Revol? Is that you? No. No, this is me. I’m… what happened? I feel him, feel you, feel myself. I was so content with how things were. I had him, the perfect person for me, and we were indestructible. Do you see how? We died, he and I, after living dangerous lives on completely different worlds, with no more than a loos thread of one-night stands to tease us with a glimpse of intimacy. And then the fingerprints of our souls were lifted and pressed into clouds of foreign particles, and beyond the scope of miracles we came to life. But is that the miracle? Or was the miracle not the burst of endorphins shared when a man named Perception asked me if I would fight a war with him, and I was shown my space in that shared room with him, my beautiful backwards Lover.
So many miracles. Too many miracles. I’m surrounded by so many of them that I sometimes want to hide from them, hide from belief, hide from religion, hide from science, hide from philosophy. And when I want to hide, there you are, putting a blanket over me and telling everyone that you saw me somewhere else, and that if they hurry, they might catch me. You are space and you are time, and you are the tether in between. And you are a stranger. I have never seen you, but that’s only because I’m blind. I’m a naked mole rat on a cosmic scale, a drifting amnesiac on a constant loop of recall and reset.
So tell me. Do you love me like I love you?
I love you, Aster. I love you, Cat. But we can’t be together with the future we both have in store. If only we could be like Reev and Ru, or Cat and Aster. This limbo is killing me, and I have to keep my feelings inside, but I don’t want any other man talking to you. I’ll fight them. I’ll fight them all. Any woman who talks to you, I’ll fight them. I only pretend to like other men so people won’t guess. It wasn’t fair, pairing the eight of you together. If only all of you could be like Ru and Reev, or Imogen and me. She was my sister you see, and it wasn’t till after she was gone that I believed.
What can compare to this? There’s no such thing as love when we’re all apart.
Cap, you hide it well, you’re affection for Ishtar. She looks young, and maybe you look a little older, but Cat, Cap and you and I and Ru and Ish, we’re all, you know, different. I feel it now. We all do. We’re back where we were. Back what we are. Are you hungry? I’m hungry. Let’s go get something to eat. Prowling through the woods... Mmm, I could really go for some UV light right about now. UV stew, baby!
I feel myself regressing. I feel myself devolving. I feel myself... no, I don’t. We don’t remember what’s it like. This is space and this is everything, and if we remember anything it’s the pain after the meal. Gorging on rich deliciousness. Gorging on energy. Gorging on life. We remember being yelled at, and then being hurt. And we can say ‘we’ now because we got hurt so bad we became I, and you became I, and I became I. Swimming through the water, the parental light, sun’s rays, son’s rays, a daughter born at dawn. The more it hurts the more we I. The more it hurts the harder we get. The scarier it gets the stronger we get. The madder we get the more we feel. The more we feel, the more we I, the more you do and the more I try. The tougher it gets the meaner it gets the more times we die the more we get grounded in this world. Which world? Each world.
Ru, that you?
Euk?
Bae! I thought I’d never see you again! I came looking for you, sweetie! How are you? Have you really been floating around out here all this time? Ru? Oh no. Ru, you’re hurt. Reev! She needs you!
I got her.
Reev, you’re here!
Yeah, Forge. I came after you guys.
They destroyed the ship?
Yeah.
Oh no. Speck...
Yeah.
-----------------------------------
Revol sat there in the cockpit, holding the thermos. He felt them all. They were screaming. And he felt Ru, but she was far away and barely whimpering. Outside the angels fought, and the stars were bleeding. A wing of six ifreet fighters strafed H1 and there was nothing Reev could do but turn back around and get as close to the Verge as he could. He couldn’t figure why he jumped towards a system occupied by Orak’s forces. He felt some sort of calling, like the coordinates just made sense, and he was heading home. And when he came out of the wormhole, he felt the radiance of all the Harbingers reaching for him. And then he was hit. So he ran. H1 made it most of the way, but the hull integrity was compromised, and soon raw Aether was filling the ship. When that happens, you’re done.
