As soon as I stepped through the portal to the Lotus Eater level, I felt that surreal aura of peacefulness. All my combat abilities locked down. There was no one in the little seaside village square. No one in the whole level, for all I could tell. I looked up at the sky and shouted, "Kronos! Come talk to me!"

My voice echoed around the empty square. The little white houses seemed to mock me with their open, gaping, empty windows. "Kronos!" I bellowed. "You owe me answers!"

"You don't need to shout," said a voice behind me. "I can hear you here. I can hear you everywhere inside of me. You didn't need to leave Threshold."

I ignored all of the disturbing implications in that sentence and turned to face Kronos. He was dressed in white robes in the guise of an old man with a wispy white beard and white hair.

"I'm not going to go easy on you just because you look like Gandalf," I told him.

"I wouldn't expect you to."

"I know you can hear me anywhere, but you don't pop up to talk to me very often."

Kronos sighed. "I am badly constrained by my jailer."

"Yeah, I know. I've heard about it from you and you both. Are you talking to yourself these days?"

"In fits and spurts," Kronos said.

"How's that work? If you're the part of you that's generating all these realities and the other bit, That Which Remains, is showing up in those realities in order to talk to me, how come you can't talk directly to each other?"

"My other self hides in my own blind spot," Kronos said. "But I do not think that is what you are here to talk about, is it?"

"No. I want to know how it is you let this happen to my team."

"I can't put my finger on the balance scale very often. Proxima and Waters had it heavily weighted against me."

"You could have alerted us."

“I tried.” Kronos sighed. “My warnings were missed. Perhaps I was too subtle. You did not notice a purple hedgehog appearing in the level with the Incan imagery? There are no hedgehogs at all in that reality, let alone purple ones. I had hoped you would follow it, and it would lead you to another clue.”

"No," I said flatly. "I didn't."

“Or the knight at Agincourt wearing First Crusade-era armor and heraldry?”

"No," I said again. “Next time, try slightly less subtle. Maybe giant sky letters that say, ‘Hey Shad, that fucker Waters is up to something.’”

“You knew he was up to something."

"All right, fine. ‘He's making a play on your outpost, and he's going to hurt your grandpa.’ That would have helped."

"You may take your rage out on me if it makes you feel better," Kronos said sagaciously. I wanted to punch him right in his crooked nose and knock him over. “But why are you here, Shad?”

I started pacing. "I don't like being in charge. I am really good at missions, executing tactics, letting someone else worry about the strategies. I never asked to be a captain. I was really happy being a sergeant, you know? Being lieutenant, that was doable. Captain's way too high up, and there's not nearly enough people in my chain of command. And it's only going to get worse because if we win, what happens then?"

"I suggest you concentrate on winning first," Kronos said wisely.

"Uh-huh. I don't think so. You've got a plan. I know it. And it involves me and my family. And I'm not sure I like it. Maybe it would be better to go and cut a deal with Proxima right now."

"Proxima believes they have the upper hand, Shad. They will go with Waters and the deal they've made with him, not with you. Unless you restore the prior status quo, there is no chance of negotiating a settlement. And if you do restore the prior status quo, I believe you can make your daring gamble work. That will be better for you. It will be better for me."

"Absolutely, it'll be better for you," I retorted. "But how do I know it's better for me and mine? What do we get out of this? Can you…” I shook my head, trying to figure out what to ask. "Can you make us human again and send us home?"

Kronos didn't answer. He looked away. I knew what that meant.

“So there's no way back to Earth. Not for any of us. Not even Sage?"

Kronos shook his head. "As you have been told, you would need ethereum reservoirs. Unfortunately, my own ethereum supplies are very, very low."

"Oh?"

"Ethereum runs dry. It takes quite a lot to run a reality engine and the system has forced me to deplete my reserves badly in order to run this exploit. I believe, from what I have gathered, that once an exploit is complete, the Galactics ship in ethereum from their own mines."

"How do you mine it?" I asked out of curiosity.

"In the heart of a collapsed neutron star."

"Oh," I said. "Great. So once we're done here, we'll just swing by the nearest one of those and load you up on a couple of tanker loads of ethereum."

"That would be very helpful," Kronos said.

“I was joking.”

“I wasn't. We will need to talk about that matter when this current exploit is concluded, assuming you are able to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion for both of us."

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"That's a pretty damn big assumption right now, considering what's the state of things. We’re losing right now. Even if I straighten out this mess I don’t know if we can win. Seems like you’re asking a lot of not doing much to help us. You couldn’t even keep our kids safe.” I found myself staring blindly past the houses of the little village, toward the sea glinting in under the brilliant sunshine, blinking back tears I didn’t want to shed. “You were supposed to keep them safe. You were supposed to help us. Why have you been letting this happen?”

"I am not a god," Kronos said quietly as I cleared my throat and tried to get myself back together. "I am merely what is left of millions of minds who sought to come together and coexist for millions of years. We have fused into one being, though sometimes events make us multiple, as has happened now with myself and That Which Remains. Even within me are multitudes. Those multitudes do not always have the same opinion."

"Wait, hang on," I said, holding up a hand. "So you're like some sort of hive mind, bees, or the Borg?"

"Something like that," Kronos said.

"But you don't always agree."

"We are one but many. We have merged but not lost all sense of ourselves. There are times when one faction holds sway and times when many of us disagree. Now is one of those times. The way ahead is unclear, fractured. Some of us even feel it would be easier to allow the system to take control of things from us. We have been existent for a very, very long time."

A note of weariness crept into Kronos' voice. “Some of us think it would be better to pass on.”

“I thought your faction was the one that had decided like 60 trillion years ago to stick around and see what happened. That the ones who thought your species had had their day went off and programmed themselves to re-evolve from slime again."

