Category: Uncategorized

Audrey pulled the car up to Josh’s house and parked it on the side of the street. The door to the garage was already open. Inside, Josh was setting up his guitar and plugging in his amps. Audrey carried her electric keyboard from her car into the garage and placed it on the stand, in its usual spot. It felt both familiar and unfamiliar.

Familiar, because they had been practicing for the Renaissance Faire concert for months now. Same as they did last year. And the year before that.

Unfamiliar, because this weekend was going to be their last concert. Not just this year, but probably forever. Josh said they could still play these concerts after graduation, but Audrey never seriously believed that would be in the cards. He would move on, and she would move on, to whatever happened next after high school.

Josh interrupted her reverie. “I invited someone to come by and check out our practice today.”

“Why?” Audrey said. “We’ve never done that before.”

“It’s our last concert together. I want it to be good.”

The concert was this weekend though, and this was their last practice. There wouldn’t be much time to fix anything, but Audrey guessed they could still do a few small tweaks, especially for their last show. “Who’s coming?”

“Haley.”

“Haley?”

Haley was a mutual friend of theirs. There was nothing wrong with her showing to a practice – except she didn’t know anything about music. She could barely carry a tune. Audrey had heard her sing at a party once.

And then she noticed that Josh sat up a little straighter and smoothed out his shirt a bit when he said her name. He probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it, she thought, and she couldn’t resist having a little fun.

“I didn’t think Haley was a musician.”

“Maybe not,” Josh said defensively, “but she goes to a lot of shows.”

“If you want we could write up some last minute lyrics and have her as a guest singer for our show.”

“No no, she’s just going to watch and give us some feedback. She doesn’t sing.”

No, she definitely doesn’t. Warbles, maybe. Audrey held back a smile and warmed up by playing a few chords on her keyboard.

When Haley arrived later, Josh had just finished setting up the holographic projector. His back was turned, and he didn’t notice her arrival.

“Hey, Josh!” Haley said.

Josh jumped up and greeted her back. He ran his hands through his hair.

Audrey rolled her eyes.

“Want to check out our show?” Josh said.

“Sure!”

Josh looked over to Audrey, who nodded that she was ready. He counted off, one, two, three, four, then launched into their musical set. It was a cycle of pieces inspired by the seasons, and as the music played, the holographic projector showed different backgrounds from around the earth, a matching mood for each season.

Audrey was pretty sure she had seen the same generic scenes playing in the waiting room of her dentist. But Josh had picked out the scenes for the projector, and she didn’t care enough to argue. Playing in the concerts was something she did to relax and have a bit of fun. Not something to be taken too seriously.

Not like Josh, who treated it with more intensity than any of his schoolwork.

Josh played the final riffs, ending the set. “So what do you think?”

“It, um, was cool. Good job,” Haley said.

If Josh noticed the awkwardness, he pretended not to notice.

“Any suggestions for our show this weekend?”

“Well.” Haley thought about her answer. “Have you thought about making the show, like, bigger?”

“What does that mean? Bigger.”

“Well, you know how like Ian’s show has that—”

“Ian? That guy can barely keep time. Have you heard his solos?”

“Really? It seems fine to me. Anyway his shows have this cool hologram thing where it follows what the audience does. So when they start clapping, these sparkly things bounce around more and kind of start dancing on their own. It’s not as…” Haley trailed off.

“Not as… what?”

Audrey had heard this tone in Josh’s voice before. She tried to defuse the situation. “I think what she means is that we can probably make our hologram show a bit more interesting. Isn’t that right, Haley?”

“Right,” Haley said, thankful for the rescue. She retreated down the driveway. “Anyway I’ll be at the Ren Faire, so I’ll check out your show!”

“Can you believe that?” Josh said, when Haley was gone. “Ian? That guy is an incompetent hack.”

“Sometimes,” Audrey said, “It’s not about just the music. It’s about the show.”

“I guess we’ll have to practice on Friday night.”

“But I thought this was our last practice. I have plans on Friday night.”

“It’s our last concert. Besides, you heard what Haley said. We have to make it more interesting.”

Audrey considered protesting some more, but she knew Josh would just whine until she agreed. And if she were being honest with herself, she was curious about what he would come up with.

---

Nothing, as it turned out. Josh had come up with nothing.

It was Friday, and Audrey had come over after dinner, and they had tinkered on the projector for hours.

They took a break around midnight. Audrey snacked on a chocolate bar as she looked out the window of the garage. The streetlights were dim and all the houses she could see were dark. On the block, their house was the only one with any signs of life.

“I don’t think we’re going to figure this one out.”

Josh just sat there. He didn’t say anything for a while.

“It’s not fair, you know,” he finally said.

“Haley has no taste anyway. Who cares what she thinks? For the record, I agree with you. Ian can’t keep a beat. And he’s a bass player.”

“I’m not talking about that.” Josh waved his arms at their musical equipment. “I’m talking about this. All of this.”

Audrey didn’t understand. “What about this?”

“Do you know what we would be if we weren’t in Selunia Falls?”

“Delinquents?” Audrey chuckled.

“Rock stars! We would be rock stars.”

“Maybe you would be. I wouldn’t.” It was said without self deprecation nor shame, just an objective statement of fact. She put in the time as long as it was fun, but she would never be dedicated enough to turn pro. It didn’t bother her. “I would probably be doing the same thing I’m doing now. Taking these stupid exams, getting into college somewhere, then becoming a scientist. Maybe even coming back here to do research in the future.”

“I just want some more respect. That’s all.”

“If you wanted respect, why didn’t you do something for the science fair? You’re good enough to come up with something.”

“Why should I have to do what everyone else does?”

Audrey shrugged. Josh was in one of his moods again.

She finished off her snack and stood back up next to the holographic projector. “So what are we going to do with this thing?”

“I already gave you a suggestion, but you said no.”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“I’m serious. We can double the power of the ionic rotator in the projector. It’ll work.”

“You mean it’ll explode in your face.”

His obsession was getting the best of him, Audrey thought.

“You heard what Haley said. We need something big to spice up the show, and we don’t have anything else.” Josh cracked open the projector and adjusted some of the components inside.

Audrey was too tired to have the same fight for the third time that night. This time, she simply escaped to the farthest corner of the garage and tried to hide behind some cabinets, hoping it would provide enough cover. “Don’t do it.” She said it anyway, knowing full well that he would ignore her.

The projector gave a muted hiss and smoke started floating out of it. The unpleasant smell of burnt metal wafted through the air.

“It didn’t work,” Josh said.

I told you it wouldn’t. Instead Audrey said, “That’s it. I’m going home.”

“You can’t go home. We haven’t figured out anything for tomorrow yet!”

“And now we have no projector either.”

Josh was taking apart the projector again. “We can fix it.”

“Josh. It’s past midnight. I told you not to do it and you ignored me. I’m going home.”

---

The next morning, Audrey arrived at Josh’s house to go to the concert together.

“You were right yesterday,” Josh said, as they loaded their equipment onto a cart to carry it to the concert. “I’m sorry, I should have listened to you.”

Audrey only grunted, both as an acceptance of the apology as well as a response to all the physical exertion.

They rolled the cart along the sidewalk, making their way to one of the shuttle stops that would take them to the Renaissance Faire. It was a little bit busier than usual, though there still weren’t many other people on the street, as they made their way through the suburban streets. Audrey guessed most of the other people were going to the Renaissance Faire also. Occasionally she saw a group in costume.

They walked for a while, before Audrey realized they hadn’t made much small talk. That didn’t mean that they were still angry from last night. They had known each other long enough that they were able to walk together in contented silence.

But something felt different.

It was quiet, but it wasn’t an angry quiet. Nor was it a moody quiet. It was something else. She tried to pick up on it and then she noticed his walk, and it was more self satisfied than she would have expected, and…

“What did you do?” Audrey said.

He was up to something. He was way too relaxed with a bit too much smug.

“What? I didn’t do anything.”

“What did you do?” Audrey said again, in the same even tone.

“Fine, fine. I fixed the projector.”

“No, you did something else. What did you do, Josh? Don’t lie to me.”

“I came up with something big for our show.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a surprise.”

Audrey took a deep breath. “I’m performing on stage with you. I’m not the person you should be surprising.”

“Ok, that’s fair. But it’s too difficult to explain right now. I’ll show you when we get to sound check.”

Audrey wanted to smash his face in with his own guitar. She resisted the urge. It wasn’t the way she wanted their last show to go.

It would have felt really good though.

Finally they arrived at the Renaissance Faire. They proceeded to the open air tent, where sound check was being held.

“So what did you do?” Audrey asked.

Josh led her to one of the far corners of the tent, away from where the other bands were warming up. He unpacked the holographic projector and set it up to play. It projected a shot of green meadow, the selection they had chosen for spring.

“You fixed it.”

“I did more than that. Look again.”

Audrey studied the image being projected. She didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. The projector panned from flat grass to a field of lilies. The image was translucent. She could see through it to some vendors on the far side of the Faire. She leaned in to examine the projection. That’s when she smelled it.

“Lilies?”

Josh grinned. “So you can smell them.”

“How did you do that?”

“I know a guy.”

“Are you for real? You know a guy-“ Audrey made an air quote with her hands “-that you talked to after midnight on a Friday, and he found some part, that not only fixed the projector, but also creates smells?”

“I know how it sounds. But that’s what I did. There’s a guy who lives up in that neighborhood where all the scientists live. He deals in odd technologies, stuff I’ve never seen before. I found him this morning and he set that up for me. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but you have to admit, it’s pretty cool.”

Audrey didn’t have a chance to dwell on it, because the stage manager came by. “You’re up in ten,” he said.

Audrey and Josh moved their gear onto the stage. Audrey still felt the butterflies before every concert, even though the crowd was small and she’d been doing this for years. She ran her hands over the keyboard again to calm herself.

Josh counted off. “One, two, three, four…”

She played the first chords of Spring, and settled in to the familiarity. By a few notes in she was playing on autopilot, muscle memory from months of practice taking over. The scent of lilies was faint, and wasn’t enough to crowd out the aroma of lamb cooking from one of the food grills nearby. She scanned the audience. No one noticed the added effects.

Oh well, she thought.

The first song completed, they moved on to the next one, the Song of Summer. The projector played a scene of a luminous sunset with a volcano in the background, the entire image bathed in red. The day was warm, and Audrey felt herself starting to sweat, much more than she had expected. She thought maybe it was some kind of psychological trick, that the image of the volcano was causing her to imagine that it was warmer than it really was. Then she looked up and almost forgot her notes.

The banner above them had caught on fire.

The fire was small but was spreading its way across the stage. Some people in the front row pointed at it and applauded.

They think it’s part of the show, Audrey realized. More people were gathering in the audience now to see what the commotion was about. Keep playing. Don’t cause a panic.

Audrey looked over to Josh and was glad he had come up with the same idea. He looked up at the banner and gave a small shrug.

This time, I really am going to smash his face in with that guitar.

The fire was spreading above them, but it wasn’t spreading beyond the stage. It looked like it would just burn out the banner, and that would be that. Crisis averted for the moment, Audrey went back to focusing on her music. As the Song of Summer neared its end, Audrey mentally prepared for the Song of Autumn. There would be a videoscape of fall foliage, and… she didn’t know how all the dry leaves in it would interact with the fire, but it probably wasn’t good. She looked over to where Josh was playing the solo at the end of Summer. He hadn’t thought that far ahead, as usual.

If the dry leaves in that scene did what she expected, there would be a panic for sure.

She looked around for something, anything, like a fire extinguisher, but she couldn’t find anything to contain the blaze – and even if she had, it was probably too late to use it. It seemed like everyone at the Renaissance Faire had come by to watch their concert, and it was just a sea of faces in front of them.

Her last concert was about to end in disaster.

Then she stumbled on an idea. An idea that would also give everyone there a show to remember. If the idea worked.

She only had to figure out how to get Josh to cooperate.

Before the Song of Summer was done, she started playing a new set of chords. The music clashed at first, but then Josh, realizing that something was wrong, started following along with her. He looked over at her in confusion.

Winter, she mouthed to him, her mind screaming.

He didn’t seem to understand.

Come on. Figure it out. Come on. She made a subtle movement with one of her hands while the other one continued to play. She gestured towards the projector, using the keyboard to hide the motion from the crowd.

Josh’s playing grew more confident. Audrey breathed a sigh of relief.

He started the last song in their set, and as he did so he danced his way to the projector, making it look like it was part of the show. He gently nudged it, so gracefully that it seemed intentional, and the snow white mountains of the Song of Winter appeared on the stage.

As they played, ice crystals started to form around them. Audrey didn’t really understand exactly how this new projector worked, but her gamble had paid off. The chill wrapped around her, a welcome contrast to the previous heat. The ice smothered the fire. The crystals floated around them and melted into a gentle mist that drifted through the audience as Audrey and Josh finished their set.

It was a standing ovation. And Audrey thought, maybe, just maybe, they were rock stars after all.

Even when the stage manager rushed up to them, it couldn’t dampen her spirits.

“What the hell were you two thinking?” the stage manager screamed.

Audrey only laughed, high on the performance, causing the stage manager to become further enraged. But before he could berate them again, they were rescued by someone else who came on the stage. This time, Audrey was stunned into silence.

The man needed no introduction, but he gave them one anyway. “I’m Adam, the head of the laboratory at Selunia Falls,” he said, with a firm handshake. “Did you two enhance this projector yourselves?”

“Yes, that’s right. We did,” Josh said. He puffed out his chest.

“That’s pretty impressive. Have you ever thought about coming and working for the lab?”

Josh didn’t hesitate. “I’m going to be a musician.”

Adam handed him a business card. “Well, if you ever change your mind.”

He turned to Audrey. “What about you? Interested in working for the lab?”

All those late nights studying, all those exams. And now this job had practically fallen into her lap.

Her response surprised even her.

“You know what? I think I’m going to see what’s out there.”

The store was a lot less interesting than Sadie had expected.

When Rainbow told her that he needed to stop by the Karazai store before trivia night, Sadie had asked to join him.

She was kind of regretting that decision now.

She thought Karazai tech would be more unique, but none of it looked that different from human electronics. Neither did the store. The place reminded Sadie of other electronics stores she’d been to. It was a bit cramped, and the walkways created random nooks and crannies. The items, while they were organized into categories, sat in disarray on the shelves. If Rainbow hadn’t told her, she never would have guessed this store sold Karazai components.

She looked over to see if Rainbow was almost done. Rainbow had been arguing with the store owner over some Karazai thing she didn’t understand, but now he was examining a stack of components on the counter. She caught the store owner giving her the side eye.

Sadie ignored him and wandered down another aisle, where the items looked a bit more interesting. A hollow cubic frame, the size of a small safe, rested on the shelf, with various other bits connected to it. It reminded Sadie of a 3d printer. She reached out to play with it.

“Don’t touch that!” the storekeeper said.

Startled, Sadie jerked her hand back.

“Do you even know what that is?”

“Well, it kind of looks like a 3d printer…”

“It’s a graviton collector. Do you have any idea what that does?”

“Well, since you called it a graviton collector, I’m guessing it doesn’t print things.”

The store owner sputtered and said to Rainbow, “Is she even supposed to be in here? She’s, you know, a…”

“She’s a… what?” Rainbow said.

“Human.” The storekeeper said to Rainbow, but projected his voice just enough to be sure that Sadie could hear it. Luckily there was no one else in the store.

“Take it up with Arden. He says she’s allowed to have access.” Rainbow swept all the components into a bag he was carrying. “Charge these to my dad’s account.”

When Rainbow and Sadie were outside the store, Sadie said, “You could have told me he was such a grouch.”

“And miss the chance to see that? No way. Besides, he thinks too highly of himself, just because most of the Karazai components here flow through him. It’s about time someone annoyed him a bit.”

They stopped by Rainbow’s house to drop off the components. Sadie was on her way back out when she noticed that Rainbow wasn’t following her. He was heading down into the basement instead.

“I thought we’re going to get some food at the Edge Bar and then crush trivia night.”

“We are. But there’s still another hour or so.”

“But I want to get there early.”

“I just need to fix up the k-net before my dad comes home. It’ll only take a few minutes.” Rainbow disappeared downstairs with the bag of components.

Sadie followed him. It was the first time she had seen the basement of Rainbow’s house. Most of the houses here didn’t even have a basement, but some of the people here had added them as disaster shelters – not from a tornado – but from the endless scientific experiments in Selunia Falls.

Rainbow was already at work at a machine. Two padded chairs faced each other in the center of the room. A coil of wires snaked out of the sides of each chair and connected to a large cabinet along the wall of the room. On the outside of the cabinet were all sorts of controls – screens, buttons, levers.

“We call it the Bubble,” Rainbow said.

Sadie was about to ask what it did, but she didn’t want whatever he was doing to take even longer. She settled into one of the chairs in a gallery along the wall, and she went online on her phone as Rainbow was working.

A while later, having gone through all her friend updates three times and having nothing else to do, she said, “I thought it would only take a few minutes.”

“Yeah. It was a little harder than I thought.”

“Can’t you just fix this when we get back?”

“No, my dad needs to use it tonight. What’s the hurry anyway?”

“Because. I’m bored,” she said. She didn’t want to be rude.

But Rainbow knew her too well. “He doesn’t hate you.”

“He doesn’t like me either. He tolerates me. And I’m pretty sure that’s because Arden said he had to.”

“He’s like that with everyone. It’s different when he gets to know you.”

Sadie changed the subject and pointed at the Bubble. “What does this thing do anyway?” Not only did she not want to talk about Rainbow’s dad, she was getting bored.

“It hooks up the Karazai network – we call it the k-net for short. Full immersion, lets you talk to others who might be hooked in, or explore imaginary worlds.”

“Oh, we have those kinds of things also,” Sadie said. “VR helmets. The older versions were kind of heavy, but now they’re pretty light and kind of fun to play with.”

“VR helmets?” Rainbow stopped working on the machine and stared at her. “VR helmets are toys. This is full immersion. As in, not just sight and sound, but smell, taste, touch. The whole thing.”

“How?”

“It links directly into your neural pathway.” He went back to fixing the machine. He pushed in the last couple of circuit boards and closed the panel. “Ok. Time for trivia night.”

But Sadie was interested in the Bubble now. Her curiosity fought with her distaste for Rainbow’s dad, but finally won out. “Show me.”

“Show you what? The k-net?”

“I want to see what it’s like inside.”

Rainbow was amused. “What happened to avoiding my dad?”

Sadie knew she was being baited, but she didn’t care. “Are you going to show me or not?”

He shook his head. “I can’t. I don’t know what effect the neural link has on humans.”

“I feel like a lot of other Karazai stuff works on humans. I want to try it.” When Sadie saw that Rainbow was about to protest again, she said, “I had to wait around while you fixed it. The least you could do is let me see what it’s like.”

“Well, I guess your biology is actually quite close to ours, somehow… Fine, it’s worth a try. Sit in one of the chairs.”