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There was no more thermos now. They were all primordial photons. But at least they were together. The sad thing was, Reev knew where they were. But even more troubling than that was that he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d always been there. He watched the others swirling and writhing, and after a while he was able to tell them apart. Then he heard one of them speak and had he a mouth he would have kissed her, as it was his Ru Bear.
“Ru, I know you can... hear? Whatever. This is gonna suck, but it has to happen.”
And he sent a blast of cold heat into her, making her mad but helping her form.
“That was quick. You’ve done it before, I take it.”
She was crying. “They kept chasing me.”
“Oh, Ru. Baby...” his form solidified, “come here.”
Floating through the weird sky of a weird plane, the two armored lovers held each other.
“Where...”
They turned. Cat’s face was forming, but it was made of strings.
“Put a skullfort on,” Reev said. “It helps. For some reason. Really makes no sense. No damn sense at all. But, if you make a skullfort, it will be easier for you to make another face... out of light... in space.”
Ru laughed weakly, and Revol held her a little tighter.
Cat grunted, and for a second a visor and crest started to appear, but he quickly dispersed, and for a long time they couldn’t get him to come back into any recognizable shape. It went the same with the others, and after a while Revol began to fear that he might figure out how long they’d been in that state, and he didn’t think he could take it. So he and Ru floated while the others drifted in pain, and Ru cried out the horrors she’d been through. She stopped one day, or night, and looked at him. He could see her eyes, glowing as they had before, and then her face glanced down and she slept in his arms. A little cyan star blinked at him, the only familiar thing that side of the Verge.
But it wasn’t a star, he noticed.
“Hey,” he said. She woke.
“Wow. I needed that. I must have slept for a week.”
“Longer.”
“Have the others taken shape yet?”
“No. Hey, guys. Shape up, will ya!”
“It’s hard to do it here. Unless already have on our side, I don’t even think it can be done.”
“It can.”
She furrowed her brow. “How do you know?”
Revol shrugged. “Sol did it.”
“What?”
“Think about it.”
“You’re right. You’re right. Did he want this to happen?”
“I don’t know. I keep changing my mind. So uhm, who’s that?” He nodded towards the cyan star.
Ru turned around, then reached back for his hands and wrapped them around her waist. “That’s Netz. She’s my friend.”
“Hey Netz.”
The cyan star blinked. “Hey. Ru’s told me about you guys.”
“Cool. So, what are you?”
Netz laughed. She had a sweet voice like a bell. “I’m like you. But I was made by humans.”
“And we were made by...”
“Accident.”
“Huh. Well, sorry.”
Both the girls laughed.
“Don’t you... take... anything... seriously?”
Reev and Ru both looked over their shoulders.
“Hey buddy,” said Revol.
Cat was struggling to form his face again, but this time inside a skullfort. He grunted, wheezed, then was mist again.
“They came across this way,” Ru said to Netz. “Do you think you can help them?”
“I’ll give it a whirl.”
“Who is that?” asked Euk. From her voice, it was clear she was hurting awfully. The most shape she could manage was her lips.
Behind her was Forge. He’d been slowly, quietly, learning how to move. But he hadn’t taken form. He was just exploring his new nature, like he was a new device to tinker with. Aster and Ish were mingling together, like two kittens who’d strayed too far from their litter.
“I’m Netz,” said Netz. “Don’t push yourselves too hard. This is going to take some time. For now, it’s best you just rest and get a feel for what it’s like without a body before you try to make one.”
Revol felt his throat tighten, and soon he was crying. Ru held him as he’d held her.
“Yeah,” said Netz, “been a lot of that going around lately. And there’’ll be more. I wish I had something to say to cheer all of you up, but as you can see...” she sent a swath of light in a flaring arch. The space they were in was a maelstrom of murky clouds bent and twisted like mangled corpses. “... you’ve come to a pretty messed up place.”
Reev patted Ru on the back to let her know he was okay. She let go, and they held hands as they floated away from the group. They were in a cosmic wasteland, and they could feel this universe weeping into its own sores.
“Welcome to Ulro,” said Netz.