Chapter Text
3. Event Horizon
The event horizon is the spherical outer boundary of a black hole loosely considered to be its surface. It is the point that the gravitational influence of the black hole becomes so great that not even light is fast enough to escape it. When an object nears an event horizon, a witness would observe the object's image redden and dim as gravity distorts the light it emits. Once the object reaches the event horizon, to the onlooker, its image would effectively fade into invisibility.
Within the event horizon is the black hole's singularity, where previous research suggests all of the object's mass has collapsed to an infinitely dense extent. The fabric of space and time curves to an infinite degree around it, breaking down all laws of physics as we know them within its grasp.
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Mission Log ██████████
Timeline: ██, ████, Aculon Empire, ██
Objective: ██ ███ Emperor ████ as █ ██ survived all assassination attempts in this timeline. Assist Duke ███ in ████ ██ ████, which is ██ █ ██ █████. Operatives ██ and ██ will serve as points of contact from ███ █ ████. All long-term check-ins to be filed in ████-C.
Status: COMPLETED
Notes: Next time, don't send ████ on long-term missions. That kid almost got frostbite, twice. —Operative ██
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Mission Log ██████████
Timeline: ██, █ ███, The Andes, Chile, ██
Objective: Investigate the Central Volcanic Zone, which in Operation ████ was noted to be ███ ████. In particular, █ ███ has experienced increased ███ ███ at a ████ █████ rate. Anomalous weather phenomena also observed to ████ in neighboring timelines (██, ██, ██, etc). ████ ███ may be due to ██ ██████ ███ ███ ████. ████ █ ████ — ███ ██ ████-█ █ ███ █ ████.
Status: COMPLETED
Notes: ███ █████ no longer safe. ████ ███████ successfully contained. —Operative ██
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Mission Log ██████████
Timeline: ██, Pretoria, South Africa, 2057
Objective: ██ ███ █ riots in ███ and ████ ███. ████ ██ █ ███ █ █ ███ █ ████ ████. Aurora ████ █████. ████ █ ███ ████ — █ ███ █ ████ ███, ███ ████. Long term ███ ██ ████-█ ███. No backup is to be provided.
Status: COMPLETED
Notes: Requesting aid with cleanup. —Operative ██
Request Denied — ████
San Francisco, USA, 2012
The first thing he registers is that the sun is too bright. He squints against the burn of his corneas from the reflected radiance of the pavement. Blinking furiously, the rest of his surroundings materialize into view. Red-roofed buildings, wiry tufted trees, streets sloping so far they almost disappear from existence—it doesn't take a genius to deduce he's in the completely wrong timeline. Cursing, he reaches for the trigger in his pocket, only to realize upon powering it on that it only has one jump left. Thinking fast, he ducks into a nearby alleyway to draft a strongly-worded plea to Central Command on his tablet. He might as well wander aimlessly while he waits for a response, he thinks, as he tucks his tablet away. He's on thin ice already, he knows, his focus oscillating wildly, causing longer and longer mission assignments with backup fewer and far between. Sure, he's never had a problem with overworking before. Certainly not now. And yet his work is sloppy at best and unacceptable at worst.
He ambles along cracked sidewalks, neighborhoods gradually opening up to wide intersections and haphazard apartment complexes. Eventually, after dodging a near collision with a stampeding cable car, he finds himself in a coffee shop, the nostalgic scent of fresh roast filling the cramped walls as he sidles into line behind a gaggle of excited teenagers. The beginnings of a migraine are starting to itch at his temples. Everything is too loud, steam hissing, the roar of the coffee grinder, cramped walls breathing, choking, in sync—
"—You okay there, dude?" The phrase and cadence is so achingly familiar that Thomas jolts at the sound, unwittingly making eye contact with the barista smiling at him from across. He can't breathe, thoughts swimming through molasses.
