Thomas sat cross-legged in his newly constructed shrine to real-time information.

The main interior of galaverse hall was larger than any cathedral or throne room. It accommodated endless ghostly holographic news feeds. Images streamed between soaring pillars, showing Sediment City on Yoft, Lambent City on Tenth Ocean, SilenceSphere Orbital, CurlVents MetroHub on Toishifel, and hundreds more.

Ariock had even mounted camera marbles at a spot along the Dovanack driveway, just for fun. The three dimensional projection showed no people, just trees and an occasional wild turkey or deer. The feed bounced across interstellar relay stations to reach Freedomland, the nominal capitol of the galaxy.

Few people could handle the information overload in this hall. For Thomas, it was a place of quiet meditation where he could experience a ghostly simulacrum of the Megacosm. He sat on the quietly rotating hover disk of the central dais, taking in wonders.

Evenjos was decimating a Torth stronghold on Parity. Fayfer and her many pilots were harrying the remains of a Torth space fleet towards the Ultron Orbital, where defeated Torth had no choice but to kneel in submission and become penitents. Weptolyso was training an army on Algyp, teaching the savage nussians there to adhere to a new justice system. They might attempt to retrain battlebeasts as service animals, but that was a project for the future.

Garrett was on Hretshu, showing his gratitude to victorious freedom fighters by healing fatal injuries. It was strange to see Garrett healing people instead of wreaking havoc, but the collapse of the Torth Empire had brought out his kinder side.

Nethroko was consolidating friendly forces on Nuss. The liberated population of that planet had elected Nethroko to be Consul of Nuss, and the war council and Kessa’s lieutenants had both agreed, ratifying that decision. If the new galactic empire was going to last more than a few years, it would need wise decision-makers at the top of society.

Pung had not volunteered for the job of Consul of Umdalkdul, but the war council unanimously agreed that a heroic smuggler who had traveled with Kessa and Ariock since their earliest adventures would be the most reputable and honorable representative possible. So Pung was reluctantly acting as a consul there, with eager help from councilor Deschubah and his family.

Thomas flipped through live feeds from Enera, Paleoterra, SilverVeil Colony, the Yins, Lateral City, Glukgorba, and more. He didn’t see any hint of an existential threat to the universe.

But the Death Architect operated in a communications abyss. She was outside of his many territories, unseen by his people or his drones.

The irony was visceral. Slaves used to operate in the few caves which Torth could not surveil or which Torth did not know about. Now? Only the most dangerous of Torth were driven into hiding, operating with the same degree of secrecy.

Thomas closed his eyes and reached outward with his mind. He sought any mind who might sense him and draw him in, wanting his attention, or wanting a shared exchange. Just in case.

Static.

Radio silence.

Where once there had been mental palaces and oceans and universes, now there was nothing.

Because of him.

Thomas tried not to weep. They weren’t literally gone, he knew. Not really. Some factional Torth groups still shared their thoughts, and he could even join some threads, if he tuned into the right mental frequency, so to speak.

But any Torth in the universe would recognize his gargantuan mind. They would need to trust the Conqueror, or have curiosity about his thoughts, in order to invite him into whatever minicosm they had created. The Death Architect and her cultists were not interested. Neither were the various fundamentalist sects of Torth remnants.

Thomas searched. And he searched. But he was as lonely as he used to be on Earth, before he had learned of the existence of other sapient species.

When he imagined how much cosmic knowledge his decisions had obliterated… how many lives his decisions had ended… cities burned, spaceships blown up, torture enacted… oh, how could anyone respect him? How could anyone regard him as anything other than a monster?

“Is this a simulation of what the Megacosm feels like?” Cherise asked.

Thomas opened his eyes. She stood before him in a fiery sundress. As the dais rotated away, she climbed up onto it, joining him.

“It’s overwhelming,” she said.

“Not to me,” Thomas admitted. “This is a small sliver of what’s happening in the universe. And it’s silent. It’s far away. I actually find it relaxing.”

That was at least one upside of this poor replacement for real-time galactic knowledge. The Megacosm had been many things, but rarely had been it relaxing. Not for him, anyway.

