Brand flicked his wrist, and, suddenly, we were in a conference room, with an elliptic table surrounded by sleek, roller-footed swivel chairs. Potted ornamental plants sat on the floor atop wall-to-wall beige carpeting. A projector had snaked out from the ceiling, casting a console Home screen on the wall—a screensaver of a kelp forest beneath the waves.

Brand turned to face me. “I did what you asked,” he said. “Nurse Stewart gave me your data about the Lantor Incursion. I’ve been examining the fuck out of it.”

With a glance at the projector, the kelp forest vanished as the projector display played recordings of Andalon and me previewing the regions within the Lantor Incursion.

“I’d like to focus on… this one,” he said.

The recording paused, focusing on a single setting. I immediately recognized it as the ammonia-stricken disaster zone Andalon and I had explored with Kreston.

“Because you were actually in that environment,” Brand explained, “even if only partially, the records you gave me came with sensory information in them. I spent part of the past few days of me-time boning up on my chemistry knowledge. And… it’s been interesting, to say the least.”

“So, what have you found?” I asked.

He turned to face me. “You said you thought Catamander Brave might have some connection to all this?”

“Yes.” I nodded.

“That’s the story with the Worlds Beyond the Night, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “So?”

“What if it’s some kind of prophecy?” Brand said.

“I’ve considered that, but there’s not really enough evidence to—”

Brand grinned. “—That’s where you’re wrong.”

He waved his hand again, and the images in the paused recording flowed out of the wall and became real.

“Have you ever heard of theoretical biochemistry?” he asked.

“No.”

Brand clapped his hands together. “It’s delightfully useless. A bunch of chemists with overactive imaginations decided to imagine alternative forms of biochemistry. We know how life works: photosynthesis, rubisco, electron transport chains, cytochromes, adenosine triphosphate, lipids, and nuclei and amino acids, as far as the eye can see.”

Andalon would have been so lost if she was here. As for me, my knowledge of non-neurology-adjacent molecular biology pretty much began and ended with “cellular respiration is the reverse of photosynthesis,”—not that I was going to admit that in front of Brand.

“But,” he continued. “What if you had to do it differently? Could you do it with silicon? What about using sulfur as an electron acceptor, rather than oxygen? Perhaps arsenic-based life? The list goes on and on.”

“Is there any point to these questions?”

Brand grinned. “It is very useful for writing weird science fiction. Aside from that, though, nope, no applications whatsoever. It’s right up there with theoretical underwater basket-weaving. I had to spend quite some time sifting through the digital library to find the pertinent research papers.”

I crossed my arms. “Where are you going with this, Dr. Nowston?”

He gestured to the Incursion-stuff floating around us—fauna and flora plucked from nightmares and dreamscapes.

“Genneth,” Brand asked, “what do you think this stuff is? Like, what do you think you and Andalon were seeing inside the Incursion? Nightmares? Daydreams? Memories?”

I cupped my hand at my chin. “You know… I never really thought about that.”

“Well I have,” Brand replied.

He raised a single finger. “This stuff? It’s not a daydream. It can’t be. It’s statistically impossible. I even did a Chi-squared test.” Brand pointed at one of the headless lily-crowned elephant-things.

“Genneth: this is ammonia-based life.”

I stared. “What…?”

With both hands, Brand grabbed the top of one of the chairs.

“The cold. The hydrocarbon haze—gaseous methane and ethane.” His arms trembled with his excitement. “Clouds of polymerized cyanide soot. The explosive reaction of methane and liquid ammonia meeting water and oxygen. All of it checks out!”

I stammered in panic. “C-Cyanide!?”

“Yes!” Brand said. Whirling the chair around, he sat down at the desk, conjuring animated 3D science models, graphs, and other nifty demonstrations.

“At sufficiently low temperatures,” he explained, “ammonia would be in a liquid state, and could take the role of water in an alternative form of biochemistry.”

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

Clusters of stubby tetrahedral ammonia atoms floated above the table.

“Photosynthesis would have ammonia as the photon acceptor, and use that energy to split methane into carbon and hydrogen, and then hydrogen gas would be expelled as a waste product.”

Squiggly animations of photons wriggled out from the walls and bombarded with the methane molecules that drifted into view. Stoichiometric equations floated midair, giving me traumatizing flashbacks to my college organic chemistry course.

“This parallels how our plants use water to split carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen and expel oxygen as the waste product.”

Brand made a point to emphasize the word “oxygen”.

“Conversely,” he continued, “cellular respiration would take oxygen-free hydrocarbons to harvest the hydrogen to power their biochemistry, and they’d breathe out methane as a waste product.”

Colored arrows appeared on some of the ammonia-creatures and ammonia-plants, indicating the uptake and output of the various chemical compounds.

“It all works!” he said, nodding triumphantly. “I even went inside to poke around, myself.”

I stepped back in shock.

“You what!?”

But Brand just waved his hand dismissively and spun around in his chair. “It’s alright,” he said, “I was under an invisibility spell and a perceptive gloaming. I was in and out, and nobody was the wiser. I was even able to take samples and bring them back for analysis.”

“Bring them back?” I asked. “To where?”

“To my mind, I mean. From yours to mind.”

“And what did you discover?” I asked.

I had no illusions that I was going to understand a word of the answer.

“The ammonia lakes and oceans of this Incursion world had a high concentration of dissolved metal ions,” Brand explained. “You know what that means?”

