The towering but hollow cloak lingered at the center of the celestial platform, motionless even as Vell stepped towards it. He took a deep breath and prepared to ask his first question. A simple one, but necessary.

“Uh. Are you the Butterfly Guy?”

I have existed since before names, and thus have none. But yes. That is how others identify me.

Vell had almost gotten used to Quenay’s deific voice, and the way it seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, but the Butterfly Guy had turned that up to eleven. Vell shuddered as the voice seemed to emanate from the inside of his spine, and the way Lee and Harley suddenly shook told him they heard it too.

“Okay. Great. Will you, uh, answer some question for us?”

I will. And yet I will not.

“Can we go with ‘you will’?” Harley said.

Pardon my indirectness. Your circumstances are curious. You will not be here, and yet you will have been here. I will not speak to you, yet you will remember my words.

“Yeah, things around us are a little confusing sometimes, timeline-wise,” Vell said. “Sorry about that.”

Apologies are unnecessary. I do not experience confusion. I merely play out the timeline as I have already witnessed it.

“Oh yeah, you’re the time guy,” Harley said. “So you already know everything we’re going to say, and are just responding in the way you’ve already seen yourself respond?”

Yes.

“Alright then, let’s skip the bit where we try and say random words to test you-”

Thank you.

“-and get right to the questions. Vell?”

“Well, I think I, uh, know how this one is going to go already, but just to start off with,” Vell said. “Time’s your thing. Do you know why there’s a timeloop on the Einstein-Odinson campus?”

Yes.

“And can you tell us what it is?”

No.

“Okay, good, glad we got that out of the way.”

“We’re never going to find out what the fuck’s going on with that, are we?”

Within the confines of your societal circumstances, I believe the phrase “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” exists.

“‘Gift’? That just raises further questions!”

It does.

“Focus, Harley,” Lee said. “We came here for a reason.”

Getting some answers about the time loop would have been a nice bonus, but it was not necessary. Vell got back to their real reason for their mission.

“Why have you been sending butterflies to follow me?”

Observation.

“But why me specifically?”

Because you are worth observing.

“What makes me worth observing?”

You are a perfect butterfly. This answer will confuse you. Allow me to contextualize.

Vell stood and waited, as he was, in fact, confused. The Butterfly Guy did not move once, but imperceptible shifts in energy drew their attention towards the tornado of solar fire at the center of the trinary star system around them.

What you see is a visual manifestation of the flow of time. The vortex above contains all possible moments in all possible futures. Every possible outcome of every possible situation that may possibly occur.

The spiraling cyclone continued to swirl as Lee focused and took a slightly closer look at it. For a moment, the potentiality contained within the cortex crystallized, and Lee could see everything. She saw herself, just moments in the future, suffering from a severe headache, alongside trillions of other possible futures. She saw buildings crumbling to ruin in apocalyptic futures, starships taking humanity to new worlds, and countless more mundane scenes, as every moment of infinite ordinary lives played out. She even saw glimpses of Ateela and Daveed, the future loopers that had time-traveled to their era last year.

Then Lee caught up to one of her possible futures, and witnessed the information overload of countless timelines causing a severe headache. Shortly after witnessing that potential outcome, she started to feel it becoming reality.

“Ow.”

While Lee cringed from precognitive pain, the energy shifted again, towards the expansive disc of sapphire dust that was slowly drifting away from the time cyclone and fading out into nothing.

But all things that will be must eventually face the crucible of the present, as they must become what is -or is not.

The Butterfly Guy’s focus shifted downwards, towards the infinitely long line of blue light that stretched out into the cosmos.

There is only one timeline. One reality. One sequence of events which has come to pass. The singular truth, sorted from what could be, as all other possibilities turn to what could have been.

“Oh. So all those high concept sci-fi think pieces about every moment branching off into multiple timelines-”

All nonsense. Time is as singular as it is linear. With some exceptions.

The Butterfly Guy did not move, nor did he have eyes, but the loopers still got the impression he was glaring at them.

“Okay. Still feel like I’m missing some context,” Vell said.

I am not finished.

“Sorry for interrupting, please continue.”