Cherise took a seat next to him. No fear. No guardedness. Thomas sensed that she spent a lot of time with Vy and Abhaga, these days. She used telepathy gas with Abhaga to facilitate his ease of language learning. The street orphan was now fluent in the common slave tongue, and Cherise had even picked up some of his language, Bengali, in the process.

Cherise and her friends appreciated Thomas for all of the things he’d done.

She saw him as a hero. She felt humble next to him, and guilty about the months she had judged him wrongly.

“I haven’t defeated every threat.” Thomas thought about the ominous prophecy of the Lone Survivor. He was glad that Cherise could not read his mind. There were hints that Vy would suffocate in outer space, and Ariock and Evenjos did not seem to have any preordained resolution to their respective stories. Ah Jun had not painted their final endings.

Cherise was not shown, either. She might live, she might die, but Ah Jun had not seemed to count her as important enough to include.

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“I don’t think you can count me as a hero,” Thomas warned Cherise. “We still need to defeat the Death Architect, and she’s dangerous. I don’t know what will come of it.”

Cherise remembered that her foster sister had departed with Ariock in a stormy mood. All of their teasing talk about weddings and mixed marriages between humans and shani had ended abruptly. Vy and Ariock had not returned since yesterday.

“What happened between you and Ariock?” Cherise dared to ask. “Where is he?”

“We’re still on good terms,” Thomas said, although he wasn’t entirely certain about that.

“Where did he go?” Cherise asked.

“He needed some time off,” Thomas said.

Cherise gave him a very skeptical look. Armies were stranded, in need of mass teleportation. Ariock had been impossible to communicate with for more than a full day.

Thomas didn’t want to toy with her, or mislead her. So he took a moment to evaluate how much he should reveal.

He settled on the full truth. He might not have trusted anyone else with it, but Cherise understood all that was at stake.

“Garrett showed us the final prophecies,” Thomas said. “According to Ah Jun, only one of the four heroes will survive to return after the final battle with the Death Architect.”

Cherise immediately grasped the implications. In the back of her mind, she imagined a painting of Ariock standing alone. He was Strength personified. If anyone survived, she assumed it would be him. Not Transformation. Not Wisdom.

“Who will survive?” She gave Thomas a look of sympathy.

“The painting,” Thomas said, “was of me. Alone.”

“You?” Cherise studied him, gauging how serious he was.

“Me,” Thomas affirmed. “Ariock took it hard.”

“Oh no.”

“But all of Ah Jun’s prophetic paintings are misleading,” Thomas hurried to add. “Maybe the death of the other heroes is metaphorical. She really left it open to interpretation. I don’t think we can know what that painting means until it happens.”

Even as he spoke, his voice faltered. He desperately wanted to believe his own words.

Death was so final.

The prophecy was specifically labeled as the lone survivor. The lone survivor of what? Of an apocalypse? Of death? Or of something else?

There was a glimmer of hope there. Thomas felt sure of it. Ah Jun had given this hope to him, across the eons, as a gift. Judging by that final defaced prophecy, Ah Jun had wanted to mislead the Death Architect, who could likely foretell the future. But Ah Jun was also offering hope to anyone who had enough empathy and emotion to read between the lines. She had been a genius of causality, in the same way that Thomas was a genius of neuroscience.

“Is Ariock coming back?” Cherise asked, her tone as somber as the question warranted.

Thomas began to offer reassurances. But he didn’t want to mislead Cherise, so he once again, he veered towards the truth.

“Ariock has been plagued by a recurring nightmare,” Thomas said. “I don’t normally make it my business to reveal other people’s secrets. But Vy knows, and I believe she would want you to know, at this point. Delia entrusted both of you with the secret of Ariock’s precognitive power.”

Cherise looked unsurprised that Thomas had known that secret.

“The book of prophecies confirmed Ariock’s biggest fear,” Thomas said. “He knows that his dreams are prophetic, now. He thinks he’s going to lose Vy.”

“Lose her?” Cherise asked warily. “How?”

“The prophecies are not totally clear,” Thomas said.

“Death?” Cherise guessed, watching his face.

“That is the implication,” Thomas admitted.

Sadness radiated off Cherise. She didn’t want her foster sister to die.

“If I can save her, I will,” Thomas said. “But I’m also focused on trying to stop the Death Architect from destroying the universe. She has a doomsday device, and she’ll use it, unless I can figure out where and when.”

