable."
           "I'm touched."
           "Oh, don't be. I should be clear: you may not be irredeemable but you're still pretty fucking…" Lady Aesc was quiet for a moment. "…Deemable. I mean, you're still a bad person who blows up shipyards with people inside, so you still totally deserve what's coming to you. What I'm doing is giving you a chance to go down well. Turn yourself over and fully co-operate with Centro."
The man lowered his head. "Never. They may take me but I will never betray my kin. Humanity did not deserve to rise from the Earth. This egocentric idea that we are entitled to more than our world has led to all the problems of the universe. All the tension that surrounds Mars and Centro now."
           Lady Aesculapius thought about his words, and the sadness in his voice. "You've got it wrong. People aren't trying to own or conquer the stars. Well, not all of them anyway. People want to SEE the stars. They want to explore and find their place and take bitchin Instagram photos with new horizons in the background. Trust me, your solar system is so tiny, it's hilarious. Outside of your neighbourhood, over the garden fence, that's where the fun is.”
The man blinked. “Sorry, ‘bitchin’?”
           Both of them reflexively stood up when they heard heavy footsteps approaching. "Humanity is full of basically good eggs," she continued. "Don't bring the rest of them down to your level."
           The doors slid open again and the soldiers entered with Captain Andros.
           The hooded figure shot one last look at Lady Aesc. He almost looked proud of what he'd done as he was dragged away.
           Jason emerged from the sea of uniforms and joined Lady Aesc's side. "Yo, so you still haven't actually explained why we're on a planet now. Or how a planet can be made of crystal. Or how a planet can be a ship. Or who you even are?"
           Lady Aesculapius put her arm around his shoulder and let out a hearty laugh. "Oh, Jason. You see, there's so much more to the multiverse-”
“What?”
“-Than what's right in front of you. So much to see and discover. That's why you've got to keep pushing forwards to achieve your goals. Never give u-"
           The door opened and Mr Best burst in. "Captain! Captain! The ship got stolen and then we got hit by something and then the gravity went weird and now we're on a planet and then the ship that was stolen from us crashed!!!"
           Captain Andros sighed. "You sort of just killed the moment."
           Mr Best looked at Lady Aesc and her enraptured audience. "Oh. Sorry, Captain. Please continue."
           "Nah, no point. It's dead now. The moment's gone. Fuck it."

​

It was a two-moon winter night, and Angelica Mustrip was waiting for Santa Claus. She had been told if she didn’t sleep then Santa would never come, but she figured if she pretended, he wouldn’t know any better. That was when she heard it—thud. Thud. THUD. She opened her eyes, and slipped out her her covers, making sure to put her slippers and robe on before she left the room. She crept into the living room, peering in through the hall. She shivered.
    Framed in the window between the twinkling painted Christmas tree and the coat rack was a tall figure, its head a horned sheep’s skull, its back hunched from its height to stare through the window. It was robed in a black and dark gray cloth. Its hand came up, wrapped in untanned leather, and rapped on the plastic window again. Thud. Thud. THUD.
    Angelica had two urges: she wanted to stare at this strange terrifying thing, and she wanted to flee. She stared. It rapped again, then tilted its head to the side, and started walking towards the coat rack, and out of view.
    She let out a breath. Whatever it was, it was--
    The door controls were being activated. She could hear the tones of the buttons being pressed, the horns scraping against the door. She ran.
    She scampered back into her room and closed the door behind her.
    Her surprises weren’t over though, because her room wasn’t empty. There was a woman in there messing with the wings on her lego starfighter, her brown fingers failing to reattach something.
    “Oh, hello there! Sorry I can’t seem to get the wing back on, I took it off because I thought I could improve it but it looks like I’ve mucked it up. Oh well.”
    Angelica took a step back towards the door, then remembered the Sheepman.
    “I’m afraid I already know your name, it's on your wall in big purple letters, good color purple, mind you, but I haven’t introduced myself,” she set the lego Starfighter down, took off her flat cap, and bowed dramatically. “Lady Aesculapius, at your service. Yes I know, ‘lady’ is so old fashioned. Such a weird thing to have in a name.”
    Angelica swallowed, “You need to get out of my house. I...I’ll scream.”
    Aesc frowned, “Why ever would you do that? I apologized for the legos.”
    The sound of the front door opening made them both silent. Heavy footfalls came towards them.
    “Isn’t it late for guests?”
    Angelica backed away from the door, towards Aesc and the bed, “Its the Sheepman.”
    The footsteps got closer, and then the door was pushed open. An untanned leather gloves slipped around it, and gently pushed it open. There it was, skull and all. It unhunched its back, and raised itself up to its full height, which scraped the ceiling.
    It pointed at Angelica.
    Lady Aesc stepped in front of her, “Hello there, it looks like you’re breaking into this house, and terrifying this child. Which is absolutely not--”
    It swung at her. Angelica put her hands over her eyes, and heard the strange woman drop to the ground. Then the leather gloves were under her arms, and lifting her up. As she tried to scream, one went over her mouth.

* * * *

Twelve Hours Earlier (Martian Time), Christmas Eve

    “Is that normal on Mars?” Lady Aesculapius said, pulling her brass spyglass away from her eye and pointing.
    Graelyn Scythes, who looked much younger than Lady Aesc physically but had let out the sigh of an adult trying to wrangle a particularly hyperactive child, snatched the spyglass from Aesc and focused on where she was pointing. On a Martian dune, a single figure stood, wearing a billowing black and gray cloak, and a ram’s skull. Graelyn frowned. “No, that’s not normal. Martians tend to be fairly respectful with remains. Not because they’re nicer than other people, they just think its in bad taste to keep something’s skull sitting around.” She looked to her right, “You see this guy Arch?”
    The cyborg nodded his enclosed head, “Is this some sort of weird Christmas tradition? Like Krampus or Mari Lwyd?”
    Graelyn shook hers in response, then adjusted her glasses, “It's not any Christmas tradition I know about. Mari Lwyd uses a horse skull, and Krampus is supposed to be part goat.”
    “Maybe they’re just bad at reading comprehension?” Lady Aesculapius chimed in.
    “Or they couldn’t find the appropriate skull and improvised,” Arch suggested.
    The figure raised a hand, and then started to walk down the dune, away from them, disappearing from view.
    “Well Lady Aesc, it's certainly weird. But I’m not sure this is worth another delay in trying to get us home.”
    Aesc sat down on the edge of the rock face, dangling her feet over the edge, “My pilot and I are trying, but if I’m being honest we’re still pretty new at this.”
    Graelyn closed the spyglass, “What do you mean pretty new?”
    “I mean my Pilot and I are only a few years out of school. We’ve got all the basics down, mind you, but trying to get to the weird reality you live in isn’t easy. I honestly think it was made to be difficult to travel to.”
    Graelyn frowned, “So you’re a newbie.”
    “A professional newbie. Anyway, we’re here and there’s something wrong, so we should go check it out.”
    Graelyn looked away, “I don’t really like Christmas. I’d rather not spend it here and just skip it.”
    “What don’t you like about it? The commercialism?” Aesc asked.
    “Look, I don’t want to talk about it.”
    “Then let's find out what’s going on here. There has to be something weird going on, and it's our responsibility to make sure everything is okay.”
    Graelyn looked over at Arch, hoping he was going to be of the opinion they should go straight home, but instead he said: “Alright, where do we start?”