"I was asking what you'd like to order?" the barista smiles, somehow even more politely. Brown hair, blue eyes. Thomas mentally kicks himself. He clears his throat, frantically skimming the lengthy menu, squinting at the scribbled cursive. "Um—"
"How about our Columbian dark roast? It has a deeper profile with a rich sweetness, perfect for an energy and mood boost. No offense, man, but you look like you've seen a ghost," the barista laughs, which peters out awkwardly, as the eye contact drags on, and for a second his brunette hair fades into alabaster, blue eyes blending into gray.
Thomas swallows. He thinks he might be sick.
He doesn't remember ordering or paying, only stepping out the door with a steaming hot cup of coffee that burns his lips when he takes a sip. It's too sweet.
Los Angeles, USA, 2149
The acid rain thundering down on the maglev rails high above hisses as it drips onto his hood, coldness seeping through and leaving behind multicolored streaks on the waterproof fabric. The neon billboards displayed on the towering skyscrapers around him reflect distorted advertisements in neon puddles as he dashes past, splashing pink onto lime bleeding into blue.
2149—Los Angeles isn't bad when the acid rain isn't burning your skin and the merciless sun isn't roasting you from the inside.
He doesn't know why he's here. He should be in a timeline far, far away—something about corrupt politicians and a high-profile wedding. He'd taken one look at the mission briefing and his assignment and his breathing stopped, letters blurring in his vision, swimming on the pages.
A streak of white in his peripheral causes him to stumble in his steps as he slows to look, heart racing, but it's just an elfish, pale-haired model in an advertisement blowing kisses from the side of a bus stop at the pedestrians passing by.
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Mission Log ██████████
Timeline: ██, Prague, Czech Republic, 1993
Objective: ██ ███ Havel, 34, and to-be wife ████ Veškrnová, 28. The ████ day is scheduled for ████ █. Proceed with caution—reports of Aurora activity in the area. No backup is to be provided.
Status: COMPLETED
Notes: Requesting aid with cleanup. —Operative ██
Request Denied — ████
It's late enough that most of the wedding crowd has scattered back to their various accommodations through various modes of transportation, although the bride and her new husband still stand in the open field of the venue, leftover smoke from eager fireworks misting the air with a gray film. The newlyweds are pressed together, flushed and breathless from the festivities and drunk off of effervescent sparkling champagne. The groom speaks to her, low and quick, and she throws back her head as she laughs, her veil dancing in the night breeze.
The smile is still on her face when the bullet rips through her chest. She crumples like dry leaves in winter, crimson blossoming on ivory. Her husband falls soon after.
Thomas's hands shake as he disassembles his gun. He had almost missed the shot as he pulled the trigger, palms slick with sweat. He abandons his movements as he feels, rather than sees, dark spots clouding his vision. In his mind, the image of the bride replays over, and over, and over again. Crimson on ivory.
There's something very wrong with him.
"Something is wrong with you," Kanukei announces, from where he's sat across the awkwardly proportioned oval table in the dimly lit meeting room. Once he'd composed himself and arrived back at headquarters, Thomas had been told to report straight to one of the seldom-used emergency break rooms, which had been converted into a makeshift meeting room way back when. Apparently, he had a special mission debriefing to attend.
This was not a mission debriefing. This, Thomas thinks, in dawning horror, is an intervention.
He takes solace in the fact that Fluixon looks just as uncomfortable as Thomas feels. From where he's sat, right next to Kanukei, shoulder to shoulder, they look as if they are two very concerned parents sitting down a misbehaving child. Thomas banishes that thought immediately, shuddering.
"It has come to our attention," Kanukei continues, pausing at Fluixon's furious head shake in response. He rolls his eyes. "It has come to my attention"—Fluixon makes a face—"that your missions have been… less than spectacular."
Kanukei clasps both hands in front of him on the table top. "Why?"
"I haven't failed any recent missions, though," Thomas points out.
Fluixon snorts. "You don't fail missions."
"Well," Kanukei corrects, "There was that one mission that got sabotaged by Aurora, or something—"
"That's irrelevant," Thomas hurries to obfuscate.
