Antigreen

It began with an invitation to a room: a message from Annette that blasted Callie's phone with brightness when she was getting out of bed–or rather, when It rolled her out, still half-stiff and sandy-eyed, to make ready for her shift. Upon arising, she squinted down at the battered, blackened rectangle upon her palm in acataleptic daze–her faculties for reading still delayed in the waking of her mind.

"Hey y'all," it began, "Motoyori later?" The silver bubble of its text was punctuated by a summery emoji with toothy grin and hands outstretched. Calliope understood just three out of the four words it contained. Oof–a grade of seventy-five was barely passing, she remembered. Much like she was barely passing–and with that self-deprecation there was a percussion on her forehead, like she'd been flicked by fingers tipped with lacquer hard as adamant.

"Ow!" She exclaimed, reaching up to rub the spot. At her vision's leftmost edge, Esther materialized out of the gloom: black, white and sinister, leaning on the open doorjamb of her closet.

"Good morning!" It returned, feigning a yawn and stretch that put slender, spidered fingers to the sky. Callie felt heat flow into her cheeks–such flow was customary. Less than a minute after waking and already It was messing with her. That was either a new record, or it begged the question of whether it was even less than that: she stabbed the air in Its direction with her phone, like a remote to a disobedient TV.

"Do you know anything about this?" she interrogated. Esther's hands lowered and crossed over her chest; the black satin sleeves of her pajama set settled wide over thin wrists. Callie's eye was drawn by detail to where white stitching traced its way around the cuff, along the sleeve, to line a disheveled collar exposing purest porcelain–in that pale prism it was captured yet again. She'd forgotten what she'd asked It.

"The text? Oh, just wait," It evaded with a smile. "Did you sleep well?"

"Like you wouldn't know–" Callie began, tearing her eyes away, before she was interrupted by a "bloop" from her phone. Inspecting it, she realized the reason for the prior plural "you" or "y'all": a second silver bubble appeared below Annette's, bearing the tag of "Mikey":

"What's Motoyori?" he wrote, with a silly face showcasing its tongue.

Bloop. Not three seconds later:

"stfu, i'm literally right next to you right now??" from Annette, again. Ettie giggled; Callie groaned. She tossed the phone onto the sheets and flourished her free hand in the air; It rolled Its eyes at the semaphore and turned to face the closet's interior, pretending to examine the hanged rows of wrinkled flannels past, present and future. With privacy, Callie rolled out the drawers from underneath her bed and dug through the mess of clothes for underwear as her phone continued to emit a series of erratic blips. Once changed, she straightened up and claimed it, to ascertain what was said:

"no seriously what," from Erika, of all recipients.

Mikey: "omg hey girl"

Anette: "^^ ignore him. hi! it's an escape room thing. In Jamaica Plain."

Erika: "wait that sounds fun! I've never done one of those!"

Mikey: "oh they're great. little escape from reality, right?" and a winking face.

Erika: "hell, yeah. tonight?? I don't have clinical! so that works"

Anette: "rad. wait… Callie are you even getting these??"

Erika: "uhh idk if she's awake lmao"

Calliope glanced at Ettie for approval and received only a shrug. Her thumbs thus flew over the keyboard:

Callie: "Yeah i'm up"

Bloop. Mikey 'loved' your message.

Mikey: "hey there miss green bubble"

Annette: "ok good, wasn't sure if a group text would work for you"

Callie mulled over Mikey's meaning, wondering if she'd misheard. A flurry of reactions explained it for her in time:

Bloop. Annette 'liked your message. Erika 'liked' your message. Mikey sent a sticker: https://tinyurl.com/cmklohly

"Ugh. They're making fun of me," she sighed. Ettie flashed onto the bed, sitting cross-legged; the loose-fitting button up fluttered with false movement, dipping low enough to show even more sternum. A dithered bruise of raspberry remained there from the night prior: when Callie had complied after It ordered her to bite into the angel-flesh and suck into her cheeks. She reddened at that; her cheeks imitated that same sanguine, like a camouflaged chameleon.

Ettie watched over her be-fluster-ment and smiled. "I'll send them a sticker back, if you like," she teased. An intricate, mortifying pattern flickered over Callie's retina.

"No!" Callie said quickly. "Also–did you root my phone? I don't remember being able to see Apple stickers at all."

"Yes, but that's not why, actually: I'm fetching the link for you. I'm so nice." It beamed at her with closed eyes and shimmied shoulders. Calliope wondered for a moment what User-Agent Ettie would use to make HTTP requests, before returning her attention to the phone.

Callie: "yeah I get the texts on Android it's just a little cursed lol"

Annette: "again, rad. so can you come tho??"

Callie: "no, I have to work–"

I'll call you out. Stella will cover your shift.

"I dunno," Calliope mused, fixing a stray strand of bedhead. "It's a lot of people, right? I've never done an escape room before. And I'm not sure if you're gonna, like–"

In another silent clap of lightning It disappeared from atop her sheets and reformed against the door leading to the living room. A tan hiking boot's gray outsoles stomped in the center of a doorpane, where white paint was peeling; following the lithe bends of Ettie's legs, past the narrow ankles, Callie's eyes found cuffed khaki shorts, a beige vest decorated with a myriad of pins–none of which were legible–a fuchsia checkered neckerchief over Its shoulders, and her own angled half-moon shades on Its nose and ears–which It dipped down with one hand to peer up at her. She recognized the outfit as a liberal interpretation of a girl scout uniform, worn by someone who'd never had a childhood to speak of and would only sell cookies door-to-door if they were overbaked with fatal quantities of cinnamon.

"–behave?" Ettie answered. "Where's your sense of adventure? Of mystery? I'm more than prepared to solve any puzzle that's thrown in our general direction."

"Huh. I guess you could, yeah," Callie said, shrinking, aware of how she was taller than It. "But won't that be boring for you? It's not like the Necronomicon or anything."

"No. If the puzzles fail to entertain, you'll certainly prevail. You all will."

"Oh." As much as she abhorred social interaction, Esther adored it; It took pleasure in navigating the mazes of decorum her autistic self got lost in. Ariadne she was not–though she supposed Esther was bicorporeal enough to play the minotaur… but before her thoughts could go further astray, movement distracted her: down in her hand, on her phone, Annette was typing…

Bloop.

Annette: "Callie?"

Her eyes rose back up, but only briefly: Ettie was fussing with the loops of the neckerchief to maximize the skin that showed through the vest's cleave. Last night there'd been no vest–only her own hands, shakily cupping Ettie's… no. She looked away; the ceiling was a much less painful and sexy expanse of pale, soft whiteness.

"Okay. The usual rules still apply, yeah? And don't give me all the answers unless I ask, okay? I'm, I was a gifted kid, I went to MISC." She pouted.

"Mm-hm, you're prodigious–in some ways. Maybe not other, baser ones…"

Callie fidgeted. "Shut up. I'm gonna wear something with a collar, just in case any of those hickies you gave me are real, sec." She bent down to the drawer, then typed out a reply as afterthought:

Callie: "yeah, I'll come"

A few excited answers later, she emerged and headed for the door. Ettie was still in the way, leaning on it and cycling her nails through colors of the rainbow.

"You're not gonna wear that the whole time, right?" Callie asked. She failed–as always–to see past the illusion and grab the doorknob covered by Its waist.

Esther revolved her lower body, rising up on one forefoot; Calliope could see how the shorts hugged Its hips and ended just below the vest, showing a stripe of lower back. The back pockets, buttoned with olives–thread-shanks a suitable pimento–did nothing to hide Its vicious curves. "Why; is it distracting?" It sang, with word and hips.

"I'm trying to focus on my friends today, not your butt. It's–"

"Not even real anyway," Ettie mocked. "Go on then. Let this be your escape from my cute ass." She vanished in a puff of cinnamon-scented smoke.

Callie grasped the doorknob. She groaned, and grinned. "Pfft. Yeah. Thanks," she said, and wrenched it open inwards.

﹡﹡﹡

It began with an invitation to a room: an email from Argus that directed Peridot to meet him in the bowels of NatSA's Anomalous Operations building, once she returned over the Mason-Dixon line after her New England excursion. To that essential end, Peridot sped southwestwards down I-90, spurred by alarm bells that tolled more mordantly than any stop along the Massachusetts Turnpike. Inside her glove box was incriminating evidence imperative to her next shot in the duel versus the unknown–the unknowable–where hitherto she'd been forced onto the backfoot.

