Leah clears her throat. “I have good news and I have bad news.”
“The bad news is that the tea is cold,” quips Vermillion from the back.
“Yeah, and I bet you don’t like our pretzels either, Snackula,” quips Leah without hesitation. “Anyway, good news is that we’ve worked out a way to deal with the effect. We’re gonna do some applied multiversal cartography. And it’s gonna take Harold being real fuckin’ fast.”
The speedster stands and bows. His poise has returned somewhat. “To avenge my family, though they be of another world, I dedicate myself unto your cause,” he announces with determination.
Leah grins. “That’s the spirit. So basically we’re gonna open a portal using the Hula Hoop. Only we’re not aiming it along the regular space-time metric. We’re gonna do it at an angle. That angle is gonna aim partially backwards in time, intersecting–”
She looks around from face to face. “Okay, I hear y’all thinking, ‘English bitch’. I get it, I get it. Simple version.”
“We’re creating a big pit in space-time. Harold is gonna fall down it. At a very precise moment in time, he’s gonna cross paths with the Eigendrakes as they strike. He’s gonna note down that precise moment by clicking a button on a gadget I’m gonna send with him.”
Leah’s face grows stern and sad. “The bad news is, my dude, you gotta be at hyper-speed the whole way through. For us, it’s gonna be like 68 seconds. That’s the highest resolution I can get. For you, it’s gonna be more like…” She pauses. “You know, I dunno how fast you can really push yourself. Here, let’s check.”
Leah hands over a stopwatch. “Between here and here is one second. Click the stopwatch, click it again after a second, and between them tell me how long it felt like.”
Harold does so. A mere second passes, and he shakes his head as though waking up from something. “I am returned,” he reports. It takes him a few seconds to recall the question he’s been invited to answer. “To me it was but the tolling of a bell.”
“I dunno how long that is,” Leah confesses.
“There are twenty four bells in the day,” the speedster offers.
Leah whistles softly. “Holy shit. Okay. So you’re gonna have to stay conscious and alert for like… three days, my dude. Think you can handle it?”
Harold’s composure falters, but only for a moment. “If I must, then I can. That is my vow as a champion, my lady.”
The conversation from earlier strikes Charlotte again. If she is prone to loneliness, how long might she last in similar circumstances? Three days without people - three years - three centuries? How long is too long?
She has no interest in finding out.
The expedition move from the library to Leah’s underwater laboratory. From the control room, they watch Harold disappear into a glowing portal. And they watch him re-appear, just over a minute later.
Leah is first on the deck of the Launch System with a bowl of chips. She receives the device from a dazed Harold, checks it, and exults briefly. “You did great, dude. Here, chips as reward.”
Harold blinks owlishly. He’s been in solitude for three days, but it’s not just that. “What are ‘chips’?”
Leah looks baffled for just a moment. Then a warm glow of excitement radiates across her features. “Oh my god, dude. You have never had chips? You? Merry fucking Christmas!”
An hour later, as Harold is declaring for the fourth time that chips are the divine gift of God to mankind, Leah announces more bad news. “So, we gotta do this like, another 5 times to really get a solid reading. I’m not gonna put him through that immediately.”
Charlotte checks with her companions. Bodark and Vermillion can go anywhere, and have no obligations. Neither Daph nor Maury mind sticking around and seeing where this goes. Manny, of course, is excited to go on any kind of adventure. With that, Charlotte asks Leah for accommodations in the underwater city, and receives them.
In the evening, she receives a visitor. It’s Astra, the self-identified daughter of Adam Amari.
Charlotte greets her guest with her accustomed politeness and invites her into the temporary room she occupies. While she hunts for refreshments to offer, Astra surprises her with a revelation.
“Your friends, Vermillion and Bodark. I want to tell you something about them.”
Charlotte turns, surprised. “I wasn’t aware you were acquainted.”
“I’m not,” Astra confesses. “But what I know is something obvious to me, and yet it may not be apparent to anyone else. Not even them.”
Charlotte finds nothing but bottled water in a mini-fridge, and is grateful that Astra waves off the offer with a smile. “Very well. What can you tell me? And, perhaps, will you tell me whether you have told them, and if not, why not?”
Astra nods. “First. What they have isn’t a Concordance shard, exactly. Not like Sol-Gamma-2 or Tau or Enoch-7. It’s more like… the stuff that they’d make a shard out of. The primal emotional potential, some kind of motivation, but no sentience or intelligence of its own. Maybe the barest glimmer of a distinct identity. But they have more power than maybe you, and maybe they, realize. Be mindful.”
Charlotte nods. “And to my second question?”
“You know Adam better than they do,” smiles Astra. “Perhaps you’ll be able to explain their natures to them better, based on that experience. I don’t have the rapport with them that you do. It seemed best for someone who knows them to help them.”
“I see,” Charlotte says. “Do you think they will need my guidance in the future?”
Astra shrugs and smiles. “Who knows? What I do know is that they will sense their abilities instinctively, like Bodark did when he confronted the Lady. I know that despite your feelings about their bickering, they’re growing on you.”
The girl heads to the door. Before stepping out, she finishes her thought. “I know when it comes time for them to act again, you’ll worry. You won’t want to lose them. All I can say is, the future’s not certain, but have faith in your friends, Charlotte Palmer. Believe in them. They’ll come back to you.”