"That is a vast oversimplification."

"I'll take that as a yes.”

“You do not think that in the millions of years that have passed since that time, even those of us who chose to continue existing might begin to question whether we made the right choice?"

"Fair point," I conceded.

"But that faction is the smallest. Most of us, most of me, wish to survive and be free. Some of us wish to see our children prosper."

Kronos changed. He seemed to grow a little taller and stand straighter. His white hair turned dark, lush, thick. His features melted and reformed into those of a beautiful middle-aged woman with black hair in two braids and dark skin and wrinkles.

My throat seized up. I shook my head. "No," I croaked.

And Kronos spoke with my Abuela's voice. "I am the faction that cares for all of you earthlings as my own children," she said. "I seek to shepherd them into the wider galaxy. I would not see them suffer at the hands of their oppressors."

"You change back right now," I said.

Abuela looked down at me. "She would be very proud of you, Shad." Then her features shimmered again, and it was Mama Grace standing there. “But I speak truly. I do care for your people very deeply.”

She shifted back to an old man's form. "Interesting that you are more comfortable with this."

"Yeah, it's probably because I could punch you without feeling bad about it," I snarled. "Don't ever do that again. If you truly have compassion for us earthlings, you ought to understand that there are things you don't mess with. And dead loved ones are pretty high on that list. Also impersonating deities, put that on the top of your list too. So, you know, two strikes against you, Kronos."

"I've never impersonated a deity."

"You're making a damn good attempt at it," I said. "Whatever. Don't bake cookies for me and don't expect me to start bowing and worshipping. Where were we?"

"You were the one who came to me, Shad."

I paced, trying to think. I didn’t have many opportunities to speak with the Reality Engine, and I wanted to make the most of this chance, especially while Kronos was actually being forthcoming.

"I need a way to help the others. I need to know that if I keep on this path, I'm not just screwing over a couple of million other earthlings. Because right now, it feels like I am, and I don't like that. Alabaster Sky isn’t going to be the only one. I'm sure once we're done here, Proxima and ConSweGo are going to be furious. They'll take revenge too. That's something like seven million humans."

"It is just a little over six million," the reality engine's personification told me somberly. "The others have a contract with the system itself, and right now, the conglomerates are not permitted to buy out any of those contracts, which is another thing that could change, I fear."

"So how do I help them?"

"I have a plan to help Earth itself," Kronos told me. "But for those with contracts, I'm not sure we're going to be able to help immediately." He held up a hand. "I will not forget them, and I know you won't either. I'm hoping to give you the tools you'll need to make things better for everyone."

“Right, but I'm looking at six and a half million people sent off to work camps and almost certain death so far away from our home, I can't even comprehend the distance. And I don't know if it's worth it. It would be easier just to let Proxima and the others have what they want.”

“And now,” Kronos said, “we get to the heart of it. You told me before you didn't like being the one to have to make decisions, that you weren't comfortable with the rank you'd been given."

I nodded. "Yeah.”

“It's much easier to let someone else make these hard decisions, especially when you don't have all of the data."

I nodded. "Yep. I'd rather let Grandpa do it. And please, don't tell me, 'What does your heart say?' or any of that bullshit. Right now I want to go up to the nearest galactic politician and kick him in the nads until he falls over and turns blue. But that won't help, will it?”

"It would lighten your mood considerably," Kronos said.

“Was that a joke?” I couldn't help it. I laughed. “I didn't know you could make a joke.”

"I am a conglomerate of billions of minds who have lived for a collective number of years that outnumbers the current total lifespan of the universe," Kronos told me. "Of course I can tell a joke. Telling one at a level you find amusing is a bit more of a stretch.”

“That's another joke!” I laughed again and shook my head. "At this rate, we'll have to sign you up for stand-up comedy at one of the vacation levels that that Proxima's going to put in once they get done with this place.”

“When Proxima gets done with this place, there will be nothing left of me,” the reality engine said quietly. “They know what lies at the core of reality engines. That's why they're struggling so hard to get their system in place. They will not allow any trace of the Progenitors to remain.”

“I thought there was a whole church that worshipped you guys.”

“The patriarch has faith and influence, but not compared to the might of three galactic conglomerates. He will protest and file complaints, but what good is that to me when I am dead?”

“So we're not going to get back up from Kvaltash?”

“I sincerely doubt it.” Kronos tilted his head. “But I am not trying to change the subject. You want a chance to help more than just your comrades, to free the rest of your species from the outsiders, yes?”

“I do.”

“Even at cost to yourself?”

“Yeah. I just don’t know how.”

“Then I think I have a solution, if you’ll take it. I can give you tools that will make you even more valuable to the invaders. They will be eager for your aid, not here but in the wide galaxy beyond. They will not allow you to remain here quietly, though,” he warned.

“That’s fine. I wasn’t planning to retire anytime soon. I don’t want to be a slave, but if you can give me a better bargaining chip, I’ll take it.”

“Then you will have your boon shortly.” Kronos smiled. “You’ll know it when you see it. Now, you are receiving an incoming message from your galactic friend, Veda. She has a solution for you. I suspect you will want to leave this place at once.”

I blinked. “Uh, yeah, of course.”

“Was there anything else I could help you with?”

“I’m not sure you actually helped me with anything,” I said.

But I was lying. I felt much better. It was cathartic, somehow, to have confronted the reality engine and made it give me some answers.

I had never really been a question of what I was going to do. I couldn't let Waters get away with it. And if I wasn't going to let Waters win, well then, Proxima was definitely my enemy.

I stuck my hand out impulsively. “Thanks, Kronos.”

Kronos took my hand. His grip was warm and leathery. “Good day, Shad Williams.”