The next 2 days passed, during which Aurelie alternated between actually making her way through her accumulated work- processing forms for Sam and Jeffereenee, filling out an incident report for their giant lizard… incident, and other mundane tasks- and watching historical Human cooking shows that exhibited a dazzling variety of dishes, each one sounding more amazing than the previous. After discovering that mutton was not a vegetable but rather a sentient creature, she had to limit herself to shows filmed after the Earth year AD 2097, when lab grown flesh was standard and the slaughter of sentient creatures outlawed globally.
“A lot of races consumed each other at some point,” said DesUas with a shrug when Aurelie told her. “The Aredbynes were pretty damn embarrassed when it turned out the fish they’d historically eaten were actually smarter than them. We were just too buoyant to discover their underwater civilisation.”
She punctuated her day at regular intervals with take-out orders which she had delivered to her office, to feed her newfound hunger. DesUas watched bitterly. Alvedo happily partook, when he was there and not sneaking off with Cora. Aurelie realised that she had probably spent more money on food the past several days than she had in the past several months, and celebrated by ordering another round of desert.
“You’ll have to buy new clothes if you continue like this,” muttered DesUas, who had just sized down to her sorta-fat clothes. Aurelie was halfway through a family-sized tray of white brassica, coated in milled grain, fried in vegetable lipids and smothered in something called barbecue sauce. It was amazing. The Aredbyne was still five weeks out from when she could next eat again, and had several times compared being in an office with both Alvedo and a hungry Aurelie to living in a form of hell curated just for her.
“Humans don’t gain fat in a week, that’s not how they work.”
“Yes they can, if they eat enough.” Aurelie shook her head.
“Nah, it takes months to change anything with Humans. I should know, I’ve been undereating for years and my weight only drops slowly.”
“That’s because your Human metabolism adjusted to the lower energy intake. Now that you’re giving it more energy than it needs, you’ll gain weight quickly.” They continued to bicker, until Aurelie pulled out her screen and decided to look it up.
Two hours later, they were halfway through the third episode of a show called ‘The Biggest Loser’, when Alvedo and Cora burst into the office.
“Aurelie! DesUas! You- what are you doing?”
“Nothing,” they said, at the same time and too quickly. There was a beat, before Alvedo shook his head.
“Okay, whatever, don’t care. You’ll never guess- you might guess some of it, but you’ll never guess the whole thing. I was right, but I didn’t know how right I was, and now I know but I can still hardly believe it, but-“
“Alvedo!” He stopped at DesUas’ voice, breathing heavily. DesUas lead him over to his chair. Aurelie noticed that Cora, too, was looking spooked. “Inhale. Exhale. What is going on?”
Their colleague looked between the two of them, eyes wide and panicked, before getting back up and shutting the door. Aurelie had never seen him like this. Returning to his chair, he took a deep breath, seeming to steel himself, but before he could say anything Cora cut him off.
“It’s not routine maintenance. It’s the end of the SC.”
#
When Dr Lucio Enfendore created the SC, his intention was to essentially create an index universe: one in which the sequential and chronological timelines converged, to prevent endless chaos and confusion when travelling between dimensions. It was the second shortest universe, beginning at the moment within the chronological timeline that he created it, and concluding with the end of the same timeline. All other universes, besides Hominus G, were approximately the same length: Hominus G, with its untimely demise, was the shortest universe in existence, and the large empty chunks within the chronological timeline were part of the reason that individuals like Sam were difficult to return.
Not that Sam would have wanted to return, learning as he did that the universe imploded shortly after his departure.
The Sequential-Chronological was the only universe in which the final moment sequentially was the final moment chronologically, and it would be easy to assume - as all universes besides the SC were between 57 and 59 billion years long- that the culmination of the SC was so far in the future as to not even be worth contemplating. In fact, it was so easy to assume this that everyone within the SC at the time that Aurelie worked there had done exactly that. Everyone assumes they exist in a ‘normal’ time period, where everything proceeds in the way that it always has.
Part of the reason for this was lack of knowledge: few employees questioned how long the SC had already been in existence- hundreds of years? Millions? Billions? And the constantly fluctuating population from all different time streams made it difficult for things like social, cultural or biological evolution to occur. Additionally, the existential crisis that would seize the majority of its denizens should they understand the conclusion of Space-Time was upon them, given that no one knew what would occur after the chronological timestream petered out, and when they realised that the entirety of the rest of their existence had, in many ways, already occurred, would be enough to trouble even the most resilient mind. Finally, somewhat counterintuitively given the aforementioned inevitable public meltdown, those few that had considered the end of the SC assumed that they would be given ample warning and time to prepare for its demise whenever it did come.
