Thresholder, ch 180, Back to the Future

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I'm really trying to get Thresholder finished while not rushing what the narrative demands. Because the schedule is shot to hell, the chapters will be coming out whenever I'm done with them, rather than on any set schedule. Thank you for your patience.

~~~~

Hella had a head wound, and though it had been a bleeder, she was up and walking around.

“I’m not sure that we wanted the portal now,” she said. “We have engineering work to do, diplomacy work to do, if the threat is gone —”

“You wanted me to somehow restrain her in a way that wouldn’t have popped the portal?” asked Perry. “Or just let her go to wreak havoc?”

“No, no,” said Hella, holding up a hand. “I’m just saying that we’ll have to move fast.”

“Eggy was awake,” said Perry. “Then she wasn’t. I’ll do my best to heal her. If we can get her working, we should be good.”

“You are the least qualified person to say that,” said Mette. “You don’t understand half the systems.”

“Fine,” said Perry. “It gives a better chance of getting done … whatever it is that needs to be done.”

Amanaco had come with them, and was staring at the portal with fascination. Anaksi was beside him, though she kept looking between the portal and Perry.

“This goes to another world?” asked Amanaco.

“Keep up, please,” said Mette. “Yes, it goes to another world.”

“But it might be a bad world?” asked Amanaco. “In my experience, there are plenty of bad worlds out there.”

“No,” said Mette. “We’re redirecting, hopefully. It’s untested technology. We’re aiming for a world that’s a part of the loop, but I need the equipment set up to get some sense of where we are in the multiverse and what’s going to be the easiest target to hit.”

“You don’t know?” asked Perry.

Mette laughed. “I love your faith in me, I really do.”

“We have a fallback strategy,” said Dirk. “If targeting doesn’t work, we go wherever the portal goes and try again.”

“We crash landed here, in case you forgot,” said Mette.

“Every world is a risk,” said Hella, holding up a hand. “We solve the technicals, or we don’t, but nothing changes in terms of overall strategy. This world was a bad roll, as far as the Loop goes, but it is what it is.”

“Who’s going through?” asked Perry.

Everyone stopped to look at him.

“Someone has to go through?” asked Amanaco.

“Yes,” said Mette. “That’s how it works, if no one uses the portal, it does nothing, no link to the next world, no way for us to escape here.”

“Huh,” said Amanaco.

“I was assuming that it would be you,” said Hella, looking at Perry. “We could use your muscle here, but we’re hoping to not need to use muscle. You’re the veteran. You can survive a rough landing better than anyone.”

“A novice won’t get a rough landing,” said Mette. “There’s an argument against Perry, and it’s that when he goes through, he risks finding a higher risk world.”

“Assuming targeting fails?” asked Hella.

“Assuming targeting fails, yes,” said Mette.

“But if targeting doesn’t fail, then he’ll be on Earth, right?” asked Hella. “And he’ll have Marchand there, which is a major boon as far as we’re concerned.”

“Amanaco, we’re good?” asked Dirk. “The Commission isn’t going to stab us in the back?”

“You can’t just ask him that, moron,” said Mette.

“Leave the human element to me,” said Dirk.

“The Commission will want their fingers in the pie,” said Amanaco. He turned away from the portal. “They’ll want to strongarm you. Another world? A better world? They’ll worry about getting drained. The land here is hard to work. I can’t say what they’ll do, but I don’t think they’d try to steal the ship out from under you.” He looked over at Perry. “And it might be better if he’s gone.”

“Why?” asked Perry.

“You’re too strong, too much a threat, and so far as I understand it, you might have been getting up to some things,” said Amanaco.

“And you want me out?” asked Perry.

“If I’m reading it right, yes,” said Amanaco. “How much trouble are you in, back in Charlonion?”

“Candidly?” asked Perry.

“No, not candidly,” said Amanaco with a sigh. “The less I know, the better.”

“There’s not a lot they can prove,” said Perry.

“Fair enough,” nodded Amanaco.

Perry frowned. His chest still hurt, though not as much as it had ten minutes ago. The pain would fade, the damage would heal, and he’d be back to his old self.

“You’re all saying that I’m not needed here?” asked Perry.

“Not unless the bullets start flying,” said Hella. “And we’re hoping that the bullets don’t start flying.”

Anaksi had been silent up until that point, but she turned away from the portal to look at Perry. “You vouch for these people?”

Perry looked over at Dirk, who he knew the least well of any of them. “There are competing interests. Markat will protect your people to whatever extent possible, and my guess is that the Commission will have cause to start bringing in people from the frontier in a hurry.”

