Starting at a new school was always rough, but as long as there were no killer wasps, Vell had a feeling he’d do fine.
In an incredibly vivid anxiety fueled nightmare, Vell Harlan had foreseen his first day at his new school ending in horrific disaster, namely a swarm of murderous wasps. He’d initially been very concerned about this, but the psychometric app on his phone had confirmed he hadn’t received an omen, vision, or even a portent. Just to be sure, Vell pulled out his phone again, and checked that the psychometric energy levels around him remained low.
The app he used had been developed, appropriately enough, by the academy he was now set to attend. The cumbersomely named Einstein-Odinson College of Paracausal Forces stood as the reigning educational authority on all things paranormal, covering every topic from A to Z, and every other letter of every other alphabet as well. An app that detected psychotropic particle concentrations was child’s play for a faculty that had figured out the rune-circuitry sequence to allow teleportation. Instant matter transportation was incredibly expensive, but it was possible, thanks to the EOC faculty.
The exorbitant cost of teleportation also made it more practical for the College to ferry it’s students to the campus with an actual ferry -albeit a high-speed one. The Einstein-Odinson College was several hundred miles from any inhabited territory, built on an artificial island in the middle of the Pacific. It had the dual benefits of ensuring the College remained neutral among all the nations, and minimizing the damage of any potential explosions. Most of the people on the planet were, to be frank, baffled the school hadn’t blown up a long time ago.
As Vell would soon discover, there was a very good reason it hadn’t. He found his way to his assigned seat, sat down, and waited for the ride to start. The PA overhead announced that they would be departing.
“Please ensure your seatbelts are fastened,” the PA droned. Vell nodded along, even as he tightly fastened his seatbelt.
“And ensure that any live specimens are properly secured, because we’re still trying to catch the last one that got loose,” Vell mumbled, quoting his dream.
“And ensure that any live specimens are properly secured, because we’re still trying to catch the last one that got loose,” the PA droned.
Vell’s eyes narrowed. As he squinted, another student took the seat next to Vell.
“Hey man,” the chipper young man said. Vell looked at him. He was a young black man with a slight smile, and a remarkably calm demeanor considering the strange environment they were heading to. Just like Vell remembered him.
“Nice to meet you,” Vell said, for the second time.
“I’m Cane,” the other student said, confirming what Vell already knew. Cane extended his hand, and Vell shook it. He hadn’t seen Cane go for a handshake the first time around, and he’d felt rude afterwards. Vell had been a little in a hurry at the time. He’d had very little time to find the ferry after getting off the train, and Vell had had some bad experiences with trains in the past that made it even more nerve-wracking. About as nerve-wracking as his current sense of deja vu.
“Name’s Vell,” he said. He pondered the strange repetition, and decided to try something. “So, uh, have you heard the people you’re sat next to are going to be your roommates?”
“Yeah, actually,” Cane said. “My brother used to go here, he gave me the heads up.”
Vell nodded. He’d already known that. The only reason he knew about the roommate assignments was because Cane had told him last time.
The other students came and took their seats, and Cane sparked a conversation with each of them in turn. They introduced themselves in ways that Vell had heard before. Lucas, who preferred to go by Luke, and Renard, who preferred to go by Renard. Vell had laughed at that the first time around. Now he was too busy wondering why there was a first time around.
----------------------------------------
After hours spent weaving through dorms, laboratories, and academic facilities, Vell and company had nearly completed their tour of the extensive island campus. For a second time. Every high-tech lab had been filled with unique and spectacular gadgets, and an overwhelming sense of deja vu. Now Vell was being led to the end of the tour, the dining hall near the center of the island.
“And this is our lunchroom,” Vell mumbled to himself. “Don’t be fooled, you can eat breakfast and dinner here too.”
“And this is our lunchroom,” the tour guide said. “Don’t be fooled, you can eat breakfast and dinner here too.”
Vell nodded and looked to Renard. He’d be the one to speak next.
“Is brunch off limits?” Renard asked.
“Yes,” the tour guide said. “Brunch is banned.”
Renard laughed, and Vell put a hand on his chin. Everything was going on track so far. Unfortunately, that track led to death by wasp, so Vell wasn’t eager to follow it.
Sometime this evening, Vell was going to go to his new dorm room, say goodnight to his new roommates, and lie down just in time for a swarm of wasps to break through their window and kill them all. Vell had an obvious interest in preventing that, and in finding out why he was in a position to prevent it. They’d be set loose from their tour guide in a few minutes, and Vell would be able to start poking around for answers. He didn’t mind having to wait a few more minutes. There were a handful of events from the first go around he wouldn’t mind repeating.