In some sense she was happy–ecstatic, even–that Sharrow was finally taking this as seriously as she was. When she'd called him from the backseat of her car a second time to fill him in on her discovery, his incessant, distracted typing became broken up and slowed, further and further, until at last she captured his full attention.

"You need to get back at once," he said, and she agreed. "Do not look at the photographs. I'll send a team to retrieve them from your car," he went on, and she affirmed that, too–though she was a bit worried about her car's integrity in the wake of an AO extraction effort. Peridot put aside her apprehension to leave the state in such a state–where Calliope could very well try to flee or worse–and complied with Argus' directions. The problem was slipping through her fingers, however capable they were; she appreciated the additional sets of hands Sharrow could provide. For the eight hour return journey her mind was nearly blank in meditation, preparing to do battle in a more capable war room than her silver minivan.

On reaching Maryland, she pulled into the NatSA complex: a sparse array of parking spaces, asphalt baking in the Southern sun. Two figures in matching pinstripe suits and shades greeted her at her car without a word. The gray fabric sparkled in the light, but before she could discover why, they sprayed her down with a similar glitter that deeply irritated her sinuses. One of the two suits guided her sneezing self to a back entrance, while the other searched through the glove box, pocketed the sunglasses. The entire interaction was a blur: Peridot had little time for thoughts ere she was ushered to the elevator and descending on her own–down, down, down, to the floor of white, sterile tile. The last detail she noticed of the pair was that they both wore white gloves–except the gloves had red stitching on the palms that looked as if it went into the skin; it formed a pattern straight out of a grimoire. What kind of magical cleanup-crew could Sharrow be employing? Whoever they were, they'd thoroughly inflamed her nose. Peridot massaged it, still descending; before long the elevator landed with a clang–a thud–and its doors opened onto a familiar, refrigerated hum and a hallway awash with white fluorescence.

Peridot took a moment to collect herself. In her hurried exit she'd forgotten her laptop and handbag in the car. She wasn't overly attached to either, but hoped for their return, after Sharrow's underlings cleansed them of any residual nonsense. Of nonsense: when she closed her eyes, she could see glitter–was that a side-effect of the spray, earlier? She'd ask Sharrow, shortly. Setting off along the hall, stabbing tiles with her heels again, she counted the doors and sounds she passed: monotonic and increasing, then none. Did anyone else even work in the department? The only AO office she'd ever occupied was Sharrow's… but the conference room he'd told her of (Lyr-A) was on this floor, so maybe the bulk of personnel offices were somewhere else? In addition, there was the cafeteria: she glimpsed it at the end of a hallway at the fork, where chatter drifted down from, but maintained her mission and took the other opening. Finally at the threshold, she took a deep breath and tapped her lanyard on the keypad.

The door bulged outwards, then inwards; it rotated around to make a concave opening. She stepped inside and it revolved behind her, revealing the interior. Oh–so like an airlock, she thought, before her mind was met with overpowering nostalgia: the scent of '70s finished basement carpet, a bit musty, a bit earthy–like her parents' home had smelled. Peridot's perturbation was more than little; she recoiled back, away, until she was drawn forward by Sharrow's narrow voice: "Come in, come in," he said.

If aesthetics were the target, the interior was precise but far from accurate: one could even call it hideous. Behind her, the curved door could no longer be found amidst the pattern of the wall: earthy-brown wallpaper with an argyle pattern of red, sky-blue, and yellow spreading over it. Wall sconces cast incandescent light at regular intervals, their warmth in sharp contrast to the hallway. The room was practically its antithesis, except it wasn't so much a room as it was a suite: the space was a red-floored, taupe-walled, dingy cavern, lined with elliptical tables for two or three or more, all topped with bright green felt like astroturf. Stairs went up to an interior hallway on her left, along which she could see breakout rooms of more modern decoration. Under them, on the left wall, there was a separated space with a disgusting armchair and ottoman and floor lamp–metal bars divided it from the main area. She resisted the urge to exclaim "where the hell am I" and settled for something more tempered:

"Why," she intoned, finding Sharrow seated at the far wall, "are we meeting in a casino?"

The meek man looked up from his laptop; he gestured to the scene. "Oh, ha," he chuckled. "Welcome to Lyr-A, Peridot. Or as I like to call it: the Vegas room, my reasoning for which it seems you would agree with." He motioned towards the chair opposite. She crossed the room and took it; here, her heels made no sharp sound upon the thick carpet.

"Argus," she greeted him. He didn't offer her his hand; both his limbs lowered and fixed the violet necktie of his off-white dress shirt. Now she–with her more monochrome apparel–was the one conflicting with the theme.

"Peridot," he returned. "Thank you for your timely attention to this matter. I just got word–the photographs are being tested as we speak."

"And the glasses, too? Am I free of any contamination?"

"Oh, yes, that," he waved a hand–the nails of which were fresh and purple. "You're lucky on that front. If you had been infected by anything dangerous, the mist shower would have you sneezing up much more than mucus."

Peridot wrinkled her nose–still a bit swollen. "Ugh. Does every remedy in your department have such a grotesque air to it?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"If it's not physical grossness like mucus, it's ethically fraught like spying on dreams, or the BD satellites, or–" she cocked her head at the longhorn skull mounted on the wall, "whatever the decoration of this room is. It's an insult to… decency, surely."

"Yes, exactly!" Sharrow extended a finger out from folded hands. Peridot looked on in confusion. "It's an almost universal insult to the aesthetic capacity of living, thinking creatures."

"I'm sorry–I don't follow."

"I believe… yes, I do have time. So: all of our conference suites are named after stars, as a way to inject a bit of whimsy into meetings. And–as with stars–they aren't all created equal. In decades past, we experimented with a number of architects and design decisions in order to meet various departmental needs. Have you ever been to Vegas, by chance? Before you began working here, that is."

"No. I'm not one for chance… games of it included."

Sharrow nodded. "That tracks well. Well, in my opinion, you missed out. With your intellect you might've been quite talented at blackjack. Counting cards and such. As NatSA employees, we aren't allowed to gamble, naturally–or unnaturally, I guess. Regardless: you've never experienced the marvels of casino architecture. It's designed to keep guests trapped, enticed, enclosed, all to sharpen that house edge a little."

"If brutalism is communist architecture, casinos have the predatory, capitalist counterpart," she quipped.

"Yes, you get it! You know Circus Circus? In Las Vegas–or Paradise, proper? Not very popular, but nevermind–that same architect designed this room. Except, despite the green felt tables and general gambling paraphernalia, we're not actually aiming to keep staff trapped in here or take anyone's money."

"Is the aim to annoy the hell out of whoever enters, so that meetings will be more efficient, then?" She shifted in the stool.

"Oh, I wish. We might be here a while. No–this suite is kind of a tongue-in-cheek joke of that expression: 'what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas'."

Peridot groaned; Sharrow ignored her.

"Every aspect of this room's design is to facilitate its purpose as an isolation chamber: no coherent misinformation can enter or exit this room except through the airlock. Not electronically, not physically, not noetically, either–most critically, that last one. This is a true hermetic seal, where we're safe from any and all prying eyes of those entities that have them, as well as any ripple effects in the human noosphere. Even the airlock is a low pass filter that keeps 'hot' noetic agents bottled in."

Peridot closed her eyes; she breathed the thickened air, laden with an unknown number of latent ideatic wisps, caught forever in the suite like gnats; she felt uneasy. "So it's a bunker. A doomsday bunker. And the door isn't even very thick," She said, opening her eyes.

Sharrow placed a hand beside his end of the table, like a bank teller preparing an alarm. "The door can be remotely sealed. And yes, this is a bunker of sorts. There are provisions to sustain human life for weeks and servers archiving the most critical civilizational knowledge. If all of humanity lost our minds tomorrow, whatever sane being finds this room could reconstruct a semblance of how we used to be, or develop a plan while unaffected. Spend enough time in here, and you'll start to remember concepts our species has forgotten. Divisions within color, emotions evolution has discarded, the names we gave to lost gods and fairies, et cetera."

