EPSILON DELTA, PART SIXTEEN: FATE’S WIDE WHEEL

Kat had been fine with doing a controlled firebombing of Compton’s camp, up until the point that he heard Alice on his communicator say, “Everyone. Get out. Get out now, NOW, N–"

Kat’s first instinct wasn’t to run, but rather to flatten himself down on the ground where he stood on the edge of the clearing. He was pretty sure he couldn’t run fast enough, and besides, the purple smoke he could see implied that Alijda had just teleported herself back in to get Beam. He tried to bend the fire of the exploding tent around and away from that location.

The mystic shockwave was a surprise.

Kat wasn’t sure whether things happened in the blink of an eye, or whether he actually lost consciousness. Either way, the next thing he knew, everyone in the clearing was flat on the ground. Except Compton. The short, bearded man was now standing rigidly, quietly, instead of bellowing about getting Destiny back. Then a smile flickered over his face.

Kat didn’t like that.

Firestorm charged in from the other side of the clearing. Kat winced, but decided not to intercede yet. Curiously, as Firestorm hummed and released a fireball towards Compton, the short man simply watched it approach. That is, until it was almost right in front of him, at which point he raised his palm, whistled - and the fireball bounced. Firestorm dove to the side and rolled as it came back towards him, causing Kat to wonder how much the cloaked man could be affected by his own attacks.

Kat took advantage of the distraction, crawling into the clearing, staying low to the ground. Alijda, Beam and the henchman who’s been holding onto Beam were all in the same general area. Hopefully they were merely unconscious, as it beat the alternative.

“Oh, this is brilliant,” Compton said, his smile becoming a smirk. “All I need now is more power. Hmmm, and what’s this aura I sense…"

Kat froze as Compton began to stride towards him - but it was Beam that Compton reached for, grabbing her by the arm and hauling the blonde up to her feet.

“Whuhhhh?” Beam warbled, the holographic girl seeming as dazed by the blast as any of them. She barely managed to stay upright as Compton began to drag her back towards the location of the stone circle. The location of the dimensional weakness.

Compton then began to whistle continuously, eyeing both Firestorm and Kat, as if to make it clear that he knew they were there, and not to do anything stupid. Beam moaned and tried to push Compton away as he reached his destination, but the man simply gripped her by the ear instead, whistling louder as Beam slumped down to the ground.

Kat remained where he was, trying to analyze the situation. Was Compton somehow draining Beam’s batteries using his magic? To what end? Compton pointed down. To weaken the dimensions? Firestorm tried to attack while their adversary’s attention was diverted - but again, his fireball bounced off an invisible wall.

“Damn it,” Kat said. He helped that attack burn itself out, before it could cause any major damage. He was getting good at that of late, given how they’d been trying to restrict the effects of their fire attacks to the clearing itself.

“Oh, you thought I had to be watching you to bounce your attacks back?” Compton snarked, ceasing his whistle. “How wrong you are. No, no, this power, awakened in me by that explosion, you have no chance of defeating it. Not with such pathetic attacks. And soon, I’ll have bled out enough energy from this strange one” - he jerked Beam’s head by the ear - “to gain full mental control over this mystic doorway. You hear that, Destiny, wherever you are? You’ll rue the day you crossed me, make no mistake.”

Compton resumed whistling.

However, having been reminded of the fact that Fate had been brought to safety reinvigorated Kat. Moreover, he knew Rose and Alice were still out there too, likely working on a plan. They simply needed to regroup. Kat resumed heading for Alijda.

He had managed to ascertain that Alijda was fine, but unlikely to regain consciousness any time soon, when Compton resumed his gloating.

“Ha ha! I can feel it happening,” Compton shouted in delight. “Control over this mystical gateway. Soon, I will be unstoppable.” He began to whistle louder.

That had happened faster than Kat had anticipated. Was another shockwave imminent? Firestorm began pushing himself to his feet; he looked to Kat for guidance.

Kat shook his head. They didn’t have enough information here. Maybe, after talking to Fate, they could reverse whatever Compton was about to do…? They certainly couldn’t manage it if they were left unconscious. Kat motioned at Firestorm to leave the clearing as he grasped for Alijda’s shoulders.

Which is when Rose ran in.

“Rose, run away,” Kat shouted.

Instead, Rose stopped and stood her ground about five metres away from Compton, issuing him a warning. So was this part of a plan? As Rose’s body seemed to double, and then double again, Kat had to assume it was, resisting the urge to gape. Did Rose have magic? Or was it holograms, maybe?

Whatever it was, it got Compton’s attention enough to free Beam, tossing her aside. But then, they had to assume Compton already had enough energy to enact his plans by now. Four sets of Rose cracked their knuckles. Then three of them rushed at him - as the fourth doubled back towards the treeline.

Okay, this HAD to be a plan.

Kat exchanged a glance with Firestorm (who was looking rather dumbfounded), then pushed himself up, running towards Compton himself. It had just occurred to him that they had only tried magical means of bringing him down. Perhaps Rose’s reasoning was that he was still vulnerable to a left hook.

His belief lasted only as long as it took to see one of the Roses try to punch Compton’s shoulder, her fist bouncing off an invisible wall, making her hit herself instead. From behind, another Rose tried to kick Compton’s legs out from under him, only to hit a similar barrier, and end up falling over herself.

The third Rose paused, then stuck out her tongue, stuck her thumbs in her ears and wiggled her fingers in the air. Provoking him? Because maybe Compton couldn’t maintain his defence while using an offensive power?

Kat honestly wasn’t sure what the plan was here any more. He stopped running, hoping someone would clue him in.

Compton seemed equally unsure of how to deal with Rose. He took a step forwards, swinging for the Rose who was taunting. She ducked out of the way, pulling SecondRose back up onto her feet as she moved. The third Rose, shaking out her hand, screamed down at the stone circle on the ground, and abruptly there were two circles there.

“You meddling…" Compton’s growl trailed off as he reached back and pulled some sort of switchblade out of his pocket.

“Oh, we’re doing physical violence here?” SecondRose snarked. “Because you don’t have the magic skills of your father?”

With a yell of rage, Compton slashed at ThirdRose, the teenager only just managing to duck and roll out of the way, audibly muttering, “oh, flûte”.

Kat was now headed for Firestorm. “The diary,” he called out. If this was all connected back to Fate’s abduction, there had to be some information there. “Is there a symbol we can use against him?”

“Uh, no, there was no handling of an invincible guy with a blade section,” Firestorm countered, pulling the book out of his robes and shaking it at him.

“Compton’s not invincible,” one of the Roses called out.

“All he can do here is absorb or reflect,” another Rose agreed.

“Watch him reflect my power,” ThirdRose added. She sang a note, and then there were four Roses running around Compton again.

“I will END you,” Compton said, lunging for a Rose. He managed to slice through part of her shirt, making her yelp.

Kat snatched the diary out of Firestorm’s hands and started running back towards the fight. “Hey, instead of beating up on girls, why not face off with me? I’ve got a book here with ALL of Destiny’s secrets in it. You want it?”

Everybody paused at that.

“Kat, do you know what you’re doing?” a Rose asked.

He looked back at her. “Do you?” he challenged. Because he was pretty sure he’d worked out their plan by now. To keep Compton away from the gateway, and to stall for time. He held Fate’s diary aloft.

“Give me that book,” Compton said.

“Say please,” Kat requested.

“Give it to me NOW,” Compton insisted.

“Wow, I can see why you’re not great at running a business,” Kat observed. “You can’t even follow simple instructions.”

Two of the Roses giggled. Compton looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel somewhere. “You think I don’t know some of my dad’s spells?” the shorter man screamed. “Hand that over, or I will use them. I will END you. All of you!”

“Hey, know what’s at the heart of this?” SecondRose mused. “Father issues. Paige had ‘em too. Find your own path separate from your father, Compton. Be your own person.”

Compton turned to glare at her. He had been letting out the occasional low whistle whenever he hadn’t been speaking. Now he whistled higher, and louder, and he started gesturing towards SecondRose. She placed her hands on her hips.

Compton gestured towards her. SecondRose’s head snapped back, and with a shocked look on her face, she fell to the ground - and vanished. The other Roses in the area staggered for a moment.

Kat almost shouted out ‘What did you do?’, but from the expression on Compton’s face, he seemingly hadn’t expected that result either.

“You think you’re so tough? Try that again,” shouted a Rose.

“Rose, what are you–" Kat cut himself off, as another Rose standing behind Compton raised an index finger and shook her head. Compton repeated his series of whistles and movements, and moments later, another Rose was gone.

Compton turned back to Kat. “Now, give me the book,” he declared. “Or another of your friends gets it.”

“Oh, no, no, please, do that once more first,” a Rose croaked out. “We almost got it that time.”

Compton obliged her. Moments later, the only people standing in the clearing were Compton, Kat, Firestorm, and one last copy of Rose. Or possibly she was the original Rose, and the Rose now returning to the clearing with Fate was the copy. Kat cleared his throat to keep Compton’s focus on him.

“Here’s the thing,” Kat said. “I’ve made a copy of the important pages here. If anything happens to me, a friend of mine will bring them to the police.”

“If you’re pinning your hopes on them, you must be desperate,” Compton observed. “Now stop wasting time and give me that book.”

“This book? Or the REAL book, which I have hidden back in the bushes?”

Compton shook his fist at Kat. “If you persist in these games, you WILL face the same fate as those redheads.“

“Actually,” came a new voice, tired but with a hard edge to it. “I’m the Fate you need to be worried about right now.”

Compton spun. Fate was now ten metres away from him. “Destiny. Have you finally come to your senses? Will you serve me?”

Both Roses moved to flank Fate, as the blonde spat into the ground. Then Fate began to trace something there with a stick she was carrying. “The spell for scrambling minds,” she remarked. “The one known by Compton Senior, the one that allowed him to abduct people. He was always so secretive about it, I was never able to figure out how it worked. Until now.”

Compton smirked. “You hope to try it against me? After I used it to dispel the doubling magic of this redhead? Fool, I can bounce it right back at you. You’ll lose your own mind.”

Fate looked back up at him. “Oh, no. No, because my spell will be stronger than the version you’ve been throwing around.”

Rose raised her hand and wiggled her fingers. “Hi. I’m Algebra. I multiply things.”

Compton’s smile morphed into a glare. “You stupid women. Even now, you do not understand my true power.”

“It still seems to be ‘reflect’ or ‘absorb’ to me,” the other Rose reiterated. “More to the point, for as long as you’re on reflect, we can do this.” She clapped her hand onto Fate’s shoulder, sang a note, and then abruptly there was another copy of both Rose and Fate, sketching on the ground. Then another.

“Meaning as long as you’re on reflect,” the Roses chorused. “We’re powering up.” More versions appeared, starting to form a circle around Compton. “The question becomes, are you man enough to absorb what Fate throws at you without succumbing? Or are you going to remain in the shadow of your father forever?”

Kat could have sworn Compton’s face went purple. And with a dozen Fates arranged in a half circle around the angry man, Rose’s notes ceased to be effective in creating any more copies.

“Now,” Rose whispered.

Fate began to chant the same phrase Compton had used earlier, but while he had punctuated his with whistles, Fate simply made her voice sound melodious. It wasn’t a happy melody, in fact Kat could pick up on an undercurrent of sadness and resentment, but it got the job done faster than Compton’s attempt to do the same.

As they finished, the Fates jabbed their sticks at the symbols on the ground. The area began to glow with a white light, and Compton let out a shriek. Kat was forced to look away from the brightness, and when he did turn back… Compton was still standing there. Looking stunned. And the only Rose and Fate in the area were lying on the ground, unconscious.

Fearing the worst, that their opponent had withstood the attack, Kat closed the distance to Compton, pulled back his free arm, and clocked the short man hard in the jaw. Compton crumpled to the ground without resistance, joining everyone else in the land of unconsciousness.

Well, almost everyone else.

“We win,” Beam chirped, from where she was still crumpled, unmoving, on the ground. “Now what. Are the chances. I could get. My own copy. Of Rose. To bring home. With me?”

Firestorm laughed. Kat’s communicator crackled back to life seconds later.

“This was probably not the dinner you envisioned,” Kat admitted.

Alijda smiled at him from across the table. “It’s not the location that matters. It was more about getting to know each other a little better.”

They had spent the last hour or so catching up on things in the Epsilon Station’s small cafeteria. This after having spent a couple of days completing paperwork after the mission, not to mention undergoing some tests to ensure there wouldn’t be any lingering issues after the mystic shockwave.

Firestorm had offered to take charge of dealing with Compton and the police down on the planet, once Fate (aka Destiny) had made it clear that she wasn’t planning to remain. In the end, Firestorm had decided not to ask more questions, deciding the more he knew, the more trouble he’d be in.

Fate had then helped Alice do a sweep of Compton’s business, confiscating anything dimensional from his records, under the rationale that his memory of such things would be sketchy anyway. It would have been like leaving matches in the hands of a toddler.

They hadn’t located records of anyone else who had once been abducted. And after years of living on the planet without finding anyone herself, Fate reasoned that randomly removing people who believed themselves to be natives might cause more harm than good anyway.

“Right,” Kat agreed. He rubbed his forehead. “I don’t see how this can work though. I’m in the military. I can’t simply disappear.”

“I could,” Alijda said. “Except it’s probably against the rules, plus someone needs to take care of Alice. I’m guessing she’s the one who volunteered to dress as a maid and serve us today?”

“Oh yeah,” Kat agreed. “Have you heard of the anime ‘Kaichou wa Maid-sama’?”[1]

Alijda shook her head. “No, and don’t even start. Back to you. Now that your decades long search for Fate is done, what will you do?”

Kat leaned back in his chair. It was a good question. “I guess I’ll stay hooked into occult matters. Still lots of pretty girls out there I can… not date?” A frown tugged at his features.

Alijda chuckled. “You sound like me when I realize I’ve blithely talked about killing myself.”

“Old habits,” Kat said dryly. “Like anything else, I guess we go forwards one step at a time.”

Alijda nodded. “I guess we do.” She seemed about to say something else, when Fate walked into the room.

Fate had cleaned up nicely, and was wearing a casual shirt and slacks, having pulled her long, blonde hair into a side ponytail. Without looking up from the book in her hands, she called out, “Hey, Alice. Bad news. The– oh, sorry, the computer said Alice was in here.” She seemed a bit chagrined once she took in the scene.

“Hmph. Thank you, Ziggy, thank you VERY much for that,” Alice sighed, popping up from behind the cash register with a sigh. She was still dressed in the maid outfit.

Alijda snapped her gaze over towards her roommate. “You were SPYING on us?”

“I was quietly counting the receipts down here after serving your dessert,” Alice said, leaning her elbows onto the counter with a grin. “And for the record, I can take care of myself, thankyouverymuch.”

“Uh, Alice? This station exists outside of space and time, there should be no receipts there,” Kat pointed out.

Alice nodded sagely. “So I gotta make sure none randomly appear. Cuz that’d be weird.”

“Hey, great news,” Beam said, entering the room behind Fate, dragging Rose along with her. “My lesbian friend here no longer has the desire to lick at my neck whenever she sneezes!”

“Ahem. She means that the police smell tracking thing has worn off,” Rose said, her freckles getting a bit washed out by her reddening cheeks. “So I’m probably clear to leave.”

Beam grinned. “Can I joke about tasting, and which of us is sweeter, as a call back to your comment on the day we met? Or is that out of bounds?”

“Don’t say it in public,” Rose advised, the roll of her eyes implying Beam’s attitude was no longer getting to her quite as much. “Moreover, there’s been no side effects from my using math powers on that planet, and Alice said that the ability shouldn’t carry over to my normal reality. So yay?”

“Hey, that’s great,” Kat said, giving her a thumbs up. “But guys, me and Alijda were kinda in the midst of…"

Alijda laughed. “Oh, Kat, it’s fine. I think we were pretty much done. Besides, with Rose departing, I’m kind of curious as to who will end up being left in charge.”

Kat double-checked Alijda’s expression, noting her sincerity, before looking back to Rose. She was already looking at him. He nodded slightly at her; they’d had a brief conversation that morning about her possible selection.

Rose took in a deep breath. “Right. Well. Since there might be issues from higher goddesses if I pick either Alice or Beam, I decided that…" She turned. “Fate should be in charge. But, I mean, the others can stick around here to keep her company, and to make sure she doesn’t go crazy or something. If they want. This is okay, yes?”

Fate’s pencil slid out of the spine of her book and fell on the floor. “Oh. I… I was wondering how I’d return home after all this time. So I suppose this… as a transition… that is… I’m honoured.”

“Ooh, I have no problems being under a woman like Fate,” Beam said, her eyes twinkling.

“It’s Fate’s Wide Wheel[2],” Alice mused. She eyed everyone in the room, then face palmed. “Quantum Leap song. From Glitter Rock. Get WITH it, people, sheesh.”

Kat chuckled, then looked back at Fate. “Congratulations. I hope this means we can still keep in touch.” Fate nodded back at him, smiling a bit nervously.

“As to the bad news?” Alijda remarked, pushing her chair back from the table.

Fate blinked. “Oh! Yes. Well.” She tossed her book on the table. “It’s as I always suspected. Compton Senior? He didn’t come across his dimensional knowledge by accident. It was somehow fed to him. By someone else.”

Alice’s expression turned serious as she came around the counter. “That’s impossible. No one on that planet could have had the knowledge.”

“I know,” Fate said. “I didn’t say it was from someone on that planet.”

“Something to do with where the arm came from then?” Rose asked.

Fate shook her head. “Unlikely. The arm appeared later. Possibly as a result of Compton Senior’s efforts. His awareness had to precede that. Somehow, there was a space-time breach, and this Station didn’t know about it. As if the abduction thing wasn’t already a clue to it’s fallibility.”

“So we have a mystery on our hands,” Kat said, frowning.

“One that me and Alice will need get to the bottom of,” Beam decided, crossing her arms. “Now that Fate’s going to be handling the daily station duties.”

“Huh. Will you need our help with any of this?” Alijda wondered.

Fate picked her pencil up off the floor. “Time will tell,” she remarked, tossing it onto the table. “Only time will tell.”

[1] Have a “Maid-Sama!” OP. [2] Here’s a Doctor Who video with Scott Bakula singing.

END OF STORY 4: EPSILON DELTA

Preferred POV character from Story4? (* means ‘voted on at the time’) OPTIONS:

VOTING WILL LIKELY REMAIN OPEN (like the end of every full story)

EXTRA ASIDE:
Thanks for reading! I’ll likely do a “behind the scenes” separate post later, maybe with some stats, and then in 2018 we’ll head into “Virga Mysteries”. Still every two weeks, as there are edits, and I need to devote some time back to my math comic. There’s a Discord comic chat coming up for it in February and I want it to see new material. I’m also now writing monthly for the Time Travel Nexus. So I’m keeping busy.

EPSILON DELTA, PART FIFTEEN: ROSE TO THE OCCASION

Rose watched Alijda as the older brunette woman considered their next move. At last, Alijda stood and moved off of the tarp, rubbing the areas where she’d been tied up. “Well, Firestorm is the resident of this planet,” she concluded. “Might as well go with his plan.”

“Really?” Rose said, surprised. It wasn’t that she had anything against the idea of fire bombing Compton’s supply tent. She had simply expected a plan with more finesse to come up.

“Unless someone else has an objection,” Alijda clarified. “Plus I suppose you are technically still in charge of the Station, Rose. Are you good with us doing this?”

“Oh.” Well, her plan had been kind of shot down by Alice. “Uh, yeah, I suppose.”

“Then I’ll spread the word,” Alice chirped over the communicator. “Because we’ve got to get on this fast. Beam turned on her communicator after Alijda left, so I’m now tuned into the happenings of Compton’s tent. FYI, Ned’s on his way to tell the others that Alijda escaped. He also beat up Beam a little.”

“He did WHAT?” Rose shrieked, one hand clenching into a fist.

“He hath attacked your lady love,” Alice clarified. “Give ‘em hell, Rose.”

ROSEMARY THORNE
Commission from Lia[/caption]

Rose spun, staring towards the clearing. She couldn’t see it through the underbrush, but knew where it was. In part because Firestorm was sending up balls of fire, and Kat was making them burn up in the air as a distraction, one which was easy to spot in the darkness.

Presumably, the two of them would now start to smash their fire down into the clearing. Destroying Compton’s plans, while sowing enough confusion for Alijda to teleport Fate and Beam to safety. And as they did that, Rose would… watch.

After giving the order, all she could do was watch.

Her hand fell open. “I have no powers. I guess I’ll fold up the tarp here.”

Alijda cleared her throat. “Actually Rose, as much as I don’t want to have to do that blind teleport a second time, it would be good to keep the tarp here. Just in case.”

“Awesome. Means I’m zero help.”

Alijda reached for Rose’s hand, and Rose turned to see the older woman giving her a reassuring smile. “Oh, Rose. You’re the one who got us here. By sniffing out Beam. That helped.”

Rose shrugged. “Except anyone could’ve done it,” she pointed out. “If they’d been the one stamped by the police instead. But it’s cool,” she continued, before Alijda could speak up again. “You’re older and more experienced anyway. Go give ‘em hell on my behalf.”

Rose forced out a smile. Alijda still seemed to hesitate, until Alice’s voice came back over the communicators.

“Beam’s getting clear of the tent,” Alice announced. “Kat and Firestorm are starting their run.”

“Hell incoming,” Alijda assured Rose. She dashed off towards the clearing.

Rose nibbled on her lower lip. She activated her communicator. “Alice, can you let me know when Beam is all safe and sound? I mean, along with everyone else too. Obviously.”

“No problem,” Alice assured her. “If you want, while you’re waiting, you can think about who should take this station back from you. Once the problem’s been dealt with.”

“Oh, right,” Rose groaned. “Can’t it just be Beam again? Or you?”

“The all-knowing dimensional God could object,” Alice reflected. “But then, they might not have a leg to stand on. Given how Beam bringing you in did save the station, and me coordinating here now proves that I would still be an asset.”

“Gods might not even have legs in the first place,” Rose mused.

“They move in mysterious ways,” Alice affirmed. She then continued to hum, “It’s alright, it’s alright, it’s all right. They move in mysterious ways.”

Rose ran her fingers back through her hair. Perhaps almost as important as who she chose for the job would be who she did NOT choose. Because what would Alice or Beam do if they weren’t working on Epsilon? For that matter, was there even anyone else to choose? Alijda had already said she wasn’t interested. What about Kat - or could having him be in charge cause problems for Alijda, putting their relationship into a chain of command.

“Oh, don’t pick a guy to run the place,” Alice added, as if reading her thoughts. “That’d be vetoed. I mean, can you even imagine a male administrator patrolling the multiverse? Ha! Men’s egos can be so fragile. Things would get seriously screwed up.”

Rose chuckled. “What’s that a quote from?”

“Not quoting, it’s just a truism. Oh, hey, hold on. These power readings are spiking, that shouldn’t be…" The humour vanished from her tone. “Everyone. Get out. Get out now, NOW, N–"

There was a blast of feedback from the communicator, making Rose wince and hold her arm out to the side. At the same time, the Earth shook. Moments later some sort of shockwave was projected out from the vicinity of the clearing, knocking Rose back on her ass.

Then things were eerily silent.

Rose did her best to shake it off, though she felt queasy. When she reopened her eyes, she saw a number of leaves and pine needles all around her on the ground, shaken free by the blast. For a moment, it seemed like there were even more trees surrounding her too - until Rose realized she had double vision again. She closed her eyes, counted to three, and when she looked once more, the problem had resolved itself.

Rose scrambled to her feet and ran for the clearing.

She nearly tripped over the blonde woman in the dark, but managed to sidestep her in time. Going down on one knee, Rose quickly felt for a pulse, only to realize that the woman was breathing.

Also, it wasn’t Beam. So with that hair, and more to the point that plain looking dress, it had to be Destiny. Or rather, Fate, the local potion master and Kat’s childhood friend.

“Hey, are you gonna be okay?” Rose asked, gently tapping at the woman’s cheek.

Fate moaned. “Today I’ve been kidnapped, tortured, and caught in a magical explosion, what do you think?” she grumbled. She cracked an eye open. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Rose Thorne,” the redhead said with an uncertain smile. “With Team Beam, trying to take down Compton and save you.”

“Oh, YOU’RE Rose,” Fate muttered. She tried to push herself up.

Rose wasn’t sure how to take that. She glanced back towards the clearing - it was now close enough to be seen through the trees, in fact some of those trees had been bent away from the area - and decided that, for right now, the stranger in front of her had to take precedence over her team. She helped support Fate into a seated position.

“I am indeed,” Rose agreed. “Can I help you?”

“Gimme a second.” Fate pressed her palm against her head, squinting at Rose through the darkness. “Huh. You don’t look like the most amazing lesbian anyone would ever meet, but then me and Beam didn’t have tons of time to talk while Compton was setting up camp.”

“Ah. Well, y’know, I’m not sure how many other lesbians Beam has really met,” Rose said. She hoped she wasn’t blushing foolishly.

Fate chuckled. “Ah, young love. Those were the days.”

Rose rubbed her neck. “So, um, did you get blown back here by that explosion?” she asked, trying to change the subject.

“No,” Fate admitted, lowering her arm. “It was that teleporting woman. She pulled me away from Compton, we appeared here, she said she’d be right back, then she vanished in a purple cloud. Moments later, boom, and I’m on the ground. What happened, did Compton’s tent blow up or something?”

“I think so? At least, that was part of the plan,” Rose admitted. She tapped at her communicator. “Alice? Alice, what happened?” There was no answer.

Fate coughed. “Okay. So, bright side, Compton can’t use his fireworks and other explosives to force open a dimensional portal. Nor can he use his potions and other magical items to force open a dimensional portal. But, down side, I think those two things interacted in a negative way as they were taken out. Hopefully not in a way that opened a dimensional portal.”

“Dimensional portal bad, I get that,” Rose affirmed.

“Bad in the hands of Compton’s damn family is all,” Fate clarified, taking in a long breath.

Rose nodded. “Right. Well, give me a moment, I’ll go see if I can tell what happened.”

Rose began to push herself back to her feet, only to have Fate reach out and grasp her leg. “Wait, let me come,” she requested. “Sounds like you’re cut off from your friends, and I might be able to help diagnose the situation.”

Rose hesitated. Fate was bound to slow them down, but still, the woman had a point.

She reached her arm out. Fate grasped it, and Rose hauled her up to her feet. Fate smiled. “Thanks, Rose. So, do you have a thing for older women at all?”

