"The first time we encountered the Speluncam we knew nothing of the Paradigm War. We were desperate and afraid, nothing but children in the wrong part of the celestial neighborhood." Despite her tone, Eve was sure to smile and nod at people as they continued down the hall.

"These aliens showed up to help us out of our bind. They towed Nexus out of the wormhole so that we could patch her up properly. Keep in mind that A.I. update had only just allowed us access to the bridge. We didn't know what the hell we were doing. We just wanted to survive. Conveniently and out of nowhere, these strange aliens appeared in green ships." Eve laughed ruefully, a little too loudly. "At the time, I just couldn't believe my luck."

Victor looked up at the twitching lights. The wide nano-glass windows that had once displayed the surrounding area were now merely blank grey walls. He couldn't believe their luck, either.

"They boarded our ship without our permission. With the state of things and the fact that we hadn't yet discovered the Weapons Depot or the Maker Room, we were helpless to stop them. They were a bestial green, a similar color to that of their ships, and were surprisingly humanoid - still quite different from a human, mind you. But they walked on two legs, and were covered in something reminiscent of hair. It's possible that the Speluncam had chosen them on purpose. Their familiarity might have made them a little easier to trust."

Eve was silent a moment.

"You say the Speluncam chose them," Victor said. "Why didn't the Speluncam come themselves?"

"Oh, they did, Victor. I'm getting to that."

Victor was beginning to wonder where it was that Eve slept. They'd referred to her having her own quarters, but where? The other side of the ship, apparently. Victor hadn't done this much walking in days, what with being stuck on the small shuttle. Not that he was complaining. Eve continued.

"The creature, there was only one on the first ship, spoke to us through a collar tied around it's neck. It explained that it would need to make something that translated to a mind-bond with one of us in order to save our ship. Whatever it was, it didn't sound like something we would be interested in. We had just found the bridge, after all. Maybe we would figure things out in time."

She continued to nod at people in the hall, but now she wasn't smiling.

"However, with the surviving half of Nexus in tatters and an incomplete A.I. update, there just wasn't time. Edgar volunteered. Speaking of which, the A.I. never did properly recover its voice function. It communicates with us in text only. A good side to everything, I suppose.

"The creature wouldn't let us see the process. It took Edgar back to its ship, and he came back looking absolutely normal. We almost thought whatever process he was supposed to have gone through didn't take. Then he stayed up for three days straight coding and modifying non-stop. Fumio could barely keep up, and even he had trouble comprehending the final output.

"The alien left. Things seemed to go back to normal. We began to gather our bearings on the ship during those weeks. But Edgar began to change. Small things, at first. He became odd, distant. He began staying up for a week at a time, reading through the virtual libraries of human culture. He started to talk about how he was a mere shadow in a cave. How truth had been revealed to him. That's how we got their name. Speluncam. It's latin for 'cave'. I think he was talking about Plato's Cave. Do you remember that from class?"

Victor nodded, "It's Plato recounting one of Socrates' conversations. In it, people are bound in a cave facing a wall. They can't see actual objects, just the shadows of objects. It's supposed to be a metaphor for reality. The point he was trying to make was something along the lines that the material realm that we see is just a shadow of a much larger reality."

Eve was impressed. "Not bad, Victor. You're right, it's something along those lines," she said. They passed the place that had formerly been the dorms. There were instructors giving orders to a room full of people doing exercise. Did that mean everyone had their own private quarters? When they came around the bend Victor received his answer: where the partition had been there were elevators.

"There were other floors on Nexus the whole time?" Victor said it incredulously. Why in the hell had they been made to share space if there were other living arrangements right underneath them?

"The whole damn time. Would you believe it?" she said, as she placed her hand on the verification panel. "Maybe it occurred to someone back home that having a single gender on each side wouldn't necessarily stop some people from 'getting involved'."

"You mean like you and Miguel?" Victor asked raising an eyebrow. She was the Captain of Nexus, but it was her who had opened this can of worms.

"You had better not repeat that again," she said back with a wink. Victor didn't think she was joking. "Back to our story," she said, regaining her serious tone as the lift doors opened. "Edgar kept talking about the things he was learning from the mind-bond. He told us about the Paradigm War, an eons-old, galaxies-wide conflict between two alien races that are so ancient that they have long since transcended this plane of existence. On one side of the war are the Speluncam, who want to unite the universe under one paradigm, controlling it from their higher plane of existence. On the other are the Dream Dwellers, who believe there should be freedom of paradigm, and no interference on the less evolved material realm."

The elevator doors opened. It was another hall, blue, with sliding doors side by side off into the distance. Between each door was a hole with ladder leading down. Victor assumed these were dwellings, too.