The future possibilities are infinite, but infinite outcomes does not correlate to all possible outcomes. There is no possible occurrence where up becomes down, no possibility that all stars in the universe spontaneously turn into cheddar cheese, no possibility that Jared Leto ever plays the lead role in an enjoyable movie.

“Man, what is with cosmic entities and hating Jared Leto?”

He’s just not a good actor. To my point: between these impossible moments and the common possibilities, there are points where the timeline narrows. Moments that are not impossible, but unlikely, rare among the infinite potential.

One of the butterflies took flight, and drifted into the cosmic maelstrom, vanishing in an instant.

These rare possibilities may radically alter the nature of all possible futures -in a phenomenon similar to what you would refer to as the “butterfly effect”. Great conquerors, brilliant scientists, and inspired artists have ways of creating such narrowed moments in time. But no matter the stakes of the battle, the advancement of the science, or the beauty of the art, the moments are merely rare. Infrequent, but not unique.

The central point of the energy shifted yet again, this time away from the cyclone of time, as all the focus of the universe shifted away from it, and onto Vell.

Except you.

“Me?”

You. You, Vell Harlan, are the perfect butterfly. A singular entity destined to face a singular moment in time. A possibility unique among infinity.

“Uh. Wha- I mean, uh...uh…”

Over the past few years, Vell had started to cope with the fact that he was special in some way, but being told he was a singularly unique entity in all of time, backward and forward, had successfully overloaded Vell’s brain all over again. He managed to piece his refried brain together long enough to ask some more questions.

“No no no, that can’t be right,” Vell said. “I can’t be that important, compared to everyone else. I mean, Kim’s the first robot-”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

She is. But she didn’t have to be. Given time, there would have been another thinking machine. Just as some other caveman could have invented the wheel, some other warlord conquered Rome, some other inventors create flying machines. Anything that can be done by one could be done by another. Except you. Except your moment.

The immobile cloak of the Butterfly Guy shifted in a cosmic wind, and for a moment, Vell thought he saw eyes turn to look at him. It was only a passing trick of stellar light, as the Butterfly Guy remained motionless.

Though it is not for lack of trying. The universe itself rebels against your unique circumstances, and seeks to recreate the conditions in which you exist.

The cosmic cyclone shifted for a moment, and the disc of fading potential displayed some moments that were occurring in the present. The doppelgangers from schools like Patschke-Puck and Zeus-Stephanides, and even stranger duplicates from different layers of the multiverse appeared in the cosmic dust. Disparate groups that contained similar but never identical versions of Lee, Harley, Kim, Hawke, and Samson, but never a duplicate of Vell. The universe itself tried dozens of times to create a Vell-shaped mold in the hopes another Vell would fill it.

To no success. You remain unique. The moment you face remains unique.

“Well, that does answer one mystery, at least,” Vell sighed. He’d always sort of wondered why his friends had so many doppelgangers out there. But that answer only made him hungry for more explanations of the odd cosmic bullshit that surrounded him. “So. What is this moment? How soon will it happen? Where will I be? Can I get some details?”

Only this. Someday soon, Vell Harlan, you will be asked a question. If you do not answer correctly, no one ever will.

The Butterfly Guy’s focus shifted off of Vell, but he felt no relief. The weight of infinite expectations weighed on his shoulders now. He’d always know that Quenay’s game—finding the answer to the question “what is the meaning of life”—was high stakes, but this was on a new level. He stood in stunned silence as the universe spun around him. A single butterfly spiraled around his shoulders for a moment before joining its brother, or perhaps itself, in the time cyclone.

My scout watches wherever the timeline narrows. They take a special interest in you. All possible futures for humanity rest on your shoulders.

“No pressure or anything,” Harley scoffed.

You need not fear. Humanity is a single planet in a single point in time. The consequences of your failure will barely register to ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine nine six percent of all sentient creatures that have ever or will ever live.

That actually did help a little, but not enough to be worth mentioning.

“So...how do I answer the question? What do I do?”

You do what you have always done. You grow. You learn. You become the best possible version of yourself.

The spiral of energy above them had slowed and stopped as the looper trio had passed through, but now it resumed in full. The Butterfly Guy shifted his attention entirely away from his guests, and continued his relentless observation of the singular timeline.

You know all that you will know.

