Winter 2022

Allison Fae

The front doors opened and the dulcet tones of some viral song played over the radio in the front lobby of the Scientia building. Allison couldn’t hear it clearly—but it sounded like some old rock track with a familiar guitar riff that she remembered hearing a lot back in this time. Though, the song didn’t come out then...it had come back into popularity for one reason or another and now the radio stations were eyeing it as a new top track.

She guessed there was some clip online that had used the track as its background song which introduced it to a lot of new listeners—and those same listeners were voracious. Searching the song up online and driving up its metrics that anybody in the know just had to incorporate it into absolutely everything. That kind of thing happened all the time back then.

She remembered the excitement that traveled through school halls whenever a new song lit up the masses. Of course, it also completely burnt those who were lukewarm at best to the song and absolutely infuriated those who didn’t care for it—because like it or not they would be listening to it again, and again, and again.

She thought then of herself in this time—how right now she was probably back at Nassau. Were the events of that tragic murder already in play? Something about how things tended to echo across history told her they were, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to confirm. It wasn’t as if she could just simply leave and road-trip off to Maine. Besides, Wynrie had no knowledge of that event after all. Even if she had passing knowledge and Allison was somehow able to traverse the world of memory to her old school, she wouldn’t be able to change things there—only be a witness to her own trauma yet again. That wasn’t something she wished to do.

Allison looked up to see a baby blue sky and a brilliant yellow sun. The sight more than anything froze her to her core. It was something so simple—the hue that humans perceived the sky to be, but it hung almost like a tease for how things used to be. Of course, things back then were not perfect, but nostalgia makes fools of even the mightiest of humanity. One could yearn for environments of abuse’s time past if you were distanced enough and suffering enough in the present.

It might not seem as bad.

That therein lies the folly that leads those to recreate those past traumas in their current self—those that cannot move on and see forward toward a healthier future. Knowing this...it did not help any in her yearning for when things were simpler—but that in of itself was a facsimile, as things were never simpler—she was just ignorant to the complicated facets of life.

A rough clearing of a throat brought her back to herself as she was looking straight at a receptionist on the other side of the door in the lobby. “Well, are you going to be standing there all day and letting the draft in or what?” The woman had a look of annoyance plastered on her face, but it looked forced. Like it was the emotion she was expected to feel instead of the feeling proper.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Allison said, stepping inside as the doors slid closed behind her. “Yeah, I guess I’m just not used to being here...it’s a little crazy that I am.” She hadn’t yet known the method she wanted to attempt—she figured being amazed might play over well than the more forceful and demanding personality.

The woman’s demeanor shifted on a dime, shedding away the mask. She nodded slightly and smiled. Her bright blue eyes were glimmering and it almost didn’t feel real to see someone in a service environment so perky.

“Yeah, I remember being in your shoes. It was about two months ago for me. I thought to myself, Bess, now don’t you get excited. It’s probably just going to be paperwork and people yelling at you all day, but you know what I said when I learned how much I actually made here?”

Allison, a little taken aback at her sudden shift, shook her head. “No...what was that?”

“I said Jeff Goldbum himself could shit on my desk and I’d take it for this paycheck.” She enunciated each syllable with a wag of her finger and a little giggle. “And you know what? I don’t even have to take that...it’s nuts—the things being accomplished here...oh, but look at me. Just talking like I know you. I’m sorry, if anything my problem is a lack of faces around here. The whizzes are typically in the lab or the testing environment. Who were you here to see?”

“Wynrie Herschel,” Allison swallowed, regaining her ground against the strange woman. “I spoke with her on the phone, she said she was going to meet me here.”

“Right, okay, if you want feel free to sit over there and I can page her for you.”

“Oh, no, that’s perfectly fine. She told me she was going to head up around this time. She always seems to know when I show up. Said something about not bothering you.”

“Oh...you know your way around?” The woman seemed to almost be pleading with her—as if Allison’s offer to take even the most menial work away from her job was the greatest of offerings.

Allison could tell she was new at her job and wasn’t exactly confident in acting fully in the role. Anyone more experienced would have fought back and went up her chain of command, but something inside Allison knew the right words to find her weakness. “Yeah, I’ve been round the area here a bit. I was a contractor previously for some of their more hush hush work.”