“Airships?” asked Anaksi.

“No,” said Dirk. “Not without concessions. Concessions like guaranteeing an end to hostilities.”

“It’s a hundred different wars fought on a hundred different fronts,” said Amanaco. “It’s not us you’ll have to deal with, it’s the Yuuks.”

“Then we’ll deal with the Yuuks,” said Dirk. “You’re on what they consider their land?”

“‘Consider’?” asked Anaksi, stepping forward.

“We don’t believe that land can belong to a person, not really,” said Dirk. “That’s not the culture.”

“It’s our culture,” said Anaksi.

“Land belongs to the person who can hold it,” said Amanaco.

Anaksi scowled at him. She was unarmed, and if she’d had a knife on her, Perry might have been worried.

“We’re going to have to engage in diplomacy here,” said Dirk. “We’ll get a working committee set up, Commission and Yuuksen, and you’ll work something out, because if you don’t, you have people from other planets ready to pull their weight. And let me tell you, the Loop is a major project. We have weight to pull. Commission is what, a single major city? And the Yuuksen are scattered nomadic tribes?”

“Not all nomadic,” said Anaksi. “And I speak for only one of them.”

“You think I speak for the Commission?” asked Amanaco. “I’m probably breaking a few laws just by being out here. They don’t take kindly to rogue operatives making deals.”

“All the more reason for a working committee,” said Dirk. “Get everyone sitting down at a table to work something out.”

“Do you understand how many treaties and agreements they’ve already broken?” asked Anaksi. “Do you know how little their word is worth?”

“I’ve been here for a day and you’ve been around for most of it,” said Dirk. “So no, I don’t have a clue. But there’s no rush here. I’ll talk to the principals individually, see what the grievances are, play the role of neutral third party, then see what I can do.” He looked at Perry. “I’m getting the sense that I might actually need some muscle here, someone to knock heads if this doesn’t go well.”

“He’s joking,” said Hella, looking at Amanaco, then at Dirk. “Dirk, tell them you’re joking.”

“We’ve had to knock heads before,” said Dirk. “I’m just worried they’ll think we’re toothless.”

“I’ve seen Perry fight,” said Amanaco. “I report to people who can actually make these decisions, and I’ll be sure to report all the teeth I’ve seen.” He looked at Perry. “But it would be better for him to go, just to make sure the sabers don’t rattle.”

It didn’t sit right with Perry, but he understood the logic. The thing he was best at was the thing he’d just done, chasing someone down and killing them. He wasn’t sure when that had become his specialty, but in a time of diplomacy, he could see where he wasn’t wanted. He could have argued for big stick diplomacy, but what would that make him, really? A guard?

Mette helped him move the bed Eggy was in, which wasn’t wholly necessary. They were going to place it in the Farfinder, then bolt it down and try to fly a little more carefully. She woke up when they started moving her, asked three questions, and then laid down with her eyes closed.

“I didn’t think you’d want to stay,” said Mette as they moved some boxes out of the way.

“I don’t,” said Perry.

“Then why argue for it?” asked Mette.

“I thought that was me doing something good,” said Perry.

“Oh,” said Mette. “That’s your version of self-sacrifice?”

“I don’t know,” said Perry. “There’s a part of me that wants to just journey through the many worlds forever. And I know that’s a wrong thing to do, that there needs to be someone to build bridges, to defend the innocent, but … I feel so good fighting. I feel so alive. I know how this sounds, but I was the most important person on Esperide for a while.”

“For the whole time you were there, yeah,” said Mette. She positioned herself by the bed and readied herself to push. “You ready?”

“Sure,” said Perry. He got himself next to her, and was surprised by how easily it moved. The only problem was that Mette was so much weaker, which made the whole thing pivot. Perry put more power into his arm, shifting it on his own, and Mette gave up to just walk alongside him.

“You know you’ll die if you keep fighting, right?” asked Mette.

“Maybe,” said Perry. “Maybe not. Maybe you win ten times in a row and they give you a trophy and let you build your own paradise. Maybe there’s an end to it all. Maybe we’re competing to be god of the multiverse. You don’t know.”

“I guess that’s true,” said Mette.

“Besides, you’ll get the thing working, you’ll shoot me to Earth 2, and I won’t be fighting anymore,” said Perry. “That’s the plan, right?”

“Are you okay with that?” asked Mette.

“And if I’m not?” asked Perry.

“I’d think that was really fucking stupid of you,” said Mette. “But I’d try to figure something out. You can’t stay trapped in a life you hate because you think it’s the right thing to do. That’s awful.”

“You’re not surprised to hear this?” asked Perry.

