Adam usually looks after Jordan when the Amaris leave the house. When he’s busy - or “out”, as they euphemistically now call his excursions away from Earth - Jordan has expressed a definite preference for alternatives.
Summer doesn’t own a car, but the Amaris don’t think twice about her pulling up in one. “Hello!” she calls brightly.
“Summer, thank you so much for coming on such short notice.”
The girl’s cheerful smile doesn’t flicker a whit. “I always have time.”
They depart, and Summer heads in. But instead of settling down for a fun evening of entertainment, Summer hunkers down in front of Jordan. “Hey there.”
Jordan feels something she hasn’t felt before. Maybe it’s having Anty. Maybe it’s all the practice she’s had with her princessin’ powers. “It feels like there’s two of ya,” she finally says.
“Well there kind of are, Jordan. That’s what I want your help with.”
“Whatcha need?”
Summer leans in, conspiratorially. “You know how there’s princesses that are reincarnations of someone else?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, I’m one of those.”
Jordan’s eyes widen. “Ohhhhh!”
Summer’s smile widens. “That’s right! Unfortunately, my reincarnation thingie is trapped. I need your help to free her from being turned to stone. Will you help me?”
This is high-level, grade A, no fooling, top tier, senior class Princess Stuff. Of course Jordan is gonna help. And she says so.
Summer has some kind of big device in the back of her car. It looks kind of like a big spikey metal basketball, with lots of wires running around it.
“What is that?” Jordan asks.
“This is a dimensional anchor. It was built by someone named Leo Snow. Do you know him?”
Jordan think think thinks. “Ohhhh, Adam went to school with him! An’ he’s on the team with Concord!”
Summer nods. “That’s right. Well, Leo built this device awhile back to help out. I’ve made some adjustments to it, that are going to let us rescue Queen Infinity.”
Jordan knows this! “It’s uh, an art… artichoke.”
“Do you mean artifact?”
Oops. That’s the word.
Summer hefts it out of the back. She beckons to Jordan to hop up in one arm while she holds onto the anchor with the other. And they take off, flying at an incredible pace.
“Whooaaaaaaaaaa!” Jordan clings to Summer for dear life.
The first few minutes are the scariest. There’s a huge booming noise, and Jordan can see the air distort and deform around them.
As Jordan gets used to the feeling of flying at such dizzying speeds, though, she relaxes, and even starts asking questions.
“Hey, um, don’t you have to put your wings out?”
Summer shakes her head. “I need to conserve energy. Keeping you safe in a barrier and maintaining supersonic thrust are my priorities right now.”
“What’s super sammich?”
“Sonic is a word that means sound. Sound travels through air at about 760 mph. So things moving faster than that speed are said to be traveling super-sonic.”
760 is a big number, but Jordan’s been to space. She can handle it. “Where are we goin’?”
“Disney World.”
The park is closed, but that’s okay, they are flying.
Summer lands near a statue. Jordan can immediately see that the story about reincarnation checks out, because the statue looks like a fancier version of Summer.
While Summer makes some adjustments to the dimensional anger thingie, Jordan walks around the statue, wondering and examining.
“What happened?” she asks at last.
Summer doesn’t look up, but does talk.
“Long long ago, in a far away place, there was a girl who lost the boy who was more important to her than anyone in the world.”
Jordan feels herself overwhelmed with a sudden wave of emotion, all coming from Summer. Sorrow, and loss, and anger, and lots of other things she doesn’t really understand.
“But there was a way to get that boy back. To do it, she had to fill the universe with light.”
Summer makes more adjustments to the anchor, as Jordan struggles to cope with the feelings. “She did some things she wasn’t proud of, and some things she was, and she saved many many lives along the way. There was a man who tried to stop her, but he did some pretty awful things, so she fought against him.”
Jordan feels tears running down her eyes, and tries to stop the flow with her hands.
Summer stands up from the machine, and turns to look at her. “If she’d fought that man this time, bad things would have happened to lots of her friends. They’d have become statues instead of her.”
Jordan is in awe of the story. It sounds so much like the stuff she watches and reads, but it all feels true, because Summer’s feeling it too.
“Why would they be statues?” she whispers.
“Reflected spacetime disjunction,” Summer explains.
If Jordan was expecting an answer, it wasn’t this one. “Oh.”
The robot girl goes on. “So instead, she got turned into a statue, by a special friend of mine. But that’s okay, because it was done for the sake of love, and what we do in the name of love is always okay.”
Jordan likes that phrase. She’s gonna remember it. What we do in the name of love is always okay. That sounds like a serious princess thing.
“But now, it’s time to reverse the process.” Summer beckons, and Jordan approaches. “I need to be over here praying for the safe return of Queen Infinity. This won’t work if you don’t press the button here, though.” She indicates the one she means.
Jordan is still confused. Something is telling her to pull on the Adam thread in her heart, but all of Summer’s big feelings are drowning it out.
“Why me?”
“You possess a personal time loop, Jordan. Somehow, I can sense that ten years of your history have been attached to you in the here and now. The machine needs that time loop to work.”
Jordan thinks hard about this. “Oh, when I turn into Peri, I grow up. An’ I had a dream where I was a grown-up, an’ that’s when I got the Continuum Sword and Anty! Is that whatcha mean?”
Summer beams. “That’s right, sweetie.”
A fear creeps into Jordan’s heart. “Will anything bad happen to Anty? 'Cause I got Anty 'causa the loop thingie?”
Jordan can feel Summer’s uncertainty and eventual conviction. “No, it shouldn’t have any negative impact on Anty. That’s the Concordance Shard attached to you right now, isn’t it?”
“Yah.”
“It should be okay then. As an extradimensional entity penetrating into the local Lorentzian manifold rather than being contained by it, the Shard is immune to things like chronotropic collapse.”
“You use a lotta big words, Summer.”
Summer smiles, but it’s the saddest smile Jordan has ever seen. “Sorry, sweetie. I can explain soon, if you want. Push the button.”
Jordan steps forward, and hesitates. There’s something telling her to call Adam. But, at the same time, she can so powerfully feel Summer’s regret, and sorrow, and hope.
Being a princess is about helping people feel better.
She’s trying to help Queen Infinity.
This is the right thing to do.
Jordan presses the button.