While the tour guide ranted about tomorrow’s schedule, Vell kept his eyes on one of the side hallways. If his theory of repetition was correct, which all evidence was pointing to, in about thirty seconds a woman was going to walk around the corner, bump into someone coming the other way, and fall to the ground in disastrous fashion. While that was a solid moment of slapstick comedy, Vell was actually more interested in what the klutzy girl’s friend would do afterwards. The short one dressed in various shades of red was going to take advantage of the fact that all eyes were on them to flash the entire room at once. Vell’s interest was obvious.
He kept a close eye on the side hall as the klutz approached. She strode confidently and with purpose, headed right for the impact that would see her embarrass herself in front of the entire room. Then, just as the moment of impact approached, she stopped in her tracks.
The woman who should have been falling instead watched with a satisfied smile as the person she would otherwise have ran into walked by without incident. Vell stared at her for a second as her friend, who should have been exposing herself to the entire room right now, stepped up and had a short conversation with the would-be klutz before they went to a table and sat down.
“That about wraps it up for today,” their tour guide said. She should’ve been awkwardly shuffling them away from the indecent display. “Feel free to find me if you have any questions, and enjoy the rest of your day!”
With a friendly wave, the tour guide bid them good day and excused herself. Luke led the group to the nearest table to chat about their next move. Vell had other priorities. For the first time all day, something had changed without Vell changing it -and it had started with the two women now sitting in the center of the room.
“Excuse me for a moment,” he said. “I think I, uh, recognize that chick over there.”
“If you want to flirt you can just say so,” Luke said.
“Sure, I’m flirting, let’s go with that,” Vell said. He turned sharply and headed for the pair of women who’d somehow defied repetition. They stopped their conversation and eyed him warily as he approached.
“Hi, sorry to interrupt, can I talk to you?”
“That depends entirely on what you have to say, dear,” the would-be klutz said. She sounded British -too British. Like she was an actor putting on an accent. This, combined with her tightly-buttoned attire and stern demeanor, gave the impression of a mid-1800’s dowager despite the fact that she was in her twenty-first year and they were all in the twenty-first century.
“Well, this’ll sound weird,” Vell said. “But have you two been feeling any, uh...deja vu lately?”
The two women exchanged a look.
“Maybe a little,” the shorter woman in the red outfit said. “Why’re you asking?”
“Well, like I said, uh, odd stuff, but,” Vell said. He held up a finger for emphasis. “Things are sort of repeating themselves, I think? Except for you guys.”
The two women shared another look. They seemed impressed.
“Wow, got it all on your own, and on your first loop,” the little one said. “Nice going, dude.”
“And you’re handling it quite well,” the obscenely British one said. She turned to her friend. “We were both quite panicked our first time around.”
“I’m more of an internal panic guy,” Vell said. “So, uh, I take it that this is not the first time this has happened?”
The women were being remarkably casual about time loops, so much so Vell could only assume they had experience. Either that, or they were deeply, deeply insane. Vell chose to believe the first option.
“Quite so,” the tall one said. “And if you’re worried about the wasps, don’t be. We handle such problems. ‘We’ now meaning ‘us’, I suppose, if you’re interested in helping.”
“I’d like to not die, yeah,” Vell said. He’d already had more than enough first-hand experience with death. Most people only got the one go-around.
“Wonderful. Harley, be a dear and give him the basics, I’m going to get Leanne and set up for a meeting. Apparently we have an introduction to make.”
She clapped her hands together and nodded towards Vell.
“I’m Lee,” she said.
“And I’m Harley,” snapped the bubbly woman in red.
“Pleasure to meet you,” Lee continued, never missing a beat.
“Vell Harlan,” he said. “Nice to meet you too.”
Lee departed to fetch an apparent third member of their group while Vell took a seat with Harley. She held her round face in her hands and looked up at Vell with a sparkle in her eyes.
“So, you remember seeing me flash everyone, huh?” Harley said. She seemed to have mixed feelings about that.
“Yep,” Vell said.
“Well. Was not expecting anyone to remember that, but since we’re here,” Harley said. “How’d you like ‘em?”
Vell considered his words carefully, but Harley seemed eager for his feedback. Her freckled cheeks curved upwards as she smiled broadly -and expectantly- at Vell.
“They were, uh, nice,” Vell said.
“Thanks,” Harley said, apparently satisfied. “It’s hard to get feedback since most people I show them to forget afterwards.”
“Right. And you do this often?”