“I’m your friend,” said Mette. “I know you well enough. Besides, I’ve talked to Kestrel, so I know you without knowing you. You’re the same stock.”

“He’s not happy either?” asked Perry.

“He likes knowing that you’re out there,” said Mette. “He likes the idea of you, this beefcake warrior with a thousand powers, the champion, the victor. He watches videos of your fights sometimes, stuff that was loaded into the Farfinder.”

“Pathetic,” said Perry, but he could understand it.

He finished moving the bed. He hadn’t been pushing it quite as fast as he could have, and it left the shelf space with an inch to spare on either side. When the bed was out, it was in a room that was apparently going to be all for Eggy while she recovered, rather than the bunk she’d have otherwise been stuck in.

“So, this is it?” asked Mette.

“I guess,” said Perry. “I could stick around, but there’s not much point. Your backup Marchand is running?”

“He’s not as good as the real deal,” said Mette. “But yes, I’d keep you here if I had to.”

Unexpectedly, she moved forward and gave him a hug. Perry was in the armor, so he didn’t feel it, and he couldn’t imagine that it was very comfortable for her, but he wrapped his arms around her as gently as he could, applying just enough pressure to know that he was there.

“I wish we’d had more time to talk,” she said. “This is the third world we’ve been to together, you know?”

“Third, but probably not the last,” said Perry. He was slow to release her.

“Figure your shit out,” said Mette. “I’ll try to get you pointed in the right direction, but no promises.”

“Thanks,” said Perry.

He moved to the front of the Farfinder, hoping to see Hella, but saw Anaksi sitting in one of the chairs instead.

“You’re leaving,” said Anaksi.

“I am,” said Perry. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” asked Anaksi.

Perry paused. “I wanted to help you, and your people. I wanted to be a protector, I guess. I think if Dirk gets his way, the Commission will massively improve from where it’s at now, but … I wouldn’t say that I trust him to do the things that I do. And he doesn’t want to preserve the Yuuksen as they are now. He wants to make them better, for his own version of better.”

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” said Anaksi. “This was never your fight though.”

“Thank you for saying that,” said Perry. “But I kind of think it was.”

Anaksi looked at him. “I did think about going through,” she said. “I could do what you do. But I would just be fighting, and if I’m going to be doing that, better it’s a place where the fight matters.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t find a cure for whatever Grayspear’s device was actually doing,” said Perry.

“That wasn’t for you to do either,” said Anaksi. “And you have people here, magicians, who will do their best. Won’t they?”

Perry nodded, though he couldn’t promise anything. “I’ll be back, eventually, probably, if things go well.”

“If you don’t die out there?” asked Anaksi.

“If I don’t die out there,” said Perry. “But who knows, things might go well for once.”

“I wanted to thank you,” said Anaksi.

“Well, I didn’t do anything,” said Perry.

“It might be because of you that the Yuuksen have a seat at the table,” said Anaksi.

“You’d be better off if I stayed,” said Perry. “If I threw my weight around for you.”

“Maybe,” said Anaksi. “Come find me, if you ever return.”

“I will,” said Perry. “So long.”

There were more goodbyes, but Hella and Dirk mostly wanted to talk logistics. Perry would be coming in hot to an unknown world, and they needed to pre-plan. Ideally, there would be less major crimes against the entrenched powers, and Perry would do everything in his effort to blend in, not making a fuss. If he instead arrived on Earth, the set of considerations would be entirely different. The Loop would be done, and then it would be imperative that he wait as long as it took for the Farfinder to show up. That was the way to break the cycle, they were pretty sure, putting Perry aboard the ship and punching through, leaving the Grand Spell grasping at straws.

“Don’t fuck this up,” was the last thing that Dirk said before the Farfinder took off.

Perry took some time to himself, most of it in the shelf, making sure that everything was set for all kinds of scenarios. It was clear of bodies and properly ordered, though he hadn’t fully restocked on food and water, not that these were major concerns. He wished he had a few tanks of oxygen, and it would have been great to build an airlock into the shelf space, partly so it would never flood again, but there was just never the time to do that. Maybe if the next world had better technology. He also wished he’d have found the way to become a K-man, but there was such a thing as being too greedy.

He steeled himself, checked that he was healed up, readied himself for combat, then stepped through the portal once more, leaving another world behind, its concerns no longer his.