Anyone else would call the bluff, and yet…

“Oh wow. That’s serious business...can I ask what kind of work it was? I always get curious about the kinds of things they test back there, it’s amazing kind of stuff I hear, but you know how chain of command goes. Nobody tells the messenger what kind of message they’re delivering.”

What kind of message are you delivering? Allison thought on the matter, feeling like it didn’t matter so much in the grand scheme of things and nodded, smiling small. “If I told you I’m sure I would be arrested six ways to Sunday.”

The woman nodded and suddenly started considering the future of her job—wondering if she had already asked too much. Now that she had made it this far...she needed to move on—move forward, and then unfortunately, move deeper. There was still the voice that rang at the source and it still called for her to continue in. She closed her eyes and the woman in front of her disappeared.

There was a deep fading of the voices and music around her as the blacks and blues overtook her vision. She wouldn’t be gone for long—she needed to establish her alibi. The song from the radio had faded completely to a dull hum and the world around her faded to a deep black.

She felt as if she was sinking down below, deeper and deeper.

Fall 2021

Glowing lights flickered and proclaimed the bar to the residents of Vegas. Among the crowd it barely stood out—at least, outside of the memories she was in it would have. To Allison, however, it stood as the lone source of light on the strip that faded on either side into darkness. This represented Wynrie’s active memory of the location. Not much else had stood out during her time here—which, being a bar in Vegas, that made enough sense. Anyone would get plastered enough that it would tear away at the familiarity. Especially when each bar looked nearly identical to one another—it wasn’t necessary to retain the information of anyplace you didn’t visit. At the end of the day it stood among dozens, hundreds of bars just like it. Its name was unimportant—it wasn’t represented here as Allison saw—probably because Wynrie hadn’t bothered to remember it. After all—why would she? She was trying to drown her sorrows. Something so simple needn’t be committed to memory.

The air had tasted of something different—there was a noticeable clearer tinge—like the lack of production or exhaust. Whatever it was, it was enough that Allison knew these purveyors had it good here—any closer to the old taste and the patrons would likely relieve themselves of their drinks much faster.

Allison pushed open the doors and the dimness of the atmosphere definitely seemed like a play of Wynrie’s memory rather than historical accuracy. To her sober mind it felt oppressive. To Wynrie it must have been the perfect amount of melodramatic. Allison was able to pick her out of the blurred beings sitting at the bar. The seats on either side of her were taken, but the figures in each of the seats weren’t fully there. They looked as if she could get their image on the edge of her vision, but not head on.

She moved forward and pulled back the chair to Wynrie’s right and took her place—occupying the same space as the distorted figure, which then faded completely.

Wynrie rested on her outstretched arms, eyeing a nearly-emptied glass grasped in her right hand. Her hair casted most of her face from view, but Allison was able to glance at a familiar sight. It’s a feeling she’s long since known and easily identified with.

“Who were they?” Allison asked. The world around her resumed—the chatter of the bar turned back on and the figures around them both filled in and filled with color.

Wynrie’s head turned ever so slightly. She didn’t answer for a period of time, contemplating the drink once again, swirling the amber liquid until she brought the glass to her lips and finished the drink, setting the glass down and pushing it forward. Allison saw the residue of her lipstick stained on the rim of the glass. The bartender—quick on the prowl took the glass and cocked his head to her. She nodded slightly and then he turned to Allison.

“And for you?”

“Start me with a shot of whiskey,” she nodded.

“You got it,” the bartender nodded and then left to start both of their drinks.

Allison rested her own arms on the counter top and took in the environment—familiar as any and remembered how awful things went last time she gave into her inhibitions. Not this time. It’ll only be one. Just something to calm the nerves. Liquid courage as they say.

“You said they…” Allison said, returning back to Wynrie. “You didn’t say him. You’re either more progressive than half this town or you’re…”

Wynrie stared back at her, but didn’t say anything for a few seconds. She looked to be demanding courage from deep within. “It’s my...well, I guess she’s my ex now. She broke up with me—dumped me like the years we shared together meant nothing.”

