(no subject)
Close to dawn, and Delores Vickery stops her cab on Second Avenue, at the little park across the street Dag Hammerskjold Plaza. She has him wait--she can afford it--but she takes her duffel bag full of money. Oh yes.
There's a fountain in the center of the park; it has a tarp over it. In the center of the fountain is a turtle and someone vandalized it; there's a jagged crack in its shell. Nestled in the crack is the purple ball, Iona's Snare. The destruction of Black Thirteen, the sudden traumatic severing of their link, has left it stunned, but it tries a defense at the last moment; at the last moment, Delores Vickery sees herself bringing down Rose's tire iron on the severed head of her own mother.
She sees it through. Haggard, she makes her way back to the cab. She drops the tire iron, still crawling with violet sparks, into a trash can on the way. Drives away.
Now her tale is told.
***
Eva Tenneson is not in the office early; she is simply still here, at W&H headquarters in the Empire State Building, when the sun comes up. When she stops and opens her bottom drawer. Some people might take out a bottle at this point; she takes out a large silver cask--about the size of one of those big, bad-ass eight cell flashlights. She lifts it out carefully, and presses her ear to the side.
(She should have turned this in weeks ago, there will be another security sweep soon and then she'll be in a lot of trouble, but she just--)
She listens. Gets up. Takes a walk. At this time of the morning, in Manhattan, this is supremely unwise, but no one bothers her.
When she reaches the corner of Second Avenue and Forty-Sixth Street, she stops to look at the black glass tower across the street. Looks like a busy early morning over there, too.
(Something stirs in her memory, troubling the waters, but the spells that hold her... hold her.)
And then something sparks in the trash can, and she picks it up.
And with the shattering of illusions--remembers. Everything. Who she was, and what she's lost.
She never does get back to W&H; she takes the cask with her, into her new life.
Her tale is just beginning.
***
At W&H, not much later, the morning has turned unexpectedly hectic as well, for the handful of personnel on site. Sirens are going off.
One of the technician--his name is Clark--is typing feverishly at a computer (with... interesting bits) when one of the security people--Powell--storms in. "What the hell is going on?" He's yelling over the sirens, but he's also just a shouty person.
"Can't talk now, fixing it," Clark says, in the dismissive manner of technical people. Then notices the gun, held in the brandishing way of violent people.
He sighs. "Do you know anything about quantum superposition?" Blank look. "All right, have you seen Back To The Future 2?"
He's on safer ground, there. "Remember when the worlds split? Yeah, well, we're in the wrong one."
"So we're going to be erased?"
The gun goes away; Clark goes back to work. "Not exactly." This is why he asked about quantum superposition first, Powell. "Look, these assholes--" type type type type type type "--at Tet got a message from the future, but they haven't been able to do anything with it. Only apparently now they did, and there's a new future. Which, plus the old one, makes two futures, and we got duplicated along with the rest of this universe."
"And... that's bad?"
"Yes. It's bad. Because, a) it's going to fuck up the whole reason we came to this universe, and b) we only have the remit for one universe. There's... paperwork. Eldritch paperwork."
"...so we're going to be erased? And you're fixing that from your terminal?"
"No." He shoves his hair back from his face. "Look, we might be erased, if we hung around. X'ed out. But the company would also come under serious strictures for the fuck-up. You're not allowed to just duplicate yourself, the Powers That Be play hardball with that stuff. Think about all the shit in this building there really shouldn't be two of. It's in W&H's interest to just, uh, eliminate one of the branches and all duplicated materiel. I was changing all of the building passcodes." He exhales, pushing back from the computer. "I think I got them all in time."
"Why?"
"Because the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart consider which branch survives to be a local matter to be resolved on that level," says Clark. The other Clark. The other Powell shoots them both.
"They the last ones in the building?"
Clark checks a checklist. "Yeah, everybody except some mindwiped new hire who isn't on our lists. Must be a timeline difference--they've got a handful of artifacts not on our inventory, too."
"So if we took those..."
"You pick up on this stuff fast, Powell."
Their tale...
...is no longer our problem. It's Alice Bailey's.
***
All right, fine, I hear you say. Enough about these sidetracks and subplots. What happened?
Things are busy at Tet this morning. There's a cordon of Security around Susannah and Eddie Toren, still keeping vigil around the rose. Phone calls have been coming in--Marian and Charlie are still alive; both of them are still unconscious. The Tet Security people involved in the accidents (two of them--they slid between worlds as they drifted away, disrupting traffic in White Plains and then appearing out of thin air in the wrong lane in the Keystone World)... are mostly neither alive nor conscious. In White Plains, Jake Toren is trying to build a reasonable cover story, with the unspoken collusion of Major Robinson. Some things just don't make sense. Better to move on.