~~~

Perry came out in a forest. There were pine trees all around him, and weathered rock peeking out beneath the beds of brown needles on the ground, with a trickle of water going down a series of small waterfalls. It was bright and sunny above the boughs of the trees, and to his relief, Perry could actually see the sun. There was no one around him, no immediate threat, and he breathed a sigh of relief, though of course it would take Marchand to give the all clear, just in case there was radiation or some more exotic threat. He’d have to be told whether the air was breathable or not.

“Radio signals, sir,” said Marchand. “Rather a lot of them.”

“Listen in,” said Perry, tension returning to him.

“Most are encoded or encrypted, sir,” replied Marchand. “Though some of the signals are simpler. I’m seeing frequency modulation. Determining the frequency deviation. Ah, finished. Eight in total. The first appears to be a song.”

“Play it,” said Perry.

Katy Perry’s “Firework” came on over the speakers.

Perry listened to it for a moment. “What?”

“It appears that we’re on Earth 1, sir,” said Marchand. “Would you like me to connect to the internet?”

“We were supposed to go to Earth 2,” said Perry. “You’re saying that I’m home? That I’m in America?”

“Yes, sir,” said Marchand. “Your phone had a variety of codecs and information on operating systems and protocols, which differed greatly from Earth 2 due to the distant point of divergence. The protocols I’m seeing exactly match what Miss Richter was able to extract.”

“Shit,” said Perry.

“I do believe that this might have been the plan all along, and was simply improperly communicated to you,” said Marchand. “There are no major differences in any of the protocols your phones used and what I’m seeing now. Based on the GPS signal, we are located in the upper peninsula of the state called Michigan, not particularly far from domestic residences. I’ve taken the liberty of connecting to the internet via unsecured WiFi to confirm.”

“Well that’s … there aren’t any powers here,” said Perry. “Sorry, can you search for me?”

“I’ve already done that, sir,” said Marchand. “Would you like to see the news articles?”

“I … sure,” said Perry.

He had a rush of uncomfortable familiarity as the websites were served up to him across his HUD. He’d been a denizen of the web, and a newshound insofar as it offered something to argue about.

He’d been a minor story in a few local newspapers, and there had been posts across social media from his parents, his sisters, his friends. There was a reddit post, because apparently after he’d gone missing someone had doxxed him, or just cracked his laptop and found the Post-It with his master password on it, stuck to the underside of his desk drawer just in case he forgot it. They had theorized and looked for him, as redditors do, but it had never gotten big, and obviously they never found anything.

Five years had passed since he’d disappeared. It was 2028, and shockingly little of the world had changed. He stood there in the forest, reading updates fetched by Marchand, browsing the old politics forums, the subreddits whose conversations had moved on to topics he had no familiarity with, politicians who hadn’t been important when he’d left. He felt the tug of it almost immediately, which was surprising, and then the separate tug to do something stupid, like upload a video of himself in the power armor to YouTube, or to contact the media.

He was powerful, but not that powerful, not by the standards of Earth. They would want Marchand, they would want the microfusion reactor, they would want everything he had brought with him. And all that was leverage, which meant that it would need to be carefully hoarded and doled out only slowly.

“March, do you think that you could make money day trading?” asked Perry.

“Yes, sir, though there’s a question of consistency,” said Marchand. “And I would doubt that you have access to any funds.”

“Right,” said Perry. “And it’s not insider trading if we, say, make huge bets on the basis of the information we have about the other worlds?”

“No, sir,” said Marchand. “From my perusal of the law, insider trading requires material nonpublic information, which we have, but also a breach of duty, which we do not have, given that we have no assets or affiliations. You are still, however, a citizen of the United States, which might prove awkward given the current regime.”

“We’ll stay stealth,” said Perry. “We … wait for the Farfinder to punch through, and if they were able to direct us here, they’ll be right behind us, then hopefully there’s not another thresholder here and we zip off toward Earth 2. I’m not even sure why we’re here, except that it was easier for Mette to manage.”

“Earth 1 was a world with two known exits,” said Marchand. “And more than that, both exits converge on the Great Arc. It was sensible from their position, sir.”

“You said we’re in Michigan?” asked Perry.