Peridot shifted again. "Is it so serious we need a space like this? I doubt it. They're only creepy photographs. She's just a superstitious freak with a fixation on me. And…" she flicked her tongue and found her nerve, "If we forgot all those things so easily, they probably weren't very important."

"Well, I don't know," Sharrow admitted, talking while typing. "But after my mistake I'm being over-cautious; I won't underestimate this case again. It may be Miss Mondegrene or whatever she's in contact with is ultimately harmless–I'm waiting to find out. But while we wait: don't you see how memory is absolutely critical? Truth is the foundation of everything we do. If we can't remember what's normal or what's natural, how can we maintain it? We can't even remember all that we've forgotten; imagine if we lost our sense of empathy, or love, or–"

"Magic." Peridot said.

"Yes," Sharrow whispered. "We–we are losing that. Rather quickly, really."

"I get it, Argus. Knowledge is power. But some things," she hissed the word, "are best forgotten. If everyone forgot every superstition, we'd be free. Or freer. That's what we're working towards: freedom for us all to live a natural, normal life. We don't need magic. We have technology and the drive to make things better."

Sharrow was left at a loss for words: his mouth flapped open and closed, tongue clicking out of time within. The cycle was broken by a ping on his laptop, which Peridot still couldn't see. He eyed it: narrowly at first, then wider and wider, until his eyebrows disappeared underneath his bangs.

"What is it?" She pressed.

"I wish I shared your sentiment, Peridot. But I can't help but mourn for the loss of the extraordinary. Blame it on my position if you like, in such proximity to inhuman things. But–in the end, it's us, the murderers, who are burdened with the memory. Like Judas, Cain, or Lucifer we've cast ourselves from Paradise, again and again. We could have been more and decided that we'd rather just be us. No–I'll remember magic when it's gone with fondness–and fear, too, of course, but that's not my point."

"No, no, not all that. Don't go all biblical on me. Did the analysis come back?"

He sighed. "Yes. It's–" he wrung his hands together. "Before that. On memory, still: do you ever get the feeling we were born yesterday? That we're out of time–as in outside of–and that we remember things that didn't ever happen, or haven't happened yet. That because I can't recall every minute detail of my life, I can't ever be completely sure that it's all real, and we don't just build up clumps of experience as we go, kind-of haphazardly, like a… spectrogram, where all the colors don't arrive all at once? Not in order, or because of physics, or our own thoughts or actions. That maybe it makes more sense like that and less sense as a line. Time, that is, moving in great dollops."

Hushed silence followed. Peridot's brow couldn't possibly furrow sufficiently to express her bepuzzlement with that surrealist screed. There were no ticking clocks to break the lack of talking, like in Sharrow's office. There were never any clocks in a casino. "No. I haven't. I don't know what to say to that. Argus, have you ever… as your colleague, I can't help but be a bit concerned."

Hands unwrung; laptop bell re-rung; Sharrow laughed it off. "Oh, ha! Just a bit too much lateral thinking in this job, I'm afraid. I'm okay, I promise. Conversations in here are confidential, right? What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."

Peridot did her best to affect a neutral expression.

Sharrow hurried on: "But, then, the analysis. The photographs. The puzzle addressed to you. If all that's the case, then," he gripped the top edge of the laptop screen, as if to spin it round, "we may need a bigger room than this."

﹡﹡﹡

In the evening, Callie took the train with Erika, hurtling southwestwards towards the terminus that had in days before her time been elevated, but was now exiled to a more chthonic byway: either at or just below the surface–like a shallow grave. Her mood was appropriately morbid, with her eyes fixed and bulging on the train car's opposite window, as Erika sat in the seat just to her right. She wasn't afforded anything as sweet as sleep, because she wasn't alone: in the dirty window, where the reflection of their row of seats garbled in the grime, Esther sat on Callie's left, eavesdropping on any conversation. She couldn't afford for It to go from listener to participant–not when Erika was involved.

The smalltalk was small indeed, though. "The sun's starting to not set so late," Erika remarked, her mouth buried in a thick burgundy scarf.

"Mhm," Callie affirmed. Her roommate nudged at her right shoulder.

"Oh come on, the sun is good for you! Everyone's favorite star, or something."

"Hey," Callie flinched away. "I never said it wasn't! I take my multivitamin, that shit has vitamin D, too."

"It's not the same! One of these days when I'm more free, we're gonna go to the beach. Just wait."

"I'm not really a beach person," she said externally. Inside, Calliope did battle with unbidden images of Esther under beach umbrellas, clad in retro black-and-white polka-dotted swimwear, or else It building a mermaid tail of sand over her lower body while the tide rolled in.

Back in subway semi-springtime, Erika made a muffled noise like a "hmph" and was quiet for a while. Their stop was due next on the line. Ahead, across, streetlights flit past in afterimages that intersected with Its eyes: watching, always watching, her as well as everything she saw.

"Actually, wait," Erika said, when the doors opened. "You probably do have some freaky favorite star, don't you? That's not the sun, I mean."

Callie eyed Its indistinct reflection; Ettie smirked right back. "Noo," she lied. The three of them walked out onto the platform.

The station's climbing escalator delivered them to an unfamiliar neighborhood. Calliope never had the time to explore every nook of Boston's semi-urban sprawl, but now there was no need: Ettie went along ahead, guiding them, always a dark hair quicker than Erika's mobile mapping application. Five minutes in they passed a thin brick building with an oily plaque affixed in the alley–one whose text was too difficult to read by ailing twilight.

"Sylvia Plath's house for a year or so," Esther offered, skipping backwards. "Where she wrote some of the poems of The Colossus, her only work published prematurely."

"Prematurely?" Calliope repeated.

"What?" Erika asked, pausing.

"Oh–nothing," she added, flashing Ettie a glare.

"Before her death. It's a morbid collection through and through. Allow me to provide you an impression," It said, still moving, splaying a hand over where Its heart would be.

It is a silly god, a god of shades,
who Godly, dodderingly spells
Its amorous nostalgias.

Or,

In this light my blood is black. Ten fingers knit a bowl for shadows. My bindings itch. There's nothing more to do but be–

"And other such macabre lines," It terminated. Calliope couldn't help but be enchanted. A girl who could recite her poetry, so perfectly–even if butchered by its sharpened tongue–was difficult to escape infatuation to. What verse It read by cellular nightlight while she slept, she couldn't say, but Esther did nothing without purpose; It was clearly quite well-read. If there were metred lines anywhere across the world's anthologies that laser-fit her awkward, nerdy heart, surely It'd find them or compose something in summary. She was Esther's muse, the subject of Its poems, epic or domestic–an honor and a horror she did not take lightly. Maybe one day there would be a plaque affixed outside her own apartment, a living will and testament to the Calliope Mondegrene that was, that is, that would be in Its service for all time. A dramatic thought–one she scribbled out.

No, puppet, do go daydream. We'll have our plaque if you desire it.

Calliope sighed; she pushed her hands deeper into her coat pockets. They were almost there: just one more corner left to round.

After the bend, their merry gang coalesced quickly. Annette and Mikey had preceded them, both leaning against the brick wall under the multicolored awning that bore the standard of "固より MOTOYORI: A place to escape!". Annette wore a dandelion jumper–clean of any paint stains–over white and sipped on bubble tea, while Mikey had on a ridiculous tweed overcoat, deerstalker cap, and blueish magnifying glass in hand. When Calliope made eye contact with the former, she grimaced in Mikey's direction as if to apologize, before they closed the gap and were as four–or five, with Ettie stalking up the rear, unseen.

"Hey, you made it! Not gonna lie, I didn't know if one of you would flake," Annette laughed. "Not that I'd be, like, mad. Just. You know."

"Yeah, I know," Callie said. "Sorry. For being a flake. Lately. Always," she flaked a smile.

"It's not that we want to dodge things, Annette. I'm just busy as shit. It's actually pretty lucky we're all able to do this." Erika puffed from behind her scarf.

"Aw man," Mikey finally jumped in. "This isn't fair! It's three girls and one guy! I don't have that much machismo, guys. Girls. Hey, by the way."

Annette thumbed him in the ear–the stupid cap did not protect him. "Dumbass–I love you. But we're all on the same team."

"Ow! Aw. I was hoping to flex my biggest muscle of all–the brain–and win this thing for the boys."