Rose flinched. “What? No. That is, damn, I’m sure you’re a nice person and all but I didn’t even know you were–"

“Trying to lighten the mood,” Fate finished, interrupting. “Because you seem tense as all get out. Though I suppose the situation warrants tension. Sorry, it was a bad joke, let’s get a move on.”

“Right. I knew that, not really,” Rose said.

Apparently Fate had a weird sense of humour. Meaning she’d get along just fine with the rest of the Epsilon team. Actually… what if Fate were put in charge of Epsilon? Could that be a thing? Or would the trauma Fate had suffered here be a deterrent to being in charge? Rose made a mental note to ask Kat about it in private.

Assuming Kat was still okay after the mystical explosion.

The two of them crept closer to the clearing.

The first thing Rose saw was the bodies. Since the clearing was still magically lit, they were hard to miss. She started to charge in closer, only to have Fate grasp her shoulder, preventing the motion. “That can’t be good,” she muttered.

Rose turned to see what Fate was looking at. That’s when she saw what had to be Compton.

The short man with the scruffy beard was standing and whistling some distance away from the bodies, with one hand pointed at the ground. His other held Beam up by the ear. The blonde hologram was slumped on the ground, her eyes open, but seemingly blank. Rose’s hands had curled back into fists before she realized it.

Yet charging in was the wrong course of action. Rose shrugged off Fate’s grip, gliding behind the nearest tree, peering around it to get a better look at the situation.

The bodies she’d seen were those of Alijda and one of Compton’s henchmen. She now saw that Kat, Firestorm, and the other henchman were also lying prone on the ground. Before Rose could ask herself if they were okay, Compton turned to look down at something, and Firestorm was moving.

The cloaked man sat up, thrusting his arm forward and letting out a humming noise. A fireball appeared in the air, streaking towards Compton.

It bounced off an invisible wall, flying back in the direction it had come.

“Damn it,” Kat said. Rose watched as Firestorm rolled away, with the fireball striking the ground and quickly burning itself out as Kat stared at it.

“Oh, you thought I had to be watching you to bounce your attacks back?” Compton snarked, ceasing his whistle. “How wrong you are. No, no, this power, awakened in me by that explosion, you have no chance of defeating it. Not with such pathetic attacks. And soon, I’ll have bled out enough energy from this strange one” - he jerked Beam’s head by the ear - “to gain full mental control over this mystic doorway.”

“Well, that’s bad,” Fate muttered near Rose’s ear.

Compton turned to look at some trees. “You hear that, Destiny, wherever you are? You’ll rue the day you crossed me, make no mistake.”

“That’s worse,” Fate added. Compton resumed whistling.

Rose turned to face the older woman. “Can you work some of your symbol magic to stop him?”

“Hmph. If he were unconscious, maybe,” Fate said. “Seems like he’d resist most anything right now. I don’t suppose you have magic abilities that would knock him out?”

Rose shook her head. “I have zip all for magic. Unless you count the tracking spell the cops gave me.”

Fate frowned. “Oh? That’s bizarre. The police would only have given you that ability if you already had major magic potential. And even if it was dormant, that blast wave would have triggered something for you, since it also did for Compton… Rose, did you feel anything after the wave hit?”

“Nauseous,” Rose said. “And I also saw double for a bit, but that happened after I got stamped in the police station too. Oh, and earlier, in your place. I’m probably overexerting myself or something.”

“I don’t think so,” Fate said, her eyes widening. “Were you in the presence of strong magic each time you saw double?”

“Uh, I guess?” Rose realized. The protection spell, the tracking spell, and the explosion did make three for three. “Why is that important?”

“Because it means the magic inside you is resonating with your surroundings,” Fate explained. “I’m pretty sure it’s the same sort of resonance which allows for my occult symbols to work more tangibly on this Earth. In fact, if you’re not careful, the magical backlash could lead to you feeling kind of drunk.”

“Oh, now someone warns me,” Rose muttered.

Fate grasped her by the shoulders. “Rose, this is great. If you’re seeing double, you might actually have the power to double the things you see, be it temporarily, or as an illusion.” She frowned. “If only we could somehow coordinate your ability with my symbols…"

“Ha ha! I can feel it happening,” Compton shouted in delight. “Control over this mystical gateway. Soon, I will be unstoppable.” He began to whistle louder.

Rose snapped her gaze back towards the clearing. It looked like Kat had crawled over to Alijda to check on her. Perhaps hoping that her teleport ability would be able to get to Compton, but she remained unconscious. Firestorm was pushing himself to his feet, but he looked unsteady. And Beam, poor Beam looked catatonic.

With still no word from Alice, it was up to Rose. Rose, and her doubling ability. Which honestly, she should have recognized sooner - after all, she had once been Algebra, capable of multiplying emotions. Was this so different?

Rose turned back to Fate. “Could I also duplicate living matter?”

Fate blinked, lowering her arms. “I don’t know.”

An idea was forming. “Tell me how to activate my magic here.”

“It’s different for everyone. But it is sound based. Humming, whistling, even the sound of a sneeze can trigger something under the correct conditions.”

Sneezing, that would probably just turn her nose on. But vocal notes, as a choir member, Rose knew all about those. She thought back to the scream she’d used when rushing into Fate’s home, the first time she’d experienced her double vision. It would do.

“Okay, Fate. If this works, just tell one of me how to coordinate with your symbols. If it doesn’t, um, avenge me.”

“One of you? Rose, what–"

Rose evaded Fate’s outstretched hand, dodging around the tree trunks to emerge into the clearing, jogging towards Compton.

“Hmmmm, what have we here?” Compton said, again ceasing his whistling as he turned to look at her.

“Rose, run away,” Kat shouted.

Rose stopped and stood her ground about five metres away from Compton. She could now see that the hand he had pointing down was directed at some sort of stone circle, which was engraved with a clover.

“Here’s your only warning,” Rose said, raising her own hand to point, while wishing her arm wasn’t shaking. “Stop what you’re doing, and let your hostage go.”

Compton smirked back. “Or else what?”

Rose drew in a breath, tried to envision multiplication, and screamed at approximately a middle C. As expected, Compton reacted as he had with the fireball, and bounced her spell back. At least, she assumed that’s what had happened, as she felt not only her vision doubling, but everything else about her as well.

She took a step to the left, as she simultaneously took a step to the right.

Both Roses felt a little queasy at that, but she immediately screamed again, to take advantage of Compton’s confusion.

“What trickery is this?” Compton demanded, as Rose became four. Apparently sensing that he had an actual fight on his hands, he released Beam’s ear, throwing her aside as he took a step closer to one of the Roses.

Rose began to circle left, even as she circled right, each version vaguely aware that only the Rose second from the left had any real permanence. Yet her other selves knew they didn’t feel like an illusion, so for as long as they were around, well, perhaps it was time to test out their self defence courses.

“You’re about to find out,” the Roses chorused as one.

A faint giggle came from the ground as Beam’s eyes refocussed. “Ooooh. You. Pissed. Off. My. Girl. Friend.”

Four sets of Rose cracked their knuckles.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Who will be taking over the Epsilon Project? OPTIONS:

VOTING CLOSES NOON EST SATURDAY DECEMBER 16th

THE ORACLE PROPHESIED:
The double vision cauldron of Part 7 was a throwaway item for me to use anywhere, if I wanted. For all I knew then, it was specific to the item, or the location. But when Part 9’s vote picked Rose to be deputized, and the double vision returned in Part 10 (“see deuce”), Rose’s specific brand of magic became all but inevitable. The oracle did not prophesize Rose doubling herself here, but hey, whatever works.

EXTRA ASIDE:
I’m pretty sure we’re down to one last instalment, which will be posted over the holidays. Then we’ll go into whatever got selected out of this post, because it doesn’t make much sense to have a runoff vote now (most everything is tied). So, go vote again on your fave? It renews every week. In other news, “Time & Tied”’s rerun has finished on RRL, and there were some character votes there, if you felt like contributing or seeing results in the final post. Thanks as always for reading here; I’m blown away by there being 7 votes for a second time running.

EPSILON DELTA, PART FOURTEEN: TIED AND TRUE

“Wondering about Kat?”

Alijda looked up at the remark by Rose. While waiting for Kat to return from his scouting mission, Alijda had taken to leaning back against a tree, her arms crossed. She fired off a reassuring smile at the redhead. “I’m sure he can take care of himself just fine.”

“Oh, I know,” Rose said, clasping her hands behind her back. She leaned forwards a little. “I said wondering, not worrying.”

Alijda felt her smile becoming more of a smirk. “Ooh. First Alice, now you, huh?” she remarked, more amused than anything else. “Fear not. The two of us are possibly doing dinner, so there’s nothing more for anyone to wonder OR worry about.”

“Possibly doing?” Rose prompted.

Alijda shrugged. “We literally do not live on the same Earth. Makes reunions awkward. The weird thing is how, despite knowing that, I haven’t been able to simply forget about him. So I guess we’ll see what happens.” She gave Rose a pointed look. “Something you may want to consider regarding Beam.”

Rose seemed to pinken, though it was difficult to be sure now that the sun had set. “Nice deflection, but I hadn’t planned on forgetting about Beam.”

“You just hope to forget about the relationship issues she sparked.”

Rose pulled back and looked away.

Alijda quickly moved to grasp the young girl by the shoulder. “Hey, not judging,” she said. “Not by a long shot. Goodness knows I don’t know how to react to anyone who shows an interest in me, romantically or otherwise. It’s only, heads up, Beam is something you’ll need to deal with before this is over. And you might not have a lot of time to decide on a path, depending on how things play out. You know that, yes Rose?”

She sighed. “Yeah. Plus I’ve got to pawn off this Station Commander role onto someone else too.” Rose crinkled her nose. “Do you think, if I gave it back to Beam, that she’d be able to email into my dimension or whatever? Because I could see having her as a pen pal going forwards. If she doesn’t hate my guts after that rant I gave her.”

“Hm! That’s not a bad idea,” Alijda reflected. “Even if Beam’s not in charge, I might be able to hack something together.” She wiggled her eyebrows as she pulled her arm back. “All you’ll need to do find a way to explain to your girlfriend why your new blonde pen pal keeps emailing you images of herself in sexy lingerie. I’ve heard that’s a tradition where Beam’s from.”

Rose’s eyes went wide. The mixed look of fear and confusion on her face gradually morphed into one of chagrin as she saw Alijda’s expression. “Oh. You’re joking. Um, right?”

“Mostly,” Alijda said. “Just remember, Beam’s ways are not your ways, plus she’s a hologram to boot. Don’t be afraid to set ground rules.”

“For sure,” Rose agreed, rubbing her neck.

“If you two ladies are done chit chatting, I can hear Kat coming back,” Firestorm remarked dryly, walking past them.

“Oh golly, we’ll swap makeup tips some other time then,” Alijda deadpanned. Rose let out a quick laugh. Firestorm didn’t seem to notice.

The three of them walked over to meet Kat as he approached through the underbrush.

“So Compton and Co are up to something,” Kat concluded after giving them a quick rundown of what he’d seen at the clearing. “The question is, how do we stop whatever this guy is up to, while also spiriting Beam and Fate out of there safely.”

“You’re sure the Destiny woman was your Fate?” Alijda verified, searching Kat’s expression. His voice had caught when describing her. Would his personal stake in things become an issue?

“I’m sure,” Kat said, clenching his jaw. “We’ve got to save her.”

“Should that be our priority though?” Rose asked.

Kat rounded on her, his body tensing, and the young girl shrank back in surprise. Alijda reached out to touch Kat’s shoulder.

“Please clarify?” she asked gently, looking at Rose.

Rose cleared her throat. “Um. Just, seems like this Compton guy feels he has something to prove. What if removing Fate, his key source of information, drives him into doing a boneheaded thing later on instead of backing down?”

“In which case I’d hope your plans don’t involve you simply waltzing away,” Firestorm grumbled.

“You’re right, Rose,” Alijda agreed. “We do need more information before we act.” She released Kat’s shoulder as she felt his posture relaxing. Though his jaw remained clenched.

“Do you know anything more about Compton’s intentions?” Kat asked, looking at Firestorm.

“No. I’m not the font of knowledge you seem to think I am,” the planetary resident insisted.

“We need to talk to Beam,” Rose put in. “I mean, wasn’t her whole plan to learn more? She doesn’t know we’re out here now, worried. She might have real good ideas, if we can get to her, as she’s seen this guy up close.”

“Another good point,” Alijda yielded. “The question is, how can anyone get to Beam when she’s in that tent, without causing Compton to overreact?”

They exchanged glances. Kat sighed. “I have a thought,” he admitted. “But I don’t like it, because it involves putting someone else in danger.”

“Let’s hear it anyway,” Alijda said.

When Alijda teleported into the clearing, she made a point of trying to arrive near the spot that Kat said Compton had been pointing at earlier. That helped her to see the stone circle on the ground, two steps away, with some sort of engraving on it. Possibly a four leaf clover? Interesting.

She didn’t have much time to think about it though, because her presence in the purple cloud of smoke had attracted everyone’s attention in the area. She raised her hands into the air as Compton’s security guy pointed a gun at her.

“Oh, golly!” Alijda said, trying to put a quaver into her voice. “What happened? However did I get here? What’s going on?”

Compton, the shorter man with the beard, had been in the process of doing something with a potion, looming over Destiny, who was on the ground. Or rather, Fate - Alijda supposed she should start thinking of the woman that way. They hadn’t been sure what Compton had been trying to accomplish from the edge of the clearing, but Alijda saw it now. He’d been cutting Fate with a knife, then applying a healing potion, as some sort of torture technique.

Alijda hated the guy immediately. She forced her expression to remain neutral.

Compton pulled Fate back to her feet, pointing at Alijda. “How is this possible?” he demanded of her. “How can people be coming through that thing before I’ve fully opened it?!”

“I still don’t know, and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you,” Fate said tearfully. She spat at his feet.

Bonus points to Fate. Alijda took a few steps forwards, her arms still up, to help pull everyone’s gaze back to her. “Can you send me back now?” she asked. “I’d hate to be late for my CyberArm class.”

Only Alijda noticed Fate’s eyes widen slightly. She the woman gave a hopeful smile in response.

“Stop where you are,” Compton’s man said, waggling his gun to arrest Alijda’s forward motion.

“Hey, Ned,” Compton called out at the same time. “Bring more rope out here, we’ve got another one.”

In less than a minute, Ned had emerged, and Alijda had had her arms bound behind her. She was then pulled towards the tent. “I can walk,” she said, petulantly.

“You can shut up,” Ned countered. He pushed her inside and she nearly fell on her face.

The tent was big enough to fit four people comfortably, and contained a few rolled up sleeping bags, implying that Compton had planned on camping out for a while. Granted, that could be due to his coming into the area from another town. The open container of potions and what looked like a supply of fireworks was a bit harder to explain away. Compton had a plan, but what was it?

“Oh!” was Beam’s only exclamation as Ned marched in behind Alijda, pushing her over next to the holographic girl.

Alijda fired off a smile at Beam as Ned got busy tying up her legs. “Hi again. Rose is worried about you,” she remarked.

Beam looked away. “No,” she sighed. “Rose hates–"

“–being drunk,” Alijda finished. “It makes her say silly things she regrets. Gotta get used to us humans being irrational, Beam.”

Beam turned back, a hopeful look on her face. Ned stood up and brushed off his hands. “Do I have to gag you, girlie? Or will you shut up?” he asked.

Alijda glared at him. “Do I have to spell out the fact that we know each other and obviously came from the same place? Or does your boss not care to have that information?”

Ned glared back. He looked from her, to the front of the tent, and back. Then he reached into a nearby pack, pulling out a towel. Stuffing one corner of it into Alijda’s mouth, he then turned and walked back outside.

Alijda gave his back a nasty look. She turned back towards Beam, glancing down at the towel which was protruding from between her lips, which she couldn’t easily spit out. Beam leaned in close, grabbing the material between her own teeth, and she pulled it free. Alijda tried to spit out the aftertaste.

“At least these guys are idiots,” she said.

CHIBI BEAM
Commission from Gen Ishihara

“Which is bad,” Beam insisted. “Very bad, considering what they know and what they’re attempting.”

Alijda caught the undercurrent of fear in Beam’s tone. “Okay. I’m all ears, and ready to teleport away again with the information,” she said.

Beam glanced towards the tent flap.

“Don’t worry, Kat and Firestorm are ready with a distraction to buy us more time if we need,” Alijda insisted. “What have you found out?”

Beam nodded. “Right. Well, you’ll need the backstory. I learned it when they left me and Destiny together while they were setting up camp. She told me it all started with Compton’s father. A man who abducted people from other worlds, recruiting them to work here, for him.”

Alijda flinched. “Wait. So Destiny - who is Fate, by the way - was abducted?”

Beam nodded again. “Compton Sr. had some way of scrambling people’s minds, giving them false histories so they wouldn’t want to go back home. But it didn’t work on Dest– Fate,” Beam corrected herself. “Possibly because she carried her own ward of protection. She even escaped from him. Tried to get local authorities to go after Compton Senior, but her story was too fantastical, and he was too influential. Plus the guy was smart, shutting down his activities when she began pointing fingers.”

“Damn. So he was a successful businessman largely due to illicit abductions from other magical worlds,” Alijda reasoned. “Did he take items as well as people?”

“Probably. So, this left Fate resigned to living out her days here, because it didn’t seem like anyone knew of other Earths at all. Of course, she did try to find people living here who might be like her, creating her club of people with powers not-quite-right for this world. But she never told them her history, fearing they might simply be locals with quirks.”

Alijda frowned. “But then why would Compton’s son now be–" It came to her. “He inherited everything when his dad passed away. He must have found information in his dad’s records, and wants to start this whole portal thing back up. To become a success story. Hoping Fate can fill in any missing pieces towards re-activating it.”

“Bingo. And he got to Fate using that Ned guy,” Beam added. “Managed to get him on her list, then boom, abduction.”

“And the cyber arm?” Alijda wondered.

Beam made a shrugging motion. “Fate found it in the clearing one day. After all, this apparently IS a dimensional weak point. She didn’t want to leave it around for anyone else to find, but hoped that despite removing it, it would phase back into her world at some future time. Hence the symbol she placed on it.”

Alijda nodded, and was about to ask another question, when there were a couple of shouts from outside the tent.

“Damn, we’re almost out of time,” she realized. “Beam, do you know how best to stop Compton?”

Beam shook her head. “All I know is he’s planning a ritual, and we can’t underestimate him. He knows things through whatever his father left behind. The only reason he’s waited to act on the stuff outright is out of a fear that he’ll end up trapped on some other world. Hence his nabbing of Fate. But if he’s cornered, who knows what he’ll do.”

Alijda nodded. “Pity we’ve still got Firestorm with us, or we could just portal everyone here up to the Station and sort it out from there.”

Beam snickered. “It amuses me that you think Epsilon has that much power,” she said. “But even so, Compton’s two friends still think he’s a bit nuts. We don’t want to give his stories more credence. I kind of regret claiming that I appeared from another place as it is, and am kind of hoping we can claim to be part of a joke that Compton himself set up for them.”

“Mmmm.” Alijda glanced towards the front of the tent as the shouting got louder. “Once I’m out of here, can you go holographic?”

“I’d need to be able to touch my earring,” Beam admitted. “Also, physical objects on my person phase with me, so I’d still be tied up. Even assuming my power reserves are enough to do it.”

“You want to come with me then?”

Beam shook her head. “I won’t leave Fate with them. Underneath it all, I’m still a hologram. Even if they cut me, my blood isn’t real, so better me than her.”

Alijda imagined that while Beam’s blood might not be ‘real’, it’d still hurt like hell, given how the blonde girl’s reactions had been programmed to mimic that of humans. But there wasn’t time to argue, plus maybe Beam could phase, once freed.

“I can at least help with your hands,” Alijda reasoned, given her ability to decide whether to take objects with her on a teleport or not. “Show me the ropes. Alice, it’s time to check in with Rose!”

“Roger wilco,” came Alice’s voice. “Apologies to any pilots listening in who are cringing and want to smack me.”[1]

“You kept the comms open,” Beam realized. “Smart. Sorry I couldn’t activate my own communicator once they got me.” She flipped over to present her back to Alijda, her arms bound tightly together behind her.

Alijda edged down towards Beam’s bottom, closing her mouth over the end of the rope and closing her eyes. She visualized the predetermined area in her mind, and that she wanted to be there with with the ropes.

Gods, but she hated teleporting blind. Even with live surveillance cameras, there was always the chance that something would turn up at just the wrong moment, or that there was some nigh invisible wire that would end up perforating her body, or…

“Rose says you’re good, Alijda,” came Alice’s voice.

‘My life’s in their hands,’ Alijda thought. She teleported.

With her eyes closed, she didn’t experience any visual disorientation, but there was a bit of motion sickness as she fell the half metre onto Firestorm’s tarp, the one Kat and his group had used earlier for his communication ritual. They’d set it out earlier for this very reason.

Alijda spat Beam’s ropes out of her mouth after she landed - seriously, she could use some mouthwash after this mission - and drew in a huge lungful of air. She seemed to be alive, if still trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Blinking her eyes open confirmed that she had made it to the prearranged failsafe location.

“She’s here,” Rose’s voice said from behind her. “Uh, you want me to untie you, Alijda?”

“Please,” Alijda rasped. “I’m a little too shaken up to teleport out of these at the moment.”

She heard Rose’s feet approaching on the tarp, and then the redhead was looming over her, fiddling with the ropes binding her hands. “Alice passed on most of what she heard to us,” Rose assured. “But the only real plan we have remains Firestorm’s preference for launching fireballs at their tent.”

Alijda chuckled. “Well, that would set off the fireworks they have in there, so it’s sure to mess up whatever their goals are,” she remarked. “But that’s risky.”

“Even given Kat’s ability to control fire?”

“Hmmm, point. Still, our best bet might be subterfuge,” Alijda decided. “They’re not that smart. We could make Compton think he’s awakened some sort of dimensional gods his father had offended. Scare him away for good. I think Fate would play along.”

Then again, as she said it, she realized that might only add credence to his beliefs. The very thing Beam had hoped to avoid.

Rose sat back as she pulled Alijda’s ropes free. “There’s no way the Project could simply shore up this dimensional spot then?” she asked. “Making all of Compton’s efforts totally moot?”

“Oh, we could totally do that,” Alice’s voice offered up through the communicator. “The problem is it’d take time, and the process further weakens the forces, much like how waves pull back from a shoreline before a tsunami. Do we really want to risk that when Compton might know how to drive a wedge in?”

Alijda chewed on her lower lip as she considered the options.

[1] When I looked up the phrase, I learned “roger” means ‘received and understood’ while “wilco” means ‘will comply’, making both words together rather redundant.

OPTIONS:

VOTING CLOSES NOON EST SATURDAY DECEMBER 2nd

EXTRA ASIDE:
I had another medical appointment a couple days ago. Life’s stabilizing, I think we’re back on a two week schedule here. In other news, I wrote a post for the “Time Travel Nexus” about a “Back to the Future” comic book, and my NaNoWriMo for “Time Untied” has reached 25k (though Carrie’s still only on day three of University). It’s going to be an undertaking; I’ll keep poking away. Thanks for reading here - wow, and 7 votes last time!

EPSILON DELTA, PART THIRTEEN: SEARCH AND RE-SKEW

They had soon left the vicinity of the village entirely, Rose continuing her enthusiastic jog through the fields, occasionally pausing to sniff the air once more.

“It’s been over fifteen minutes,” Kat mused to Alijda as they kept pace. “What’s the range of this spell I wonder?”

Alijda shrugged. “Maybe Rose isn’t homing in? If she’s tracking Beam, could be we’re simply retracing her route. And as a hologram, Beam could move pretty quickly.”

“I guess,” Kat yielded. He sighed. “If only I’d had Rose wait outside the police station.”

“Hindsight is 20/20,” Alijda retorted.

Kat chuckled. “I seem to recall using that argument on you once.”

“Hmph,” the brunette said. “Bear in mind that you’ve also been fortunate - or possibly unfortunate - enough to have been placed in an advisory role to the people who are actually in charge twice now. Namely me and Rose. There’s a good chance you couldn’t have changed Rose’s mind about something any more than you could have changed mine.”

“I’ve gone rogue before. Hallucinogenic gas,” Kat reminded her.

“Oh, well, you’ve got an answer for everything, don’t you.”

“Not everything.” Kat wondered about filtering his next thought even as he spoke it aloud. “Not you.”

Alijda didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “I haven’t made that easy. Did I even properly thank you for saving my life last mission?”

Kat hesitated. “In your own way.”

Alijda winced. “Meaning no. I was mostly focussed on Chris, and myself. So thank you. And know that I have been working on being less negative, and some of that is thanks to you as well.”

Kat eyed Alijda, remembering what she’d been saying right before Rose had regained consciousness. “I was getting that vibe. That’s good. But don’t feel you need to do it for me.”

ALIJDA VAN VLIET Commission from Shirochya[/caption]

They fell silent again, climbing over a fence as Rose continued her tracking. At last, Alijda spoke up again. “Kat, do we have a thing?” she asked, without looking at him directly. “Or, that is, might we have a thing? A together thing? If I don’t sabotage it? Or am I imagining things?”

“Hey, I have already seen your underwear,” Kat remarked, before he could stop himself. He rolled his eyes, pushing off from the ground a little harder than necessary on his next stride. “Sorry. Bad time to joke.”

Alijda didn’t answer.

“We might have a thing,” Kat granted after a few more paces. “Though this Destiny/Fate situation has me more than a little mixed up right now. Also, remember how I’m not the most mature person as far as relationships go. You think you can deal with that?”

“Nobody’s perfect,” Alijda said after a bit. “Am I hearing you’d be willing to give an actual dinner with me a try sometime though? Assuming Epsilon allows it?”

“Dinner works,” Kat agreed. “Do you like Thai food?”

Alijda finally looked over at him, offering up a small smile. “We can negotiate.”

He fired a smile back at her, and the two of them resumed their jog after Rose.

As they were coming up on more of a forested area, the young redhead tripped and went sprawling, letting out another sneeze. She managed to roll and come up on one knee, only to let out a whimper. “Oh noooo, it’s GONE.”

“What’s gone, the scent?” Kat asked, coming up next to her. She turned to look up at him and nodded.

“A sneeze to turn tracking on, a sneeze to turn it off?” Alijda hypothesized as she joined them.

“Oh, that could be,” Rose realized. She stood and turned to look at the closest tree, only a few paces away. “I feel like I was getting close too. Should I tickle my nose to turn it on again? Or would that intoxicating smell convince me to run into some kind of trap?”