"The point is," Fluixon's monotone voice cuts in. "Your work is sloppy."
Thomas leers. "As if you could do better?" He turns to Kanukei with exaggerated exasperation. "Flux here has been moping around for months—why don't you stage an intervention for him, instead?"
"You—"
"This isn't an intervention," Kanukei quickly cuts in, before Flux, scowling darkly, can rise to defend himself. "We're just trying to understand, as colleagues and as friends, if there's anything we could do to help—"
"You can't help me," Thomas says, coldly. His leg shakes. He needs to leave, can't be stuck inside this cold, clinical room, the thinly veiled pity of his colleagues burning against his skin.
Kanukei looks over at Flux, silently begging him to speak. After an awkwardly prolonged silence and intense battle of wills, Fluixon heaves a sigh.
"If you say so," he says, flatly, impersonal. "But the moment you majorly fuck up a mission, Central Command is sending you straight to off-duty rehabilitation."
"We can't afford to make mistakes. Not now, not ever." He taps the table surface with one finger, in sync to his words. "You know this."
He does know. But the thought of telling them about Micro, about what is possibly the greatest mistake of his recent life, fills him with sick dread. He can't.
"Yes, sir," he says.
In the time between worlds, Thomas dreams.
He's sitting in a lecture hall, fidgety, back aching from the uncomfortable hard plastic. The room is packed, students overflowing off the walls and standing and sitting in a jumbled mess on the entrance stairs. Everyone's attention is rapt, directed towards the blackboard and the woman standing in front of it. He watches as she turns around on the podium and picks up a small object sitting on top of the lectern. She holds it up in her hand, presenting it to the class. He squints at her, confused, from his seat at the back of the room. It appears to be a small, rounded pebble.
"Let us suppose that this stone represents an object, or a human, moving through time." she gestures towards her outstretched hand. "And let us suppose that the river it originated from represents the vast universe of infinite time."
"With a small stone such as this one, a strong enough current can send it moving along the bottom of a riverbed with its brethren. It will only move with the current in an undisturbed natural environment, just as how living beings have, historically, only been able to move forwards with the flow of time."
"Now—" the woman rotates the stone such that its flat surface is balanced between the edge of her forefinger and the flat of her thumb, as if she is about to throw a frisbee. "—who here has skipped stones before?"
A handful of hands raise as a murmur of confusion ripples through the hall. The woman looks around in mock disappointment.
"Too busy to indulge in some fun?" she tuts. "Or a lack of a proper childhood, perhaps?"
A wave of laughter.
She continues on. "I will confess, I am not an expert in skipping stones. Far from it, in fact. As a child, I could only make the pebble bounce off the water once, or maybe twice if I was lucky."
"Traveling in a non-linear manner through time is much like skipping a stone. With every jump, you leave one timeline and enter the next; similarly, the stone leaps into the air and hits the water with every skip. The fraction of time it spends touching the water between one leap and the next corresponds to the comparatively miniscule amount of time we humans are currently able to tolerate in a timeline other than our origin." She pauses, allowing herself a moment to catch her breath. "My colleagues and I are currently conducting research in the hopes of expanding that time frame. If any of you are interested in contributing, you know where to find me."
"Now, what do you think happens if this stone is unable to find its way back to the river?"
Silence. The whir of the air conditioning unit and the overburdened squeak of plastic. A brave student raises his hand. The woman points to him.
"Uh, well, I would assume that the stone—or human, in this analogy— would cease to exist in all timelines?" he stutters, hand lowering in uncertainty as he speaks.
She hums, noncommittal. The dream dissolves around her before she can respond.
Fog smothers rolling hills. He walks with no predetermined destination, past empty villages and swathes of green forest. He blinks, floats back to the surface, and he's left the wood for ragged coastline. The air is thinner up at the cliff's edge, sharpening knives in his throat with every breath.
Standing on the precipice between open sea and empty sky, everything seemed to fall away. There was only the whistle of the gentle breeze and the distant crashing of waves against the rocky seashore to accompany Thomas and the endless roar of his thoughts.