The bartender returned with each of their drinks—he slid the shot of whiskey over to Allison and handed Wynrie her next glass. She grabbed for it immediately and downed a large gulp. Allison downed her shot and asked for another, then turned back to Wynrie. Just another for courage’s sake.

“We were fighting because of work,” she said. “She works for this big shot research facility and I was trying to get my in.”

“Big shot research facility...around here, you’re not talking about Scientia, are you?” Allison asked.

Now was the time to make her offensive. It could as easily backfire, but if she was going to start making her way in she needed to take some risks.

Wynrie let loose a hollow sound like a chuckle. “Guess it’s not so unknown, I almost wish she was here to hear you say that,” she muttered. To Allison’s look of confusion, she continued. “We were at university together—same discipline and working toward the same degree. We met because we were both at the top of our class—always edging the other out for top marks. I was talking with one of the head researchers at Scientia—he was interested in some of the projects I had been working on. We were talking about a possible sponsorship slash internship…I’ve been working in neural networking and artificial intelligence.”

“I assume things didn’t go so well?” Allison asked, her eyes darting from Wynrie to the bartender who had collected her glass and began to fill the second.

“Understatement.” Wynrie placed a hand face down on the desk as if to accentuate the point. “At first, they were great. But Anabelle never stopped being competitive. Not even when we got together. Of course, we were able to keep it light most times. A little friendly competition inspires the greatest of relationships, you know?” She looked toward Allison and seemed satisfied with her reaction.

In reality, she had no specific reaction as her experience in the relationship department was pitifully low, but she felt glad it seemed okay enough for Wynrie.

“...but I think something in her snapped when she learned I was in talks with Scientia. She reacted...strangely to the news. Happy on the outside, but I could tell under the surface that those gears in her head on how to come out on top. I was worried it would end in her lashing out at me or acting jealous—but of course this was my first relationship where I was out…I didn’t want to come to terms with any of the problems.”

This was a more familiar tack for Allison. Being Bi and its many social pitfalls were topics she had thought a lot on, although like many things of the old world not as much as of late. She offered an understanding nod which seemed to reassure her into continuing. The bartender filled up Allison’s shot glass which she quickly finished again, setting the glass down and pushing it to be taken. As the bartender grabbed the glass he gave her a look and she motioned with her hand to take it for good. You’re done. No more. If she continued then those kinds of thoughts would pour in by the dozen and she’d be in just as sad a state if not worse as Wynrie.

“Those things admittedly would have been hard to deal with, but they should have been my problem to handle. Instead, she hijacked my sponsorship. She went behind my back and...well, today I got the notice in the mail that my offer was being rescinded. And...that was that.” She took another gulp and set the glass back down, exhaling from the force she sucked it down.

“Are you just going to leave it at that?” Allison asked. “Going to let her win?”

Wynrie looked up, a heartbroken look on her face. “Won? She’s already won. That’s her whole gambit.”

“If you choose that to be how it ends. It’s not over until you decide you’ve given up the fight.” Her gaze hadn’t left Allison’s. “Well, think about it. She went behind your back and got herself a job. If that’s the game they’re willing to play by those rules, you don’t have to be restricted. You can march on down to that building and prove to them why you deserve to be working there.

Wynrie took another long gulp from her glass. “I don’t know. I think it’d just about kill me to accept the leftovers and beg. What kind of scientist would I be if my work alone couldn’t get me in? She’d love that though...why put myself through that torture? Why not just move on to something better…” her eyes darted down toward the floor and Allison took her moment.

“Well, I’m no scientist, but you’re more than your work, you know,” she said. “I don’t think many people can skate by on their work alone, you know? You’re the human element. It takes what the work can do and pushes it past anything you could have tested for.”

Wynrie offered a chuckle. “Even if your work is in the field of developing the replacement of the human element?” She gave a wry smile. “I seem to be at a particular disadvantage at offering the human element.”