“It’s starting to get dark, and we wouldn’t want to lose track of you in there,” Kat added. “Let’s have a quick look around first. See if there’s signs that anyone’s come this way.”

The group started to walk along the tree line, looking for a path or obvious entry point into the underbrush. It wasn’t long before Kat heard some noises. An animal? He held up a hand and flattened himself against a tree trunk, Alijda and Rose following suit nearby.

Something was definitely approaching their position. And as much as it had made sense for them to come down without weapons, that did feel like an oversight now. All they had on hand was Beam’s jeans. Then again… Kat reached into his pocket for his matchbook. He could manage something with fire, in a pinch.

Fortunately, it didn’t turn out to be necessary. Even in the fading light, Kat recognized the human figure as he jogged out into the open a few paces away.

“Firestorm,” Kat called out.

The redhead spun in place and nearly fell over. “Don’t DO that,” he accused, brushing off his robes before shaking what looked like Destiny’s diary in their direction. “You’re as bad as your blonde companion for sneaking up on people.”

“Beam?” Rose said, stepping forward. “Do you mean you’ve seen Beam?”

“Yeah, sure, we teamed up,” Firestorm said, lowering his arm.

“Then where is she?” Rose asked, turning to look at the trees.

“Caught by the enemy,” Firestorm said, shrugging.

Rose’s gaze snapped back to him. “WHAT?”

“Look, that wasn’t MY decision,” Firestorm sighed. “But Beam figured being intentionally caught would provide her with useful information. I was just on my way back to tell you guys what had happened.”

“Why did you even run off in the first place?” Alijda asked.

Firestorm peered. “Who in blazes are you?”

“Time out,” Kat sighed. “I think we need a moment here to get caught up.”

After a quick introduction to Alijda, Firestorm answered her question. He explained that he’d seen mention in Destiny’s diary of a “dimensional weak point” with occasional activity “around sunset”. So he’d headed off to check out the area, not wanting to miss the time frame. Unfortunately, he hadn’t managed to find the clearing that she had described.

“What I DID stumble onto,” Firestorm concluded. “Was Compton and two of his friends, with Destiny in tow, all tied up. They seemed to be looking for this dimensional thing too.”

“You haven’t mentioned Compton before,” Kat accused.

Firestorm snorted. “Not much to mention. His father was a big shot a few towns over, because he managed to become a pretty successful businessman. Guy passed away a couple years back, and Compton inherited everything, but he is pretty clueless. Both in business and in interpersonal skills. I sure wouldn’t have figured him to resort to kidnapping.”

“So what would motivate kidnapping Destiny?” Alijda wondered.

Firestorm rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe he wanted her for her potions, stumbled into whatever you guys are looking into, and is now hoping that Destiny has dimensional knowledge he can use to make it big? Honestly, I’m not even sure how he pulled off the abduction in the first place. Maybe he was coached?”

“Or there’s something bigger going on here,” Kat cautioned. “What did Compton say to you when you ran into him?”

“Whoa, whoa, I didn’t let myself be seen by that guy,” Firestorm protested. “Just heard his crew stumbling around in the underbrush and hid, to see what I could learn. And what I learned, I’ve already explained. It’s as I was backing away from them, figuring I might need backup, that I ran into that Beam woman again.”

Rose leaned forwards, looking worried. “Oh yes?”

“Yeah, she just seemed to be running right through, uh, everything. That’s a hell of a power, by the way. I made motions to flag her down, lest she freak out Compton and initiate an unfortunate chain of events. She came to her senses long enough to listen to me, and we decided to team up to help free Destiny. Beam apparently wanted to ‘do something right for a change’, whatever that means.”

Rose winced, as Firestorm paused, eyeing the rest of them. “And that’s when Beam proposed getting herself caught. To learn more. And given her ability to pass right through stuff, it didn’t sound like a bad idea.”

“Except it turned out to be a bad idea?” Kat said dryly.

“Eh, maybe? I’ll let you be the judge,” Firestorm decided. “Beam marched out to attract Compton’s attention while I hid and watched. She pretended like she’d come through a portal and wanted their help to know where she was. Compton was intrigued at first, but freaked the heck out once he realized she was some sort of ghost. Screamed at his friends to tie her up.”

“Oh no. And Beam didn’t run away at that?” Rose said, clasping her hands together.

Firestorm shook his head. “She doubled down, saying ‘I can be corporeal if you want’ even as Compton screamed at her to ‘Get on the ground’. She must have turned her magic power off too, because one of Compton’s guys was able to tie her hands behind her back. And after Beam wouldn’t explain to them what part of the forest she’d come from, she was gagged too. That’s when I figured I should hightail it back to Destiny’s place, to get you for backup.”

“So Beam’s been with them for a while and might have useful information by now, we simply can’t get to her,” Kat reasoned.

Rose’s palms separated into fists. “Well, he’s messed with the wrong girl. One sneeze, and I’ll have us back at Beam’s side in no time. As long as Firestorm being here doesn’t mix me up.”

“Um, I’ll try not to?” Firestorm said, scratching his head.

“Hold on,” Alijda said, crossing her arms and leaning against a tree trunk. “No need for us to charge in. This is kind of perfect, actually.”

“Perfect?” Rose gasped. “Alijda, how can you say that?”

As a response, Alijda reached down to tap at her communicator. “Hey, Alice?”

“Hey Abbott![1]” Alice’s voice chirped in response.

Alijda rolled her eyes. “Remember how you were wondering how to abduct a person who is insubstantial?”

“Ooh, doing six impossible things before breakfast down there, are you? I hope one of them was talking to Kat.”

Alijda coughed, as Kat let out a quiet chuckle. “Fo-cus, Gods Alice,” Alijda said. “Beam’s become less holographic. Meaning not only is she caught, but you should be able to pick up her communicator now.”

“Oh? Gimme a second, I’ll check.”

“You figure we can track her,” Rose realized. “Maybe even listen in on what’s happening.”

Alijda nodded. “And more than that, if Beam’s been kidnapped, this becomes an Epsilon mission again. We’re within our rights to interfere.”

Kat rubbed his chin. That seemed like a bit of a reach, given how Beam had created the situation herself. But if it helped them to pursue the goal of getting Destiny back, he wasn’t about to object.

Firestorm threw his hands up into the air. “Okay, seriously, who ARE you people?”

Kat looked over at him. “I don’t think you really want to know the answer,” he remarked. “After all, your imagination can probably dream up something far more interesting than reality, and we’ll be leaving soon enough anyway.”

Firestorm looked Kat up and down. “So you’re some sort of magical special ops unit? Looking into these portals?”

Alice’s voice came back over the comm. “If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire…"[2]

“Alice, do you have a fix on Beam?” Alijda interrupted, palming her face.

“Yup, got that,” Alice confirmed immediately. “At least, I presume it’s Beam, I don’t know what else this signal could be. She’s about a kilometre away, in some sort of clearing within that forest region.”

Firestorm grimaced. “So Compton and his buddies found the clearing.”

“Is that bad?” Rose wondered. “What did Destiny’s diary say about it?”

“Not much,” Firestorm admitted. “Just that she’d used some of her occult tricks to pinpoint it, yet had no idea how to open an actual portal.”

“Could be how Destiny got the cyber arm,” Alijda mused. “If it came through there?”

“Maybe,” Kat said. “Though given her tendency to ask travellers about objects, maybe she traded for it or something.”

“Either way, we need a plan to get Beam and Destiny out of this Compton’s clutches,” Rose broke in. “Alijda, maybe your teleport…?"

“Limited to one person at a time,” Alijda said. “Meaning the first retrieval would tip them off.”

“Not if we arrange a distraction,” Kat remarked.

“Hold on. Once you get your people, what then?” Firestorm protested. “You just leave? What if Compton’s doing something illegal, are you just going to let him get away with it and prosecute him later?”

Kat exchanged a glance with Rose and Alijda. They couldn’t really interfere with that - except what if it was dimensional? “Firestorm’s got a point. Maybe Alijda should try to get more information before springing them. Beam might even be able to do something from the inside, even goad Compton into spilling the beans on his plans, if he hasn’t already.”

Alijda let out a breath. “Careful, Kat. How much of this is our fight?”

“We won’t know until we have more information,” he insisted.

“Information that we might get at this clearing,” Rose supplied. “If it looks like Compton’s setting up weird ritualistic rocks or something, that could tell us everything we need to know.”

“My fellow redhead has good advice,” Firestorm remarked. “One thing at a time. Now, do we have to walk there, or do your supernatural abilities allow for a more instantaneous transportation?”

They walked. Even if power had been fully restored to the Station, Kat knew that providing Firestorm with even more evidence of what they might be capable of could only be problematic in the long run.

As they got close, Kat offered to scout up ahead. He had a certain amount of experience through his military training, and while Alijda could vanish faster with her teleportation, the purple smoke she left behind was a dead giveaway. Even if it was dark by now.

On the one hand, a quick surveillance of the clearing showed that Compton and his men weren’t doing anything obvious that might involve creating a portal or otherwise affecting the dimensions. However, they’d set up a tent, added perimeter lighting using some sort of spell, and one of the guys seemed to be keeping an eye out for anyone watching them, implying suspicious behaviour.

Kat was just about to retreat when he saw her.

Compton - it had to be him based off of Firestorm’s description, a shorter man with a scruffy beard - pulled her out of the tent. Destiny. Her long blonde hair trailed behind her as he muscled her over to a part of the clearing and pointed at the ground. Kat couldn’t properly hear what they were saying, but he was more fixated on Destiny’s features. Her mannerisms, even with her hands tied behind her back. And he couldn’t be certain, not a hundred percent, but on some level, he knew. He knew.

After years of searching, he had finally located Fate Wallace-Wray. His childhood friend.

[1] From “Abbott and Costello”, parodied here. [2] …the A-Team. (Or this crew, I suppose.)

WHAT’S NEXT?

OPTIONS:

VOTING CLOSES NOON EST SATURDAY NOVEMBER 18th

EXTRA ASIDE:
I’m leaving the vote open for two weeks, as I indicated in this post, which gives me time to deal with report cards as I return to work from medical leave. Plan is to have another part up for the last weekend of the month. Thanks for sticking with me. In other news, I’m doing a sort-of NaNoWriMo on Time Untied. We’ll see how that goes. Consider a TWF vote for Time & Tied? Thanks.

EPSILON DELTA, PART TWELVE: Non Scents

“The next move… should be yours, Rose,” Kat remarked.

Rose listened as Kat and Alijda caught her up on what had happened since she’d fallen unconscious. At one point, she had to force herself to focus on their words, rather than listen to the inner voice that was screaming at her about how any decision she made here would mess things up again. The way she had messed up with Beam.

When they finished explaining, Rose rubbed her nose, wondering idly if it was going to be perpetually itchy now that she was the vessel for some magical tracking spell.

“O-Okay.” Rose bit on the edge of her tongue, trying to swallow the quaver in her voice. “Okay,” she repeated, closing her eyes momentarily. There was only one right thing to say here. She turned to Kat. “So, we go after Firestorm.”

Kat crouched down in front of where she sat on the bench, to better meet her gaze. “Rose, are you sure?”

Rose let out a quick laugh. “Oh, heck no. I mean, I think the Destiny thing might lead us into a trap, so that’s out. But while my heart says to patch things up with Beam, my head says Firestorm. And in the end, he’s closer to the mission here, right? Get the diary back, figure Destiny out. So, we track him. Beam will find her own way back to the Station. She doesn’t need me.”

Rose held Kat’s gaze levelly until he nodded, and turned to look up at Alijda. “You have Firestorm’s note?”

“Mmm hmmm,” Alijda responded. There was a silence then, to the point where Rose had started turning her own head to see what the older woman was doing. “We’re not going after him though,” Alijda finished.

Kat stood back up. “Alijda…"

“Come on, Kat. We can’t,” Alijda said. She pointed at Rose. “We’re not going to leave this poor girl to wonder for months about how her situation might have turned out better, if only she’d made a different decision in this moment. Because I know what that’s like. Both given my history, and given… I mean, listen, it’s even more terrible when this is filtered through Epsilon, because you can’t simply call up someone you’ve wronged. Not when they’re in another multiverse. So, I’m contacting Alice, to send something of Beam’s down. We’re going after Beam, and that’s all there is to it.”

Rose tried to smile bravely. “Alijda, that’s not necess–"

“Don’t care, doing it anyway.” Alijda spun on her heel and walked a couple paces away, tapping at her communicator.

Rose stared at Alijda’s back, then slumped to look at the ground. So she was screwing it all up regardless. Damn it. She ground her palm in against her freckled nose. It didn’t help with the itching.

A moment later, Kat sat back down next to her, and reached out to pat her shoulder. “Alijda does have a point,” he soothed. “This mission, it’s becoming more about feelings than logic. Given how the logical thing would have been to leave as soon as we’d figured out Beam’s memory loss. Right? But I want to connect with Fate. The same way you want to with Beam. So let’s follow your heart, and let Beam lead us to Destiny.”

“Hah. Me, connect with Beam?” Rose scoffed. “I told the poor girl to go away forever. Because of how I’m attracted to her. Which is my issue, not hers. It’s not even the same attraction as my Paige-love, with Beam it’s this… this… ugh, it’s so confusing. I don’t even know what I’ll say to Beam now. It’s all so… agh.”

Rose slid her palm from her nose up across her eye while turning her head to the side.

“Kat, you ever wanted to be someone else?”

Kat reached his hand to the back of his neck, rubbing. “Not really? I mean, the pyrokinesis took some getting used to, but I’ve accepted it as a part of me.”

“I ask because, see, I wanted to be Paige,” Rose clarified. “After I met her. It took a while, but eventually I realized that what I truly wanted was to have Paige as a constant presence in my life. Like, to always be surrounded by Paige’s pleasant demeanour, by that cute French accent, and oh God, by those long, gorgeous legs…" Rose felt her heart rate increasing. She pulled her brain back on track.

“The thing of it is, the more I learn about Beam, the more I want to be her too,” Rose admitted. “Her attitude of, oh yeah, I’m a lesbian, I know what I want, and rawr, girl power all the way - it’s like, that’s sexy. Or at least, it’s a goal of mine too. So there’s an attraction there, but… well, is it a surround me with that kind of attitude desire? Because I’m acting like it’s a surround me in a sexy way desire. Which is supposed to be my Paige feelings. I think I’m defective.”

Kat chuckled softly. “Rose, you’re not defective. If anything, this explains why you resent so much how Beam was able to turn off her sexual feelings towards you. You want to do that with her, so it’s yet another aspect of Beam that you wish you had yourself.”

“Meaning you also think those feelings are there.” Rose looked back at the ground, wishing her nose would stop itching. “What bugs me is, while I couldn’t turn my feels off with Angie back in high school, I could at least rationalize them away. So why is it so much harder now? I mean, sure, I’m more hella gay, but I’m also older and wiser. So how can I possibly see Beam as being attractive when I’m already dating someone else?”

“Honestly? How could you not see Beam that way,” Kat said. “She’s a cutey.”

Rose frowned. She turned her head back to check his expression, but he didn’t look like he was pranking her. “So you think I’m a horrible cheating bitch. Great.”

Kat sighed, and shook his head. “No, Rose, you’re not. But you are still young, and thus figuring out what love means for you personally. Consider that there’s a difference between appreciating feminine beauty, and actually following through on feelings of attraction to someone. It’s a philosophy I kind of adhere to, actually.”

“What, looky’s fine, nookie not so much?” Rose scratched her nose. “Thanks, but I’m not adopting that philosophy. I mean, if Paige was drooling over every redhead we passed in the street, I’d be hurt. Even if she didn’t act on her desires. This is the same thing.”

<img src=" width=“181” height=“300” alt=""> KAT CONWAY
(Commission from Jakface)[/caption]

“You think?” Kat leaned back on the bench. “Okay, Rose. Two comments, prefaced with the remark that I DO have a tendency to romance any woman who looks to be in my wheelhouse, while making it clear to them that I’m not looking to settle down. Not unlike Beam. So I might not be the best person to give responsible relationship advice.”

Rose gestured towards him. “Yeah, well, I’m a teenager. I may not be the best person to take responsible relationship advice. So it works out.”

“All right. First thing, more of a question, do you drool over every blonde you see?”

Rose glared. “Don’t be silly. My drooling remark was exaggeration to prove a point. Even one drool is too much.”

“But there are blondes you don’t drool over, yes?”

She had to grant him that point. “Duh.”

“So you don’t have a wandering eye. Also, remember, we’re in a highly charged situation here. You said it yourself, you’re lost and scared. Adrenaline is high, and when coupled with how pretty Beam is, it’s only natural that you might want to get in one last fling before the big goodbye. It’s the fact that you’re torn up about those feelings, rather than simply acting on them, which speaks volumes. Don’t you think?”

Rose felt forced to give more ground. “I’ll grant this isn’t a normal situation. But I’ve been in tight places before, and my thoughts didn’t trend towards pre-death sex.”

“Bringing me to my second point. Some of this IS Beam. She made blatant advances towards you earlier. That’s hard to shrug off. But you have no control over that, so tell me, would your girlfriend truly think you were being unfaithful merely because another girl was flirting with you? Accidentally or otherwise?”

Rose squirmed. “Maybe?”

“If so, that seems rather controlling. But even setting that aside,” Kat continued before Rose could interject, “what if we flipped this situation around? What if Paige came to you tomorrow, and said that she’d been in a near death experience, and that in the heat of the moment, she’d kissed another girl. Would you forgive her?”

Rose stood up, balling her hands into fists. “How dare you say that. You don’t even know Paige.”

“Maybe Paige was receiving mouth-to-mouth. Work with me here, Rose. Hypothetically, could you forgive?” Kat crossed his arms and looked up at her.

Rose squared her jaw. It was a stupid question. Her perfect Paige would never do such a thing! Moreover, CPR was CPR. … Then again, French people did kiss each other on the cheeks when they met. So what if Paige did that with an ex-girlfriend? And what if someone’s head slipped? …

Well, so what? Rose had made a point of saying that she wasn’t the possessive type. Hell, there was also that little voice inside, speculating that it was only a matter of time before Paige realized she could do better… whoa, okay, check that thought. Paige thought that Rose was already the best girlfriend to date. For whatever reason. … Why was that again?

Maybe that was part of the problem here. Rose had no practical experience with girls being attracted to her, outside of Paige. And given how she was still processing Paige’s feelings, throwing Beam into the mix as another suitor… someone Rose hadn’t even been trying to flirt with…

Fine. It was true, she could forgive Paige kissing an ex, depending on the circumstances. Meaning Paige could forgive her for getting flustered about Beam. As long as nothing happened. And nothing would. If only Beam weren’t so aggressively cute in the ways she expressed herself? But Beam couldn’t help that, any more than Rose could help finding it a-dork-able.

Rose flexed her fingers back out, then ground the palm of her hand in against her nose, hard, trying to stop the damn itchy feeling. “Kat, when do relationships get easier?”

He chuckled again. “They don’t. They only get different.”

“Figures.” Rose sat back down. “Okay. I see forgiveness as a thing. Here’s hoping Beam can forgive me too. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Any time.”

Rose angled her head. “So, speaking of flipping situations around, how about you? Assuming we do find this Destiny, and she’s Fate, will you be hooking up with her again, relationship-wise? Alternatively, will you cultivate whatever’s happening between you and Alijda? Or will you just keep hitting on random cops for all time?”

Kat flinched back, his eyebrows going up. “Uhm?”

Rose felt like it was her turn to cross her arms. “C’mon Kat. That decision HAS to have occurred to you. I saw how Alijda was looking at you earlier.”

“Euh, I think Alijda feels badly over how she acted on our last mission together,” Kat explained. “So she wants to make it up to me here. That’s it.”

“That’s it, suuuuuure.” Rose quirked her eyebrow, to emphasize that things weren’t as clear cut as he was trying to make them.

Kat looked away. “Look. Alijda and I, we haven’t known each other that long.”

“No? It’s been something like six months on her end, hasn’t it?”

Kat grimaced. “Well, yes, but I haven’t… that is, we were hardly communicating back and forth during that time.”

“Okay. So you don’t think you could date Alijda.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“What about this Fate then, your communication with her has been even worse lately.”

“That’s different,” Kat said sharply.

Realizing she’d jabbed a nerve, Rose quickly lifted her hands up, palms out. “Whoa, sorry. Just, you did tell me this mission was all about feelings, right? So you might wanna do some advance thinking on that front yourself. Because if you’re all about Fate, or at least more about Fate than Alijda, then she should know sooner rather than later. Yeah?”

Kat looked at her sidelong, tight lipped. Then slowly, he nodded. “Point taken. Thanks, Rose.”

Rose offered up a partial smile. Before she could properly reply though, there was a large puff of purple and black smoke, and Alijda appeared before them. She held a pair of jeans out towards Rose. “Here you go. These are Beam’s.”

“Alijda? Did you just teleport up to the Station to get them?” Kat demanded, even as Rose accepted the clothing. “That was hardly safe.”

The brunette woman shook her head. “No, no, not depressively suicidal at the moment. I merely had to go to a convenient doorway outside the park so Alice could pass them off to me, after which it was faster to teleport back to you.” Alijda smiled wryly at Rose. “For the record, Alice wanted to root through Beam’s lingerie drawer. I talked her out of that, since we’ve already had enough comments about underwear choices today.”

It reminded Rose of the first conversation she’d overheard between Alijda and Kat, only a few hours ago. As Rose watched Alijda’s gaze flicker towards Kat, Kat cleared his throat, turning to look at Rose instead.

It was true, relationships really didn’t get easier with age.

“Okay,” Kat said. “So, let’s get to the tracking. Rose?”

“Uh. Yeah.” Rose stared at the jeans in her hands. So she was supposed to just… sniff them? Yeah, hey, that wasn’t weird at all. She slowly brought them up towards her face and, trying not to feel self conscious, gave a quick inhale.

Nothing happened. Her nose still felt itchy.

“Longer, maybe?” Alijda suggested.

Rose lifted the pants again, wafting her free hand towards her face, inhaling, trying to pick up a whiff of… whatever this spell was looking for. Beam pheromones? Did holograms have pheromones? Ones they could leave on jeans? Beam HAD said she could get hot and bothered, with a body that reacted in the same ways as a human. But right now, Rose couldn’t even smell denim, let alone Beam sweat.

“Beam isn’t from this world,” Kat remarked. “So maybe it won’t work.”

Screw it, Rose decided. She smacked the jeans right in against her face and gave a long, deep sniff. Not once, but twice. Let it not be said that she hadn’t been trying.

It did nothing but make her want to sneeze.

“Maybe Beam hadn’t worn those much,” Alijda confessed. “I could ask Alice for something else.”

“No. Know what? Just give me Firestorm’s letter,” Rose decided. She smiled, and for once, found that she didn’t have to force it. “I mean, the important thing is that we tried. Right? I feel better for having done that, so… so yeah. Back on mission. We’ll figure out the Beam stuff later, this is a sign that it’s time for us - for me - to move on.”

Alijda and Kat exchanged a glance, and Alijda seemed about to say something, only to think better of it. “Okay, Rose.” She pulled out Firestorm’s letter. “I, uh, hope this doesn’t smell more like me now, or the tracking will be pretty quick,” she realized.

“I’ll try to tune into male smell more than female smell,” Rose quipped. “Despite my obvious preference for the latter.” Never mind that she had no idea what that even meant.

Rose took the letter. She first sniffed the middle of the page, then around the outer edge. Much like the jeans, she couldn’t pick up anything. For the second time, she stifled a sneeze.

“Maybe Rose needs to be where the note was found for this to work?” Kat suggested, lifting his hands into the air. “The police form I signed really wasn’t clear.”

“Firestorm would likely return to Destiny’s house too,” Alijda remarked. “So we might as well go back there. In the meantime, I’ll contact the Station. They should have more power restored, and maybe Alice can spot something on surveillance for how this tracking is supposed to work?”

The three of them started heading back out of the main area of town. Based on how much lower the sun was in the sky now, Rose judged that it was probably dinnertime. At any rate, even fewer people were around them now. No one approached. And Alice simply said she’d get back to them, following Alijda’s request.

It happened as Rose was grinding her palm in against her nose for at least the twelfth time. She felt a tickle, and before she could stop herself, she sneezed. In an instant, the itching sensation was gone, replaced with the very faint smell of… of something wondrous.

“Bless you,” Kat said.

Rose moaned. That scent, it was so good. Where was it coming from? She sniffed in a breath, turning in a slow circle. Yes, that way.

Alijda’s hand landed on her shoulder before she could take a step. “What is it, Rose? Nose suddenly behaving?”

“Oh yeah,” Rose huffed. She started to walk, sniffing the air as she went. Ohh, more of that smell, yes please.

Alijda’s grip tightened slightly, slowing Rose’s pace without forcing her to stop. “Are you picking up Firestorm? Or Beam?”

“I dunno. It’s…" How did one even describe it? “It’s the scent of fresh cut flowers. Of homemade baking. Of the air after the rain has fallen. Of… oh, of all that and more, Alijda. It’s just so good, please, we gotta get to the source.”

Alijda glanced at Kat, then nodded. “Okay then. Just make sure we can keep pace.”

Rose nodded back and resumed her tracking, no longer caring about the scenery around her, totally focussed on her goal. On the scent.

As she began to jog, she heard Kat remark, “Neither Beam nor Firestorm smelled like cooking. So we may not know who we’re tracking until we get there, huh?”

“Guess not,” Alijda’s voice agreed with him. “It does make me wonder though, would we be smelling the same thing in Rose’s place? Or would I be picking up aftershave or alcohol or something?”

Rose didn’t know. All she knew was, she wanted more of what she smelled now. Granted, she kind of hoped the source was Beam, not Firestorm, given how much she wanted to sniff at the target for a while after arriving, which felt wrong with a guy. Actually, no, it felt wrong no matter who it was. No wonder this spell was regulated by police. She hoped she’d be able to control herself.

Ohhh yeah. The aroma was stronger in this direction, Rose was sure of it.

(Heads up, Beam and Firestorm will be found in close proximity. WHAT’S NEXT?)

VOTING CLOSES NOON EDT SATURDAY OCTOBER 14th

EXTRA ASIDE:
The first 1,000 words of my story about Rose (“The Girl Who Speaks with Algebra”) actually placed in the Top 10 of the “Ink & Insights” writing contest for 2017, out of over 150 entries. There’s a page here looking at the other winners. My link simply directs back to this site, but it’s prompted me to update my story catalogue. And as long as we’re talking about eyes on this site, consider a TWF vote for Time & Tied? Thanks.