“Not often, but it’s been a long summer break, and I had to get something out of my system,” Harley said. “I usually keep my shenanigans less public, because I don’t like strangers getting involved, but, you know, one time doesn’t hurt anything. We’re the only people who remember what happens during the first ‘loop’ day, and everything you do on the first day basically gets undone, so you can kind of do whatever you want.”
Vell nodded.
“So you flash people because nobody will remember.”
“Oh I do more than flash people,” Harley said. “Like I said, no consequences! On the first day you can have all the sex you want and never need to worry about babies or diseases or anything, because time loops and then you technically never had sex at all!”
“Huh. So…”
Vell took a look around the room and pointed to a random table.
“So, say, tomorrow, on the ‘first loop’, I give all those guys twenty bucks, by the ‘second loop’, that money would be right back in my wallet.”
“Well, yeah, I guess,” Harley said. “But you might want to come up with some more ways to spend your loops. There’s going to be a lot of them.”
Vell’s eyes narrowed.
“Ah. So, the uh, wasp situation, that happened today, is that a…?”
“Regular occurrence?” Harley said, finishing his thought. “Sort of. It’s usually not wasps. I think this is a first, actually, at least while I’ve been here.”
“But, the people dying, that happens every day?”
“Basically,” Harley said. She saw the look of concern on Vell’s face and gave him a firm pat on the shoulder. “There there. You get used to it.”
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After a brief discussion on the inevitability of death, Harley led Vell to an empty classroom that was apparently their headquarters for the day. While Lee finished preparing her presentation, Harley introduced Vell to Leanne, who had the physique of a Greek goddess and the conversational skills of a Greek statue. Leanne nodded at Vell once and then stared blankly forward towards Lee, pointedly ignoring any further attempts by Harley to coax her into making an introduction.
“She’s not mute, she’s just quiet,” Harley assured Vell. Leanne nodded in agreement. “She’s technically the senior member here, but since she’s not really interested in this stuff, other than the obvious apocalypse-preventing, Lee’s sort of in charge now.”
“Sort of,” Lee said, from the front of the room. “You’ll excuse me if my presentation is a bit rough around the edges, this is my first time. There were two upperclassmen who previously led the group, but they have since graduated.”
“Fun fact,” Harley said. “Once you graduate, you’re out of the loop! As soon as they hand you the diploma you just stop keeping your memories of the first loop. All the old memories stay, but in any new loops you're just like everyone else.”
“Yes, a detail I was about to make him aware of,” Lee said, glaring pointedly at Harley. “Now if you could please follow Leanne’s example and sit silently, I’d like to begin.”
Harley crossed her arms and waited patiently. Vell followed her example.
“So, Vell, as you are now well aware, the Einstein-Odinson College exists in a very dangerous state. The constant clash of magic, technology, and the ambition of those who research it creates an environment in which catastrophe is all but inevitable. Luckily, the College also exists in some kind of time loop wherein those same catastrophes can be prevented.”
Lee held up a binder she’d compiled of everything that had happened last year and perused it.
“Every day of every school year in which classes are held, an event of variably apocalyptic nature occurs,” Lee said. “Nuclear meltdowns, accidental summonings of eldritch beings, teleportation devices that move the body but not the soul, several instances of the undead by either scientific or magical means.”
“Blech. Too many zombies,” Harley said with a small grunt.
“You have a problem with the undead?” Vell asked.
“Not personally, the zombie apocalypse is just played out.”
Lee snapped her binder shut to draw attention back to her.
“The point is, on a regular basis, the apocalypse, or at least mass destruction of the Einstein-Odinson college, occurs,” Lee said. “This is only prevented because, for unknown reasons, time loops in on itself whenever such an event occurs, and a small group of people retain their memories of the first loop. We act to prevent the apocalypse that occurred on the previous loop, and we have so far succeeded without fail on every daily loop.”
Lee stepped away from her podium for a bit.
“Now, there are a few-”
She stopped as her foot slipped slightly on a ledge that held the podium up from the floor. Lee managed to catch herself on the edge before falling completely and then stood to regain her composure.
“There are a few rules we try to follow,” Lee said, acting as if nothing had happened. “And a few interactions you should be aware of.”
Lee perused a separate binder she’d prepared, filled with the rules and regulations that she had collected.
“First of all, you should know that we don’t tell anyone who’s not a ‘looper’ like us about the time loops,” Lee said. “A half-awareness of the time loops can have unpleasant psychological consequences. Contemplation of temporal repetition can have some unpleasant repercussions for a person’s sense of self-determination and free will. It tends to drive the person afflicted, well, severely homicidally insane. Our predecessors called it Butterfly Effect Psychosis.”