“Not a clue.”

Brand raised his finger. “Bio-organic circuitry! Look, you can even see it in the filamentous structures on these organisms here.” He pointed at the lily-like structure on so many of the creatures. “I wonder if they can communicate in radio waves…”

“Brand, Brand—I’m glad that you’re so excited about this,” I said, fidgeting with my bow-tie, “but I don’t see how—”

He grinned again. “—This is another world, Genneth. Remember how I said the Green Death is not of our world? Well, lo and behold: our world is not the only one out there! Kosuke Himchi was: there are worlds beyond the Night, Genneth.”

My jaw went slack. I muttered under my breath, almost inaudibly: “Holy forking shirtballs…" I swallowed hard, my heart racing. “Then, the Incursion—”

Brand nodded. “—It’s exactly that: it’s other worlds. Well, memories of them, I suppose. Memories of lost worlds, taken by the fungus. Somehow—and I still have fricking clue how this part works—someone or something—or multiple somethings—knows about this ammonia life world, not to mention Angel-knows how many other places, and that consciousness or consciousnesses—whatever it is, wherever it is—is and/or are hooked up with yours the way our minds are linked right now.”

As calmly as I could, I walked over to the other side of the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down. My mind was swimming with possibilities. Colorful disturbances thrummed in the air around me.

Other than a plague of apocalyptic proportions, the biggest challenge we faced in defeating the Green Death was the fungus’ sheer otherworldliness. We needed a context for it, a way to understand it. Without that, we might as well have been grasping at straws.

“Up until now,” I said, “I’d thought scripture would be the key. But…” My voice trailed off.

“It might still be,” Brand said, swiveling around to face me. “Right now, we’re just getting a more complete picture of what’s going on. One moment, it feels like fantasy; the next, like science-fiction. But the answer might very well lie in between. Who’s to say both can’t be true?”

So, it wasn’t just Suisei who might have answers. Lantor might hold them, as well—perhaps the secrets hidden in Andalon’s missing memories.

“What about the Scary-Shinies, as Andalon called them?” I asked. “She was petrified of them. Were you able to figure out anything about them?”

“Yes and no,” Brand replied.

“What do you mean?”

Pursing his lips, Brand rested his head in his hand, propping his arm on the table with his elbow, his sponge-curled hair as vivacious as ever.

“I don’t know if it was the Scary-Shinies,” he said, “or something else, but, when I tried to approach them, well… I got attacked by fungus monsters. I’d set up a teleportation spell beforehand, so I was able to port out of there after I’d stunned the first wave.”

“You didn’t try again?”

Brand nodded. “You bet your ass I did.” But then he sighed. “But the same thing happened each time.” He sat up straight. “Still, I managed to reach some tentative conclusions.”

“Tell me.”

“Gladly,” he said. “You said you think the fungus might be trying to attack us across time.”

“Possibly across different timelines, too,” I said.

“Noted,” Brand replied.

“What do you mean, noted? I’ve been freaking out about this!

“It synergizes with my ideas so far. You see… what if the fungus isn’t just attacking us, be it at one or many times? If Catamander Brave is right, and there are worlds beyond the Night, and we already know the fungus isn’t from our world, so… it must have come here from somewhere else. That means the fungus can travel between worlds.”

I stared at him, fully cognizant of the implications. “Fudge,” I muttered.

Brand looked me in the eye. “Andalon’s wyrms archive souls, and with all those souls come memories, right?”

“Yes.”

“And Hell wants souls?” he asked.

“Also right,” I said.

“Genneth, I think the ammonia beings were fighting the Scary-Shinies.”

“What about the hummingbirds?” I asked, recalling the people-shaped hummingbirds I’d seen in Lantor.

“I don’t know about the theological implications, but I think it’s safe to say they were fighting the Scary-Shinies, too. Indeed, there were no signs of the fungus on any of the Scary-Shinies, and considering Andalon is afraid of both the Scary-Shinies and the fungus, it stands to reason that the two are related somehow.”

“Really?” I asked.

Brand nodded. “I think the Scary-Shinies are in cahoots with the fungus, and the images we’re seeing are the memories of the souls that the fungus has devoured.”

“Souls from other worlds?”

He nodded again. “Souls from other worlds. Perhaps even wyrms from other worlds. You’ve somehow gotten in touch with them. Their thoughts are reaching out to yours.”

I slouched, slumping further down into my chair. “Angel… this… this is a lot to take in. Time-travel. Zombies. Wyrms. Angels. Stars. And now, other worlds.” I looked my friend in the eye. “This is incredible work, Brand.”

Dr. Nowston bowed his head. “You’re welcome. But…”

“Oh God, there’s more?”

“Yeah. I found something: a tunnel. It goes from the edge of the safe zone you made to the heart of the Incursion zone.”

“What are you getting at?” I asked.

“Well… I’ve tried getting through on my own, and I can’t. So…” Brand shot me a sheepish look. “I was hoping you could help me out.”

My back went stiff. “Oh…” I said, my mouth hanging slightly ajar.

“Think of it as an adventure,” Brand suggested.

There was a long pause, during which the only sound was the quiet rustling of my fingers fidgeting with my lucky bow-tie.

“We’re going on a quest, aren’t we?” I said, softly.

“Yes,” Brand nodded, “yes we are.”