    “What do you mean the police haven’t done anything?” Lady Aesc yelled at the vendor.    
    He held up his hands, “Look Ma’am, I just serve veal on a bun. The Sheepmen come at night and terrorize the children. It's just how it is.”
    Graelyn raised an eyebrow, “Is it now?”
    “It is. So I’d stay in if I were you come sundown.”
    Lady Aesculapius looked to her companions, “You two get a hotel and stay out of trouble. I need to investigate this.”
    Graelyn sighed, “Does it really need to be investigated, I mean--”
    “Of course it does! This is a dangerous situation for these people. Who knows what these Sheepmen are.” Lady Aesc stormed off, and Graelyn could only sigh as she walked away.
    “That’s not what I meant.”

* * * *

The Present

Lady Aesc had a pounding headache. She moaned as she got up, expecting to see morning, but it was still dark, and the pounding on her head continued...till she realized that the pounding was actually literal. A small glowing crystal orb was flitting back and forth between a spot in the air, and her forehead, over and over. She batted it away as it came in again, and it veered off as it also grew in size.
    “Was that really necessary? You hit me more than that Sheepman did,” she groaned.
    “Lady Aesculapius, Angelica has been taken. The child, the one in the room remember? I couldn’t think of any other way to get you up. I don’t have any limbs as an orb,” it replied.
    She did remember. The child. The Sheepmen. The rumors she’d heard. It seemed weird, and the exact sort of thing she liked checking out. Sure, it wasn’t technically her job to check this sort of thing out, but she had taken it up as a full time hobby at this point.
    Standing and straightening her back, she focused on her vertebrae, getting them back into the proper alignment. How did humans go through their whole lives and not have an inborn system to realign their bones?
    She shook her limbs out, and looked at the orb, “Where are Graelyn and Arch?”
    “I don’t know, they weren’t at the hotel, so I thought it most important to get you up.”
    Aesc nodded, “You did the right thing. Let's find that girl.” She listened to the silent house for a moment, then whispered, “I just have one other thought, the girl is gone, but listen.”
    “I don’t hear anything,” the orb said.
    “You don’t. Her parents are gone too.”

    Aesc followed the tracks out of the town, it wasn’t hard. The big footprints weren’t covered at all. They led across the red dunes to a rock circle, where a circle of black figures stood, sheep skulls swaying back and forth as they chanted. A little girl sat crying in the middle of them.
    Lady Aesc snuck up, close enough she could hear them, peering over a rock outcrop.
    “Little girl,” a deep voice like a nightmare said, “do you know what Christmas means for little girls?”
    She shook her head, “The Sheepmen come for little girls like you who want a Christmas. Luckily we already ate one little girl tonight, but if you keep believing in it, you’ll be our next meal.”
    Lady Aesc had heard enough. She pulled her Factory of Crystal out of her pocket, tossed it in the air, and held onto the orb as it flew over the heads of the Sheepmen—until she let go over the one speaking to the girl. She fell onto it, expecting it to bat her away (she had an excellent maneuver to pull when that happened) but instead the thing just collapsed under her, moaning in pain.
    The rest of the circle stopped chanting. Lady Aesc stepped off of the thing she’d landed on, which got up, the sheep’s skull having fallen off from the hit, the stilts broken off its feet.
    Angelica gasped, “Dad?”
    Aesculapius blinked, “What?”
    “Johnathan are you okay?” Angelica’s mother said, tossing her skull aside and running to her husband.
    “I don’t know who you are, but you’re a dead--” the crystal orb flew at the speaker, and bonked him in the head.
    “You were saying?”
    “You don’t know what you’re doing. We’re trying to do something good for this town. For all of Mars!”
    “How in the heavenly Firmament do you think making a little girl cry is...good”
    “We’re getting the Christmas out of her, for her own good.” The man growled, “Christmas is an Earth holiday. An old Earth religion based on lies turned into a commercial black mass to our Centro overlords. You think we’re monsters? We’re trying to purge this blight from our planet. Christmas will be terrifying. It will be something Children will fear, rather than look forward to. First here, then it will creep across Mars. And then we can cleanse the next ideological Tyranny.”
    Lady Aesc sucked in a breath through her teeth, loudly. It was a long breath. “Yeah uh, look, you’re terrorizing children because you don’t like a holiday, and that’s fairly messed up, so I’m afraid I’m going to have stop all of you. You need to let Angelica go immediately.”
    “Or you’ll what?” The head Sheepman stepped forward from the crowd, laughed, and pulled his mask off, “My name is Tybalt, I’m the Mayor of this town.”
    “You’re not doing a very good job.”
    “We’re keeping our values. And scaring the Christmas out of these Children.”
    “You dressed up as monsters to terrorize them, that’s frankly very awful, and I can’t let this continue.”
    “It doesn’t matter,” Tybalt said, “There are no presents for the children this year. There’s nothing for them to wake up to. You think you’ve stopped us, but there just isn’t a Christmas. They’re waking up right now, to empty houses without their parents, and with nothing under the tree.”
    Lady Aesculapius grimaced. They were right. And going back in time to try to change this now would only earn her a reprimand: it had already been witnessed. The lights lit up in the windows of the small Martian town, and then so did much more. Strings of lights going down the town’s streets burst into light, and the tree at the town’s center became a sparkling beacon.
    “That’s not possible,” Tybalt said, “that’s just not possible.”
    “It looks like Christmas wasn’t canceled after all. Sorry, but in that sarcastic way where I’m not actually sorry at all and I’m really gloating just a little bit.” Aesc smiled warmly.
    Angelica’s face lit up, “It’s beautiful!”
    Her mother looked terrified.
    The Sheepmen ran towards the small dome, jamming through the airlock. When they entered into the dome, snow was falling gently upon them, and through the windows they could see their own delighted children unwrapping boxes and pulling out toys. Some dumped piles of candy out from stockings onto the floor. Little Angelica ran from her parents to their house, which had now been filled with presents too.
    “Who...who did this?” Tylbalt yelled.
    On cue, a red sleigh with twelve sheep pulling it coming towards them. They were stunned. As the sleigh got closer, they could make out a skinny person in the front, wearing a clearly fake beard and a Santa costume, with an over-sized cyborg in the back wearing an elf outfit.
    The sleigh skid to a halt, the sheep pulling it not remaining entirely still, and the skinny Santa rose.
    “Ho ho ho, horrible parents, Merry Christmas!” Graelyn Scythes said in a terrible impression of a deep paternalistic voice.
    “And happy holidays to anyone else!” Arch added from behind her.
    “You’ve all been very naughty, so I thought I’d help teach you a lesson.”
    Tybalt broke through the crowd and pointed a finger at Santa Graelyn, “What have you done? You’re getting in the way of our right to rule our children the way we wish!”
    “What I’ve done is give your children a moment of happiness they’ll remember. Not fear,” she looked out at the crowd, “Children shouldn’t have to be afraid.
    “Fear builds character,” someone yelled.
    “Jesus, what the hell is wrong with these people,” she muttered, and then cleared her throat to yell again, “My name is Santa Claus, and I’m a protector of children. If you didn’t know that.”
    “No you’re not, you’re that girl who was at the hotel earlier!” a Sheepwoman yelled.
    Graelyn looked at the woman, “I just delivered presents to an entire town, wrangled twelve sheep, and have a military grade cyborg as my elf helper. Tell me I’m that girl again.”
    “Right, sorry, my mistake!”
    Lady Aesculapius raised her hand from the back, “Are the threats really necessary Graelyn?”
    “I’m not...” Graelyn sighed and pulled the fake beard of, “I had a whole schtick going, c’mon.”
    Aesc looked more embarrassed than Graelyn had ever seen her before, like messing up a schtick was a worse issue than failing to get them home for two months. “Sorry!”
    Graelyn grunted, and kept going, “Okay, forget that. You’ve been terrorizing your children. And that’s messed up. I can’t even imagine why you’d think that was a good idea.”
    “My mother tortured me as a child, and I turned out fine!” Tybalt yelled from behind the animal skull he had jammed over his head.
    “No, you didn’t, and that’s my point. My mother was a terrible person. Worse than you, if you can believe that. She made my life a living hell. Every Christmas, she’d tell me I was going to wake up and there would be wonderful surprises under the tree for me. But there never were. She made me sit there, and watch her open presents for herself. Then she’d ask me, ‘Graelie, why is there nothing for you? Oh yes, because you’re a terrible daughter. Not even Santa loves you, pity,’ of course, I didn’t believe in Santa, but it still was a knife to my heart. It's fine you don’t like Christmas, but you don’t have to lie to your kids about it to make them hurt the way you did. So I did your job for you in one sense. I gave them something to be happy about. But I have to tell you, they’d be happier with you. Happier to have their parents there with them, to share in their joy. To spend that time together and not be afraid in the dark and cold of winter. But I suppose spending time with your kids is less important than making sure Tybalt here gets to have his culty power trip. So, go choose. Choose between your kids or sucking this guy’s-”
    “-toes,” Arch cut in.
    “So it's your choice. I’ll leave it up to you. Have a Merry Christmas.”
    She pulled on the reigns, and Santa’s sheep sprang into action, pulling her towards the gate to the dome.
    “Want on, Lady Aesc?” Arch asked as she got close.
    Aesc took his hand, and pulled herself onto the sleigh, “You know, we could just ride out of the town on my Factory of Crystal. It flies.”
    “Nah,” said Graelyn, pulling her beard back on, “I’m enjoying this.”
    “I can respect that. But are we really done with this town?”
    Graelyn tossed the toy plasma rifle off of the sleigh, the hollow casing cracking on a rock as it fell, “Oh trust me, Arch and I handled it.”
    
