Chains of a Time Loop

It was probably through the detail of her accounts that Lukai found the time loop fairly plausible without a whole lot of persuasion. They hashed out a formal agreement (roughly, that Lukai would do whatever he could to help Myra fix the loop, and that Myra would help to uncover the truth behind the fire—leveraging the time loop if necessary—and she would also help trying to get through to his godfather).

So Lukai packed up all his stuff and departed for the station, finally prompting Geel to slither out from the shadows (he had been taking notes, apparently) and ask where he was going, and to size up Myra and the rest for the best way to grip them when he would chuck them into the abyss.

It was nearly 4 A.M. by the time they caught a train. She pulled Shera into the seat next to her, cuddling into her, while Nathan and Lukai took the opposite seats. Then it was time for another big infodump, the third one of the loop (and hopefully not the last). Lukai studiously took notes, filling up pages and pages of that notebook he always carried with him. On occasion, he would ask her to pause or repeat something, and his eyes seemed to react to just about everything Myra said, even if the feeling behind them was inscrutable.

By the end, Myra's throat was sore, and she was kept awake only by innumerable refills of coffee from the dining car. How'd she even get that way? At the beginning of the loop, she had been a tea girl. Maybe it was Ben's stupid attempt from ages ago to make her like him by pretending to like the same tea flavor, but ever since the loop had begun, she had increasingly become a coffee girl. Time loops changed people.

She finished explaining everything just around the time they were leaving Unkmire. Lukai had to sneak past the border, so he left to go do that, and when he returned, he was already ready to present his own thoughts on the case, starting with the political context of Unkmire.

"To start," he asked, "what exactly have you worked out so far?"

"Eh… We think it's some kind of Quistil-Dakteria situation. Unkmire has been at a stalemate with Briktone for a long time over various deep wounds. Unkmire wants the empire's help. Unkmire has been stockpiling topological weapons, which require Common Library access. So, the presumption is that Unkmire will… come to some agreement with the empire, probably one that is very favorable to the empire, in exchange for Common Library access, which then gives it an enormous amount of leverage over Briktone," Myra summarized.

"Then on top of that," she continued, "the murk bogs are somewhere in the middle of this. They were hired by Briktone to investigate Unkmire's plans, and now Unkmire is planning to hire them as security at the summit. And it's some kind of 'trial,' though we only know that because we eavesdropped on Geel's phone call."

"So… I dunno. Do you think this is roughly on the right track?"

Lukai nodded, picking at his fingernail. "It tracks with everything that I know. It sounds like I can learn a lot more a few weeks from now when the murk bogs are formally hired by the government, but my guess is that Unkmire wants the murk bogs to be involved in the operations against Briktone. That way, they can keep their own hands clean in the public eye."

"Even though the murk bogs have worked with Briktone before?"

"I doubt that the Unkmirean government is aware of it. If they are, I can't guess their perspective on it, but I imagine they think they can just outpay any competitor." He shook his head. "I can only speculate on that, but there are some things I know. Things that not even the other murk bogs know."

Myra raised an eyebrow. "How'd you come by that?"

"It started with the Klein bottle in the vault." He casually made a complicated hand gesture that Myra suspected was meant to be the tracing of a Klein bottle surface with his fingers.

"Ah, right… I remember you figured out how to get past it, but you never told the murk bogs. In the last loop, you said it was because the bottle was an artistic masterpiece."

He looked embarrassed. "Well, it —"

"No, I agree."

"Yes, well, I was worried Geel would do… something about it." He held his head, like he was getting a headache. "You might think it would be safe up in the vault, but Geel can get very creative whenever I get too attached to something."

Shera reached across the table to pat him on the shoulder.

"Anyway, I did some investigating. See, Briktone already had an idea of what was in the vault, and our job was supposed to be to confirm it. So from them, I had an inkling that the vault stored topological weapons. And then I saw topological structures built into the security… I began to have a suspicion about the source of these weapons. The Harwackad Group." He looked inquisitively at her.

"Ah, I haven't heard of them."

He shook his head. "I would have been impressed. They're obscure, but their work was a big inspiration when I was a child. They might be the best crafters in topology this side of the Ilmanian—their name comes from a glassworker in an ancient Unkmirean epic. So I sought them out and managed to get to the bottom of a few things. Most of all, what I learned is that the empire has been supplying expertise on the Common Library." Something clicked in Myra's brain. "Specifically, a few of the empire's top sages—"

"Wait! I know this! Hazel Ornobis and Aiko Ueno! The sages of Infrastructure and Practice!"