EPSILON DELTA, PART ELEVEN: TRAIL MIX

Alijda stared at the station’s computer output. Despite the clues pointing to Kat’s childhood friend Fate being mixed up in whatever was happening on the planet, there was no sign of any anomaly. Human or otherwise. Meaning this mission was over. Meaning… Alijda clenched her jaw, and turned to her companion. “I’m going down.”

Alice flinched. “To the planet?”

“No, for limbo practice. Yes, to the planet.”

“Alijda. Sorry, but no.” Alice began to dance nervously from one foot to the other. “Army’s been deactivated. These scans show no further technology is present, so Beam’s mission is done. Protocol dictates that we get everyone back up to the station and vamoose.”

“You don’t work for Epsilon any more,” Alijda pointed out. “Why enforce their rules?”

Alice added hand wringing to her dance. “To atone for my sins? To keep Beam from getting in even bigger trouble? To get everybody home in time for lunch? C’mon Alijda. We can’t interfere with planets that are simply doing their own thing. That’s wrong, and we both know it.”

Alijda looked away from Alice’s pleading gaze. She didn’t like that her friend was making sense, because she didn’t want to be talked out of her decision. “You once told me that signing up for this Project meant we’d get help,” she stated. “If we ran into problems. Well, I think Kat needs help.”

“The deal was, you’d be helped within your personal multiverse,” Alice said. “Not out here.”

“How is out here so different? Either way we’re getting external help.”

Alice poked her head back into Alijda’s field of vision. “Look. Even if this Destiny woman Kat mentioned IS Fate from his world, the only reason she wouldn’t show on our scans is if she breached the barriers herself. Thus not our problem. Moreover, she’s obviously started living a life down there. We can’t simply abduct her away from that, there would be repercussions for anyone who knows her.”

“This project abducted me. Twice.”

Alice stamped her foot. “That’s different, and you know it! Stop bending the rules to suit your narrative.”

Alijda spun away from her roommate a second time. “Why? That’s what I do, right? I’m questionable morals woman with enough l33t h4x0r skills to enforce my choices on others.”

Alice sighed. “Alijda, think. We don’t know anything about this Destiny. What if it’s all some sort of trap? To catch the original owners of the cyber arm?”

Alijda ran her fingers back through her hair. “Fine. We call Rose first - she’s technically in charge. If she feels like Kat’s behaving irrationally, we pull them up. Otherwise, I’m going down to help.”

“To help with what, reprogramming the local abacuses?”

Ignoring Alice’s little jab, Alijda paged Rose. They’d restored communications nearly half an hour ago, but Alijda had wanted to be sure there was no chance that they’d missed something on scans before making contact. To avoid being the bearers of bad news.

When Rose didn’t answer, Alijda wondered if that had been a mistake. “I’ll try Kat,” she decided.

Kat answered. He quickly brought them up to speed, in terms of Rose having been rendered drunk and unconscious from a magical police stamp, and Beam running off after having been screamed at by Rose in that state.

“It’s my fault,” Kat concluded. “I told Beam to act like Rose was a male lesbian, then paid little attention to issues arising from that decision. Worse, I prolonged the mission and brought us to the police station, instead of waiting for you to resume contact.”

“You meant well,” Alijda said, rubbing her forehead.

“Did I?” Kat challenged.

“Eh. Better than I probably would have under the same circumstances.”

Alice spoke up at last. “All three of us are kind of bad for breaking rules, aren’t we,” she reflected. “Hold on, I’ll see if I can pick Beam up on sensors.”

“The good news?” Kat offered. “According to the papers I signed, the magical tracking effects will wear off of Rose within a day. Two at most. I’ve pulled her off the main streets, we can lay low until she regains consciousness. And Beam might come back here in the meantime.”

“That doesn’t solve the question of this Destiny woman,” Alijda pointed out.

Kat was silent for a moment. “No,” he admitted. “It doesn’t.”

“I can’t pick up Beam anywhere around you,” Alice remarked. “Could she have been teleported away?”

“Seems unlikely, unless that’s another trick she had up her sleeve,” Kat said. “She did go insubstantial. Maybe that blinds her to your sensors?”

“Or Beam was abducted too,” Alijda said. “Making this an Epsilon mission, meaning I should go down to help with the search.”

Alice cleared her throat. “How can someone abduct a person who is insubstantial?”

Alijda resisted the urge to stamp her foot. “Look. We can’t just stand here and do nothing while they’re in trouble down there, can we?”

“Can’t we? It is hard. Doing that. Isn’t it?”

It was Alice’s tone of quiet sadness that made Alijda flinch more than anything. Because, of course, that’s the reality Alice had been faced with many times - sending people away and doing nothing, or the bare minimum, to help them. A boundary that Alice had ultimately overstepped. One which had gotten her fired.

Even now, there was no malice in Alice’s expression. If anything it was a searching, a pleading, a longing for confirmation of some feeling she had somehow never fully managed to articulate.

“Yeah,” Alijda agreed. “It’s hard. And… and there’s no need to put you through that again, Alice. How about you go down to help Kat out and assess the situation. I mean, it would seem to call for a level headed woman to put things right, and you’d be more objective about it than I would be.”

The two roommates stared at each other.

“Kat?” Alice said after a moment. “One of us will whirlpool down to the previous coordinates we used. Can you give us directions to your present location from there?”

“I can, but do you think having more people here might make things worse?” Kat said.

“Let us worry about that,” Alice stated.

Kat told them how to reach his position, adding that it might be a good idea to pick up Firestorm from the occult house on the way. Alice then closed the channel. The two women continued to stare at each other in silence.

Just as Alijda was about to ask Alice if she’d need anything, the younger woman spoke up.

“You can go down,” Alice said. “If you tell me why you want to go.”

It took a moment for Alijda to formulate her argument. “Think about it, Alice. Why would this Destiny woman magically give a cyber arm some ‘desire’, which included accessing computer records, and pulling Kat onto the Station? Why have the arm cause another crisis as soon as Kat left, then spout ‘Fate’ from a computer program? Between that and the symbols, there must be some connection to him. To his world. This might even be a cry for help, from Fate. We need Destiny, and we need Beam, and me going down can help us get them back as fast as possible.”

A smile tugged at Alice’s features. “No, you silly. Tell me why YOU want to go.”

Alijda frowned. Slowly, her eyes widened as she realized what Alice was getting at. She pursed her lips. “B-Because Kat’s an amazing guy and I screwed it all up with him once so I want to make that up to him?” She hoped she wasn’t blushing or anything so ridiculous.

Alice clapped her hands. “We now fail the Bechdel test, but as long as you’re AWARE of that issue, I’m okay with being the one staying behind. Let’s get you a communicator.”

Alijda stared. “Are you truly okay staying here? Really?”

It was Alice’s turn to look away, as she tucked some hair back behind her ear. “Old habits die hard. Besides, I need to think of a good way to incorporate initials for Rose and Beam into my pin design. This’ll give me time to do that.” She turned back, and winked off Alijda’s nonplussed look. “You know, the pin I made for Epsilon, based off Steins;Gate? I showed it to you a couple months ago.”

Alijda shook her head. “Oh, Alice. No matter what I might say about how weird you are, never change.”

“Same, honey.” Alice reached out, then seemed to think better of it, turning the movement into a stretch.

Alijda stepped forwards and grasped Alice, pulling her into a quick hug. “Thank you.” She pulled back, holding Alice by the shoulders. “Now yes, let’s get me a communicator.”

Firestorm was gone. All Alijda found in the house that Kat had directed her to was a note, left on the table, reading ‘Onto something, can’t wait’. There was no sign of Destiny’s diary.

“Sorry, Kat,” Alijda finished, after explaining. They had met up near the police station, in what passed for a park. The unconscious Rose had been laid out on a bench, Kat leaning over her, to monitor her condition.

Kat shrugged. “No need to apologize, doesn’t sound like you scared him off. We probably shouldn’t have left Firestorm alone. That’s another thing I’ve messed up planetside.”

Alijda put her hands on her hips. “Oooh, don’t you even start.”

Kat frowned. “Start what?”

“I’m a depressive. I know all about the spiral down, pinning extra blame when it’s not really warranted. I mean, if you’d left Beam behind with this Firestorm, her memory might have glitched again, or Firestorm might not have read something important, and so we’d still be in some sort of trouble. So don’t dwell.”

Kat shook his head. “Alijda, you forget, I’ve trained for off-planet missions. The repercussions of messing up in these sorts of situations…"

“Still lie in our future. We can salvage this situation, so for now we focus forwards. Okay?”

Kat chuckled. “Oh, very well. But only if you take your own advice. Particularly with respect to whatever you were doing in your six months away from me, versus my six hours.”

Alijda let out a quick breath. “Fine.” He was pointing out a conversational door there, one related to them, but this hardly felt like the time. “So, now three missing people and no way to track them. Beam’s habits we know, more or less. Tell me about the other two.”

Kat filled in the information about Firestorm easily enough, Alijda pacing back and forth as he spoke. Kat then gave what cursory information they knew about Destiny, before visibly hesitating. A few people had wandered through the area during their conversation, but there was no one there now, so Alijda knew it had to be about her.

She stopped in place, turning to face him. “If you don’t want to tell me about Fate, you don’t have to.”

“It might be relevant. It’s just…"

“It’s not on your business cards, as you said. I get it.”

Kat shook his head. “No, it’s more like, I’ve never really gone in depth with anyone about it before. So I’m not sure how to do it now. But…” He came around the bench and leaned against the side, near Rose’s feet. “Okay. Fate was my first serious relationship. Could even be why I don’t take them seriously now, you never know when the other person’s going to up and disappear.”

“Meaning you took relationships seriously before Fate?”

Kat seemed about to reply, only to rub the back of his neck, sheepishly. “Hah, okay, no,” he admitted after a moment. “But I was a teenager, and with a name like ‘Katherine’, it was all about being as manly as possible. That said, Fate was the first rejection in high school that truly bothered me. She said she was upset that I was wasting my ‘gift’. It was only by looking into her occultish things that made me realize, she’d somehow sensed my ability for fire control. And it was only by proving a genuine interest in learning more that got me into using that ability, which led to us hooking up.”

“So Fate was the first girl you actually cared about,” Alijda realized. “As far as relationships go.”

“Huh. You may be right there,” Kat said. “We went to prom together, but our paths diverged in post secondary. What with my Dad wanting me at military college. For a time, Fate and I corresponded back and forth, but then it suddenly… stopped. Fate’s parents thought she’d gone out west. I wondered as to an occult connection, but there were so few leads. I’ve searched for her, on and off, ever since.”

Alijda chewed briefly on her lower lip. “Guess I’ll just ask this then. Kat, could Fate truly have breached dimensional barriers by herself?”

“It’s possible,” Kat granted. “She was always deeper into occult things than I was, and she never told me what her gift allowed her to do. I just always figured she’d been recruited for something top secret, the way I was with the ‘Doorways’ program.”

“Did Fate have any interest in potions?”

“Like Destiny, you mean? Not really. But she could have grown into it, using that rare skill to maximize her chance of meeting someone like her elsewhere on the planet.”

“And you have no idea where Destiny might have been taken?”

“Not off the top of my head.” Kat shook his head. “It’s funny, now that I think about it, Fate did tend to wear a lot of black. Kind of like how you do. I wonder, could it be I have a different attraction to a certain type of woman?”

“Meaning you think Fate could have black, suicidal thoughts, like me?”

“Whoa. Whoa, no,” Kat protested, jumping back to his feet. “I didn’t mean… it’s only… yeah, I’m not sure why I said that. Sorry.”

The man had been pointing out how he’s attracted to you, dumbass, Alijda realized moments later. And you had to go and turn that into depression. Sabotaging the conversation, and yourself, like always.

“Hah, no, I’m the one who’s sorry,” Alijda said quickly. “I’m just terrible, in how my mind interprets…" She also needed to stop putting herself down. “I mean, not always, but my default it’s, er…" Still talking about herself. “Whereas you, uh…" Oh, just say you like him already. “See, I failed the Bechdel test with Alice.” Damn it.

Kat’s eyebrow arced up, but before he could say anything, Rose let out a gasp. The redheaded teen’s eyes snapped open, and she jerked herself up into a sitting position, breathing fast.

Kat and Alijda moved to sit on either side of her, to prevent her from slumping back down, Alijda reaching out to touch the young girl’s arm.

“Rose? Rose, you okay?” Kat asked.

“Feel all funny,” Rose wheezed. “My tongue, my eyes, my ears, my fingers, my…" She sniffed in a long, deep breath through her nose. Only to wince and reach up to touch it. “My nose. Ack, now all the weird tingles are zeroing in on my poor nose.”

Alijda met Kat’s gaze. “That signed police form, giving Rose tracking powers. Did it mention turning her into some sort of bloodhound?”

Kat considered it. “You mean, allowing her to track someone or something by scent? Yeah, it could be interpreted that way.”

Rose poked at her nose. “That’s non-scents. In fact, my nose is feeling more and more stuffed up. Like it’s waiting for the right thing to smell, or something.” She looked around. “Hold on. When did Beam turn into Alijda?”

“This means we need to give Rose something of Destiny’s to sniff,” Kat decided. “Let’s get back to her place.” He started to rise, then sat back. “Unless, should we track down Firestorm instead, using that note he left? He knows the terrain, has the diary, and might already be onto something.”

“Do either of you have a tissue?” Rose asked.

“Hell, maybe Rose should track Beam,” Alijda suggested. “Using some item of hers from the station. Alice had noticed upgrades to the sensors that she didn’t understand. If Beam could get those working, and if Destiny is Fate, and if that means the Station can pinpoint her, we’d be able to go into the situation much less blind.”

“Beam,” Rose gasped. Her hand slid to her mouth. “I told her… I said she was… oh no. Oh NO, I’m HORRIBLE.”

“That was lots of ‘ifs’, Alijda,” Kat said, looking troubled. “And what if we track down Beam only for her to tell us it’s time to leave the planet, by the book?”

Alijda shook her head. “If Rose finds Beam, it shows she cares. And I doubt Beam would shut down a friend in need after that.”

“Wait, what is going on?” Rose looked back and forth between the two of them. “What’s the next move here?”

WHAT’S NEXT?

VOTING CLOSES NOON EDT SATURDAY SEPT 30th

THE ORACLE PROPHESIED:
Subtle decision from the Part 9 vote: When Firestorm was left behind, it meant no tech would register on the Epsilon scans, as revealed in this part. (After all, Rose being deputized has kept them tied to the planet.) Had Firestorm been the one deputized, there WOULD have been signs of a tech component, as a reason to stick around and not turn everything over to Firestorm. Thanks for reading and voting!

EPSILON DELTA, PART TEN: SEE DEUCE

“Okay, good idea,” Rose decided, nodding at Firestorm. “See what you get from the diary, there could be something in there about where Destiny’s technology came from.” She glanced to Kat. “We could use the techno tech know, you know?”

Kat seemed to hesitate before nodding. Rose chalked it up to the possible invasion of Destiny’s privacy - but they needed every angle here, right?

ROSEMARY THORNE
Commission from Lia[/caption]

She was second guessing her decision within five minutes of leaving Firestorm at Destiny’s house. True, he had given them the information they’d need for dealing with the police, including the location of the station, but what if something unexpected happened? Maybe the only planetary resident they knew should have come along. Rather than leaving him to snoop. Then again, maybe they had the Station for backup by now?

Rose tapped her communicator. “Rose to Alice, are you up there?”

Kat reached out to seize Rose by the arm, though he stopped short of actually touching her. Still, Rose flinched at his sudden movement.

The tall man cleared his throat. “What’s wrong, Rose? Anything I can do?”

“I wondered if they’d managed repairs up there yet, I guess,” Rose admitted. “But I probably shouldn’t disturb them, huh? They’ll call us?”

“Probably,” Kat said, smiling wanly at her. “Don’t worry, Rose. I can handle talking to the police.”

“Yeah. I just… yeah.”

“It’s just, you’ve been abducted from your Earth and are feeling a little out of sorts. I get it.”

Rose let out a long breath. “Don’t forget, I’m also in charge somehow. If this goes pear shaped, it’s on me.”

“Oh, Rose. Oh no,” came a soft voice from her other side. Beam reached out and touched Rose through the shoulder, with her incorporeal hand. “It’s on me. Because I’m the one who pulled you into this. I’m so sorry it’s distressing you.”

Rose turned to look at the blonde hologram, and immediately had to look away. That tender, apologetic gaze… Rose wasn’t sure if she was more irritated at the sense of being pitied, or more rattled by how her first instinct had been to give Beam a reassuring hug. Her feelings for the pretty girl were still rather mixed up.

“Let’s all talk about something else,” Rose suggested. “Your previous missions, maybe? Were any of them as screwed up as this?”

Kat spoke first, as they walked down the dirt road. He offered up some highlights of his only previous Epsilon involvement, where he, Alijda and a personified parabola - Rose idly wondered if this “Para” was in any way related to “Sine” - had come together to look into dimensional tears on a scaled-down world. It had apparently led to Alice being fired.

Though the way things were going here, Beam might end up fired too, so that wasn’t entirely comforting.

Then Beam launched into a tale of her first Epsilon involvement. She had been pulled onto the station, where some higher entity had communicated to her through the computer. They had provided her with the station’s mission, requesting equipment repairs at first. After Beam had agreed to and accomplished those, there had been the actual prospect of a retrieval mission.

“It’s like it had been hand picked just for me too,” Beam remarked. “Very tech world, but with a magic amulet. Which had been buried in a lava flow, so the Station couldn’t get a positive lock until it was uncovered by an archaeologist centuries later. So, fine, I devised a clever plan. I appeared shortly after said archaeologist found it, pretending like she’d released me from being confined in said amulet. After rewarding her for my freedom, I left with the artifact, mission accomplished.”

“Rewarding her?” Kat asked. “Does the Station have money?”

“Oh, no, no. She swung my way. I was the reward.” Beam raised a finger to her chin. “Interesting thing is, she tasted spicier than the women of my world.”

Rose stumbled and nearly face-planted into the dirt.

“I mean, sure, every female tastes different,” Beam chirped, without breaking stride. “And it’s connected to diet and all that, but sometimes I wonder if it was that Earth? Or maybe being an archaeologist contributed to her–"

“BEAM,” Rose cut in, wide-eyed. “TMI!”

Beam turned to her. “The Michener Institute what now?”

“Too. Much. Information. Ix-nay on the Issing, ‘kay?!”

Beam glanced from Rose to Kat, where she saw his eyebrows were up, and then back again. “‘k-kay. I’m sorry. Really. I didn’t mean to overstep. I really haven’t had occasion to socialize much since leaving my Earth. Except with the Epsilon computer.”

“We know you didn’t mean anything by it, Beam,” Kat soothed. “But don’t forget, Rose was a tad conflicted about you, particularly on that sort of subject.”

“I haven’t forgotten.” Beam nibbled on her lower lip. And it was cute, and Rose had to look away again. She took a moment to take in the village (town?) that was now around them. They had covered a fair bit of ground during story time.

The three of them were still on the dirt road, but there were now other roads crossing it, and wooden or stone structures surrounding them, versus having houses appear only every so often. There were a few people about too, though they were not paying much attention to them.

Well, aside from the occasional sideways glance at their outfits - their lack of cloaks might be making them stand out. But the residents themselves seemed more intent on getting to wherever they needed to be.

It was probably close to dinnertime. Or maybe, on a magic world, you simply took things at face value and didn’t ask too many questions.

Rose also noticed that the tavern that Firestorm had told them to be on the lookout for was up ahead. The police station would be down on the cross street, not far away. Making it easier for the cops to get to refreshments whenever the work day ended, the fire mage had griped.

“R-Rose…?"

Suppressing a sigh, Rose looked back at Beam. “Yippers?”

“Clarify. I’m used to talking about - um, let’s say kissing of girls - with both girlfriends and guy friends. But I gather that’s a bad topic for girls who are friends? Or is it more a case of too soon?”

“Yes. That is, maybe. That is…" Rose paused to press the heel of her palm to her forehead, before sliding her hand down over her face. “Flûûûûûûûte.” As she said it, Rose realized something. The mild french swear word was becoming a way for her to feel closer to Paige. Her girlfriend. A multiverse away.

With effort, Rose swallowed away the lump in her throat.

“Look, Beam,” Rose began. “You said all girls… taste different?” Damn it, normal girls didn’t talk this way when they got together. Did they? Beam simply nodded back. “Well, girls as friends have different tastes in conversation too. Meaning for me, right now? Sexy time talk is a no-no, and that qualified. But maybe the next girl you befriend will be different. That make sense to you?”

Beam nodded again. “It does. I guess I’m just hoping some universal truths will come up. Ones which will always apply for your new subclass. Like how the male subclass is all just kind of ugh.”

“Oh, thanks,” Kat remarked, a hint of amusement to his tone.

“Oh no, I mean, you’re nice enough. It’s only, men are lousy lovers,” Beam clarified.

“Thanks again,” Kat said. He apparently couldn’t resist adding, “you know our anatomy is the basis for how your toys are shaped?”

“Pffft, it’s not about anatomy,” Beam scoffed. “It’s about the five senses. For instance, compared to a man, ooooh, the scent of a woman, that’s so…" Beam paused, hands partially clasped, looking sidelong at Rose. “So totally a movie. Yippers, on some Earths ‘Scent of a Woman’ is the name of a movie.”

Rose wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry at the conflicted expression on Beam’s face. She settled for lifting her finger and pointing, to change the subject. “There’s the tavern. We’re almost to the police station here. Destiny awaits?”

“Right,” Kat agreed. “Let’s get to it.”

Rose felt a tingle as she walked through the doorway into the police station. Shaking it off, she held the door for Beam, so that the hologram wouldn’t need to phase through the wall. Kat walked up to the main counter before them.

The station itself looked like a small time police department out of a TV show. A female officer was looking over some sort of newspaper as Kat approached. There were a couple more male individuals in the back, one reading, another looking at papers he’d taken out of what Rose took to be a filing cabinet. A door in back led to where they presumably had a jail cell or two.

“Take a number,” the desk officer said, before Kat could speak.

Kat looked around. “We three are together though,” he said. “And there’s nobody else in here.”

“I’m on break. More people might come,” the officer said, not looking up from her news article.

“Okay, well, crime waits for no one,” Kat said. “So maybe you could take a break from your break?”

She looked up, irritated. “Why, are you about to go commit a crime?”

Kat smiled. “Heeey, only if it’s a crime for me to look this good. Though I will grant that, next to you, I pale in comparison.”

Rose considered gagging. Until the officer folded up her newspaper and smiled. “Well played. I can appreciate an ego that rivals my own. What’s the trouble?”

Kat gave a quick rundown of their situation. They used the angle that Firestorm had recommended, saying they had come in from out of town to find Destiny missing. As the story came out, the interest of the desk officer gradually faded, and neither of the cops in the back paid them any attention. Soon, the woman was reaching back for her newspaper.

“Fill out an initial report form, then come back in a couple days,” she said.

Kat winced. “Isn’t there anything that a charming and intelligent woman such as yourself can do for us in the meantime?”

She eyed him sidelong. “Fishing for special dispensation? Fine, fill out the waiver form.”

Rose had already noticed the various forms in the slots near the door. Grasping the one they needed, she took it over to Kat, placing it on the countertop. He grasped a pen and filled it out as Beam paced back and forth, occasionally looking over their shoulders.

The desk officer scanned over the form after Kat pushed it at her. “Hmph. I guess this is in order,” she sighed. She reached underneath the counter and brought out some sort of stamp.

It happened quickly. Before Rose could react, the cop had seized her by the wrist and brought the stamp down onto the back of her palm. There was a chiming sound. “Hey!” Rose protested, jerking her arm away.

Now she was seeing double. Much like how she had seen two cauldrons after charging into Destiny’s place. It was making her nauseous, so she closed her eyes and fell to her knees, judging that to be more dignified option versus falling on her ass.

“What the hell?” Kat’s voice was saying. “I’m the one who filled out the form, lady! What did you just do to Rose?”

“This isn’t our first rodeo,” the officer answered. “You know magic potential gets scanned as soon as you walk in here. That girl’s is the strongest, so she leads the search. We’re not going to let you file a complaint as if we didn’t notice that.”

“What?? But Rose doesn’t do ANY magic. And I’m the one who handles fire.”

“Oooh, good for you. Look, either fill out a rescinding form, or get out of here.”

Rose reopened her eyes. She was still seeing double, so it looked like Beam’s concerned gaze included four pretty blue eyes and two sets of kissable lips. Whoa, no, no, bad thoughts again. “Bye bye bad thoughts, go away now,” Rose gasped.

“Rose, are you okay?” Beam asked.

Rose hiccuped, then giggled, despite trying to suppress the urge. She smacked her palm over her mouth. “Oh, ah feel shooow gooood,” Rose cooed. “‘Cept mebbe ah’m too shexhy for dish magicks.” Wait, she was saying that aloud?

Rose pulled her hand back, glaring at both her right palms, as if they were to blame for letting those words escape.

“No,” she accused them. “Bad hand. Ooo, filtersh, filtersh, come back brain filtersh… ah neeeed youuuu… ah neeed yoooouu lik a lite houshe needs a coasht…"[1]

Rose had no idea why the lyric of that hokey country song had suddenly come to mind, and she dissolved back into giggles. It was just too FUNNY, that a song she’d heard maybe ONCE would come back to her now, in the presence of a seductive lesbian hologram while on some alternate magical Earth.

By the time Rose was able to stop laughing, she’d been helped outside, Kat leaning her up against the side of the building. He was saying something, but Rose wasn’t entirely clear on what.

“Youse haff two hedds,” she pointed out to him. Granted, they were sort of focussing themselves into one, but they didn’t seem to want to stay that way.

Kat said something else while waving six fingers in front of her face, as if that would help anything. Rose closed her eyes, turned to the side, and reopened them. Beam was standing there. Oh no, pretty lesbian.

“Rose…" Beam began.

“Nooo,” Rose yelped, trying to step back, and only succeeding in flattening herself against the wall. She hiccuped again. “Know what? You my anti-Angie. Shtay ‘way, anti-Angie!”

Beam frowned. “Auntie Angie?”

In a flash, Rose realized what the root of her problems was. And she couldn’t stop her stream of consciousness from running out of her head via her mouth. “Angie. I liked her ’n high schewl. An’ she pulled back, an’ so I diden go deeper, an’ so I diden figger me out. But now’n I know, wif me an’ girls, an’ here you are.”