Rainbow attached a set of electrodes to Sadie’s ankles and worked his way up, attaching electrodes to her wrists, her shoulders, and finally her face. They were cold at first but adjusted to her body temperature. Sadie didn’t feel anything sticky on them, but somehow they attached firmly to her. The other end of the electrodes connected to the panel in the wall through a collection of cables.

Rainbow sat in the other chair and attached himself. “Ok, we’re zoning in now.” He pushed a button.

Sadie blinked her eyes, and in an instant the world shifted. She was no longer in Selunia Falls. She didn’t think she was even on Earth anymore. The sky was no longer blue, but purple. And there was no longer one sun in the sky, but two. Binary stars. She felt a little breathless and lightheaded.

“Is this… real?” Sadie asked.

“It’s a virtual rendition of the real Karazai world.”

“Oh, so this your home then!”

“It’s where I’m from,” Rainbow said.

They were in the middle of some kind of plaza. Other people – Sadie assumed they were Karazai – were milling around.

“Are those other Karazai?” she said.

“They could be. But no, we’re not connected to the other k-nets right now. These are other characters that are generated by the computer. NPCs.”

“Is this what you and your dad do with this thing? Visit home, since you can’t actually go back?”

“My dad doesn’t visit this world. It reminds him too much of what he lost. He only uses this for business meetings, when he connects to the other k-nets and they discuss whatever it is that they discuss.”

“What about you though?”

“I don’t really visit here for… other reasons.”

Sadie didn’t pry.

“Ok, time to go back.” Rainbow grinned. “Time passes here the same as it passes in the real world, and it’s time to go to trivia night. Just imagine yourself falling out of this world, and you should find yourself back outside.”

She did what he said, and felt herself falling out of her virtual body. It felt strange, twirling through the emptiness of a void, even though it only happened for a moment before she found herself back in the chair in Rainbow’s house. She disconnected herself from the Bubble, and waited for Rainbow.

He should have been just behind her. But when a minute passed, and then two, and he was still sitting there, frozen, she knew something was wrong. She gently prodded him, but he gave no sign that he had felt or heard her.

She considered disconnecting him, to see if that would bring him back, but the thought better of it. Wouldn’t disconnecting him from the machine kill him, while he was still in there? She was sure that was some kind of scifi trope, and she figured tropes usually had an element of truth to them. She knew she could disconnect a VR helmet safely, but this was technology she was unfamiliar with.

Better not to risk it, she thought. She muttered to herself, resigned, as she sat down on one of the chairs along the wall to wait. Rainbow’s dad would be home soon.

It was worth it, though.

---

“It’s a good thing you didn’t try to disconnect this,” Rainbow’s dad said.

His name was David, and he had been surprisingly calm even with his son stuck in the k-net. Sadie described what they had been doing that afternoon – leaving out the part where she had gone into the k-net. He wouldn’t have approved of that.

David checked Rainbow, who seemed to be fine physically. Whatever Rainbow was doing in the k-net, in this world his breathing was slow and even. When there was no immediate danger, he summoned Faye, a Karazai technician, to examine the Bubble. She arrived soon after and they popped open the panels and combed through all the components of the machine. Sadie recognized some of the components as the ones that Rainbow had just bought that afternoon.

“There,” Faye said, pointing to a gray cube inside one of the panels.

David examined the cube. “You’re right,” David said. “It’s been tampered with.”

“Rainbow just bought that this afternoon and put it into the Bubble,” Sadie said. “I saw him do it.”

David frowned. “I need to make some calls,” he said.

While he was gone, Sadie asked, “What does that do?”

“Persona converter.” Faye didn’t bother to explain more, though it wasn’t clear if it was because she didn’t want to give away Karazai secrets, or whether she thought Sadie wouldn’t understand.

Doesn’t matter, Sadie thought. I can guess what it does from the name.

“I called Arden,” David said, when he returned. “This is a security matter now. In the meantime, Faye, can you see if you can get Rainbow out of the Bubble?”

---

“I stopped by on my way here to question the Karazai seller,” Arden said, when he arrived at the house. “Kind of a weasel, that one. He claims that he doesn’t know anything about any malfunctioning parts.”

“He’s lying,” Faye said. She had extracted the persona converter and placed it on a table next to the Bubble. “Look at this. Definitely tampered with.”

“Is it possible that he didn’t know about it?” Arden said.

“I’ve dealt with him before,” Faye said. “He knew about it. Probably took a bribe to do it.”

“You think it’s sabotage, then, and not an accident.” Arden’s tone was grim. “I’ll have another talk with him when we’re done here. So, can you get Rainbow back?”

“I was studying this converter while waiting for you to get here. It’s been tampered to trigger when a Karazai tries to leave the k-net. Normally you would just be able to zone back out. But with these persona converters, some code is triggered, which locks you into the k-net.”

“What would be the point of keeping someone in there?”

Faye shrugged. “I don’t know. Leverage? Anyway, I keep a supply of extra converters in my work bag. We’ll put in a good one and then he should be able to zone back out. It’ll just take a few minutes.”

Sadie sat along the wall to wait again, but lasted only a minute before she had too much nervous energy and started pacing. She wondered if somehow her presence had triggered the Bubble failure. It was true that the persona converter had been tampered with. But she wondered if somehow her being in the k-net had something to do with it. It was silly, but she couldn’t push the thought out of her mind.

“Is everybody ready?” Faye said. Seeing their collective nods, she continued. “We just have to reset the Bubble and that should restart the persona converter. That’ll notify Rainbow inside the virtual world, and he should be smart enough to know what that means and try to leave again.”

“But I thought we can’t disconnect him while he’s in there. Won’t resetting the Bubble kill him?” Sadie asked.

“It’s not a disconnection,” Faye said. “It’s a soft reset. The Bubble will go into standby mode for only an instant and it’ll be fine. Anything else?”

When no one answered, she said, “Resetting now.” She pushed a button on the panel. The people in the room held their collective breath as the machine went to standby power. The screens on the panels blinked and a burst of text scrolled on the screen as the machine executed its restart sequence. The fans started again as the Bubble came back to life.

“Rainbow?” Faye said, when the screens stopped updating. “Are you back?”

Rainbow remained unchanged from before. Suddenly there was a loud pop, and all the lights in the room turned off and the machine went dark. It happened for less than a second, before a different set of lights – the emergency lights – turned back on. The machine went back into standby mode.

---

Faye finished her analysis of the Bubble. “Something overloaded the power and forced us onto backup generators. The good news is, even though the k-net turned off for a second, it didn’t kill him. He’s still in there somewhere,” Faye said.

“But?” Rainbow’s dad said.

“But we don’t know where he is. When the power turned off, his neural signal blinked off also. We haven’t been able to recover the signal. So we won’t be able to recover him from out here. Someone has to go in and bring him out.”

“So? I’ll go. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is no one can go in right now. That massive power surge was caused by us trying to remove the persona converter. The tampering was more sophisticated than we thought. Not only is it programmed to trap anyone who tries to exit the Bubble, it also infects the system to overload if it’s run with the tampered converter removed. So until we’re able to figure out how to deactivate it safely, we can’t risk removing it.” Faye saw the look on David’s face. “I’ve called up everyone on staff. We’ll have this figured out by the morning.”

Arden’s phone buzzed, and he checked the message. “Is your backup generator going to last until morning?”

“The Bubble uses a lot of power, even in standby mode. We’ll be lucky to get another hour out of it. Why?” Faye asked.

“The power outage took out the entire town. You’ve got however long the generator’s got.”

“Are you serious?” David said.

“It’s a mess out there,” Arden said.

“I’m the leader of the Karazai,” David said. “That’s my son in there!”

“It wouldn’t matter if you were the president. Power’s not coming back on tonight. Do you have any other generators you can bring over?”

“It’s a special power supply. We don’t just keep extras of those sitting around.”

Sadie didn’t want to bring more attention to herself. But when no one else had any ideas, she made her suggestion.

“So you said no one could go in there. I guess you meant Karazai. But could a human go in there?”

“A human going into the k-net? Absolutely not,” Faye said.

“But it would be possible, wouldn’t it?”

“I would have to study the neural link-”

David cut her off. “Then study it.”

Faye worked at the terminal. After a few minutes, she said, “It looks like this tampered converter is finely calibrated. So I guess if a human tried to go in there, they would be able to get back out. That’s assuming a human could even connect to the neural interface.”

“But human and Karazai have really close biologies, right? So it should work?” Sadie said.

She noticed that David was giving her a curious look. Meanwhile, Faye glared at her. “How would you know?”

“I’m just guessing…”

“Enough,” Arden said. “If a human can go in there and bring Rainbow home, then we need to do it. I’ll go in there and get him.”

Faye appealed to David, who had stopped listening to the conversation and was now examining the persona converter carefully. “Are you really going to let him go in there?” Faye said. But David wasn’t paying attention to either of them.

“How would you even find him? Do you even know where to look?” Faye said. She and Arden continued to argue for a bit.

“I’ll go in there,” Sadie finally said.

Arden looked at her in surprise. “No.”

“Like Faye said, you’ll need to find him in there. I know him. I know where he’d be. And, there aren’t any other humans that know him well enough.”

“You’re not trained for this. I’m not letting you go in there.”

“I think Sadie should go,” David said.

“Really?” Sadie wasn’t sure who was more shocked, her or Arden. Arden looked like he was about to object again.

“She’s right,” David said. “You won’t be able to find him. She would.”

“I can do it,” Sadie said.

The decision made, Sadie stepped into the Bubble and sat down in one of the chairs. She almost started attaching herself to the machine, before realizing it would give away her secret. She waited, instead, for David to come help her. When she was connected in and ready, Faye powered on the machine, and the familiar noise filled the room.

David leaned in next to Sadie. “You don’t know anything about Karazai technology, but somehow you guessed that the persona converter had been calibrated for only Karazai,” he said quietly. With the machine running, neither Arden nor Faye could hear.

Sadie tensed. “Just a lucky guess.”

“I studied that converter. Faye may not have noticed, but I did. Two people triggered that persona converter. I know you were in the k-net.”

She wanted to deny it, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good.

“That’s why I wanted you to go in there. You’ve been in there already, you know how the system works. And I know you’ll be able to get back out safely. Go bring Rainbow home.” David patted her on the shoulder, and stepped back from the Bubble. To Faye, he said, “She’s in. Activate the k-net.”

“Remember,” Faye said. “You don’t have much time. When you find him, grab him and zone out of the k-net. He won’t be able to zone himself out because of the persona converter, but that doesn’t matter. Grab him, zone yourself out, and he’ll ride your signal and come out with you.”

Sadie zoned in, expecting to see the purple sky of the Karazai world.

Instead, she was startled to see Selunia Falls. It was the Selunia Falls she knew, in every detail. Except it was empty. Not the kind of empty where she was walking home alone at night, and there was no one else around. The kind of empty of a virtual void, where time itself had stopped flowing.

Faye’s voice spoke into her ear. “Sadie, are you there?” She reached up to her ear and found an earpiece.

“Yes. I’m here. I’m outside Rainbow’s house. But there’s no one else here.”

“That’s the machine conserving power.”

Sadie searched through all the rooms in the house. “He’s not here.”

“He must have bunkered down in what he thought would be a safe place.”

“I’ll try the lab.”

Fortunately Rainbow’s car was parked in the driveway. She took his car keys from the bowl just inside the entrance and started driving. With no one else on the road, she was able to speed way above the limit. But she had only been driving for a minute before Faye spoke to her again.

“Are you there yet?”

“It’s a twenty minute drive! There’s no one else here so I can make it in fifteen though.”

“You don’t have twenty minutes! You barely have fifteen minutes. And why are you even driving?”

“What do you mean?”

Sadie could hear the invisible sigh on the other end.

“Sadie,” Faye said. “That world isn’t real. None of that is real and physical rules don’t apply. Just will yourself there, and you’ll be there.”

Will yourself there…? Well, I’ll give it a try I guess… Sadie closed her eyes and imagined herself in the lab.

And she was no longer sitting in the car. Instead she fell backwards, reaching out her hands to try to grab onto something, but all she found was air, and she landed hard onto the tiled entrance of the lab. There was no one there to see, but it wouldn’t have mattered if there were, because she was too excited.

“I did it! But… I don’t know where Rainbow’s office is.”

“I’ll guide you,” Faye said.

Sadie followed Faye’s instructions as she sped through the lab. “Rainbow! Are you here?” she shouted along the way. She shoved the door to his office.

It was empty. Just like the rest of the lab.

“He’s not here either.”

“Sadie, the backup generator’s running out. There’s only five minutes left. You need to come back.”

“What happens to Rainbow if the power goes out?”

There was no answer.

“What happens?”

“If you don’t get out,” Faye said, “then both of you will die in there.”

“I still have five minutes. I’m going to find him.”

“The subsystems are starting to shut down, to save power. I won’t be able to speak to you much longer.”

“I got it.”

Sadie tried not to focus on how much time was left and to focus on where Rainbow might be. She had searched the house, and she had searched the lab.

Where would he be?

Faye’s words echoed in her mind. He would be hiding in a safe place. Sadie tried to reach out psychically, and whether it was just intuition or Rainbow trying to make contact, she wasn’t sure – but she knew where she needed to go. She closed her eyes and willed herself.

She found herself inside Anna’s Cafe. A shadowy form was sitting in the corner, the only other person she had seen in Selunia Falls.

“Rainbow!”

The form didn’t answer.

“Faye, I found him!” But there was no response from the earpiece either.

Must be disconnected from low power…

“Rainbow,” Sadie said. “I’ve come to get you.”

Rainbow appeared not to have heard her. She took a tentative step towards him. The tables in the cafe shifted, forming a barrier between them. She saw a blur of movement reflected in one of the legs of the table and whirled around, thinking that maybe someone else had come in to get them.

The movement was coming from outside. But it wasn’t a person. It was the world itself, falling apart. The buildings were dissolving, first into wireframes, and then disintegrating completely into particles that floated off into space. The collapse was still on the far end of the street, but it was making its way towards her.

Sadie forced herself to remain calm.

“Rainbow. It’s me. Sadie. Remember me? I was working here when you first came in, and you chose that exact same seat.” Outside, the destruction was now across the street. She pressed on. “Remember when you told me your name, and I thought it was a funny name and you said you picked it out yourself?”

Rainbow finally looked up, and she saw the recognition in his eyes. “Sadie? Is it really you?”

“Yes,” Sadie said, and she was half laughing and half crying. She lunged forward, and this time the tables in the cafe remained where they were, and he was reaching out now, and so was she, and she grabbed his hand.

---

It was one week later.

It should have been trivia night at the bar, but Rainbow and Sadie were on their way to Rainbow’s house instead.

“I thought your dad used the k-net on Tuesday evenings,” Sadie said.

“Not anymore. Karazai meetings are in person now, until they can figure out who was sabotaging the equipment. There might be more tampered machines out there.”

“Then how do you know it’s safe for us to use.”

“Trust me. We’ve scrubbed this machine thoroughly. It’s safe.”

They arrived at the house just as David was on his way out. It seemed to Sadie that he had warmed up to him, at least just a little. He even gave her a hint of a smile.

She supposed that was the most she was going to get.

“You’re using the k-net?” David asked. “To do what?”

“Oh, I just wanted to show her what the k-net is really like. You know, when it’s not about to come completely apart. I figured we could take a flyover of Selunia Falls.”

David frowned. “It’s not really meant for humans.”

“She saved me, dad. I think she’s earned the right.”

David shrugged. “I guess it’ll be alright.” He got into his car and drove off.

They went into the basement, where the mess from last week had been cleaned up. Rainbow connected Sadie to the Bubble, then connected himself.

They zoned in.

Sadie turned to Rainbow and was about to tell him that he had set up the wrong location. But he winked at her before she could say anything, and Sadie just smiled back and basked in the purple sky.

Reena glanced at her rearview mirror, watching as Malina’s shrinking figure turned toward a bench, her friend’s shoulders hunched in a defeated fashion. She tightened her grip on her steering wheel and pressed down on the gas a little harder, trying to shove away the helplessness she felt in reuniting Malina with her family across the rift.

But she was no scientist. Instead, Reena was here to protect this town’s denizens–both human and Karazai. Keep the peace. Maintain the status quo. There was no pushing the envelope with her job; instead, that was left to the brilliant scientists in this town.

Back at her condo, Reena shifted through the shirts in her closet, frowning at her choices. As she reached for a frilly button up shirt, a black dress that hung at the very end of her closet caught her eye and beckoned. Reena slipped into the black dress, silently chiding herself for making a big fuss over what to wear just to see Victoria. 

Victoria, Reena thought, as she dabbed coral gloss on her lips that were pulled to a smile. Their friendship had a rough start, what with Victoria trying to ruin her Christmas. Though Reena’s job was to keep the town safe, she let Victoria slide, mostly because she felt sorry for the little criminal, the loneliness in this strange town all too familiar to her. Other than Malina, Arden, and the rock band that Arden urged Reena to join after learning she played guitar, Reena filled her off days with hikes and ice cream runs with Victoria. The more Reena got to know Victoria, the more she sensed this resilience and determination inside Victoria that Reena admired.

Of course, Victoria wasn’t yet privy to the alien race in town, so unaware of the stakes involved. Often she would complain to Reena about her mindless documentation of strange plants and seeds, though most of her frustration stemmed from not knowing the bigger picture.

Reena checked her reflection, thinking twice about wearing heels and opting for boots instead. She didn’t want to appear too dressy. She took one more quick glance around her apartment, which had upgraded from “bare” to “utilitarian” during her tenure here. It was no longer empty, yet it still felt… hollow. As Reena drove a few blocks over and past white picket fence cookie cutter homes that queued up like an assembly line, her thoughts wandered wistfully for something at the tip of her tongue. 

Victoria’s condo was easy to spot, with pots of succulents lining her porch and hanging from above. The front door creaked open before Reena could knock. 

Reena sucked in a breath.

There stood Victoria, wearing a flowy red dress beneath a leather jacket. Her hair was pulled up to a messy yet elegant bun. She towered over Reena easily with heels and unabashed confidence.

Damn you, Malina, Reena mused to herself, it really is a date. But Reena also accepted she knew that the moment she had slipped on the black dress.

Victoria gave Reena a coy smile. “Hi.”

“Hi,” was all that Reena could say back. As silence descended upon them, Reena furiously thought to herself: Words. Say. Something.

Victoria looked down at her outfit. “I hope I’m not overdressed. Millie’s Steakhouse just sounded like a fancy place to eat at.”

“You’re fine.” Reena cleared her throat when her voice croaked unnaturally as the words escaped her lips.

Victoria looked down with a blush. “Shall we go?”

Reena nodded dumbly as she led Victoria back to her truck. She snuck glances at Victoria, as Victoria told Reena about her day.

“What about you?” Victoria asked. “How was your day?”

Maybe there can be a life, a home, to go home to, Reena mused. She shrugged off the thought, not wanting to assume Victoria’s intentions, as she told her friend about meeting with Malina, while deftly dodging and omitting any bits about Malina’s extraterrestrial life. Victoria listened with a smile.