"There's no winning–er, okay, I guess there kind-of is? If we solve the room. Just hope we can do it with four people. Y'all've better brought your A-game today. Callie." Annette nodded at her. Callie returned a sheepish smile.

"Wait, is it meant for more than four?" Erika asked, unwrapping her scarf.

"Yeah. Six, actually. They don't even have rooms for less than three! It's pretty popular. I actually put in an application months ago, and we would've had five, with uh, Sawyer…" A chill set in amidst the group. "But they only just had an opening today."

Mikey broke the awkward silence that followed first. "Well, let's get to it, then. Puzzle's not gonna solve itself, right?" He bounded towards the door and pushed the handle, which did nothing. Annette followed with a laugh and pulled it open. This time Calliope was the last to enter, trailing behind Erika.

"Are you okay, by the way?" She whispered to Ettie, who she could see–by bare legs and rolled khaki cuffs–had kept the scout uniform on under her peacoat. "I'm sorry you can't talk to anyone but me."

"It's fine! I don't want to. I'm happy to watch." It grinned. "And you might need me for the puzzles, anyway."

"Maybe. But I don't just want to cheat, okay?" She entered and let the door shut behind her.

Inside was dark and colorful–like an arcade. Cyan, magenta, and yellow neon lighting prevailed, with desks and carpets colored black or in sweeping linear patterns that fluoresced under the blacklight. Opposite the door was a reception area, staffed by a woman their age in a black T-shirt and jeans. Her face was nondescript, like a mannequin's; she looked bored out of her mind.

"Welcome to Motoyori, y'all! My name is Claudia. How can I help you today?" Her voice told otherwise via animation. Annette stepped up to the counter and pulled out her phone–jangling with artsy charms–to search for their appointment.

"Hey, Claudia! Happy to be here! I had a reservation for five for six o'clock under Annette, but there's just four of us–is that okay?"

The receptionist typed something on the computer terminal. "Yes, I see it! Hmm… the room you've reserved is meant for six. You might have some trouble with the time limit? Or you might have to double up on some of the challenges."

"That's okay," Callie said, stepping forward. She kicked herself in the ass with as much psychic force as she could muster. "We can handle it!"

Murmurs of affirmation warmed her heart. "Yeah! Callie, you should've worn your MISC shirt. We've got this," Mikey said behind her. Calliope could feel a proud, amused pink stare burning at her neck.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"Alright then," Claudia smiled. "I have a card on file? I can bill that for you."

"Yes, please," Annette replied, with an eagerness only possible when spending money that was not one's own.

"Perfect. Let me show you to your room, then." She stepped out from behind the desk; the party of five followed behind.

Down jet-black hallways lined with LEDs she led them, past shadowed doors with golden knobs or handles, each with an electronic display depicting the room's title, theme, and intended occupancy. Near the end they stopped at one that read "QCD, QED" and "6", with spiral lines resembling particle tracks in a cloud chamber scribbled all around.

Beside the door, Claudia's eyelids fluttered. She recited the lines straight out of memory: "At Motoyori, each of our rooms is a self-contained experience, finely-crafted to test and grow your brains and hearts! In this room, 'QCD, QED', you'll explore the mysteries of quantum physics and your bonds as friends! The time limit for the experience is set at two hours; if you escape the room within that time you'll receive a special reward. We ask that you leave any mobile electronic devices in the bin here," she pointed down into a plastic tub at waist level. "In case of an emergency, or if you need to leave the room at any time, there is a call button inside. I'll demonstrate the usage of this button now."

Amid Mikey's subliminal whisper of "this is so cool" and the rest of the group's processing, the door opened inwards just a hair. The woman pressed a button just inside it, and right away a red light lit up above the lintel, accompanying a buzzer. She dismissed both light and sound as quickly with a tap of a finger on her earpiece.

"Yo, what if we need to use the bathroom, though?" Mikey clamored, as the door shut with a click.

"You can press the button, and someone will be along to escort you. We take the experience pretty seriously, haha. We just don't want you looking up the answers." She looked in Calliope's direction. Wait, why her? If–

"Damn, there goes my plan, then." Mikey laughed–it was infectious, making patients of the six of them, even if Callie's was made more of nerves than mirth. In the wake of laughter, all of them deposited their phones inside the bin and spread out against the far wall.

"Have fun, guys! Take your time and don't rush–you'll enjoy it more," she said. The door opened again, this time wider and for longer. Calliope was closest and thus the first to enter, followed by Erika, Annette, Mikey, and at last Ettie in the scout suit–her coat had disappeared. Their proctor remained in the threshold with one hand on the doorknob.

"Thank you, and see you soon," she said, then affected an awkward bow. "We hope to see you again!"

The door was shut and locked this time; above, a red digital countdown started, descending from 2:00 to 1:59. Silence fell upon them, punctuated only by the soft murmurs of an HVAC unit filtering the air. The sound of it was comforting: Callie had faith that the time limit was arbitrary, not just the volume of breathable oxygen the room could hold ere being opened.

"I guess we really do need to escape," Mikey erupted. "We're locked in! Huh. This is kinda like Saw, right?"

"No, hun, it's not like Saw," Annette sighed. "It's not some grungy-ass bathroom. But I guess it's–" she craned her neck to view each corner, resembling a yellow-breasted, auburn-headed bird, "–weird. Quirky. Quark-y? Is that the word, Callie?"

They all looked at her expectantly–Esther included, which annoyed her most of all. She gave the room a once-over:

Any room was just a cube in masquerade, and this one was no different, except that the mask had been dispensed with: overall it was all but bare and flat on every side, except for little piles of minutiae or tables at each wall. Each face was painted a different, solid color: the floor was turquoise, the ceiling marigold, left and right walls rutile, then ultramarine. The face opposite the door was a bright, glaring heliotrope, and its partner wasn't much more pleasant: the entrance wall was a painful harlequin green, with the door painted the same, almost invisible in its facade. Looking closer, Calliope saw the missing doorknob and a doorbell to the side–the call button. Taken as a whole, the space was a garish, overstimulating mess of neon colors, made worse by the perimeter of Christmas lights that went around where walls met ceiling. She didn't like it, not at all, and had already forgotten what Annette had asked; already a headache was inchoate in her brain, catalyzed by the white fluorescent lights inset at intervals into the floor.

"What?" She asked, stalling, stepping back. Her heel slipped on something sort-of round and she felt herself begin to fall–but in a flash there were hands grasping her forearms, steadying her. She caught a whiff of Esther's signature marshmallow-fluff faux-perfume.

"Careful," she chastised, standing Callie up. None of the room's other occupants seemed to notice she had slipped at all, nor notice the girl that helped her up.

"Fuck, we're losing you already? Callie, we need you for this! We need your brain," Annette's tone was more serious now, but still playful. "This room is based on quarks, right? Quantum shit. That's your deal!"

"What's a quark, again?" Erika butted in. She placed her coat and scarf on one of the tables and rejoined the group in the room's center; against the floor's bright cyan, her dark red jeans clashed horribly.

"It's a type of cheese. Gotta be. If you don't know what something is, just assume it's cheese." Mikey answered.

"No, guys, it's, wait–" Callie started, pinching at her forehead. "Ettie, help me out here. It's–" she knew this, it was there, it was easy, so why was the information evading access? There, there, there–it slotted to the forefront of her thinking, as if delivered; It effected a courier transform on her mind. "It's an elementary particle. They make up protons and neutrons, antiprotons, that shit. There's six of them. It's–strange…" she remembered the thing she'd not-tripped on earlier. Mikey went on being annoying as shit while she bent down to locate it.

"Elementary? Oh, so this'll be easy," he joked.

Scoffs were heard above, but as Calliope was on the floor, they went over her head. Embedded in the floor were those circular white lights, but in the place of the most nuclear was something circular in three dimensions–or mostly, in multiple senses. It was mostly a sphere–twelve rounded mounds stuck out of it at even intervals, forming six antipodal pairs. It was mostly white–each of them had a colored ring around it, where it joined the surface. It was mostly soft–the mounds were hard, like rubber, in contrast to the squishier remainder. In an attempt to identify it, her mind retrieved memories of a Wikipedia binge wherein she'd read of ancient Roman–or was it rhombic?–dodecahedrons, stellated and hollow, whose purpose was unknown, but might've had a use in knitting. She turned the object over and over in her hands; her brows knit together in scrutiny; she straightened up and reopened her ears up to the group.