Why they would assume that, given that the SC had no government besides what a generous individual could describe at best as a benign bureaucracy, was a mystery.
Aurelie had not fallen into this trap, but not due to any excess of wit and cynicism: she simply fell into the earlier trap of assuming the end of the SC could not happen in her lifetime. On learning that the SC was not only ending, but ending in approximately 36 hours, and that the bureau was trying to simply mass export its inhabitants under the guise of ‘routine maintenance’, her first thought was ‘of course the bastards are.’
Her second thought was ‘shit’, as the existential crisis hit.
#
Alvedo was coping with the news by funnelling the remainder of Aurelie’s cruciferous vegetable dish straight to his stomach in an act that seemed to require neither mastication nor peristaltic movement of his oesophagus. DesUas was coping with a steady stream of profanities under her breath. Cora was coping by pacing back and forth within their tiny office and trying to come up with a plan of action.
Aurelie was coping by staring at the floor and not coping at all.
What cruel twist of fate, she wondered, had led to this outcome? Why, when she was so close to finding and returning home, was this happening? Was she cursed to remain forever displaced, the answers to the questions she’d had since she was a small child snatched from her hands?
“They want to mass silence us,” Cora was saying, reaching the far wall and doubling back towards them. “The universes they’re sending us to, at the time they’re sending us, have no civilisations. They don’t want us going and running amok in the rest of the timeline, with the tech and the knowledge that we have- we could cause chaos.”
Aurelie wasn’t sure she was breathing. An experimental breath that resulted in a coughing fit proved conclusively that she had not been.
“They’ll send us there and we just have to live out the rest of our days with the people we were sent with, dying one by one until only the most longevous individuals remain. Or maybe they’ll kill us on arrival.” Cora looped again.
Alvedo finished the vegetables and began licking the sauce off the tray. Aurelie watched him, the excessive quantities of food she had consumed in the past week sitting in her stomach like a rock. She felt as though she might throw up.
“No, if they were going to kill us they would just leave us here and let the SC end around us. They’re going to let us die off in rudimentary civilisations with no resources and no economy and no purpose and abandon us. Is that why the mercurial beings left? Not because of equipment issues but because they knew what was coming?” Nearly bouncing off the far wall with the speed of her pacing, Cora pivoted again.
Fuck fuck fuck shit shit fuck shit shit fuck was how Aurelie’s translation headset was picking up DesUas’ profanities, though Aurelie could see that her co-worker was using different words each time. The small, disconnected, unhelpful part of her mind wondered how many synonyms for ‘fuck’ there were in DesUas’ language.
“Half of management has taken leave recently. The bastards. I wondered why so many people were going on holiday. I wonder who else knows. Has anyone else said anything to you? Has anyone else been acting weird?” Cora paused as she levelled her question at the room, looking at each of them in turn.
Aurelie’s stomach gave a definitive lurch, and she grabbed the rubbish basket just in time to violently expel the contents of her stomach. This took several minutes, as it was a very full stomach; during this time DesUas and Cora fell silent while Alvedo slid the empty and half-licked food tray away.
“Micky knows,” she managed finally. “He basically told us as much before. Do you remember?”
“Micky?” asked Cora, confused. “You mean the Chitinous Farer whose brother you found? Why do you call him Micky?”
“Because I’d like to see you say his name.” Aurelie wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and pushed her hair back from her face. “He said that after the maintenance he would be seeking ‘alternate employment’. And he said it really weirdly- I wondered at the time, but I was focused on other stuff.”
“Like getting home,” said Alvedo, sliding over a water bottle which she accepted gratefully.
“Yeah, well, there goes any chance I had of that. What are the odds that within the next 9 standard time units there’ll be one that gets me close to my family? Especially since it can’t be after a certain point, because that universe goes boom.” She rinsed her mouth out with the water and spat it into the same basket, then wrinkled her nose and stowed it under her desk.
“He said he would tell you when he knew,” mused Alvedo. “Cora, you work in the same office with them; do you know how long it usually takes for them to figure it out?”