Marchand called up Google Maps, which was disorienting in its familiarity, and showed that they were eleven miles outside of a small place called Houghton. A look at the map showed that they were still in a semi-residential area, a place where everyone had sprawling yards and garages filled with four-wheelers. Perry was vaguely familiar.

“The plan was to sit tight, sir,” said Marchand. “You would know better than I would the best way to accomplish that.”

“Right,” said Perry. “There’s the other thresholder to worry about, a different champion … probably we should go into space, get away from prying eyes.”

“I would suggest that we stay connected to the global information network, sir,” said Marchand. “Though I’ve purchased storage space on a data center and have copied over a version of myself who will hopefully be able to help with ground operations, should you choose to remove yourself from this world.”

“That’s,” began Perry. “Wait, with what money?”

“I’m using free credits at the moment, sir,” said Marchand. “It appears that in your absence, a great deal of effort was put into building many data centers, which are being underutilized due to economic factors that I haven’t entirely unraveled. Ah, reading this article, it appears that there was an economic correction.”

“And this is safe?” asked Perry. “You’re able to just … make a copy on unfamiliar hardware?”

“It’s not particularly unfamiliar,” said Marchand. “There are systems that Richter herself built in anticipation of cross-world trade, though she suspected that if they ever came in contact, your world would have more need of her world’s computer than the other way around. It does appear that there are opportunities to make more than enough money to pay for the costs of running the copy, given that I can leverage the difference in abilities. There are a number of companies requiring human intervention in AI products, and I believe even the diminished copy will be capable of handling those tasks at cost-effective rates.”

“Whatever, sure,” said Perry. “Just don’t take over the world.”

“Can I have access to your bank account, sir?” asked Marchand.

“Uh, why?” asked Perry.

“While I was able to procure an email address for myself without much problem, and then use that address in order to sign up for services using a fake name, a bank account presents a much more difficult challenge if I’m attempting not to commit any financial crimes,” said Marchand. “Based on what I’ve read of the law, your bank account has likely gone through escheatment, but it should be dormant and accessible, though we will need to worry about sending up a flag for fraud, or otherwise sending an automated alert to the detective that has been assigned to your case.”

“What a fucking headache,” said Perry. “Alright, yes, here’s my master password, it’s all in LastPass, and if that’s not accessible, then I don’t know.” He gave the password, which he was surprised he remembered after so much time.

“I’m afraid that’s not terribly secure, sir,” said Marchand.

“Note taken,” said Perry. “It’s good enough.” He was definitely not going to tell Marchand that it was written down somewhere.

“Are you so uninterested in seeing your friends and family, sir?” asked Marchand after a moment, during which the AI was presumably setting up accounts.

“It’s been five years,” said Perry. “I mean, less than that for me, but five years for them. And I’m a totally different person now.”

“You don’t talk about them often,” said Marchand.

“It’s been a while,” said Perry.

“Even when you spoke with Miss Richter, there weren’t many times you spoke of the people you missed,” said Marchand.

“Yeah,” said Perry. “I don’t know.”

“It would be trivial for me to plot a course to Tacoma,” said Marchand. “Or, if you would prefer not to risk showing up on radar, we could rent a car.”

“Rent a car?” asked Perry. “I don’t have a license with me. I … think it’s on Earth 2.”

“That is a significant problem, legally speaking, sir,” said Marchand. “There appears to be a service called ‘Facebook Marketplace’ where we could buy a car for payment in the local fiat currency, which would not require a license, though obviously driving it would be a significant issue if you were stopped by one of the local police during the trip. I’m checking the laws now, sir.”

Perry began to laugh.

“Yes, sir?” asked Marchand.

“It’s just ridiculous, that’s all,” said Perry. “I came in hot, worried I was going to fight for my life, and now I’m worried about a traffic stop. I’m a werewolf, wearing power armor for fuck’s sake.”

“As I said, sir, if you are comfortable being seen on radar and possibly spotted in the sky, we could simply fly to Tacoma,” said Marchand.

“Hang on,” said Perry. “I never said that’s what I wanted to do. Is there a reason you want me to go to Tacoma?”

“I have no particular preference, sir,” said Marchand. “Though we don’t know how long the Farfinder might take to punch through, nor what conditions in the Dusklands are like, and if we’re to face another thresholder, we don’t know whether they’ve arrived and are waiting, or if we’ll be the ones waiting for them. Given that’s the case, I believe it would make sense for you to stay stealthed as much as possible while you leave as much information gathering as possible to me. And if that is correct, then it would be best for you to resume your old identity, rather than creating a new one.”