    That Christmas was one every child in town would remember. The cookies for Santa had all been eaten, the stockings filled, and the trees—oh the trees were loaded with presents. Every child, rich or poor, found exactly what they’d wished for under the tree that year. And as their parents came in, wearing strange clothes, the children were so excited to see them. Most of them knew Santa wasn’t real, so they assumed their parents had just been paying close attention. There were so many hugs. So many excited smiles. “Christmas is amazing!” the children said, which was at first annoying, but as the day went on, and the warm glow of their family sunk into the evening, one by one the parents all had a thought they’d never expected: maybe, they liked Christmas to.
    
    As the Sleigh crested a dune outside the town, the trio saw a figure standing on the dune across from them. It’s head was a sheep’s skull. It raised a hand to them, and then disappeared into the sand.

​

'Happy 20th Anniversary, Faction Paradox fans!
20 years ago, author Lawrence Miles brought a group of time traveling voodoo cultists called Faction Paradox into the world in a Doctor Who novel. People loved them, and they’ve since become their own amazing spin off series. I love it, and I wanted to do something to share that love with my readers, and all the people who already love it.

To celebrate, I’ve gotten permission from a Faction Paradox author to write a story crossing over a character (but just that character) from his novel with the universe-hopping heroes from my 10,000 Dawns book series. You don’t need to have read either of our books to understand this tale, so no worries! (Though if you have, expect some little treats.) But if you aren’t familiar, I hope you go check out Obverse Books' Faction Paradox novels and anthologies when you’re done here. You’ll have a good time:
http://obversebooks.co.uk/product-category/factionparadox/

So thank you to Andrew Hickey for trusting me with his creation, Stuart Douglas and Obverse books for keeping the dream alive, Lawrence Miles for getting the ball rolling, and every writer, artist, editor, and company (especially Lars Pearson at Mad Norwegian Press) that’s helped make Faction Paradox such a fun corner of Doctor Who to play in. Here’s to the next 20 years!

Thank you also to Jo Smiley, Evan Forman, Michael Robertson, Trevor Allen, Mary Beringer, and Nicholas Kory for their invaluable feedback and proofreading on this story. Thank you as well to all my backers on Patreon who make this weird stuff possible.

Radicalrachel.dreamjournal.com
Entry: November 11th

Okay, I know you’re all going to be mad at me, so I apologize ahead of time.
I’m in New York City. Yayyy, right? I’m getting to see all the sights, and...yes coming back here was hard. But I couldn’t really turn it down. My old boss here offered me a plum boring job covering some rare books that the New York Public Library has acquired. It’s easy, boring, and frankly seems to be something of an apology tour for how things ended before. He didn’t feel bad then, he’s trying not to show it now, but I can tell it’s changed. The first oh-so-subtle clue was when he paid for me to go to the top of the Empire State Building after I got here. Still hasn’t admitted he missed out on a story, or did anything wrong though. But whatever, I’m essentially on a paid holiday a guy is paying for out of pocket instead of being able to open up about a Feeling (TM). So I’ll take it.
But I’ll admit, after the events of last year it was hard coming back. I putzed around La Guardia for an hour after I landed before I worked up the nerve to call my Lyft to come get me (still boycotting Uber, the collaborationist bastards). The ride to the hotel was all nerves, even though my driver made all the small talk a human possibly could on the drive over (a random dude asking about where I went to school definitely didn’t make me feel safer, honestly). I’ve settled in now though. My hotel window overlooks a dumpster and a dirty lot between buildings and I love it. 
But…I know you’re probably worried about me. I would be too. But I’m okay, I promise. I’m just glad to have mates back home in the UK who support me. I’ll be back in a few days after talking to some librarians about a book. 

That isn’t actually why I’m updating today though.
Despite this website being called dreamjournal, I really don’t use it to talk much about dreams. But I had one last night that won’t get out of my head. It still feels real.


I was waiting in line at the coffee shop, desperate for caffeine (hello jet lag my old friend). I’ve never been huge on coffee, but when in Rome get a pumpkin spice latte, right? So that was when the pair started harassing me. One was a young woman, wearing a red blazer and matching skirt with a white blouse and black tie, the other was a tall cosplayer (probably? It’s a dream so maybe he was just in some sci-fi crap I forgot I saw) they came right up to me in line (rude) and started talking to me (rude x2) trying to convince me that I was being followed and they were here to protect me (please seek a therapist x3). I got my coffee, and hurried past them.
They kept talking, but I ignored them, just as I ignored the Buddhist monk who tried to force a medallion into my hand (he'd then try to guilt me into paying for it) and the musician handing out his mixtape (who would do the same). I walked past a poster someone had plastered on the wall of the President, and tried to ignore that too. 
That was when I noticed the cat.
It was a grey kitty, wearing a white collar with a rainbow sprinkles pattern on it. It was following me, or at least it looked like it was following me. I said a few extremely cutesy things to the cat, which ignored me in return. After I turned a corner, and had gone down half the block, I knelt down to see if I could make it come up to me. It rubbed its face against my glove, which was cute, but then it backed up. First it meowed loudly, then it hissed.
“What’s got you bothered?”
That was when I felt the hand go over my mouth.
I dropped my coffee in shock, and felt my right foot get hot and wet.
I did my best to look around, and saw the street had basically emptied out. Perfect. Naturally, I was terrified.
"Rachel Edwards?" they said, "Nod or shake your head. Be honest.”
I felt compelled to honesty by their tone, and I nodded.
"Good, you’re going to take me to the Book of Books," keeping their hands on me, they turned me around to face them. They were wearing a cartoonishly intense black robe, flared gently at the boots like a bell, and every edge rimmed in patterned blue. I couldn't see their face aside from the mouth since they'd pulled the pointed-cowl hood down low. A shining orb floated next to their head, I supposed some sort of drone even though it wasn't buzzing. It looked like it was made of crystal.
They began to speak, but I yelled in their face and kicked them in the shins. As their hand broke free, I grabbed my keychain pepper spray and let it off in their face. Then I ran.
And here's the part where it becomes really obviously dream-y.
Their hand grabbed my shoulder, but I was still running, and they still held on. I looked back, and their arm was stretching out. Like, full on Stretch-Armstrong, Mr. Fantastic.
That was when the woman and the cosplayer came back into my dream.
The cosplayer rammed the stretched arm, legs pumping like pistons, and I heard a crack. The arm reeled back in like one of those retractable ID holders as the cloaked person cried out. They turned their head left, eyes filling with surprise. Mine did too. There was the woman again, holding a crystal disk the size of her palm. She slapped it on the creepy-cloak person, and they let out a loud sigh before they were enveloped in a circular white light and vanished.
"Hi again," the cosplayer said, "You alright?"
I ran again.
I tripped, and everything went black.
“Ugh, this is why you should never meet your favorite characters,’ I heard the woman say.
Then I woke up in my bed. 
What the hell, right?