Gentle like the first layer of fog on a rainy morning, a heavy weight descends onto him.
Throughout the course of his life, Thomas had wanted various things. As an undergraduate student, he quickly realized the insignificant scope of his known world and wanted to expand the depths of his learned knowledge. As a graduate student, he wanted to make a lasting impact on the scientific community through his research contributions. As a scientist, and an engineer, when new technology ceased to conform to the longstanding rules governing space and time, Thomas had wanted to test the limits of human innovation.
After the beginning of the war, when the realization struck that there was a future he could never grasp with his own two hands, when civilization had fallen and Eclipse had merged with the surviving militants of the Order in the hopes that maybe, a small shred of possibility existed where they could create a perfect future, Thomas stopped wanting.
There was no more room for want, only the necessity of need. He needed the Order to win, and so he would do everything in his power to create such an outcome. His wants had no impact on that all-encompassing mantra. And yet, even standing here, staring at the faint impressions of windmills on the distant horizon, sunlight glimmering on cerulean waves, Thomas wanted Micro.
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Mission Log ██████████
Timeline: ██, ██████, ████, █ █
Objective: See Notes.
Status: In Progress Reassigned
Notes: Operative ██ to be put in immediate rehabilitation. Scans show signs of instability. Do not assign ██ to any further missions. —████
Sometimes, when the forced isolation of his missions becomes too much to bear, the crushing futility of his actions a persistent shadow at his feet, Thomas thinks about death. In the past, before the inception of modern time travel technology, death was a certainty. When someone passed away, you knew for certain that they were never coming back.
In the new age, death became a paradox. Once civilization collapsed from the stress of the war, numbers dwindled, and solo missions foraying into the depths of the tree of timelines became more and more common. An operative could miss one check-in, or two, or even three, and still turn up one day safe and sound to be reintegrated at headquarters. Or they could miss a check-in and never be heard from again. He thinks back to Micro's friends, almost certainly dead. But then again, Micro had survived, hadn't he?
Before the war, scientists had long since debated the effects of a time-travel death. As it turned out, although what was left of the human race could no longer die through natural means, killing would take all the same—just without the bodies as proof. When an operative died in a timeline outside of their home, they simply ceased to exist, and so a disappearance meant a Schrödinger's cat situation: a paradoxical not-quite death. Time was a beast that swallowed them whole.
Was Micro dead? Would Thomas die, too, searching for him?
He knew the answer to the second question, at least. Once, a visiting professor from a world-renowned university had come to give a guest lecture to his graduate class. She had posited the same question. It was only experiencing the effects firsthand that he truly understood her answer. Due to time dilation, he had ceased to age normally, stuck in the body of a man in his mid-twenties, perhaps a mere couple years physically older than he was at the start of the war, despite the decades or even centuries that could have passed since then. However, although his body had ceased to age, his mind had not. His memory would crumble first, and then the rest of him with it. The most lethal killer of the war was not, in fact, any particular person, weapon, or faction. It was time, and the effects of twisting it on the fragile human mind. Naturally, the novelty of time travel meant extended expeditions deep into the outermost branches of timelines. No time jump was ever executed without the certainty of being able to make the journey back. And yet more and more scientists, researchers, and, eventually, operatives, would journey into the unknown and never come back.
No matter how seasoned an operative he was, the extended isolation in a distant timeline he didn't belong to would rot away against the hull of his consciousness, fine grains of sanity swept away by the tides. He would die a slow death, Schrödinger's cat in an open box. An empty ship, burned clean, hollow.
He opens his eyes, and he is lying in an empty, endless field, and he knows he is dreaming. Only in his dreams are his thoughts ever quiet. He blinks lazily at the clear blue sky smudged with the occasional wispy cloud. The grass is soft underneath him and the sun is high but not searing. All in all, it's a pleasant dream.