Rose took in a deep breath. “An’ Beam, you go thuther way, instead of no deeps, you want ALL the deeps, Beam, ALL the deeps, an’ I canna take it. I canna, cuz I wanna wif Paige, but ’m lost n’ scared here, ’n you is pretty, ’n you lead me to titillation, and you don’ deliver me from evil, and thine is a kingdom, an’ power n’ glory, uh…"

Rose steered her thoughts back on track. “Yis, so Beam, you an anti-Angie cause jest like wif Angie I wanna, but I DON’ wanna, cuz it’ll mess all life up. Which, okay, we deal wif it, maybe? Until you TURN LOVE OFF. Is NO FAIR BEAM, I no turn it off, not wif Angie, or Paige, or you, an’ then you make me all confuzzled about friendships. Why you do this to me, Beam? Why?? DAMN it, I HATE you,” She was almost screaming by then.

Beam flinched back. “Rose, stay calm. Okay? Y-You’re being affected by that police stamp. You d-don’t really mean you hate me, right?”

“I DO. I hate YOU, an’ I hate bein’ in CHARGE, an’ I hate my head’s HURTIN’ now, an’ somehows I gots magicks so I canna even flee to Station no more,” Rose sobbed. “So know wha? YOU, Beam, I wan YOU t’go ‘way frum me.”

Beam reached out, so Rose lifted her arm to point for emphasis. “NO. Go ‘WAY, y’hear? Go ‘WAY Beam, you an’ your cutesy love off switch. Mk? JEST GO FAR ‘WAY FRUM ME F’REVER!”

“Rose, stop, that’s enough,” Kat said sternly, grasping her by the shoulder. She swatted his arm away. Alas, the movement unbalanced her enough that she felt herself sliding down the wall and onto the ground.

The last thing she saw before closing her eyes again was a sideways view of Beam sprinting away as fast as her legs could carry her.

The last thing she heard before falling unconscious was the sound of the Station communicator on her wrist.

[1] “I Need You”, Tim McGraw featuring Faith Hill.

WHAT’S NEXT?

VOTING CLOSES NOON EDT SATURDAY SEPT 16th

EXTRA ASIDE:
There was a post last week with information and a poll about where to take this site in 2018. Also, voting for the time travel story never hurts… this site just had two consecutive zero view days in a row (plus nine spams).

EPSILON DELTA, PART NINE: DESTINATION: DESTINY

Kat suspected that his brain was trying to interpret what he saw as double vision. But what surrounded him was actually overlapped images, and he wished his head would figure that out already. As it was, he was trying to focus on the Epsilon Station by targeting the people there, largely because they tended to be the things speaking and in motion.

Still, when Alijda stepped back, overlapping with Beam, who was rocking back and forth on her heels… the one person passing back and forth through the other person forced him to close his eyes and shake his head to readjust.

When Kat reopened his eyes, all he saw was Destiny’s house again. He snapped his attention over towards Firestorm. “Hey! Turn that back on!”

“I’m surprised the spell lasted as long as it did,” the robed magician grunted. “Never tried communicating in quite that way before.”

Rose coughed. “The place is kind of smoky now, can we go outside?”

Kat took in the scene that now surrounded him. He was standing in the middle of the room, on Firestorm’s fire-resistant tarp. The wood in the circle around him had been burned down to ash. Beam stood to one side, monitoring, unaffected by the fire owing to being insubstantial. Firestorm was at his other side, holding up some magic symbols. Rose was halfway across the room.

“No, listen, I just needed another minute or two,” Kat insisted. “Find something else to burn.”

“That was all the firewood, and we’re not burning Destiny’s stuff,” Firestorm objected. “In fact, I’m starting to think you weren’t talking to someone on the other side of the country at all.”

“Maybe the communicators will work soon?” Beam suggested. “Now that the others know you need to talk?”

“And what was up with your muttering about Alijda building an army?” Rose asked. “Also, can we go outside?”

Kat pinched the bridge of his nose, forcing himself to remain calm. If Destiny really WAS Fate, from his world, she’d apparently already been here for a decade or more. Another few minutes wouldn’t change things. Would they? Well, he’d at least give Alijda and Alice some time, in order to avoid interrupting them while they stabilized the station.

“It wasn’t an army, it was the arm they were catching,” Kat explained. “And before we go outdoors, we need to figure out if Destiny left her home voluntarily. Because if they can’t track her from the Station, we’ll need to track her ourselves.”

“Swell,” Rose said, coughing again.

“Would you like a soothing massage, Rose?” Beam said brightly. “Once I can touch things again? Or can girl friends not do that without it getting sexy?”

“Oy,” was Rose’s only comment, looking sidelong at Beam.

Firestorm cleared his throat, setting aside the pages with the symbols on them. “Kat, you really think Destiny would have left her place looking like THIS if she’d left by choice?” He made a shooing motion in Kat’s direction.

“For misdirection, sure,” Kat retorted. Realizing what Firestorm wanted, he moved off the tarp, to allow the man to start retrieving it.

“Oh, hey, the front door,” Rose remarked, walking towards it.

“Yes, fine, Rose, I get it,” Kat sighed. “If the smoke’s bothering you that much, we’ll catch up with you out front.”

“No,” Rose said, pointing at it. “I mean it was locked. Beam had to muscle her way in. Isn’t that a clue?”

Kat again tried to keep his emotions in check. “Good point, sorry Rose. Firestorm?”

Firestorm nodded. “Yeah, if it was police cracking down on Destiny for spell casting, they would have busted that thing down. So she wasn’t arrested. Or if she was, it wasn’t here.”

Kat nodded. Firestorm had explained to them that magic was highly regulated on this world. That was the whole reason they’d had to perform the communications spell indoors, to avoid detection.

“But if Destiny locked herself in, why isn’t she still here?” Beam wondered.

“I locked the door,” Firestorm said, shooting her a look as he swept the last of the ash away. “After your unauthorized access earlier.”

“Oh. That,” Beam said, nibbling on her lower lip.

Rose turned away from the door. “Firestorm, can you maybe explain what happened the first time Beam arrived? We’d like to, uh, hear it from your point of view.”

Firestorm looked towards the ceiling. “You people… but very well.” He continued to speak as he folded up his tarp. “I was supposed to meet with Destiny tonight. As it turned out, I got a lift into town, so I came by early. The place looked like this when I arrived. I’d barely had a chance to start looking around when blue-eyes there,” he jerked his thumb at Beam, “appeared in the doorway, saying she had ‘come for the technology’.”

“I was polite about it, yeah?” Beam asked.

“You acted as if I knew what the hell you were talking about,” Firestorm said, shooting her a look. “We argued, I made a fireball, you did some freaky acrobatic jumping moves, I grabbed the fireplace poker to defend myself, and you used it as some conduit for a lightning attack. Which knocked me out.”

“Again with the lightning? How did I…" Beam’s eyes widened, and she reached up to touch the side of her head. “Oh no. No, no, did you hit my hairband with that poker? Or my earrings?”

The man rolled his eyes. “Girls and their trinkets."

“They’re my control mechanisms,” Beam snapped. Her hands fumbled over her hairband, touching it and tapping at it. She didn’t pull it out to look at it though. Actually, Kat recalled, hadn’t the hairband popped up from her head, to let them power her up? Perhaps it was a part of her. If they removed it from Beam’s hair, might Beam herself vanish?

“Major systems all functional,” the holographic girl muttered, seemingly to herself. “If I had been damaged, I’d have rebooted after self-repair. The mission would still be in short term memory. Or I might have contacted the Station… but it means I was already partly damaged when I returned with the arm… what if I’m prone to blackouts now?"

“ANYway,” Firestorm said pointedly, ignoring the rambling blonde. “When I came to, alone, I locked myself in here. Took a closer look around, found the diary, and was reading that when you all showed up again.”

Rose had approached Beam by now, reaching out to touch the troubled hologram on the shoulder. Of course, her hand passed right through, but it got Beam’s attention. She turned and fired a grateful smile at the younger girl, pulling her hands away from her hairband off Rose miming the action.

Kat decided to refocus the conversation back on his original question. “Firestorm, during that closer look around, did you see anything that might have explained what happened to Destiny? I mean, you know her better than we do. Does this seem more like the results of a struggle to you, a search, something staged…?”

“She’s a fighter,” Firestorm said, tucking his tarp away in his robes. “But her opponents wouldn’t be able to use spells in here, unless they were on the list. I’m inclined to say a search. But I don’t see her that often, so I don’t know what ‘technology’ she might have had that everyone’s obsessing over.”

Kat rubbed the back of his neck. “Would that have been the target though? I mean, they left before finding it. Didn’t they?”

He looked to Beam, who seemed to have calmed back down. She shrugged. “I didn’t know what I’d find here,” Beam answered. “There could have been more than the arm, if it was removed before I arrived. All I know is, Destiny couldn’t have had too much, or the initial reading would have been bigger.”

“Maybe there’d be information in Destiny’s diary?” Rose suggested.

Kat frowned. “Yeah. I’m hesitant to read that without permission. She kept it hidden, it feels like an invasion of privacy.”

Firestorm grinned. “I didn’t care about that.”

Kat shot the man a glare. “I noticed.”

Firestorm seemed unfazed. “You want to know about what I read, or not?”

Kat waged a brief internal battle between his morals and their mission. “Fine.”

Firestorm’s gaze became smug. “Destiny started it by saying she was ‘resigned to living out her days here’,” he said, picking the book up off the table and holding it aloft. “There’s a bunch of stuff near the start about our customs, and her symbol magic which ‘works more tangibly here’, which is why I wonder if she was originally one of the fae or something.”

Firestorm paused, as if hoping that one of them might confirm or deny his belief. When no one spoke, he continued on.

“She mentions deciding to specialize in potions, because it’s the best way to encounter people from all over. And she’s right about that. It’s not a simple trade, people travel to find potion masters. And speaking from personal experience, I know Destiny liked hearing stories or seeing objects related to the unusual, things outside the norm.”

He paused again.

“Things like you?” Beam said in the ensuing silence.

Firestorm shot her a look. “I’m not that unusual. Not everyone on her list has unusual beliefs, okay?”

“Yeah, hey, what is the story of this list?” Rose wondered.

He peered closer at her. “Don’t you know? Aren’t all of you ON the list?”

“Actually, Rose isn’t. Yet,” Kat said quickly. “She came with us in order to join. We were reluctant to give her the details, but now that Destiny’s gone, maybe you should tell her…?"

“Oh, sure. Just tell strange people ‘on the list’, who never saw Destiny in person, about that list.” Firestorm looked back and forth between them. “Ah, hell, you might be playing me, but at this point it’s probably in the diary anyway.” He adjusted his robes. “We’re the few mages who can imbue objects with powers. Meaning we’re able to use Destiny’s ‘occult’ symbols, as she calls them.”

“Anyone who can do that ends up on the list then?” Rose asked.

“No, we have to be vetted, directly or indirectly,” Firestorm said. “Destiny didn’t want this going to our head, leading to us trying to take over a city or anything. It was a way to spread the word though, in an urban legend sort of way.”

Kat rubbed his chin. “That symbol on the arm,” he mused. “That desire. It could have been a desire to connect up with others who know the symbols."

“And your symbol knowledge would be in the Epsilon database,” Beam remarked. “How DID you end up on the Station, Kat?”

“Alice thought it was a glitch,” Kat said. “Because I left right after her, so when she was pulled in… but maybe…” Could his being here be more than random chance? His hands curled into fists. “We have to find Destiny.”

“Well,” Rose put in, “if we assume Destiny let people in the front door, or was lured out, it had to be by people she knew. Probably either occult-list people, or rare-potion people.”

Kat nodded. “They subdued her, and then searched the place for… that list?”

“The list wasn’t physical,” Firestorm said. “Or at least, I didn’t think it was.”

Rose looked at Firestorm. “If we check out the storage-and-potions room, do you think you’d notice anything out of place?”

Firestorm hesitated, then shrugged again. “Maybe.” He headed towards the other room, Rose falling into step ahead of him. Kat moved to follow, only to have Beam step in front of him - he almost walked right through her.

“Kat?” the hologram said. “I am on the cusp of a logic error.”

Kat blinked. “Related to damage on your hairband?”

Beam shook her head. “No. This mission. Because it’s over. The station is safe, it sounds like the women have secured the cyber arm, and I know what happened with my memory. There is no reason for us to remain here.”

“No reason?? Beam, DESTINY–"

“Is internal to this world. Not our problem.”

“Not if she’s Fate.”

Yet again Beam shook her head. “No. This Fate may have breached the dimensional barriers herself, without external interference. That’s also not our problem. The Project cleans up rogue anomalies, it does not correct for human error.”

Kat felt a hand closing around his heart. After the years of searching, of wondering, it felt like he was suddenly so close. They couldn’t take that away from him. “The… there might be other technology,” he blurted. “Taken by whoever took Destiny away.”

Beam nodded. “That is the loophole I am holding onto. But you should know that, if further technology is not the case? I will advise Rose that our mission is over.” She glanced down at his communicator. “As such, I’m not certain how eager you should be to hear from the others.”

Kat flinched, one hand automatically covering the wristwatch device. He swallowed, and pulled both hands back to his sides. “Understood. Thank you for the warning, Beam.”

Beam nodded, her more serious expression dissolving back into a smile as she pivoted on one foot to follow after Rose and Firestorm. They met the two of them right outside the storage room, as Firestorm was emerging.

“Healing potions are gone, as are a few of the more powerful ones,” the redheaded man remarked. “But it could be Destiny simply sold out. Her permit’s not there though, her storage permit, that’s weird. Her permit for manufacturing, which she likely would have hidden, might explain the search. Rose may be onto something with her potion people abduction theory.”

“But it could still be technology,” Kat put in quickly, before he could stop himself. He bit down on the edge of his tongue.

Firestorm shrugged. “Hey, all we can do is theorize. I almost hate to say it, but maybe we should go to the police station, open an investigation? They might grant us special dispensation to use search-and-tracking magic, assuming there’s anything here to track.”

“Wow, seriously? They’d just give that kind of power to random civilians?” Rose asked.

“Sure. Because they can always revoke it, and then they’re able to say that the early interference makes solving the case unlikely,” Firestorm grunted. “Holier than thou jerks. Hence my hesitation. Thing is, police won’t investigate directly until Destiny’s been missing for a couple days.”

They couldn’t wait a couple days. Kat knew that much. Either the Epsilon Station would locate Fate - or rogue technology - probably within the next hour or two… or it would all be over. Unless they somehow ingrained themselves more into what was happening on this world, such that they couldn’t simply step away.

“We’re off to the police station then,” Kat decided. Belatedly, he looked at Rose. “Er, if that’s okay with you. You’re still in charge.”

Rose let out a long breath. “Well, is there any real alternative?”

Firestorm shrugged. “I’m cool with staying here and reading more into the diary, maybe I’ll stumble on something more concrete about Destiny’s stranger associates in her more recent entries.”

Rose pursed her lips.

WHAT’S NEXT?

VOTING CLOSES NOON EDT SATURDAY SEPT 2nd

EXTRA ASIDE:
If you hadn’t noticed, I like grabbing throwaway things (like Beam breaking down the front door) and twisting them to be significant. If it now feels like “kidnapping” was always in the cards, then I’m probably doing my job right. Had “arrest” been chosen, I’d have obviously gone a different direction with that. Is this a skill? I don’t even know. Anyway, thanks for reading. Voting for the time travel story never hurts, August has been the worst month for views in 2017.

EPSILON DELTA, PART SEVEN: Goodness Gracious

Rose stared at Kat. He, in turn, stared back at her.

“It’s your call, Rose,” he said after a moment. “You wanted to come down to the planet.”

“What?” Rose flinched. “Oh. Oh, yeah. Uh, I guess I just… I figured… yeah.”

I figured, you’re the one fixing my relationships here, Rose thought to herself. Hell, I’m the youngest one on this team, what idiot would even put me in charge in the first place? Only a crazy person. A crazy blonde hologram person.

With that thought, her gaze slipped to the side, to Beam’s eager expression. No doubt eager for more than Rose’s opinion on how this mission should go. As there was also the question of how to properly make small talk with another girl that you really wanted to mack on, but were now trying to see as only a friend instead.

Gods, how was it that this hologram could be blonde, like Paige, and experienced, like Paige, and yet somehow be even more innocent than Rose herself? It made Beam way too adorable. And not necessarily in a sexy way, so Rose found herself wondering why she was now feeling some disappointment over Beam no longer seeing her as a potential sexual partner. Especially since, being undesirable, that’s what Rose had ASKED for, right?!

“Oh, flûte it,” Rose grumbled, pushing those thoughts away and shifting her attention over towards the house.

Kat was right, she had to maintain her focus down here. The sooner the mission was done, the sooner the Beam stuff would become a non-issue.

“Let’s go investigate.”

Rose pivoted, heading towards the structure, Kat falling into step right behind her, and Beam trailing after them. It had to be about the house. It had a symbol, like the arm. Plus she’d suggested investigating there, so if she didn’t stick with that choice, she might look indecisive.

Rose had to go up on her tiptoes in order to properly see in the window, in part because the glass itself was dirty. And not merely dirty on the outside, as the wiping of her palm on the surface revealed. Still, she could see the outline of the objects in the large room. A table and chairs, maybe a kitchen area with pots and pans, nothing out of the ordinary. Except for how the items had been tipped over and strewn about, as if there had been a search, or a struggle.

“Could be a tornado ran through the place,” Rose remarked.

“A wind spell gone wrong?” Beam suggested.

“Dunno,” Rose mused. “Wouldn’t a protection symbol be trying to prevent rampant spells?”

“We’re still lacking the necessary context for those occult symbols,” Kat reminded them. “It may protect against detection of a person inside, not the structure itself.”

Right. So maybe she should have called Alijda after all. Rose pursed her lips, but as she turned away, she caught something out of the corner of her eye. She peered back inside. “Ooh, wait, someone’s there. At least, I think it’s a someone. Not a something.”

“What do you see?” Kat prompted.

“A filthy window. Maybe one of you can boost– aww, fiddle mix.” Rose ducked back down out of sight. “I think the whatever saw me.”

“Are you sure?” Beam wondered.

“The head of the thing was looking to the window, then it dashed back out of view,” Rose admitted. She looked to Kat. “Is there a military procedure we should enact now to keep it from getting away?”

“Well, I’d suggest you and Beam burst into the front, making a lot of noise, while I circle around to the back. I’ll grab the whatever if it tries to run, and if it doesn’t, I’ll sneak up behind it.”

Rose nodded. “I like it. Good plan. Beam, let’s act on this good plan.”

“But what if the something is a robot with still one functional cyber arm?” Beam asked. “Isn’t that possible?”

Rose winced. “Okay, yeah. Not the best time to point out that we should have come down armed. That is, armed with weapons, not with actual arms.”

“Seeing weapons might antagonize this thing even more,” Kat remarked, as he moved off to circle around the house. “Also, it’s a magic world, not a tech world, so a robot’s unlikely.”

“Let’s hope it knows that,” Rose muttered.

“Rose, don’t worry, I can kung fu,” Beam assured. “It’s only, a part of me thinks that you should be the strong one protecting me. Not the other way around.”

“Then screw that part of your program, I’m good with being protected,” Rose said, smiling half-heartedly. “Though, I have been taking self defence courses too, yeah? And those can teach a girl more than just how tasty floor mats can be. So I’m not totally defenceless these days. Don’t count me out yet.”

Beam extended her arms for a hug, then seemed to think better of it. “Right. Let’s do this, girl friend.”

The awkwardness of that phrase nearly made Rose cringe, but Beam was already turning away, so Rose simply hurried with her over to the front door. She saw Beam gently try to turn the handle, but the door seemed to be locked. Beam looked back, shrugging up one shoulder.

Rose nodded. “On three,” she whispered, holding up three fingers. That’s how they did it in movies, right? She curled her fingers, one by one. As the last finger came down, Beam threw her weight in against the door. It popped open.

“Noooiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiise,” Beam shrieked as she charged into the residence.

On the one hand, it was a silly thing to yell, but on the other hand, Rose hadn’t thought of what noise to make herself. “Eeeeeeeeeeee,” she was screaming before she could think about it. Though being an alto and not a soprano, she felt it lacked the proper effect.

Her gaze swept across the room as she entered next to Beam, stamping her feet for what she hoped was added intimidation. The place looked much like it had through the window, just less indistinct. No one was there. Curiously, the cauldron on the floor vibrated unexpectedly as she screamed towards it, giving her double vision.

Perhaps due to that, the sound of a humming noise failed to draw her attention right away, and she only saw the danger coming from out of the corner of her eye.

“Rose,” Beam gasped.

Rose felt herself get shoved to the side. She stumbled, falling forwards onto the ground, quickly spinning over to look back. To confirm what she had feared. There had been a sensation of increased heat. Now there was a great big ball of fire where Beam was standing. Burning her up.

“BEAM,” Rose screamed back.

“Ha ha, I got you first this time,” came a new voice, a male voice.

Rose snapped her gaze over to the source. A doorway towards the back of the structure. There was a red haired man standing in it, wearing what looked like a monk outfit, with his hands on his hips.

“What have you dooooone??” Rose cried out, pushing herself off the ground and charging towards him.

Caught off guard, the man lifted his arms again, Rose belatedly processing he might well be about to throw a second fireball into her face. But this could be their only shot at taking him out. She closed her eyes, turned her face to the side, and bent her body lower, but didn’t cease her charge.

It was a bit of a surprise when she connected solidly with the man’s midsection without feeling a blast of heat, and then both of them were driven backwards and down to the ground. Rose used him a mat to cushion her landing. She quickly moved to try and pin the guy’s arms down on the ground, hoping he needed them to channel magic. He didn’t resist.

“How did you DO that?” he man demanded, glaring.

“Adrenaline helps me run faster,” Rose breathed.

His eyes rolled. “No, no, how did you manipulate the fire? I heard nothing.”

“It’s actually me,” came Kat’s voice. Rose looked up to see him standing next to them. She had propelled the monk-man into the room at the back of the house, where Kat was holding his arm out and grimacing as he looked back through the doorway. Following his gaze, Rose saw that the fireball which had encompassed Beam had moved to the middle of the room, and was burning itself out.

“Beam,” Rose gasped. “Kat, she was hit, go see if you can still save–"

CHIBI BEAM (scan)
Commission yesterday from Gen Ishihara

“Hi hi,” Beam said, stepping into the doorway and wiggling her fingers in a wave. Incredibly, she looked completely undamaged. Rose felt her jaw drop.

“It’s fine,” Beam explained, smiling at Rose after glaring at the man on the ground. “I turned myself insubstantial right after I pushed you.”

She reached out, swiping her arm right through the wall next to the doorway. Unable to drop her jaw any lower, Rose tilted her head to the side instead.

“You can do that, huh, Beam?” Kat grunted. He closed his hand into a fist, and the fireball in the other room disappeared.

“Hologram, remember?” Beam said, as if that explained everything. Only to add, “The transition is a serious power drain though, and I did it without thinking. Switching back will be the same issue, so I think I’d better stay this way until we know whether or not you need me to interact with anything.”

The only reason Rose managed to pull her attention away from Beam’s still quite solid-looking and unblemished form was that the man beneath her tried to move.

She renewed the pressure on his upper arms while looking back down. “Just stop. Ooh, you are SO lucky you didn’t hurt her, or we’d have you on trial for murder.”

“Hurt HER?” the man grumbled. “You’re the ones breaking in. And your blonde friend already knocked me out once today. Who are you people anyway? You shouldn’t be able to cast in here. The building is protected against that, unless you’re on the list.”

Kat crouched down, resting his palms on his knees. “Well, here’s the thing. You want to know about us, and we want to know about a cyber arm. Any chance we could all simply have a nice chat over some tea?”

The man shot Kat an incredulous look, but upon seeing the irritated expressions Rose and Beam were sporting, he gave a resigned sigh. “Why not. It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that’s happened today.”

The man’s name was Firestorm, or at least that’s the name he gave them during a round of introductions. Firestorm assured them that no one else was in the house, but Kat asked Rose and Beam to take a quick look around to be sure. The place turned out to have four rooms in total.

The main room in the front seemed to be the kitchen, slash meeting room, slash whatever else room… it was all a bit of a jumble, what with the furniture and pots and pans strewn about everywhere. The smaller room in the back was the structure’s bedroom, or at least it had a comfortable mattress there, plus a dresser.

Then there were two smaller rooms off to the side, one a storage room for a mop and numerous potions, and that what seemed to be a washroom, implying some form of indoor plumbing. Beam used her insubstantial form to push her head through the doors before Rose opened them, to check for traps or other occult symbols.

“It’s no good if the room is totally dark,” Beam remarked as she did so. “But enough light’s filtering in through the cracks.”

“Except, uh, how does that even work?” Rose asked. “To see the world around us, light needs to hit our eyes, so if your eyes are no longer in phase with the world…"

“My eyes are also light now,” Beam said, turning back with a smile. “I don’t sink into the ground very much either. Don’t think too hard, Rose. I know I don’t.”

When they got back to the main area, Kat was finishing setting up the chairs from where they had fallen, as Firestorm peered in the cupboards. “Destiny’s out of tea,” he remarked. “Do you want macaroons?”

“Let’s just compare notes,” Kat suggested. “How long have you known Destiny?”

Rose frowned. She almost spoke up to ask about the name ‘Destiny’, but then realized what Kat was doing, and bit her tongue. It stood to reason that if Destiny was the true owner of the place, Firestorm might think she’d authorized them to be here. Admitting they didn’t know this Destiny woman could mess that up.

Firestorm turned, adjusting his robes before leaning back against the counter. “Several years now. And she’s never mentioned you.” He focussed in on Beam again. “Why did you knock me out?”

“I was after a cyber arm?” Beam answered.

Firestorm sighed. “Is that the technology you were talking about before? When I said I didn’t know what you meant, and told you to leave, you instead knocked me out with some lightning attack.”

“I did?” Beam rubbed the back of her neck. “I guess I didn’t want you in my way as I searched.” She glanced around the room. “Wait, I didn’t mess this place up, did I?”

“No worse than it was already, when I got here this morning,” Firestorm said. “I’m worried that something’s happened to Destiny. At first I thought you were involved in taking her away, but if you were, why would you come back? Twice? Particularly after finding whatever you’d been looking for.”

“So that cyber arm WAS being kept in here then,” Beam said, her eyes lighting up. She moved to lean in against the table, but of course passed right through it, and ended up sprawled on the floor. “Derp."

Firestorm rolled his eyes. “Could be? When I came to, I discovered someone, presumably you, had pried up part of the floor. There was a secret storage place down there that I hadn’t known about. Thanks for leaving behind the diary, by the way, it gave me something to read after I regained consciousness. And it helped me realize that I didn’t know Destiny as well as I’d thought. Which brings me back to, who are you, and how long have YOU known Destiny?”