"There's six quirks, there's four walls, a ceiling and a floor," Mikey was saying when she returned. "Maybe there's six puzzles that we have to figure out?"

"It is meant for six people," Annette sighed, leashing Mikey with a handhold. "We would've had five if Sawyer–well, you know…" They all knew; Callie gave Ettie a shaded look. So far It'd been silent and done nothing but observe and look cute, from just outside their smaller, gathered square. She opened her eyes wide in a kind of provocation, but it was misdirected: Erika noticed the thing she'd retrieved from off the floor before It could acknowledge her.

"Oh shit, what's that?" She asked. "Where'd you get it?"

"Uh, the floor, I guess. Don't know what the fuck it is, though." Callie answered.

"It looks like a dryer ball," Mikey added. "But there's no dryer in here. Maybe we have to do some laundry?"

"Mikey, you can't even work our dryer," Annette said, using him as a counterweight to lean forward, towards the orb… thing.

"I can too!" He protested–and hiccupped. Annette's smile inverted at the sound.

Callie tuned out the bickering and all else besides the object in her hands and the pink glow at her left. A thought which had until then been nagging grew to full fruition: she knew what the object was like, though not yet what it was.

"Huh. Did any of you guys ever play that old game? Katamari Damacy? For the PlayStation 2?"

Three of them looked at her like she had as many heads as the katamari in her hands.

"Noooo…" Mikey drew out the sound. "Not all of us are nerds."

"Hey! That nerd is gonna get us out of here!" Annette pinched him.

"I've heard of it," Erika said, looking her way. "Just didn't play it."

Callie fidgeted with the thing in hand. "Okay, so like: it's been a while. But it was this 3-D game where you have like, this ball thing, a katamari," She held it up to show them all. "and it starts out all small. You have to roll things up with it and it gets bigger, until it becomes a star or a planet. Because your dad in the game is the King of All Cosmos, and he destroyed them all, so–" Eye contact with Ettie plucked her thought out of its flight. It was smiling; Calliope inspected the thing closer. Was the pink in one sixth of its rings the same as that of Ettie's eyes? Or was she just conditioned to assume such?

"It's not me; I'm over here," It said. "You're doing great, puppet." The praise dispelled the worry by putting butterflies in Callie's stomach.

"Okay, so let's roll stuff up with it?" Erika cut in.

"So it IS like a dryer ball! They pick up–hic–lint!" Mikey slurred, after escaping Annette's grip to jab a finger at her.

"It's not, like, sticky. It won't pick anything up like that. I think it's got to do with all the knobs on it. Maybe if we had like, rubber bands or something…" Callie mused.

Mikey's finger vibrated to a blur; he swayed from side to side. "Shit! Yeah! We do! I'm standing on them!"

Three sets of eyes glared at him. "You're what now?" Annette accused.

Mikey shuffled to the side and gestured. Where his dirty sneaker had been a moment before, a small pile remained: a pair of cyan rubber bands and a slip of construction paper. Within moments Callie bent down and snatched them up, reading off the words printed on the paper and ignoring Mikey's trodden footprint on it:

In the ether, truth inchoate spun a yarn of reverie.

"We're fucked," Mikey announced, turning towards the green entrance wall.

"Yeah, that's… I know some of those words," Erika smiled sadly. "I feel like I'm back working at the pharmacy, reading off medications."

"This is all you, Cal," Annette said, collapsing back into a blue beanbag chair.

"Come on, it's not that bad. I think I get it," Callie said–no, she knew she did, or knew she could, if she made use of every resource. One deep breath before the plunge… and she was swimming in It, with her eyes and nose and ears all closed so as not to imbibe saline. Esther's vast, maddening intellect immersed her like black treacle, thick and suffocating–but a warm current guided her whither her thought chose. She surfed the wave, directed it, and felt her way by touch: inchoate, a word for ickle, crooked things just-formed; a yarn, a tale, a lie, spun round; reverie, a daydream, a musing, an escape–and that was it. The katamari was fractal and self-similar: it had knobs and rings and color but was itself a knob, a 3-D ring, a color–white–just like the room if all colours were combined. Macrocosm, meet micro–she opened her eyes to find her human friends depressed and her inhuman one excited. In her It saw the same satisfied fire It'd kindled when deciphering the Necronomicon. As above, so below.

She took the rubber bands and wrapped them around, matching their color to the rings; they snapped in place like magnets to a refrigerator door, complete with matching, snow-white hum from deep within.

"I've got it," she announced; the others gathered close to listen. "So, the bands go around it, see? And once we get them all, we do… something, it should fit somewhere, like in the door–it's a doorknob, maybe." She passed the katamari to each of them, one by one.

"Shit, well fuck me sideways–hic," Mikey blathered, to Annette's glare. "I was close, though."

"Whoo! Let's go Callie! Cal-culator! Yeah!" Annette cheered.

"So we just have to find more rubber bands? That's too easy," Erika said. "We didn't do shit!"

Callie took the ball in hand. "Hang on, I think it's like, a warm-up? Truth's the foundation, so that one was free, on the floor. The top quark used to be called 'truth' or something."

"If it's the top one, why's it buried in the floor? Does that mean the bottom one is up there?" Mikey said, veins bulging in his neck as he craned it to the gilded ceiling.

"There's a joke here about you getting the top one first when you're like, not that, Callie, ha," Annette teased; Calliope flushed redder than the wall behind her.

"Hey! I'm not–I'm not gonna solve any more fucking puzzles, if you're gonna–"

"She's not wrong. Your role inverts expectations, puppet," Ettie chimed in.

"Nobody asked you! The people are talking, now," Callie rounded on It. "Let me do the people-puzzle and just watch."

Ettie was unflappable in the face of the insult; she threw up her hands and rolled her eyes to the ceiling, then returned to lean against the green wall.

"Oh, I think there is something up there," Mikey said; none of them had heard her, somehow. Despite Annette and Erika's protests, as the tallest among them, he reached an arm up to a square patch of ceiling that was darker than the bulk. Once dislodged, It fluttered to the floor and was caught by Annette, and where the panel had been there was an indent in the ceiling that looked like an electronic sensor of some kind. Annette read out the next line from the yellow slip of paper, which lacked an accompaniment of rubber bands; instead, it had a series of thin plastic puppets pasted onto popsicle sticks.

Aurous sunset's shadows reaching sombrous branches, feathery

"That one's even worse. I give it a five out of seven," Mikey commented to blank stares.

"No, no, hang on. It says shadow, and there's these," Annette fanned out the puppets; together they'd looked black, but now it was apparent–now that they were transparent–they were each a different color, blocking different wavelengths of light. "Maybe we have to use them for a puppet show? What's the uh, bottom quark, Call? Short for something?"

"Bitch," she joked, laughing to make it clear. "Beauty, it used to be."

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But you're not holding a bee, or me." Mikey whined, reaching for a puppet; Erika's hand on his arm stopped him.

"Okay, I need to say it. Mikey, are you drunk?"

"Nooooo…" he slurred. Callie and Erika both looked at Annette, who trilled her lips.

"It's fine. He is–was–drinking. I didn't want to leave him–I planned this months ago, okay? And we're doing good, we're making good time, right?"

Erika let go of Mikey's hand. "Still–rude. Annie," she spat.

"Okay. I don't know why you're mad about it." Annette turned her eyes downwards: with an absent mind she flicked the fan of puppets from one side to another.

"It's just that it's a group thing, and he's gonna show up drunk? Like, maybe hold off on that? It's not like Callie dropped acid before we came. And you know I don't–uh. I don't drink much." Erika shifted at the last; Callie felt a pang of guilt. Through it all, her acid trip of a partner was a wallflower.

"Guys, I'm not that drunk. Let's just–hic–the puppets," Mikey said, again trying to grab one from Annette's hand.

"I'll do it, hun," she sighed, then muttered: "I-don't-know-what-the-fuck-I'm-doing, though." She crouched down to the floor on the balls of her sneakers; the others gave her space, where in the center, the floor-lights lit her golden overalls with white light. With her chin illuminated, Annette looked to be on the cusp of telling them a ghost story.