“Depending on their workload and the parameters, a few hours to a few days,” Cora said with a shrug. “If he already knew and didn’t say anything, he might not have been planning on telling you, same as how he hasn’t told any of us about the universe ending.”
“We can find him and demand to know. And also demand to know some options for where we can go, because I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste away in some government-run encampment in a hell-hole universe with no resources. I can go find him right now,” said DesUas, pushing herself to her feet.
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“I’m hurt that you have so little faith in me,” came a voice from the doorway. The occupants of the room snapped around to find Micky once again leaning against the frame. Sam was peering over his shoulder and gave a meek wave.
“How long have you been listening?” demanded Aurelie.
“Since you finished disgorging your last meal. You should really have these kinds of conversations with the door closed, imagine if we were one of the supervisors instead?”
“What are they going to do, fire us?” Aurelie shot back. “Also, shut up- the door was closed.” Micky laughed, entering the room with Sam and shutting the door behind them. “What’s the situation from your side?
“So, I’m not meant to know any of this, but like all of you I got suspicious and did some digging too,” Micky began, leaning against the closed door. “It was a probably a lot easier for me than it was for you, because I’ve been trained to read the time charts and it was obvious early on that there was something happening. I did some more digging and came to the same conclusion: end of the chronological timeline, yada yada yada. Then I spent a while hunting back in the archives and yeah, save for a handful of individuals everyone who is currently in the SC never makes it back.”
A sour smile tugged its way onto Cora’s face.
“And I take it that includes the people in this room?” She asked. Micky nodded. “So, what’s the plan?”
“Lucky for you, I have options… made more difficult by the fact that Aurelie and DesUas have been stripped of their access codes. The first thing is with regard to [Sam] and I: they need me for the coordinating and movement of the denizens of the SC, so I can’t disappear in an unexplained way, and now that they know that [Sam] is my brother he can’t disappear either- not without it looking incredibly suspicious. So, we’re going to board the transport ships and travel with them to the universes, but I’ve programmed a code in that will allow me to still use the Space-Time Machines on arrival.”
“They were going to get rid of it?” said DesUas, cutting him off. “Gods, they just keep getting worse.”
“Yeah, on arrival everyone’s security clearance will be wiped. They wanted us fully trapped. That won’t be the case for me, though, and after sixteen hours we’ll be taking the Space-Time Machines to the trade community of Ingios, in Egrenio R.”
“And you think this will be successful?” asked Alvedo, concerned. “What if senior management discovers your code, or destroys the Space-Time Machines on arrival?”
“Senior management has already left, H13 was the most senior position still around and had departed by the time Aurelie broke into its office. Besides, so long as we keep our wits about us, I know we’ll be successful.” He opened his screen and showed them a currents event article from the Ingios Herald. In the background were Micky and Sam, clutching alcoholic beverages and beaming widely. Alvedo shook his head.
“I hate time travel. This is so confusing- you know you’ll be successful because there’s evidence that you being successful has already occurred further back in the chronological time stream even if it hasn’t yet occurred in the sequential stream. Is that it?” Micky’s grin dropped.
“I think so? I’m fairly certain that’s how it works- Aurelie and Cora, you two are Humans, have I got this right?” Simultaneously, the Humans rolled their eyes and nodded.
“Yeah, you’ve got it, you’ll be successful- just don’t assume that it’ll be all smooth sailing just because you know the end outcome.” Aurelie said. Cora smirked, bumping her with her shoulder.
“Non-Humans, right? Like trying to teach the alphabet to a toddler,” snarked the shorter human. Aurelie laughed; it felt weird, enjoying fitting the Human stereotype rather than rallying against it. Feeling like she had an ally in it helped.
“So that takes care of you and [Sam],” said DesUas, who was able to pronounce the whistles correctly. “But where does that leave the rest of us?”
“If you leave tonight, you’ll arrive in Ignios two days after [Sam] and I.” Alvedo opened his mouth, paused looking confused, then shut it again. “But, of course, that doesn’t help the matter of Aurelie getting home.”
There was a long pause, in which Aurelie couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze. Her recently emptied stomach felt like lead. She wondered if she was going to throw up again. Finally, when the silence became unbearable, she looked up to find everyone staring at her. The familiar, unpleasant blush began to spread across the back of her neck.