"—ey. Hey!" He's memorized that voice by now, familiar to him even in this dream world. So he isn't surprised when Micro's face pops into view. He's done something with his hair, tied it up in a short ponytail, and he stares down at Thomas disapprovingly.
"I thought you said you were going to help," he scowls at Thomas in mock annoyance, his frown more of a pout.
Thomas just grins lazily up at him. "But it's so comfortable," he says.
Micro kicks him lightly in the shin. As expected, it doesn't hurt. He feigns pain anyway, just to see Micro's reaction.
"What do you want me to do, anyway?" he finally relents, after Micro makes several unsuccessful attempts to tug him to his feet. He brushes grass off his pants as he heaves himself up. The dream has him both feeling lighter and moving slower, like a film in slow motion.
"Over there, I'll show you," Micro says, pointing into the distance. Thomas tracks the direction of his finger. He's just pointing towards more endless green and continuous blue.
"There's nothing over there," Thomas says.
"I didn't know your eyesight was failing you, already, Mr. Thomas," Micro laughs. "Come on, you'll see." He set towards his destination at a leisurely walk, Thomas falling into step next to him. They don't speak. The grass doesn't crunch underneath their feet. All of a sudden, Thomas realizes how silent this dream is, just the occasional whisper of wind to accompany them on their journey.
He's broken out of his musings by Micro suddenly taking off in a sprint.
"What the—" Thomas sputters, racing to catch up. He's graced with a faint laugh in response. His pace is oddly slow, and he struggles to gain on Micro, whose figure shrinks smaller and smaller into the distant horizon. It's as if Thomas is running through molasses, the air fighting against him with each step.
"Wait—" he tries to say, as he falls more and more behind, but his voice is soundless. Micro is, improbably, already a pinprick in Thomas's vision. Swallowed by the void. The sun is bright and the ground is very, very hard. He looks down. Bleached white tiles stare back.
Thomas's eyes snap open. He's greeted by pitch black and the persistent hum of the temperature control unit. The last vestiges of his dream crumble away as he sits up, slowly, in his cot, feeling as though his body weighs a thousand pounds.
Reality is crushing in its weight, the ache in his chest making it hard to breathe. He fists the blankets around him, wishing it were grass, knuckles white with the need to do something, anything.
When you go to a timeline, you don't see hope, only destruction, Micro had said, in their last ill-fated conversation. He wants to escape; to run at full sprint; to be free. He wants to have hope.
He leaves headquarters for the last time in bits and pieces: footsteps unsteady as he staggers down the hallways, he assigns himself a mission he doesn't remember, smashes his tablet and watches the shards be consumed by the flames of the trash incinerator, steps into the time chamber for the final time. He thinks of blue skies and soft grass as the universe tears him apart.
He finds himself in a cave of ruins, stalactites dripping water from the ceiling onto moss-covered bricks. Flashlight in hand, he walks aimlessly, careful not to slip on the moss-slick stones and cursing himself for not remembering which timeline he'd chosen in his panic-filled daze. He automatically reaches to grab his tablet from his pocket, recalling belatedly that he had trashed it before he left. Well, at least it would take a long time before the Order would be able to track him down, if they even wanted to at all.
He follows the faint sound of trickling water to an underground stream, crisp and freezing cold. The stream widens into a creek into a mini river rushing out of the pinprick of light that is the cave's opening. The light reflects off the water's surface, dappling his skin into a kaleidoscope of color. The currents carry him out into the sun.
He doesn't have anywhere else to go, now, he muses, as he hikes up the side of a lush mountain. His tablet is gone. So is his trigger. He'd had enough common sense to wipe the records of his faux mission, at least. No one knows where he is. He pauses in his ascent up the ridge, panting slightly. The air is thinner up this high, burning his lungs with every ragged inhale. From the ridge, he has a sweeping view of the valley below, steep slopes smoothing out into fields of colorful wildflowers and clear alpine lakes. A memory itches at his brain. He tucks this one alongside it and carries on.