Having set herself up for a clever segue, Lee moved on to her next point.
“Though speaking of the Butterfly Effect, the second thing you should know is that it doesn’t actually apply as much as you think,” Lee said. “While we can use our knowledge of past events to change what’s going to happen, it requires some applied effort. When you try to change something, the universe will try to change it back, so it can stick to the ‘script’. Say you step on a butterfly -like that one, for instance-”
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Lee pointed at the classroom’s window. A single butterfly with iridescent purple wings had alighted on the windowsill.
“-the universe will simply put a different butterfly where it should have been. We must put in a certain level of effort to make sure the future stays changed.”
She looked at Vell to make sure he wasn’t getting overwhelmed with knowledge. To his credit, Vell seemed to be handling the information dump quite well. Now that it was done being used as an example, the butterfly fluttered away, leaving Lee to continue her explanation without any fortuitous visual aids.
“That said, we try not to change too much,” Lee said. “We ask that you please avoid buying any lottery tickets, doing any gambling, stock trading, et cetera. You’re free to make some minor adjustments as it suits you-”
“Like how Lee avoids tripping on her own feet all the time,” Harley said.
“Or engaging in wanton sluttery like Harley,” Lee said without skipping a beat.
“Don’t slutshame me,” Harley said.
“It’s just a statement of fact, dear,” Lee said. “You’re free to sleep with whoever you please in whatever quantity you please. You whore.”
“Klutz,” Harley snapped back.
“Tramp," Lee said, before remembering there was a stranger in their midst. "Oh, Vell, dear, you’re new, I should clarify that these insults are not genuine.”
“I love Lee, I just like to call her a dipshit sometimes,” Harley added.
“I figured,” Vell said. Any two people who truly hated each other would use much more scathing insults.
“Anyway! Back on topic,” Lee said. “Do you have any questions, Vell?”
“A lot, actually, but I assume you’d have told me if you knew,” Vell said. “Like, ‘why is this happening’?”
“You’re right, I would tell you if I knew, which I don’t,” Lee said. “We assume it’s some kind of curse, or maybe a practical joke Loki is pulling.”
“Personally, I think Einstein built some kind of time machine loopy mechanism as a safeguard,” Harley said. “Leanne, what do you think?”
Leanne shrugged her broad shoulders and said nothing.
“At any rate, this has been happening for a very long time and no answers have revealed themselves yet,” Lee said. “We’re usually a bit too concerned with stopping the apocalypse to investigate it too deeply.”
“Alright, I think that about covers it for now,” Vell said. It was time to move on to his top priority. “Can we please do something about the murder wasps now?”
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As it turned out, Harley and Lee had already concocted a plan for the wasps before Vell’s ‘recruitment’. Lee was an RA, and had already tracked down some students in the entomology department who knew about an experiment happening today. From there it was a matter of concocting an excuse to take a look around their lab. Lee had an idea, but she needed at least a partial cover story.
“Now, what’s your degree in?”
An odd question to ask a freshman student, under normal circumstances, but the students of the Einstein-Odinson College were no ordinary students. The school was so prestigious it actually required you to have a two-year degree from a second, slightly less prestigious school before you could even apply.
“I’m studying rune tech,” Vell said. The ability to inscribe spells into stone tablets was relatively new, and still a very expansive and profitable field of stufy. Vell had a more personal interest in runes, but the commercial applications were a nice side benefit.
“Rune tech, very modern,” Lee said. “Any possible applications on entomology?”
“Uh, almost none.”
“Very well, we’ll say you’re considering a minor,” Lee said. “Just play along and ask about wasps when it seems natural.”
“Sure.”
Harley apparently acted as Lee’s usual sidekick on these operations, but Vell had been given the ‘honor’ of field duty to celebrate his new membership. He tried to avoid questioning too many decisions to avoid slowing down the process. The top of his priority list was currently “avoid getting killed by wasps” with “ask questions” significantly further down the list. He’d always been better at learning by doing anyway.
Lee led the way, pretending to be giving Vell a tour of the school. She pointed out some mundane features of the school’s hallways before bursting into the entomology room.
“And this is our entomology department,” she said, gesturing broadly to the room. It was packed to the brim with terrariums and plastic containers, as well as glass display cases displaying pinned insects. “Take a good look around, but be careful not to touch anything. Unlike most of our class subjects, these ones do bite.”
“And sting, and excrete toxins, and some of them spray acid,” one of the room’s residents said. “But don’t worry, we keep those ones in especially sturdy containers. Like this one!”
