Assembly Member Negri was a man who wanted things kept in order. His father had been a stern but fair man. Negri had feared him, but had quickly learned that being disciplined, keeping things in order, would keep him on his father’s good side. And keeping things in order often required going to great lengths.

It was this need for great lengths that had brought him here, standing deep under the campus of Helison university, in an underground chamber that had a huge device stuffed into it. He didn’t like it down here. The air smelled…metallic. It made his beard feel itchy.

“That’s the new BEAR detector. Did you know they actually had it up and running for a whole week before we could even get around to nerfing it?”

Negri turned to see Viktoria Akmatova coming from around the curve of the huge tunnel leading to the chamber. It was like they were in an unfinished station for an unfinished subway line. One that was just a three-kilometer-long circle under the campus. A subway line filled with, what was to Negri, a metal pipe with nondescript science stuff around it.

As Viktoria approached, she looked tired. He was expecting her to be more nervous for this meeting. He lowered his voice. “A week ago, you violated one of our most important laws, and you greet me by telling me of another incident where you didn’t do your job?”

Viktoria smiled, but it was a tired, mirthless smile. “Data has to be verified. Initial results are never trusted. We rarely interfere right away anyway. Keeping a loose grip on things like this keeps paranoia to a minimum. It’s what keeps Prometheus happy and placid. Unlike Pan.”

Negri turned to the BEAR detector, its name being an acronym for something. It was a three-story-tall, octagonal mass of sheets of metal and ceramic insulators and kilometers of copper windings. It looked like it was made to resemble an occultist summoning circle. “I thought devices like this were the greatest threat to maintaining the laws around the Silencing.”

Viktoria folded her arms and sauntered up to the device. “We thought they would be. Before the Silencing, we were sure Irse and Clausius wouldn’t be able to give us data for these experiments. But, every time they throw a new detector module down in this ring, they just work.”

“What do you mean they work? They aren’t finding out how Mebar is put together, are they?”

Viktoria turned to him. “In a way. It’s as if someone created a new manager who has all the knowledge of quantum mechanics we had before we entered Mebar…plus everything else. Everything we could ever know. We thought supercolliders would show people the ‘bottom’ of Mebar. But, there is no bottom.”

Negri frowned and held up a piece of metal that looked like obsidian, but was heavy and cold like cast iron. “But these have always worked?”

Viktoria walked over and took it from him. Negri had sent an assistant to buy it from a black-market vendor who had smuggled it over from Pan. Because that was currently cheaper than trying to mine, purify, and alloy it here on Prometheus. Even though there was just as much of it here as over there.

Viktoria climbed up a rolling staircase set in the center of the chamber, unlatched and pushed a segment of the science pipe away, and set the mazai metal in the small opening in the BEAR testing module. “It’s only because of the off chance someone might bring in something like this that we’ve had to nerf any of the detectors.”

The black ice steel sample now in the detector, Viktoria walked back down next to Negri. She hadn’t replaced the pipe she’d moved out of the way for some reason. He looked down at her. “Can you tell me what it was it about that woman which made you think it would be at all acceptable to violate protocol?”

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She didn’t react. She remained looking at the BEAR device a moment, then walked over to a locked panel along the wall. She sighed as she pointed her aleph key at it and it clicked open. “You know why. Sir. She deserves a lot more from us than just getting to keep her memories.”

“It has nothing to do with what she deserves.” Negri’s tone darkened, only a little, but it was enough for lines to form on Viktoria’s face. “She’s intelligent and driven. And now she’s armed with memories and agendas from the world she came from.”

Viktoria, staring at the control panel that had been hidden behind the little, locked door, drew in a long breath. “I know. I did what I did.”

“You’re not on probation. Yet. But if anything comes of it, you’ll risk exile. You know we have enough problems to deal with right now.”

“Yep. Which is why we’re down here. Performing this silly ritual.” Viktoria studied the control panel a moment, turned some dials, and said, “Ready.”

Negri put on a set of goggles that he didn’t really need, but which made him feel more comfortable. He couldn’t argue with what Viktoria had said; the ritual was silly. Some ancient Aleph had decided to make a fairy tale about Irse true. To make it so that, if you could “fool” her, she would be forced to appear before you and answer any question you asked. He turned to Viktoria and nodded: “Do it.”

Viktoria also put goggles on. “No metal on you? Just in case?”

Negri shook his head.

Viktoria pressed down on a red button as big as her palm. There was first a crack, then a hum that slowly rose in volume. Then she pressed another button like the first, and the lights in the chamber turned off. Then she pressed another and a flickering, purple-blue beam appeared in the air, shooting out from the part of the pipe where Viktoria had removed a section. It shot into the BEAR, just barely missing the hunk of black ice steel.

The humming continued to rise and the flickering beam became brighter. Then Viktoria pressed one last button. “Diverting beam!”

Both of them hunched down a little in reaction to the BANG that reverberated harshly in the chamber. The glowing blue beam was gone. There was something spinning up where the hunk of black ice steel had been. Or a few things were spinning, but it was too dark to tell.

The lights came back on, revealing that reality had been broken. Literally. Up in the center of the BEAR, pieces of it and the hunk of black metal were kaleidoscoping around. Negri had seen many strange things since becoming a Seated member of the Assembly, but still he felt his stomach clench up every time he saw this happen. It was like big chunks of glass and polished metal were twisting around and within and through each other. As the pieces of distorted space lazily rotated around, they occasionally showed reflections of Negri and Viktoria. But not just the two of them.

In the “reflections,” they also saw Irse, standing next to them. But she wasn’t actually there. Negri cleared his throat and called out. “Irse. We’ve summoned you here—”

“Just shut up and ask your question. Though I have a feeling I already know what it is.”

Negri and Viktoria looked at each other, then back up at the pieces of broken reality. “Why did you—”

“I can’t believe you still use this old loophole to contact me. You could just ask nicely, you know.”

Negri felt himself getting hot under the collar, but chose to swallow his pride. As much as he could, anyway. His anger still came out in his voice. “Why did you release TAW Nathan Sanchez?”

She smiled. “I’d think you would have figured that one out already.”

The three of them stood there in silence. At least, the images of all three of them rotated around in silence, while Negri and Viktoria looked on, waiting.

Finally, Irse sighed and folded her arms. “You really can’t tell? I want him to kill all of you.”

BANG. The chamber returned to normal. Irse was gone. The spinning distortions of reality were gone. The only sound Negri could hear was his own angry breathing.

“Well,” Viktoria said, “That’s not very comforting.”

Negri turned to leave. “I’m transferring all your lieutenants to Threshold guard duty. If your little science experiment doesn’t actually need supervision, then your subordinates can do something useful. Like stopping the end of the world.”