Millie’s Steakhouse was crowded, with several groups of people waiting in the foyer already when they arrived. The two women waited nearly an hour before finally being seated, settling into a booth near the bar.

Reena scanned the dining room, assessing for threats. A soft blend of jazz background music, hushed conversations, and dishes clattering filled the space. Before Reena could settled into a relaxed state, something catches her eye.

A man sat at the bar, nursing a drink. Something about him didn’t sit right with Reena. Maybe it was that his coat collar was turned up to cover his face despite the restaurant’s warmth. Maybe it was the way he seemed to be waiting rather than savoring his drink. Maybe it was how he sat rigidly in his seat in a way that wasn’t socially awkward but poised, as though preparing for an attack. 

“Well?”

Reena snapped her attention back to Victoria. “Well what?”

Victoria frowned as she peered at her friend. “Are you okay?”

“I’m sorry,” Reena said. “It’s just…”

She trailed off as she noticed the suspicious man at the bar slide an envelope across the counter to the bartender, who hastily shoved the envelope inside his pocket. In a motion that happened so quickly that Reena felt she would have missed if she blinked, the bartender sprinkled powder into a glass of wine, right before a harried server appeared at the bar for his next deployments.

Victoria followed Reena’s gaze. “What?”

“I’ll be right back.” Reena stood up before Victoria could protest. She stalked to the frenzied server, who was about to place the drink on the table of another booth. “I’ll take that.” Reena said simply when the server yelped in surprise.

“Is there something wrong?”

The voice in the booth was smooth–magnetic even. Easily recognizable, as Reena knew immediately who the man was even before she met his eyes. Michael, a prominent Karazai figure, lounged in the center of the booth. A few others, who Reena couldn’t quite name, shared his booth, their heads leaning toward Michael in a wary and conspiratory way.

“I believe this was my drink.” Reena said, raising the pitch of her voice and feigning an air of apologetic inanity with batted eyes and an easy smile. Based on the expressions of the server and the men and women in the booth, her daffy demeanor seemed to successfully shift the tone from alarmed to confused, though it did very little to assuage Michael’s quizzical expression. When the now-irate server opened his mouth to protest, Reena interjected. “Why don’t you get another glass for this man?”

Reena turned to the bar, where the suspicious man’s seat was now empty. She cursed to herself, scanning the back of the bar for the bartender instead, but finding that also empty. She stormed into the restaurant’s kitchen, restaurant staff looking up in alarm.

At the far end of the kitchen, the bartender shoved his way through the staff and pushed his way out the back door. Reena thanked her past self for her prescience to wear boots as she sprinted across the kitchen and through the door, quickly closing the gap with the bartender in the alley, and knocking him to the ground with a hard thud.

The bartender groaned as Reena turned him over so he was lying on his back. She roughly searched his pockets, pulling a bag of green powder and a fat envelope with a stack of cash. “Hello, Barry.” She spat the name from his nametag. “I’d like to know more about your secret menu.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be off this evening?” asked a familiar voice from behind her.

Reena jumped to her feet and spun around to see Arden emerging from the back door from where they came and striding to her. 

Arden turned to the worried onlookers who had poked their heads out of the door behind him, his hands open in a calm and reassuring manner. “Nothing to see here folks. Please go back to your business.” 

They waited as the kitchen staff reluctantly pulled back inside and shut the door. Reena placed her hands on her hips, pointing to Barry the bartender who was still groaning on the floor. “I saw this man slip something in Michael’s drink.”

Arden kneeled down over Barry. “We’ll get him to the hospital first. You might’ve banged him up real good. Then we’ll question him.”

Reena handcuffed Barry as Arden pulled out his phone to call for the ambulance, which arrived a few short minutes later. Onlookers once again began poking their heads through the kitchen back door and windows.

“You don’t seem fazed,” Reena told Arden quietly, as they watched the paramedics load Barry into the ambulance. “What were you doing here? I didn’t notice you in the restaurant before.”

“I was… spying,” Arden replied, his eyes shifting to the restaurant.

“On?” Reena asked. “The man at the bar?”

“What man?”

Reena sighed. “The man who paid Barry to put this powder–” she held up the bag of green powder– “in Michael’s drink. I assume this is poison.”

Arden eyed the bag. “We’ll send that to the lab. I wasn’t aware of the man. I was spying on Michael.”

Then the suspicious man got away for sure, Reena thought, as she rubbed her forehead. “You’re no spy, Arden. You could have asked me.”

Arden nodded, rubbing his chin pensively. They stood in silence until the ambulance pulled away. Finally, Arden said, “There are some dangerous politics being played in this town. Some Karazai are adamant about staying here on Earth and preventing–even sabotaging–any progress on connecting our two worlds.”

Reena froze and her heart sank, her thoughts returning to Malina’s defeated figure. Anger boiled inside Reena. Who were these callous people who decided it was acceptable to keep Malina and her family apart? “I want in on this.”

“Are you sure?” Arden asked. “It could be dangerous. And may require a lot of late nights.”

“Yes,” Reena said without hesitation. Then she thought of Victoria, who she had neglected for far too long this evening. “Now, if I could be excused. I was here with someone.” And now I think that evening is now irretrievably ruined, she thought ruefully, feeling immediate regret for how easily she forgot about her date when her job kicked in. Still, her anger at Barry the bartender, at the man at the bar, at this faction, still resonated in her bones.

“One more thing.” Arden studied Reena, his eyes lingering at her fists that were still clenched tightly. “There is also a faction that is driven to return to their home planet at any cost.”

Reena nodded, her expression neutral. She didn’t need to be an ex-spy to understand his unspoken cautionary note. “Message received,” she said, as she braced herself while slipping back inside the kitchen door.

---

Victoria waited. And waited. And waited.

Reena was still nowhere in sight. It had been several minutes since Reena jumped up from their table, inexplicably accosted a server, and made a beeline to the restaurant’s kitchen–all without so much as a backward glance to her.

Victoria sighed, resigned, as the server showed up at their booth and asked, an edge in his voice, if she was ready to order. She shook her head, relinquishing their booth as she made her way to the bar to get a drink, only to find that the bartender was nowhere in sight. She leaned against the bar and tapped her fingers impatiently on the counter, when a familiar voice called out to her.

“Hey, Victoria! Over here!”

Angela, one of her coworker Sian’s gaming buddies, waved her hand wildly from the other side of the bar. Victoria hesitated, far from being in the mood to make conversation. But as Angela’s hands shifted from waving to beckoning, Victoria felt no choice but to join her. 

“Fancy seeing you here,” Angela said as Victoria plopped on the seat next to her.

“I was here on a date,” Victoria said glumly.

“You don’t seem very thrilled about that.”

“She left me,” Victoria bemoaned. When Angela raised an eyebrow, Victoria explained, “She’s an officer in this town. I think duty called.”

“I see.” Angela hesitated, as though reluctant at first, before sliding her glass of beer to Victoria. “I think you need this more than I do.”

Victoria smiled at Angela. “That’s very sweet of you but I can’t take your drink.”

Angela waved her hand dismissively. “I don’t know where the bartender disappeared to. He left in a hurry.” Angela grumbled. “Hopefully to get more beer.”

Victoria chuckled. “Thank you.”

“I don’t think we ever had a moment to chat just the two of us,” Angela said, as Victoria took a sip of her beer. “What brought you here to Selunia Falls?”

“To be a botanist,” Victoria said. “And occasionally sell trees.” Her tone was flat and uninspired. Victoria couldn’t muster the energy to sound excited about what she did.

That didn’t go unnoticed by Angela. “Do you enjoy it?” Angela asked.

“Yeah, sure.” Victoria knew she was convincing no one.

Angela titled her head thoughtfully. “What excites you about this town?”

“I guess Reena does,” Victoria said.

“No, no!” Angela waved her hands, as though commanding Victoria to a stop. “What drives you? Surely there’s something that you stand for by yourself?”

“I’m just getting by really.” Victoria glanced away as she fidgeted in her seat. “Good pay. My own condo. Can’t complain.” She looked back up to Angela–to find the engineer glowering at her. “What?”

“You have an opportunity in this town!” Angela exclaimed. “To make a difference! To do something huge!”

“What difference?” Victoria countered. “I spend my days conducting experiments that go nowhere! I could be doing research elsewhere without being kept in the dark about the bigger picture!”

“But instead you’re here!” Angela placed her hand on Victoria’s arm and gave her a firm shake. “You just need to push yourself and ascend the ranks! You know there is something here bigger than anything you can imagine. Don’t throw it all away just to be here for some floozy.”

“‘Floozy?’” Victoria let out a laugh. “She ditched me to go do her job!”

“Sounds like she knows what it takes to be here,” Angela said with a shrug. “The question is, do you have what it takes to stand on your own here?”

Victoria sat back on her seat, flustered and annoyed. But Angela was right. Victoria knew there was something bigger in this town. Though she appreciated her friendship with Reena, the hollowness inside her could only be filled by understanding her piece to the puzzle in this strange town. She had taken the job, uprooted herself to this town, after a breakup with her ex-girlfriend because she wanted to know there was something she could do by herself. And that she could survive by herself.

And she couldn’t do that if she was with Reena.

“Now where is that bartender?” Angela demanded impatiently.

At that moment, Reena appeared at Victoria’s side, her face apologetic. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Victoria said. It was only a half lie. She was angry at Reena but Angela had given her something to think about. “I think we should just call it a night.”

Reena opened her mouth, as though to protest, before nodding. They made their way back to Reena’s truck and sat in contemplative silence as businesses and houses sailed past their window. Reena offered no explanation for her absence, and Victoria asked for none. That silence continued until they reached Victoria’s condo.

“I know tonight was supposed to be a date,” Reena said, her voice gentle and her eyes down at her lap.

Victoria froze, unsure what to say, or how to feel. Of course it was supposed to be a date. She was looking forward to this evening and taking the next step in their relationship–at least, that was what she originally wanted.

But…

“I do like you a lot,” Reena continued, her voice insistent as she barreled ahead, smoothing the wrinkles on her dress nervously. “But I don’t think we should date each other.” Her eyes fell. “At least, not right now.”

An odd feeling of relief washed over Victoria, with only a pang of sadness at her heels.

“I’m still trying to figure myself out,” Reena explained, her eyes drifting down.

Victoria looked down at Reena’s arm, resisting the urge to squeeze it and tell her that they could figure themselves out together. 

But Victoria knew that both she and Reena couldn’t figure out themselves with someone else. She needed to stand on her own. “I understand,” was all that Victoria could say.

Victoria leaned in and kissed Reena on the cheek, quickly exiting the car before she could change her mind. She wrapped her arms in front of her chest, bracing herself against the cold, as she watched her friend drive away. She then closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath, feeling herself grow taller with the motion, as Angela’s words resonated inside her.

There was a lot of work to be done here in Selunia Falls. Now was her time to shine and ascend the ranks. Maybe then she would finally find out this town’s secret and understand her piece in this puzzle.

---

Reena watched Victoria in her rearview mirror, her friend’s figure hunched. She couldn’t imagine the pain Victoria must be feeling, being sent adrift by her closest friend. Reena let off the gas slowly, gripping the steering wheel to prepare for a U-turn.

In her rearview mirror, she noticed Victoria straighten up, her frame determined.

Reena smiled proudly, pressing on the gas again. There will be time for us after, Reena reassured herself.

But for now, Victoria just needed to be Victoria, and she needed to just be Reena.

When David was summoned by Arden, the head of lab security, to the lab a couple of hours before midnight, he knew there must have been another accident.

Sometimes it felt like the lab was one experiment away from disaster.

Even at this late hour, some of the scientists were still working in the lab, unaware of what had just happened. They nodded at David in greeting as he passed by the main atrium. He turned along one of the side corridors and continued deeper into the lab, along a nondescript hallway, until he ended alone at an unmarked door. The door unlocked as he held up his badge, and he passed through to the wing of the lab that housed all the Karazai experiments.

As the de facto leader of the Karazai, he wouldn’t have been summoned unless it had been a Karazai experiment that had failed.

Well, he thought. It’s not as bad as last time. At least the inner walls were still standing.

Arden’s people were standing guard outside one of the experiment rooms, and they waved him through. Arden was already inside, but none of his people had cleaned up any of the damage yet. That would wait until after David had inspected what had happened.

The smell of burnt electrical components wafted through the air. A sensor dish stood in the center of the room, pointed roughly in the direction of the forest. A tangle of cables snaked out and connected to an array of other electronic devices positioned around the dish. One of the devices was still emitting smoke.

“Was anyone hurt?” David asked.

“The lab was empty,” Arden said.

As David traced through all the connections and inspected the status lights, he was relieved to find that only one of the support boxes was damaged. It was a common component – easily replaceable.

David pointed at the damaged box. “This thing must have overloaded. I can get this replaced by tomorrow and we can try the experiment again.”

“We aren’t restarting the experiment until we’ve had the accident review meeting.”

David checked the calendar on the wall, where a block of days had been marked off. “The measurement window only lasts until the end of next week. We won’t get another opportunity like this for a while. It was probably just a loose connection somewhere, or maybe one of the cables wasn’t up to code.”

“That might be. Or maybe something was wrong with the experimental parameters you gave us.” Arden said. From his tone, it was obvious that Arden was certain the humans had set up the equipment properly. “Regardless, we need to review the data.”

“I’ll get back to you,” David said. The damage was obvious from inspection, and it wouldn’t be that hard to prove the cause. He detached the datapad – which contained the black box that recorded all the experimental data – from the sensor dish, and brought it home to analyze.

When David stepped into the house, he was surprised to see his son Rainbow was still up, watching the television. He didn’t understand how Rainbow could be amused with such a primitive device. Karazai technology was far more advanced. But Rainbow seemed to get particular joy from playing with human toys.

“Late night at the office?” Rainbow said.

“There was a lab accident,” David said, as he set the datapad down on the kitchen table. When Rainbow didn’t respond, David looked over and saw that Rainbow had gone back to watching the television.

He’s spending too much time on that thing, he thought.

“You know,” David said, trying to get his attention, “we were running an experiment that was going to collect some data from the rift. It’s the first step on our way to reopening it and getting back home.”

Rainbow didn’t seem to have even heard him.

Exasperated, David said, “You’re not disappointed? If there had been no accident we could be going home.”

That finally got Rainbow’s attention, and he turned off the television. “I don’t think we’re going home, dad,” he said. “Even if you did figure out the physics, we’re not going to be able to cobble together a powerful enough energy source. I think we have to make peace with staying here on earth.”

“No. We’ll find a way. We’ve barely begun to research this.”

“I’m not the only one who—”

“The Remainers don’t know what they’re talking about. We can’t stay here on this planet.”

The Remainers were a group of Karazai who planned to stay on earth. They were a fringe group, and their numbers were small at first. But as the months dragged on and turned into years, and they were no closer to finding a way back home, the Remainers’ size grew steadily.

“At least they’re more realistic than you,” Rainbow said, stomping off to his room.

David sighed and sat down to study the datapad. By now it was after midnight and the only sound was David’s fingers brushing along the datapad as he swiped through all the records. He got to the beginning of the experiment and studied the initial data.

He frowned.

He hated it when Arden was right. Something had been wrong with the initial parameters.

He knew he would need to talk to Michael, but despite the urgency, he decided to wait until the next day. He didn’t have the energy to deal with Michael now, especially not after his little argument with his son.

---

It wasn’t until late in the afternoon when Michael showed up at David’s house.

“Finally,” David said, when Michael knocked. He didn’t bother with a greeting. “Where have you been all day?”

“I have my own work,” Michael said, as he looked around the house.

“Rainbow’s not here.”

“Ah, so we are having one of those kinds of discussions. I was wondering why you didn’t want to meet at the lab.”

“There was an accident yesterday.”

“So I heard. No one was killed, I hope? Not that it would stop the experiment.” The shrug was unspoken but palpable.

“You pushed the parameters too hard.”

“My parameters were perfectly within specification. If the humans were so careless in setting up the experiment, then maybe a few of them deserve to be killed.”

David gave him a sharp look. He knew Michael was more of an extremist who thought a few human deaths might be the cost of progress. “You should be careful with that attitude. If the humans die, they’ll demand some of us be sacrificed in return. And even with our technology, we won’t be able to fight off an entire planet of them. Now look at this and tell me why your experiment wasn’t within the parameters.” He shoved the datapad towards Michael.

Michael studied the datapad. “You’re right, these parameters are out of spec.”

“Why did you change them?”

“I didn’t.”

“But you’re the only other one with the access codes.”

“True. What is it that those humans say in situations like this?” Michael said. He pretended to think for a moment and grinned. “Ah yes. ‘I’ve been hacked.’”

“Stop playing games. We only have one more shot at this before our worlds go out of alignment.”

“If – If – I had actually changed these parameters, do you think I would bother lying about it?”

It would be a bit out of character for him, David thought. He was far too arrogant to lie about something like this for no reason. On the other hand, he was cunning enough to lie to throw me off the trail, if he had some grand plan he was keeping secret…

There was a rattle at the front door, and then the door swung open, interrupting them both. The door swung open.

“Dad? Michael?” he said. “What’s going on?”

“Your dad and I were just having a talk,” Michael said. “And we’re all Karazai here. Do you really have to use those human names? It grates on my ears.”

“They don’t bother me,” Rainbow said.

Michael turned to David and said with disdain, “You hear that? If you’re not careful your son is going to turn full human soon. Don’t bother with any comebacks. I was leaving anyway.” He sauntered out.

When Michael was gone, Rainbow asked, “Why do you work with him anyway?”

The question caught David by surprise. Because he’s just as invested in the project as I am. Because who knows what he might do with no one to look after him. Better to keep him close, where I can keep an eye on him.

“Because, even though he’s intolerable, he’s still the most knowledgeable about interdimensional physics here,” David said. “And we need him if we’re going to figure out how to get back home.”

It was there for only a moment – an inscrutable expression on Rainbow’s face when the topic of going home came up. Rainbow smoothed it over and it was gone as quickly as it had come, but David had noticed anyway. He pretended not to see anything, however.

Rainbow dropped down in front of the television again.

I can only deal with one crisis at a time. I’ll have a talk with Rainbow after figuring out what went wrong with the experiment.

David carefully went through the datapad and reset all the experimental parameters to their original values. Then, for the rest of the afternoon, he added a trap into the system – a trap that would send him a notification if someone tried to change the experiment again.

---

A couple of days later, when David was at home late in the evening, his phone pinged with a message. The experimental parameters had been changed again. The trap had been sprung.

Michael’s access codes had been used.

“Rainbow!” David shouted. “I need to head into the lab for a bit!” He hurried out the door.

He rushed through the main part of the lab. When he arrived at the door to the Karazai section, he stood there, forcing his breath to slow down and become even. He didn’t want Michael to know he was coming, though for why, he wasn’t sure. He had worked with Michael long enough to know that Michael would follow through with whatever he was doing, and getting caught in the act wouldn’t faze him in the least.

David still wanted proof with his own eyes though.