Most people would have been overwhelmed by all the dire news. Cherise took it in stride. She knew Thomas well enough to believe him and to trust him.

“You’ll stop her,” Cherise said. “You’ll save the universe. I trust you.”

“I have an idea of how to begin,” Thomas admitted. “But I’m hesitant.”

“Why?”

“Because.” Thomas wondered how to describe his own moral uncertainty. “I’m problematic.”

Cherise was listening.

“I destroyed a civilization,” Thomas said, struggling to explain. “Sure, the Torth Empire had to go. We all know that. But when my biological father faced me and shot himself in the head, he blamed himself for causing my birth, thereby setting up a path towards the destruction of the most majestic and utopian empire in the history of the known universe. And I can never forget. He blamed me for ending his civilization. And he was absolutely right.”

Cherise nodded, as if Thomas had said exactly what she expected him to say. “Do you care about Kessa?” she asked. “And Varktezo?”

“Of course.”

“What about Nea?” she asked. “And the Twins?”

“Of course.” Thomas understood her point. He had saved many Torth refugees. He had liberated slaves, including people he valued quite a lot.

“And me?” Cherise said. “And Vy? And Ariock?”

“I know the Torth Empire had to go,” Thomas reiterated, although her questions did make him feel better about it.

“But even though you saved a lot of people,” Cherise said, incisive, “you still think you should have saved more.”

That was it. Exactly. Cherise had pinpointed the main factor driving his internal mess of guilt. She had done it without even reading his mind.

“Yes,” he admitted.

He thought of the super-geniuses who had been murdered; the ones he would never get to meet in person, as well as the one who had mentored him. And they were only the baryonic halo around a galaxy of guilt.

“When the Torth took you and Vy as hostages,” Thomas said, “my quest to find the Lady of Sorrow took us through the Isolatorium. While I was there, I saw a little girl. A Torth girl. She was being tortured to death. Probably for the crime of helping slaves, or maybe for wanting to be a human.”

He was never going to forget that child prisoner. He still saw her forsaken look in his dreams.

“I didn’t save her,” Thomas said. “I couldn’t. But I knew that she was only one of many nameless victims. No one would take risks to rescue them, or even spare a thought for them.”

“You did,” Cherise said.

“I saved a fraction of them,” Thomas said. “The Torth Homeworld got destroyed because of events instigated by me, and that little girl died in the wreckage. Countless cities burned because of me. And more will burn before the year is over.”

He expected Cherise to reason with him, to say that he had done more good than harm, and that his heart was in the right place. That was what Vy would say. It was what Varktezo and other friends would say.

As if good intentions were the most important thing.

“I set a galactic collapse in motion,” Thomas explained. “I’ve been trying to guide the fallout, but it’s a chaotic mess, with rocks falling every which way.” He indicated the live streams throughout galaverse hall. “All I can do is watch, helpless, while some people suffer who don’t deserve it.”

The Torth Empire had arisen because a scientist named Unyat had wanted to end suffering and inequality on his planet. Oops. Good intentions did not always lead to good outcomes. Thomas had done a nice thing by liberating slaves, but he didn’t want to sow the seeds for some future atrocity.

He was trying his best. But he wasn’t an oracle. He had blind spots.

“I ended the Megacosm,” Thomas said with all of the mournfulness that statement deserved. “I ended eons worth of knowledge. I killed it.”

Cherise snuggled against him and kissed his cheek.

Thomas blinked in surprise.

“You’re right,” Cherise said. “You’re a really despicable person. You destroyed knowledge. You let children die.”

He was surprised by how readily Cherise accepted his darkness.

“You’ve tortured slaves,” she went on. “You removed people’s free will and caused them to suffer horrible deaths.”

How could she stand him?

She sidled closer. “But you’re also a wonderful person.” Their lips were almost touching. Her breath warmed his face. “You’re complicated.”

He sensed accommodation from her. She knew his flaws. She had spent years analyzing his flaws, mulling them over, one by one, and yet she had decided to accept him as a fixture in her life, even so.

Her face was close. Right there.

Thomas hesitantly kissed her full lips.

The sensation was as sweet and exhilarating as he used to dream it would be. A long-buried remnant of himself seemed to wake up and shake off a dusting of snow.