I left Alice with a heavier heart than I'd arrived with. I could understand what she was saying, and if I were in her shoes, I'd probably be right there with her. Power to the people and all that, but it wasn't like I could democratize having a Shadow realm passage to a liminal space that contained a door to the outside world. I couldn't send Sori around to explain to 100,00 people the state of things and how to escape. Or at least, I didn't trust that Sori wouldn't go around making outlandish claims and generally adding more confusion and anarchy than he resolved. For better or worse, I had the only tools of escape for the town, and, like Alice, I didn't trust anybody else with that much power, even if I could give it away.

Doing my best to keep out of sight, I began making my way to the Filton, walking in ditches and taking alleys and side streets to avoid as much attention as possible.

Whether or not I could empathize with Alice, I couldn't agree with her solution—at least not all of it. Grouping people up in combinations that let them piece together their memories and lean on one another for support would make spreading information much easier. The problem would be getting those people to then prioritize communication over saving the same people over and over with little to no lasting gain.

Maybe I could modify my pyramid scheme so that, as people earned passage out, they could gift that 'ticket' to someone else. I'd have less turnover that way, and my recruits would still be able to save their friends and family.

For any of this to really be effective, I'd need to be able to change spawn points. My recruits would at least need to spawn near each other, as would anyone they recruited. I was going to need at least 10,000 memory crystals for the people that would gather the rest of the town. Even if I could get by with fewer, it was time to start collecting. I'd told Alice we'd begin evacuation in 23 weeks. That would mean killing more than 400 monsters a week. Taking the memory crystals didn't stop the monsters from respawning, so I could just kill the same 60 or 70 monsters in each loop. Once I got a few recruits, things should go smoother. Still, I couldn't ignore the possibility that, between Sori, the Wisps, and other unknown dangers, I might lose more time.

I wouldn't have trouble finding that many monsters, fortunately or unfortunately, but killing four or five hundred monsters per week would either require help or constant effort. I'd also have to be selective about my targets—or upgrade my weaponry—because I doubted my sawed-off shotgun was up to the task of killing dozens of monsters a day even if I had the ammo, which I didn't.

I had to cut off my line of reasoning. The task was daunting, and the logistics were just a reminder of how out of my depth I was. I'd need help both to collect people for evacuation and to hunt trauma monsters for their crystals. Of course, I'd already known that and had been in the process of recruiting a dozen people by way of Luke and his patrons. I'd be less irritated with Alice if she hadn't decided to go behind my back to take my own people—well, prospective people. Then again, maybe I was reading too much into what she said. After all, Alice was the only one of the bunch who kept all her memories. Just because she said they were doing it one way didn't mean that was really their stance—or that I couldn't change their minds.

Since I'd been going the scenic route to the Filton, I wasn't that far away from Luke's bar.

I should stop by to check the results of Alice's memory types discovery, see if it's really worth organizing future recruits into small groups.

It wasn't that I doubted Alice's breakthrough necessarily, but she'd hardly be the first person to see grand opportunity in a pipe dream.

Today was pretty much a wash anyway, so even if Luke and them were fully on board with Alice's plan of saving the people with the most immediate needs rather than planning for the bigger looming problem, I wouldn't have lost much. I was pretty sure I'd have time to both check on the bar and have a conversation with Hands about Nia. If there was any time left after that, I'd collect supplies and kill monsters.

I hadn't thought to ask Alice how she knew who had which type of memory. Then again, it shouldn't be that hard to figure out now that she did the hard part of finding the pattern. The categories seemed to be emotions, facts, tropes, and muscle memory—or at least that was my layman's takeaway. Hopefully, that would be close enough for me to form groups.

Some of them should be obvious, like Dalia's muscle memory. Although, not everyone would sit down to learn a new skill during the apocalypse. Still, there should be signs.

In retrospect, Jessica's and Denis's emotional reactions to me fit pretty neatly into emotional conditioning. I wondered about the ethics of trying to inspire some strong emotion that could act as a signal in future loops. For better or worse, my monstrous appearance made that more of a likelihood than a necessary psychological experiment.

Then there were people like Craig who always knew I was coming and could almost predict it. His was more challenging to be sure about. It could be he remembered something happened at a specific time, which would make it semantic memory—remembering facts—but I was leaning toward trope memory; Alice called it episodic memory. It seemed like Semantic memories needed a reason to be recalled—a trigger. From what I'd seen, I didn't think Craig needed that prompt. Instead, he anticipated the event itself, like waiting for a jump scare.

Alice, on the other hand, knew me as Oberon even when she didn't remember actually meeting. So, I should expect someone retaining semantic memories to have that kind of disconnect between their knowledge and where that knowledge came from.

Luke was another hard one to tell; he seemed to more or less trust me, but I also knew he retained memories of the Kaiju, at least to an extent. My guess was that he also had episodic/trope memories. He remembered me as an ally and that there would be a big-bad to face.

Of course, even before Alice made her discovery about memories, one of the reasons I'd started going to his bar was that people were already talking and recreating their patchy memories. So either Alice's insights weren't of much value, or Luke's people wouldn't have any trouble remembering they'd disagreed with my course from the start.

I'd hoped that a failed and painful attempt or two to even approach the Kaiju would be enough. I needed them to believe me when I said there wasn't anything we could do, at least not yet, not without more help. That was a possible shortcoming of relying on a group already piecing things together; they were self-organizing and had no reason to trust I knew better.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

I'd wanted to take a group of people who'd started piecing things together and use that understanding to get them on my page. It was looking like it would be better to look for smaller groups that could complement each other's memories with some help from me.