News Report: ViralNoiseNews, November 12th

You think you love donuts? Check out this crazy criminal! Late last night a hungry ninja seemed to break into a New York coffee shop, and security cams caught it all on video!
(The article continues for several more paragraphs, featuring every single second of the video written out in prose, with large gifs between each chunk showing people making over the top reactions of shock, doing backflips, or stuffing too many donuts in their mouth.)

(The actual video is below all of that, and is very short. A small figure climbs down out of an air vent via a rope, grabs a donut box and fills it with donuts, then sticks another one in her mouth. She throws money down on the counter, more than the donuts are worth, and climbs back up the rope.)

Radicalrachel.dreamjournal.com
Entry: November 12th

Today was the “Big day.” The day I got to interview people about these old books. I’ve set this blog post so only the usual suspects can see it, but here’s some of my favorite choice segments from the raw material:

Me: So what does this discovery mean for readers?
Johannes Englesberg III: (laughs) Well, it means some of the most amazing speculative texts in history will finally be available to the public.

Me: Speculative?
Johannes: Yes, the texts are old. They date from the 1700’s, and their discovery site lines up with accounts of a meteor falling in that area during the time they were buried! The books display printing methods that we thought weren’t developed for centuries, and feature predictions about future technology that are breathtaking in their accuracy. I dare say, it might be the first science fiction.

Me: What are the books about?
Johannes: Aside from one book, which appears to feature many texts condensed within it, and is an outlier, they all seem to follow one great narrative of a war of powerful beings and the humans that interact with it. It’s quite fascinating, and I’m excited to study them further.

So, that’s the kind of stuff I’m doing. Asking about books. They sound like pretty cool books, I’m intrigued, but like I said: plum job. I’ll be excited to come back, even if things back home aren’t going much better than here.





Radicalrachel.dreamjournal.com
Entry: November 13th


Okay faithful readers...I’m not sure if you’re even reading this post. I’m putting it on private for now. I’m not sure if I’ll ever make it public. I’m still not sure its real. But I’m sitting here, and looking at the evidence right in front of me. So I’m writing this out. I’m not sure what else I can say.
I was walking to the library from my hotel, hands in my pockets, nose dipped into my scarf. They say that the summers in New York are why people live there and the winters are why everyone doesn’t, and I was beginning to understand that. Nice fine holiday, I thought, as the wind ripped through me.
I shouldn’t joke. The next part isn’t funny. A lot of it isn’t funny. Its terrifying, and I want all of you to read it, I want to scream about this and knock things off tables dramatically (I’d go pick all of them up afterwards, sure but…) and I just can’t make light of this. Because if you read this, you wouldn’t believe it. 
So, remember my dream? It wasn’t a dream. And my confirmation of that started when I was mugged for the second time this week.
I was walking by an abandoned shopfront, the windows obscured by cardboard lining them on the inside. The door opened, and a hand reached out in front of my face.
It wasn’t a normal hand.
It was dripping neon.
Blue ooze seeped from the cuticles as it pawed at me, leaving a slick smear as it fumbled to cover my mouth while I tried to whip my head away and yell. I lost, and it clamped down over my mouth. Other hands reached around me, and I was pulled, alone and terrified, inside the dark building. I thought of last year, and assumed that it was the killer from the campaign. I shouldn’t have come back. My heart was tearing up my chest. It happened faster than I could blink and yet I can still distinctly remember the foul taste of the ooze, the way the hands stank like a chemical spill, and the knowledge that this really was the end and I’d never see home again. I’d die in an abandoned shop an ocean away.
“Keep calm dearie,” someone said, through a mouthful of goo, “You’re in safe hands with the Strid. We’re actually from the neighborhood, if you know what I mean.”
“She doesn’t know what you mean,” a different voice said, equally garbled.
I began to struggle, but fell still when I heard the voices in the ceiling. The Strid looked up.
“You’re crowding me!” One said.
“I’m large!” The other replied.
“This feels kind of shaky,” the first voice continued.
Suddenly, in a stunningly accurate recreation of all the promises made by the prats who came up with Brexit, the ceiling cracked, (“Oh,” said the ceiling) then utterly collapsed. Mixed in with the debris fell the two weird strangers who had rescued me in my dream. They landed, without a shred of grace, into a mess of boxes and rubbish. The arm of the woman from the day before popped up, rasing up a single finger.
“In the name of Dawn, I command you to let her go!” she said from under the rubble.
The two goo-faced folks (Strid?) both looked at each other, and began a slow uncertain laugh. That was when the cosplayer from the day before burst from the rubble. He ran like an Olympic sprinter (Not that I support the Olympics but it’s a good analogy) and before the pair of Strid could get their bearings, he’d rammed into one with his shoulder (bones cracked, they flew and hit the wall) and grabbed the other one’s arm with a firm grip. He tugged, and ripped them away from me, sending them sprawling onto the floor.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I began to nod, but the two Strid rose from the floor. From how they were hit, it seemed like they should have been dead.
Should have.
From the rubble, the woman rose fully, dusting herself off.
“Are you aware that Archimedes here is a cyborg with built in weaponry capable of turning both of your pitiful forms to...well I’d say goo but that would be a bit redundant wouldn’t it?”
One of the Strid, their finger dripping blue ooze as they pointed at her, replied, “You have no right to the Book, outsider.”
“Look,” Arch cut in, “we both legitimately don’t like hurting people. But we will.”
The Strid looked at each other, and then, nodding in unison, backed towards the door.
I was expecting them to say something like, “This isn’t over, earthling!” but instead one of them just flicked Arch off. 
I certainly appreciated the assist, but I still had the urge to flee or fight.
“Okay, you’re probably scared, or pissed off, or confused, or all of the above, but we’re here to help. This is my friend Graelyn Scythes, she’s in charge of our team. We work for a group called Dawn, and we’ve been sent to protect you. My name is Archimedes Von Ahnerabe.”
“Are...what the hell was wrong with those people?”
Graelyn walked over, picking her glasses up off the floor (surprisingly uncracked) and took up a prim and composed pose, despite still having plaster dust in her black hair.
“Follow us, we’re going to take you somewhere safe where we can talk and answer your questions. Then we’ll make sure we get back to your hotel tonight.” She started walking, as though the debate was over and we’d all agreed to this. 
I stared dumbfounded.
“Well come on then!”
“No, really, what was wrong with them?”
Graelyn exhaled, pushed her glasses up to touch her face with one finger, and put on a smile that I could tell was fake from across a dark room while I was still in shock.
“You’re in danger. People are coming for you, only they aren’t people. Arch and I come from the future, and those blue oozie folk, the Strid, they’re aliens. Surprise! Your government has been lying to you about that and aliens are real. Also yesterday wasn’t a dream, I love your blog, and seriously we should get moving before backup arrives.”
“Okay, yeah, sure.”
I went with it for the moment. Why not, I suppose? The moments were passing like a blur. We hustled down the street, trying to look Incredibly Normal (TM) so probably the exact opposite of that, but no one bothered us on the way over to where they took me.
“I don’t believe any of this,” I said defensively.
“Did the two kidnapping attempts not convince you?” Graelyn said with more than a hint of snark (rudex4).
“I should just get on a plane and go home. The USA is a madhouse—USians are a madhouse.”
"USian? Did people actually say that?’ Graelyn asked Arch.
Arch shrugged, "I'm really not the person to ask you know."
Graelyn held up her index finger, and then moved it down, "You--absolutely have a point." She looked at me, "Oh, he was raised on a spacestation in the middle of nowhere where they lied to all the inhabitants and told them that the world outside didn't exist. Also he’s a cyborg.”
Arch rapped a knuckle against his metallic head, “Long story,”
“Right,” I said.
We reached the door of a theatre, announcing it was setting up for some show based on some corporate property to premiere in the future. We reached a side door, which was of course locked. Arch’s finger opened up, and little...thingies came out and slipped into the lock. In a second, it clicked, and he barged in.
“We’ll be safe in here, this theatre is in between productions,” he said, shutting the door. They ushered me to a seat in the front row, where they’d left some popcorn, a box of donuts, a bottle of water and a latte.
Graelyn hopped up on the stage, and held her hands up.
“We know you have a lot of questions, so we’re going to try to clear up everything we can. We actually put together a presentation just for this occasion. So that’s exciting right?”
“Okay, how do you know who I am?”
Graelyn thought a moment.
“Wait, just...look at this okay?” Graelyn ran off stage, and came back holding up a book, "See, where I come from, you're a work of fiction. Well, that's not true, you actually did exist in my universe a few hundred years ago, but this story didn't happen to you. You at one point heard there was a book about a journalist with your name but according to historical records you just laughed it off. I read your book over and over growing up!" she flopped the paperback in my face a few times,  till she finally stopped and I could read the cover.
"Who the heck is Andrew Hickey?"
Graelyn frowned, "Oh come on. He's really good. He wrote that book about the Monkeys."
“I’m not familiar.”
She sighed, “Not appreciated in his own time. Anyways, Arch and I used this novel about you in order to find you.”
“We bought it from Obverse books,” Arch added.
“And we did find you! Which is lucky, because you’re at the center of a big problem. Those books you’re doing the story about? They’re not from this universe. And neither are we.”
There was a long silence. I calculated the fastest route between me and the door, (dash across the aisle, hop over the queue, make a right) just in case. 
"After all that crazy stuff last year, I mean, the Pr-"
“Just look in the book, it’s all in there.”
I took the book from her, and began reading.
My dreamjournal entries were in there, along with…some other weird stuff. Some of it I saw the connection to (again, rather not think about that), but some was...really egregiously random. At least at first. It seemed like there was some connection between things, but I was only skimming it. I wasn’t sure what I believed. The book was probably some elaborate fake. This whole thing was. 
But it was my life as a book. Someone had written it. 
I sat there reading it for quite a bit of time. Graelyn left at one point and got something for us to eat, and I sat there and read. And read.
If this was a hoax it was...detailed. I closed the book. 
"We come from another reality," Graelyn said, spreading her arms out dramatically, "In our reality, the last election you had turned out differently. The former United States of America--"
"Don't say former, it weirds people out," Arch cut in.
"Yes, sorry, the still very present and existing United States of America. And there are lots of other little differences which all lead to us growing up in a very different future from the one your world leads to. Not that, you know, you'd know that.”
I shook my head, “The heck?”
Graelyn sighed, “Look, you just saw a goopy guy right? And before that you saw a robed guy whose arm stretched extra long right? So just take my word that this isn’t normal please?”
I threw my hands up, okay.
“Great. So anyways, Arch and I put together a hologram to try to explain what’s going on. None of the people are real, mind you, Arch just put the script into a program and popped the likenesses of some actors you like in there, but it should be okay.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I whispered.
“I wrote it, so I hope you like it!” Arch said.