“Let me be the first person to assure you I don’t quite understand the nature of your work. I know vaguely about the idea of AI but aside from science fiction stories it may as well be gibberish to me, but there’s always something you can do to better your situation. From someone who knows well how your heart is feeling...if you don’t confront your feelings on this directly and let her control you like that...then you will live to regret it every day of your life moving forward. You don’t deserve the pain I have. You don’t deserve to be here like this...like I am.”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Wynrie didn’t look back to Allison, but from the small scared sound she could tell her words had hit their mark. They had reached her heart—and mostly she knew because they were words co-opted from Wynrie’s own memories—her fears and doubts cut down from her own personal strength. In reality, Wynrie had come to the decision to push forward at Scientia herself, but here, Allison had inserted herself into Wynrie’s subconscious—rewriting what little remained while she remained consumed by the creature back in the real world. I guess you could consider me a self insert.

“You know deep down you deserve to be there. You deserve the chance to show off the fruits of your labor. And, if time and circumstances permit, I’d love to have my tour of the facility be from someone like you.”

Wynrie looked up, a new confused look on her face, a tear half fallen down her cheek.

“I’m not just some random person. You remember me, right?” Allison figured she’d just go in and go for it. If she was going to get her key in, this was the time to try.

Suddenly, the sounds around her began to fade once more and she closed her eyes. I need to go even deeper. One final level then I can work my way back up. The dim lighting of the bar faded to its final black.

Summer 2018

It was a bright day in the middle of July. Allison had been picking at her brain to find the next closest traumatic moment in Wynrie’s memories. At first it had been such a foreign act—to scope through someone’s mind like a labyrinth searching for keys you didn’t even know the shapes of, but the more she did it the easier it became.

She looked down at her form—noticeably younger as to reflect the purpose of being here—she needed to establish herself in Wynrie’s past so she could remember her on that fateful day in the bar...and finally give her the go ahead she needed at Scientia. Memory was a tricky thing—how interconnected it all was. How simple it was to mess up and damage the resulting image irrevocably. If Wynrie were still alive in the present Allison would fear damaging the poor girl’s mind forever, but the image of her body being manipulated by that...demon reassured her that she was as good as dead—so she was free to take risks here this deep.

That did speak to the question of the location of the demon—she would have to make sure she kept an eye out, as insofar she has not made contact since going deeper within Wynrie’s memory.

The world around her filled in—it was the streets surrounding Phoenix, Arizona. She had been off from the part time job she held at the local grocery store—times were tough for college graduates back then. Overqualified and still left to manage with the scraps that remained. This was before she mustered the courage and funds to apply to graduate school—those times with Annabelle had not yet happened. It was important that Allison inserted herself before Wynrie ever met Annabelle, as she would have realistically recognized Allison much earlier if that were the case.

She needed to be far enough back that she could have a drunken conversation before that moment of recognition hit—the pin that would drop needed to make sense within the context of her memories. This was the key to reaching past the edges of the memory—of allowing her to write and insert herself into the future—at least, for the purposes of her memory.

It was a busy evening—rush hour was still prevalent and this street—Allison looked out toward the long stretch of road that seemed to go on for miles—well, Wynrie hated this road especially. The road was unmarked for speed so daredevils drove however fast they thought they could get away with—provided there weren’t any officers posted for speed traps.

Wynrie always feared some awful wreck happening on this road, and for a large chunk of time that she was forced to ride it into and from work her fears were unfounded. The worst she’d experienced were watching some fool who passed her be immediately lit up by a stationed cop off from the side. These experiences still tensed her up something bad—even if she wasn’t the one being pulled over. She was an overly cautious person and the inkling of something being wrong sent shivers up her spine.

Today, though, something bad did happen. Allison saw her driving her used and beaten-up car—Allison wasn’t fond of cars and their many forms they took—she wouldn’t have been able to tell what it was on her own, but Wynrie remembered it as a 1990 Chevrolet Impala.

Allison saw the driver behind her begin to approach, slow at first and then much faster. She felt second hand the tension that rose in her as she must have been eyeing the car from the rear-view window with increasing ferocity. Something told her that this time was different—something was wrong—

That was the last thing she thought before the car clipped her passenger side bumper. It had tried to overtake her, but it was not fast enough to clear the bumper before making contact with her car. She wasn’t driving faster than what the speed limit should have been, but she spun out and let out a scream. Her car came to a stop off to the side in the ditch pointed backward the exact moment the other driver’s car made contact with the side railing. It was a head on collision and she watched in horror as his body was ejected through the front window. She saw how his body collided with the ground and how it bent in such unnatural ways. Allison felt the shadow of this image back in the bar three years in the future. She knew that it never left her wildest nightmares.