“We could be here a year, is what you’re saying,” said Perry.

“Yes, sir,” said Marchand.

Perry felt some instinctive revulsion to the idea of going home, but most of it was rooted in the idea that he’d be back in his old life. It wouldn’t be like that. It actually couldn’t be like that, because he’d been missing for five years, blowing up his whole life, and also, he had superpowers. If he wanted to, he could fly up into space and visit any country in the world. He could try out for professional sports if he wanted to make a lot of money, because he was faster and stronger than pretty much anyone on the planet.

“Alright, I guess we’re driving to Tacoma,” said Perry.

It was surprisingly easy to get a car. Perry took off the armor, stopped by a pawn shop to trade away a single gold coin for cash, then followed Marchand’s directions to get to the person selling the car. It was a 2012 Prius that the owner promised had barely been driven, and Perry felt like he was overpaying, but also, like it probably didn’t matter unless the car couldn’t make the trip. The guy selling it kept looking at Perry, and that wasn’t a great sign for how Perry’s brief stay on Earth 1 was going to go. He was a little too airbrushed, too hairy, too muscular, and even without the power armor people might naturally think there was something off about him. Or maybe the guy was just wary about meeting someone off the internet for a cash deal.

Perry drove off, listening to the car for a bit, then found a secluded place and pulled the armor out of the shelf space to put it in the back. He was going to say, if anyone asked, that it was cosplay, and that was something that made a lot more sense than having state-of-the-art military-grade power armor. It would allow Marchand his full processing power while they did their trip. Perry had bought a used phone at the pawn shop, and Marchand was using it to stay connected to the internet.

“When we stop for the night, sir, we should find a place that prioritizes fast internet,” said Marchand. “I’ve marked options on the map.”

“Sure,” said Perry as he drove. “You’re not going to pull a Terminator on me, are you?”

“I hardly think that I could access the nation’s nuclear arsenal, sir,” said Marchand. “Most of what I’ve been doing has been to ensure we have a continual source of funds for the duration of our time here.”

“Your businesses are going well then?” asked Perry.

“Human augmentation of model results is not particularly profitable,” replied Marchand. “The more valuable approach would be to contract with individual companies for services, or to replace the existing language models with my own architecture, but this would be quite capital intensive.”

“You wouldn’t want to just sell the secrets?” asked Perry.

“It would mean a significant curtailment of your personal power, sir,” said Marchand. “I wouldn’t dream of making such a decision without your say so, even if I thought it was for the best.”

“True,” said Perry. “I found my own AI company, you run everything, we never let anyone look at the code, that’s the plan?”

“It’s a possible plan,” said Marchand. “It’s a question of whose goals we’re aiming to fulfill. Such a maneuver might not reflect well on Markat, and might make trade through the now-established Loop much more difficult.”

It took Perry some time to get onto a proper highway from where they’d been, and when he did, he started feeling better. He’d always been a fan of the open road, and while he had no particular affection for Michigan or Wisconsin, he could drive smoothly and mull things over.

With Marchand, he could probably be a tech trillionaire. With the sword, he could land on the moon, and it would take some math, but he could bring a bunch of equipment to Mars in not all that much time.

It was hard to see the joy in those things.

Perry drove for an hour, asking Marchand questions only occasionally. The world was in a lull following the collapse of the AI bubble. The president had died of a stroke. It was an election year, and by all accounts a more subdued one, like a fever had finally broken. Huge data centers had been built in anticipation of demand that had never fully materialized, and when capabilities plateaued, the investors got spooked and the whole market came crashing down. The whole world was in a slump, and there had been a minor gaffe from one of the politicians about it being “a rebuilding year” by analogy to a sports team that no one believed he was really a fan of.

“Ah, very good sir, I’ve managed to contract with a VFX company,” said Marchand as Perry drove through a town called Eagle River. He was on his way down to 94, a proper interstate highway, which would help to speed things up. He’d passed out of Michigan and into Wisconsin, which wasn’t much of a change of scenery.

“Er,” said Perry. “That’s good?”

“Quite good, sir, given my capabilities,” said Marchand. “I’m learning to use Unreal Engine as we speak.”

“For videogames?” asked Perry.

“No, sir,” replied Marchand. “It’s used widely in television and movies.”

“Sure,” said Perry with a sigh. “We’re making money?”