The woman reached below her desk and pulled up a container with a hole melted in the side.
“Uh oh.”
Vell stared at the melted box while Lee gave a polite, yet forced, chuckle.
“Oh, Dr. Boniventure, that never gets old,” Lee said, in a way that implied it very much did get old. Dr Boniventure’s style of humor wore out its welcome fast even for people who didn’t live every day twice. The Doctor set aside her prop with a laugh and stepped up to reach out a hand to Vell.
“Dr. Boniventure, but you can call me Dr. Bon. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Well, this is Vell, he just started today,” Lee said, before Vell got the chance to make his own introduction. “He’s just touring our different departments, trying to see what he might want to take a minor in.”
“I asked to come here because I’m really into wasps,” Vell said. Lee gave him a look, as if he was jumping the gun. Vell, however, felt that “as soon as possible” was the best time to ask about the murder wasps. “You ever do any experiments with wasps?”
“Why yes, as a matter of fact, we’re going to start one this evening,” Dr. Bon said. “You’re probably not going to like it, though. Some idiot imported a wasp hive into west Africa and now the newly introduced species is tearing up the local ecosystem. We’re trying to invent a way to kill off the invasive species en masse.”
“Ah, well, you know, sometimes the ecosystem needs balancing,” Vell said. “I’ve never let my passion for wasps get in the way of understanding sometimes they need a good genocide.”
“You have a very interesting perspective on bugs, young man,” Dr. Bon said with a squint.
“If I may, Dr. Bon, how do you plan on executing your plan?” Lee said, trying to salvage the conversation. “Maybe a glimpse into the method of the College’s brilliant minds will help Vell decide where he belongs.”
“Well, I suppose I could share some details,” Dr. Bon said. “What we’re planning to do is introduce a targeted chemical agent that will attack the wasps brains and basically cause them to shut down. Like a modified version of what we use to exterminate mosquitoes in plague-heavy areas.”
“It must be hard to target a specific species of wasp, though, I imagine there’s some complicated chemistry at work,” Lee said. Dr. Bon nodded to a nearby shelf, stocked high with bottles. Vell turned around and examined it.
“Yes indeed, took us a long time to collect everything we needed.”
The bottles were all labeled, but as Vell was not a chemistry major, they were labeled in varying degrees of gibberish. He took a pair of glasses out of his pocket, tapped the edge of the lenses, and put them on as he did a second scan of the shelves.
“Incredibly interesting, Dr. Boniventure, is there any chance I could observe this experiment happening?”
“Sorry, Ms. Burrows, but this one’s off limits,” Dr. Bon said. “We’ll be sealing the lab at eight pm tonight.”
Vell looked up from the shelves, and Lee met his gaze. While his stare bore a note of vague panic, Lee barely registered the new complication. In her experience, minor complications like changing schedules rarely amounted to much. She’d once had to disarm a nuclear bomb in thirty seconds, having to stop a wasp attack in a few hours was barely worth mentioning.
“Sorry for the quick interruption, Dr. Boniventure, I just have to talk to Vell real quick,” Lee said. “We need to discuss something. We might be back, so don’t lock us out just yet.”
Dr. Bon nodded as they hurried off back into the hallway. Lee grabbed her phone, as did Vell.
“I need to call Harley and let her know we have to advance our timetable,” Lee said. Vell held up a hand to slow her down.
“Hey hey hey wait, are Harley or Leanne chemistry majors? Ask them if they know about pheromone stuff,” Vell said.
“Why?”
“Because I scanned the bottles and one of them is labeled wrong,” Vell said. “It says it’s a pheromone that induces mating, but it’s actually a pheromone that induces aggression.”
Vell held up his phone. An itemized list of every bottle he’d looked at was displayed on screen, including details about the contents.
“How do you know it was labeled wrong?”
Vell removed his glasses and displayed the edge to Lee. There were small runes carved into the sides of the frames. Vell put his phone away so he could point at runes.
“There’s some runes here that see, identify, then search, combined with some ciruitry to link them all together in the right way,” Vell explained. “And then I’ve got a chip in the glasses that connects to my phone, and the phone connects to the internet, so basically I just look at something and the glasses tell my phone to look it up.”
“Yes, I’m aware of the system,” Lee said. A sudden edge of skepticism cut into her voice. “Isn’t that a Kraid Tech copyright?”
“Technically,” Vell said.
“And you’re using them?”
“Uh, well yes,” Vell said. “I’m not connected to Kraid Tech or anything if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Then you stole them?”
“No! Not, uh, literally, at least. I sort of stole the idea of them. I just saw some Kraid Tech guys using them and then I made my own later?”