He presented his badge and opened the door as quietly as possible. He stealthily made his way to the experiment room, checking around each corner before he made his approach. The carpet muted most of his footsteps.

When David was about halfway to the lab room, he was startled to see someone leaning in the corridor. He whipped his head back, hoping he hadn’t been noticed. He listened carefully, but there was only the whine of a fan somewhere in the building.

That looked a lot like Michael, he thought. It can’t be though…

A minute, then another, went by. All was quiet. He turned back around the corner.

“I was wondering if you had gone home,” Michael said. He had been waiting there the entire time.

“You’re- you’re not in the lab?” David said, trying to regain his composure. He checked his phone. Michael’s codes were still being used.

“Did you really think I’d fall for that clumsy trap you set?”

“What are you doing then? Trying to keep me from seeing what you did?”

“On the contrary, no. I was waiting for you. I told you before, I wasn’t lying. I didn’t change those experimental parameters, and I’m curious who would have the gall to abuse my access codes. And before you ask, I found out they were being used the same way you did: through your notifications.” Michael stalked down the hallway. “You coming?”

They made it to the experiment room with no further incident. Then, after pausing for a moment to prepare themselves, they nodded at each other and charged through the door.

Someone was standing at the terminal. He turned in surprise.

It was Rainbow.

Michael broke into a grin. “Well, well. What do we have here?”

David tried to speak, but no words would come out. The world was spinning out of control. He had expected one of the humans – one of Arden’s people that might have found out about the Karazai – to wreck the lab in protest. He had expected one of Michael’s cronies, trying to advance some dark scheme that David had yet to puzzle out.

Rainbow was supposed to be at home. Not here.

It was impossible. It was surreal.

Michael, though, was handling the situation just fine. “How did you get my access codes?” he said.

“You’re not the only ones that know people,” Rainbow said.

David finally found his voice. “I don’t understand. Why? Why did you do this? Don’t you want to go home?”

Michael cut in. “Don’t you get it? He’s a Remainer. He doesn’t want to go home. And he tried to sabotage our experiment so that none of us would be able to.”

“No!” Rainbow said. “The Remainers just want each of us to have the choice. To decide for themselves, whether to go home, or to stay on Earth. You two are the ones that are forcing everyone to do what you want! To open the rift, and then make everyone go back home.”

“And aren’t you making a choice for everyone too?” David said. “Aren’t you choosing for all the Karazai to stay here, by ruining the experiment?”

“This was never going to keep you from getting home anyway. It was only going to delay you for a bit. We knew that. We just wanted some more time to change your mind, for you to let some of us choose to stay here.”

I could make him go. Or maybe I couldn’t. But at least he seems happy enough here. And if we opened the rift once, we could open the rift again.

Michael interrupted his thoughts. “I know you’re having some kind of moment. But there’s still the matter of the access codes.”

“What about the access codes?” David asked.

“He used my access codes to sabotage an important experiment. We can’t allow him to work at the lab anymore.”

David hesitated.

“If it were anyone else, you would fire them from the lab. You know you would.”

I have to pick a side…

A new voice spoke from the doorway. “I was the one who told Rainbow to do it.”

“Arden? You?” Michael said. He had always been two steps ahead of everyone else, it was what made him so arrogant and so annoying – but this, he had been unable to predict.

“That’s right.”

“You told Rainbow to do this. You told Rainbow to sabotage our experiment. You told Rainbow it would keep us from going home?” Michael was incredulous.

“No, Michael. Nothing so backhanded. I just asked him to check up on what was going on in the system, to keep an eye on you. He must have accidentally changed some of the parameters when he was snooping around. Isn’t that right, Rainbow?”

“Yes,” Rainbow said, grabbing at the lifeline. “That’s what happened.”

Michael stared at Arden and Rainbow, as if trying to decide whether to challenge them. The story was ridiculous, but he let it go. “This isn’t over,” he said, as he stormed out of the lab.

David exhaled the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Go wait outside,” David said to Rainbow.

When Arden and David were alone, David went to the door and closed it firmly. Then he asked, “Why did you do it? Why did you lie for him?”

“We’re the two men keeping this town together,” Arden said. “Between the two of us, we’re the only ones keeping the humans and the Karazai in line. And if keeping your son out of trouble is the price, then the choice is simple. For the town.”

David thought for a moment, then nodded. “For the town,” he said.

He left the experiment room where Rainbow was waiting outside, and put his arm around his son. “Come on,” he said. “We’re going home.”

Still, David thought. I better keep an eye on the Remainers.

The passage of time flows differently in this strange place. Humans are always in a hurry, shuffling from one task to another. I feel time slip through my fingers every time this strange sun sets and you’re not by my side. Miss you more than you know.

Malina clicked the pause button, silence filling the space that her static-filled recording left. She shot a glance at the rest of the laboratory, which was already empty due to humans leaving early for Valentine’s Day plans and Karazai taking advantage of a lax evening without their human counterparts.

A lax evening was too much of a luxury that Malina could take. The notes strewn on the desk in front of her offered no solace, only more questions: How can one send a message across the rift? How do we tell the ones we left behind that we are okay?

Are we okay?

Though she was satisfied with her message, Malina replayed her message once again, this time listening to the cracks of hope in her own voice, a harsh contrast to her earlier messages she recorded. She idly rubbed her lanyard, her name and title of “scientist” prominently displayed. “Scientist” was a far more prestigious title from the educator status Malina enjoyed at home before she was violently whisked into this strange planet called Earth.

Home, Malina thought wistfully.

The laboratory’s door creaked open. Reena slipped inside, a coffee in each hand and two paper bags wedged between her fingers precariously. “Got you a scone,” Reena said, as way of greeting, before shutting the door with her foot.

“Thank you.” Malina pushed aside the notes so Reena could plop a grease-stained paper bag in front of her.

Reena settled onto a chair across from Malina before helping herself to the bagel inside her own paper bag. Malina watched as Reena’s eyes shifted to the corners of the room, though in a much less guarded way than the first time they met–when Reena had accused Malina of shapeshifting and stealing her appearance. Even until now, Reena was convinced they had similar appearances.

Malina bit into her scone, eyeing Reena thoughtfully as she munched. She couldn’t understand it before, but she saw it now–the kindred spirits burning inside them both. New to town, new to this convergence of worlds. They needed each other more than they knew.

“What is this?” Reena asked, pointing her chin to the device on Malina’s desk before taking another large bite out of her bagel.

“It’s an emitter,” Malina explained. She lifted the device, turning its clunky frame in her hands. “I’ve been recording myself on this–” she tapped the recorder– “and I’m hoping to send a message across the rift with this.”

“Any luck?”

Malina’s eyes fell. “So far, no.”

Reena’s lips pressed together in a frown. She then reached across the table and squeezed Malina’s arm. “We’ll find a way to let the people back home know you’re okay.”

“I can’t imagine them being so worried sick about me.” Malina’s voice cracked. “I also hope they are also okay.”

“I’m sure they are,” Reena said, a little too quickly. A little too rehearsed.

Malina smiled sadly at her friend. She knew Reena had to say that, because the alternatives were too terrible to imagine. “Though they’ve given me a degree of freedom to pursue communications across the rift, this particular project isn’t quite sanctioned. Hence the recorder. It’s more of a pet project.” Malina picked at her scone, trying to sound casual. “Do you know if the rift is open today?”

“It is,” Reena said, eyeing Malina suspiciously. “Why?”

Malina fidgeted in her seat, before finally saying, “I hate to impose this on you, but would you mind giving me a lift to the rift?”

Reena blinked in surprise. She then nodded. “Let’s go.”

Relief washed over Malina. She hated to ask Reena to break the rules, but she doubted they would let her do her pet experiment if she asked. Malina shoved her recorder into her bag before gathering her coffee and emitter device. She followed Reena outside, precariously balancing the emitter device as she shuffled into Reena’s off-road vehicle. 

Once inside–and after chiding Malina for nearly spilling coffee in her work vehicle–Reena entered a code to unlock the vehicle’s console. She navigated the screen to find the rift’s current coordinates before driving into the forest nearby. They crawled up and down grassy knolls and weaved between trees before arriving at their destination in a meadow.

Malina hopped out of the vehicle, her eyes never leaving the rift. Its presence was unsettling, the aberration–the unnaturalness–of the rift pierced right to the bone.

And, beyond that rift, was the man she loves.

“We have to leave by five.”

Malina turned to face Reena, who was glancing at her watch. “Big plans?”

“Not really.” Reena shrugged casually before sticking her hands into her jacket’s pockets. “I’m going to see Victoria.”

“Was she the one who tried to ruin your–what did you call it? Christmas?”

“Yes.” Reena snorted. “And she’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Seems like an odd choice of date.”

Reena rolled her eyes. “It’s not a date.”

“But it’s Valentine’s Day.” Malina folded her arms. “Are you telling me all this heart-shaped nonsense means nothing?”

Reena rolled her eyes. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you!” she hissed. “Can we hurry now? Before someone else sees us?”

Malina crouched down to place the emitter device on the grassy floor, connecting the recorder to the device through a cord. Reena tapped her foot as Malina operated the device, adjusting its antennae to point to the rift while studying the emitter’s console. When Malina was satisfied with what she saw on the console, she snapped on the emitter switch and stepped back.

Please work, Malina thought wistfully as the emitter hummed. She glanced up to the rift, which gave no indication that her attempts were received. Malina held her breath until the emitter stopped humming, its task completed.

If her calculations were correct, her message would be sent across the rift. That was, of course, assuming all the variables–and there were so many–were as expected. 

“How will we know if it worked?” Reena asked as Malina gathered the emitter.

“There’s a feedback mechanism in here,” Malina explained, pointing to the emitter’s console. “It should measure the integrity of the message and we should have some data in a few days.”

“So we can go then?” Reena asked.

“Yes,” Malina said hesitantly. She lingered as Reena headed back to the car, her body not wanting to leave.

Reena turned to see Malina wasn’t following her. She retraced her steps to her friend. “Or…how about we wait for a while to see if anything comes through?”

Malina smiled at Reena, gratitude swelling in her chest. “Thank you.”

Malina and Reena settled on the ground, leaning back on the grass, their legs stretched in front of them. Thin clouds drifted slowly overhead. Minutes turned into hours. The sun sank lower toward the horizon.

No sounds came from the rift.

“Maybe they can’t send a message back?” Reena suggested.

“Possibly,” was all Malina could croak.

“Or maybe the message is too long?” Reena offered. When Malina didn’t respond, Reena said softly, “I’m sorry.”

Malina only nodded, disappointment weighing down on her. She wasn’t going to cry, not in front of people–even if it was only Reena. She got to her feet, dusting the dirt off her pants. “Let’s go.”

The women rode back to the laboratory in contemplative silence. The emitter device hung loosely under Malina’s arm as she walked around the car to Reena’s window after they pulled up to the laboratory. “Thank you for taking me to the rift today.”

“Let’s not make breaking the rules a habit,” Reena said with a wink. “Stay out of trouble.”

“Tell that to your date.”

“Not a date!” Reena called out from the window as she drove away.

Malina watched her friend drive away, a pang of loneliness seeping into her chest. Instead of walking back to her office, she took a seat on a nearby bench, turning the emitter device in her hands to review at the console.

No feedback yet.

Malina sighed as she turned her eyes to the sky, at a planet she couldn’t see.

---

It’s been a while since we last saw each other. Not a single day passes that I don’t think of you. I cannot wrap around where you might’ve disappeared to. I hope that you are well and that one day you will read these letters.

Dulin scanned the purple skies above, squinting against the rays from the sun that sat close to the horizon, its twin close at its heels. He then rested his eyes on the crater before the stone bench from where he sat.

Scenes of that dreaded day replayed in his head. One moment, he was looking at Malina, her face bright smiling at him. Then, the next moment, she was gone. Vanished, along with so many others. His whole world imploded, leaving behind a gaping hole in the ground and in his heart.

And this mysterious rift.

Teams buzzed around the rift constantly, entering notes into tablets as they prodded the rift with machinery. Fellow observers hung around the perimeters. Dulin watched from his stone bench, as he did every day since the incident, wistfulness hardening into anger as he waited for a breakthrough.

“Mind if I join you?”

Dulin’s eye shot up to the woman standing next to him. He had seen her around this area, though never spoke with her. She buzzed around with the group that was researching the rift with absolutely no progress to provide answers on what happened that dreadful day. Dulin shoved down his resentment enough to nodded mutely at her.

The woman took the seat next to him, her hands clasped together in front of her. “Did you lose someone during the incident?”

Dulin simply nodded again.

The woman nodded. “Me, too. My husband and son.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What are you writing there?” The woman gestured to the letter in his hand.

“A letter,” Dulin said. “To my wife Malina.” When the woman gave him a quizzical look, he explained impatiently, “We used to write cheesy letters to each other when we were younger. Malina would turn those letters into songs. She was a gifted musician and singer.” He let out a sad laugh. “I guess writing these letters helps keep her alive in my head.”

“She is alive,” the woman insisted. “Somewhere out there. They reckoned that a hole was punched through the universe.”

Dulin stared at his letter, boring a hole. He had to cling to the chance that Malina was still alive out there.

He felt a hand squeeze his arm. Only then did he realize he had been crying. He looked over to the woman, who gave him a faint smile.

“We’ll find them,” the woman said. Her voice was firm with resolve.

A resolve that Dulin no longer had.

---

Miss you.

If the feedback reports from the emitter are correct, the message had a 0.00022% chance of being received.

Malina snorted. Message? More like “noise.”

In her most recent attempt, she had whittled down her message to just two words, in case Reena was correct about the message length interfering with the transferability of the message. The chances of the message being sent across only increased to 0.00025%, before the message’s integrity devolved into a muddled mess like the one blaring in Malina’s office right now.

She had failed.

Frustrated, Malina punched the emitter, crying out at pain that shot into her hand. Her efforts only made the emitter play the garbled noise louder. She rubbed her bruised hand as she sank back into her chair and pressed her forehead onto the emitter’s cold steel, letting the feedback noise wash over her, relinquishing herself to discord. She found that, by just letting go of all her expectations on the message sent through, that the noise mercifully ebbed and flowed rhythmically, almost in a soothing manner.

Almost like… a song.

Malina bolted up in her chair. She replayed the noise again and again, before scribbling notes into a chart. She replayed the feedback noise from previous attempts as well, ignoring her hand as it cramped as she wrote out more notes. 

Hours later, Malina sat back in her chair, studying her notes, a pattern emerging.

She began to craft her next message.

---

Please come back to me.

Dulin folded his note. Today, he didn’t have the heart to write more, had only the energy to shove the note into his pocket.

He closed his eyes, letting the surrounding noise drown his thoughts–the clanks from machinery, the hollers from the investigation teams, the whistling of the wind. If he listened long enough, the noise became static, fading into the background. Occasionally, a lilting note may emerge from the dissonance. And another.

And then another note. And another.

Dulin’s eyes flew open, scanning his surroundings to find the source of the tenacious notes–and finding none. He dared to not move a muscle as he focused his full attention on listening.

A simple melody persisted from cacophony, faint but unmistakable.

It was Malina’s song that she wrote for Dulin when they first met. She sang the song to him, a goofy smile incongruent with the tender vibratos her voice deftly navigated. It was an image that would last forever in his mind and his heart.

A smile crept across Dulin’s face. He couldn’t prove that Malina sent it. The impossibility of the event dictated there was no way she could have. But the impossibility of those notes–those exact notes–also suggested it had to be her that sent it. 

He had to believe it was her. He had to.

Dulin leaned back and closed his eyes again, listening to the pulses of Malina’s song as he slipped into her embrace.

Randall finally found Brynn in the main cafeteria. He had stopped by her office quite a bit in the last few days, but either the office had been empty, or she had been in a meeting or on a call.

It shouldn’t be this hard to find your girlfriend, Randall thought.

Brynn was standing just inside the doors, studying the trash containers in front of her, a plastic fork in hand.

“It’s the far right one,” Randall said, as he caught up to her. He pointed to a bin labeled with an image of two intertwined leaves. The other two were marked with the more familiar trash and recycle pictography. “The fork’s compostable.”

“Thanks. Sorting the trash is getting harder than my research,” Brynn said. She gave him an apologetic look. “Sorry, I haven’t had a chance to reply to your texts.”

“It’s alright. Are you still coming by Saturday night?”

Brynn’s phone buzzed and she took it out of her pocket. It buzzed several more times while she was reading the message. “What’s on Saturday?” she said, her attention still focused on her phone.

“Our anniversary?” Randall said.

“Oh, right, ok. Yeah, I’ll be there, don’t worry. Look, I have to go, but I’ll be there.” Brynn was already calling someone on the phone as she left without saying good bye.

Randall wasn’t sure if Brynn had even heard him. She had been more distracted than usual lately, and Randall had thought about asking her what was going on. But he didn’t want to pry. She’ll tell me when she’s ready, he thought. Until then, there’s nothing I can do about it. Besides, he had his own project to deal with. He was almost late for the meeting.

By the time he arrived at Dr. Campbell’s office, he had pushed the conversation with Brynn to the back of his mind. Today was the first live test of the project he was working on with Dr. Campbell – a project they thought might lead to a new understanding of the brain. For their first experiment, they had chosen a lie detector. Dr. Campbell had come up with a way to measure brain waves, and Randall had come up with an algorithm to convert those brain waves into images.

It wasn’t the project Randall would have chosen, as he imagined all the other possible uses for this technology. But Dr. Campbell had assured him it would be the easiest way to keep this project funded by the higher ups.

“They need to see we’re doing something useful for them,” Dr. Campbell had said, when they were picking out the first experiment. “Once they get something they want, then they’ll give us more money and we’ll get to research the things we want to research.”

Now they had finally reached the live trial. Dr. Campbell was in the middle of setting up the equipment. He nodded at Randall, as he continued to attach small medical pads, the size of band-aids, to a set of wires, connected on the other end to a computer screen. “Randall. Are you ready?”

Randall settled into the medical chair in the center of the room, and stuck the electrodes to his head – one on his forehead and one just above each ear. He did it smoothly, calmly, as if it were just another day in the office and not a first new attempt at peering into the brain. “Ready.”

Dr. Campbell turned on the machine. The screen lit up. Randall couldn’t see it from where he was sitting, although he could see a blurry reflection in Dr. Campbell’s glasses.

“What is your name?” Dr. Campbell said.

“Randall.” He could see the images shift in Dr. Campbell’s glasses.

“And what is your job here?”

“Research assistant.”

“How long have you been in Selunia Falls?”

“One year.”

The images continued to shift as Dr. Campbell worked his way through the baseline questions – a set of questions about Randall’s background that were easily verifiable. Baseline completed, Dr. Campbell then asked, “Why are you in Selunia Falls?”

Randall hesitated. He considered what to say. He didn’t want to sound too egotistical, especially to one of the senior researchers.

A smile spread across Dr. Campbell’s face.

“What?” Randall asked.

“Pretty ambitious for someone so young, aren’t you?” Dr. Campbell said.