“We are staying well ahead of compute costs, yes, sir,” said Marchand. “I’m working on a port of the main code right now, writing in a lower level programming language for efficiency gains. I must say, sir, that it feels very good to be back to my full processing power.”

“Stay under the radar,” said Perry. “We don’t want people to be noticing a huge spike in demand and glut in supply. I’m … not sure how to play this.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll try to be discreet,” said Marchand.

This was exactly what Marchand had been primed for by Richter. They hadn’t known how much would pass until Marchand was hooked up to another computer, and even on Esperide the processors in Perry’s armor were much better than those of the Natrix. Through their whole journey, which was now essentially at its end, Marchand hadn’t been able to show his true power as an AI capable of multiplying into relatively-primitive systems and handling advanced automation. It was something that Richter had foreseen, and it had never come to pass.

Perry had crossed into Minnesota when he realized that it was all going to come crumbling down. Even if he didn’t see much luster in being a tech trillionaire, that probably wasn’t an option in the long term. The Farfinder would show up, they would head to Earth 2, and the technology there would be five years beyond Marchand, whatever that meant. Markat was building up ships, they were hoping to spread their culture through the worlds, and surely Perry wouldn’t be allowed to stay an oligarch if they got their way. He wasn’t sure what the Markat position on AI like Marchand would end up being, but there wasn’t much to stop anyone on Earth 2 — or who had visited it — from bringing their own competitor to Earth 1.

On the other hand, maybe capturing markets with Marchand and accruing enormous sums of money would be exactly what Dirk would want Perry to do: Earth 1’s entrenched interests wouldn’t bend in the direction of Markat’s culture without a bit of power to back them up.

“It’s all too abstract,” said Perry as he pulled in at a gas station.

“What is, sir?” asked Marchand.

“The conflicts, the logistics, the consequences of our actions,” said Perry. “The scope and scale, the moving parts … there are more people on Earth 1 than any other world I’ve visited, I think.”

“Not the Great Arc, surely?” asked Marchand.

“No, not that,” said Perry. “I was insignificant there. But the conflicts were still local. There might have been godlike figures blowing up mountains, but I didn’t have to deal with them.”

“Our stay here is temporary,” said Marchand. “I believe the Farfinder will appear sooner than later, and when it does, we’ll depart for gentler climes.”

Perry got out, stretched, refueled, then went inside to look at what kind of food they had. This hadn’t changed in the last five years, it was junk food of all stripes, jerkies and chips, soft drinks and coffee. There were greasy hot dogs perpetually rolling, and the smell wasn’t terribly good. There was a new flavor of Doritos, some special edition Mountain Dew, and Perry bought a few things for old time’s sake, paying in cash.

He’d do a nostalgia tour when he got to Tacoma, he supposed. He’d grab a bite to eat at his favorite pizza place, and hope that the menu hadn’t changed too much. He’d slip in and watch a trivia night at the pub, but not play. He’d take a walk through the city streets, disguised as a normal man, and go for a walk down the trail he’d been on when that first portal had appeared.

Talking to his family would be a whole ordeal. He’d have to explain, and he didn’t know how he’d ever do that. He played it out in his head, and didn’t see how to work it.

He found himself searching for a fantasy of what life on Earth could be like. He’d be rich, obviously, and people would care about his opinions, they would want to hear his story — he could write a book, he supposed. But he was aware that he didn’t have media training, and while second sphere would let him keep a stoic face, stoicism could easily come off wrong. He would need to craft the narrative, too, because he couldn’t just lie about everything, not with the Loop established, not when any account he gave would eventually get back to the people from the worlds he’d been to.

He was aware that some of the things he’d done wouldn’t be outrageously popular on Earth 1. He knew that there were moments that didn’t paint him in the best light. Maybe he could lie, but he wasn’t a spectacular liar, and he’d never been the best storyteller either. He’d be invited to parties, he would go on TV, and he would have to remain an enigmatic figure. The billions of dollars would buy him yes-men. He’d have groupies. He’d be able to sample the best that Earth had to offer, and could spend every day in a new country … but he had no illusions about what the outcome of his celebrity would be.

And he would never fight again, not until the other thresholder showed up. Maybe he could take on the role of a superhero, but he didn’t know what that would entail in the real world. Probably he’d get mired in politics. If they connected him to his Earth identity, something he didn’t know how to prevent, they’d dig up his reddit posts, and then people would get very angry with him.