“You rebuilt a mechanism that complicated from memory?” Lee asked.
“It took more than one try.”
“Still, it’s as impressive as it is concerning,” Lee said. “Aren’t you worried their copyright will still apply?”
Kraid Tech’s copyright department, like their founder Alistair Kraid, had a reputation for being merciless -some of their magical copyright protections left a mark on the offending thief’s soul.
“I’m not worried,” Vell said. He had a bit of a loophole when it came to certain legal punishments, even -and especially- ones aimed at the soul.
“If you said so,” Lee said. “For now, those will be very useful. I think that mislabeled bottle may be our culprit.”
“Do you want to just go in and tell Dr. Bon she’s got a bottle out of place?”
“Oh, it’s never that simple,” Lee sighed. “Remember what I said about the Butterfly Effect not really applying? The universe will move towards the events that already happened. Even if we told her, she’d just forget, or the bottle would get misplaced, or something. We have to neutralize it more permanently.”
“So what, do we walk in there and pretend to trip and knock over the bottle or something?”
“As a last resort, perhaps,” Lee said. “But causing trouble like that would give us a bad reputation and make our job far more difficult in the long run. Breaking things is a specialty of Harley’s, however. I’ll stick around and be ready to make a distraction, you go help her set up.”
Vell nodded, and after receiving directions, headed off to Harley’s room.
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“While getting you in the bedroom was always on the agenda, this is a bit ahead of schedule, so pardon the mess,” Harley said. True to her word, the room was disorganized, though mostly as part of her unpacking at the start of the semester. The detritus around the room consisted mostly of clothes and electronic components. Harley started digging around for some of the pieces she needed, mumbling under her breath about things like actuators and steppers.
“So I take it you’re a tech major,” Vell noted, looking at the electronics scattered haphazardly across her room.
“Yep, specifically robotics!”
Harley stood and triumphantly displayed a small mechanical body -noticeably absent a head. With a flourish of her hand, a small orb bearing two mechanical lenses appeared in her palm.
“This is my familiar, Botley,” Harley said. The golf-ball sized head glanced side to side. Vell glanced right back at the tiny head.
“Your familiar is a robot?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought they, uh, couldn’t do that,” Vell said. He wasn’t an expert in magic, but he knew enough to be pretty sure a familiar had to be a living thing.
“Don’t worry about it,” Harley said. “Look at all the cool stuff Botley can do!”
Demonstrating one such instance of cool stuff, Harley plugged the disembodied head into the spiderlike frame, and the limbs began to move. She dropped Botley on the floor and he immediately started scuttling in the direction of the entomology lab. As a school for advanced tech, a few scuttling robots were to be expected, so Botley didn’t draw any attention as he traveled. Every few seconds, Harley pressed a palm to her fingertips to her head to share Botley’s sight.
“Hmm, I have to replace those servo’s, the left leg is a bit sticky,” Harley noted. “Botley’s almost in position. I’m going to need to take manual control soon. You know how this works?”
“Yep. Keep your body relatively still and the environment relatively silent to maintain synchronicity, and don’t let any physical harm occur to the body.”
While transferring one’s consciousness to a familiar was a useful process, it came with the risk of psychic backlash if the original body was disturbed. It was almost never harmful, but it was a major headache. Harley nodded in approval of Vell’s understanding, and pointed towards a nearby chair.
“Take a seat and keep an eye on me while I’m out,” Harley instructed. Vell carefully removed a bra from the appointed seat and sat down.
“Alright, where are you going to be lying down?”
In answer, Harley turned around, sat on Vell’s lap, and went limp. He grabbed around her waist and held her tight to avoid disrupting the psychic link. He questioned whether or not to ask whether this was a joke, but even noise could disrupt the link, and he didn’t want to be responsible for her headache.
As seconds dragged on to minutes, Vell started to realize it wasn’t a joke.
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Lee gave a nod to Botley as he approached. It was time to start the distraction. She opened the door and let Botley slip into the entomology lab by creeping around her ankles.
“Oh Dr. Boniventure, could I bother you one more time?”
“Of course Ms. Burrows, I have some spare time before the experiment,” Dr. Bon said.
“Well, I was actually discussing that experiment with my father over the phone earlier, and he seemed genuinely interested,” Lee said. She restrained a sigh as she saw Dr. Bon’s ears perk up the way any professor’s did when she mentioned her father.
While Dr. Bon began brown-nosing, Botley scuttled into position. Through their now-shared mechanical eyes, Harley appraised her climb. Lot’s of plastic and glass on the way up, thanks to all the terrariums. She hadn’t packed Botley’s adhesive footpads. This was going to be slow work.