"If it's shadows, and there's light down here, maybe…" she murmured, arraying them like sunrays. Twelve in all, they cast colored shadows on her face, showing where makeup hid crows' feet. "Wait," she said after arranging. "I'm dumb. It's just the zodiac!"

"Whaaat," Mikey droned.

"Ohh," Erika realized. "The western one."

"Yeah, see, there's Aries the ram–that's red. Your birthday's coming up, right, Riri? Taurus, Gemini–that's me! And yellow… Leo for Callie, but it's not green or purple, aw… they just go in order, like this, see?" she finished. All dozen puppets all arranged, Annette sat back on her haunches and beamed up at them. Over the light, the filters cast a cornucopia of color; Callie's eye was drawn to the one following the orange lion, clockwise: a woman in a Virgin veil crowned with as many stars as there were signs, as there were hours; her silhouette was pink.

"Yeah, I would've been no help," Erika said. "I only know the Korean signs offhand."

Annette adjusted the filters' positions to be more symmetrical. "Oh–are those like the Chinese ones? Based on year, right?"

"Mhm. Most of us are gae-tti, year of the dog, I think."

Mikey placed his hands on Annette's shoulders. "Ha–gay-tea. That's Callie's year for sure, for sure."

Callie rolled her eyes. "Tch. I need to get more queer friends," she started, before eyeing Ettie and deciding otherwise. "Also–Annette–I think you're blocking the light."

"Oh, yeah!" She straightened up; as soon as her shadow no longer covered up the light, the kaleidoscope of shadows on the ceiling primed a click. A panel opened next to the sensor and dropped two yellow rubber bands onto the floor unceremoniously. As the de facto katamari bearer, Callie picked them and stretched them over the yellow rings. The object's hum increased in pitch.

"Two down, four to go?" Annette got to her feet. "How long's it been? An hour?! Wow. Which one's next?"

"I'll do red," Erika said, moving towards the matching wall. A scarlet briefcase rested on a table up against it; when opened it revealed an eclectic collection of puzzles: a 3-D maze made of hard plastic, a Gordian knot tied on red string, and a modified copy of the board game Operation. Erika & co's dismay was evident on seeing them:

"Oh, fun," Erika groaned.

"Maybe I should've booked a smaller room than this," Annette admitted, as the timer ticked still downwards.

﹡﹡﹡

"And that's why," Sharrow finished, still gripping the laptop, "and that's why a work-life balance is so important in this field. Do you… understand?"

Peridot had no patience for such drivel, nor enough to keep her displeasure hid. "So you're saying that I need a hobby of some kind–or, no, you just said something unresolved–to keep me occupied. Otherwise–"

Sharrow waggled a finger on his left hand; his eyes were wide and–frankly–frightened. "Don't think it; don't say it. We don't need to discuss it anymore. Your analysis–" He said, hurried, whipping the laptop screen to face her. Peridot leaned over with elbows embedded on in feltgrass to get a closer look.

The first revelation was how red it was: lines and lines of scarlet text that filled most of the screen's otherwise black field. In the upper left corner there was a photograph, in miniature, redacted by means of such heavy pixilation, she couldn't have made out its subject without personal foreknowledge; still, she could discern the unmistakable aubergine locks of Calliope Mondegrene despite the heavy blitting. A verdict was displayed just to its side: CLASS B COGNITOHAZARD in all caps, followed by graphs and data spreadsheets just below. The screen was angry–red–and industrial, ugly; though she couldn't grok the finer details, she could understand the vibe at large: this was altogether quite bad.

"Class B," she offered up. "I'm unfamiliar with how you classify… these."

"That's B, for basilisk," Sharrow said, directing his finger over the screen from on high. "Don't ask why, I won't tell you. There are only two classes that are 'worse': A, of course, the principal, and a series of aleph-based classes used to designate hazards so radioactive, research on them can only be performed within hermetic seals like this–outside, the files cannot even be perceived, let alone read. We always have less disk space than we thought, because of that, ha."

Out of sight, out of mind, Peridot thought. "Let's start with A, then–what's that designate?"

"Lethal. A-class hazards permanently abort the mind's processing. Viewing them induces immediate grand mal seizures and subsequent brain death–in ninety-nine percent of cases there's no coming back."

"Oof. At least it's not as bad as that, right?" She said, half-asking, trying to keep the mood afloat.

"B-class is only slightly better, I'm afraid," Sharrow said, tapping the screen. "Though the notes here tell how our technicians were initially unsure of how to classify the photographs, since they're so conditional."

"Conditional?" She repeated, staring at the blurry pixels and trying hard–or trying not to–remember their original arrangement.

"Highly conditional–targeted, even. Dot, to view this image without the protective shades would have commandeered your mind. Your mind, specifically–the effects are rather mild for any other viewer. Little more than a nosebleed or a prickle of discomfort. Also, I must confess to something: the agents that I sent to receive you today were prepared to neutralize you in the parking lot if you'd proved to have succumbed to it."

A chill ran down her spine; Peridot recalled how in the whir of arriving, she hadn't recognized the bulky mass at the right side of both staff member's waists; they'd both been armed. Her face went white.

"What would I have done? If I'd seen it," she whispered, eyes focused past the screen, on nothing at all.

"I wish that I could tell you–that's not a redaction, really. Of course, you're familiar with the concept of public key cryptography."

"Of course…" she muttered, still the chief of Cryptocurrency Fraud & Abuse Management.

"Think of the image as a malicious transaction, then, and your mind as a crypto wallet. We can identify the shape of the message and its colour–how harmful it would be, replacing the bulk of your psyche in an instant–but we can't actually read its contents. Only you, yourself would be able to decrypt and understand it. Obviously, I can't ever allow that, though, for the sake of your–and everyone's–wellbeing. Whatever doctored these photos knows a great deal about you, too, Peridot: to target you in this way, It needs a 'public key' of sorts, which only comes with broad, deep psychological and biographical knowledge. You don't have any… typographically-related enemies, do you?"

There was a ringing in her ears–a voice, or not-a-voice, speaking soundlessly as she remembered: HEXADS… ASTERS… SASSED… At that final mockingword, red rage bubbled up to replace any and all fear; Peridot scowled and made a fist around an elbow. "Typographical–what? Argus, please be serious."

"I am, quite," he said softly. "Both the legible and illegible message are addressed to you. The first begins with a dot, after all. You didn't have a childhood friend named Ampersand, or a roommate at Stanford surname Tilde, or anything like that, right?"

"No," she scowled down at the screen. "That's–ridiculous. Why would… I've gained a lot of respect for you these past few weeks, Gus, but you cannot expect me to believe that whoever made me this… memetic mail-bomb… operates with such adolescent, punning humor!"

"Whatever, made you this."

"What?"

"Whatever–whatever made this isn't human, Peridot!"

She squeezed her elbow tighter. "Then whatever It is can go to hell, Argus! My name?? What the fuck does that have to do with anything?"

Sharrow brought a finger to his mouth to chew on; his eyes turned to the table. "Names have power, it's all connected," he muttered, then made eye contact. "Let's review."

"Whatever made this knew that you were coming–that much is clear. Some amateur photography waiting in a basement, hundreds of miles from here, with a class-B cognitohazard meant for you, specifically? That can't be a coincidence."

"Oh, now you say it," she spat. "I thought you dealt in coincidences, Sharrow. You swim in them, drown in them, always gambling, always telling me how chance isn't really random, how nature has a sense of humor." She stood up, palms against the table, taller than Sharrow's slouching self. "God does not play dice. There's no Providence; there are no dice."

Still seated he looked up at her, then back down, spinning the laptop back around. "Denial was a river in Egypt, not Rhode Island," he quipped. "And Einstein was wrong, in the end: quantum mechanics seized the era. The basest fact of the world is its uncertainty, and even classical encryption can be broken with theoretical quantum algorithms, right? Shor will be the downfall of Satoshi–Bitcoin–as soon as science finds a way of scaling qubits that doesn't rely on magic."

The message, delivered with cold calmness, was expressly clear: Sharrow knew the downsizing of his department was imminent–coincident–with the waning of magic and the waxing of the 'Whir' within the world, but he also knew how humanity's incessant thirst could well drive her own department under: a quantum computer of sufficient size was a powerful thing, able to unmake much of the classical Internet and world order, too. A powerful, theoretical thing–something not real, anymore than the entity behind the photos was. Peridot preferred to dwell down in the real, where things actually mattered.

