None of the humans noticed as Tek tightened the last screw into place. It didn’t really need her help, but it seemed somehow appropriate. This was her first real installation on a planet other than Earth, after all; it felt like she should be involved.
She stepped back and looked at the transmitter closely. It was a really simple piece of technology, essentially just a repeater for a local network that would only cover a little beyond the building it was installed in, but it was still the start of her first shrine, more or less. Tek knew this one was simply a noble showing off his wealth by adding the ability to call a specific servant to his side from anywhere (a task that could have been handled at least half a dozen other ways), but it was a start.
In many ways, she’d have preferred the one across town to be first; it was adding lighting to a building, which had some fun historical resonances. This one was a simpler installation, though, so-
Tek froze. Something had just changed on Earth. Something important. She couldn’t tell what it was from here, but she could feel …
No, that didn’t make any sense at all. Why would everything have to reboot at the same time? She had to be imagining things, right?
Tek flashed back to Earth, far more worried about events there than anything happening elsewhere now. As it turned out, not everything had rebooted. That feeling was an artifact of the fact that Tek’s space station performed a power cycle.
It was, however, a lot. Almost everything that ran off battery power on the entire planet seemed to have rebooted while Tek wasn’t watching. It was enough to make her want to swear; this was not supposed to happen!
Tek reached out to start diagnosing what happened.
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Human tapped the dark eye of her nemesis. “Tek? Can I get some help here? I think this thing is broken.”
She still hadn’t figured out exactly what the “MANIC” was actually checking, but she had figured out that it didn’t do anything at all like what the people who made it said it did. It didn’t measure people’s Tiers at all; instead, it did something with the local mana level and how it interacted with something. Human couldn’t tell what.
What she could tell was that it wasn’t something that was common on other human planets. She’d tested. It was only here. Only now it was reporting “Tier Fifteen” before it buzzed and now said “rebooting.”
“I’m a little busy,” Tek’s voice came from the device. “So if it’s just the fact that it’s rebooting, so is everything else, it’ll be fine.”
“No, it’s giving absolutely crazy answers too,” Human countered. “The planet isn’t Tier Fifteen - oh, it says Twelve now. What is it doing?”
“It says what?” A warm shoulder brushed Human’s arm before Tek’s glove-covered hand tapped the screen and started moving through the settings.
Human wished Tek would give a little more warning before she just appeared, but she didn’t seem to understand what Human meant when she asked for that. “You asked for help, right?” was not a good answer to “Do you have to appear next to me?”
“Tier Thirteen,” Tek answered her own question. “That doesn’t make any sense. No, wait. What if - you know, I think I know what this thing measures.”
“What.” Human couldn’t quite make it a question. She’d been trying to figure that out … admittedly infrequently … for months now. Tek was available only for occasional… what did Death call it? Tek Support? … and now she knew the answer? “You couldn’t have mentioned that earlier?”
Tek grinned at Human. “Didn’t know what it was ‘til now. You see, something big just happened. Something really big. Big enough to trip the overcurrent protection on all sorts of electronics but not burn most of them out. And that just doesn’t happen; that’s not how it works. Anything that big should have -”
Tek stopped and waved a hand high up in the air. Her voice was high and excited and got faster and faster the more she spoke. “Details. You don’t need the details. It was worldwide and all over the world that’s exactly what it did. Oh, a few things broke, but they were going to break soon anyway, probably. I’m still mapping the damage; there does seem to be a rise in concentration - doesn’t matter. So. This thing noticed it and it measures something to do with magic. That means it’s measuring an electromagical reaction! Not just a secondary effect, I already filtered those out, but an actual direct reaction. And that means I can use it to figure out where this came from!”
Human blinked at Tek. She thought she understood what the short girl in goggles was saying. “Uh, okay?”
“Thanks!” Tek vanished.
Human sighed. She’d forgotten that “okay” meant “yes” as well as “I understand.” At least this meant she’d be able to get something useful out of Tek soon. She shouted, “Make sure you bring it back with an explanation!”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
She couldn’t trade away something she didn’t have, after all, and this definitely sounded like useful trade goods once she understood what it really did.
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Clattering brought Russ to his feet and across the room almost immediately. He halted in the doorway and stared. Phoebe stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by at least a dozen curse-breaking balls. They were all she’d been working on for months now, yet she didn’t seem to mind that they’d fallen to the floor.
A smile spread tentatively across Phoebe’s face as she looked up at her husband. “It’s gone. I hadn’t realized how much weight it still had.”
“It?” Russ couldn’t help the hope that filled his voice at her words. Her obsession was better than her earlier depression, but it still wasn’t good for their relationship. He missed the woman he’d loved for most of his adult life, the woman he’d married and raised two children with. He could think of only one “it” that she would be talking about, but he wasn’t sure how much weight he could put into that hope yet.