And Susannah and Eddie and now Michael Copeland are waiting. There's no reason to think it will be the rose, where she comes back. If she comes back. But there's no better place to wait and hope.
For a happy ending.
There's a fountain in the center of the park; it has a tarp over it. In the center of the fountain is a turtle and someone vandalized it; there's a jagged crack in its shell. Nestled in the crack is the purple ball, Iona's Snare. The destruction of Black Thirteen, the sudden traumatic severing of their link, has left it stunned, but it tries a defense at the last moment; at the last moment, Delores Vickery sees herself bringing down Rose's tire iron on the severed head of her own mother.
She sees it through. Haggard, she makes her way back to the cab. She drops the tire iron, still crawling with violet sparks, into a trash can on the way. Drives away.
Now her tale is told.
***
Eva Tenneson is not in the office early; she is simply still here, at W&H headquarters in the Empire State Building, when the sun comes up. When she stops and opens her bottom drawer. Some people might take out a bottle at this point; she takes out a large silver cask--about the size of one of those big, bad-ass eight cell flashlights. She lifts it out carefully, and presses her ear to the side.
(She should have turned this in weeks ago, there will be another security sweep soon and then she'll be in a lot of trouble, but she just--)
She listens. Gets up. Takes a walk. At this time of the morning, in Manhattan, this is supremely unwise, but no one bothers her.
When she reaches the corner of Second Avenue and Forty-Sixth Street, she stops to look at the black glass tower across the street. Looks like a busy early morning over there, too.
(Something stirs in her memory, troubling the waters, but the spells that hold her... hold her.)
And then something sparks in the trash can, and she picks it up.
And with the shattering of illusions--remembers. Everything. Who she was, and what she's lost.
She never does get back to W&H; she takes the cask with her, into her new life.
Her tale is just beginning.
***
At W&H, not much later, the morning has turned unexpectedly hectic as well, for the handful of personnel on site. Sirens are going off.
One of the technician--his name is Clark--is typing feverishly at a computer (with... interesting bits) when one of the security people--Powell--storms in. "What the hell is going on?" He's yelling over the sirens, but he's also just a shouty person.
"Can't talk now, fixing it," Clark says, in the dismissive manner of technical people. Then notices the gun, held in the brandishing way of violent people.
He sighs. "Do you know anything about quantum superposition?" Blank look. "All right, have you seen Back To The Future 2?"
He's on safer ground, there. "Remember when the worlds split? Yeah, well, we're in the wrong one."
"So we're going to be erased?"
The gun goes away; Clark goes back to work. "Not exactly." This is why he asked about quantum superposition first, Powell. "Look, these assholes--" type type type type type type "--at Tet got a message from the future, but they haven't been able to do anything with it. Only apparently now they did, and there's a new future. Which, plus the old one, makes two futures, and we got duplicated along with the rest of this universe."
"And... that's bad?"
"Yes. It's bad. Because, a) it's going to fuck up the whole reason we came to this universe, and b) we only have the remit for one universe. There's... paperwork. Eldritch paperwork."
"...so we're going to be erased? And you're fixing that from your terminal?"
"No." He shoves his hair back from his face. "Look, we might be erased, if we hung around. X'ed out. But the company would also come under serious strictures for the fuck-up. You're not allowed to just duplicate yourself, the Powers That Be play hardball with that stuff. Think about all the shit in this building there really shouldn't be two of. It's in W&H's interest to just, uh, eliminate one of the branches and all duplicated materiel. I was changing all of the building passcodes." He exhales, pushing back from the computer. "I think I got them all in time."
"Why?"
"Because the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart consider which branch survives to be a local matter to be resolved on that level," says Clark. The other Clark. The other Powell shoots them both.
"They the last ones in the building?"
Clark checks a checklist. "Yeah, everybody except some mindwiped new hire who isn't on our lists. Must be a timeline difference--they've got a handful of artifacts not on our inventory, too."
"So if we took those..."
"You pick up on this stuff fast, Powell."
Their tale...
...is no longer our problem. It's Alice Bailey's.
***
All right, fine, I hear you say. Enough about these sidetracks and subplots. What happened?
Things are busy at Tet this morning. There's a cordon of Security around Susannah and Eddie Toren, still keeping vigil around the rose. Phone calls have been coming in--Marian and Charlie are still alive; both of them are still unconscious. The Tet Security people involved in the accidents (two of them--they slid between worlds as they drifted away, disrupting traffic in White Plains and then appearing out of thin air in the wrong lane in the Keystone World)... are mostly neither alive nor conscious. In White Plains, Jake Toren is trying to build a reasonable cover story, with the unspoken collusion of Major Robinson. Some things just don't make sense. Better to move on.
And Susannah and Eddie and now Michael Copeland are waiting. There's no reason to think it will be the rose, where she comes back. If she comes back. But there's no better place to wait and hope.
For a happy ending.