So the performance began. I recorded it on my phone and… Its embedded below.

* * * *

(Transcription inserted)

 Why We Need This Book
 a new play by Archimedes Von Ahnerabe.

 (Stage lights go low. When they go back up, we see a hologram flicker to life. It’s the ARBITER OF ETERNITY. It looks like Lin Manuel-Miranda. Also on Stage are a Cabinet, a Chest, and a pile of black cloth.)

Eternity:
I was old and eternal,
my hooks had me bent
trying to run the
First and final
Firmament
Everything was easy
I was utterly bored
when my girl the Arbiter of Knives
came on board.

 (THE ARBITER OF KNIVES enters, she looks like Tracy Thoms. The hologram takes a moment to load, and for a moment she instead looks like Matthew Broderick.)
 
 Knives:
Eternity sucks, we’ve been here forever.

 Eternity:
My friend that’s the cost of holding things together.
10,000 Dawns, each of them scrappy,
And now the Great Assimilation is trying to own the mapping
An inter-universal empire? It’s never been done.
But they’re doing their best, those fools have me spun.

 Knives:
What if there was a way for us to get happy?

 Eternity:
You’ve got a slice, I’ll taste the pie.

 Knives:
The Arbiter of Knives is ready to try.
Think about a book.

 Eternity:
You’re done that’s easy.
I’ve read every single one,
even ones a little sleazy.
10,000 Universes, I’ve read it all.

Knives:
What if you never ran out?

Eternity:
Okay, I’ll hear it all.

Knives:
Outside of our domain
I found another ‘verse.
A place with a book that’s anything but terse
You turn every page, it just keeps going.
You end one book, another keeps flowing.

Eternity:
You’re saying this book lets you read on forever?

Knives:
I’m saying this book is the key for us to weather
A trillion more years of keeping things together.
How much longer can you sit around bored?
Making sure Eternity stays true to your word.
Everyone needs a break, even Eternals.
Eternity:
I am pretty tired…

Knives:
So go get some words!

Eternity:
You know as well as I we can’t interfere.
If you try to cross that line,
You’re gunna know fear.
We’re not the only Firmament
putting glue on the stars
If we interfere with another
And they catch us in the act
We’ll be at war with our equals
and Knives:
We cannot have that.

Knives:
I know its a risk,
But you gotta let me try!
I know a way in, 
I promise I’ll be brisk
A man on the inside
Who’ll just want a dip in the fisc
Eternity:
You mean…

Knives:
He’ll choose us a person.
We’ll follow their path.
And he’ll block their Firmament
from kicking our ass

Eternity:
But only one person?
You’re cutting it close.

Knives:
We only need one
If we choose the right host
I’ve done a lot of research
I’ve narrowed it down
A girl named Rachel Edwards
is ready to take that crown

Eternity:
Edwards? I’ve read a book about her.

Knives:
Her novel in our our world’s
her own truth in hers.

Eternity:
Okay then Knives,
I’ll trust you to get it done.
But if you screw this up--
(there is a record scratch)

No help’s gunna come.

(dramatic music plays as the Arbiter of Eternity exits, the Arbiter of Knives walks UP STAGE RIGHT, and stops in front of the audience. From behind a cabinet, two figures emerge: It’s HYPERION and GALVIN, spies from the COUNCIL of the GREAT ASSIMILATION. They begin to sing in a totally different musical style. They look sort of like Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.)

Hyperion:
Did you hear it? Did you see it?
Did my eyes deceive me so?
Those goody two-shoes Firmies
Going Blackhat for some prose?

GALVIN
I don’t wanna go.
I don’t wanna know.
We’ve done enough here,
Why can’t we just go home?