“The curse,” Phoebe confirmed. “It’s gone. I think it’s completely gone. For everyone.”
Russ grinned and swept Phoebe up in a hug. She returned it with more strength than he’d felt from her since the curse was revealed. “That’s great news. You know, I’ve been thinking; I’m really getting too old to be chasing magical criminals…”
Russ knew that, realistically, he couldn’t just step down. The new people weren’t really quite ready. Quincy was getting close, but he needed to train more than just her.
He could, however, limit how often he got involved. He’d already started rejecting some cases that didn’t really need him; he could reject more. He’d probably end up working at least part time for a few more years, but if Phoebe was finally ready to slow down, he wanted to be able to slow down with her.
Maybe they’d even do some of that travel they’d talked about. Travel that didn’t involve magical crime sounded nice.
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Serenity rubbed his forehead. He hurt.
That didn’t mean he could stop, however. Apollyon was dead, which meant everything was over, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have things he had to do. He still had to clean up that ritual made of ley lines. Perhaps he’d just break the crystals that anchored it, now that Apollyon wasn’t around to notice. That would probably be enough. He really wanted to know how the other man had managed to move ley lines, but unless he found that written down somewhere he’d have to figure that out for himself. At least he had time now.
Fixing the ley lines wouldn’t deal with the massive numbers of demons that had been released on Earth in the past two or three years, though. Serenity had no idea what he’d do about that. Apollyon wouldn’t be able to summon more, but the knowledge was out there now.
The first step was to make sure that the people here wouldn’t be summoning more. A lot of demons seemed to be coming out of Locust Farms; were they really all summoned by Apollyon? If they weren’t, Serenity needed to do something about that.
The first thing to do was to search Apollyon’s rooms. Surely there was some information here. If he had a magical library, that would be awesome, but it was the mundane information that Serenity needed first.
“Serenity?” The voice came from near the ceiling.
Serenity looked up and saw a floating young woman dressed in obvious steampunk garb. He grinned at her. “Tek. What’s up?”
“It is you! I thought so!” Tek floated to the ground. “Even if you are two people tall, you still look like you. Plus, no one else would use that awful ancient phrase just because I’m flying.”
Serenity silently admitted to himself that the pun hadn’t even occurred to him. He wasn’t going to admit that to Tek, though. “Seriously, what brought you here? I don’t think the tech I’ve seen in this area is even close to advanced enough to draw your interest.”
Tek waved an oversized phone at Serenity. Well, it looked oversized in her hands; compared to Serenity’s current hands, it was probably not large enough. “Did you do something that affected thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people across the planet about an hour ago? It seems to have originated here.”
“No?” Serenity glanced back towards where Apollyon’s body lay a couple of rooms away. “At least, not unless killing Apollyon did something. The timing’s about right?”
Tek followed Serenity’s gaze with her eyes then her feet. When she reached the room Apollyon’s body was in, she stopped and glanced between it and Serenity. “Huh. He looks sort of like a really skinny red wingless version of you.”
Serenity looked down at Apollyon’s body. He wasn’t exactly sure how to answer that, so he decided to try for humor. “That’s not exactly flattering.”
“Oh, but it is. I’m pretty sure he could pass as a model if he weren’t red. Skinny’s all the rage, you know?” Tek waved the oversized phone at Apollyon, but she couldn’t help glancing up at Serenity. Whatever expression he had must have been hilarious, because Tek immediately chortled.
Serenity couldn’t help joining in Tek’s laughter. This was honestly a huge relief; he’d been stressed about Apollyon for months. While he hadn’t cleaned up all of the problems Apollyon created, he didn’t feel like he had to. Making the world a little safer was enough; Earth was just going to have to deal with a little demon infestation issue. He couldn’t solve that on his own even if he wanted to, and truthfully he didn’t really want to.
Even better, although this wasn’t the last threat Earth would face, it was the last one that he felt weighed on him from the original timeline. Wasn’t it?
The Voice had refused to say previously, but maybe it would now. He’d feel a lot better if it really was all over. Voice? Was Apollyon the reason Earth was destroyed in the previous timeline? Or was it from the planet Tiering up too fast? Can you tell me now?
The reason for Earth’s destruction in that timeline is unknown.
Serenity wasn’t certain if that was a good response or not.
However, recent information suggests an increased probability of an alternative threat.
Serenity took back his earlier optimism. It definitely wasn’t a good response. What threat?
The cause is still under investigation. Any information would be potentially misleading at this point.
Aargh.
END OF ARC 11