Later.
They were standing amid open grass, criss-crossed with yellowed paths that toed the line between compacted gravel and tarmac. The field was nearly cropped, but here and there the green grass gave way to swathes of blackened stems, the aftermath of flames that had chewed through the landscape in the not-so-distant past.
It was Hyde Park, April knew. Or what was left of it. This part of central London had been impacted badly by the almost-apocalypse, and it was an area she had not managed to repair while she had still been God. It was a shame, but then you couldn't have everything in an imperfect world. The city was still in aggregate standing, following her piecemeal restorations, but only half so. A lot of hard work to do, with hammers and welding torches this time, not just the wave of a hand. Oh well. She had more than done her part.
Charlie walked over to her from where he had been standing with Trace. Morgan and Michelle were slightly further away, speaking to each other with a sort of nervous animation that seemed to involve a lot of exaggerated hand motions.
"Are you sure about this?" he said, glancing around anxiously. "That it will be, like, safe? Or safe-er, I should say. I know the city's in pretty bad shape, but..."
"I spoke to the Committee guy that Tavistre left behind," she said, "apparently plenty of projectives weren't even touched by the collapse, and any Committee installations will apparently be happy to welcome us, as long as we, uh- what was it Tavistre said again?"
"Stay the fuck out of his business from now on", Charlie intoned.
"Yeah, that. But anyway, I figure it'll be better than hanging around here. At least for a while. I need a holiday, I think."
"You and everyone. I mean, fuck, April, you didn't even die."
"Well, yes, but I did become God."
"Yeah, so you've mentioned, and, like, are we meant to... I don't know, are we meant to feel sorry for you because of that?"
"Yes! Yes you should, it was very fucking tiring!"
"Well, for the record, so was was getting the back of my skull caved in by a brick."
April scoffed. "The thanks I get for bringing you back from the dead. Really, Charlie."
He chuckled, and put a hand down on her shoulder. "I'm kidding. Don't worry, I trust you—if you say it's for the best, then it's for the best. Honestly, I don't know what else I even could do but trust you at this point. This shit, it's... I wasn't ready for this."
His voice sounded weary, and just a little bit feverish, trailing off as he stared out into the middle-distance. He let the words hang there for a moment, contemplating, before meeting turning back to meet her eyes.
"April, I'm... I'm so sorry, about before. About what I said. You- you've done right by us all, I see that now, even despite all this... all of this shit. I didn't know what the fuck I was talking about back then. I was... I was just scared, and, and I-"
April put her hand on his shoulder, opposite to his own, so that they formed a weird sort of mutual rectangle.
"It's fine, Charlie. I get it. We all had a lot of shit going on."
"Yeah, you can sure as fuck say that again..."
He turned his head, his eyes sliding towards Kroakli, who was standing a few dozen feet beyond Michelle and Morgan, talking to It. Michelle, she noticed, was standing with her back pointedly turned against the creature that had killed her, but other than that, her reactions to the orgoane had slackened considerably since April had touched her mind. It was more, she reflected, than either of them had deserved.
Kroakli turned towards her, and made a beckoning motion with one amorphous limb.
"I think your friend wants a word," muttered Charlie.
"Yeah. Thanks, Char."
April made her way across the grass, stopping next to Kroakli and the figure that it had been talking to. Kroakli had been favouring a new variation on its form recently; humanoid, but with two sets of arms, and a more defined face that reflected how it had appeared within the mental landscape of the Sigmoid's mind. The new face was markedly more expressive, and it turned to her with a sharp grin.
"We are close to the point of being ready to proceed," it hissed. "Our friend here has confirmed that It can make the connection as needed, krr."
"Yes," intoned the man standing next to them. She looked up, and met the coal-black gaze of the Sigmoid's reconstituted avatar. It stared at her with a sort of detached coldness. The monkey with the red eyes was nowhere to be seen, this time. She distantly mulled over why that might be.
"I have set aside energy necessary for the transmission," It continued, "as per our arrangement. It can be opened and re-opened at will, to enable further transfers without destabilizing your own atomic matrices, or those of your companions. All at remains is the matter of your destination. Do we proceed with the alignment we had previously proffered? The one that the orgoane encodes as, 4FFS;55HR;PTR1;?"
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"Tavistre called it Scion's Bliss," she answered, "and yes, I have no objections. A well-mapped Committee world sounds like as good a place as any to start out."
"Very well," said the Sigmoid, "the gateway will close once you are all across the threshold." It turned to look down at April directly, and, for the briefest of moments, Its passive face was touched by the faint ghost of a sneer.
"Happy travels," It said, before vanishing.
There was a moment of silence as April gave Kroakli a slightly nervous glance.
It was broken abruptly by a loud tone, blaring like a klaxon and sweeping up the frequency scale in a slightly disorienting manner. April heard a yelp from behind her as Morgan jumped, followed by the sound of Trace swearing loudly.