Hyperion:
Galvin you’re a coward!
I can’t stand your lack of faith
If we follow on her journey
We could make it a disgrace

We could take this precious book
Bring it back home to our world
Make our emperors so happy
Give our Council oh such Joy

Together:
I say we’ve got a plan.
We follow where we can.
We risk a broken treaty
for the glory of our land!

Galvin:
I guess I know you’re right
and all this fuss is just a waste
So let’s do our small invasion
hope that no one sees my face
Hyperion:
And when we’ve sent them packing
And we’re heroes there back home!
They’ll forgive the slight transgressions
That it took to make us known.

Together:
I say we’ve got a plan.
We follow where we can.
We risk a broken treaty
for the glory of our land!

(Laughing, the two walk UP STAGE LEFT where they freeze like the Arbiter of Knives. GRAELYN SCYTHES emerges from the chest, who looks like Idina Menzel instead of herself for some reason. ARCHIMEDES VON AHNERABE follows behind her, reminiscent of Kyle Scatlife.)

Graelyn:
Arch I think they’re mad.
I can’t abide their plan.
They’d risk a whole invasion
just to get that book in hand!

Arch:
Graelyn we will have to go,
follow them and stop this show
if we don’t they’ll cast the lure
for inter-universal war

Graelyn:
We have to find Rachel!
Where did she go?
What did she do?

Together:
Gotta track her down
But we haven’t got a clue.

(They walk down stage, and face away from the audience. From the pile of black cloth, a figure rises, who looks like Andrew Chappelle. It is THE STRID.)

The Strid:
So we see
What could be
Forever on the Strid shall be

These foes invade
Our own plans made
We slink into our solemn shade

(The seven characters all converge in the center, and begin a new song in unison.)

All Together:
When we--

Rachel Edwards:
Jesus, okay, I get it.

* * * *

The hologram disappeared, and the two of them clambered to stage center to address me. Arch slid to a halt in front of a less amused Graelyn, performing jazz hands.
“So, any questions…?” Arch ventured.
“So, why are they after me? Why are you protecting me?”
“They’re after you because you’re our tie to this universe. See, people come and go from alternate realities all the time. Most of the time you never notice them. They just hop over to the store, buy all the seasons of their favorite TV show that were never made where they lived, and hop back. But this is trickier. Because the powers that be in this verse? They want that book. Or they will as soon as they realize it exists. Because we’re not supposed to be here the folks from my ‘verse called the Firmament bribed one of the folks who watches to make sure parties from other universes aren’t having shenanigans to ignore anything funny going on with you for the next few days. You’re reporting on the book, so you’re a natural fit. As long as our actions are centered around you, we, anyone, can get to the book.”
“Alright and...who the heck are you two in all this? Where are you from?”
"Arch and I grew up in a future where the whole solar system is run by one big corporation called Centro systems, but things were pretty boring and after some misadventures we got recruited by this big interuniversal paramilitary group called 'Dawn'. We run around doing missions, helping people, trying to stop bad stuff, and fighting other interuniversal organizations."
"Like in this case, many of them," Arch said.
"Quite right," Graelyn continued, “Here in New York are representatives of the Great Assimilation and their Council, a weirdo group of aliens called the Strid, and what are probably several different alternate versions of a universal regulatory group called the Firmament--"
"Though they aren't called that here," Arch again cut in.
"Well, no, but I already forgot what their name is here? Cool Tower or something. Good Home? Exemplary Mansion?" Graelyn paused.
"You’re not supposed to say their name anyway, you know.”
"Ah. Yeah. That would be bad." She sighed, "The point is a lot of people want this book, and we need to stop them."
"Because you want the book?"
"Yes," they replied together.
"Name one reason you'd be a better choice to be given this book than everyone else."
Graelyn was about to speak, but Arch held up a hand, and she demurred, "The Firmament wants the book because they’re old and bored. The Great Assimilation wants it because the Firmament wants it. And the Strid…Well honestly we’re not entirely sure. They’re from around here, but they seem to be off the radar. But they use human bodies as unwilling hosts and tried to kidnap you so I’m pretty sure they’re not the greatest. We on the other hand did not try to kidnap you and took you to Broadway.”
I took a moment to just let all of this settle in.
I pinched myself. I dug my fingernails into my skin hard. It hurt.
Let me tell you, it’s a pretty wild situation to be in like this. You can’t deny you just saw something weird, but it’s really pretty hard to accept this kind of stuff in practice. It’s not like you see on TV where you’re either logically debating whether or not things are happening, coming up with tons of reasons why the obviously happening things aren’t happening, or where you just go, “Of course this is real! Lets flip all my expectations of the world on their head!”
It’s more like you’re in a car wreck, and your car is going off the road into a tree, and there’s that moment before the impact where you think, “This can’t be happening. Not to me. Why is this happening? This can’t be real?” and you just feel absolutely helpless and confused, even if they explain it all as a musical.
That’s more what it’s like.
But then there is the moment after the crash. Where you stumble out of the car, a line of blood going down your face from your forehead, and then you look back and realize the driver is still in the car, and your head clears.
I had to accept this. And whether or not I trusted Graelyn and Arch, they were the only people who hadn’t tried to kill me yet. So that had to count for something.
“Okay,” I concluded, “They’re unveiling the books to the public tomorrow. I’ll get you in.”
Arch pumped a fist in the air, “Yes!”
“Don’t do that,” Graelyn said to him.

I’m back in my hotel now. And I’m reading this book Andrew Hickey wrote about me. And I’m writing all this out in fits and bursts. I’m still not sure this is real.
But if I wake up tomorrow and the book they gave me is still here, I guess I’ll know.

Update: November 14th 6:38 AM
It is.

Firmament Data File: The Strid
The Strid are unusual in that they have been enemies of some of the most powerful people in their native universe for longer than many civilizations have existed. However, they rarely act on their intentions, and this has fermented their survival. You can see the Strid throughout important documented events and adventures in their native universe, only you’d never recognize them. They’re there in the background, watching. Did you see them? They never speak. If they spoke, you’d know. When they take a host, speaking causes their natural form (a blue goop) to seep out from the host they are inhabiting. Indeed, they only ever appear silently in the background. They’re there in the crowd, observing. Learning. They learn, and they use intermediaries to disseminate that information. Their goals are unclear, but they have avoided any outright conflict with people from their own universe. More than anyone, they seem aware that the great figures they seek to fight have an inevitable draw towards victory, something scorched into the nature of their world. They’ve seen it a thousand times. So they watch. And they learn.
But when people come in from outside their bubble, outside their realm of knowledge, they are prone to quick action. If you’re acting in their universe as an outsider, you have permission, and they know you’re vulnerable. They have successfully taken advantage of several unprepared expeditions. Advise caution when dealing with them.

 News Report: ViralNoiseNews, November 14th

The donut bandit has struck again! This time the thief made off with not only donuts, but coffee. According to morning manager Ryan Tockle, the thief left a $3000 dollar tip in the jar, along with paying in exact change. The queue to the coffee shop has been out the door since the 
thief began their sweet plunder, so the owners can’t complain too much!

(A video is embedded below, it’s basically identical to the earlier one.)

