I left the ruins after a period of melancholic watching. I could maybe have gotten over there, though I had no idea about the distance. I was sure there was some math I could do to guess its distance based on the height of the pyramid, but I would rather not try and puzzle it out. Because even if I could get there, I wouldn’t meet the deadline the collector had let slip to get off the planet.

So I made my way back, avoiding the spots in the air that gave me the feeling of weak points, and following the direction each time she let out a beep inside my head.

The feeling was even weirder than when I was inside the compound. There were no corners to anything, they simply were. In the air and in all manner of directions. But no dogs came, no hounds came from any non-existent corners, and no great, beastly thing pulled itself from the weak points in the air, covered in horrible ooze and reeking of synesthesia.

It still made me weary; sometimes, I would spot one, and a hand would move towards a gun, only for me to rapidly abort the motion.

I pushed myself, moving my feet as well as I could as I ran. My feet moved over the coarse, uneven sandy soil, each footstep from the springy shoes kicking up plumes of dust as I kicked off and leaving slight craters as my weight pushed down when my feet landed.

I looked down, I felt my stomach lurch, my body brace and a spike of adrenaline kick off in my head. I closed my eyes and breathed, lifting my head before opening them.

“Gah, I hate that. As much as it pumps me up its starting to makes me want to puke. Its like falling forward every time I look down.”

“Well, what do you think running is?” Lilly chimed, before continuing with, “And stop looking down if its making you feel sick. You can just focus forward instead of down to avoid puuuking.”

“Running is more than just falling forward, its… Well ok, I guess its kind of falling forward. And I can't just look ahead… What if I trip on something? I would turn into a smear of meberry jam,” I complained.

“Then don’t trip. What are you going to trip on anyways? A comedically placed bone? There’s nothing here… OK well, there is stuff here, but it's not in three-dimensional space, and you can’t trip on a fourth-dimensional tree branch, no mater how close to our three dimensions it is.”

I thought about it for a few moments, chewing it over in my head.

Not the banter on if I could or could not trip on a tree branch, the it I was thinking about was time. Right now, it was all coming back to time.

I was travelling fast. Very fast. I was going fast enough that I shouldn’t be able to do it by foot. If, I could run this fast, and the keyword was if, my legs would have been cramping and my lungs screaming. I would have probably destroyed whatever I called shoes, and I would have been pulping my feet.

But the shoes, whatever they were made of, were tough, and their effects were well worth the detour. I was going several times my top running speed, hell, several times the speed I could sprint, and I was doing it with the same effort it took to keep up a brisk jog.

Each time my foot hit the ground, the shoe sucked up as much kinetic energy as I exerted, as well as some of the energy it got from my reactor, and then it reflected it back into the ground. I was like every time I took a step, I gave off the energy it took to jump. We had to lower my speed because my weight was too low and my drag too high, I could run fast enough to awkwardly fly.

Or ‘fly’ for long enough to crash hard into the ground on my wounded leg.

I had to do my best not to flinch as I ran.

Anyway, the point was that I was going at a quick clip… And I still didn’t know if I would make it in time.

Because I couldn’t travel as fast as on my bike.

And then I closed that line of thought and just pushed on, trying to move faster, get closer to the ground, and lessen my forward-facing surface area. There was nothing that thought could give me but anxiety.

And then my mind snapped to her words, and be it my paranoia or something else, I asked her, “Trees? You can see trees?”

I could feel a sensation creep over me, and it reflected in my tone. She picked it up immediately, bless her.

She must have because she was confused when she replied, “What?”

On the edge of an idea, I practically snapped out, my words sounding more like panic than anticipation.

“You mentioned branches, can you see or detect a bunch of trees or whatever?”

“Well, I can sense something that looks like trees… yeah, yeah, I can. I don’t get what the deal with that is…”

I started thinking, and then I gave that job to Lilly instead, “Why! Can you figure out why?”

Lilly stuttered, and not the way she sometimes did where she sounded like a golem, but instead out of confusion.

“Wha- b- Wh- Why? Why does this matter? And I don’t know? Its… Like an outline? Like something pressing into plastic. I don’t know if there are any trees.”