"So we'll adapt," she insisted. "There are quantum-resistant approaches: lattice-based, oil and vinegar… all of cryptography won't fall because of some Santa Claus professor at MISC–"

"It all comes back there, doesn't it?" Sharrow interrupted. His fingers flew over the keyboard. "To MISC. To Boston. To Calliope Mondegrene. But why?"

Peridot sat, her tirade over. "Hub of the universe, or something, probably," she jested. "Hell if I know, Argus, all I've done was try to find more information. That's all I've ever done, and now I'm getting death threats from this Thing that you won't–or can't–even name."

"Not a death threat," he corrected her, as screens reflected in his glasses. "Class A is lethal, remember? Class B is merely more a… change, though what kind of change is unknown."

"So it could be nothing, too. Much ado."

"Whatever It is, It's not nothing. Even a black hole is something, dark matter is something, just… darker, yet darker. Look," he said, beckoning her. Peridot rounded the table to his end, expecting to find some new horror waiting on his screen… but found only a printout of a class attendance. 6.898, Quantum Computation, Prof. Peter Shor.

"Miss Mondegrene enrolled, two years ago. She got a B."

"So what? She can do complex linear algebra–there was still no quantum computer at her place, or anywhere! She couldn't have built it with just her mind and nothing else, Gus!"

"Maybe. Maybe not her own mind," he admitted, tabbing right. The front page of a newspaper–The Tech–took up the screen.

Volume 102, Number 55, Tuesday, November 23, 1982

Saturday's score: MISC 1, Harvard–Yale 0

What followed were three grainy grayscale images: a large balloon surrounded by football players, decorated with question marks, the other two the same in various stages of inflation.

"At the 1982 Harvard–Yale football game, MISC pulled a prank with a black weather balloon during the second quarter. Its appearance was so iconic that the Institute, searching for a new mascot, decided upon Errol the Eroteme. A question mark–a typographical symbol."

"Argus, please," Peridot protested, as he flit from webpage to webpage. "Let's just stay on target."

He ignored her. "On November 19th, two people–a former undergraduate student and a graduate–visited the rare books reading room at MISC's Barker Engineering Library. That pair consisted of Calliope Mondegrene and Sawyer James. Not one week later, this whole fiasco all began, when you were alerted to the anomaly in the blockchain, right? Sawyer James has since been hospitalized in a persistent vegetative state on December 8th, around when the Eglæche disappeared. But these photos were taken before November 19th, which doesn't make any sense at all… If the photos' sigils were made with just inherent knowledge, what horrors could It make with the secrets of the Necronomicon?"

"None of what you're saying makes any sense to me. These are all unrelated events! 1982? Calliope wasn't even born! I was–"

"Don't." Argus clutched her arm. "Stop. We're supposed to be building a foundation, but where's the cornerstone? What's written on the ceiling, or the walls, rather–are we so gullible?"

She wrenched her arm away; below her, the man slumped a little further in his seat, defeated. "What're you–have you gone insane, Argus?"

"No. Not yet–I don't think. But then, would I know if I had? Haha. No, it's not my role–I have to be the straight man, after all."

"You're disturbing me–more than usual." She backed away. Argus typed more slowly now, still hunched.

"It shouldn't be in here. It can't be in here. We're out of time. It's red, of course it's red…"

She looked around for any sort of weapon–on the walls were mounted pool cues. Peridot inched towards the nearest, stalling. "What? What do you mean?"

Sharrow sat stock-straight and still. His voice grew darker–and acidic–as he recited something.

Mazy idol vivisected forms a reddened eidolon, then–

Then it was over: light returned into the room, breath returned to the air from Peridot's lungs, and Sharrow looked to her smiling, with normal eyes.

"Sorry–I don't know what came over me. I can get a bit lost in thought, at times."

"You're–impossible," she chided, debating whether to slap him for his insolence. "Please behave more logically. What'd you mean we're 'out of time'? I can't believe that–I won't."

Sharrow closed the laptop lid. "We may be. But I think it's not over yet. We're dealing with something unfathomably powerful, yet still localized. If the opening were any wider than a pinhole we would not be capable of having this conversation, now; we just have to make sure it can't open any further. In the worst case," his eyes went to the ceiling, where nothing was written, "I suppose we could glass all of New England, centered on the Hub."

"You're joking."

"No. But I don't think it will come to that–I hope."

Peridot processed the shock, only coming to once Sharrow moved to pass her, laptop bag in tow. "What're you going to do, Argus?" She asked, fearful.

He paused with his back to her. "I'll send a task force. They'll extract her. We'll bring her in for questioning. Then as a last resort we can glass a room instead of a whole region."

"But what should I do? What can I do?"

Sharrow's head turned slightly; a sliver of brown iris was made visible. "Do nothing, Peridot. Please. Every step you've taken so far has advanced whatever plans this entity may have. What happened in this room–let it stay in here. I'll keep you updated, I promise."

Peridot was stunned. Sharrow exited without a further word and left her to the garish, uncomfortable silence. She had no reason to continue bearing it: in a huff she headed for the door, never looking back, not once.

Something was left behind, though: extra effort was needed to pull her body through the airlock, as if her smartphone weighed ten times more than usual. Back in the hallway, she inspected it: it was unharmed. No, more than that, better than: it was cured of some virus or another. In her email app, past the biometric scan, in an inbox that was supposed to be secure: dozens and dozens of unread entries in a thread with one Diana Shadrin. She'd never sent a one; she'd never met someone by that name. What the hell was going on?

She looked both ways along the hallway; Sharrow was already gone off somewhere. She clicked into the latest entry from just hours ago, her heartrate rising:

ITERATION 12 – I've done it! Please advise. I'm getting sick of those pink eyes.

They were compromised. How long, she couldn't say; how long, it didn't matter. Her thumb drifted down to open the attachment until caution arrested it. No–she wasn't going to be had so easily by another photograph. Instead, she inspected text alone. That Shadrin… the FROM domain was too familiar, dshadrin AT alma DOT edu… and then it hit her. She knew what she had to do if only she could find the strength to do it.

Peridot hurried to her office, with no mind for any other stops. Sharrow would only slow her down and was probably just as compromised as she was, after all. They were out of time if ALMA was involved, because ALMA specialized in turning biomedical theory into practice. Not on her watch–she would prevent It turning physical even if it meant she'd hang for what she was about to do. Argus would have to understand.

The abstract was untouchable, but the physical: not so. If It bled, It could be killed. She'd gladly give that order. Peridot smiled all triumphant as she dialed in, or out: finally, they'd reached the endgame. Finally she could do something.

﹡﹡﹡

They'd made good time and reached the final third–the endgame. Clever thinking and deft fingers on Callie's part had solved the maze and untied the red thread of fate; Erika had handled the miniature surgery of Operation, plucking the last red rubber band from deep within the dummy's heart.

Mikey for his part had helped out too. The fourth, charmed slip of paper was wedged between two water coolers camouflaged against the blue wall–he noticed it first because of thirst, but thirst turned out to be their aid:

Introverted heart beat half-steps grisette green calligraphist

Only Mikey could've found the answer there: there were two coolers at odd levels, and by drinking a copious quantity of liquid he was able to align them. That had the effect of sobering him up a bit and spilling blue bands onto the table with a click; they went around the katamari while Annette's arms went over his shoulders. Four down, two to go.

"Why're you all looking at me?" Callie asked, to four pairs of eyes. "I did the maze. Hell, I found this stupid ball thing in the first place, too."

"Aren't you gonna do the green one, though?" Mikey burped, all bloated.

"Yeah, it just feels like it has to be you, Callie," Annette added.

"I didn't pick my last name, guys. Whatever. Just figure out the pink one, then, okay?" She said, turning. The three other humans had their work cut out for them: unlike the rest, the magenta wall's was a completely blank expanse. Calliope could at least depend on Ettie, who went with her to the green one. Next to the door there was a green box like a changing table folded to the wall; she made it horizontal.

"You really are doing so well," Ettie said, taking a position by the door. "You didn't even need to ask for help to solve the maze."

"Yeah. I kind of miss doing puzzles like that. I used to be so good at that shit, in school. Tests and trivia were easy; then I grew up and everything got harder. What's this, now?" From the table she pulled out a black wire attached to an alligator clip. The other end went into a screen at shoulder height.