Lukai raised an eyebrow. "Spot on. Harwackad has been working with those two and a few of their underlings for some years now. I'm afraid I can't guess how you knew that."

"Sky Mishram told us ages ago… they've been visiting Unkmire discreetly…" She slapped her forehead. Obviously, it was strange that Unkmire had the expertise to build weapons dependent on the Common Library. "I should have put this together…"

◆

All the way in Jewel City, it was a quick job to grab the journal and get out, though she also wanted to show him the security system, and one more thing that she had almost forgotten about until they went into the basement.

"Lukai, I wanted your take on this real quick." She navigated through Massiel's chaotic basement to find the glass case containing the golden wristwatch that she'd seen Hazel Ornobis retrieve in Loop 5.

"What's this?"

"I honestly have no idea, but I actually wanted to ask you about the security." She pointed to the complex yarn knotwork that held the door in place. "Do you know what this is, or how to open it?"

"Hm…" He inspected it closely, then pulled out a hooked metal instrument and poked at the yarn a bit. "I haven't seen this exact thing before, no. But I believe the principle is simple enough. You need to unravel the knot in Abstract Space. That's easier said than done. Do you need the watch?"

"I'm… kinda curious about it."

"We could take the whole case and figure it out later."

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Eh… Hazel Ornobis always comes for this later in the week. I have no idea what the hell would happen if she can't find it, and the last thing I want right now is another shitstorm over the dead guy's stuff—Actually, the reason I wanted to show you this is that there's a door in Mirkas-Ballam that's secured the same way."

Lukai nodded. "I understand. Let's focus our efforts there this time."

◆

When they finally got back to Ralkenon, Nathan left to ask around for any sign of Ben, and Shera took Lukai to show him around the campus and city. Shera didn't need to sleep, of course, and though Lukai had given no indication of being other than somniatypical, he had seemed enthusiastic about the idea of the tour. That just left Myra to hit the pillows hard, only stopping to hand the journal to Iz.

When she woke up, she found they'd all met up with Nathan again (no luck finding Ben) and they had congregated by the fountain on campus, where Nathan was explaining the riveting story of its commission and installation.

First on Myra's agenda was Mirkas-Ballam to get Lukai's analysis on the barrier.

"I've seen barriers like this before," Lukai said, after a few minutes' inspection of the laboratory building. "It'll take some time, but I think we can knock this one out for a few minutes."

"How long are we talking?"

"Give me… three weeks? I'm going to need a rune lab. And I'm almost certainly going to need your help."

"Wait, you can really do it? Just like that?"

"I'll explain the basic principles. It won't sound so implausible, then. The short story is that we're going to overwhelm the defenses with targeted probes that are perfectly synchronized to exceed its capacity, but this needs to be tailored to the geometry of the barrier. We should find a blackboard."

The next stop was to the hole-in-the-wall restaurant to blow Lukai's mind with the greasiest onions Ralkenon had to offer. Then it was back to the university, where they found a blackboard—there were all kinds of out-of-the-way non-rooms with spare blackboards at the university.

The 'basic principles' were far from basic, though they weren't inscrutable either. Probably the largest obstacle was working with Lukai's somewhat nonstandard notational choices. He also had a weird tendency, which she sort of recognized from the bridge, to string runes together in syntactically correct but difficult-to-parse ways. The runic equivalents of garden path sentences like 'The old man the boat.' He didn't even seem to notice he was doing it.

◆

For dinner, they ate on campus, for it was time to introduce Lukai to Iz. If she was hoping they'd hit it off, she was disappointed. Lukai didn't seem to know how to talk to anyone who hadn't bungee-jumped off a bridge for him, and while Cynthia was jovial as always, Iz was Iz.

Myra was eager to hear her conclusions, though. "So, Iz, Iz," Myra asked. "Did you check out that journal?"

"Mm hmm."

"Whatdya think?" Myra wanted to see that thoughtful, cutting look.

She scratched her head. "Yeah, it's… I mean, on the surface it looks like an incredible piece of history, but are you sure it's real…?"

Her skeptical tone triggered some words in her memory. She's just going to go back to disbelieving you about the time loop, isn't she? But no, it wouldn't do to dwell on that.

"Yeah, why wouldn't it be real?"

"Okay, but… where did you get it, again?"

She hardly—

Ugh.

"I got it from Emmett Massiel's house! You know, the old imperial sage who died."

"How did you get it?"

Myra looked to her allies. Nathan kinda looked like he wanted to jump in, but didn't—probably nobody felt like anyone other than Myra could contribute.

"I'll tell you soon. But you have to think about it first! I told you, it's a puzzle."