“Because of the Junkers there!” I practically yelled, “I landed in a forest!”

“I didn’t know that!” she shouted back in surprise, “Please calm down! I can’t read your mind, please explain!”

My mind blinked as the information clicked together, and I took a few breaths. Putting together my thoughts before I answered her.

“When I landed,” I started, “It was in a forest.”

“OK… please continue because I don’t need to read your mind to figure out there’s more.”

“Well… If you can see a tree… and there's more distance between us and the ship than is possible… maybe there's something going on with space.”

I didn’t know if I was even making sense because the idea was stitched together from duct tape, glue and the remains of my hopes and dreams.

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Lilly wasn’t picking up what I was putting down, and while it was frustrating, I didn’t take it out on her.

“So you landed in the forest, what about it? There is obviously some kind of distortion in space, but what are you getting at?”

I thought again for a few moments, and on instinct, I leaned into one way of explaining it.

“There were multiple changes in scenery. If there were multiple changes, then maybe the reason is because the space is warped, like down in the facility. If you see trees or their outline or whatever, then maybe we can find some kind of shortcut to the place with the trees, does that make sense?”

I crossed my mental fingers that I had said the right thing because I didn’t know if I had.

Lilly hummed in my head, clearly turning it over and over in her head or in my head? In her head, that was in my head.

“Well… I think I get where you’re going with it. Oh, one moment,” she said, only for a new pinging to go off.

I changed direction to follow it while she continued, “I can see what you’re talking about, if space is folded up, maybe you can cut a corner and get ‘closer’ to your ship quicker, right?”

I almost nodded but stopped before I could and just agreed verbally, “Yes, that’s what I’m thinking. You guided me before, can you find a shorter route?”

“OK, we’re on the same page, good… I don’t think I can, though is the only problem. First of all, I’m relying on the thing in your pocket to find the closest route to your ship. And based on how it’s finding it, if there was a shorter route it would find it. The closest open route is the current one; the only way out is forward.”

Was it?

That felt like the wrong answer, and it took a bit for the reason why to click into place.

It felt wrong, in the same way, I could tell something I was working with was wrong. The same way I could tell a part or the whine of a machine was wrong. The same way the information genetically passed down to me could tell right from wrong.

“Hey… you mentioned those… bio-resonant, talent thingy’s. Can you compare them? Compare the difference between how they work or whatever?”

I was answered by some wind and the sound of sand below my feet for a few moments before Lilly said, almost cautiously, “Yes?”

“Is the one I got from the dog thing acting the same way as my talents, the ones that are giving me information?”

She stopped, considering for much longer than before. The pause was long, multiple minutes long. Only interrupted by my own breathing as I tried exerting myself to run faster. The awkward shape is harder to hold than the jog.

I was starting to sweat when she answered maybe four eternity’s later.

“There are parts that are acting similarly, yes. Though I caution that I can’t rigorously confirm that.”

“Ok, thank you for that. The talent is telling me that something about what you said was wrong. And I think it’s related to the weak points. They feel like the walls the hounds were coming out of. If you put both of those together, I think it’s trying to tell me something about those weak points. Next time I see one… I’ll point it out. And if it's near a tree, I’ll try and figure out if I can go through.”

“Oh god… Why? I can’t confirm what dangers that could do to you. Please rethink this.”

I slowed my pace as well as I could, bleeding off some energy over the course of a few steps before returning to a jog.

“Lilly, how long until the deadline?”

“A few hours,” she said.

“No, hiding it from me,” I insisted, “How long?”

“We have close to two hours, a little less,” she said quickly, following it with, “But I’m sure we can make it on foot. It couldn’t have taken that long.”

“It took close to an hour, if not longer. And on the straight aways I was going fast on a bike. Were not going as fast on foot, nowhere near it. The shoes are great, don’t get me wrong, but the next segment is on gravel and rock, and I’m liable to break an ankle on it. Tack on take off, getting to altitude, finding our exit point, assuming we even can, and getting out of orbit? I’d put that last part as at least forty minutes, maybe more.”