“So I guess that means we’re done talking?” Harley asked. “Hello? Hey, Butterfly Guy. Hey!”

In spite of her best attempts to get a reaction, the Butterfly Guy never moved or acknowledged her presence, or her attempts at pestering him. Harley briefly considered going up and poking him, but decided not to. She backed away and focused on her friends instead.

“You guys good?”

“Reeling from the expanse of the cosmos, but yes,” Lee said. She was starting to recover from taking a brief glimpse at the totality of time, as her brain did away with a lot of excess magical information.

“Vell?”

Vell stared at the spiral of time for a moment, and felt sick to his stomach. He turned around and wandered away from the spiral, towards the edges of the great black disk. Once there, he sat down on the edge and dangled his feet into the void, with the tips of his boots barely scraping the celestial storm that surrounded them. As his two best friends joined him and sat on either side, three bright blue suns continued to burn overhead.

“Vell,” Harley repeated. “Are you okay?”

“Why the fuck would I be okay?”

Vell threw his hands out at the cosmos, gesturing at nothing and everything at once.

“For as long as I’ve been in this stupid game of Quenay’s, I’ve at least been able to tell myself ‘maybe someone else will figure it out’, ‘maybe someone else has the answers I don’t’, ‘maybe I’ll meet someone who has the brains I clearly don’t’,” Vell said. “But no. It’s me. Just me. And if I don’t have the answer, no one ever will.”

The incarnation of time itself had piped up to let Vell know the weight of the world rested entirely on Vell’s shoulders. As one might expect, that feeling sucked.

“What happens when I’m not good enough?”

“If,” Harley said. “If you’re- wait, what am I saying? There’s no ‘if’. No maybe. You’re the guy who can answer the question because you’re the guy who will answer the question. Simple as that.”

While Harley talked, Lee scooted over to lean on Vell’s shoulder. The intimacy of the gesture was slightly lost thanks to the bulky spacesuits they wore, but Vell appreciated it all the same.

“You know, Vell, I recently stared straight into all possible timelines,” Lee said. “I have seen everyone who ever has or ever will exist.”

She reached up to tap a gloved fingertip onto Vell’s padded chest. The bulky space suits did rob a little of the intimacy from the gesture, but she was trying.

“And there is no one, at any time, in any possible world, that I would pick to face this challenge other than you,” Lee said.

“Hell yeah,” Harley agreed. “Obviously you’re a close second, Lee, you kick ass at the organizational and leadership stuff, but Vell’s got you beat at figuring out weird shit.”

“I appreciate that, but we’re peptalking Vell right now.”

“I know, just wanted to spread the love,” Harley said. “We’re a team, right? Sure, Vell, you’re the one answering the question, officially, but we’re going to be right there with you helping you figure shit out, all the way to the end.”

Harley leaned on Vell’s shoulder too, and put her arms around his for good measure.

“Tell us what you need, and you got it,” Harley said. “We’re in this together.”

“Always,” Lee insisted.

Three suns continued to spin overhead, and three friends sat side-by-side in their blue light. Vell took a deep breath of his limited oxygen.

“Okay. First things first,” Vell said. “Can we change the subject? I would really like to think about something else right now.”

“You got it champ, compartmentalization is go,” Harley said. “Let’s see how much oxygen we got left in these things, for starters.”

Harley tapped some buttons on her tablet and checked their tank capacity.

“Looks like about five and a half hours,” Harley said. “We left at what, ten? Guess we’re going to run out of air before the reset hits us.”

“There are worse ways to go than oxygen deprivation,” Lee said.

“We know, lady, we’ve all oxygen deprivated before,” Harley said. “Just means we’ve got a lot of time to kill.”

Harley tapped through the menus on her tablet and found that the only form of distraction was a default solitaire app.

“If I’d known I’d be sitting around so long I’d have put a movie on this thing,” Harley said. “Guess you two are just going to have to deal with five uninterrupted hours of talking to me.”

“How horrible,” Lee said.

“It’s not too late to jump into the sun, Lee,” Vell said.

“Hey.”

“Only joking, obviously,” Vell said. “Taking your helmet off would be way faster and easier.”

“And messier,” Lee said. “Hmm. Suddenly my appetite for this conversation has taken a turn. Can we talk about something normal?”