The worst thing about it was the driver was only fifteen—a kid who had taken his dad’s car for a joyride. She never learned more details than that of the kid—she’d blocked out a lot of the details due to the trauma of the event, but that image of that poor boy made sure to imprint itself there forever in her brain.

She made her way over to Wynrie’s car and opened her car door. Suddenly, on Allison’s command a car—it didn’t matter what kind of car—that would be one of those details that gets lost in the haze—appeared stopped on the side of the road. In this memory edit Allison was a driver who had stopped upon seeing the crash. She checked in on Wynrie—making sure her vitals were okay and pulled out her phone—something she had to think through the act of doing—it had been that long since she’d ever carried a phone—and called emergency services.

This was an easy enough edit since Wynrie hadn’t remembered the face of the real woman who did stop and made that very same call.

“Here, take my number, I know you might not need it, but if you need help talking through some things I’m really good at listening,” Allison said, placing the handwritten note that had contained Allison’s very real number into Wynrie’s hand. She knew she wasn’t going to get any positive or negative affirmation here, but Wynrie would keep that note, and because she remembered getting it she knew she would then rewrite her memories directly after this event as having included a call with Allison—which would then lead to her talking and eventually befriending her.

And then...

Fall 2021

“I…” Her eyes scanned Allison’s face. They were slow—delayed and genuinely trying to close the circuit. “Yeah...of course. I’m sorry. I think it’s just been a long day. Of course...I...I am going to show up there. I am not going to let her win. I am going to do my best. God...how drunk am I that I didn’t even recognize it was you,” Wynrie said, placing her hands over her face.

“Thatta girl,” Allison said. “And don’t worry about it. I had a feeling I’d find you here, you think I’m not going to know where you like to drown things out when they get tough?”

Wynrie offered a small smile and then returned to her drink, finishing the glass. “Thank you, it means a lot that you showed up. And you know what? I’m gonna get you that tour. Bet on it.”

Allison felt like her job here was done. She didn’t need to add anything else—if anything she risked overdoing it and introducing doubt into the system. She was playing hard and loose with Wynrie’s memory so that she could let her own imagination make some of the connections herself—save her from having to go down even deeper than what she’s already done to establish herself in Wynrie’s life. What better a way than to let it cement itself here at a traumatic point in her life near her breaking point.

She closed her eyes and the background noise of the bar shifted hard and fast back to that viral song on the radio. She opened her eyes.

Winter 2022

Wynrie was standing in front of Allison when she was standing back in the main lobby of the Scientia building. That ever familiar song had resumed playing on the radio—a few verses deeper than when she had gone under.

“Hey,” Wynrie said, offering a smile, then came in for a hug, wrapping her arms around her and holding tight before letting go. Wynrie here looked much more confident than before. Her smile was bright and the lab coat she wore spoke to the quality of her work—she was no mere technician here. Those seeds Allison had planted seemed to have blossomed here further along in her memories—she must have remembered her as a much closer friend—one that it was not odd to have come asking for a favor to take a tour of the place. She remembered the memory initially had placed her as a new employee—that must have been due to the real Wynrie’s assumption by seeing her on the ship.

Being on the ship must mean you’re an employee of Scientia—so this woman must have been there and come on after she did while she was busy with her projects. The thought process had now changed as Allison rewrote her memories.

“It’s so good to see you,” Allison said, nodding. “I knew you’d get here.”

“Yeah, well, I’m just that good,” she flashed a large grin and let out a laugh. “Anabelle’s still a project manager so that’s still bullshit, but I have made it at least. And it was because you were there to pick me up by my bootstraps and made me see sense when I was wallowing in my sorrow.”

“What can I say? I saw something in you and knew you had more to you than the bottom of a bottle.”

She smiled and then cocked her head. “Well why don’t we go see what kind of things we’re working on. I’m sure the article will come out great if we can detail the projects we’re ready to show.”

Article. I’m a journalist. I can’t say it’s not fitting, but interesting nonetheless. I guess there was something to letting her make some of the connections herself.