Radicalrachel.dreamjournal.com
Entry: November 14h

Graelyn and Arch greeted me at the hotel with hot coffee (they said they’d kept it in a “stasis crate” overnight) and a box of donuts. I was beginning to suspect Graelyn had stolen them.
We walked to the library, the Lion’s greeted us on our way in in their fancy stone way, and after making our way through security, we hit the sign.
The sign that said the reveal of the books to the public had been canceled.
Graelyn stared down at the sign, she trembled slightly, and muttered “shit” under her breath over and over. Graelyn grimaced, “We already have one inter-universal war to deal with, I’ll be damned if they start another over a hardback.” Without a glance back, she hustled forward, walking as quickly as she could without drawing attention to herself. Arch and I followed behind her, probably not helping the whole “anonymity” thing as we stumbled around tourists taking pictures while we tried to keep up. She flashed some identification at a guard, and we barreled past, going down corners and corridors as the little Russian led us in the slowest panic I’d ever seen.
We finally reached the door to the room the book was being kept in. Graelyn looked at Arch, and he nodded, stepping between us and the door. He widened his stance, ready to take on whatever was inside.
The door slid open, and we were greeted with jovial welcomes and the scent of blood.
Arch had to step through the door before I could see it all, but when he finished it was one of those, “Wow I wish I hadn’t looked!” moments. Like when your parents make you cross a rope bridge on a family trip and they tell you not to look down. You instantly look down.
Arch said, “You don’t wanna look,” and Graelyn and I peered around him instinctively.
Sitting on a desk was a woman in a black robe with stenciled blue lining and a point at the crest of the hood like a wide beak. She was lazily wiping the blood off a knife made of the same werido translucent blue and white crystal everyone and their Labrador retriever seemed to be using these days. Around the desk, standing, were a variety of worried, tired, or grossed out people, some dressed like her, some wearing black clothes styled with what appeared to be millions of dollars of actual gold per person, and then a few who looked like everyday New Yorkers or tourists, only with blue goo dripping from their orifices and cuticles.
Lying on the ground around the desk were bodies. Bodies in a pool of blood.
They’d been cut, some. Or had holes burned through them, some. Or looked like they’d suddenly died of old age, some. Or had globs of still cooling molten gold shining on them, some.
They were dressed in all sorts of clothes. Some in robes. Some wore masks. Some wore silver jumpsuits. There was a wide variety there on the floor.
All of them were dead. All of them had been slaughtered.

I’m sorry. I needed to step away from the keyboard and sob into a pillow for five minutes. Understandable right? That’s pretty messed up?
I’ve done some intense journalism. You’re all aware of the awful stuff I’ve gone through in the last year. I hadn’t seen something like this. 
In your mind, you always think you’ll be resolute during this kind of situation. You’d be able to...say something meaningful. But I didn’t. I froze up, and then made a lot of panicked noises and tried to grab something to defend myself with from the floor. Fight or flight I’m a fighter I guess? 
Arch and Graelyn held me back, and I think Graelyn slapped something on my neck and doped me. (Real classy, these guys.) I didn’t pass out, but I felt the panic drain, the need to run disappear. I still felt sick to my stomach though, so a little more politely, I threw up in the middle of what the lady started saying.
“Finally,” she polished the knife as she spoke, “We figured Dawn was showing up we didn’t want to begin without you.”
“Begin what?” Graelyn looked at the bodies, “It looks like you already got started. Jesus.”
She shrugged, “None of us are supposed to be here, you know that Dawn Agent. Unfortunately, our bribe didn’t stop a few parties from finding out about the book and arriving here at the same time. Awkward to say the least. We all came to an agreement that bidding for the book should only be between--”
I threw up.
“--those not from this...is she okay?”
“No, why would anyone think anyone would be okay when they come in here and see this? This is heinous,” Arch began.
“She’s peachy keen!” Graelyn cut in, “Just great. Now what the hell do you mean about bidding?”
Arch, despite not having a face, looked furious still. I braced myself against the wall.
“Right, yes. Bidding should only be between those of us not from this reality, well, and the Strid. So we disposed of everyone from this reality who wanted it, honestly they were pretty rude about it. Called me a lot of rude things. Most of them have some way of getting up again or hopping into a new body, so you shouldn’t be so sad about it. I’m not really sure how the Firmament here does that, but I’m 98% sure I’ve inhibited the process till we finish up here. Lattes, by the way? The Great Assimilation grabbed some on the way. They really can be quite a bit more thoughtful than I anticipated, when we’re not trying to kill each other and all.”
The people in black and gold waved like they were a nice couple from down the block, happy to finally introduce themselves.
“No,” Graelyn said, “I meant why are we bidding on it at all? You’re acting like someone has possession of it. Also I don’t want a latte. I brought my own.”
“Your friends…?”
I shook my head, Arch did the same. I tried to get my bearings. Tried to convince myself this was a drug trip, or a dream, but it all seemed too real.
Someone else spoke up, one of the blue goo people Graelyn called The Strid, “We have it. We have contained it within our person, and will release it to the one who provides us with the finest offer. If you attempt to take it from us, we will destroy it.”
Graelyn looked around the room, and then laughed stumbling forward a bit, tripping over a body, which caused her to stop laughing and make uncomfortable noises as she got away from it. “This is amazing. The best infiltrators from 10,000 universes, and we all let someone else throw us into a bidding war. We absolutely suck. Wow.” She threw up her hands in the air, “Astonishing.”
“Since you three arrived last, you will present last. Then we will decide,” goo guy said.
“Then I’ll present first,” the woman said, hopping down from the desk, “I’m the Arbiter of Knives, and I come representing the First and Final Firmament. We’re prepared to offer the honorable Strid their own planet in our universe, and the protection of our Firmament. We know the Strid have been nomadic for eons, living by avoiding trouble. We’re prepared to give you a homeworld where you can live unmolested, unafraid of any repercussion to the fact that you have to kidnap people and take over their minds in order to survive more than a few hours outside your goo pools.”
The Strid looked at each other, impressed, “That’s a...really good offer.”
The Arbiter of Knives pushed her chin up in the air, “It is, isn’t it?”
“Arch,” I whispered, “I don’t understand. If they’re trying to keep a low profile, why would they kill these people? I mean, why kill them in general...Shit.”
He shook his head, “Even backed into a corner it’s something else. But we have to find an out here.”
I didn’t look down at the floor, I looked past it. I focused. I had to think.
“Now, let’s hear from the representatives of the Council of the Great Assimilation,” the Strid continued.
“Thank you, now, we might not be as familiar to you as the Firmament, but while we didn’t inherit power over reality, we built it. Under the rule of our three Emperors, and our Council, the Great Assimilation has spread across universes binding them together under our shared banner. We also offer you a homeworld, but more than that, we offer you a purpose. The Strid would be invaluable as a part of the Empire, and with your skills at information gathering would be on the shortlist to gain a position on our Council. You would have a say and voice over your own destiny.”
One of the Strid stroked its chin, rubbing in some of the goo that had dripped from its mouth, “Another excellent proposal, one we’ll have to discuss and think on...which leaves only Dawn? What do you have to offer us?”
I looked at the pair I’d been thrown in with. I couldn’t read Arch, but Graelyn was racking her brain hard. She frowned, and looked back at us, “You guys got any ideas?”
“We could offer them something of symbolic value?” Arch suggested.
“No,” the Strid cut in, “We’re really more interested in direct power.”
Graelyn sighed, “Honestly? I don’t think there’s anything we could offer you that would be responsible here. I mean, seriously, screw all of you. You guys are cool with murdering people over a book, that’s kind of ridiculous. We offer you nothing, final offer.”
“Wow,” Knives said, “I think we can rule them out.”
“Quite,” the Strid replied, “I will confer with my partner.”
While they talked, the Firmament began shoving all the bodies into a circle, and then sprinkled some crystal dust around them all. The floor lit up in a brilliant white and blue light, and they were….gone.
“It’s a portal,” Arch whispered, “They dropped them off somewhere else.”
I nodded, and walked over to the other books in the exhibit. They all wanted one of them, this Book of Books...but what of the other books? No one paid me much mind. I flipped through them. They were paperbacks, from a handful of different publishers. “Burning with Optimism’s Flame” one was called, well I sure wasn’t. “The Book of the War,” “Head of State,” hey I’m in that one!
Then it struck me. The most obvious thing. To them, I was a character in a book. Graelyn had read about me. She’d said as much. And they didn’t want anyone to know they were here. These books were all dangerous. They were all something people wanted. They had to be dangerous for a reason. I picked up the copy of “Head of State”, and opened it to the last page. I reached into my pocket, pulled out a pen, and wrote in it:

“It was on November 14th of the next year, that when Rachel was in a room filled with strangers from another world, that they all vanished suddenly, the Book of Books dropping to the floor from where the Strid had held it within itself.”