The question was addressed to Kat, but instead of answering it, he shifted his attention to Rose. She wasn’t sure if he was deferring to her being “in charge” for the more pointed question, or if he was trying to give her some sort of signal that he wanted her to be a distraction, but Firestorm was now looking at her instead.

Rose squared her shoulders. “We’ve never met Destiny in person,” she said, figuring truth was the way to go, even if only a partial truth. “But we know things.”

“Is that the diary?” Kat asked, pointing to the book on a corner of the table as Beam pushed herself to her feet. She ended up standing in the middle of it.

Firestorm shrugged. “Yeah. Recognize it?”

Kat walked over to have a look, Beam moving out of the way. He flipped the book open, and frowned at whatever he saw there. Then he picked the book up, scanning the passage closer. A haunted look came into his eyes, and he grabbed for his communicator watch. “Alijda? Alijda, are you there? Alijda, come in!”

There was no answer.

Kat looked to Rose. “Try yours.”

Rose looked down at her wrist, and attempted to open a communications frequency. “Hello? Alijda? Alice?” Again, there was no answer.

“Mine won’t work unless I switch back,” Beam remarked. “It’s phased with me.”

“Well, we need them to do a scan,” Kat said. “An in-depth scan, NOW.” He jerked his gaze over towards Firestorm. “You! Do you know any communications spells?!”

WHAT’S NEXT?

We’re going back to the Station, probably for an Alice POV since she’s been used already, but if anyone would prefer Alijda, feel free to comment. The vote is for how communications get restored. OPTIONS:

VOTING CLOSES NOON EDT SATURDAY AUGUST 5th

EPSILON DELTA, PART SIX: SHE LOVES ME NOT

Kat was the last to arrive out of the transportation whirlpool. He tucked his body and rolled on the field of grass as he landed, looking up in time to see the vortex shut behind them. He first looked over to where Beam was helping Rose up to her feet, then tapped at the watch device on his wrist.

“Alijda?” he asked. “Any problems your end?”

“Aside from having a magical cyber arm stalking us? No, no, we’re good,” came Alijda’s voice.

“How’s it look down there?” Alice asked.

Kat stood up, brushing off his pants as he looked around. They were in a field of grass, by a dirt road, with a cluster of houses not very far away. Logically, that village had to be the origin for the arm, as the three of them had been transported to the planet at the same coordinates Beam had used for her first visit. It seemed to be late afternoon here, based on the location of the sun.

“Civilization’s nearby,” Kat reported. “We’ll go check it out. I figure we’ve got to hit something within twenty minutes, since Beam had less than an hour to come down, get the arm, and return.”

“Might take you thirty minutes,” Beam spoke up. “My top speed is a bit faster than that of a normal human.”

Rose tilted her head. “So do you sweat like us when you run?” She immediately smacked her palm over her mouth, as if she hadn’t meant to speak aloud.

Beam clasped her hands behind her back, wiggling her eyebrows and letting out a giggle. “Ooh, Rose, yes. Every time I get all hot and bothered, my body reacts JUST like yours does. Thank you for asking?”

Once again, some of Rose’s freckles began to wash out as her cheeks darkened.

“I heard just enough of that to not want to hear any more,” Alijda remarked. “Be careful down there, Kat, okay? We don’t have the power to pull you back yet.”

“Understood,” Kat said. “Signing off.”

“Wait, wait, I want to hear more of the cute girls flirting,” Alice’s voice came, right before the connection ended.

Kat shook his head, then looked over at his two companions. They were standing side by side, though Beam was leaning in towards Rose, looking hopeful, while Rose was staring down at the grass. Or rather, sidelong at Beam’s legs. He sighed.

“Alice makes a good point, if accidentally,” he remarked. “Rose? Beam? We really can’t afford to have you two making eyes at each other right now, not if there’s someone or something dangerous lurking down here.”

Rose snapped her gaze up towards him. “What? Oh, Kat, I wouldn’t. I mean, I’m not. I mean, I have a girlfriend, a wonderful girlfriend. I would never cheat on Paige. No way!”

Kat crossed his arms. “And I believe that. But you DO seem to be affected by Beam somehow, whether it’s curiosity, something physical, or because this situation has turned her into a damsel in distress. I know I’ve fallen for a few pretty girls under that sort of circumstance.”

Rose visibly swallowed. “Well, yeah, I want to help Beam. B-But I would never cheat on Paige,” she repeated softly, before looking away, towards the settlement.

Kat looked to the blonde hologram. “Also, Beam, you’re not helping. For now, can you modify your algorithms, or set Rose as unattainable or something? She is, as she points out, taken. Not to mention very possibly your superior officer.”

Beam leaned back away from Rose, her smile disappearing as she focussed on Kat. “Apologies. Under these circumstances, I cannot help but flirt with Rose.”

Kat lifted his eyebrow. “Why’s that?”

Beam sighed. “Honestly? Rose is now more than a run-of-the-mill cute, funny, intelligent redheaded girl. Because she has saved my life, as it were. Meaning I owe her. And by default, I am programmed to repay such debts to women in a very specific way. By cozying up to them, until such a point that I can reward them with–”

“Space?” Rose squeaked, cutting Beam off.

“–kisses,” Beam finished regardless. She eyed Rose. “Kisses… everywhere.” Yet even as she generalized, her gaze wandered south for just a moment. “All very commitment free. Whenever you’re ready to accept.”

Rose let out what Kat interpreted as giddy laughter. The teenager began to backpedal. “Wow! Okay, so, I’m sorry Beam, that’s not happening. Like, ooh, I’m sure you’re awesome and good at what you do, but not only am I off the market, I’m sure no parts of me taste sweet at all. Besides, mission. Big mission here! We gotta get back on track, right Kat? Time’s a-wasting, we gotta get going here, we gotta–"

As Kat raised his hand, palm out, Rose stopped a few steps away. “Rose, wait. Please. Remember, you wanted me along with you? Not Alijda, who might have tried to ignore this relationship, or Alice, who probably would have encouraged it. I think we need to put it to bed.” He frowned. “Though, bad choice of words.”

“Kat, I wanted you along since you recognized the occult symbol,” Rose mumbled. Though she did stop, executing a series of such rapid fire toe-taps on the ground that the tip of her shoe began to make an indentation.

Kat peered closer at Beam, who was now looking at the ground with a pouty expression. Almost like she was a young twenty something who wasn’t being allowed to borrow the family car. It WAS sort of adorable - but surely that too, had to be programming.

“Beam?” he said. “I’m sorry if this sounds indelicate, but I’m not sure how else to put this. Were you created to be some sort of high-tech prostitute? Is that part of the problem here?”

Beam’s pouty lower lip started to quiver, as if she was upset. From the corner of his eye, Kat saw Rose smack her hand over her face - while still peering out between her fingers. For a moment, he was worried she’d jump in and say something to deflect before Beam could speak up, but Rose held her tongue.

“I do not know,” Beam answered at last, her expression becoming more neutral as Rose failed to object. The hologram again scrutinized Kat. “I can tell you this. I have experienced memory loss before. My first memory ever is waking up in an alleyway on my Earth, with no idea as to how I got there. At the time, I knew little more than my name, and my basic programming.”

Her shoulders slumped. “I like to think that my creator, whoever they were, had honourable intentions, and was sadly forced to leave me behind on that day. But it is equally possible that I was discarded there by a creator who became disgusted by my lesbian settings, and was unable to reformat me. Which, yes, might make me nothing more than someone’s off-the-market high-tech sexual plaything.”

“Ohhh, Beam, you poor–” Rose froze in the process of reaching back towards the holographic woman, leaving her fingers twitching in the air. Apparently, her desire to help out was still battling with her fear at being seduced by the pretty hologram.

Kat found he wasn’t entirely surprised by Beam’s answer. Granted, he’d thought that maybe the holographic girl’s reluctance to give Rose space was due to a different sort of boot-up imprinting, but… “Then did a redheaded woman take you in on that day, and treat you nicely as you coped with your memory loss?”

Beam shook her head. “No.” She looked sidelong at Rose. “But your thinking does match my own here, Kat. For while the woman did not have red hair like Rose, I repaid that debt in much the same way I want to here. She was even funny, in a similar way to Rose.”

“Ah ha ha, funny looking, you mean,” Rose muttered.

Beam smiled. “Oh, no Rose. Have I mentioned yet how much I love seeing your shirt?”

Rose pounded her toe into the dirt. “Don’t even. I hope they’re still growing. That is, oh, DAMN it, you meant the pun there, huh?”

Lia even drew the shirt
Such a good commission[/caption]

Beam giggled. “I did. You can handcuff me whenever you want. To whatever you want. Commitment free, Rose.”

Kat had been vaguely wondering about the meaning of Rose’s T-Shirt, which sported a squiggle leading down to the single word ‘YOU’RE’. With Beam’s remark, it suddenly clicked - the squiggle was music notation for a quarter rest. Rose’s top read: YOU’RE, under a rest.

Rose again buried her face in her hands, turning away. “Should I die now? Because under the circumstances, I think dying of embarrassment is the only proper thing for me to do. Solves everything. Give my love to Paige. Not literally.”

“Ohhh, Rose, you poor–” Beam froze in the process of reaching back towards the other girl, leaving her fingers twitching in the air. Kat wondered whether the blonde was mimicking Rose’s earlier actions deliberately, or instinctively. At least she seemed to know enough not to hug Rose just then.

He sighed. “Beam. Listen. You have GOT to scale it back, for Rose’s own sake if nothing else. Is there any way you can just… reclassify Rose as less your saviour, and more one of your girl friends?”

Beam turned to look at him, lowering her arm. “I could. That would stretch out the time frame for intimacy, though not remove the compulsion.”

“I meant, your friends who are girls,” Kat added quickly. “Not girlfriends as in girls you might one day end up sleeping with.”

Beam canted her head to the side. A puzzled look crossed her face. “Honestly, I’ve never been clear on that distinction.”

“Girls that you simply get along with,” Kat pressed. “That you don’t sleep with, who aren’t into you sexually. Heterosexual girls, for instance. Rose’s preferences aside.”

Beam shrugged. “On my Earth, the default is that people feel they are compatible with everyone, regardless of gender,” the hologram explained. “That’s partly what made my programming so unique, its inherent rejection of the unfairer sex. It’s why I had to remain in hiding, why my existence was looked down upon by most men, and even some women. It’s also why I saw my recruitment to this project as a form of escape, rather than as an abduction.”

Kat shook his head. Beam had surprised him at last. “Wait, no. You’re from some free love society? Where every female on your Earth is open to any gender, no exception?”

Beam tilted her head the other way. “It is the same for the males.”

Kat swallowed. “But then, you’ve… with ALL your female friends? But that’s impossible.”

”Impossible?” Beam half smiled. ”Do you really want me to answer that?”

”What about marriage?” he objected.

“Marriage unites one woman with one man, for procreation, but she is still welcome to have as many female partners as she requires for pleasure. As is the man with other males. Cheating doesn’t apply with the same sex.”

Kat let out a low whistle. “Huh, unique. So you really… like, you mean ANY girl you’ve met, you eventually kiss and… damn, really? Seriously?” Kat said, starting to feel flustered himself at Beam’s penetrating, yet increasingly inquisitive look.

“If I meet a pretty woman in the grocery store, no,” Beam admitted. “Yet if I have become friendship bonded with a female who is old enough to understand, the next step is quite natural.“

“Even if they give you a hard ‘no’?“ Kat said, feeling he was grasping at straws.

Beam crossed her arms. “Do not misunderstand. I will not initiate when a partner is not ready. But in the interim, having established compatibility, I cannot help but flirt. Thus, for now, it must continue until Rose is no longer my lesbian friend, or my life debt is repaid.”

Rose had dropped her arms to her sides and was now staring up towards the sky. “Ohh, yup, Lesbian Rose Thorne is now dead of embarrassment,” she sighed. “So, we gonna have an open casket funeral for the poor dear, or just a big ol’ girl love orgy in her honour, ooooh, choices, choices…"

Kat rubbed the back of his neck. There had to be a way out of this. “Can’t you make some new off limits classification for Rose?”

“I would need a point of reference. I am still desperately trying to compute your distinction between lesbian girlfriends and friends who are lesbian girls. Because I…” Beam bit down on her lip. “I don’t want to lose Rose’s friendship. I feel that would hurt my heart.”

Rose turned her head, eyes widening. “You have a heart too?“

Beam looked back at her. “It was a metaphor, but I can simulate having one. If it would please you.“

Rose sighed. “Ohh, Beam… would it help to lie to you about my preferences? It’s just, I spent so long lying to myself…”

Kat clapped his hands. “Wait, that’s it. Beam? Classify Rose as a male friend.”

Beam gasped. “Oh. OH. Of course, it’s so simple.”

Rose shifted her wide-eyed gaze to Kat, then let out a moan as she dropped to her knees, placing her hands back over her face. “Y’know what? I can’t even tell if I’m offended or relieved. But know that Lesbian-Boy-Rose is ALSO DEAD. He/she/we are all dead, dead, stone cold dead from being too embarrassed. Uhh, as long as that’s doesn’t categorize me in a fetish way instead, Beam? Cuz if so, I’m only mostly dead. Also, ew.”

Beam let out a soft cooing noise. “Oh, Rose, don’t worry. I could never truly see you as male. You’re too curvy, not to mention adorable. But overlaying my feelings for men onto a new subclass of girl could make you my first real girl… friend. If that’s acceptable?” Her look was hopeful again, her body faintly quivering with excitement.

Rose looked back upwards through her fingers. “Why do I feel like I’ll be in charge of teaching boundaries to a hot lesbian hologram?”

Beam clasped her hands together, silently pleading.

Rose pulled her hands down. “Um, okay, acceptable.”

Beam blinked a few times. Then she squealed in delight. “Oh, ROSE, is this how you see ME?”

Beam knelt down next to her, grasping Rose in a sideways hug. Only to immediately pull back slightly. “Hugging, I can mean it non-sexually, right?” Rose nodded mutely in response, only to be pulled back even tighter into Beam’s bosom. “Oooh, it’s so weird and different, but I feel like I really get your reluctance now.”

“Urk. Yeah, uh, so I guess Rose lives again?” Rose wheezed. “She needs to breathe though. Beam, please let Rose breathe?”

Kat found he could only shake his head in wonder. And as Beam released Rose and then tried to engage the stunned redhead in a discussion of sports and beer, he realized that long term, he had probably only served to trade off one problem for another.

The first two houses they passed on the road, which were spaced a few city blocks apart, looked unremarkable. They continued on, Beam practically skipping along the dirt road, all smiles, as Rose trailed long looking sheepish. But, Kat suspected, secretly relieved.

Kat extended his arm as they came up to the third house, bringing the two girls up short.

“I see it too,” Rose remarked. “Another occulty symbol, on the wall there.”

“That’s no desire symbol though,” Kat revealed. “It’s used for protection.”

“So is it protecting someone who’s inside the house?” Beam wondered. “Or is it keeping something in there from getting out, like a freaky homicidal robot who’s short one cyber arm?”

Kat could only shrug. “I don’t know. We could call Alijda for an update, see if maybe they have the arm, or can get something from the station’s database about how common these symbols are on this world.”

Rose expelled a breath. “Well, it’s only a one story building, and I’m feeling amazingly brave given all my resurrections of late. We could at least look in the window.”

Beam pointed down the road. “Or, look, someone’s in the street, closer to the heart of this village. They’re coming this way. Could be a local. Or maybe they saw me here last time? We could always talk to them before messing with the spells in the area.”

NEXT?

What should they do about this symbol? OPTIONS: 

VOTING CLOSES NOON EDT SATURDAY JULY 22nd

EPSILON DELTA, PART FIVE: Holo Victory

Rose repeated the “hand squeeze of support” with Beam once more before releasing her, rising to her feet at the same time as Alijda. “If the planet already knows we’re here, they know more about us than we do about ourselves,” Rose pointed out. “We need to fix that fast. So, we scan them. Which will also tell us if there’s still an artifact to be retrieved.”

Beam blinked up at her. “Rose, you already know that much about Epsilon’s missions?”

Rose nodded. “Alice explained. Collecting stuff or people which are drifting between the multiverses. She did some solo missions when she started out too.”

“Yuppers. Never send others to do things you haven’t already tried yourself,” Alice remarked. “But in the end, this place REALLY needed maintenance. Plus some artifact stuff is a lot harder to pinpoint without ‘boots on the ground’. Ergo, recruiting.”

“Except, Rose, can’t we check containment here to know if an artifact was retrieved?” Kat insisted. “That would also tell us whether any prior artifacts have gone crazy.”

“We could,” Rose admitted. “But we’d probably have to split up then, plus that won’t help Beam’s memory loss. Fixing Beam is our priority now.”

“Oh?” Alijda said, raising an eyebrow. “Why, so that she can take control of the station back from you?”

Rose frowned at Alijda. “No. So that we’re all on the same page, and not making the same mistakes twice with whatever’s on the planet.”

“I don’t think Rose or I will be allowed to retain control anyway,” Beam murmured, lying back on the floor. “Not after bringing Alice back in.”

BEAM (Approx)
A modified Haruki

Alice winced. “Geeeez, Beam. You’re making me feel like I killed kittens while I was in charge here.” She eyed the others. “I didn’t, for the record.”

Alijda glanced from Rose to Kat and back. Then she stepped to the side, gesturing at the computer. “Well, you are technically in charge, Rose. Scan away.”

Rose blinked. “What? Er, I mean, right.” She exhaled. Why had she insisted on taking this stand?

To help Beam. Yes, that was her cause now, Rose decided. And not merely because the two of them were the youngest, or the only ones into girl love, or the most inexperienced with whatever was going on as compared to the others. It was because Beam had asked for her help, so damn it, she was going to stop acting like a scared teenager, and start doing more to provide that help.

Rose interlaced her fingers and pushed her palms forwards, cracking her knuckles. “Right,” she repeated, staring at the computer. The problem being, Paige was techno-girl, not her. Hell, pretty much everyone in this room was more tech savvy than she was. Too bad the interface wasn’t a piano keyboard.

Rose chewed on her lower lip. She looked back at Beam, then extended an arm down towards the other girl. “Let’s have you do whatever it is you would have done here, as if you were first arriving at the planet,” Rose suggested. “I’m guessing that would include a scan, and it might trigger a memory for you.”

“My memories may have been deleted, versus being rendered inaccessible,” Beam murmured.

Rose shrugged, keeping her arm extended. “Won’t know until we try.”

“I guess.” Slowly, Beam’s smile reappeared. It became hesitant as her gaze drifted back over everyone else in the room, but finally the blonde hologram looked back to Rose, and took her hand. Rose pulled the other girl to her feet.

Beam turned and stared at the computer. Seconds ticked by.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Rose encouraged.

Beam nodded. “Just a moment. Normally I interface directly, but I believe it’s better for you to see what I’m doing in human time. Also, the station is actually in synch with, and orbiting, the planet. Not usually something we do. Adjustments are needed.”

“Truth,” Alice observed.

“Oh. Okay. So just tell me if I’m being a moron then,” Rose said.

Beam turned, still smiling. “Oh, you’re not. You’re very sweet, Rose.”

“You haven’t tasted me, how would you know I’m sweet?” Rose shot back.

She immediately wished she could rewind the last five seconds. Rose spun away, pounding her fist into her forehead. Damn it! Bad Rose. Do not make sexy jokes at the pretty holographic lesbian.

Rose heard Beam giggle, and saw Alice mutter “Adorbs” towards Alijda. Kat seemed to take a sudden interest in the computer hardware. Before Rose could recover by saying ‘tasted my cooking, I meant my cooking’, Beam was speaking again.

“I’ve now mentally run through everything I would do prior to a scan,” the hologram said. “Having the computer execute another one seems like the best plan now.” Beam reached out, tapping at the computer interface. Images began to appear on one of the monitors.

“First, it’s a magic pure world,” Beam said.

Alice let out a sigh of relief. “That means less stuff in orbit for us to possibly be crashing into,” she explained off Alijda’s look.

“But it means they probably won’t have the technology we need to restart the station’s systems either,” Beam pointed out.

“Sooo computers can’t run on magic, huh?” Rose asked, hoping to lighten the mood.

“Hmmm,” Kat said, rubbing his chin. “Rose raises an interesting point, given how that small world we visited had been trying to find some sort of fusion.” Rose arced her eyebrow back at him.

Alijda clasped her hands behind her head. “That also tells us the artifact Epsilon wanted from that world is technological, yeah? Tech being the sort of thing that would stand out as wrong on a magic world.”

“Correct,” Beam confirmed. “And I’m not reading any such signs now. Either the tech is being magically shielded, or I already brought the artifact back.”

“My money’s on that,” Rose said, pointing. “You brought something back, and that tech is what messed up the station tech.”

“Or maybe the tech messed with Beam’s tech, and her tech transferred it to the station tech?” Alijda mused.

“Oooh, technobabble,” Alison purred.

Alijda rolled her eyes. “Anyway, this would explain why the virus wasn’t in the communication logs.”

“Hold on. Is the entity up here some sort of sentient computer virus then?” Kat wondered.

“Perhaps I should access the transport logs,” Beam decided. She continued to type. “All right. It looks like I whirlpooled down to the planet, and returned less than an hour later. There is no record of any entity accompanying me.” She frowned. “There is also no record of me checking in a new artifact afterwards.”

“So this problem hit pretty fast,” Alice remarked. “Since that’s the first thing you should do upon retrieval.”

“I know that,” Beam said. “Could be my programming was already glitching by then.” She sighed. “I wish I could remember any of this.”

Rose turned from the monitor displaying the planet. “This is the station of creepy oversight, right? Couldn’t we see a video of your return, Beam?”

Beam blinked. “Oh, yes, of course. Let me pull up the last activation time.”

Everyone clustered around the monitor as Beam tapped the necessary keys. “Uh oh, looks like a lot of the feed is unavailable,” she remarked. “Could have been damaged or blocked off, as has been done to me. I do have something from one camera though, here we go…”

Beam paused, her fingers over the ‘Return’ key. “Rose? Your idea, and you’re in charge, you want to do the honours?”

Rose opened her mouth, but before she could say ‘No, do the thing’ she saw Beam’s eager expression. “Oh. Uh. Sure,” was what came out instead.

She reached over. Her hand brushed against Beam’s. Before she knew it, she was staring into Beam’s eyes, and Beam was staring back, and it’s like the hologram was searching her for something. For some deeper connection, maybe…

Alijda cleared her throat behind them. Rose quickly tapped the key and turned back to the monitor, inwardly cursing herself for getting flustered. Again.

The image of the room they were in appeared on the screen, with a big blue whirlpool in the centre of the floor. Moments later, Beam was spit out into zero gravity, floating towards the top of the monitor screen. She appeared to be carrying something.

Alice let out a low whistle. “What is that, like Cyborg’s arm or something?”

Then things began to happen quickly. Rose’s attention was on the floor irising shut over the whirlpool, so it wasn’t until the others gasped that she looked back up. In time to see the arm device jet away from Beam, the holographic girl in the video letting out a rather human shriek.

“What? I missed it, what did that?” Rose asked.

Alijda held up a finger, as if to say ‘wait a moment’. They continued to watch, as the Beam in the video said, “Computer, normal gravity.”

Beam plunged back down towards the now sealed whirlpool, Rose wincing in anticipation of the impact - but Beam managed to land on her feet without injuring her legs. In fact, she bent her knees and pushed off, running in the direction of the computer banks. Right. Holographic legs, Beam likely had no bones to break. So then why give her anatomy that… Rose pushed that thought aside.

“No, no, no, NO,” came Beam’s voice from off the screen. There was a zapping sound, and then Beam’s body flew back through the slice of the room visible to the camera. Sparks were flying from her hairband. Again she was gone, there was a smacking sound, then a dull thud. Then the picture cut out entirely.

Rose licked her lips as she glanced at the others. Alice looked surprised, Alijda looked wary, Kat looked worried, and Beam was simply wide eyed.

“You gonna be okay, Beam?” Rose asked. Beam cleared her throat. (A human mannerism, programmed in? Did Beam even eat with that throat? Why did she keep thinking about this stuff, Rose wondered.)

“I’ll be fine,” the hologram said. “That even explains a few things. Namely, me regaining consciousness in this room, learning of the station’s problem, and hooking myself into the system to summon you, Algebra. Um, I mean Rose.”

“Beam, can you rewind to when that symbol appeared?” Kat asked. “And pause?”

Beam nodded, turning back away from Rose to reach for the controls.

“That was a magic thing then, right?” Alijda said. “That symbol on the arm?”

“I’d say so,” Alice agreed.

“Sorry,” Rose apologized. “I missed it. A magic symbol on the cyber arm what now?”

“Pretty much just that,” Alijda said. “Somebody booby trapped the tech artifact with magic.”

Rose tilted her head. “But why would someone do that?”

“Good question,” Alice grumbled. “Want another good question? How could anyone down on magic planet even know to magically program that tech to go and mess with other tech like our tech, when tech down there is not technically a thing?”

“Oooh, technobabble,” Alijda murmured, half smiling. Alice stuck out her tongue.

“Maybe someone figured out what Beam was, in the time she was down there?” Rose guessed. “And thought she was part of some advance strike force?”

“I’ve got the symbol up,” Beam remarked.

Rose looked back at the screen. She saw it now, glowing white on the cyber arm Beam was holding. For all she knew, it was a Chinese character. Yet Kat’s worried expression had shifted to alarm. “You know it?” Rose asked him.

“It’s an occult symbol I recognize,” Kat said. “Someone imbued that arm with a… desire, that’s the best way I can put it.”

“A desire to screw around with advanced technology?” Alice said.

Kat shrugged. “No way to know specifics unless we find the caster.”

“I guess we’re going down to the planet then,” Rose decided. “That’s where the caster would be.”

“No way,” Alijda asserted. “We’re going to figure out where on this station that damn cyber arm is now. If it gets to Mr. Smith? We could be done for.”

Rose put her hands on her hips. “Exsqueeze me? What happened to me being in charge? The station self corrected, remember. The arm might have screwed things up by accident. And Beam’s answers are down there, not up here.”

“Sorry Rose, I have to agree with Alijda,” Alice said. “I mean, there’s probably enough power now to make a whirlpool down once, but then you’d be stuck on the planet with no backup for at least an hour of recharge time. Whereas Kat, if we found the arm, could you reverse engineer something occultish to find this caster’s ’desire’?”

“Uh? Well, maybe,” Kat said. Rather unconvincingly, Rose thought.