Allison followed Wynrie and she saw a few workers walking passed looked faded like the other patrons of the bar—they must have been people she didn’t associate with or know enough to remember details about them. There was something to be said for the sorrow that followed an everyday affair when scanning it to one person’s recollection. Allison was led to a room that was closed behind a barricade—and the both of them had to gown up into a clean suit to enter. The suits themselves were bulky—probably twenty pounds combined.

“This room back here is where the heavy hitter rests—it’s more sterile than a surgery room here. Any sort of microfiber can seriously affect how the project’s results are obtained. It’s that granular.”

“What could require such a clean environment?” Allison asked.

“Isn’t that the question of the day?” Wynrie asked with a wink. She zipped the hood over her head and there was a plastic screen she could see out of that made her look like a beekeeper. Allison zipped on her own hood and zipped the line sealed shut.

Inside the clean room Allison saw a lot of fancy machinery in the back that housed a lot of heavy electronics. In the center of the room was a central podium with what looked like to be a solid white orb hovering a foot above.

“This...is the culmination of the work I started back in university. The result of my exploits since coming here—and most importantly, it is the first project in this department that I get to manage. Meet Pneuma.

The orb shook with anticipation and it seemed to open on itself like a pair of eyelids revealing the pitch black-to white iris within.

“I contain multitudes.” A hollow electronic voice rang out.

“Multitudes?” Allison asked. “What does that mean?”

“Pneuma is a fully automatic system that is its own creative energy. It was designed to interpolate between human programming and artificial inputs to create completely new thoughts and ideas. Starting off on a micro scale it thinks, acts, and reacts to external stimuli in completely original ways outside of its original programming, but on a much larger scale…”

“I contain multitudes,” Pneuma said, this time in a completely different, unrecognizable voice.

“I’m afraid I’m still having trouble picturing the scale of what you mean.”

“Here, it’s easier with a demonstration,” Wynrie motioned, come and stand in front of it, and slowly—make sure you do it slowly—take off your hood.

“What?” Allison asked.

“Go on, you’ll be the only one doing it, it’ll be fine.” She motioned to the other workers around her. They had perfectly distinguished faces, but it was clear this wasn’t a meeting to be introduced to the available team. To Allison they were faces in lab coats, all in alignment on this project that—

“I contain multitudes,” rang Pneuma in a third, completely different voice.

“Okay,” Allison nodded. She stepped up to the eye which was looking around its environment before settling on her. She reached up to her neck and grabbed at the zipper and started undoing it. She pulled the hood off her head and Pneuma’s eye focused on her.

“I contain…” it started, slowly thinking. “Congratulations and welcome to the world of Elysium!”

The world around her shifted and she saw a grand world envelop as far as the eye could see. A massive land of castles and fields expanded and a large figure in a crimson red robe with golden filigree floated in the sky. Allison was dumbfounded—the voice of an older man rang through her mind. She saw the faces of the other scientists and Wynrie around her fade in through the illusion, but something about the sounds that were coming from the world down below that seemed real. Like she could travel to any point and live there for the rest of her days.

Pneuma continued, and suddenly the scene shifted as quickly as it had arrived.

“The worst time of the year is when all the bugs come out. It’s days like this that make me want a drink.” This time the voice was a younger man’s—probably around his early twenties—and it flashed immediately across her mind’s eye as Gavin Daniels—her father. The world shifted and she saw him form in front of her eyes. He looked so young—he almost looked half her own age. He looked as if he were living out of the bag on his back. The voice kept rattling off words from those old worlds that were long dead and she found herself focused intently on it.

Each time the voices changed, the world changed with it. She got closer and closer to the action and felt, heard, and saw the worlds of old with her own eyes.

“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” Wynrie said, bringing her back to herself. “It looks into the center of your deepest being and existence and it begins creating off of that. Right now it is only an ocular artifice. It looks and it repeats what it sees. But soon it will transcend form. It is going to be more than anything we can begin to perceive. We’ll be able to shape reality as we see fit. The realities we dream of...they’ll soon be in the palm of our hands.”

Pneuma looked at Allison and blinked. “You contain...multitudes.

In a flash of an instant Allison was dragged back up a level through Wynrie’s memories. She was back up to the surface level on the ship—The Lumina. Allison didn’t choose to come back yet...she wanted to explore more down there. But, Pneuma brought her back.