I closed the book and waited.
Nothing happened. Rats.
I thought, okay, if I’m a character to them, maybe the reverse is true. I googled their names, and I found some books about them. I threw money at the ebooks as fast as I could, and skimmed, searched for keywords, and browsed them with a fury. No luck though. I couldn’t find anything useful. I half considered emailing the author and asking him to throw up a quick blog post or something (?) but if writing in the book didn’t work, I didn’t think that would either. These were people. They weren’t just words on a page. I could see Graelyn, crossing her arms, trying to think of something, her feet moving in slight shifts with worry. Arch, struggling more than her to keep it together, had his head in his hands. The Arbiter of Knives was cutting papers into shapes with her blade. The Assimilation folks were playing cards. They were people, and I’d been a fool to think anything less, even with how outlandish this was.
As the Strid’s voices got even louder (They were having a fierce ideological debate at this point) it occurred to me, something that I should have thought of before.
“Graelyn,” I said, rushing over to her, “you said you read my book before?”
She nodded, “Yeah. I was thirteen.”
“Did it matter to you?”
She furrowed her brow, “It did. You were a bisexual woman running around doing cool things. I was a pansexual girl trying to figure my world out. I read the book a lot, and I mainly skipped over the parts you weren’t in.”
I leaned in, “Tell me more. Tell me why it mattered.”

Moscow Russia, 2471, Another Universe
Her mother was yelling again. She did that. Graelyn was used to it. Mr. Sprinkles, her cat, was curled up on her feet. She just hoped things wouldn’t escalate to violence again tonight. The door swung open, and she closed her eyes. Of course. Jinx. She curled up in a ball, and made sure she didn’t cry. That was a sign of weakness, after all.
“You’re broken,” her mother whispered in her ear after she’d finished the blows, “I saw your grades, and they’re still not good enough..” All A’s, yet again, “How could you treat your poor sick mother this way? How could you?” She began to sob, “You keep pushing me to this. I hope you try to be a better daughter.”
“Yes, mom. I will,” she replied dutifully.
In time, her mother left, and she pulled the book up on her phone. Rachel was being hunted by a mysterious killer, and Graelyn needed to figure out who it was. She knew Rachel didn’t die, it’s why she picked up the book in the first place. Someone like her to read.
Someone who wouldn’t die.
She wanted to feel that way herself.
She kept on reading.
She still had no idea who the killer was.
But Rachel survived.

November 14th, New York, New York, USA
I listened. And...It was a hard story. She’d had a rough upbringing. But I listened. And I knew what the answer to all of this was. The whole time. It was me. 
I walked right up to the Strid, and I pulled my pen out again.
I placed the sharp tip against my own jugular. 
“Excuse me,” I yelled.
They stopped.
The Arbiter of Knives coughed, and gestured at Arch and Graelyn, “Could you two bring your guest under control? Sure shes our cover but--”
“Exactly,” I replied, “I’m your cover. So what happens if I’m not here?”
Her face fell, “Well we’d…”
“If you’re so afraid of being found out by whoever runs the show here, then you need me. You’re far from home aren’t you? A foreigner in a land that seems to hate foreigners? Let me tell you, welcome to the USA. And our Universe. You’re offering these folks a planet, but you can only do that when you get home. Right now, other people have that kind of power? And you’re just a lonely woman with a big knife who thinks she can get away with anything because she can kill. And you two, so enamored with empire and colonization. Really, that’s just gross. And of course, my fellow natives, apparently. Selling off our heritage to the highest bidder. Shameful, I’ll tell you. So let me tell you what’s going to happen. You’re all going to go home. The lot of you.”
I looked around. There was silence.
“If you don’t, I’ll cut a major artery, and you’ll all be crying about...all that crap you’ve been info-dumping on me this week. Even you, Strid folk. You’ll be found out. The powers at be will know about your private auction, and you’ll make the big time. So I’m going to be nice and give you all an out. Go home.”
The Arbiter of Knives stood up, “You have no idea what it’s like to be immortal. To be so...bored! If I had that book I could read things forever!”
“And you won’t know what it’s like to be immortal if you don’t agree to my terms.”
“You’re bluffing,” the Assimilation group yelled.
I just stared them down, till they looked away.
I was absolutely bluffing, no way I was going to cut my throat but oh you should have seen their faces, because I sold it well.
“So, all this work, all this...everything. We just leave and pretend this didn’t happen?” Knives said.
“I didn’t say that,” I replied “I said you should go home. I very much want you to remember this. Also, the Strid need to give me that book. It’s mine now.”
The Arbiter grimaced, then shrugged, “Well, time to live another day. I’m out.”
“Same,” the Assimilations said.
Graelyn and Arch high fived.
The Strid gave me the book though…how they removed it from their form isn’t easy to describe, and believe me it was even harder to watch. So I’m just going to skip that, k thx bye. Soooooo anyways, I was left with a gallon sized ziplock bag coated in goop with a book (I took the book out with minimal bag-touching and left the bag in the rubbish bin).
The Arbiter pulled out a crystal orb that began to hover in the air, which was neat, and then met my gaze, “You want us to remember this, but you probably won’t. When we’re gone, the powers that be will probably try to wipe your memory. They don’t like this stuff getting out.”
“Psh,” Graelyn said from across the room, “Empty threat. They really couldn’t care less as long as they get to act all self-righteous and important, I mean, you would know.”
The Arbiter frowned, took a step towards the orb, and the vanished into it. It zipped away, disappearing in a flash. The Great Assimilation just walked out the door, as did the Strid. This time they flipped me off though. I gave them the two fingered salute in return.
“Well, our turn to head out then. It’s been real, Rachel Edwards,” Graelyn said, waving, “Have fun with the books.”
I smiled, and gave her a hug, “I’m glad I meant something to you, even if it was just fiction for you.”
She blushed, “You were never ‘just fiction’. And you still aren’t.”
Arch waved goodbye as well, and I gave him a quick hug as the pair threw dust on the wall, and jumped into the light it made.

It was just me and the books now, and this blog.
I don’t know if the Arbiter was bluffing or not. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow, and this will all be gone from me. I hope not. There’s so much going on I had no idea about. Things that...explain other things. I want to learn them. I’m putting this on flashdrives, printing it out. Hiding it. Even if my memory is gone, maybe they’ll miss one of these and I’ll find it later.
And if they don’t, maybe you’ll find it. You’ll read it, and you’ll know there are other things out there to.
Whatever happens, it’s only the beginning of this journey. Time to do what I do best: find the truth.

November 15th
World Daily Updatez

The unveiling of a collection of rare books purchased by the New York Public Library was put on hold today when it was discovered that the books contained a rare parasite that had caused the deaths of several library employees. The books have been taken to a secure location for quarantine, and it’s unclear if they will ever be put back on public display. 

(Below is a picture of the books being escorted from the premises in a hazardous waste container. You wouldn’t usually notice it, usually you would skip over it, ignore it, but you can’t unsee it now. There they are in the crowd. Utterly non-descript. Staring at the box. You’ll see them in other pictures now too. They’ll wait. They’ve always waited. They’re patient. This is only their beginning too.”)