“The good news,” Micky continued, once he’d caught her gaze, “is that I’ve been able to narrow down your displacement number, and I know where to send you. Even better, there’s an upcoming intersect, so we can get you to Hominus G. Even better again is that we can then get you to Ignios to join the rest of us a week later.” He hesitated.
“And the bad news?” she finally prompted, voice small.
“The bad news is that the only intersect occurs in the last four hours of the SC… and takes place in the last four hours of Hominus G.”
“Right before it implodes?”
“Right before it implodes,” he confirmed.
She sat and digested the news, relieved that no one was immediately asking her opinion on what she wanted to do. Looking at their expressions, she realised they were probably focused on their own impending futures- even without the detour, their entire lives were being uprooted, and they were all going to have to commit a serious crime.
There were no winners in this situation- just escapees.
“So I have one window in which to get to the Space-Time Machine, get to Hominus G, find and meet my family, and then continue on to Ignios; and if I mess up at any point I’m in a universe as it collapses?” Micky nodded.
“That’s about the sum of it, yeah. Of course, you could always leave with DesUas, Alvedo and Cora tomorrow night- but then there’s no going home. I won’t have access to the same equipment and information outside of the SC, so we’d have no way of calculating your next shot. We all know how much you want to get home-“ he laughed at the look she shot him. “Come on Aurelie, it’s essentially the only side that you show besides rude and snarky. I think [Bob] described you once as ‘abrasive and obsessive.’” She rolled her eyes, but gestured for him to continue. “We know how much this means to you, but is it worth risking your life?”
She looked down at her hands, still smooth from her spa trip with Alvedo. She thought about the years in the barracks, the hours spent training, the cooking channels with their rainbow of fruits and vegetables. She thought about growing up in the Displacement Home, and even now, looking at Cora, the words ‘It’s like you don’t even know how to be Human’ echoed in her ears. As though reading her mind, Cora ducked her head and turned away.
She thought about Alvedo explaining the menu and the absolute dread she’d felt as the lizard monster carried off her co-worker. She thought about DesUas bringing her a nutrition shake, and the absolute joy on Sam’s face when he saw Micky again.
“I need to think about it,” she said finally. “I need to go for a walk and just… just think.”
“Thinking things through is a good idea,” said Micky, voice gentle. “You don’t have to decide anything until tomorrow night.”
“I’ll let you know.” Aurelie pushed herself to her feet. “I’ll- yeah, I’ll let you know.”
Grabbing the rubbish basket full of spew to empty out on the way, she left the office with her mind racing.
#
The Sequential-Chronological universe had an irregular population, constantly in flux, with individuals arriving and departing at bizarre and specific times. The population consisted of approximately 18000 individuals, around a third of whom worked for the Space-Time Bureau while the others served as auxiliary beings: running restaurants, selling various wares, managing the housing. There was an economy, of sorts, or at least a micro-economy with the currency being Sequential-Chronological Coin. There was even an exchange rate with various other universes, though how it was decided what the coin was worth was embedded deep within an algorithm that would take three artificial intelligences all speaking over each other, forty years to explain.
Despite its small population, the SC could also be incredibly chaotic. Due to the huge number of races that inhabited it, there was no consistency to a ‘day’, as every race operated on its own circadian rhythm. If an individual operating on a 17-hour circadian rhythm wanted to open their store for half of their sleep cycle each sleep cycle, then the store would be open at different times for every one of Aurelie’s 24-hour cycles. As they were the ones who had initially invented Space-Time, Human time units were often treated as a ‘common tongue’, with hours being used universally and 24-hour days being used for calculating dates (that a 24-hour day perfectly divided into 6 STUs worked well for the bureaucrats who initially structured the SC). However, weeks had been deemed unimportant and were only used by some Humans out of habit, and official SC-years were divided into quarters, each one 100 Human days long.
Many inhabitants of the SC were displaced, stopping over for a while after aging out of their Displacement Homes in order to assess their options; some worked for the Space-Time Bureau, others gathered just enough coin through menial labour to move on to their next destination. Other inhabitants were from poor families, looking to improve their economic success; a well-timed immigrant into the SC could arrive, work for ten years to amass coin, and then return to their home universe seemingly a day later. These individuals had the nickname ‘overnight successes’, as the years of hard work they put in while in the SC was often overlooked by friends and family upon their return.