“Sure. Uh, seen any good movies lately?”

“Vell, dear, you’ve been there every time I’ve watched a movie for the past two and a half years.”

“Really? Every time?”

“Every time,” Lee said. “I don’t really watch things all by myself. It feels lonely.”

“Huh. Man, there must be a hell of a lot of movies you want to watch but haven’t had the chance to, then, right?”

“I am a bit behind the pop culture curve, yes,” Lee said.

“We’ll have to plan another movie night for when we get back then.”

The planning killed about twenty minutes. Roughly five hours later, when the oxygen started to run out, they were all surprised to find they hadn’t run out of things to talk about yet.

----------------------------------------

The planned movie night provided more than just an opportunity to get Lee caught up on her film lore. Getting all their friends in one place also made it easy to recap what they’d learned from the Butterfly Guy.

“Got to say, of all the theories I had, none of them were that,” Adele signed. As the first to bring the issue of the butterflies to Vell’s attention, she was called in for the long-overdue resolution to that thread. No matter how awkward it was to have Lee and her ex-girlfriend in the same room. Lee was sitting quietly at the corner of the table, desperately trying not to make eye contact.

“So that thing’s just been watching you the whole time?” Cane asked.

“Seems like it,” Vell said. “And it’s going to continue watching me, from the looks of it.”

He pointed to the windowsill, where three of the purple butterflies were roosting. Adele looked at the three temporal butterflies and sheepishly waved hello to the Butterfly Guy watching through their eyes.

“Well, that’s nice to know,” Luke said. “Wish it gave us something to work with. Don’t get me wrong, happy to have a loose end tied up, I just wish it gave us a springboard to the next problem.”

“No, I get it,” Vell said. “If anything it’s just more pressure on me.”

“On us,” Harley reminded him. “We’re doing this together.”

“Ditto,” Freddy said. “Later, though. I’ve got to go finish packing.”

“Yeah, this does hit us right before new years break,” Cane said. “We can think about it while we chill at home.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Vell said. “But don’t overthink on my account. Enjoy your break, guys.”

“Thanks,” Adele signed. She looked sideways at Lee for a moment. “Good seeing you again.”

“Nice to see you too bye,” Lee mumbled. The awkward energy gave everybody the motivation they needed to get the hell out of Vell’s dorm, and it was soon down to Vell, Lee, and Harley yet again.

“You holding up, Lee?”

“I’m fine,” Lee insisted. She’d broken up with Adele months ago. It was awkward, but that history was hardly the greatest of her worries right now. “I’d actually had something else creeping up on me.”

“What’s that?”

“Just overthinking,” Lee said. “All this business about timelines, decisions, being unique or not unique. Hard not to feel existential.”

“It is a brand new flavor in our soup of weird cosmic bullshit,” Harley said. “Honestly between all the time loops and goddess games and reality altering fish, I’m barely registering the whole ‘one timeline’ thing.”

“Yeah, not really registering for me either,” Vell said. “Well, not in the same way, probably. I do suffer the crushing burden of glorious purpose, but that’s more of an extension of my old crisis.”

“Maybe it’ll sink in for us over break,” Harley suggested.

“Don’t feel compelled to join me in my existential crisis,” Lee said.

“Too late. Oh I’m suffering so bad, I’ve got so many new anxieties,” Harley groaned. She rubbed her temples for extra effect. “I feel inexplicable cosmic dread due to forces beyond my comprehension, like a Lovecraft protagonist but without the racism!”

“Thank you for clarifying that last part, dear.”

“Naturally.”

“But, uh, really though,” Vell interrupted. “Are you okay? Do you want to talk about it?”

“I’ll be alright,” Lee said. “Like Harley said. Just another flavor in the cosmic bullshit soup.”

After waving off their concern, Lee excused herself, citing the need to head back to her dorm and get some rest. She did return to her dorm, but she did not rest. Lee stayed awake the entire night, tossing and turning in her bed, thinking about what she had seen and heard.

One timeline. One life. One Lee. Her mind lingered on what the Butterfly Guy had said to Vell. Though not intended for her, the words resonated all the same. Grow. Learn. Become the best possible version of yourself.

Lee laid awake and wondered if she was the best possible version of herself.