Randall knew then that the machine had succeeded. He leaned forward so he could see the screen, and on it was an image of a lab room twice the size of the one he was in now. He was speaking to a group of researchers, and they were taking notes and hanging onto his every word. The image was fuzzy – he couldn’t see any faces or details – but the broad strokes were clear.

“I admit it,” Randall said without shame. “I want to be in charge of my own research lab.”

“Well, let’s finish this project first, and then see what happens next.” Dr. Campbell leaned in and said conspiratorially, “The director wants this project going as soon as possible. He hasn’t said exactly why, but I heard he thinks there’s someone in the lab stealing secrets, and he wants to figure out who it is.”

“The full algorithm is almost done,” Randall said. “I’m sure I can get it working this month.”

“Good. And I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, whoever helps the director solve his problem would have a lot of freedom to pursue what they wanted.”

---

Randall and Valerie were eating lunch in the cafeteria. They often ate lunch together – Valerie was another one of the research assistants who worked in the lab, and they had shared an office for a while and become friends. She was a molecular biologist, specializing in the study of bacterial DNA. On occasion, Randall and Valerie had tried to figure out the exact nature of the research at Selunia Falls by putting together a list of all the different scientists’ specialties.

So far they hadn’t figured anything out.

Randall was picking at his chicken salad, which, despite being surprisingly good for a corporate cafeteria, did nothing to lift his mood.

“What’s wrong?” Valerie said. “Stuck on your research?”

“Nah. There’s a few glitches still, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out soon. I’m pretty close. I can feel it.”

“What then?”

“What? Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.” He looked again surreptitiously to the other side of the cafeteria.

Valerie followed his eyes to see what he was looking at. When she saw Brynn, she sighed. “Just let it go. I’m sure she had a good reason.”

“She said she was coming to dinner and she didn’t. She ditched it. She ditched our anniversary.”

“I keep telling you. An eight month anniversary isn’t a thing. It’s not a thing!”

Randall continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “And look at her. She talks to that guy way more than she talks to me.” He brooded as his mind jumped immediately to all sorts of scenarios. Missed anniversary. Ignoring his texts. Spending all this time with this other guy.

“That guy is her research assistant,” Valerie said. “Have you even talked to her about any of this?”

Randall got up from his seat, a plan having shaped up in his head. “I’m going to now.”

Valerie called out as he was leaving, “Talk to her, not yell at her!”

He made his way across the cafeteria to where Brynn was eating lunch. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

“Sure,” Brynn said.

Randall looked meaningfully at Brynn’s assistant, who was sitting next to her, also in the middle of lunch, hoping he would get the message. The assistant, fortunately, picked up his tray of half eaten wings and announced, “I need to go check up on an experiment in the lab,” before he left.

“I need your help with something,” Randall said. “I was wondering if you could be a volunteer for the research project I’m doing. There’s some glitches and having some more data would be helpful.”

“I don’t know… I’m pretty busy. The funding meetings are coming up soon and I have to get my pitch ready. It’s like interviewing for your job every quarter.”

“It won’t take a lot of time. One hour, that’s all.”

“Don’t you have an army of volunteers already?”

“Yeah, but more data is always helpful.”

Brynn’s voice turned suspicious. “Is this some kind of trick? I’ll have a lot more time after the funding meeting and we can do whatever you want.”

“No. It’s not about that at all. But since you mentioned it… you do owe me.”

“Owe you? For what?”

“For cancelling on dinner.”

“I don’t owe you anything for that,” Brynn snapped. But then she sighed and relented. “Fine, I’ll do you this favor. Let me know when.”

---

To avoid suspicion, Randall lined up several other test subjects for that day. The work proceeded smoothly. He asked the subjects the standard battery of questions, and used that data to further calibrate his data model.

He checked the schedule as the next candidate walked in. It was the last test before Brynn showed up. The candidate looked around, and Randall pointed him to the test chair in the center of the room. Randall had seen the candidate around the lab before, though he had never talked to him and did not know his name or what he did. He attached the electrodes to the candidate’s face and scooted back around to where the computer terminal was facing.

“I’m going to start the experiment now by asking you a set of questions,” Randall said. “Please answer them truthfully.”

The candidate indicated that he understood with a nod.

“What is your name?”

“Rainbow.”

“I need your legal name for the experiment.”

“That is my legal name.”

Had Dr. Campbell sent someone in to test his algorithms? No matter. Randall had confidence that his code would be able to work around the occasional dirty data.

“Ok, then, Rainbow. What is your job here?”

“I’m a physics researcher.”

“And how long have you been in Selunia Falls?”

“I-” Before Rainbow could answer, the screen went dim and blanked out. Randall tapped the keyboard a few times and turned the screen on and off a few times, but nothing happened.

What a time for my program to glitch out. And with Brynn coming in too…

Rainbow could see him smashing away at the machine. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

“No, no, nothing’s wrong. Machine’s just being weird,” Randall said. “I think we need to reschedule.” He was preoccupied with getting the machine working in time again for Brynn, and he barely noticed when Rainbow shrugged and left the office.

Randall checked the time. He really wanted to – no, needed to – investigate this glitch. It was something that he had been chasing for a while now and all his previous attempts had failed. But he also needed to get ready for the next experiment. He debated, then he pushed a button on the side of the machine to drop the machine into recovery mode, and typed in the commands to initiate a full system diagnostic.

His hand hovered over the enter key, but he didn’t press it. At the last minute, he cursed and bent down and yanked the power cord out of the socket and plugged it back in.

The machine restarted, and everything seemed to come back up as normal. He went through the login procedure and finished bringing up the system just as Brynn walked in.

“Alright. I’m here,” she said. “What do I do?”

Randall showed her how to attach the electrodes. When everything had been set up and she leaned back into her chair, Randall started the experiment.

“What is your name?”

“Brynn.”

“What is your job here?”

“Physics researcher.”

Randall looked down at the list of baseline questions and impulsively decided to ignore them.

“Are you trying to split up with me?”

“What?” Brynn said, surprised.

“I said, are you-”

“I heard you,” she said. She tore off all the wires connecting her to the machine and stepped out of the chair. “You’re an asshole, Randall.”

“It’s a simple question.”

Brynn was seething now. Randall wondered if he’d gone too far this time – if she might actually punch him in the face. He held his breath and tried to lean back without making it too obvious. Instead she stormed out of the office.

When she was gone, Randall replayed the image the machine had collected. He replayed it over and over, hoping the algorithm had made a mistake, and that on this next time it might show something different. But it never did.

It was an image of Brynn’s empty office, followed by her leaving Selunia Falls.

---

Randall spent the next couple of weeks refining his work and continuing to search for the glitch. Valerie was out on vacation and Brynn wasn’t speaking to him, so he spent all his time secluded in his office, often eating there as well.

“Lunch?” A voice asked from the doorway.

He had forgotten that Valerie came back today. She looked well rested. The vacation had treated her well.

“Sure,” Randall said, in better spirits now that she was back. “But let’s try the other cafeteria this time. I heard there was a special that was pretty good and I want to try it out.”

They caught up on small talk on their way. In the cafeteria, Valerie picked up her order first and found them a table. She eyed him as he sat down with his usual chicken salad. “I thought you were going to try out the special.”

“I took a look and changed my mind.”

Over lunch, they talked about how their respective projects were going.

“Did you figure out the glitch yet?” Valerie said.

“I’m optimistic,” Randall said, as he took another bite of his chicken salad.

They were on their way back to the office when Randall saw Brynn coming down the same hallway. Brynn hadn’t noticed him yet, but it was too late for Randall to back out without drawing attention. He pretended everything was normal and smiled at her as they passed each other. Brynn only gave him a frosty glare.

It didn’t escape Valerie’s notice. “What did you do?” she said.

“You just assume it was me? I didn’t do anything!”

“You did something. I know you.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Randall said. Mercifully, they arrived at his office. “I need to get back to work.”

He spent the rest of the afternoon sketching out ideas on the whiteboard, but none of them seemed promising. He went home for the day but couldn’t let go of the problem, continuing to think about it as he watched TV. When he tried to go to sleep he tossed restlessly, the combination of his work problems and personal problems keeping him awake.

The next morning he dragged himself to work to do battle with the glitch again. To his surprise, office staff were removing the equipment from the office as Dr. Campbell looked on.

“What’s going on?” Randall asked.

“The project is done,” Dr. Campbell said. “Done. Cancelled. Scrapped.”

Randall stood there, exhausted, trying to wrap his mind around what was happening, as office staff maneuvered equipment around him. “But why?”

“The project doesn’t work.”

“Is this about the glitch? Because I know I can fix it. I just need a little more time.”

“This isn’t about the glitch,” Dr. Campbell said. “Actually your code worked great. But the foundations of it are unworkable.”

“I don’t get it.”

“So you know how this system works, right?”

Randall nodded. “It’s like a classic polygraph, except instead of measuring just body vitals, it measures brain waves too. It provides a lot more detail.”

“That’s right. The brain waves are able to provide an actual picture – the pictures that are generated by your code. But fundamentally it still has the same problem as a classic polygraph, because it uses the same basic mechanism. All this machine tells us is that the question triggers an emotional response. It doesn’t tell us that the person is telling the truth.”

“So we just need to fix that also, then.”

“That’s the thing I’ve been researching for months. Believe me, no one wants this to work more than me. Except maybe the director. Sorry, Randall.” Dr. Campbell patted Randall on the shoulder. “We’ll find another project for you. I can put in a good word.”

Randall left the office in a daze as he wandered aimlessly around the lab. This project had consumed his life, and now he wasn’t sure what to do with himself. He stopped by Valerie’s office, but she wasn’t there.

Maybe I should make peace with Brynn…

But first, he had another stop to make. He went to visit Sian, a botanist who worked in the lab, and she helped him pick out a set of exotic flowers, many of them with shimmering blossoms that didn’t exist naturally in nature.

With bouquet in hand, he found Brynn in her office. It was a minor miracle that he had found her so quickly, and he took that as a good sign. Brynn was typing at her computer, and Randall knocked on the door. He laid the flowers on her desk.

Brynn eyed the bouquet suspiciously. “What is this?”

“Flowers?”

She made no move to touch them. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“It’s a peace offering. Put them in a vase or something.” Brynn was being so frustrating about it all.

“No. You know I don’t like flowers. And you can’t just get out of jail this time by bringing a gift. You screwed up. You screwed up big time. And you know what? You didn’t even apologize.”

Randall knew this had been a mistake. “Why should I apologize?” he said. “You’re the one who’s been ghosting me. You want to break up, but you’re too scared, so you just try to avoid me instead.”

Brynn looked at him quietly, which unnerved Randall more than if she would have yelled at him. “Why would you think that?”

“When I asked you if you wanted to split up with me.” The images on the machine replayed again in his mind’s eye. “You were leaving. At least, you were thinking it.”

“I don’t know what you saw. Yes, I was thinking about leaving the lab,” Brynn said. “But it wasn’t about you. I thought the funding committee was going to drop my project. And I didn’t want to have to tell you.”

The question triggers an emotional response… Randall’s stomach turned. His insides twisted together while a cold sweat spread across his skin. He was a child again and he had cracked the snow globe and it was leaking everywhere and he wasn’t sure if he could put it back together again…

“I’m sorry,” Randall said.

For several long moments, Brynn didn’t respond. “You could have just asked me like a normal person, you know,” she finally said. Even the air itself seemed to sigh.

“You could have told me.”

“True. Maybe I should have.” Brynn picked up the bouquet of flowers, observing the hues that shimmered even in the office light. “Dinner tonight?”

“Really?”

“Yeah. In the end, the funding committee approved my project. It lives for another quarter. Consider it my peace offering.” She dropped the bouquet back on the table.

Randall smiled and nodded. Then he ducked out before Brynn could change her mind.

“You’re breaking up with me?”

Victoria shut her eyes, her croaked voice from her memory echoing inside her head. Maybe this time, when she opens her eyes, Donna will be there, standing in front of her with a crooked smile and torn up jeans and vintage rock band shirt.

Victoria opened her eyes. 

No one. Just an empty apartment, bare of furniture, with only dust formed around where things used to be.

Victoria swiped away a tear that rolled down her cheek as she stared hard at the glossy black invite that read like a retro travel poster. Join us at Selunia Falls!

After several weeks of rigorous interviews, the mysterious group at Selunia Falls invited Victoria to join their ranks as a botanist. The pay and benefits were great, and the secrecy intrigued her.

The day she told Donna remained etched in her head. Donna had shook her head firmly, stating that moving to this secluded town interfered with her dream to become a rockstar. Instruments packed and without so much as a backwards glance, Donna left that next morning.

With one last glance around her hollow apartment, Victoria shrugged on her backpack and stepped out the door, a rental van and official-looking driver in dark sunglasses ready to take her to Selunia Falls.

---

“I’m a botanist–not a Christmas tree seller!”

Victoria placed her hands firmly on her hips and scowled at Sian, her supervisor. They stood beneath a tarp, within a fenced area next to the laboratory. Rows of fuzzy fir saplings stretched before them, ending at a trailer that Victoria was soon to call “her office” for the next few months.

Sian held her hands up helplessly. “It’s not like we can just hire temporary people outside to sell Christmas trees. Sometimes we have to double up on tasks in this town.”

“Don’t we have Renaissance fairs that come through here?” Victoria asked incredulously.

“We do,” Sian said with a sheepish nod, “but we have a surprisingly iron-clad agreement with them.” She gestured to a row of saplings. “We need these to grow before December, or else we’re going to have some really angry townsfolk with repressed holiday energy.” Sian forced a smile, as though to channel positive energy. “I think you’re on the right track with your current experiments on expediting their growth and hues.”

Victoria fumed as Sian escaped back inside the laboratory. Ever since Victoria arrived at Selunia Falls, she had been relegated to menial tasks, with everyone around her being so dodgy about what the big secret is in Selunia Falls.

Soon, Sian had told her. Soon, I promise.

At what point does “soon” become “never?” Was she not worthy of the secret?

And now she had a few weeks to grow Christmas trees–a feat that usually takes years.

Victoria sighed before pulling on some gloves to examine the saplings. She poked and prodded them, while also pushing away the resentment in her body. There was nothing unusual with the saplings. 

The items inside the trailer, on the other hand…

An assortment of jars containing odd liquids and dust filled the cabinets and open table spaces, with only brief notes on what the samples might do (asterisks around the word “might”). Victoria pored through the samples, her curiosity piqued by their textures, viscosities, and patterns. 

These samples looked so… alien, Victoria thought to herself.

One shimmering orange sample caught her eye, as it coalesced and then dispersed in a constant pattern inside its jar. There were no notes on its properties, other than: Be sure to use gloves.

Victoria regarded the sample thoughtfully. Something about it called to her. She cradled the jar carefully in her arm, returning outside to pour a cup of it into the soil of one saplings. 

For science, she thought wryly, as she watched the liquid soak through the sapling’s soil.

Victoria tried a few other samples, occasionally mixing some together before pouring them over other saplings. So immersed she was in her work that she realized, as she squinted at her notes, it was already dark. She scribbled some last notes before tidying up her space, locking up the fenced area, and heading home.

---

Victoria frowned, poking through a pile of dust where a sapling used to be. There were no remnants of green or brown from its former form, just a pile of dark dust.

Complete disintegration! Victoria realized with a start, marveling at the fineness of the dust.

Victoria peered once again at the coalescing sample, hoping to glean more information about its nature. It provided her no answers, simply coalescing and dispersing in its hypnotic motion.

Almost equally impressive were the rows of saplings that sprouted overnight to seven to eight foot tall trees. Their pines were lush and smelled like the embodiment of Christmas, which Victoria took some pride in after deciphering the different samples from last night. Many of her experiments were a success, yielding trees with different leaf colors such as pink and blue, with only a handful of her experiments producing dead or wilting trees.

Still, Victoria could not get her mind off of the disintegrated tree. She pulled out a pen to scribble notes in her work journal when she heard a truck pull up next to her trailer. A woman hopped out of the driver’s seat and sauntered toward Victoria. She had an air of stiff formality, despite wearing a T-shirt of some obscure band, its sleeves rolled up in a fashion like Donna would. 

Victoria immediately hated her.

“Are the Christmas trees ready yet?” the woman demanded briskly.

Victoria glanced at the date on her phone. “It’s barely November!”

“Tell that to the people who are expecting trees today,” the woman said with a shrug.

Victoria eyed the woman. “And you are?”

“Reena.” The woman jerked a thumb at the truck she came in–a loaner, by the looks of the government license plate. “I’m a new security recruit here, tasked with doubling up this year to deliver Christmas trees during my off hours.” 

“Sounds on brand for this town,” Victoria grumbled before going to her computer. Sure enough, five names were listed to have pre-ordered Christmas trees for delivery for today. “Thanks for the heads up, Sian,” Victoria muttered under her breath as she scanned the names.

One name in particular stuck out to her–-Dave, another security guard in Selunia Falls. Last week, on Halloween, Victoria swung by Anna’s Cafe to grab dinner when she noticed a visibly upset woman sitting outside of the cafe, presumably involved in some incident judging from the group of onlookers that had gathered. She had seen Dave hovering over the incident, but his demeanor was alarmingly apathetic to the woman’s distress. She had vowed that day to not put much faith in the town’s security.

The coalescing liquid caught Victoria’s eye, as though it was waving at her. She glanced at Reena, who was busy looking at her phone, before seizing the liquid and pouring it over five of the newly-grown trees. She hastily hid the liquid behind the counter before approaching Reena again. “Right this way,” Victoria said with a forced smile.

Reena grunted thanks before hauling the trees onto the truck one by one. Victoria watched Reena drive away, an odd satisfaction rolling across her body. She searched her makeshift office for a clipboard and pen. Then, as she settled into her chair, she reflected on her interactions with people in this town and scribbled down a list of names.

---

Victoria surveyed the row of trees, their bases glistening with a faint orange shimmer. For the past couple weeks, she had perfected her sampling amount and, if her calculations were correct, the trees in this row would disintegrate on Christmas Eve. 

Victoria double-checked the names on her clipboard. On the top of one list was Arden, the head of security. Even with her disdain toward the town’s security, Victoria figured she should remain in his good graces. On the same list was Sadie, the quiet but kind girl who worked at Anna’s Cafe, and Sadie’s friend Rainbow, who was nice enough despite his dad being ornery. 

On the other list, which was hidden beneath the first list, were Dave (“terrible security guard”), Sian (“made me sell Christmas trees”), Angela (“rude when she drinks”), Winter (“very cold and aloof”), and Dr. Campbell (“probably a vampire”).

And, of course, at the very top of the list: Reena (“stuck up jerk”).

A smile crept onto her face, buoyed by pride for her Christmas trees. Yet, the edges of her smile were anchored down by an inexplicable feeling that gnawed at her.

Victoria’s phone buzzed. She reached into her pocket and flipped on her phone to see that Sian texted her, asking her if she wanted anything from Anna’s Cafe. 

An unexpected pang swelled in Victoria’s chest, as she found herself drawing a line through Sian’s name before adding it to the other list with Arden and Sadie. Lately, Sian had been inviting Victoria to coffee runs and even trivia nights with others.