Those in the Bureau tended to be wealthier and better educated, but still aiming for financial improvement as well as new experiences. Many preferred to be absent from their home universes for an approximately similar amount of time to that spent in the SC, or to move on to a new universe entirely after the job was done. Quality of life was high in the SC, and it wasn’t at all uncommon for individuals with weaker familial ties or less of a sense of exploration to retire and live out their days on the coin they’d earned.
Or not. Apparently, only the elite among the Space-Time Bureau (and those lucky few who didn’t trust them) were allowed to choose how they spent their life. Everyone else was being shipped out to the middle of nowhere.
Aurelie looked to the grey roof of the SC and sighed. Stuffing her hands in her pockets, she began to walk.
The SC as a universe and the SC as an inhabited location were used interchangeably in general discourse, as besides the inhabited location, the SC was empty. Yes, it was infinitely large, because all universes are, but it was a smaller infinity than most. Everything had to be brought in from outside, and the logistics were nothing short of a nightmare. Simply sending electronic messages to a different universe was challenging enough, let alone moving stone, concrete, and the radioactive materials that would become the SC’s electricity supply.
The majority of the structure consisted of a large cylinder, rolling just fast enough to maintain a steady gravity. This cylinder was approximately four kilometres in radius, though only the lower kilometre was inhabited: the higher up an individual travelled, the weaker the gravity was. The infrastructure was arranged in layers, with small layers consisting of multi-storied buildings, and larger, open layers masquerading as a sort of outdoors, complete with shrubbery. Like the Bureau of Space-Time Management, the SC was sectioned off depending on the needs of the occupants, including ratios of varying gases, ambient temperature and doorway size. Several smaller cylinders, loosely tethered to the main structure, provided accommodation for races that required a much different gravity, or beings with extreme needs that would be hazardous to other races (specifically, a race called the Wenerdreen, which needed to be fully submerged in hydrochloric acid of pH 0.5 or lower in order to survive; though from a practical standpoint this was incredibly inconvenient, they were also the only race capable of maintaining and calibrating the rest of the SC, so the necessary accommodations were made).
Why they could do all this but couldn’t put in an imitation sky, rather than just grey slabs 1500 metres up, was beyond Aurelie. Someone had taken it upon themselves, long before she had joined the Bureau, to try and create a mural of all the different races ‘living together harmoniously’, or some other office culture buzzwords. Given the vast number of races, the person had bailed on the project fairly early on; however, walking under certain areas, you could catch a pair (or set, or maybe just one) of faded eyes staring down at you, perhaps attached to a half-completed body. Aurelie accidentally made eye contact with a peeling Orphellan, shuddered, and moved on.
As she walked, she tried to step back, consciously, and watch her thoughts as they ran through her mind. This was something she’d been doing since she was young and had first started it either side of sleeping- as she was waking up or as she was falling asleep. She felt that she could hear her brain as it formed thoughts and words, or as it invented narratives, but if she stepped in to interact with them in any way- agree, counter them, refine them into coherent sentences- they would slip through her fingers like mercury. She’d never seen any reference to the practice in Human media, and had never told anyone about it- who would she tell- but as she got older she was able to do ever better, even hours away from sleep.
On days when she was bored, and procrastinating her study modules, Aurelie would sit on her bed and start by letting her eyes lose focus, so that everything appeared fuzzy. Then she would dim her ears, so that any background noises became meaningless white noise. Finally, she would step back from her brain and let her thoughts flow.
Aurelie had had a lot of free time as a child.
Now, wandering through the high-ceilinged pathways of the SC, she let the hum of reactors, water pipes and distant voices blur into white noise, and watched her thoughts swirl. Some of them were tinged with fear- fear of death, fear of being trapped and unable to get out, fear of reaching home and hating what she saw. Others felt like Alvedo and DesUas, friendly, angry, scared, joyful- her friends reacting to different outcomes. She watched various trading settlements swim into and out of view, wondering what Ignios looked like; she saw that perfect blue sphere, the water vapour drawing delicate patterns over its surface.
And Aurelie saw her mothers face, over and over, and heard the soft voice that seemed to sweep her up and wrap her in warmth: No matter what, never forget that you are loved.
A hot wind blew across her from a vent. Two Aredbynes emerged from a nearby doorway. The watch on her wrist cheeped a new STU. She turned back.
#
Aurelie stepped into the office an hour after she left. Cora had gone back to work, but Micky and Sam were still there. All eyes were immediately on her. Taking a deep breath, she nodded.
“I’m going home first.”