A bright line of light, about two dozen feet long, had inscribed itself along the grass, shining with the blinding glare of a welding arc, or of magnesium fire. As April squinted into it, the line began to lift into the empty air, drawing out a narrow rectangle that slowly expanded in height.
A strange, discontinuous landscape emerged in the space beyond it. It was like someone was raising an invisible garage door, peeling up to open upon a view of a rolling hills, covered in something that looked like yellow-gold grass, sweeping out beneath distant, twinkling lights that could not be distinguished as either cities or stars.
The high pitched tone faded into a faint whine as the aperture reached its full height. Kroakli had melted down into the grass of their own reality, distorting its texture so that it blended almost invisibly into the surface. April was confused as to why, until she heard the crunch of footsteps, and turned to see that Michelle was walking up beside her.
"Bloody hell," she said, squinting into the gateway as she stopped beside April. "You weren't kidding about this being a science fantasy deal. Are those three moons? That's absolutely an excessive number of moons!"
April grinned at her, and found the back of her hand brushing against Michelle's own. Michelle glanced down, and clasped it with a smile of her own.
"I don't think you can really put a genre on real life," said April. "I guess that the reality is that crazy shit just kind of happens, and you have to take it as it comes."
She squeezed Michelle's hand for a moment, then dropped it as she turned towards her.
"Hey, Shellie? Are you doing okay? You don't have to come if you're still... you know."
"I'll be fine, April. I'm not made of glass. Just because you had to bring me back from the dead once doesn't mean you have to act like I'm on the verge of collapsing back into my grave."
"Yeah, but- I mean, you know..."
April's gaze flicked down to the ground, and then up again.
"Your little friend?" Michelle rolled her eyes, and shuddered slightly. "Well, I can't say I like that that you're letting it tag along after what it did to me, but-"
"It didn't know what we-"
Michelle held up a hand. "I know, I know. Just- it's going to take some time for me to... look, they don't teach us things like this in therapy school."
"Is therapy school a real thing?"
"Where do you think I got my degree? The internet?"
"Well-"
Michelle gave her a faux-glare, then grinned again. "Kidding, Apes." She clapped her on the shoulder. "Are we ready to go? Should I get the others?"
"Yeah. Make sure they grab the bags."
Michelle walked back towards the rest of their group. April watched her go for a few seconds, then turned back towards the alien landscape in front of her.
"Do you think that she will grow fonder of us?" asked Kroakli from next to her feet.
"Probably not," said April, "but I'm just glad she's alive. That we're all alive. I still can't believe how lucky we- I- how lucky we got."
"Life is the great miracle of chance, yes," mused Kroakli, "but the deeper strangeness of it is how life always does seem to come around again, in the end. Despite everything, it is birthed anew, from the void, living and dying and living again, across all forever."
April hummed a vague noise of assent.
"And it remains delicious all the while."
April frowned down at it. "Is that meant to be literal, or...?"
"We were kidding, April Pearce."
April sighed. "You really have learned a whole lot, huh."
"Yes." Kroakli reformed into its human shape. "We wish to survey the territory before you make your crossing. It will be but a moment, as we make firm our first incursions. Stay until our return."
April nodded, and the orgoane walked forward towards the gateway, its stride still slightly too fluid to be natural for a human. April watched it go as it rounded the edge of the rectangle of light and disappeared from her view.
She stood there for a moment, looking out into the unfamiliar world, then did a slow about turn, taking in the horizon of her own. She took a moment to contemplate the clear above her sky, still blessedly free of any blemish more sinister than a stray cloud, then looked down at the ground beneath, the blades of green grass that had been parted by the soles of her boots.
Her boots were clean, and they were new. She had picked up a new outfit from one of the derelict department stores, and despite what she had been through while wearing it, she did not miss the torn and soiled clothes that had been gifted to her by the Committee. Her new clothes were clean, and, more importantly, felt very normal.
On a whim, April crouched down, putting her hand to the grass, closing her eyes as she felt the blades flow between her splayed fingers. She ran their tips across the lush growth, drinking in the sensation as she let it ground her. She stayed like that for almost ten seconds before her index finger abruptly caught on something sharp, and she jerked back with a sharp intake of breath from the pain, her eyes snapping open.
There was a shard of glass half buried between the stems. It was some nameless casualty of the city's recent spate of broken windows and street lights, one that had somehow been carried to its current resting place by a blast, upheaval, or other unknowable consequence of the cataclysm.
It glistened with red wetness. April lifted her hand up to her face, examining the shallow cut that had been made there, a round droplet of blood beading against her skin.
It didn't bother her. Whatever she had done to fix her phobia while her mind had been inside the Sigmoid had stuck. She wiped the blood idly on the grass, and stood, looking out to where her friends stood gathered upon the threshold of the new world. April stood for a moment, then walked over to join them.
THE END(?)