Beam latched onto Rose’s arm. “I’m with Rose. My answers are down there, with my past. You three can stay up here if you like, but the two of us are going.”

Rose smiled at Beam, glad for the support, while simultaneously worrying that she was somehow giving off all the wrong signals.

Alijda rubbed her forehead. “Oh boy. Look, Rose, Beam, if you’re dead set on going, please bring one of us along? Because I can teleport people out of trouble, Kat seems to know something about that symbol, and Alice is a walking encyclopaedia. Whoever’s left on the station can search for the arm.”

Rose pursed her lips. “I guess that’s fair.” This way, she and Beam could have an experienced chaperone.

NEXT?

Who should Rose and Beam bring with them? OPTIONS:

VOTING CLOSES 7am EDT THURSDAY JULY 6th

THE ORACLE PROPHESIED:
New section. This will chronicle events you voted for indirectly. (For instance, the firing of Alice in Story3 occurred after a vote, not to fire her, but to have her break the rules.) Here, the fact that Beam was voted to have a memory loss, followed by a Rose point-of-view? Means we’re getting more of Beam than we would have had with any other combination. To the point of me hunting for a reference picture. I am totally fine with this, but it was unexpected.

EPSILON DELTA, PART FOUR: Turnabout

Kat Conway made his decision before arriving at the auxiliary control room. He would let Alijda resume the conversation between them, assuming there was even a conversation for them to have.

She barely addressed him as they reunited. Their group of four then headed back to the large cylindrical arrivals room, looking for Beam. He ended up sidelined with Alijda as Alice and Rose discussed the unconscious blonde holographic woman, and Alijda still said nothing. Then Alice asked the both of them to get a power pack, back in the auxiliary control room.

“I can just do a series of teleports to get there faster by myself,” Alijda pointed out.

“Oh good, so we’ll do the horror movie trope of splitting up after all?” Alice said, smiling and clasping her hands together.

Alijda glared. “Sarcasm isn’t a good look on you.”

Alice shook her head. “No, seriously, I’m curious if something will try to pick us off, and you’re the best equipped of any of us to get away from an attack.”

Alijda sighed.

“Maybe Rose should go with Alijda instead,” Kat suggested.

Rose stood from where she had crouched next to Beam. “If you like?”

Alijda looked from Alice, to Rose, to Kat. She shook her head. “No, that’s silly. Rose, you keep learning more about the station from Alice. Kat, you’re with me.”

Kat nodded, and he allowed himself to be teleported back into the hallway. They walked from there. He continued to wait to see if Alijda would resume a conversation.

It wasn’t until they’d hooked the power pack device into Mr. Smith to recharge that she finally spoke up, and even then, it was without turning to face him. “So. Kat. You were gone less than a day, huh?”

Kat Conway
Never commissioned art for him, but he looks a bit like Colin Ferguson.

“Yeah,” Kat answered. “Gone just long enough to be disappointed by what I learned.”

There was a brief silence.

“I’ll bite,” Alijda yielded, still looking at the power pack. “What’d you learn?”

He found himself wondering what Alijda would make of it. “I’ve been searching for this girl. Er, woman. Well, childhood friend,” Kat explained. “Named Fate. She’s the one who first got me into the occult, only she disappeared after high school. I’ve been searching for her, off and on, for over fifteen years now. I finally thought I had a lead, a phone number I’d snared right before I was abducted by this station for the first time. In fact, that’s why I was keen on getting sent back to my Earth when we first met.”

Kat paused, wondering if Alijda even cared to hear more. She continued to stare in the other direction. He waited.

“False intel?” she said at last.

“Not exactly,” Kat elaborated. “There was, indeed, a woman named Fate trying to organize an occult group in the town I went to. Once I left this station, I wandered, returning to my hotel room only after 8pm, in order to phone the number. This Fate didn’t know what I meant, seemed to be the wrong age, and had no other useful information. She invited me to her meeting though. I was just heading out to it when I found myself back here in zero gravity instead.”

“Oh.” Alijda finally turned, biting down on her lower lip. “Kat, you must think I’m terrible.”

Kat lifted an eyebrow, trying to connect the dots that had led the brunette woman to make such a statement. “Actually,” he pointed out, “I’ve called you attractive on more than one occasion. Despite your protestations of being ugly on the inside.”

“Except I didn’t know any of that about you,” Alijda said, her gaze slipping to the side. “We had an entire mission together and I didn’t know you’d lost a childhood friend. Even now, you’re hesitant to tell me about her.”

That at least helped to number the dots for him. Kat shrugged. “I don’t put it on my business cards. Anyway, you said it yourself back then, we were going our separate ways once that whole shrinking mission ended. Why talk about ourselves?”

“Because we talked about me. And now that our ways didn’t turn out to be so separate…”

Alijda looked back at him. Then she turned and gave a side-kick into the wall. “This isn’t FAIR,” she hollered. “I’ve had six months of thinking about you, on and off, wondering about what-ifs and might-have-beens. You’ve had six hours, if that! Now you’re back, and I have another chance, and all I can do is act like a stupid tsundere from one of those animated Japanese shows Alice likes.”

Kat smiled, catching the reference. “To be fair, I think you push everyone away, and it’s regardless of any feelings you have towards them.”

Alijda snapped her gaze back over to him. “Did you just mansplain tsunderes to me??” She gave the wall another swift kick.

Mr. Smith made as noise as if he was clearing his throat. “Alijda, if you could avoid potentially damaging–"

“Oh, shut the front door, Smith,” Alijda shouted.

“The front door is not open, or we’d be exposed to the vacuum of space.”

“Damn it, I meant I don’t need you butting in on top of my angst with Kat on top of my writer’s block issues from before I even got here today!”

“Ah. Very well,” the computer said, falling silent again.

Kat managed not to laugh at the exchange. “If it makes you feel better, Alijda, I’m sure all of the information about my connection to Fate is in whatever file this station has on me,” Kat said. “I remember how you didn’t read it, feeling that would be unfair. So points in your favour.”

“That doesn’t help.” She drew in a deep breath. “Kat, it’s your turn.”

Kat blinked. “My what?”

“Last time we went on about me. My shrinking, my depression, my hacking, my friggin’ issues. I need to stop with the ego trips. Your turn now. It’s only fair.”

“What makes you think I even have issues?”

Her gaze softened. “Kat, I overheard you, that time you mentioned to Para about your mother dying in childbirth. And Alice has told me about the fire manipulation you can do. Now we’ve got a lost childhood friend in the mix. Granted, I don’t know whether any of that stuff necessarily connects to your hormonal interests towards anyone wearing a skirt, but you have issues. Unless your issue is that you don’t see your issues.”

This time it was Kat who felt like he couldn’t look Alijda in the eye. Part of him wished she’d kept ignoring him. “Okay,” he said, after a minute of scrutinizing one of Mr. Smith’s keyboards. “I suppose I don’t take relationships seriously. And I might have female abandonment issues.”

“Did you join the military so that you’d be able to form bonds with men?”

He laughed, despite himself. “Alijda, I’m not gay. Not by a long shot.”

“Didn’t mean to imply you were. But people with abandonment issues, they sometimes cling to close friendships or bad relationships. In the military, you’d get more of the first and less of the second.”

Kat realized he was now clenching his jaw, and he forced himself to stop. “I went to military college because my dad felt I needed more discipline in my life. Don’t get me wrong, I had a good relationship with him, but he was pretty lax with me. Particularly when it came to my hanging out with occult people all the time.”

“Were any of the occult girls pretty?”

“I really don’t want to talk about my sex life.”

“Hmmm. That escalated quickly.”

“DAMN it, Alijda…" He rounded on her, only to see an expression of genuine concern. There were no hints of a self-satisfied smirk. He looked away again. “We need to focus on the mission here.”

“That’s an excuse. Besides, right now, all of us getting along and making peace with ourselves kind of IS the mission,” she pointed out. “Because whatever’s out there, manipulating the situation? It’s probably been able to access our files. So it’s liable to go after our weak points, to try and fragment us.”

Kat found he had to grant her that. Whatever faults Alijda had, being timid was not among them. “I guess. Though you’re assuming that whatever put this station in danger will be actively targeting us.”

“Until we get more information, I figure we might as well assume that.”

Mr. Smith made a throat clearing noise. “Then would now be a good time to mention that your power pack is fully charged? Meaning more information is possible?”

Alijda sighed. “There would never be a good time, Smith. So sure, now works.”

Kat heard Alijda approach him, then felt her hand on his arm. “Kat, let’s leave our talk at, I do want to get to know you better. Okay?” She pulled back. “After all, one thing I’ve realized after six months with Alice is that I need to have more well rounded friends. Ones who aren’t inclined to run through the entire ‘Back to the Future’ movie for me, from memory.”

“Right. Okay,” Kat said, turning back to her. He smiled. “And hey, look on the bright side. At least Alice only quotes, she wouldn’t act that movie out for you at the same time.”

Alijda seemed to deflate a little, her eyes rolling back in her head.

Kat did a double take. “She didn’t. Did she?”

“Never give that woman alcohol,” was all Alijda would say as she turned to retrieve the power pack.

Soon, Kat was watching as Alice hooked some cables from the power pack into the hologram’s hairband. Or what had obviously been made to resemble a hairband - it had now been popped about an inch up from her hairline, exposing what looked like a number of ports and lights beneath. And while Kat was pretty technically minded, he didn’t recognize this technology, and had no idea what Alice was doing.

At least Mr. Smith had managed to restore the proper lighting to the room by now, so Kat could watch, in case he needed to do this himself later.

“Uh, so how do you know that setup will work?” Alijda asked Alice, apparently having similar reservations.

“I don’t,” Alice said brightly, dusting off her hands as she seemingly finished up. She looked up from where she was crouched. “But from what Rose has told me, I’m pretty sure all this holo-girl needs is some power. And plugging the pack into her hairband seems the best way to juice her up.”

“Oh no, no no, Alice, don’t put it that way,” Rose moaned. “Not after what you did earlier.”

Alice grinned at the redhead. “C’mon, we had to check her body for other ports. And you were wondering, you know you were.”

Alijda looked back and forth between the two of them. “What ports? Wonder what?”

Kat cleared his throat, having realized what they were getting at. “So, this Beam is anatomically correct?”

“Ooh yes, she seems fully functional,” Alice purred, waggling her eyebrows. “And if she’s an artificial life form anything like Star Trek’s Data, she’ll be programmed in multiple techniques. Lesbian ones, to boot.”

“ALICE,” Rose said, her face getting red enough to start washing out some of her freckles.

“I’m sorry I asked,” Alijda sighed.

“Oh Rose, don’t be like that,” Alice assured the younger girl. “I’m not saying you should cheat on your girlfriend. But there’s nothing wrong with talking, yeah? Swapping techniques? Knowing that this Beam might have felt first hand whatever she–"

“Alice, maybe you should drop it?” Kat interrupted. “Rose looks very uncomfortable.”

“But…" Alice paused, as she looked from Kat to Rose, and then the ground. “Okay. It’s just, I hate how Rose got pulled into this. I… I want her to get SOMETHING out of it, at least.”

Alijda reached out to touch Alice on the shoulder. “She is getting something out of it, Alice. New friends.”

Alice looked back up and smiled. “D’awwwww, Alijda. See, Kat? She really is a softie underneath it all.”

Kat saw Alijda’s grip tighten on Alice’s shoulder. “You need to stop pushing your luck, friend.”

Alice nodded, without losing her smile. Then Rose was smiling too, looking back and forth between the two other women.

That’s when the new voice came, slightly higher pitched than any of the other females present. “Reinitializing.”

Kat turned his attention to the blonde hologram, as Beam blinked her eyes open. One of her palms reached up to touch the cord that was running up to her hairband interface. “Power source. Confirmed.”

It idly occurred to Kat that he was becoming increasingly outnumbered as far as gender went.

Rose reached out to grasp Beam’s free hand. “Beam? You back? You okay?”

“I am. Unsure.” Beam blinked her eyes several times in rapid succession. “Resynchronizing. Time stamp. Confirmed. Congratulations. Are in order. Restoring. Full power. To communications.” Her hand squeezed back at Rose. “We’re not dead, and the station’s still here. Oh Rose, you were successful.”

“Uh, not exactly,” Rose admitted. “Also kinda brought in the first string team to help.” She gestured over towards Alice and the others.

Beam’s gaze followed the motion, the holographic woman freezing up as she saw Alice. “Oooh. We are so fired.”

“Eh, I was fired too. It didn’t take,” Alice chirped.

Alijda joined the other women in crouching down beside Beam. “Beam, I hate to impose on you right away, but we think there’s an entity on board. Because the station’s problems somehow self corrected. I don’t suppose you can confirm that? Or offer any alternative reasoning?”

Beam blinked twice. “I cannot.”

Alijda glanced up towards Kat before looking back at Beam. “Well, anything more you can tell us about what happened would be helpful.”

Beam opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “My memory is damaged.”

Alijda palmed her face, sliding her hand down and off her chin.

“It’s never easy,” Kat remarked.

“No, you misunderstand,” Beam said, squeezing again at Rose’s palm. “That’s helpful. I run occasional diagnostics. Everything was in order prior to my coming to this planet. Whatever damaged me, it must relate to my mission here.”

“Or it’s due to some artifact you were storing here, on the station,” Alice said, standing and bringing her hands to her hips.

Beam’s gaze tracked over to Alice’s shoes. “That is possible,” she admitted. “Containment could have been breached during the time of my memory loss.”

“So we scan the planet for more information about Beam’s mission,” Rose decided.

Kat cleared his throat. “Ah, except shouldn’t we check on Alice’s artifact containment before potentially alerting said planet to the fact that we’re up here?”

“Kat?” Alijda met his gaze. “We’re in orbit. They might already know.”

NEXT?

What should the group do? OPTIONS:

We were overdue for Kat point-of-view. Now what?

VOTING CLOSES 7am EDT THURSDAY JUNE 29th

EPSILON DELTA, PART THREE: State of Confusion

“Ziggy,” Rose said. “Initiate that recall teleport thing from the last time Alice was in charge of computers here. Authorization code, uhm, Paige-Paige-Paige.”

“Initiating, Rose,” came Ziggy’s resigned voice.

Moments later, the lights went out. Rose closed her eyes, biting down on her lip again. It was fine. Alice would fix things, and they’d all go home. She reopened her eyes as the lights came back on.

She remained all alone in the room.

But it had worked, right? Alice wasn’t in auxiliary control, she was somewhere else in the station? Rose shifted her weight forwards and back, until she couldn’t take it any more. “Alice?”

“Your phone conversation terminated when Ziggy went offline,” the large wall computer codenamed ‘Mr Smith’ advised her.

Rose swallowed. “But is Alice here? Like, not HERE here, obviously, but up here with us?”

“I do not have complete access yet. However, Alice is likely one of the life signs that I am picking up in the arrivals room.”

The sense of relief that Rose felt was quickly washed away as she parsed that. “One of? Oh, flûte! Is Alice being attacked there by whoever wanted to crash this station??”

“Unknown.”

“Does she need my help?”

“Unknown.”

“Are there even weapons I can use in this room?”

“Unknown.”

“Oh my GOD, why don’t you supercomputers ever KNOW anything??”

To her surprise, Mr. Smith let out a sigh. “Rose, I am sorry, but it’s taking me some time to figure out how to activate all the station’s backup systems. It is much like you trying to work out how to control a third arm.”

“Huh.” Rose frowned. “This project has a habit of growing extra arms for people?”

“No. I was merely trying to find a human analogy.”

“Oh.” Rose ran her fingers back through her hair. “Did you want me to shut up?”

“You are not slowing down my processing abilities to any great extent. I simply do not yet have the answers you require.”

“So you want me to shut up.”

“That is not what I said.”

“Well, I want me to shut up.”

“If so, that would seem to be something under your control.”

“You’d think so, right? Except I’m nervous.” Rose bounced on her heels. “This is why I don’t spend much time on social media, you know? I can’t stop myself from saying dumb spur-of-the-moment stuff.”

“Rose, you seem overly self critical. Would it help to hear that, in your own way, you are becoming as interesting to me as Alice was?”

“I hope that’s a compliment?”

“It is an observation.”

“Right. Well, okay, let me know when you’re able to see all the station or recalculate our impending deaths or something then, I guess?”

“Of course.”

Rose tried to figure out if she felt more like curling up into a ball in the corner and crying, or running around the room with her arms in the air screaming. She decided to split the difference, and resumed pacing in a circle with her lower lip quivering.

The appearance of purple and black smoke in the doorway, with a woman seemingly in the middle of it, might have made Rose shriek on any other day. Except by this point, she was adjusting to the absurdity of it all, so fell into an approximation of a fighting stance instead. Thank goodness for her self defence classes.

“You won’t take me alive,” Rose declared.

Curiously, the brunette smiled at her. “Rose?”

Comprehension dawned. “Alice!”

Had to be, right? Rose ran towards the teleporting woman, her arms outstretched. Only then did she wonder if a hugging approach might give the wrong signals for a first meeting. Maybe station commanders here were always about the girl-love? Rose was already in a relationship. She stopped one step away, her arms still spread wide. “Are you a lesbian too?”

A curious sequence of emotions played out on the older woman’s face. Rose fancied that the initial look of comfort became confusion, dismay, then resignation, before finally settling on wariness. “I’m Alijda. Me and Alice, it’s not like that. How is our housing situation even relevant?”

“I dunno.” So this woman was with Alice. But not that way. Rose lowered her arms as she looked her new companion up and down. Decent dress sense for someone who didn’t expect to be on a death trap of a station, though the all black clothing was giving her a funeral vibe. Also, brown hair. “For the record, I prefer blondes and rainbows anyway.”

ALIJDA VAN VLIET
Commission from Shirochya

“Good for you? Rose, you’re not hallucinating me. I am here.”

“Oh, I was pretty sure of that. Like, me hallucinating Beam I could maybe buy, but you’re kind of old to be a fantasy of mine.”

“Oh, ha ha. I can still date, you know. Men in my age range. It’s just, I’m depressive and occasionally suicidal, so it never really works out. Okay?”

That explained the funeral vibe, if not the defensiveness. “Well, okay then. I guess you can go sit in the corner.”

“I can…" Alijda tilted her head. “What?”

Rose tilted her head the other way. “What? Didn’t you just say you came here to die?”

“No, no, I’m here to help save us. But what is this about needing to be a lesbian to gain access to the room?”

“Uh, nothing?”

Alijda’s hands went to her hips. “So then why ask if…” The woman caught herself, shook her head a couple times, and switched to, “Look, never mind, just let me at the computer interface.”

Rose stepped aside, gesturing vaguely in the hopes that Alijda knew where that was. “Go for it.”

Alijda marched into the room and vectored towards some sort of terminal. “Great. Rose, I’ll need access to all station communications logs. If I can spot when a computer virus got on board here, we should be able to do a backup restore from a time before the infection.”

Shoot. Where would the logs be?

Fortunately for Rose, Mr. Smith spoke up. “I can make that information available, Alijda. Incidentally, a course correction will be necessary within the next eight minutes.”

“No pressure,” Alijda muttered. She glanced sidelong at Rose. “Can you check in with Alice? She’s probably grabbed one of the Epsilon communicators by now.”

Rose cleared her throat. “Yes, ah, Mr. Smith, can we patch in a link to Alice? Please?”

“We can. Link established.”

“– still can’t believe it’s been six months for you, compared to my few hours. That’s amazing,” came a male voice. A male voice? At this point, Rose figured she’d best keep rolling with it.

“Hello, Alice?” she called out. “Did you bring your boyfriend along?”

“Oh, hi Rose,” came Alice’s bright, cheery voice. “Great, I’d hoped the individual communicators could be patched in until allcomms are restored. No, this is Kat with me. He wouldn’t work as my boyfriend, he’s been asking allllll about Alijda.”

“Whoa, whoa, hey, I was asking about both of you,” Kat’s voice protested. “I mean, not in the bits about Alijda dealing with her depression, but I was sort of including you in the rest of my questions, Alice.”

“He’s probably hoping to score with me now,” Alijda sniped, from where she was typing at a keyboard. “Having had a look at my panties.”

“Alijda, please,” Kat said. “Would you have preferred I didn’t say anything to you?”

“You didn’t have to make fun of me in front of my housemate.”

“That wasn’t my intent. In fact, part of me feels like you would be complaining no matter what I said.”

Alijda hit an enter key on her keyboard with what Rose judged to be more force than necessary. “You haven’t changed a bit, Kat.”

“No kidding. For me, it’s been less than a day since I saw you.”

“Right. So you didn’t even miss me. Fine, then.”

“Alijda, for what it’s worth, I did miss you. To the extent that I could. I didn’t miss all this defensiveness though.”

Rose wondered if Alijda’s cheeks were getting redder, or if it was her imagination.

“Too bad that’s all part of the package deal that is me,” Alijda asserted. “And as I’m sure Alice told you, still a depressive. So there.”

“We all have our flaws, Alijda,” Kat fired back. “They help make us what we are. Now come on, it’s not like I told Alice what colour they were.”

“Oh, how NICE for you. Alice already knows I don’t always wear black EVERYwhere.”

“Oh, uhm, I didn’t know that,” Rose offered, raising her index finger into the air.

It had seemed only fair, to remind them of her presence. Except, Rose reflected, maybe she’d mistimed that. Her interjection had simply created an awkward sort of silence. Rose noticed that Alijda’s cheeks were definitely redder now, as the woman resumed typing.

The redhead slowly lowered her arm back down.

“I wonder,” came Alice’s voice over the communications link, “were you two like that all through your last mission too? Because it’s sort of adorable, in a Sam Malone and Diane Chambers kind of way. Of course, let’s hope things work out better for you than it did for them.”

Alijda’s posture seemed to tighten, and she started to turn her head.

“Alice?” Rose broke back in quickly. While this relationship angle was sort of interesting in a soap-opera-esque way, it really wasn’t their priority. “Have you figured out what’s causing us to plummet to our deaths yet?”

“Hmmm? Oh, that, right. Nope,” Alice said, sounding far too chipper for Rose’s tastes. “The most likely places for physical damage look fine so far. We may all have to cram into the station’s escape pod. It’ll be cozy, but we’re already swapping underwear stories, so it should be fine.”

“There’s an ESCAPE pod?” Rose gasped. Beam could have at least mentioned that.

“Yuppers,” Alice affirmed. “Thing is, while that saves us, lots of people might die if this station actually crashes into a planet. So let’s keep at it for as long as we can, okay? Alijda, any luck?”

“No,” Alijda said, still typing. “Nothing obvious in the logs yet. If this problem is a computer virus, it’s arrival was well hidden. Or it’s been here since the station was first built.”

“Mr. Smith?” Rose said, looking back to the computer. “How much time do we have?”

“About fifteen minutes,” the computer advised her.

Rose frowned. “Uhhhh, no. Wrong. We were at less than eight minutes a short time ago.”

“Braking thrusters have fired,” Mr. Smith explained. “We are gradually vectoring into orbit. If this continues, we may end up out of danger entirely.”

“Wooo, well done Mr. Smith,” Alice whooped.

“It was not me,” the computer noted.

“Wooo, well done Rose.”

“I’ve just been standing here,” Rose admitted. “Must be something Alijda did.”

“Wooo–"

“It wasn’t me either,” the brunette interrupted, turning away from the computer.

“And while I’d love to say I did something,” Kat remarked, “I’ll have to make the confusion unanimous.”

“Wooo boy, that’s weird,” Alice concluded. “Mr. Smith, anyone else on the station?”

“Not according to main sensors,” came Mr. Smith’s response. “Someone could be hiding. In fact, without Ziggy, we’ve only made staying hidden easier for them.”

“Maybe Beam reactivated?” Rose guessed.

“A what now?” Alijda asked, approaching her. “Some laser beam?”

“No, no, the automatic hologram who was in charge before me,” Rose explained. “I guess she was a light beam, oh, hey, that’s a very clever pun…”

“A hologram in charge? I never heard about this,” Alice protested. “Are we talking hologram Rimmer style? Or more Doc from Voyager style?”

Rose shrugged. “Lesbian hologram?”

“Hmmm, a Hatsune Miku style hologram then,” Alice decided. “I mean, there’s nothing official, but I’ve wondered about those vocaloids in their off hours."

Alijda rolled her eyes. “Focus, please, Alice.”

“Oooh, you’re one to talk, Miss Miracle Romance.”

“Hey, I can type and snipe at the same–"

“Mr. Smith?” Rose cut back in. “Anything on this Beam?”

“No. Your hologram woman never activated me,” the computer apologized. “Only Ziggy would have that information.”

Alijda turned back to Rose. “Where did you last see this Beam?”

Rose shrugged. “In that big cylinder room, where I guess people arrive. She was plugged into the computer. See, Beam was trying to save the station as much as the rest of us, until she lost power. So maybe a backup kicked in, then she figured something out?”

“I can double back and look for her,” Kat offered.

“Great idea, Kat,” Alice said brightly. “Splitting up is definitely what we should do if we’re re-enacting a horror movie on a space station.”

Alijda palmed her face. “Look. Alice, Kat, come here first, both of you. We’ll all go together. You can meet Rose that way, so that she knows what we all look like.”

“Roger, Alijda. On our way,” Kat said. It was followed by a chirp, as the connection was cut.

Rose offered the older woman a smile. “Thanks. Were you once in charge of this place too?”

“Oh, heck no,” Alijda said, pushing some hair off her forehead. “This place sucks. The couple times I’ve been here, I’ve been angling to shut it down. Their whole oversight thing is real creepy.”

Rose sighed in relief. “That’s what I thought too. Glad it’s not just a me thing.” She paused before asking, “What brought you back here then?”

Alijda’s gaze slipped away. “Yeah. Uh, Alice? I guess? She’s a bit helpless. Or sometimes she is. I felt I couldn’t let her do this alone, that’s all.” She looked back. “I didn’t know Kat would be here. And me and Alice, it’s a friend thing, not a romance thing. Seriously.”

Rose laughed despite herself at Alijda’s expression. “That’s fine. In fact, it’s nice of you.” Rose smiled hopefully. “You know, Alijda, you’ve got a real great ‘take charge’ attitude. If I get the chance to, um, hand off all this authorization stuff to someone, maybe you could be the one…"

“No,” Alijda asserted. Her tone was firm, while her expression was apologetic. “Sorry Rose, I’m not running this station. Once this problem is fixed, if the project’s even still running at that point, you can give control back to Alice and her God.”

Rose winced. “I’m not sure I can authorize Alice. The main computer didn’t even want me to call her.”

“Oh. Well, we’ll figure something out,” Alijda decided. “Don’t worry.”

“Right. Don’t panic, still my motto.”

