To Maria's relief, a light now shone through the gap beneath her uncle's office door. Finally, another human being to talk to! She knocked politely.

"Come in," said Uncle Johann.

INTERACTIVE SEGMENT: To examine something more closely, comment in the thread titled "Uncle Johann's Office."

She stepped in gingerly, taking care not to trip over the piles of paper cluttering every potentially walkable space. Maria had spent long hours in this room as a child; it was a little like home.

Uncle Johann sat in a swivel chair at a low office desk, his favorite mug in one hand. It read "I ❤️ LORENZ CONTRACTION," with the heart and text looking a little squished. He took a sip of stale coffee and asked, "Patrol going well?"

"Okay," said Maria. "Felicity's walkie-talkie stopped working, though."

He frowned. "Things don't just stop. Everything's got a cause. Be careful."

Stress and irregular hours had worn away at Johann Palmstroem. Every few days, Maria took his laundry home to the apartment she shared with Noelle and brought him clean bedding, and he seemed to be making use of the shower at the gym across the street. Even so, his crooked glasses, stained jacket, and distant air made him look like a man who’d fallen and never bothered to get up.

"Are you going to keep this up forever?" asked Maria.

"Doubtful. No one lives forever." He tilted his head a little, realized he was being too literal, and recalibrated his answer for relevance. "Just till Henry's either a free man or a dead one. But this office is my fortress. If anyone comes for me here, they’re going to have a bad time.”

In Maria’s experience, it did no good to try to reason him out of paranoia. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m keeping an eye out.” She let her gaze wander. There was the antique bookshelf with its array of dusty oddities: a globe, a bottle of pickled ash seeds, a stuffed rabbit with a pocketwatch. Little had changed there.

✔ Narration Unlocked by Astrowoud: The Ash Seeds

Every few years in the fall, the ash tree in Uncle Johann's yard cast off winged seeds in prolific squadrons. Rather than let this bounty go to waste, Alice and Noelle would clamber up on ladders and harvest them while they were still green, then pickle them in sugar, vinegar, and chili. But according to the neatly-inked label, this bottle was seven-and-a-half years old, and thus no longer edible.

✔ Narration Unlocked by Astrowoud: The Rabbit with a Pocketwatch

A kitschy stuffed doll of a white rabbit in a waistcoat, carrying a little replica pocketwatch. A tag on the back read: Alice's Shop, 83 St. Aldate's, Oxford. MCMLXXVI.

MCMLXV, thought Maria. That's 1000 (M), 1000 - 100 (CM), 50 (L), 20 (XX), 5 (V), and 1 (I). So... 1976.

✔ Narration Unlocked by Astrowoud: The Deadbolt

The deadbolt was operated by a simple turning latch, one more layer of security beyond the office's key lock. No other room on the floor had one. It would not be plausible to lock the bolt from outside the room by ordinary means, and the rubber covers that hid the gap on the sides of the door eliminated most tricks with wire or fishing line as well.

✔ Narration Unlocked by Chained: The Globe

Although the globe's sepia-toned continents and curlicued lettering gave an impression of antiquity, the presence of post-Soviet states implied otherwise. Years before, Maria had discovered that many of its features were disguised buttons, but she'd never been able to work out the right combination to pop the puzzle-globe open.

But the partition walling off the far corner of the room was new, and so was the cabinet safe standing against the east wall, protected by two sturdy locks. One key for Vincent, one for Johann. Just like the sealed authentication codes in a nuclear silo.

"How're you doing?" she asked.

"Just had a nap."

"Sorry to wake you."

He shrugged. "Doesn't matter when I sleep, as long as I sleep sometime."

"Oh," said Maria. She wished Vincent could talk him into more regular habits. "I saw Vincent before he left. He said Mr. Fell didn't think there'd be another reprieve."

Against the odds, she'd always held out for a mitigated sentence, a remedy to an obviously unjust decision. There'd been little point in Henry's confession if they were going to kill him anyway!

"We all hoped for... something," she said. "I don't know what."

"For the impossible. Or worse, the intractable," said her uncle, rolling his eyes upward in what could have been either exasperation or supplication. "The impossible's my business, but intractable's bad. Not every impossible thing is possible. There are possible impossibles and impossible impossibles.”

"Uh-huh. How's the impossibles business, anyway?"

"In a holding pattern. Finished the prototypes a few months ago." He seemed less proud of this than he might have been.

"Prototypes?"

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"Without Alice, it took years to catch up," said Johann, moving on heedless of Maria’s question. "A Red Queen's Race. 'It takes all the running you can do to stay in one place.'"

He gestured at a pile of incomprehensible blueprints on his desk. The phrase "LEDs show remaining uses, recharge impossible" caught Maria's eye, but its importance was lost on her.

“What does it do?” asked Maria, beginning to suspect that this conversation was a bit of a Red Queen's Race itself.

Uncle Johann shook his head in frustration, as if Maria had blithely asked to take a nuclear submarine out for a test drive. “Don’t even ask. It’s not safe to use them, not even the little one.” A pause. “Might be inevitable, though. Consistency and all that.”

Johann's explanations bore the same relation to the facts as Picasso's Violin bears to the real instrument. All the pieces were accounted for, but their relations were all over the place.

"Vincent wants to go ahead," he continued, "but Henry's dead-set against it. Fell doesn’t know, and doesn’t need to. The mouse hasn't taken a position either way."