Wynrie vanished from in front of Allison. As she focused she could almost bring her back, but her focus was being acted upon. She thought she saw her, but as she focused she was staring at blank space. And now that she was focusing, she wasn’t even in the same room she was in before. Is it possible I’m one layer deeper than before? No, that wouldn’t make sense—this is after Pneuma’s unveiling, I’m sure of it...but still, it doesn’t feel like I’m in Wynrie’s memory anymore. It feels colder—shifting.

If she was on the ship, then that meant that Pneuma must have been on the ship—it hadn’t pushed her up a layer through Wynrie’s memories, it had absorbed her into its own.

Taking this into account, she looked around her current circumstances carefully. She felt an immense danger looming present, but she couldn’t locate the exact source. Dark metal surrounded her at odd angles—the ship looked like a nightmare version of itself—juxtaposed with a hellscape of a dark design.

The scientists she had seen in the crashed sector where Issachar had chosen to die all faded in around a cylindrical engine, an exoskeleton was housed connected to the central cables—the Red Monolith was brutally affixed into Pneuma’s human-esque eye socket. The bodies she remembered as crumbled corpses were frozen in a terrifying moment of fear as the Lumina—this cursed ship—had exited the stratosphere.

“I contain multitudes.” Echoed the voice over the faces and Allison saw much. Pneuma was designed to create. It was given a directive to take as much external input as it desired and interpolate that information into new and original thoughts and ideas.

On a macro scale...I contain multitudes.

The scientists were up in the stars because Pneuma had made it so. How didn’t so much matter—the how was itself as the answer. The important thing was that Pneuma desired to see the stars—to see the limits of its external stimuli and use that to create. It had seen the edge of the universe and willed into its very physical construct an object of its own creation.

Allison looked down to her hands. In the world she knew, she held a lance made of two of those very same monoliths. But here, she knew the origin of these as the device that Z-One had utilized alongside her father—they were the remains of a machine that had restarted a universe at the end of its lifespan. What did this mean? What could it mean? Did Pneuma create the previous world? Did they create Pneuma? Who was the origin and who was the…

Pneuma turned slightly—its shape no bigger than a small child—metal tubes and wires encasing that singular black eye staring out. “I contain…”

Allison took a step back, looking at the sudden enormity of the figure as darkness flooded its body encasing it in shadow. Its eye sockets vacant and emitting a dull yellow pulse.

It blinked, and she sank even deeper down. She felt a warmth in her chest and realized that it was coming from her armor. She could feel it like a layer over her skin even though she couldn’t see it—it must have been burning in the real world and she tried to rip it off. Darkness surrounded her as eyes opened up in the infinite vastness.

“Wynrie’s not here. Wynrie’s not home. Wynrie’s not here, I contain multitudes.”

Eyes continued to open as the armor continued to grow hotter, then on her abdomen she saw an eye open up, then she realized what it had meant. If Pneuma had been powered by the Red Monolith this whole time, then her taking it back on the ship’s remains...it wasn’t just the Monolith. It never was. It was a trap. Did Zane know? Was that why he let it go so easily? Did he see the dark presence looming within?

Whatever the case, she realized her folly, and knew this was her final mistake. The eye opened upon itself and doubled across her body. It left a burning sensation where it had first erupted from, and then each subsequent eye burnt across her body. She felt the fire stretching across her skin to the point where her whole body was numbed to a dull throbbing. She then heard a sudden coldness as the metallic sounds of the exoskeleton clambered in the distance. She felt its rigid arm grab hold of hers, and then the coldness brushed against her lips, forcing her mouth open.

She was frozen to the touch as the cold metal snaked down her throat. She started gagging but her arms betrayed her—she couldn’t move. She jerked up to expel the metal entering her—but a clawed hand held her back and her choking only came harder. Every instinct told her to fight back and she willed it as hard as she could.

The metal did not listen. She heard a final voice in the darkness as the eyes completely surrounded her, staring deep into her soul, the voices coming into one perfect harmony as the worlds painted themselves across her vision—too many to see. Too many to focus on, but all of them better than the outside where she remained.

“I contain multitudes.”