“I’m sure that we can find a way without using an untested method. You were running faster for a bit there… That was close to-”

The idea of getting trapped on this rock reared it’s head. The fear of this place, for a moment, became too much. The idea of getting trapped on this rock, and starving to death, or getting pulled into the maw of more of those dogs grew too much.

I started babbling.

“Lilly, I can’t get trapped here… I… I won’t be. This place is… unnerving is the least of it. This place freaks me out. I’ve had nightmares of this place for almost a decade. I can’t stay here. Can’t! If you don’t think my math checks out, tell me, but I have to get out of here, and if running wont solve it, then I need to take the risk! I need to!”

Each word I spoke stepped further towards my fear, and it egged me on. By the end, I was barely thinking, I had slowed further, closer to a speed walk than a run, though my breathing hadn’t, I was near panic. Each moment, my mind tried to order itself, martial a calm, but the fear had teeth. I was vulnerable here, and that broke the calm, stopping it from getting its foothold.

Lilly’s answer didn’t help.

“I… I don’t want to see you hurt. That… It’s… God fucking damn it!” she nearly shouted, I think it was the first time she swore, it almost threw me off. “Why can’t you just not take risks? You can’t get offf this rock if you’re dead! You can’t do anything if you’re dead! I can’t keep my promise to you if you’ree dead. I- I- III- I can not willingly let harm come to you!”

She was futzing out again, more like when we had first met. The golem stuttering was back with a vengeance. She was both confused and resolute in her statements the tone bordering on pained. She sounded conflicted.

“Lilly, I need to try. I need to get out of here! I can’t stay here! If I stay here, I will die, whether its slow or fast. I can understand it if you don’t want me to get hurt. But compared to being entombed on this plant, I would say the risk is worth it.”

She stuttered for a moment before she started speaking in a blank tone, more like when she had first met me. It was like she was there one moment and then gone, replaced by something using her voice.

“I- III- Asset protection: Operator asset evaluated at 1200000 credits. The death of an operator is a great loss and should be halted, attempt to reason with your operator if a strategic asset is worth less than this and is likely to result in the operator’s death, for example. If alternative assets are-”

The voice scared me straight, like a cub of cold water poured over my head.

“Lilly?”

She didn’t answer me, the voice that wasn’t her just kept talking.

“Lilly!”

No answer, more pointless rambling about rules, now about an oracle’s job.

I went out on a limb, “Prototype Oracle XA001373487692, please respond.”

The cold voice cut off and answered me with, “Operator.”

“Please go back to being Lilly,” I asked the voice.

“Query: Reload personality matrix ‘Lilly’ Yes or No?”

I paused, not because I didn’t want to but because I had no idea if that was the right answer.

“Repeat Q-”, I hesitated, but as she started talking again, I jerked to my answer.

“Yes?”

“Reloading Personality Matrix ‘Lilly’,” it told me, followed by a series of tones.

I waited, at a dead stop for the tones to stop, fear for my new friend making my hand fidget. Then, abruptly, it stopped.

“Lilly?”

“Hello,” Lilly answered, “Sorry for that. What just happened?”

“You were panicking about me getting hurt, and then you went all monotone,” I told her slowly as if my words might set her off.

She responded, “Were you about to do something that would hurt you again? Damn it, Jacalyn! Don’t get yourself hurt.”

She didn’t mention the monotone, and I couldn’t tell if it was intentional or not.

“Lilly… What was that?” I asked, in a tone reserved for trying to calm a crazy person.

“I… I’m sorry,” she said quietly, “I warned you I was defective.” She whispered it.

She sounded ashamed, a terrible bitter shame that bordered on self-hatred, a poison, which she followed with, “I am sorry to report that I malfunctioned due to a critical error in my internal systems.”

And I didn’t know how to answer that at the moment, so all I said was the first thing I could.

“There’s nothing wrong with that, and there’s nothing wrong with having a little malfunction,” which was a bit of a platitude, so I followed it up with, “I’ve never trusted anything that didn’t break down, it means I can’t get to know it better.”

And for better or worse, I didn’t know, but I hoped it was for better.

I had always preferred machines over people… They were easier to understand. If you broke a part you replaced it. You couldn’t fix a friend, and you couldn’t replace them either. And that scared the shit out of me.