That inexplicable feeling again! Uncertainty plagued Victoria as she crossed off more names on the list. She had seen cold and aloof Winter light up when he was with his friends like Harley, who she could tell shared a special bond with Winter, the two clutching to each other like a lifeline.

For the past several days, Reena had been stopping by to pick up trees. An odd thing happened–her aloof demeanor chipped away. And, when she smiled, she smiled wide, displaying a perfect set of teeth. Small talk grew into banter that actually elicited a genuine laugh from Victoria when Reena commented on Dave’s kale obsession.

Dr. Campbell… was probably still a vampire. Victoria will continue to believe that unless proven otherwise.

Victoria frowned. She knew what the inexplicable feeling was.

Guilt.

Was she actually starting to care about these people in Selunia Falls?

Victoria yearned for 4PM, when Reena would drive up to load up the trees. Today, Reena raved about her band that played in the town’s bars. “We do stuff from the 90s mainly,” Reena said. She smiled at Victoria. “You should come see us tonight.”

Victoria’s heart skipped, her smile faltering. “That actually sounds quite fun.”

Reena dusted off her hands as she placed the last Christmas tree on her truck. “We’re missing one.”

“Oh?”

“Yes!” Reena’s smile widened. “My tree, silly!”

“Oh!” Victoria blushed. “Right.” She hurried to the Christmas tree with Reena’s name. She hesitated, before lifting the tree by its stand and returning to Reena.

Reena beamed when she saw her tree. “There she is.” 

When she approached Victoria, Victoria pulled back. 

Reena frowned. “What?”

Like a dam that was opened, guilt came crashing in, rippling across Victoria’s body and nearly causing her to collapse under the weight of the Christmas tree. She placed the tree down and hung her head. “Reena. I did something bad.”

Reena raised an eyebrow. “What?”

Victoria explained everything, even showing Reena the coalescing sample and the disintegrated trees from her experiments.

Reena glanced from the list, to the trees, to finally back to Victoria, her face aghast. “So you sent self-disintegrating Christmas trees to people that were on your naughty list?”

Victoria placed her head in her hands as she paced back and forth frantically. “This is a disaster.”

“I don’t understand.” Reena frowned. “Did you not consider that people would link this back to you?”

“I didn’t think that far ahead!” Victoria exclaimed, her voice squeaking as panic set in. “I didn’t think I was going to stick around here long enough to find out, too. I thought about having Sian take the fall, but I started to really enjoy working with her.” She hung her head. “I have to tell Sian. I’m going to go and make things right.”

“No–” Reena sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. “I can help you.”

“How?”

“Let’s just say I know how to get out of tricky situations,” Reena said, her tone firm and leaving no room for elaboration.

Victoria regarded Reena. “No. I need to own up for my mistake.”

“That’s very noble,” Reena said flatly, “but how about you take this lifeline I’m throwing you instead so you don’t get kicked out of her?” She moved in front of Victoria to keep her from pacing. She placed her hands on Victoria’s shoulders and leveled her with a look. “Now, tell me, who did you give the bad trees to?”

Victoria ticked off a few names. Reena rubbed her chin thoughtfully before setting into action. Victoria directed her to a row of good trees that she had as backups. Reena loaded the truck up with as many Christmas trees as Victoria listed from her “naughty” list. Then, they hopped into the truck and set off into town.

The first few recipients of disintegrating trees were easy enough to swap. Reena channeled an air of authority, so the recipients only gave them odd looks but didn’t ask too many questions when Reena simply said they needed to swap out Christmas trees. The ladies helped transfer ornaments from the bad trees to the good ones as a gesture of goodwill and to expedite the process. They then placed the bad trees in the back of the truck, marked them, and continued on their way.

Then they arrived at the residence of the last person on the list: Dave the security guard.

“I gave Dave one of my earlier specimens,” Victoria said, concern in her voice.

When they peered into Dave’s window, Victoria’s fear was confirmed with a pile of dust in a corner where a Christmas tree should be.

“It probably just happened today,” Reena said.

“Why do you think that?”

“He constantly shares on Selunia Fall’s social media platform,” Reena said. “Pretty sure that he’d share if his Christmas tree became a pile of ash.” She glanced at her watch. “Dave gets off work around this time. We better hurry.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Breaking in.”

“How?” Victoria demanded. Her eyes flew up to the chimney above them.

Reena tossed her head back in a laugh. “Not through there!” She reached inside her leather jacket and produced a small black case. “I can pick locks.”

Reena crouched to be eye-level with the lock before sticking one small rod into the lock, and then another.

Victoria stood between her and the street, hoping to protect her from prying eyes and passersby. And also hoping that the passersby won’t be Dave.

Reena made quick work of the lock and pushed the door open. They quickly returned to the truck, picked up one of the remaining trees, and shuffled inside Dave’s house. Reena swept up the dust from the previous tree using a broom and pan from Dave’s kitchen while Victoria gathered the scattered ornaments from the floor. 

Reena pulled up a picture of Dave’s previous Christmas tree, which Dave had posted on Selunia Fall’s social media website. The women referred to the picture as they carefully reconstructed the pattern of ornaments on the tree. When they were done, they dashed to the front door, softly shutting the door.

“Reena?”

Victoria jumped and spun around to see Dave getting out of his car, which was parked behind their truck.. Victoria called out. “Oh, hello there!”

Dave walked toward them, a puzzled look on his face. He turned to Reena.  “What are you doing here?”

“We were just about to knock on your door,” Reena said, so casually and collected that Victoria almost believed her. She jerked her head to the truck, where one Christmas tree remained. “I’m helping Victoria here deliver Christmas trees.”

Dave stared at them blankly. “I already have mine.” He pointed through the front door’s window, where their newly placed tree stood.

Victoria slapped her forehead, feigning surprise. “Oh so you do! The tree must be for someone else.”

Dave’s eyes flicked from Victoria to Reena, narrowing suspiciously. Victoria held her breath, hoping he couldn’t hear the hammering of her heart.

Finally, Dave said, “Well. Have a good evening.”

Victoria and Reena exchanged glances as Dave shut his door. They walked back to the truck, watching Dave through the window as they did. Dave looked at his Christmas tree, a frown in his face. He reached for an ornament, straightening it, before disappearing to the kitchen.

“I think we’re in the clear,” Reena whispered.

Victoria let out an exhale. “Thank you for helping me. And for not reporting me.”

Reena folded her arms and leaned back against the truck’s rear bumper. “Why did you do it?”

Victoria hung her head. “I was angry.” She explained. “My ex-girlfriend Donna and I were together for forever.” Her voice croaked. “I don’t really know who I am alone.”

Reena studied Victoria, her mouth pressed together in thought. “I think it’s a good thing you two drifted apart. Donna had to pursue her own dream, and you have to pursue your own.”

“Her dream was silly.”

“But it was still her dream,” Reena insisted. “It shouldn’t be diminished or disparaged, no matter how trivial it might seem to you.”

Victoria opened her mouth to interject, but then clamped it shut. The task of creating Christmas trees seemed silly to her at first, but she was extremely proud of her saplings that were now full-grown trees. The work she put into the task was arduous at times, but she enjoyed it. “I guess you’re right,” Victoria finally said, a weight seeming to fall away from her shoulders. She looked up at the last Christmas tree in the truck. “This one is yours by the way.”

Reena’s face lit up as she appraised her tree. “It looks like a real winner to me. Thank you.” 

“Of course.” Victoria looked around the street, getting her bearings. “I can walk home from here by the way.”

Reena hesitated, before nodding. “As you wish.” She walked toward the driver’s seat of the truck before pausing in her tracks. She glanced over her shoulder. “See you at the show tonight?”

Victoria blinked in disbelief. “You still want me to come to your show? Even after what I’ve done?”

“I believe in second chances.” Reena looked around, at houses that surrounded them. “Especially here in Selunia Falls.” Her lips curved to a smile. “Just try not to disintegrate my bass player.”

Victoria chuckled. “I’ll do my best.” When Reena turned and took another step toward the car, Victoria called out, “And also–thank you.”

Victoria couldn’t see Reena’s face, but she knew she was smiling. “Merry Christmas, Victoria,” Reena said, as she hopped back into the truck and drove off. 

Victoria took in a breath of the crisp air around her, grounding herself in this place–this odd town–and in this moment. Hope fluttered inside her chest as she thought about what she could achieve in this town, with pride swelling in her chest as she spied her Christmas trees peeking out some of the houses’ windows.

Victoria tilted her head up to the sky, feeling a chapter finally coming to a close as hope replaced resentment. And, she hoped that, wherever Donna was, that she was happy.

Sadie balanced on the stool, aligning the wires that connected the giant bat decoration to the ceiling. After it faced out towards the door, she hopped back down, almost tripping over the tail of her cat costume. It was early in the evening on Halloween and Sadie was fixing up some of the decorations in Anna’s Cafe.

“Nice costume,” one of the customers said to Sadie. Sadie had been making costumes for the Renaissance Faire for years, and her cat costume – which she had made herself – was intricately detailed. She welled up with pride and had to restrain herself from posing for her audience.

“Aren’t you kind of old to be dressing up for Halloween?” Dave said. “And as a cat, too.”

Dave was a new deputy in Selunia Falls. Right now he was standing at the cafe counter, finishing up a mineral water before starting his shift. He was one of those wellness kinds of people, or as Sadie preferred to think of him: snob. Though, she admitted to herself, maybe that wasn’t really fair. I don’t know him that well.

“Aren’t you kind of young to be so boring?” Sadie said back. She reached behind the counter and pulled out a foam sword that she had also made herself, and she waved it around. The customer who had complimented her earlier was lounging in the back of the cafe, and he nodded his approval. She tipped her sword back at him.

“You’re… a cat with a sword?” Dave said.

“I’m a catgirl with a sword.” Sadie corrected him.

“What’s the difference?” Dave put his now empty bottle on the counter. “I have to hit the bathroom and start my shift.”

After Dave left, Rainbow, who was sitting at his usual seat at the edge of the counter, said, “Hey Sadie? What is this catgirl you’re talking about? Is this some species on your world that I haven’t seen yet?”

“Shhh,” Sadie whispered. “You’re going to freak out the others if they find out about you.”

“Sorry.”

She looked around to see if any of the other customers at the cafe had noticed them. There were several groups scattered around the cafe, but they all seemed preoccupied with their own conversations. “It’s from this online game that I play,” Sadie said.

“You humans have such strange customs. We don’t have any such tradition of dressing up as something else at home.”

“Do you miss it? Home, I mean?”

“Not really. I’m getting used to it here. But my dad… I don’t know. He doesn’t like this place. He doesn’t like humans either.”

“I noticed,” Sadie said, remembering the last time she had visited their house.

Their conversation was interrupted by a loud thump outside. Through the window, Sadie could see a woman collapsed on the ground next to her bike. She rushed out, followed by Dave, who had also rushed out of the bathroom at the sound and was still holding up his pants with his hands as he ran outside.

Sadie reached the woman first. “Are you alright?” Sadie said as she knelt down beside the woman.

“I…” the woman mumbled.

Before the woman could say anything else, Dave had caught up to them. “What happened to you?” he said. “Did you fall off your bike or something?”

The woman seemed to be in shock. “He hit me. He hit me with his car and drove off,” the woman finally said.

Sadie looked around but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. There were a few parked cars and a few early trick or treaters, but that was all. The woman wore rings on every finger and a crystal pendant, and her hair was tied back with a headband. She might have been mistaken as dressing up as a fortune teller, except Sadie had seen her outside the cafe before, wearing the same thing. Sadie tried to remember if she had seen any cars driving outside just before, but she came up blank.

Dave was confused. “Who hit you? There’s no one here.”

“The vampire… He tried to control my mind, and when he couldn’t, he hit me and drove off.”

“Ok,” Dave said, losing interest in the incident. “You be careful now.” He wandered off to his patrol car.

Sadie followed him. “You’re not going to investigate?”

“Investigate what? A vampire? It’s Halloween, it was probably some guy wearing a vampire costume.”

There are stranger things here than you know about, Sadie thought. You’ll see after you’ve been here longer. “What about the mind control part?”

“Look at her. She needs a doctor, not an officer. I’ll call her an ambulance.”

“It’s still a hit and run. You have to investigate that don’t you?”

“Did you see a car? No. Her dress probably got caught in the gears of her bike and she fell over.”

“There wasn’t any grease on that dress.”

Dave appeared to be changing his mind. He studied Sadie. “Why do you care so much about this?”

Because, as strange as it seems, maybe there really is a vampire in Selunia Falls. Because, and you wouldn’t understand, I’ve seen stranger. “Because, what if it had been a kid who was trick or treating and gotten hit by that car? My shift is done anyway. I can help you. I can be extra pair of eyes.”

Dave shook his head and took out his notebook. He approached the woman. “Did you see anything that could help us identify the driver?”

“I can describe the car. And I think I caught part of the license plate.” She continued as Dave took down the details.

As Dave and Sadie returned to the patrol car, they heard another set of footsteps and turned around to see Rainbow. He had left the cafe also and he was following along.

“An extra two pairs of eyes?” Sadie said to Dave.

Dave only grunted and waved them both into the car.

---

Sadie fiddled with the visitor sticker on her costume again as she followed Rainbow and Dave down the corridors of the lab. Rainbow had gotten in easily enough – all he’d had to do was wave his employee badge. Dave had waved his deputy badge.

The guards had refused Sadie entry, and had been so firm about it that Dave had said she should just wait in the reception area while they checked out the lab.

When Sadie had insisted they call Arden, the head of security, the guards – perhaps only intending to humor her – had agreed, and to their surprise, Arden had confirmed that Sadie was permitted to enter. The guards had given her a curious look, but asked no further questions.

“Well, here we are,” Dave said. “The license plate that woman gave us – they belong to Dr. Campbell. According to the guards, he usually works the night shift.”

He knocked on the door. “Dr. Campbell? Are you here?” he called out.

There was no response. “The actual crazies are out on Halloween and I’m here chasing vampires,” Dave muttered to himself. He opened the door to the lab.

Sadie looked inside and her skin tingled. This is silly, she thought. I live in a town full of scientists, I know what a lab looks like, this looks like any other lab… and yet something seems off…

And then it struck her. The padded bench in the middle that looked out of place – it was the perfect size for a patient to lay down on. Various electronic terminals on carts were lined up throughout the office. Some of them were connected to what she recognized as a blood pressure cuff. Other terminals were attached to disconnected electrodes.

It looked more like a medical lab than a research lab.

“What did Dr. Campbell do again?” Sadie said.

Dave checked his notes. “He was measuring people’s brain reactions to various forms of electromagnetic radiation.”

“So like… mind control?”

Rainbow had been studying some of the equipment around the office. “I don’t think so. Most of these seem just like passive collective devices. The ones that do send a signal – they look pretty low powered. Probably the same power as your phone or laptop computer.”

Sadie slid around to the back of the office. A small refrigerator hummed. She knew she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t help herself. She opened it and jumped back when she saw what was inside.

“Look!”

There were several bags of blood. The bags were carefully stacked, each one labeled with a barcode. Rainbow and Dave gathered around her and stared silently.

“It still doesn’t mean he’s a vampire. That’s just ridiculous,” Dave said. He didn’t seem as sure as before though.

Sadie shut the door to the refrigerator.

They examined the rest of Dr. Campbell’s office as they waited for him to return.

“I don’t think he’s here,” Sadie finally said.

“Something’s missing,” Dave said. He pointed to a clear corner of the lab. As Sadie examined the area, it became obvious that one of the medical terminals had been there recently. Disconnected wires dangled from the wall, and a layer of dust along the floor outlined where the medical tray must have previously been.

“Did he steal something?”

Dave was already halfway out the door. “We’re checking out his house. Now.”

---

On the drive over, Sadie’s headache started acting up. She tried to focus on the drone of houses passing by outside the car, and it helped for a little bit. But after a while it wasn’t enough. “Do you have any ibuprofen?”

Dave pointed at the glove compartment. “Are you alright?” Dave said.

She rummaged around in the dark until she found a pack of tablets. She didn’t have any water so she swallowed the pills dry. “Yeah. I had a headache earlier tonight too. But it’s weird, I don’t usually have them this much. Must be the stress from all the Halloween stuff.”

Dave reached out a hand. “Give me a couple.”

“Really?”

“I feel one building up too.”

They pulled up to Dr. Campbell’s home in the suburbs of Selunia Falls, where a lot of the scientists lived. Like all the other houses in the area, the houses were standard and uniform. Here and there, a few houses had put out some carved pumpkins and other Halloween decorations, but for the most part the scientists here didn’t seem to celebrate Halloween.

Sadie wondered if Dr. Campbell could really be doing mind control experiments in this house. She didn’t think he was really a vampire – well, he probably wasn’t, though in Selunia Falls she could never quite rule out anything – but she had seen the blood and the medical gear. Maybe he was running some kind of illegal experiment.

Maybe that’s why he had to do it from outside the lab.

Dave pounded on the door. “Dr. Campbell! It’s Selunia Falls Security.”

A vampire opened the door.

“You’re a vampire?” Dave said reflexively, before composing himself.

“It’s Halloween.”

“We’ve got some questions for you. Can we come in?”

He eyed them up and down. “I guess.” As they walked in, he pointed to a bowl full of candy on a shelf nearby. “Haven’t gotten too many kids tonight.”

They settled into the living room, with Sadie and Rainbow sitting on the couch, and Dave and Dr. Campbell sitting in chairs on either side of them. To Sadie, they seemed like two boxers, sizing each other up before squaring off in the ring.

Dave threw the first punch. “So you’re a scientist at the lab, is that correct?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“Don’t you normally work in the lab at this hour?”

“It’s Halloween. I wanted to be here in case any kids showed up.”

“Have you been home all evening?”

Dave’s voice droned on as the questions and answers continued. Sadie zoned out. Soon she could feel her headache coming on again. Odd, she thought. I’ve never had it this bad before.

It was too soon for another ibuprofen. Maybe something to drink would help.

She interrupted them. “Dr. Campbell, do you have any water?”

“I-” He seemed a bit reluctant. “I don’t have any bottled water.”

“I can drink tap. Please, I have a headache.”

“Okay, in the kitchen.” He waved to a door behind him.

The kitchen sink was filled with dirty dishes, some of which looked to have been there for days. The counter was covered with boxes of cereal and opened bags of bread and fruit. The kitchen connected directly to the dining room, where a table was covered with takeout boxes and leftovers.

I wouldn’t want anyone to see this kitchen either, Sadie thought. There isn’t even anywhere to eat at that table. I wonder how this can be so messy and the living room so clean.

She couldn’t find any unused cups. Even if she had found one, she didn’t think she would trust it enough to drink from it. She turned on the faucet in the sink and gingerly stuck her hands out to cup some water, and drank from her hands.

As she rested for a bit, hoping her headache would go away, she noticed a tarp in the corner of the dining room, almost hidden behind one of the chairs. It looked to be about the same size as…

It can’t be.