"Your life is a delicious puzzle in itself. And it's a pulse oximeter." Ettie pinched her index finger to demonstrate its use. Calliope groaned and placed it on her own. Detecting her heartbeat, the screen flickered on, showing a green trail that wavered up and down in time with a numeric readout at the left: 66 BPM. Neon green text appeared beneath:

When a rooted heart slept half-steps, were those green bands furiousc?

"Heart. Heartbeat. I get it," she said, as the words vanished. Vertical lines began to move leftwards from the edge of the screen, towards the beating green dot in its center. Calliope looked to Ettie for advice: she found none, only arousal, seeing how It fanned Itself with the neckerchief removed. Her heartrate rose in turn and the dot threaded through the gap; more lines came at her from the right.

"Oh. It's just Flappy Bird. Holy fuck that's lame."

"Hey, how's it going over there?" Annette yelled. "We can't find anything over this side!"

"Shut up, I'm meditating!" Callie shouted back. The next pair of obstacles had a much lower gap than the last. That was problematic: her green dot was trending towards the top of the screen.

"Need some help?" Ettie asked; It peered over at her shoulder. The whiff of sweetened, perfumed hair did nothing to relax her.

"N-no, I'm. I can do it. I just…" Callie conjured up calm memories. Almost two decades prior she'd been in a not dissimilar position: lying on her mother's chest in a rocking chair, listening to the sound of her heartbeat, trying to relax. Her mom used to sing to her so sweetly before everything went wrong… but Calliope couldn't remember the words, now, so far away in mind and space.

"You're adorable," Esther whispered; the dot dipped lower, through the gap, but the impending opening was lower still. "Let me help you remember."

Before she could decline, her mind was changed: the words were clear. In the memory her mother pet her tawny toddler's head and sang:

A-louet-te, gentille alouet-te. A-louet-te, je te plumerai.

Just 40 BPM; she passed the third and final gap; green confetti filled the screen; a slot dispensed green bands.

Alouette, ma marionnette. Je t'aimerai.

"What was that?" Callie sniffled–was she crying?–as the echo of Its voice diminished.

Ettie squeezed her shoulder. "Good job, you did it!" She said. Callie traded the oximeter for the rubber bands, which fit around the katamari like the rest. Now just two pink mounds remained bare.

"Oh, you finished? Nice!" Annette's voice behind her made her turn. The three of them were huddled in the middle of the room, empty-handed and despondent. Before she could rejoin them, high above them all a chime sounded, like the quarters of a grandfather clock.

"Shit," Callie exclaimed. "There's no way." But it was true: tilting her head up revealed the timer stopped at triple zero. Where ever had the time gone? Hadn't they been doing well?

Annette seemed crestfallen. "I really thought we'd get it," she breathed, falling into Mikey.

"We were close, right? I mean, we did five of them!" Mikey said, consoling her.

Erika addressed her, reassurance on her face: "Callie. Cal. Don't get mad, okay? It was fun, right? We couldn't have done half of them without you!"

She looked down at the katamari in her hands: ten out of twelve bands, the whole thing humming at near fever-pitch. She looked back to the green entrance door: still closed, but likely not for long. The chime would usher Claudia to fetch them somewhat soon. Something felt off–they were supposed to win, right?

"No. We can still–" she started, spotting Ettie at the far wall. Its expression betrayed no emotion, neither disappointment nor relief. To capture Its attention she waved the wall that way with vigor. "Hey. Help me. You can solve it in like three seconds, right?" She stomped over to the final wall.

Annette challenged her along the way: "Callie, come on. There's no way you can–"

"You guys don't get it!" She rounded on her, nearly there. "I can. Ettie, please, help me!"

"Who are you…" Erika began, before descending into murmurs with the others. What they were discussing was surely unimportant. On arriving at the flat, pink expanse, Calliope pressed the katamari to the wall, to no effect.

"Ettie! Why're you–" she looked beside her, where It waited. The fierce look in Its eyes was startling; she'd only seen them like that once before, in the alleyway of months ago where It'd first revealed Itself.

"Are you sure you want my help? You said you didn't want to cheat."

"Yes," she hissed. "Why are you being like this?"

"Let's go home, now–after? If you really want the answer."

"Yes, I do! And–where else would we go, even?"

Ettie stepped forwards to take her hands; the whispering completely ceased.

"We can go anywhere, now," It said. "Anywhere you like, I'll take you. Now that I can see with doubled eyes."

"What?" She didn't understand at all. But Esther took the katamari from her. But Esther smiled–baring teeth–and produced two pink rubber bands from each pocket of her shorts. They went around and brought the form to its completion–to Callie's stupefaction–as a tag appeared stuck to her forehead, dividing her vision into thirds and covering the middle.

"Callie?" Three voices questioned her, unheeded. Ettie spun the katamari on one finger like a basketball as Callie pried the slip from off her brow to read it, the final stanza, whose contents she was already resigned to:

In odd eons doors are opened; forth the hidden asterisk.

It slotted the ball into the wall; it fit right in at waist height as if welded. Calliope was right: it was a doorknob, except the portal wasn't where she'd thought: hairline fractures raced up from the floor to form a rectangle around it, then were filled with brilliant broken light-rays shining through, like a door unto the sun, or… no, not the sun: another star, one she knew more closely, one whose ignition was well and overdue. Esther gestured to the nascent handle with a grin–the arc of pearly teeth was the last part of It to vanish, too. If It was a Cheshire cat, Calliope was Alice, down the rabbit wormhole deep in Wonderland where strange, exotic matters reigned. There would be no escape; the whole thing was a front from the beginning, of that she had no doubt now.

Another image of her girlfriend showed Itself, unbidden: Ettie in a conductor's sable tailcoat, stabbing the air with her baton to make it bleed and oversee an overture of mad tintinnabulation, the agonized piping of horned flutes and the passionate scribbles of fields and fields of fountain pens, all spilling their black ichor up to the proscenium. There, high over center stage, the ink all pooled and coalesced into a shape, a shapely form she knew–biblically and otherwise. Esther had done it, and the theatre, the theatrics–Its derangement–was like a love-poem or Romantic opera, one last romp before her world was changed.

Calliope grappled with the vision; it allowed itself to be dispelled. In a daze, her fingers closed around the handle, fitting perfectly within the katamari's grooves. She turned it, widdershins; blinding light enveloped her, the room, and everything; amid the chants of matar kubileya that filled that imagined auditorium were mixed in the real gasps and grunts of Annette, Mikey and Erika, as Something fast and blurry-black burst into the room and bowled her over to the floor.

When the light dimmed she dared to open up her eyes, finding twin pink orbs meeting them above. These orbs were different, though: they lacked the expected, hexing brightness, appearing more as contact lenses, more a soft cyclamen than phlox-y. As she stared deeper, something sparked within their darkness: the marker, that accursed stand-in, the fractal form of It in miniature. Before she could avert her gaze, she felt so very warm–why? Oh why… Esther's arms were wrapped behind her back; Esther's legs straddled her right knee. It was hotter than a furnace; the flesh was feverish but didn't sweat, didn't have a flaw at all–and both the warmth and weight were wrong. Ettie didn't weigh anything at all, so why did Callie's hand not pass straight through It when she reciprocated the embrace, like so many other times It trolled her? Instead, she felt the ripple of real muscle just under black fabric. Callie had no time to puzzle out all those mixed signals: Ettie addled her again by burying Its face inside her neck; the soft, sleek, perfumed hair was overwhelming to her nose.

"How I've waited for this," It said, squeezing her with uncanny strength. "For this exact bundle of moments. Let it be indelible in your memory, puppet–the first time I really got to hold you."

Callie's eyes were wide open to the ceiling. Against the golden backdrop, her friends were as silhouettes: peering over at the pile of their rare pair, with tripartite expressions: Mikey's confusion, Annette's annoyance, and Erika's knowing amusement. How could she begin to explain to them the shape that cradled her? The precipitated shadow, her hexing, hidden star, no longer hid–would their expressions not all merge and blanche alike to horror if they learned the truth of what It was? Her heart pounded in her chest; Esther's pounded back against it on the offbeats. While nuzzling her neck, It whispered in her mind:

You should be happy, my Calliope. We won! This is your reward.