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"I don't think the Speluncam wanted Edgar to tell us all of this. It didn't seem able to control Edgar then. Not while we were in the wormhole. The moment we left, however..." Eve breathed a quivering sigh. "The changes became much more extreme."

They came to a special door where one of the holes leading down should have been. It was deep blue compared to the rest of the hall and other doors. Eve put her hand on the verification panel outside the door. It opened.

"Some things happened, and we were finally forced to leave the wormhole for awhile. That's when the changes started to become rapid. You'd be thinking about him, and suddenly he be there next to you, like he could read your thoughts. Only the one's of him, though. He would tell us to stop thinking about him, that sounds of our thoughts were too loud. They hurt him. They made him want to hurt us.

"It was weird. At the end, right before he disappeared, it was the opposite: he was begging us to think of him. Like he was forgetting who he was. Then he was gone. One day, no one could find him. A day turned to a week. A week to a month. Then the sounds in the walls started. You've heard it. The more you pay attention to it, the louder it gets. Especially when you start thinking of who, or at this point what, could be making it. People who knew Edgar began disappearing. Peter Hornbuyer was the first. Others followed. That's when we tried hunting it down." Another sigh. "That ended poorly. Very poorly."

Eve took her Captain's jacket off and walked to a cabinet mounted on her wall. There were glass vials with brown and clear colored liquid. Liquor? Eve poured two glasses, then caught herself, shaking her head.

"I keep forgetting your age," she said, running her hands through her hair. "I'll have to be careful with that," she said, smiling.

"Uh - I'll take it," Victor said. He didn't want her to think of him as a kid. Here he was, in full-grown Eve's sleeping quarters, about to do some drinking.

Eve shrugged. She put the glass in front of him.

"Of course, by then rumors of Edgar began to spread. Now everyone was thinking of him. At one point we were losing a person a day. So, we made a rule: don't think or speak of him. So long as it isn't a sustained thought, it doesn't seem to have a major effect. Sorry I waited to tell you about Edgar. He seems to go away for a while just after a shift into or out of the wormhole. It's the only time we can properly talk abou--"

There was a light skittering sound.

"Time's up," Eve whispered. Victor still had so many questions. If Edgar had undergone a transformation, for instance, that would make this creature over a hundred years old.

"Don't worry about the drink. I don't let them make anything that strong here. Finishing that will give you the slightest of buzzes. I won't get one until my third."

"Well, thanks anyway," Victor said. He was a little relieved that the Captain of the ship wasn't an alcoholic. Although he wouldn't exactly blame her if she was.

"You're welcome," she said. She had turned her back to him, and downed her glass in one gulp. She sighed and turned back around, her expression looking steely.

"You're about to ask me to do something, aren't you?" Victor said.

"Yes Victor. Yes I am. I would never give a drink to a member of my Nexus who is your age."

"Yet you gave one to me."

"You are not a member of my ship. You're a member of a station that is long in my past. A station that is whole." There was a spark of hope glittering in Eve's eyes.

"That station is long gone," Victor said. What use was it for them to lament something they could do nothing about? Maybe this was stronger than she had said. Maybe she was an alcoholic after all.

"No it isn't, Victor," Eve said with a smile.

"What?"

She continued. "Do you remember when I spoke of the Nexus entering the wormhole for the first time? For some reason, at that point within this netherspace, Nexus left an imprint there. A frozen moment in time. A Nexus that is whole and on which me and all of our peers are still alive and well. A moment before the Speluncam took Edgar, before everything went wrong."

Victor stood. "What the hell are we doing? Why don't we go there?"

He realized the selfishness of what he was saying. Going to that Nexus might change time. It might erase all the generations that had been born here from existence. Was Eve really willing to risk that?

"We've tried, Victor," she said her eyes tearing up,"we've been trying for a long time. I don't think we'll ever reach it though. I think it's because it's in our past. It's too direct a paradox. One that cannot be allowed to exist, even in a wormhole."

"But it's not in mine," Victor said. Eve was on the same page as him.

"I brought this up to the others. They're against it, of course. No one wants to be wiped from existence. I don't think that's what will happen, but I'm willing to risk it, anyway. Are you?"

Victor tried not to nod too enthusiastically.

"Good," Eve said. "The key is you and your shuttle. You are both from that Nexus' timeline. Unfortunately, I don't think you can take anything from this ship with you. I don't know how you can possibly prevent it's rupture or stop the equivalent of the events that happened from transpiring."

Victor remembered the black data cube in his pocket. He pulled it out.

"A gift from the dream dwellers," he said, smiling. Instead of looking happy or impressed, Eve frowned.

"The dream dwellers gave you that?"

"Yes. Why? What's wrong?"

Eve lowered her head and took another look at the cube.

"That breaks their rule of non-physical interference, Victor. The dream dwellers are losing the Paradigm War."