She reached out, having a sense of deja vu from just earlier that evening when she’d been poking around in the lab, and peeked under the tarp, trying to keep the tarp from rustling.

Underneath it was a machine, identical to the machines she had seen in the lab, electrodes and all.

She crept back into the living room. The entry stood behind Dr. Campbell, and so he couldn’t see her. She caught Dave’s attention, and when he glanced at her, she pointed towards the kitchen. Dave gave a subtle shake of his head, which Dr. Campbell didn’t notice, and continued on with his questioning. Sadie’s gesturing grew more and more animated.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Campbell,” Dave finally said. “Can I get a water also?”

Dr. Campbell turned around to look at Sadie, who now stood still as a statue. “Yes… fine,” he said, in a tone that suggested it was anything but fine. He leaned forward, as if about to get up and follow them into the kitchen, but then settled back into waiting in his chair.

When Sadie and Dave were both in the kitchen and out of earshot, Dave said in a low voice, “Now what’s so important that I had to come in here right now.”

Sadie pointed at the tarp in the corner.

Dave stared at it, and to Sadie it felt like a long time though she knew it couldn’t have been more than a second or two. She could almost sense the same thought she’d had earlier, echoing in his mind.

It can’t be.

But Dave looked underneath, and it was. He called out directly from the kitchen. “Dr. Campbell, why do you have lab equipment at your home?”

Dr. Campbell entered. “I have some subjects I need to measure for my experiment. And getting them into the lab is a major hassle. I mean, you know how it is, with all those procedures.”

“You’re still not allowed to take equipment out of the lab. You’re coming back to the lab with me.”

“There’s no rule against that. And I already answered all your questions,” Dr. Campbell said.

Sadie’s headache had built up again until it was almost intolerable.

Dr. Campbell was still speaking, but she couldn’t make out the words. It sounded like he was mumbling underwater.

She stumbled to her knees, and then she passed out completely.

---

“Sadie. Sadie.” The voice belonged to Rainbow. Sadie laid on the floor. She forced open her eyes where Rainbow was studying her face.

“I’m ok. What was that?” she said. She tried to sit up, but then collapsed back down, her head still dizzy.

Next to them, Dave and Dr. Campbell muttered and groaned as they, too, were both coming awake.

“You passed out all of a sudden,” Rainbow said.

Dave was the first to stand back up. He gave a cough and shook his head. “Dr. Campbell, I’m taking you to the lab for questioning.”

“But that wasn’t me! I passed out just like the rest of you.”

“You did something.”

“That equipment wasn’t even on.”

“Something happened here. I’m taking you to the lab until we get this sorted out. It’ll be better if you cooperate.” Dave’s voice carried a new edge that hadn’t been present earlier in the interview.

For a second Sadie thought Dr. Campbell might bolt into the darkness. But finally he said, “Fine. I’ll prove it to you. I didn’t cause any of this.”

Outside, after Dave escorted Dr. Campbell into his car, Rainbow whispered to Sadie. “I need to talk to you about something.”

“Okay.”

“Not here.” Rainbow led the two of them to the far edge of the driveway near the fence.

“Kind of cloak and dagger, don’t you think?” she said, amused.

“I need to make sure no one can hear us,” Rainbow said.

Sadie knew Rainbow wasn’t human, but she also knew that he’d been in Selunia Falls long enough to understand humor. And there was no humor in him now. There was only a brooding seriousness, giving her a bit of unease. She avoided his stare and looked over to where Dave was busy at some terminal inside his car – probably doing some electronic paperwork – while Dr. Campbell waited in the backseat. Both of them were a safe distance away. “What is it?” she said.

“I didn’t pass out.” Rainbow’s voice barely carried over the whispering of the nearby trees.

“What?”

“I think that might have been a Karazai transmitter. I could kind of hear it. To me, it feels like a low rumble. I guess to humans, it causes headaches and blackouts.”

She couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. “You knew I’d been having headaches all night! Why didn’t you say something?”

“I didn’t know. I thought your headaches were, as you said, just stress from Halloween. And then I felt that rumble build and then saw all of you pass out… that’s when I made the connection.”

“So there’s a Karazai out there that’s planning to kill humans with this transmitter?”

“No, nothing like that. Though, I guess it could be used for that reason. But I could feel the rumble getting louder in this house – which means that the source must be close – close enough to cause you all to pass out. And you know…”

Sadie put the pieces together. “…your dad lives just a few houses over.”

“And he’s been working on some experiments. Yes.”

“We should go talk to him. Either he’s causing this, or he’ll know how to help us find out who is.” Sadie started down the driveway.

“Wait,” Rainbow said. “What about Dr. Campbell?”

Sadie glanced over at the patrol car, where Dave was still tapping away on his terminal. Dr. Campbell waited quietly in the back. “What about him?”

“Shouldn’t we tell them it’s not his fault?”

“And then what? Say that it’s caused by an extraterrestrial energy wave?”

“Technically it’s terrestrial…”

“Not everyone here knows about the Karazai, not even the security people. I don’t think this Dave guy knows. He’s too new. They wouldn’t tell him about it until they know he’s here to stay.”

“So we’re just going to let him get into trouble?”

Sadie wavered for a bit. Finally she said, “He’ll be fine. They’ll find out he’s not causing it, and he’ll just get a slap on the wrist for taking equipment home. Or maybe not even that. These kinds of people always manage to land on their feet. It’s fine.”

She could see that he didn’t understand exactly what she meant, but he nodded his assent.

“Hey,” she called out to Dave. “I think Rainbow and I are going to take off now.”

“You’re not interested in finding out what he was doing?” Dave said.

“Like you said, not a vampire, not mind control. It just looks like some boring science stuff.”

“I’ll take you two home.”

“No, no, it’s fine. Besides, you already have someone in the backseat.”

They hurried away before Dave could argue.

When they arrived at Rainbow’s house, Rainbow’s dad was tinkering with a machine in a spare bedroom that doubled as a home office. “Oh, you’re home early,” he said. Then he noticed Sadie. “Oh, hello.” It was said without malice, but without any warmth either. He went back to the machine in front of him – some kind of control panel covered with screens and dials and connected to a mess of metal plates and boxes that covered almost half the room.

“Dad, have you been fiddling with that all night?”

“Yes. I think I finally got the calibration working.”

“That’s what I came home to tell you. You have to stop working on that machine.”

“Why?”

“I think it’s causing headaches among the humans.”

“That’s nonsense.” Rainbow’s dad flipped a few switches, and a panel of lights on the side brightened. The fans came to life, powerful enough to blow a light breeze that Sadie could feel from across the room. The machine started beeping.

Sadie’s ears started to tingle.

“Rainbow…” she said.

Rainbow’s dad adjusted some knobs, and the machine’s beeping became steady, the signal of a tracking system that had locked on to its target. “Look at that. I finally matched the signal frequency. Just a couple more minutes and we can send a message back home. Have you figured out what you want to say to mom?”

Sadie collapsed on the ground, her breath ragged. Her vision darkened, growing from the edges of her eyes to the center. Bright lights sparked in front of her, but not the lights from the machine, it was the white sparks of a migraine. Her blood pounded in her skull.

“Dad! Look at her! And it’s not just her. It’s other people in this town too.”

Rainbow’s dad paused. “Just one message,” he said, “and that’s all we need. Just to let everyone know we’re ok. Do you know what it’s like? To have your family out there, in limbo, not knowing whether they’ll come back? Not even know if they’re still alive?” He tapped some buttons on the machine.

“We can’t do it this way,” Rainbow said. “Even if you don’t care about the humans, think about us. So far no one’s been hurt – not really anyway. If you go through with this, someone will die. And the humans aren’t going to just forget about that. They’re going to go on a hunt, and they’re going to find out that it’s us that did it. And they’re not going to forgive that.”

“Do you think I’m afraid of them? Let them come.”

Rainbow didn’t respond.

Sadie thought, this is it. I’m going to die.

Then Rainbow’s voice cut through. “I know what I’m going to tell mom. I’m going to tell her about the people you killed to get this message home.”

“You wouldn’t,” Rainbow’s dad said.

“I would. You know I would.”

“Then you won’t be sending a message at all. You don’t know how to operate this equipment by yourself.”

“Maybe not today,” Rainbow said. “But what about next time? And even if you never let me send a message at all, eventually, we’re going home. I’ll tell her then. I’ll tell her everything. What are you going to do? Are you going to leave me here forever?”

Rainbow’s dad’s hand lingered over the buttons. It might have been less than a second. It might have been a minute. Sadie couldn’t tell through the pain. But he didn’t push the button. Instead, he dropped his hand and pulled at a lever on the side. The fans died away. The lights turned off.

The world went still.

He slammed the machine with his fist, the sound booming and giving Sadie a headache that was almost as painful as the one from the machine, and he stalked out of the room.

Rainbow knelt on the floor next to Sadie. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” She took a few deep breaths to clear her mind. “What’s your dad going to do now?”

“We’ll find another way.” He shrugged. “It’s not like we have anywhere else to go.”

---

Sadie untied the giant bat from the ceiling and hopped down from the stool. She dumped it in the corner with the rest of the other Halloween decorations. Beside the pile was another pile of angels and reindeer. Sadie had insisted that it was too early to put those up, but the eponymous Anna, owner of Anna’s cafe, had overridden her. She shook her head as Rainbow sat at his usual stool and watched her, amused. It was late afternoon and the cafe was empty.

The door opened and Dave strutted in. “I figured out the last piece.”

“What last piece?” Sadie said.

“Remember that lady who said she got hit by the car. But Dr. Campbell denied it. Turns out, she wasn’t hit after all. She said she suddenly got a headache and it was painful enough to knock her off her bike. And she was too embarrassed to admit it. Anyway she won’t be doing that again.”

“So the headaches were caused by that scientist’s equipment? You’re sure?”

“Yeah. There was another wave when he was in the car. I guess the equipment must have been still going or something. Even after all that, he still insists he wasn’t to blame. In any case, it’s all moved back to the lab now and it’s better shielded so things should be fine. One of those cage things or something.” He swiped his card and took a bottle of mineral water from the counter.

“Faraday cage.”

“Yes, that.”

“So what’s going to happen to the scientist?” Rainbow asked.

“I told him not to take any equipment home again. I think he learned his lesson.”

Sadie gave Rainbow a sideways smile, and it seemed to Dave that she and Rainbow had just shared something unspoken, some secret he was not a part of. He was about to ask more, but then he shrugged, and with mineral water in hand, left to go start his shift.

“Trick or treat!”

The man at the house’s threshold flicked his eyes between Harley and Winter as they towered over him in matching but ill-fitted pirate costumes. Children peered from behind the two to gawk at the candies that the man dropped into pumpkin-shaped buckets.

Back on the dimly lit street, Harley pulled up her flimsy eyepatch and brought one of the new red-foiled candies up for inspection, giggling as she did.

Winter rolled his eyes. “Don’t you have enough candy?”

“Can you ever have enough?”

“I’m told you could get something called ‘diabetes’ if you eat too much.”

Harley snorted. “Humans are such odd creatures.”

“Shh!” Winter hissed, as he glared side to side at the largely empty street. “Don’t say that too loud. The humans might hear us.”

Harley dismissed the notion with a wave of her hand. She unwrapped the candy and popped it in her mouth, chewing loudly.

Winter grumbled.

They hung back to let the group of kids behind them trot ahead to the next house. Cell phones illuminated the bored expressions of the parents that followed behind the kids. Artificial spiderwebs canvassed the walls of the next house that was illuminated by eerie green lights. Screams punched through the artificial mist that surrounded the house. 

Every year since Harley arrived at this strange planet, she watched in awe and appreciation at the concerted effort that humans put into getting into, what they called, the “Halloween spirit.” The more humans settled the town, the more decorations of bats, spiders, and other creatures of lore and vague human media references that Harley had yet to learn popped up across Selunia Falls. Pumpkins and pumpkin spice assailed her noise at every corner. Before she knew it, she got swept up in the mania, finding herself clutching a pirate costume in the local convenience store. 

After purchasing the costume with her allowance of human currency, Harley realized that she’d have to wear the ridiculous get-up. In a panic, she had purchased a second costume, hoping to persuade someone else to dress up with her so she’d feel less ridiculous. Winter obliged, though took every opportunity to voice his disapproval of the practice after he squeezed his body into the size small costume, his limbs jutting out awkwardly.

“These candies are definitely better than anything we’ve had back home,” Harley said through a mouth full of caramel.

Winter chuffed. “Whatever.” He slicked back his hair. “Is that enough trick or treating for you? We should check out the party at the town square.”

Harley pouted, not yet ready to end their trick-or-treating. “I think we have time for one more house.” She scanned the street, avoiding the house with the recorded screaming and pointing at a house at the end of the block decorated with rows of candle lit pumpkins. “That one over there looks nice.”

Winter sighed.

Pumpkins carved with faces contorted into ghoulish expressions lined the house. Aside from the candles in the pumpkins, the house’s facade was dark and bare. Muffled, melancholic music played from inside. The group of trick-or-treaters hurried past to the next house, skipping the pumpkin house.

“Are we sure that someone’s even home?” Winter asked.

Harley jumped back when a woman poked her head out, unable to discern from the woman’s sunken eyes and disheveled hair if she was in costume. 

The woman studied the two. “You’re trick-or-treaters?”

“Uh…” Harley looked down at her costume and then at Winter. “Yes?”

Winter folded his arms in front of him. “Is there something wrong, ma’am?”

“No, no.” The woman shifted her eyes. “Usually it’s just kids who trick-or-treat.”

“Is that why people keep looking at us funny?” Harley’s cheek flushed as she tugged on her costume self-consciously.

The woman swung the door open, the melancholic music humming louder. “Come inside. You’re clearly adults. I have better treats for you.”

Harley shot a glance at Winter, unsure what protocol to follow. Her body screamed for her to run. But she also didn’t want to be rude. She stepped tentatively inside the house, her friend trailing behind her.

Groups of people were scattered inside the house in every room and hallway. They spoke in low voices, letting the music drown their conversation into muffled oblivion. The disheveled woman procured three drinks topped with a mist that overflowed the brims. Harley and Winter took their drinks and retreated to a corner to sulk in. 

Neither of them touched their misty drink.

The strange woman reappeared some time later. “I’m Zoe by the way.” She gave the two an appraising eye.“You’re not from around here.” A statement rather than a question.

“We’re from Los Angeles.” Harley rehearsed the line multiple times in the Karazai meetings that the humans fondly referred to as “Blending In 101.”

“Ah, right.” Zoe held her hands up and crunched her fingers. “‘Los Angeles.’” 

Harley arched her eyebrow at the odd gesture, looking to Winter for help. A stiff Winter shook his head in a small and imperceptible movement, indicating that he had no idea what the gesture meant.

Zoe chuckled as she leaned casually against the wall and regarded them with a piercing gaze. “I know what you guys are. No need to spin the lies in this room.” She glanced around the room, gesturing at the fake spiderwebs and plastic skeletons. “So? What do you think of Halloween? Do you have anything like this on your home planet?”

Harley froze. She then covered her surprise with an innocent smile, prepared to brush off Zoe’s question, when Winter snorted loudly.

“We have much better celebrations than this,” Winter said flatly.

Harley slapped her hand to her forehead.

A pleased smile spread across Zoe’s face. “Oh? Any of them spooky?”

“I don’t understand your concept of ‘spooky.’”

“What about ‘scary?’”

Winter let out a laugh. “If you’re referring to your cheap decorations of absurd–almost comical–characters, I don’t see how that can be considered scary. Quite the opposite in fact.”

“That’s what makes this season so fun!” Zoe’s eyes glinted with mischief. “It’s macabre, it’s silly, it’s sacred–all these, at once!” When Harley and Winter gave her no reaction, Zoe added, “I suppose this year will be extra spooky. After what happened to poor Ozzie.”

Harley raised an eyebrow quizzically. “Ozzie?” 

Zoe leaned in, her voice low but tinged with excitement. “Oswald ‘Ozzie’ Jenkins was one of the first scientists here. He did groundbreaking work in biology and experimented with Karazai plants that were identified to have appeared around the rift. Though, I heard he made a menagerie of creatures that were not approved of in the process.”

“Oh?” Harley asked, her curiosity piqued.

“Some of his experiments went too far,” Zoe said. “Anyways, he didn’t show up to the lab one day. His body was found a couple weeks later in the woods. He was…” Zoe grappled with words before she just shuddered. “We still have no idea what happened to Ozzie.” 

“That’s awful,” Harley said, dread filling her body as she glanced around the room. Who would do such a heinous thing in such a small town?

“That’s not all.” Zoe’s voice trembled with excitement that betrayed any reverence she might have held for poor murdered Ozzie. “I heard you can still see Ozzie. Floating around the cemetery they built on Crow’s Hill.”

Harley frowned. “But Ozzie is dead, didn’t you say?”

“Mutilated,” Winter added, “from the sound of it.” 

Zoe placed her finger on her nose and pointed at Harley and then Winter. “Exactly!”

Winter’s eyes narrowed. “Explain yourself, human.”

“He’s a ghost!” Zoe cried, her eyes and mouth hanging open–an expression she clearly expected from the two.

Harley raised an eyebrow. “What’s a ghost?”

Zoe looked at them, stunned. “You Karazai don’t have ghosts? Spirits of the people who died who come back to haunt us?”

Winter rolled his eyes. “It makes no logical sense. If someone is dead, they’re dead. There’s no possibility of them coming back to life.”

“Exactly! And that’s what makes it ‘spooky.’” Zoe twinkled her fingers at the last word, only to be met with blank stares.

“I don’t know about ‘spooky.’” Harley rubbed her chin. “It makes no logical sense.”

“Yeah. Why would they come back to life?” Winter pressed.

Zoe scowled, an edge in her voice. “I don’t know. Unfinished business, maybe?”

“Did you give them a proper death ritual?” Harley asked.

Zoe placed her hands on her hips. “We buried him here. As he requested.”

“Buried?” Winter asked, aghast.

“What’s wrong with that?” Zoe snapped.

Harley exchanged glances with Winter. “When Karazai die, we send their bodies to space. So they can be one again with the stardust.”

“How poetic but we’re not launching dead bodies into space!” Zoe shook her head. “Can you imagine the costs? Besides, how else can people return to honor them?” When the trio stared at her blankly again, she explained, “Like, putting flowers on their grave.”

Harley and Winter stared at Zoe in silence. Finally, Harley asked, “So you humans are afraid of dead people coming back to life? Wouldn’t they be weakened and decomposing?”

“Isn’t it a terrifying thought?” Zoe demanded.

“Well, no,” Harley replied. “They’d hardly be a formidable adversary.”

“They–they– come back with superhuman strength!” Zoe cried.

“I just don’t see how that’s possible,” Harley said slowly, trying to make sense of Zoe. Whatever reaction Zoe was looking for, she clearly wasn’t getting it from them. Harley looked to Winter for help.

Winter snickered. “This would certainly not happen if you just send your dead to space.”