Still, hopefully, I could get a better idea of what-

---=

Mr. Greg reared back on one foot to chuck the dodgeball full force at the 3rd grader in his line of sight. Overkill, to be sure, if he was just trying to knock his target out. At the last second, Mr. Greg pivoted on his foot without ever consciously planning to. His pirouette spun him about, and—without questioning it—he released the dodgeball at a blur in the air. It met a leaping insectile creature the size of a terrier with a squeal. It had been inches away from pouncing on one of his charges.

"Crap!" Mr. Greg spat out the school-allowed curse by habit. "Everybody, get behind me, and give me your balls—one at a time, Steven!" Mr. Greg said as Steven threw two dodgeballs his way, joining a third already bounced over from other students. Experienced P.E. teacher that Mr. Greg was, he brought each under his control with a bounce before briefly stepping on the final one to bring it to a stop by his foot. Swinging a leg back, he booted one dodgeball across the court and directly into the face of the recovering monster.

"Mr. Greg! What is it!?" One of the young students managed to ask through the screams of panic.

"Target practice," Mr. Greg said. "And an object lesson in why the face is off limits in dodgeball." With that, he whipped another ball at the monster, knocking it off its feet again. “Stay here,” he said as he began walking forward. He had one ball left, but with a gesture, he directed another student, Abby, to bounce over a second.

The pale-green rad-roach-like creature buzzed its wings and regained its feet, its antenna shivering like a man shaking his head after a hard blow. Its eyes stared vacantly at Mr. Greg, but when the gym teacher reared back for another throw, it hopped out of the way. Unfortunately for the creature, this wasn't Mr. Greg's first go at this moment, even if he had no explicit memories of it; his muscles knew what to do, and his eyes knew where to aim.

The ball bounced off the wall behind the giant bug, and before the creature could regain its footing from its dodge, the ball struck it in the thorax—or whatever the bug butt is called— and sent it tumbling tail over teakettle, landing once again on its back.

Seeing an opportunity, Mr. Greg charged forward, his last ball ready to disorient the bug again if it regained its footing. He reached the monster before it could react, however, and there was nothing it could do to stop the gym teacher from long jumping and landing squarely on its head, feet together and planted. In the way of bugs, it didn't immediately stop thrashing, but Mr. Greg leaped away the next moment and made sure the students were all clear.

At first glance, the gym was empty of other monsters, that was until Mr. Greg glanced up. He didn't know when it had happened, but pale-green—almost white— bug monsters had swarmed across the ceiling. He only noticed when one of his female students pointed at the ceiling and screamed.

It was at that moment that Mrs. Block shouldered through the swinging doors at one end. "This way, students, Mr. Greg. We're gathering everyone together in the cafeteria." She said calmly, unconcernedly glancing at the ceiling. "Best hurry. By my memory, we have only moments before they start raining down on everyone. Don't bother with single file, but no pushing. No one passes me, no one lags behind Mr. Greg. Mr. Greg, I brought you an ax; watch our backs, will you."

Mr. Greg wasn't about to argue, but he'd prefer something with more range than an ax. For one, if they got past him, he'd be charging through students swinging an ax. On a more personal level, he just didn't like bugs and would prefer not letting them so close. Still, as Mrs. Block tossed him the ax and the wooden handle struck his palm, there was something that felt right about it.

"Right," Mr. Greg said, herding students in front of him and out the swinging double doors, holding the strangely familiar ax shaft in two hands. "I'll guard the rear. What about you, though? We could raid the sporting goods closet and grab some bats."

"Unfortunately, that closet is a death trap. Stick close; we'll be moving fast. Everyone grab the hand of the person to your right and stay between us. I promise you'll be fine."

"How do you know?" one 3rd grader asked.

"Because there is nothing I'm more familiar with than this moment right here, right now. You can trust me. Now, then, here we go. Mr. Greg, incoming in 25 seconds."

Mrs. Block was a sixty-year-old woman, but she coached the girl's track and field, so he shouldn't be surprised she could speed walk down the hallway. At the back of the herd of students, George jogged to keep up, weaving back and forth, eyes searching for any danger that might rear its head, mentally counting down the seconds to the attack Mrs. Block predicted. He didn't know why she was so certain, but Mr. Greg didn't feel self-conscious when people knew what he didn't. Nobody could know everything. He'd learned to trust Mrs. Block and most of the teachers he worked with long ago.

As his countdown approached zero, Mr. Greg's eyes darted about, his ears perked up for any sound.

"Now." Mrs. Block said, and at that moment, the drop ceiling crumbled over the students' heads. With a roar, Mr. Greg broke the lines of held hands like a game of Red Rover and swung the ax over the heads of the students, parallel to the ground, and intersected with the dropping bug. The edge bit through the shell—carapace?—and sent bug guts splattering against the hall's lockers.

The children screamed and would have panicked, except Mrs. Block spoke up. "Inside voices students, and resume hand-holding. I told you, we'll protect you."

----=

---=-

-memory types were—What the fuck? My mind scrambled to catch up. I'd suddenly been somewhere else, a passive observer watching events unfold. Just as suddenly, I was back in my body, which I could only tell by the blue glow of my fur that lit up the space around me. Though it didn't feel like any time had passed, I was inexplicably in a dark closet.