The clouds begin to darken as he descends on the other side of the mountain, eager to reach the base before the beginnings of rain. By the time he's back on flat land, the first drops have fallen and converged into a light drizzle, soaking his hair and sluicing off his coat.
He takes refuge in a forest, the trees so tall they disappear into the haze of fog. Barely any of the rain reaches the forest floor. He sits down against a massive trunk on a bed of leaves, petrichor on damp soil.
He hears the rain stop an indeterminate amount of time later, from where he's sat, lost in thought. Standing up, his legs ache in protest as he braces a hand against the rough bark. Everything feels sharper, clearer, more like he's bound to this world instead of drifting with the tides.
Is this what Micro wanted him to experience? He thinks he might be beginning to understand the appeal—of exploring a world slowly and steadily, of walking without a destination. His journey is likely endless, but it doesn't feel futile. He walks, and walks, and he hopes.
The sky has darkened with the vestiges of sunset as he emerged from the woods, yellow and orange splashed across a giant canvas and brushed to smoothness with a gentle hand. He watches the colors shift and merge with the sun, almost technicolor in their vibrance. He's so awestruck at the sight that he almost misses it. He blinks, looks again—there, on top of a hill. There's a figure in the distance.
He's moving before he can even think.
It's not Micro, he tells himself as he races towards it, muscles groaning, lungs burning. There's no way it's him, he thinks, even as he nears the rise and catches the telltale flash of white hair, heart seizing in a way that has nothing to do with physical exertion.
You're seeing things, it's a mirage in the sunset, so stop thinking, stop hoping—
He reaches the top right as Micro turns around.
Micro looks surprised to see him. He sees it in the slight widening of his eyes, the almost imperceptible crease in his brow.
Something strange is building within Thomas, causing his stomach to leap to his throat and his heart to beat violently against his chest. All of the multitude of monologues and pleas he had composed, ruminated, rehearsed fly out of his mind in one moment. He reaches desperately, but there's only a blank.
Normally, he would be panicking. He should be panicking. Instead, he speaks, and the words flow.
"It's long been proven that probability is calculated differently when time is factored in as a variable. Not to mention juggling with the concept of different infinities. So, with all of that in mind, it's both improbable and impossible that I would ever find you in the infinite expanse of space and time."
He takes a deep breath, mouth dry.
"I looked for you, anyway."
He doesn't want to know the expression that's on Micro's face, so he concentrates on a point somewhere above his left shoulder. "Even when I got close to giving up, I just couldn't. I saw you everywhere. I—" he laughs, a little, "Maybe there really is something wrong with me."
"What I really wanted to say, on that beach, is that you're right. I don't have hope for this war. I don't have hope that any of my missions will ever make a difference."
"Is that what you think?" he hears.
His eyes involuntarily snap up to Micro's face. He's watching Thomas carefully, eyes unreadable.
"You squint your eyes a little when you smile," Thomas says, out of the blue, instead of answering. "You laugh at your own jokes, even if they aren't funny. You have atrociously wrong opinions about food. Your safety is secondary to you because you think that if you don't care it won't matter. You don't take yourself seriously enough. You're selfish, and you are human, and if you disappeared out of the blue one day I would follow you to the ends of every universe just to hear the sound of your voice." His voice shakes.
"If there's one thing I have hope for, it's that. Within the span of our brief existence, we live, and we die. I don't want to live the rest of my life without you."
Micro opens and closes his mouth, for once stunned into silence.
All he does is stare at Thomas, unblinking. Thomas stares back. The sun is beginning to set, and Micro's hair is lit ablaze. Absent-mindedly, Thomas begins to memorize the sight of the stray, pale hairs as they turn crimson, then gold. He hopes the memory never fades.
"I don't think that's an if."
Thomas, jolted out of his reverie, disoriented. "What?"
"I said," Micro's cheeks were flushed pink in the sunset. "I don't think that's an if. You'll find me. You always do. You followed me all the way here, didn't you?"
Thomas's heart leaps as Micro turns back towards the sky.