Zoe threw her hands up in the air and stormed away.

Harley snorted, ready to dismiss Zoe’s nonsense, before she recalled that earlier this week, she had passed by Crow’s Hill this week. An odd, unsettling feeling had pervaded her body at the time in a way she couldn’t explain. 

She brought her drink to her lips and sipped pensively, her eyes drifting to the window toward Crow’s Hill. Could it be… Ozzie? Could people exist beyond death? 

Harley rose to her feet. She had to know. “We should go.”

Back on the street, Winter huffed to keep up with Harley. “Finally ready to check out the party at town square?”

“No,” Harley shook her head. “We should look at this cemetery.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Winter exclaimed. “That was a bunch of nonsense!”

“Why?” Harley smirked. “Scared of ghosts?”

“I’m not scared!” Winter snapped.

“Prove it!” Harley halted in her steps. She pointed onward, in the direction of Crow’s Hill. “Let’s go to the cemetery.” She snorted when Winter hesitated. “That’s what I thought.”

Winter crossed his arms, bumbling for words. Finally, he said, “Let’s go then.”

They walked in silence toward Crow’s Hill, the only noise their panting as they ascended the steep hill. At the top, they found themselves in front of an iron gate. Stone walls enclosed the small lot of mossy ground littered with decaying leaves. The iron gate creaked let out a loud creak when Harley heaved it open.

A single headstone stood in the middle of the lot. Here lies Ozzie, a trailblazer who reached for the stars.

Harley approached the grave, dead leaves crunching beneath her boots. “Hello, Ozzie.”

She paused. A sense of foreboding creeped into her body. A draft picked up and sent chills across her body.

Winter must have felt it, too. He glanced around the lot and rubbed his arm nervously. “There. Happy now? Can we go to the party now?”

“I want to have a good look around.” 

But there wasn’t much else to see. Dim lamp posts revealed shapes of trees and rose bushes that casted unsettling shadows on the stone walls.

“Uh, Harley…”

Harley turned to see Winter backing away slowly, his face pale and pointing behind her.

Harley spun around. It was easy to miss the large shape that blended with the shadows along one of the walls. Another draft whipped through the area and brushed against the hair on the shape’s legs. Harley squinted, counting eight legs.

A giant spider!

“Run!” Winter bellowed as he took off in a sprint toward the gate.

Harley ran as fast as her legs could carry her. At the bottom of the hill, she turned around to see if the spider was gaining on them–only to find an empty path behind her. She trotted to a stop, catching her breath as she did.

“What are you doing?” Winter cried from several feet away.

“It’s not following us.” Harley ascended back up the hill, fighting against her adrenaline to keep her footing slow and cautious. She heard Winter mutter from not too far behind her.

Harley peered into the lot. The spider occupied the same spot, its body compact as though to make itself small.

“For all we know,” Winter whispered from behind her, his face pale, “that could be the creature that killed Ozzie!”

They jumped when the spider moved. It extended its hairy legs, reaching down to soundlessly move its body to the ground. Harley held her breath, her body frozen in trepidation.

In delicate strides, the spider reached Ozzie’s headstone. It raised one of its legs, a yellow flower revealed in its grasp. In slow movements, it placed the flower on the headstone before leaning its body forward in a graceful–and unmistakably reverent–motion.

Harley and Winter watched breathlessly from their distance. The spider then straightened up before skittering towards one of the walls. It effortlessly ascended the stone before disappearing over it.

Harley turned to a stunned Winter. “Maybe this is one of Ozzie’s creatures, here to pay its respects.”

Winter nodded wordlessly, as he stared at where the spider had disappeared. They both let silence, save for the soft rustling of leaves, wash over them.

“Should we tell someone about it?” Winter finally asked.

Harley shook her head. “No. Let it be.”

Winter turned to Harley, his voice soft. “Why was it so important for you to visit Ozzie?”

Harley looked up to the night sky that was clear of clouds. Here on Crow’s Hill, with only a few street lights, the stars shone bright. “I think about the people back home a lot,” Harley said. “For all they know back there, we’re dead.” Harley shrugged. “It’s comforting knowing that maybe death isn’t the end. That there’s still life to be had–for both them, and for us.” She turned to Winter. “Is that crazy?”

Winter folded his arms, regarding her. Then, he nodded. “You’re not crazy.” He sighed. “I miss home. Being plopped on this planet, with these humans and their bizarre ways.” Winter shook his head. “It hasn’t been easy.”

Harley nudged his shoulder with hers. “We’ll figure it out together.”

Winter smiled at her. Harley realized that was the first time she remembered him smiling since they arrived in this strange world.

Winter then popped a candy in his mouth. His eyes widened in surprise. “Wow. This really is delicious.”

Harley scowled. “I told you!”

“But I think we should get some real food from the diner.” Winter looked at Harley.. “What do you want to eat? I’m buying.”

“Is it weird that I want the ghost burger?” Harley asked. When Winter turned to leave. Harley held up a hand. “But let me do one thing first.”

Once more inside the gates, Harley ran an appraising eye at rose bushes that lined the wall. Tucked inside the dried leaves, a rose in a brilliant red bloom caught her eye. She snapped the rose from the bush–but not without cursing loudly when she pricked her finger on a thorn.

She stepped to Ozzie’s headstone, pausing briefly for a moment. She then placed the rose on its cold stone, laying it next to the yellow flower.

The sentiment, the motions–they all seemed odd to her. Can you really honor someone already long gone with a simple flower? She frowned, wondering if she did it right, or if there’s a wrong way to do it. In any case, she hoped Ozzie was well, wherever he may be.

Harley rejoined Winter at the gate. Together, beneath a canopy of stars, they set off to the diner, launching into an animated discussion about ghosts as they did.

Kel brought up the map of the office building on his phone, then compared his location again to the floor plan. The printer should have been here. But instead of finding it, he found a vending machine full of candy and other snacks. He hadn’t made any wrong turns – or so he thought – but when he stepped back out of the storage room and turned the corner, all four directions looked the same to him. Just uniform hallways lined with drab carpeting, the doors to one office after another lining the hall.

He cursed whoever had designed the building. They probably owned their own eclectic studio. No one who worked in an actual office would have designed it like this.

He made his way back to where he had started, the bathrooms near the center of the building, which were in the only asymmetrical part of the entire floor – men’s bathroom on one side, women’s bathroom on the other side. On the off chance that he had gone the wrong direction the first time, he deliberately took the opposite way this time. He walked the halls, checking his map at each turn.

He found himself at another storage room with a vending machine. It could have been the same room, but this machine was missing a few items. He muttered to himself and waved his badge in front of the pay reader and grabbed an overpriced bag of chips to rage eat later. He knew both his wallet and his waistline would pay for it but he didn’t care.

Kel returned to his office. On the way, he ran into Brynn. Technically, Brynn was his peer – they both reported to the same boss – but as the project lead, she was his de facto manager. He said hello in greeting but was met with a frosty glare.

So she was still annoyed at him about their argument this morning, he thought. Still, he’d been obligated to call out the issues with the project.

He decided to be the bigger person and extend an olive branch. “This building sucks.” The small talk sounded lame, even he knew that, but it was the latest thing on his mind and the first thing he’d come up with.

“What?” Brynn said.

“I was looking for a printer and this office map is just completely wrong.”

“Printer? Are you going to go looking for a fax machine next?”

“Never mind.” Kel realized his mistake. He ducked into his office, hoping Brynn would go off to whatever meeting she probably had next. But Brynn followed him in.

“Why do you need a printer?” Then she saw the web page that was currently open on his computer. “No. No, you won’t.”

Of all the days for him to forget to lock his screen, Kel thought.

“This will delay my experiment by weeks,” she said. “With no data, we’ll miss the funding cycle. And for what, some numbers you pulled out of your ass?”

“I’m sorry about that, but–” 

“No.” Brynn stalked off before he could respond more.

Well. His first full time job was going just great. He returned back to the page he had been looking at – “Submit a safety violation” – but all it contained were general platitudes, ending with “safety being all our jobs.” He could find no way to submit anything electronically. The only thing on the page was a form to print out and send using interoffice mail and he had no printer.

He even tried to find the destination office, thinking he could speak in person, but it wasn’t in the office directory.

He wondered if that office even existed. And if it did, if anyone even monitored that mailbox.

---

Kel tried to convince his boss, but as expected, his boss sided with Brynn. Kel tried his way up the chain. The lab hierarchy wasn’t very deep, and within just a couple of level of managers – who had both ignored him – he was emailing Adam, the head of the lab.

The auto reply said he was out camping or something, and wouldn’t be back until next week.

Brynn’s experiment was scheduled for Friday.

Kel needed to go lateral. He needed to find Arden, the head of security in Selunia Falls.

Arden. Adam. Arden. Adam. That was really confusing, Kel thought. Maybe he should change his name to something that started with A too. Maybe that was the secret to getting ahead in Selunia Falls. He chuckled to himself. Not that he cared about getting ahead. He was moving out of here after his rotation was done.

It was common knowledge that Arden was a regular at Anna’s Cafe, and today Kel’s luck held up. He found Arden drinking a coffee at the counter. Kel dropped down onto the seat next to him and introduced himself and explained the situation.

The entire time, Arden seemed more interested in finishing his drink.

When Kel was done, Arden responded immediately. “I usually leave the science to the scientists.”

Kel wasn’t sure if the insult was accidental or intentional. “But I am a scientist.”

“You’ve been here, what, less than a year? There’s a way we do things around here. If you have a problem with the experiment, you talk to your project group.”

Kel was surprised that Arden knew how long he had been at Selunia Falls. Maybe his careless act had been just that – an act. “I talked to our project lead. She wouldn’t listen to me. Neither would my boss. I’ve even emailed the head of the lab but he was out on vacation. He was camping or something.”

“The man does like to go camping,” Arden said, as if the absence of the head of the lab wasn’t unusual. He appraised Kel steadily. “You know there are consequences to jumping the chain of command like this.”

“Yes.” Kel knew he might be permanently in the doghouse. Good thing I don’t plan to stay here, he thought, it makes doing the right thing a lot easier.

Arden said nothing for a while. Several times, Kel wanted to jump in and repeat again the importance of delaying the experiment. But he forced himself to wait. Best not to give Arden a reason to ignore him.

Finally, Arden made up his mind. “Ok then. Explain to me again what you think is going to happen.”

“I’ve gone over the numbers, and there’s a one percent chance that one of the experimental cores overloads and causes an explosion.”

“That’s it?”

It wasn’t the response Kel had expected. “That’s… a lot?” He sensed the subtle shift in Arden’s tone, sensed that the moment had turned. If Arden had ever taken him seriously, that thread was gone now, and the rest of the conversation was just a professional courtesy.

“I know that might sound a lot to you, Kel,” Arden said gently, “but as far as projects here go, that might as well be no risk at all. How big would the explosion be?”

“According to my calculations, about a mile wide,” Kel said. Maybe Arden would take that seriously.

“Aren’t you doing this experiment in the woods? Just use some remote controls, and make sure you stand far enough away.” Arden patted Kel on the shoulder, and then he put his finished coffee on the counter and left the cafe.

---

When Kel had been pursuing his doctorate at the university, one of the required classes had been an ethics in engineering class. There had been a case study from the last century: a space shuttle exploded shortly after launch. The scientists had warned of the possibility of such an accident, but they had been ignored. Seven people had died.

That story stuck with him as he sat in his office. It was early evening and everyone else had gone home for the day.

If only Adam were back from his vacation, Kel thought. Then he could convince him to delay the experiment until more risk analysis could be done. Maybe. The meeting with security hadn’t gone as planned. But at least he would have a chance.

Adam didn’t come back until next week though. And there was no way Brynn was going to delay her experiment. Unless…

Kel clicked around on the laboratory website until he found it – the internal page for equipment requisitions. Unlike the page for reporting a safety hazard, this page was working perfectly. He checked, and yes, the positron emitter was still in storage. It wasn’t a commonly used piece of hardware and so there was only one available.

He knew it was a critical component of Brynn’s experiment.

The requisitions system was fully online, and he didn’t need to deal with any printers or other nonsense. It was a clear sign of the priorities of the lab. Kel successfully reserved it and got the confirmation notice. He checked the hours. They were already closed for the day, meaning he would have to go in and pick it up tomorrow morning.

Today was Tuesday, and Brynn’s experiment was scheduled for Friday. If he held onto the emitter, then Brynn probably wouldn’t be able to run her experiment until next week.

By then Adam would be back.

---

Kel sat in one of the chairs in the waiting area of the requisitions building. The room was smaller than he’d expected. It reminded him of a doctor’s office. No one would ever guess that this place stored an endless array of high tech equipment, he thought.

The lab technician had been gone for almost fifteen minutes. Kel was starting to get antsy and was about to go into the employees area to go look for the technician when he returned.

“It’s not here,” the technician said.

Kel had been at the requisitions building for an hour before it opened, and he had been the only one in line. There was no way that anyone else had gotten to the positron emitter before he did.

“What do you mean it’s not here? I requisitioned it yesterday.” Kel brought up the form and showed it to the technician.

“Like I said, it’s not here.”

“Can you check it again?” He tried not to be too pushy – he was starting to sound like one of those people at the department stores that asked for the manager when things didn’t go their way – the kind of people he detested.

“Do you want to search for it yourself?”

Kel nodded. The technician led him through an unmarked door in the back which opened into a connected hallway. They walked for a minute or two, and at the other end the technician tapped his badge at the reader. He opened the door and Kel was blasted by a wave of air conditioning.

Despite Kel’s current predicament, he couldn’t help but be awed by the warehouse. It was filled with aisle after aisle of racks of scientific equipment. It was a monument worthy of the most important research center in the world, he thought. His mind started racing with ideas of all the research he could do with this equipment… all the mysteries of the universe he could investigate…

“What was the part number again?” the technician said.

Kel was shaken from his reverie. “2J4-9-2.”

“Ok. Second floor, aisle J, fourth rack, ninth section, second shelf.”

Kel followed the technician up the stairs where a big sign with the letter A hung overhead. Across the floor they walked, until they reached the designated aisle, and into the aisle they went, passing rack after rack of equipment. When the technician stopped in front of a rack of shelves, Kel still couldn’t see the other side of the warehouse.

“Here we are,” the technician said.

There was a gap where the positron emitter should have been. Kel searched the area around the shelves but everything else seemed accounted for.

“See?” The technician’s voice reminded him of a parent patiently placating a child.

“I don’t understand,” Kel said. “How do you just lose track of a piece of equipment?”

“I’m sure we didn’t lose it. Someone probably just borrowed it, that’s all.”

“But the requisitions form said it was still here.”

“Well, sometimes when one of the scientists is in a hurry, we let them check out the equipment first, and they backfill the request form later.”

“Are you serious?” Kel tried to keep from shouting. “Was the positron emitter here yesterday?”

“I didn’t work yesterday, but I could try to call someone if you’d like.”

“No. Forget it.”

Kel had a good guess as to where the device was.

---

Kel drove along the gravel road into the woods. When the road ended Kel parked his car and jumped out. A set of tire tracks were carved into the dirt next to the road, and he hurried along the trail as it went deeper into the woods and the dirt gave way to grass.

He could hear a steady humming that grew louder the further along he went, and finally the trail ended with Brynn’s pickup sitting at the test site. She stood next to a refrigerator sized box that Kel recognized instantly – it was a control box for scientific measurements. He had used that exact model many times in school. Despite its size, he knew it was deceptively lightweight, its wheels barely digging into the grass underneath.

Brynn saw him approaching but ignored him. She continued to adjust some of the dials on the box. The lights were on and blinking steadily. She had started the experiment.

Kel shouted at Brynn. “The test was supposed to be the day after tomorrow!”

“And yet, somehow we’re both here,” Brynn said. The fans on the box whirred a bit louder, making it hard to hear.

“How did you know?”

“Arden told me.”

“Look, let’s go back to the lab and run the numbers some more. I think there’s a way we can lower the risk on this experiment.” When he saw that Brynn was ignoring him, he continued, “Why’s this so important anyway?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

“Fair? Fine, let’s talk about fair. You don’t care if this project succeeds. You’ve had everything handed to you. First a private high school, then a name brand university. Either way, this is just another line item on your CV. You’re going to finish your time here, and then you’re going to be out of this place.”

“How do you know? Maybe I’ll end up staying,” Kel said. He wasn’t ready to admit it, but parts of Selunia Falls were growing on him.

“Even if you did. You haven’t spent seven years, eight years, working on this theory. You’re not the one out there trying to keep this project from being cancelled.”

Their argument was interrupted as the lights on the control panel started blinking wildly and the humming grew louder.

“I don’t think it’s supposed to do that,” Kel said.

Brynn didn’t reply, but Kel could see the alarm on her face, as she turned some of the knobs. The blinking of the lights grew frenetic.

Kel rushed up next to her. “Let me help you.” He popped open a panel on the side, and found a familiar set of wires. This brings back memories, he thought. For a moment he forgot that he was trying to rescue a runaway experiment, and autopilot kicked in. He worked his way through the wires, reattaching them one by one to the reset positions.

He got to the end and found two wires unaccounted for. “Wait… These aren’t supposed to be here,” he said. The humming showed no signs of dying down, or even slowing.

“This isn’t school, Kel!” Brynn said. “We run all custom equipment here.”

“Give me a minute, I’m sure I can–”

But suddenly he was knocked off his feet and tumbling through the air. His last thought was that the box must have exploded, but then he realized it wasn’t the box, it was Brynn, she had knocked him over and they were tumbling and rolling and he ate a mouthful of dirt and his shoulder slammed into the ground a few meters away from the box. They were partially shielded now by Brynn’s pickup, and as Kel laid on the ground he felt a rumble through the earth and he instinctively curled up and guarded his face with his arms as an explosion crackled around him.

When he dared to open his eyes again, the control box was gone. In its place was a small crater.

Gone too was Brynn’s pickup.

---

Kel and Brynn crawled on their hands and knees, rooting around the debris scattered around the rim of the crater. Their clothes were caked in dust.

“Here’s another one,” Kel said. He fished out a microchip from the dirt, no larger than his fingernail. He limped over to Brynn and handed it to her, and she dropped it into her pocket and added it to the handful of microchips they’d already collected.

“I think this will be enough,” she said. They slowly followed the trail back to where Kel was parked.

Brynn patted her pocket, checking to make sure the microchips were still there. “If the data on these microchips is good there’s still hope for my project. Our project, I mean. I still can’t believe the experiment went critical like that. What were the chances?”

“One in a hundred,” Kel said. “One in a hundred.”

Brynn didn’t respond immediately. “It’s not like you were right either,” she finally said.

“Look at me,” Kel said. “Look at you!”

“Oh yes, it exploded. But you know what? You said the explosion would be a mile wide. But it was only a few meters. You were off by a hundred times there. So, I think we’ll just have to call it even.” Brynn playfully punched Kel on the arm. It was only a light tap, but he winced, having bruised that part when he fell.

Brynn didn’t notice. “Let’s head back to the lab,” she said. “You’re driving.”