“For now, back to the original problem,” Alijda said, crossing her arms. “Rose, maybe you can help me to think things through. Why would this station be put in danger, only to be somehow saved hours later? Could it be that we’re dealing with two separate warring entities on board, and shutting down Ziggy somehow turned the tide?”

Rose thought about it. “Maybe. Or it could be one single entity, which now has what it wants,” she suggested.

Alijda blinked. “How? What does the station have now, that it didn’t earlier?”

Rose swallowed. “It has us.”

NEXT?

What’s the deal with Beam? (Also connects a bit to that entity talk.) OPTIONS:

VOTING CLOSES 7am EDT THURSDAY JUNE 22nd

PATHS NOT TAKEN:
Software problem would have been Alijda’s point of view. She’d have restored an earlier Ziggy, and they’d have had to track down the origin of the virus. Hardware problem would have been Kat’s point of view. He’d have helped Alice, and they’d have then turned their attention to the planet. We got Rose’s point of view (by a wide margin), with the problem solved by unknown means, and on we go. (Alice’s above links this time are all musical, by the way.)

EPSILON DELTA, PART TWO: How Far She’ll Go

Alijda’s home universe included Time Lords. For whatever reason, as Alice dashed back to the house that the two women now shared, that was the thought at the forefront of her mind.

It’s not that Alice thought the fact would be of any particular use. Rather, it simply meant that this universe, which she was presently in, had no “Doctor Who” episodes. Since the mythology of one universe tended to only be reality somewhere else, even if it was still debatable as to whether myths formed from other realities, or vice versa.

As a result, Alice was behind on watching that series, and so returning to the “Epsilon Station” aka “The Hub” might give her a chance at catching up. “Behind” itself being a misleading term. Given how the Station had access to all of space and time, one could theoretically watch episodes that hadn’t yet been produced in a specified “present”.

But given actor fluctuations across realities, Alice had tacitly settled on a stream of continuity not far off from her own universe. From before her Earth had been pulled into that hell dimension, at any rate.

Of course, Alice hadn’t even known about real Time Lords being an issue until that “cease and desist” letter from the BBC, which had come after running her first major populated mission. Oh well, at least Alijda’s universe did include the TV show “Wynonna Earp”.

None of those thoughts would help the Rose Thorne girl.

ALICE VUNDERLANDE
Commission from Cherry Z[/caption]

Alice sighed, wondering if her tendency to have a unique thought process would one day manage to target itself into whatever configuration it was that supposedly “normal” people had on a daily, good, there was the house, home again, home again, jiggity jig.

Alice burst through the front door. “Honey, I’m home,” she called out, leaning against the wall to catch her breath.

The large living room area was visible from the front door. It took a moment, but an arm came into view on the top of the leather couch, followed by Alijda’s head. The brunette thirty-something stared at Alice in silence for a moment. “Laugh track quieted down in your head yet?” she said at last.

Alice beamed. “Yes, thank you.”

“Great. I notice you did not, however, buy bread,” Alijda noted, her gaze falling to Alice’s empty hands.

Alice closed the front door. “Because I got a call from the Epsilon Project. They need me. Us.”

Alijda’s gaze returned to Alice’s face. “So you’re being pranked?”

“Pranked? Alijda, who on your Earth would even know about it?!”

The brunette’s eyebrow went up. “Anyone you’ve talked to in the six months you’ve been here? You can’t seem to stop yourself. Hell, even though I’m not actually sitting in on your job interviews, I have my suspicions there too. I’m pretty sure the reason you can’t get stable work is because, when people ask you to clarify your prior work experience, you go on about monitoring alternate realities for anomalous events.”

Alice pushed out her lower lip. “It’s not like I can talk about being the secretary for an Angel from back on my own world. That’s even crazier. And I have no references here. Haters gonna hate.”

“I hacked out a false trail on our internet for you,” Alijda reminded her. “You can claim you were the secretary for a movie studio. Not to mention employed by the same guy I used when I was under my fake ‘Alison’ alias.”

“I know. I can lead with pride, I can make us strong, I’ll be satisfied if I play along. But the voice inside sings a different song. What is wrong with me?”

Alijda’s stare became an eye roll. “Oy, I should have smacked you when we first met. You’re still dealing with our lunch.” She dropped back out of sight to lay on the couch.

Alice’s smile returned. “I love you too, friend.”

Alijda let out a grunt. Alice walked into the room, now noticing that her housemate was staring at a laptop computer on the coffee table. Probably back to writing another of her stories.

Her writing really wasn’t that bad. In a sense, the stories were more than a way of Alijda coping with her own depression, they could be seen as a way of helping others who had similar problems. Alijda had a certain dry wit about her.

If only she wouldn’t push people away so much. Or wear black dresses all the time. One of these days, Alice swore she would get the woman into a pair of blue jeans.

“What?” Alijda asked, without looking up again.

“Alijda, please, I’m serious. The Epsilon Station made me an offer I can’t refuse. It’ll crash into a planet without help.”

The brunette met her gaze again. “Alice, you’re a dear, but face reality. The whole project got shut down when we left. Okay? It’s done. And even if we assume it wasn’t, and this isn’t some stupid joke, their whole oversight thing? That was creepy as all hell. So if the new idiot in charge wants it all to crash and burn, fine, I’m in favour.”

“Rose didn’t want it, Alijda. She sounded scared. And young. Even younger than I was, when I started.”

Alijda reached out to smack her laptop shut, muttering something indistinguishable under her breath. “What the hell is wrong with your random God, recruiting the inexperienced?”

“Mistakes were made,” Alice intoned. “Truth be told, I messed up a bunch even before recruiting you for that first in-person mission. Please, Alijda.” She leaned in against the side of the couch. “This girl’s frightened. She’s inadequately prepared. You want me to say ‘I need you’? I need you.”

Alijda sighed. “How is it that I now know when you’re quoting something, even if I have no idea where it’s from? Fine. When is this Epsilon thing supposedly happening?”

Alice felt her phone vibrate in the back pocket of her jeans. “Now?”

Alijda rolled off the couch. “Damn multiverse whatevers are never simple. Let me grab my meds.”

Alice answered her phone as Alijda headed for the bathroom. “Hello,” the former Epsilon caretaker announced. “Know that your call is very important to us.”

“When this is all over, you’ll have to tell me what your actual voicemail is,” came Rose’s voice. “For now, please, I’m in the spare control room, how do I get at this Mr. Smith??”

“Am I on some kind of speaker phone?” Alice asked.

“Beats me, but your voice is coming from all around.”

Alice nodded. She took in a deep breath, and called out, “Mr Smith! I need you.”

She heard the musical fanfare start to play in the background. The difference in ‘need’ quoting between Captain Picard and Sarah Jane Smith, it was all in the inflection. Come to think, Sarah Jane was probably the reason she’d had Time Lords on the brain.

“Greetings, Alice,” came a deep male voice. “You seem to have become a redheaded teenager since I was last active.”

“Hi, Mr Smith,” Alice chirped. “That’s Rose in the room. We need to get me back up there to fix things. Trouble is, Ziggy may be infected with something. Can you tell if that’s the case without interfacing?”

“That would take some time,” Smith mused.

“I’m going to die in less than 30 minutes,” Rose shrieked. “Also, a talking computer coming out of the wall what now?”

“Rose, your motto is don’t panic,” Alice reminded. “Mr Smith, can we get you to reroute a teleport, done by Alijda? To get us up there?”

“If Rose creates an interface by patching in the necessary circuits, yes.”

“Meaning no,” Rose asserted.

Alice chewed on her lower lip. Interfacing might simply infect Mr. Smith anyway. She needed more data. “I suppose it’s too much to hope for that the planet you’re crashing into is the one I’m on now?”

Ziggy’s voice broke in. “It is not your world, Alice. I know that much.”

“Right.” Alice smacked her fist into her forehead. There had to be a way. She turned her attention towards sifting through the limited data she already had.

Fact 1: Ziggy still had the ability to retrieve, given how Rose was somehow there, but the main computer lacked the power. Mr. Smith had the power, but lacked the ability. Their systems ran independently, for obvious reasons.

Fact 2: Rose lacked the understanding to interface the machines, assuming it was even safe to do so. She also wouldn’t be able to program them. Meaning whatever they came up with here, it was going to have to be something automated.

Automated. The failsafe.

“Ziggy,” Alice said, spinning around. “Hypothetical. If you were to be completely shut down, would Mr. Smith take over operations? Now that he’s active?”

“Affirmative. But he would not have my scope. Access to teleportation systems would be–”

“He would automatically attempt to complete a teleport if it was in progress and putting lives at risk.”

A pause. “The teleport might abort instead,” Ziggy suggested.

“Not with Rose in danger too. Okay, Ziggy. Initiate a recall teleport based on my prior departure, relative to the months I’ve spent on this Earth with Alijda, using this cell phone signal as a beacon. When you go dead, Mr Smith will pull us in the rest of the way.”

“I have never attempted that before,” Mr. Smith pointed out.

“Agreed,” Ziggy said. “I can find no guarantee this will work. I cannot authorize it.”

“We’re out of options! Do it!” Alice asserted, falling back on a quote by Picard from the TNG episode “Heart of Glory”.

“Alice, I bet I can authorize this,” came Rose’s voice again. “Except… are you sure? As scared as I am, I don’t want to order something here that might hurt you.”

Alice decided she liked this Rose girl. “It’s okay, I installed failsafes.” Mostly. “I’m sure they’re still in place.” There was no way to know. “It’ll be fine.” This was risky as all heck. What WAS wrong with her?

“Alice?” Alijda said, narrowing her eyes as she reentered the room. “Alice, what’s with that expression? Who are you talking to and what are you telling them?”

Alice flapped her free hand up and down to try and shush Alijda.

“Ziggy,” came Rose’s voice. “Initiate that recall teleport thing from the last time Alice was in charge of computers here. Authorization code, uhm, Paige-Paige-Paige.”

“Initiating, Rose,” came Ziggy’s resigned voice.

Alice ceased her arm flapping, looking to Alijda. “Change of plan. I’m headed up. I’ll bring you later.” She turned and sprinted for the nearest doorway.

“Alice? Alice, damn it, don’t you dare do reckless and foolhardy things on your own.”

As Alice began to pass through into the next room, she felt the disorientation of a teleport taking place - and Alijda’s hand seizing her wrist from behind. A dangerous and potentially suicidal act. So not exactly out of character for Alijda. Being unable to shake her off, both women ended up falling through the doorway together.

And then the house was empty.

Alice felt herself spinning through a dark void. She slammed into a wall, and a rush of air was expelled from her lungs.

“Well, here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into,” came Alijda’s voice from somewhere else in the darkness. Above her, maybe? They’d become separated upon arrival.

Alice managed a giggle as she worked to stabilize herself in the zero gravity. “Actually, that’s a misquote. Laurel and Hardy use the phrase here’s another NICE mess in dialogue. The name of one of their films was ‘Another Fine Mess’.”

“Oh, well, I beg your pardon,” Alijda mumbled.

“Uh, did something go wrong?” came another voice. A male one.

A dim red lighting finally switched on, giving partial illumination to the large cylindrical room. Alice turned her head, spotting Alijda floating a short distance away… as well as Katherine “Kat” Conway, the military man who had been part of their last mission together.

“Kat?” Alijda sputtered. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He scratched his head. “Beats me. I thought I got back to my hotel just fine, but now I’m back here a half hour later.”

“It’s the recall feature,” Alice realized. “Because Kat left AFTER us, remember, Alijda? He wanted to make sure all of us ladies got off the station okay.”

“So you mean him leaving after we did pulled him back in before us this time?”

“Right. Could be a glitch, could be the recall order to Ziggy wasn’t specific enough to exclude him. Technically, he was the last person to leave when I was in command.”

“So chivalry isn’t dead, it simply gets you killed,” Alijda remarked.

“A ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking - on my part,” Alice sighed. “Though it occurs to me now that Kat’s chivalry is possibly the only reason Ziggy even had my phone number, since I told her to call me once Kat himself had left. So there’s that.”

Kat cleared his throat. “I feel out of the loop here, ladies. Granted, that’s somewhat par for the course when I’m with you, but still.”

“Oh, the Epsilon Station’s gonna crash into a planet real soon,” Alice offered. “I’ll head to auxiliary control now to find Rose, and see if there’s something I can do about that. I kinda hope there is.”

“No,” Alijda corrected. “I’LL head to auxiliary control. I’m the hacker, Alice,” she continued, before her housemate could protest. “I can whip almost any system back into shape. You’re the one who knows this station backwards and forwards, so you need to check to see if any physical connections are out of place. Kat? You stick close to Alice.”

“Uh, yes, ma’am,” Kat said, lifting his eyebrow. “Though if I might make a request?”

“What?” Alijda asked, looking down at him.

“Stop giving your orders from directly above me? I mean, I am resisting the urge to continually stare right up your skirt, but you don’t seem to be aware I even can.”

Alijda’s eyes grew wider as her hands moved to grasp at the material of her dress, trying to bunch it back between her legs in the zero gravity of the room.

“I keep telling her, jeans,” Alice couldn’t resist saying.

“Shut it!” Alijda snapped, her face a bright red - though that was largely due to the lighting in the room. “I’ll be with that Rose girl.” Moments later, she vanished in a puff of purple and black smoke, as she teleported herself up to the doorway in the ceiling.

NEXT?

What is the nature of the mystery damage? (This will also impact a new point of view, if you think about it.) OPTIONS:

VOTING CLOSES 7am EDT THURSDAY JUNE 15th

If it had been Alijda’s world, they’d have teleported up instead of using the recall, so Ziggy would still be active. If it had been Kat’s world, he would have been kept planetside for now, perhaps contacting Rose from there. We got what we got. (Do people prefer prior vote result info here, rather than compiled in a later post? Does anyone even care?)

EPSILON DELTA, PART ONE: Beam & Me, Up

Rosemary Thorne tried not to panic. After all, this wasn’t the first time she’d been thrust into a bizarre situation lacking proper context. Except this time, as she looked around herself, it obviously wasn’t a beach. It didn’t feel like some fantasy math dream either.

No, she was in a cylindrical room with high ceilings, which as she looked around the circumference, contained a view screen, an area with a table and chairs, a large computer system, and a walled off area. Although the table had been tipped over, the electronics were sparking, and alarms were blaring as a red light strobed on and off.

ROSEMARY THORNE
Commission from Lia

Rose took off her headphones, and the noise of the alarm got louder. Tucking them away in her jeans pocket, she pulled up at the shoulders of her T-shirt and cleared her throat.

“Hello?” she called out. “What’s going on?”

“Sixty minutes until planetary collision.”

Rose jumped at the sound of the female voice. Looking around, she was unable to pinpoint it’s origin. “Oh, great, well, that gives us a little time, huh?” Her tone was more joking than sarcastic.

“Algebra…"

That second female voice was weaker, and seemed to be coming from the vicinity of the computer system. Walking closer, Rose finally spotted the pair of legs sticking out, over by the far console. She began to run, soon finding a woman leaning up against the hardware. Rose knelt down to get a better look.

Well, Rose mused, the woman didn’t seem too different from her. Roughly the same height. For clothing, they were wearing a white blouse, blue pleated skirt, dark stockings and blue shoes with a bow… which, admittedly, was quite different from her own T-shirt, jeans and running shoes. Also, they had long blonde hair, instead of a mess of shoulder-length red hair. And she looked older, like the blonde might be in her early twenties.

Okay, Rose mentally amended, maybe they weren’t so alike. Particularly given how a cable seemed to be running from a port in the side of the computer, to one in this woman’s blue hairband.

Was she hurt? Was she even human?

Rose reached out to poke the blonde in the shoulder. At that, the other woman’s blue eyes snapped open, and her head turned, focussing on Rose.

Rose flinched again, but forced herself to continue to not panic. So far, that strategy seemed to be working out for her. “Uhmmm… hi?”

“Algebra. You must. Recalculate trajectory,” the blonde said, her tone clipped, sounding somehow artificial.

Rose cleared her throat again, and extended her hand. “Hi. I’m Rose Thorne. You are?”

The blonde blinked back. “Beam.”

“Beam, cute name. Are you hurt?”

“I am. Depleted. I used. My energy. To summon you.”

Rose pulled her hand back and eyed the cable running out of Beam’s hairband. “Okay. So you’re an android or something?”

Beam shook her head in a jerky motion. “Autonomous. Hologram. I run. Epsilon station. Now.”

“Right.” Rose exhaled. “Am I back in the math fantasy world?”

Again, Beam’s head shook. “No. But you. Have their knowledge. So I locked on. To you. You must. Recalculate trajectory.”

Rose eyed the increasingly earnest blonde hologram. “Okay, first? I’m not the math girl, my girlfriend Paige is the math girl. Second? Even assuming that me and her know some math, we’re not taking any ‘fix station trajectory’ courses at university. And third? Uh, well, there is no third. But bad news comes in threes. So there you go.”

Beam blinked at her. “You. Are not. Algebra?”

Rose winced. “Kinda sorta? But not really. I only talk to personified math. And I haven’t lately.” She frowned. “Wait, how do you even know about what I went through there?”

“Multiverse. We monitor. Fixing. Inconsistencies.”

“Ah. When you’re not busy crashing your station, you mean.”

Beam’s impassive expression became a smile. “Yes.”

Rose raked her fingers back through her hair. “You know that monitoring thing sounds real creepy, right?”

Beam tilted her head to the side. “I do. Now.”

“Uh huh. Might explain why you’re in trouble, maybe you peeked in on the wrong person. So, how do we fix your station then?”

“Recalculate. Trajectory.”

“Yeah, tried to say I don’t know how to do that. What’s our next option?”

Beam seemed to think about that for a moment. “Crash.”

“Bad plan. Next plan?”

Beam seemed to think again. “I do. Not know.”

Rose exhaled, wiping her palms on her jeans. “Then can I at least bring in Paige, in order to die in her arms?”

“There is. Insufficient power. To teleport.”

“Well, of course. Good thing I was kidding about dying.”

“Humour?” Beam’s smile returned. “Rose. I think. I like. You.”

“Yeah, well, sorry. I don’t know you well enough to die in your arms instead.”

Her smile slowly faded. “A shame.”

Rose eyed the blonde woman on the floor. She seemed genuinely depressed now. “Don’t act so broken up about it. I’ve been trying to imply we’d better live through this, right? Sorry if my implier seems to be broken.”

The smile returned. “Rose. Like you. I prefer. Girls. You are. Cute. Funny. Someone I. Would gladly. Die with.”

Rose glared. “Except I’m taken, and we’re not gonna die. What, are you saying you’re actually a lesbian automatic hologram?”

“Autonomous.”

Rose rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

“I am. Yes.”

“Flûte.” Rose ran her fingers back through her hair again, tugging this time. “And we are SURE I’m not trapped in some new, warped aspect of my own personality?”

“Yes. I am. Sorry, Rose.”

“Great.” She glanced over her shoulder. “So, about our new plan. What happened to all the other techs here?”

“It is. Only me. On the station. No others. No techs. Only me. Now.”

“And there’s no power left here to bring in ACTUAL techs.”

“Correct. You were. My last chance.”

Rose turned to scan the room again. “What even happened here?”

“Unknown.” Beam licked her lips. “Possible. Sabotage.”

Rose shuddered. “Except you just said you were the only one here.”

“I should be. But sabotage. Would explain. Power loss. And computer. Malfunction.”

“Great. Your station DID tick off the wrong people.” Rose got back to her feet and looked around. “So now it’s up to two lesbians to save the multiverse or something. Thank goodness this all happened at around five in the afternoon, if it was before nine in the morning, I’d be half asleep and we’d be SO screwed.”

“One.”

Rose turned back. “One what?”

“One. Lesbian.”

She stamped her foot. “Damn it, Beam, you JUST told me that you–"

“Computer,” the blonde interrupted. “Transfer control. Of station. To Rose Thorne.”

The urge to panic clawed at Rose again. “Oh no. No, no, nononono.” She bent back down, reaching out to grasp Beam by the shoulders. “No, Beam, no.”

“Acknowledged,” came the disembodied voice that had first warned of the planetary collision. “Provide authorization code.”

Rose shook the blonde. “Beam, no, please, I’m not quite twenty years old yet. I can’t handle this alone. I don’t even UNDERSTAND this. That’s why I’m joking around.”

“Authorization. Janeway Pi. One One Zero,” Beam stated. The computer chirped, and Beam’s eyes focussed on Rose again. “I am. So sorry. Rose Thorne. Perhaps I. Should have. Brought… in…."

Her blue eyes closed and her head slumped to the side.

“Beam? BEAM?”

Rose shook the holographic girl again, but she remained unconscious. Or unpowered. Or whatever caused holograms to no longer interact with their surroundings.

Before Rose could stop herself, she had let out a scream. She quickly buried her fist inside her mouth to silence the noise, sat back on her behind, closed her eyes and counted slowly to ten, rocking back and forth.

When at last she reopened her eyes, and found that she was still in the cylindrical room, she decided she was going to have to do something about that. She stood back up.

“Computer?” she called out, after pulling her fist from her mouth.

“Acknowledged, Rose. Welcome to command.”

“Thanks, we’ll bake me a cake later. Do you have a name?”

There was a pause. “I was once called Ziggy.”

A weird name, but good enough for creating the illusion that she wasn’t truly alone in this completely insane situation. “Ziggy, hi. Why can’t YOU recalculate our trajectory?”

“Necessary functions are offline.”

“Darn. How do we get them online?”

“Unknown.”

“Great. Well, who had Beam been talking about bringing in just now?”

“Unknown.”

“I guess there’s no power anyway. Do you even have a user’s manual for me?”

“Unknown.”

Rose stamped her foot. “Damn it, Ziggy, why is everything I desperately need to know unknown?!”

“Unknown.”

“Yeah, yeah, figures.” Rose began to pace the length of the room. “Tell me something known, just for variety.”

“Forty seven minutes until planetary–”

“NOT that,” Rose admonished. “Something happy.”

There was another pause. “Our missions have been reasonably successful up until now.”

“Okay. Okay, missions, let’s focus on those. Has Beam been the only person or hologram or whatever who led these missions?”

“The Epsilon Project has recruited from across the multiverse.”

“Great. Could any of your OTHER employees get us out of this? Unknown,” she answered herself, in tandem with the computer. “Fine.” Rose decided that, instead of pacing back and forth, she would pace in a circle around the large ring in the middle of the room. “How about this. When did Beam become your primary tech?”

“Time in the multiverse is relative.”

“Okay, well, I guess I don’t even care about that, my real question is did anyone work computers on this station before Beam?”

“Yes. Alison Vunderlande.”

“Good. Now, is this Vunderlande woman the same one who caused the sabotage? Unknown,” Rose again chorused the word with Ziggy. “Could she fix our problems? Unknown. Can we at least give her a call? Unkn–"

“Her number is on file.”

Rose spun. “Ziggy? Phone. Her.”

“Alice poses a security risk. She interfered with an important mission. Friendship cannot take precedence over–"

“Ziggy?” Rose interrupted. “Am I in charge here?”

Again a pause, as if the computer had to double check. “You are.”

“Further, isn’t it likely that Beam had been thinking about bringing in that Alice to help, and only grabbed me instead owing to your stupid security whatevers?”

Pause. “It is possible.”

Rose made a point of clearing her throat. “Ziggy? Phone. This. Alice. Now.”

“Acknowledged. Connecting to the appropriate world line. Please wait.”

Rose hoped the lack of a pause that time was a good sign. She marched over to the section of the huge room with the chairs, grabbed one, and hauled it over towards the computer banks. Instead of sitting though, she leaned against the back of it, gripping the wood tightly between her hands as she stared at the machine. This would not be the last thing she ever saw. It wouldn’t be. COULDN’T be.

“Connection established,” Ziggy asserted.

“Hello! Know that your call is very important to us,” came a bright, cheerful voice immediately after.

An answering service. Rose bowed her head, worried that if this kept up, she might soon lose her mind. “Alice, when you get this message, PLEASE call back. Otherwise I might die alone on some mystery space station.”

“Oh, this isn’t my voicemail, your call is simply important.”

Rose snapped her head back up. “Alice?”

“Speaking. Mystery science theatre what now? I heard they’d returned.”

Rose circled around the chair, looking for a working video screen and not finding one. “I’m talking to Alice, Alice of the Epsilon Station, that Alice?”

“Um, I was kinda fired from there, but yeah.”

Alice sounded a little flaky, but Rose figured she was hardly one to throw stones there. “Alice, my name is Rose Thorne, and your former station’s gonna crash into some planet in a little over half an hour and I don’t know what to do about it. Help! Mayday! Emergency!”

“Oh? Wow. Um. It’s been a while. Can you transport me up to have a look? Is that allowed?”

“I can probably allow it but we don’t have the power. Can you talk me through trajectory calculations or something?”

“Uhh, Ziggy can’t do that for you?”

“Apparently not.”

“What about Mr. Smith?”

Now they were getting somewhere. “Mister who?”

“Mr. Smith. When you’re this big, they call you Mister. Oh, right, I shut him down, but he runs independent of the main computer system. So if you reactivate him, he might be able to run the calculations. Once you explain the situation to him.”

“That’s good, except I don’t understand the situation myself.”

“No?”

“No, I only got here, like, twenty minutes ago. Now somehow, I’m in charge.”

“O-kaaaay. Can you at least get to auxiliary control, where Mr. Smith is? He should have a useable power supply to patch into the grid for a teleport.”

Rose looked at the ceiling. “Ziggy, can I get to auxiliary control?”

“Affirmative, I can direct you.”

“Alice, I can get to–"

“Heard that. Okay. While you do that, lemme get to Alijda. If the power thing doesn’t pan out, maybe she can teleport us to you somehow. Don’t worry, Rose!” Alice added brightly. “As the guide says, don’t panic.”

“Yup, that is pretty much my motto right now,” Rose sighed. “Do I call you back when I get there?”

“Call me,” Alice agreed. “On the line, call me, call me any, anytime, call me.”

There was a click as the line went dead.

“Curious,” came Ziggy’s voice. “Is this sensation what it means to have… missed someone?”

“Ziggy, if you don’t show me auxiliary control pretty darn fast, you’ll end up missing me too,” Rose asserted.

A doorway in the ceiling irised open, and gravity cut out, allowing Rose to flail her way up towards it.

NEXT?

What planet is the Station currently aimed at? (Curiously, this will also decide how the rest of the cast gets there.)  OPTIONS:

What POINT OF VIEW comes next? (I won’t always give this choice.) OPTIONS:

VOTING CLOSES 7am EDT THURSDAY JUNE 8th