"I'm sorry for everything I said. At first, when I realized I would never see them again, I thought, maybe I'll just find a nice place to die. One with a pretty sunset that they would've wanted to see. But the more I traveled, and the more I saw, the more I started to feel more like a ghost rather than a human. I didn't expect you to reply to my letter at all. I thought it would just be another thing I did to keep pretending that my actions had real consequences, that I was still real."
"I'm glad you responded." Micro turns to Thomas, pokes him on the forehead gently. All Thomas can do is gape at him. His heart feels so full it could burst.
"You missed the main show, though," Micro continues, casually, rocking back on his heels as if he hasn't brought Thomas's world to a standstill and shattered it all at once. "There were dozens of ginormous jellyfish floating through the sky, earlier." He traces an invisible path in the air with one outstretched finger.
Thomas tracks his movement. His thoughts are still sluggish.
Has he been forgiven? He thinks so. He's given a part of himself to Micro and Micro has in return.
Micro. Micro. I'm glad you responded. I'm sorry, too.
Sunset. Hope. Jellyfish floating through the sky.
Jellyfish. For some reason, the last phrase catches in his mind, sounds oddly familiar. Where had he heard it before? Before he can help it, he starts wracking his brain, combing through memories, before one in particular floats languidly to the surface.
Floating jellyfish. Bioluminescent lanterns. Something about a biochemist?
Well, Micro was a biochemist, before, he remembers that much; perhaps that's why he was reminded—
And then the realization hits him.
It's so utterly ridiculous and obvious that he can't stop the laugh from tearing out of him, doubling over from the force. He's almost shaking, giddy. Through teary eyes he can make out Micro's face, visibly torn between stepping back to distance himself from the scene and reaching out in concern.
"You're a genius," he says, gasps, once he's composed himself, his ribs aching. "You fucking idiot."
Micro scoffs, indignant. "Way to be contradictory, Thomas—"
"How badly did you fuck up your time trial research when you first started?"
Micro just stares at him in bewilderment. "I mean, I had no idea what I was doing, so it was pretty bad, yeah, but what—"
"This world, Micro. It's yours." Thomas sweeps out an arm, gestures to the grass and the empty sky. "It's a wonderful, spectacular, failed experiment that you created."
Micro stares harder, tracks his movements with reluctant keenness. He's stumbling over half-assed protests but he can't help his mouth from forming an unwillingly growing smile.
"That's—"
"I will admit, though," Thomas interrupts. "I only know one biochemist, so my hypothesis might be unfounded." He brings his hand back down, reaches out to Micro, palm up. "But, well, if there's anyone who could create this, it's you."
Micro shakes his head, smiling. "Does it matter?"
No, not in the grand scheme of things. The timeline will simply continue to exist, like all the others, regardless of a grand revelation by two insignificant beings in a vast, empty universe.
Still—
"Does it matter to you?"
Micro takes his hand.
Time stops, and from it another day blooms anew.
mcrspr123: Hey Snowbird, it's Thomas. I had to borrow a friend's tablet to send this, so ignore the random user. You probably know by now, but I'm not a part of the Order anymore, and I don't plan on coming back. We used to joke about never being able to take breaks nor being able to enjoy them when we did chance upon them because of the stress, but, now having taken my first real break in who knows how long, it's safe to say that nothing beats the real thing. You should try it one day. Maybe not permanently, but you should pay me a visit, at least. Or us, actually. There's someone I'd like you to meet. Maybe bring Flux along too, him and his situationship (?) boyfriend (??) desperately need couples counseling. Bring Gray, too, I know she'd love it here and she'll be overjoyed to tag along. And she's better at counseling than I ever will be. That being said, please do not under any circumstance bring Kanukei. Also—I know it's mostly thanks to you that my peaceful retirement hasn't been interrupted by assassins breaking down my door in the middle of the night, so thanks for that. There's a lot more I should thank you for, too, but this message is getting too long already and I'd rather say those words in person. I'll say it here, first, though: You've always been a great friend.
mcrspr123: img91.png