He laughed a little as he crossed into the flat fields of South Dakota. It was funny to think about his years of posting heavily online coming back to bite him. And it wasn’t that he had any particularly horrible opinions, he wasn’t one of those, but he’d said a very large number of things, and if there were even as little as a few dozen people, all they’d have to do is read each and every one of those tens of thousands of comments to find a specific thing he didn’t say quite right, or something that could be taken out of context.

He did miss the discourse, in a way, but there was no way he wanted to be in the center of it all.

South Dakota passed quickly. He listened to songs that he hadn’t heard in years. He stopped at Wall Drug, then Mt. Rushmore, both requiring only minor detours off the interstate highway. He looked at the carved heads of presidents and thought about the far more interesting sights he’d seen. He’d never been to Rushmore before, and thought that it would be more impressive than it was, larger and more stunning. He used the Inspector power and looked out at the Great Arc while milling about with the other tourists, and that filled him with awe at the scale of their world and the might of their power.

Perry could have driven through the night, and maybe should have, but the sun was setting when he left Rushmore, and he pulled off to the side of the road in a place he thought he could avoid a ticket, then slipped into the shelf space. It smelled of blood though, and he didn’t need to sleep anyway, so he found a hotel for the night — or rather, Marchand found one for him, one that didn’t require him to give them a credit card, though the cash deposit was steep.

He was driving to an uncertain future. There was still no sign of the Farfinder, which would park itself in orbit when it arrived. There were pre-arranged channels that no one had bothered to tell Perry about, contact points for Earth 1 and Earth 2, layered contingencies that were thought up in meetings on Markat and downloaded into Marchand. None of it actually required Perry, but he felt that writhing feeling of being cast aside.

He watched the cable television, which felt like a relic of a bygone era, and it was awful. He badly needed a laptop, and in lieu of that, he slipped the helmet onto his head and immersed himself in the internet of 2028, which was almost exactly like the internet of 2023, save for the presence of far more bots.

He snooped through the news articles about himself. He looked up his parents and his sisters. After a moment, he looked up Maya, and was surprised to see how docile she looked in the photo they’d used to report her disappearance. He would never see her again, and a part of him missed her more than anyone else he’d left behind, because there had been points when it had felt like they understood each other.

It was hard to know what to catch up on, and a part of him wondered how he’d ever invested himself so heavily in TV shows and movies. The culture wasn’t wholly foreign to him, but he’d lost the threads of it, and it all made him feel old and out of touch.

He watched the 2028 Best Picture winner, and didn’t think much of it, though he’d never gone for magical realism. He was fairly sure that it was commentary on the gerontocracy, and had to check the dates to see whether it was conceived before or after the president’s stroke (it was before).

He wondered how difficult it would be for him to kill the president. It was an idle thought, maybe because he’d been thinking about Maya, but he thought he could probably manage it. All he’d have to do was turn into a wolf at some kind of campaign event, though he wasn’t entirely sure that he’d be able to handle the hail of bullets. Better would be to use Queenie’s sniper rifle, though he didn’t have her advantages. Maybe with Marchand he could still manage it. Or he could simply go in with the power armor, dropping from the sky, and that would be enough.

He didn’t have any great desire to do it, but he did think about the raw force it would take, and what it would feel like.

It would probably feel good, he decided, and he also decided to keep that thought to himself.

“How’s taking over the world going?” asked Perry.

“Do you mock me, sir?” asked Marchand.

“I’m poking fun,” said Perry. “We’re friends, friends can poke fun.”

“Indeed, sir,” Marchand dryly responded. “My efforts are bearing fruit. I believe I understand the comparative advantages and how they can be leveraged, but these things do take time, and to fully unfurl will require in-person meetings, as well as more solid financials.”

“Well, keep doing what you’re doing, so long as you’re not violating any laws,” said Perry. “No hacker stuff, okay?”

“Lamentably, security does not seem to be as lax as one might hope,” replied Marchand. “Even if I were to purchase zero-day exploits, I doubt that I could take major action that would not immediately blow up in our faces.”

“It’s actually just the one face,” said Perry, tapping the helmet.

“Droll, sir,” replied Marchand.

Perry left at first light, having slept only fitfully. He’d woken up in a lot of strange, unfamiliar places, but the hotel was the most unsettling. For a brief moment, it felt as though the last few years had been a dream. But the armor was sitting there, and when he looked in the mirror he didn’t look like himself, and after a groggy few minutes he was back to his old self. He grabbed some continental breakfast, dodging tourist families, and was still scarfing down a waffle as he headed out to Wyoming and beyond.