Carefully wedging Botley’s pointed legs into whatever solid footing she could find, Harley ascended the shelves, moving limb-by-limb up the slipper shelves. With one final pull from Botley’s forelimbs, the machine ascended to the top of the shelf. The rack of chemicals, and the presumed source of today’s doomsday, was just a few steps away. Harley guided the bot one step forward, and then down, as a mesh roof to a tank gave way under Botley’s weight.
“What was that?” Dr. Bon said, at the sudden noise.
“Sorry, my fault, I think I slipped a bit and kicked the edge of your desk,” Lee said. She then veered the conversation back towards the experiment, hoping to distract Dr. Bon from Botley’s shenanigans.
The arachnid in the tank Botley had fallen into did not take kindly to the intrusion. The scorpion emerged from it’s hiding place and expressed it’s displeasure in the traditional scorpion manner, which consisted mostly of showing that it’s stinger was ready to sting and it’s pincers were ready to pince. There was also a bit of mandible action, for those looking closely.
Harley tried to mimic the scorpions threat display as best she could with Botley’s significantly less pointy limbs. The scorpion was duly cowed by the strange display of the odd robot that had stumbled it’s way into its home and backed off. Harley scanned the terrarium for a way out, and settled for the mesh that had collapsed. Part of it still clung to the lid of the terrarium, and assuming it held under the weight, Harley could climb it back to the top. She cautiously set Botley’s limbs to crawl up the loose mesh grate and managed to begin her ascent, the mesh wobbling below her borrowed body all the while.
Halfway through the climb, the ascent became much more stable -suspiciously so. Harley turned Botley’s head down to see that the scorpion had latched on to either side of the mesh with it’s pincers and was holding it steady. As Botley’s examined the scorpion, Harley would almost swear it’s tail bobbed twice in the direction she was traveling, goading her further out of the terrarium.
Harley made the executive decision not to think about that, and continued climbing.
The minute she was out of the tank and up on the shelves once again, though, she turned back to look at the scorpion -who was itself now climbing out of the tank and finding it’s footing atop the shelves. The scorpion turned and gave a wave with one pincer that mimicked a salute before dropping off the shelves and scuttling away.
Harley briefly considered the issue of a hyper-intelligent scorpion on the loose, and decided it was a problem for a different time and a different person. She set her own skittering limbs towards the mislabeled bottle.
Botley’s spherical head turned to Lee to check on her distraction. Dr. Bon was wrapped in a rant about the virtues of her experiments, and barely noticed as Lee turned to check on Harley’s progress. Seeing that Botley was in position, Lee winked. Harley tried to wink back, but the borrowed body of Botley didn’t have eyelids. She settled for reaching out one metal limb and knocking the bottle off the shelf. She waited until she heard the crash to poof her robotic familiar back to her physical body.
Botley reappeared by Harley’s body with a puff of smoke, and the link broke almost immediately. Back in her own body, and still sitting in Vell’s lap, she quickly stood to stretch out tired limbs. Vell also stood, though in a much wobblier manner. Both of his legs had fallen asleep.
“Looks like mission accomplished, bud,” Harley said. “Good job keeping me steady. You get handsy with anything while I was out?”
Vell looked down at her and squinted.
“What? No,” he said, vaguely offended.
“Good on you,” Harley said. “Just because I like to bang doesn’t mean you can disrespect my boundaries. That said, how about you and I meet up on the first loop tomorrow for a ‘successful first mission’ celebratory screw?”
Vell considered the offer very intensely but very briefly. While the idea of consequence free sex by exploiting a time loop had it’s appeal, there were other factors at play.
“Thank you for the offer, but I think I’m going to spend most of tomorrow consumed by existential dread that I’m going to die at an unknown time for an unknown reason.”
Harley gave an understanding nod.
“That’s fair. You take all the time you need to get used to it,” Harley said, patting him on the shoulder. “It’s an open invitation.”
“I will keep that in mind,” Vell said.
----------------------------------------
“So that’s all, huh? One broken bottle.”
“Well, the loss of the bottle has delayed the experiment, and I persuaded Dr. Bon to be more careful the second time around, so I’d say yes, job well done.”
The team of time-loopers had regrouped to debrief -although Leanne, who was both uninvolved and uninterested, was merely looking at her phone. Harley had assured Vell that Leanne took her responsibilities seriously, when she had them, but her brand of talents leaned more towards the physical.
“We usually get these things on the first try,” Harley assured Vell. “Don’t worry too much about it.”