"The mouse! So that harness..."

"Doesn't chafe or abrade. Padded. Quite humane."

"Yes, but why don’t you want to use... whatever it is?"

Deflection in 3, 2, 1...

"How about a riddle? We haven't done that in a while."

As non-answers went, this was more promising. Sometimes, riddles were how her uncle spoke when he had something important to say. If he ever intended to answer her questions seriously, it might well be in that form. Then again, he might just have been nostalgic for those twilight riddle sessions years ago.

"All right. What's the riddle?"

"Everything. But we'll start with this."

INTERACTIVE SEGMENT: All riddles have been answered by commenters!

RIDDLE ONE:

Even though I'm always here,

I come around but once a year.

"A calendar?"

"Not a bad guess. But not it."

After giving it some more thought, Maria was able to hit on the answer.

✔ Narration Unlocked by Melanthe: Riddle One's Answer

"It's the Earth," said Maria. "When you say it's 'always here,' you mean under our feet. But from the point of view of the sun, it comes around once every year."

"Correct," said Uncle Johann, picking up the globe from the bookshelf. "There's no such thing as a 'better' or 'worse' reference frame. But it's only human to prefer our own point of view."

His fingers danced over the surface of the globe until it swung open at the equator with a click. From its core, he produced a pocketwatch and a key.

"The heart of the world," he said, holding out the watch to Maria.

An engraved butterfly flitted across the front of the casing, over a banner reading TEMPVS EDAX RERVM. Her fingertips trembled as she opened it.

It kept accurate time. Pasted inside, opposite the watch face, was a photograph of the Palmstroem siblings: her mother and Johann. They looked no older than Maria was now.

Gently, she shut the watch and handed it back.

"It's beautiful," she said. Palmstroem replaced the watch and key in the globe and neatly clicked it shut.

"That wasn't so bad," said Maria. "Got another one?"

"Sure."

RIDDLE TWO:

Dark when it's still,

And aglow when it goes,

Its eye's in its belly,

Its tail's on its nose.

"It's not a literal animal, is it?" said Maria, more to herself than her uncle. Eventually, she found the solution.

✔ Narration Unlocked by MortimusWasHere: Riddle Two's Answer

"It's an optical mouse, right? Like the one in the other room. It's got a wire connecting it by the 'nose' to the computer, and a little glowing 'eye' underneath."

"Correct," said Uncle Johann. "I've been thinking about mice."

“So have I,” said Maria, her memory stirred. “You know how I saw that mouse after Mom disappeared? What happened to it?”

"Henry caught it. Next riddle."

It seemed, Maria thought, that Uncle Johann was trying to direct her attention to specific things and ideas without saying anything explicitly. But to what end?

RIDDLE THREE:

The end of all time is my terminal part,

Fifty-one and a hundred comprising my heart.

My first is the first; you must not append more,

For I'm wicked and cruel with a thousand before.

Take out my hundred and split me in two,

And all that remains when you're done is untrue.

Maria gradually pieced the wordplay together, but she was unprepared for what her uncle showed her next.

HINT 1: One of the items already described in Johann's office may yield a clue.

HINT 2: It may help to focus more on letters and numbers than on meanings, at least to start.

✔ Narration Unlocked by SmolShrimpa (with contribution from Astrowoud): Riddle Three's Answer

"It's ALICE," said Maria, after great length. "It's first letter is the first letter, A. Fifty-one and a hundred give LI and C in Roman numerals. And the end of all time is 'E.'"

"That's correct. And the rest?"

"Begin it with M, a thousand, and you get MALICE. Take away a hundred, or C, instead, and split it up, and you get A LIE."

Johann smiled weakly and turned to his computer. "Never thought I could live without her."

Uncle Johann sometimes needed the world translated for him. How had Maria's mother described it? As she sifted through her recollections, a stilted, half-familiar voice jarred Maria from her thoughts, and spoke exactly the words she was trying to remember.

"You can, Johann. But your way of looking at the world can get a little creative. Dangerously so."

No! That couldn't possibly be...

An image of her mother stared at her from Uncle Johann's computer screen, smiling emptily. A synthesized voice droned through the speakers.

"I didn't want to show you until I'd refined the model more," said Uncle Johann. "A simulation of Alice. Based on videos, chat logs, writings, my own guidance... not perfect. But she helps me focus."

Shutting her eyes, Maria turned away.

"...I should have warned you that her voice might not be right. The uncanny valley effect would be disconcerting if you weren't used to it, wouldn't it?" said Uncle Johann. "But we can improve her. It would help if you talked to her. Would you like --"

"No!" It came out sharper than Maria intended. "No... thank you. I'd rather, um... not tonight."

"All right," said Uncle Johann, recognizing that he had once again tripped over one of the many invisible lines that crisscrossed the world. He shut down the computer. He had confused Maria, and that was certainly not helpful at all right now.

Johann fruitlessly readjusted his glasses. He had bared an embarrassing secret to his niece, only to be met with bewilderment. Another nap was in order. "Thanks for stopping by," he said.

"Um, anytime," said Maria, stepping back. What was she supposed to say to that? She understood that he could be a little obsessive, but this… she tried to come up with a word for this, and rejected both "scary-sad" and "tearrifying" offhand.

"I'll... just be going now."

As she left, the deadbolt slid into place behind her. That was the last time she saw her uncle alive.