“We have been an exceptionally efficient unit so far,” Lee said. “As one can obviously tell by the fact the world hasn’t ended, this group has never failed in it’s mission, and I believe we have everything we need to carry on that winning streak.”
“Yeah, we’ve got my tech, Lee’s magic, Leanne’s muscles, and, well, whatever you bring to the table,” Harley said. “Not trying to be rude, it’s just as far as I know the only thing you’ve done is get sat on.”
“I get it,” Vell said.
“He has some rather interesting glasses, and a very masterful grasp of rune technology,” Lee said.
“Yeah! See, that’s a thing! We’re going to be a great team,” Harley said.
“Indeed,” Lee said. She clapped her hands together. “Now, decorum would naturally suggest having a celebration of your first success, but given our circumstances I’d wait until tomorrow, when you can really cut loose.”
“Oh, yeah, I think I’ll be fine, I’m kind of still coping with all this,” Vell said.
“I already invited him to our own personal celebration and he turned me down,” Harley said, giving a dramatically exaggerated sigh of disappointment.
“Really, Harley, first day?”
“Summer break is a hell of a dry spell to go through,” Harley said. “I apologize for nothing.”
“Well, however you choose to celebrate, Vell, do it fast and do it recklessly. You have literally nothing to lose, after all,” Lee said. She stood and curtsied at the newest member of her team. “We’ll see each other tomorrow, and then again tomorrow.”
Lee winked at Vell and strode off. She’d barely made it around the corner before Vell heard her trip and fall to the ground. He then heard Leanne sigh, the first noise she’d made around him at all, and walked out of the room to check on Lee. With them gone, Harley turned to Vell and took a long look at him.
“So, you seem to be taking this all in stride,” Harley noted. Vell nodded in agreement. He was probably being remarkably cavalier about the whole “daily apocalypse” scenario, but then, this was not his first brush with the inexplicable.
“Yeah, well, you know, to tell the truth, this is uh, not my first time dying.”
For the first time since Vell had met her, the radiant smile on Harley’s face vanished.
“Wait, what?”
With some hesitation, Vell lifted his shirt. Hidden beneath the fabric, just below his navel, sat a large, pinkish-red scar about half an inch wide, circumnavigating his torso at an odd angle.
“I was sort of in a maglev train accident when I was ten,” Vell said. “Launched me into a metal wall at five-hundred miles an hour. I got cut in half.”
He looked up at Harley’s face to try and gauge her reaction. Luckily, she was not being subtle in her sheer confusion, and she stared down at Vell’s scar with wide, curious eyes.
“What the fuck,” Harley said, before deciding she had not said it with appropriate horror and going for another try. “What the fuck! How the fuck are you alive? We can’t do that!”
As far as Harley was aware, their advances in medical technology had yet to solve death -at least in a way that didn’t involve brains in jars or becoming a lich. Vell had far too much skin to be a lich, leaving Harley baffled as to his apparent resurrection.
“Uh, I don’t know,” Vell admitted. “They put both halves of me in the morgue and a couple hours later, I guess I unzipped myself from the body bag with this on my back.”
Vell turned slightly, to reveal a symbol on his spine, just below the scar, situated directly on his sacral chakra. It had the look of a rune, but Harley didn’t recognize it as any rune she’d ever seen -nor had any of Vell’s years of research on runes revealed a match for it. Vell lowered his shirt and turned around again.
“It’s not so bad, honestly,” Vell assured her. However it had happened, he was not dead, which was good on it’s own. He was also immune to all of Kraid Tech’s soul-marking copyright magic, since his soul was technically marked as “dead”, despite his currently-alive status.
Harley looked down at his midriff, back up at Vell’s face, then down at his midriff again. As Vell had expected, she took the strange revelation better than most. Her life was already weird enough that Vell’s resurrection was not that far from the baseline -although still far enough to be a concern.
“Vell I’m going to be honest with you I don’t think I can cope with this shit right now.”
“You have a lot on your plate already, I understand,” Vell said with a nod. Harley stood up, clapped her hands together, and bowed at Vell.
“I promise I will help you deal with this later, but right now I need to go lie down,” she said. She turned on her heel and left the room at an unsteady pace, leaving Vell alone with his thoughts -for a second. Harley peeked back through the door momentarily.
“Oh, and you being undead does not affect my offer to have sex,” Harley said. “I do not discriminate for any reason.”
“Thank you,” Vell said, for some reason. Harley waved goodbye and left Vell alone with no company but the rapidly-growing cloud of unanswered questions that surrounded him.