She tilted her head. "Myra, you're being really odd. Cynthia thinks so, too." She glanced at Cynthia, who nodded. "I don't really like this game…"

"Well, I have a good reason for it!" Myra snapped, a little more aggressively than she intended. "Really, it'll make sense soon."

"Iz," Nathan finally spoke up. "Myra has a really well-thought-out plan here—you should trust her. She's right that it'll make sense. Hell, even everything we're saying now should help you figure it out."

Iz huffed. Damn it, Iz. Come on!

◆

Lukai, who must have been used to the murk bogs barracks with all the beds in a row, preferred to split a hotel room with Myra. As Myra was trying to drift off, she realized that he hadn't spoken of the fire since they'd made the deal. Some of the facts were still pretty unclear to her—she had worked out that he believed the culprit had used his arm to make the fingerprints on the rune cabinet. He hadn't said anything about the lack of fingerprints on the wall, though, and also, they still hadn't confirmed when he lost his arm.

"Lukai?" she asked tentatively.

From the next bed came a soft snore. He was already out like a light, apparently.

In the morning, they met up with Nathan and Shera again. They had a lot of barrier-breaking work to do, but Myra proposed something else first: that they investigate Professor Bandine. Myra explained on the way, though it didn't take that long to explain, and absent anything else to talk about, they naturally ended up discussing Bandine's work and prosthetics in general.

"No, it's not one of hers," Lukai said. "Roc made it from scratch, but he read up on all her work. He read all the big names in prosthetics: Professor Bandine, of course, Dr. Zahir from Chal, and the Pirate Captain, Joseph 'Four Limbs' Towerbeard. Bandine's principles were very interesting, to mimic the internal organics of a real arm in order to make control easier. But we weren't worried about my ability to control it, so we optimized for longevity… Bandine's designs require a lot of maintenance. And Roc was always better at gears and precision cutting than elastics… But he took a lot of inspiration, and he tried to mimic the muscle tensions as much as possible. To be honest, I would like to meet her. Or at least, I would say that, if not for the fact that she could be wrapped up in this disaster."

"We don't know anything for sure yet," Myra said.

"Yet, you seem to have another reason to find her suspicious."

"Well… you tell me."

They arrived at her house, and she showed them to her office where she had found the letter from Halibar Hospital in a previous loop. "Okay, so this is the letter from the hospital director. The hospital's giving her a gift. A physical gift, and they need all this shipping information."

"Seems normal."

"And then." Myra showed them the page behind it. "You have this flyer for the cruise, and these tickets."

"It's a famous ship," Lukai observed. "We robbed it once."

"… Right. Anyway, it's been bugging me since, like, look. The letter doesn't mention the cruise at all. It's all about this other gift they're going to send her."

Lukai whistled. "I see where you're coming from. Something about this stinks." He inspected the flyer closer, then the tickets. "They seem legitimate, though."

"What are you all implying?" Shera asked. "Th-these aren't a gift from the hospital at all?"

"I'd theorize not," Lukai said. "Consider instead the possibility that Professor Bandine wants to leave the city with her family because she knows about the volcano. To do this, she needs an excuse for a short-notice vacation on a specific date. But who is it she needs to fool? Her employer? Her family?"

"Or is it the culprit themselves? If th-the professor needs to avoid tipping her hand that she knows…"

"Indeed," Lukai said.

"B-but there's a second possibility," Shera said.

Lukai nodded. "Right. It could be that the professor herself has no idea that the tickets aren't from the hospital. After all, if they all came in an envelope like this, you'd certainly assume. It could be that the culprit wants her out of town for some reason. Myra, can you think of a reason why? Is she capable of stopping the catastrophe?"

"I… I don't think so? Her big project right now is a mega-golem that's controlled similarly to her prosthetics. It's close to completion… I don't know if the culprit is worried about it getting involved, or what." She looked at the tickets again. "We're not jumping to conclusions here, are we?"

"We c-could probably confirm from the hospital itself, or with the cruise ticket office," Shera said.

"Indeed," Lukai said. "Plus, it might not have to do with any of those things. Her presence in the city could have any number of indirect effects that could inconvenience the culprit's plan. Maybe she walks by the wrong place at the wrong time, and this led the culprit to start getting her out of the picture. This sort of thing would be impossible for us to predict."

◆

"Myra, something's up with you," Iz said. Finally. "You mutter something about a time loop that doesn't make any sense, befriend Shera Marcrombie of all people, run off and come back with an Unkmirean boyfriend and this implausible expedition journal, and refuse to say anything about it."

"And what's your take on that?"

She took a deep breath. "I didn't know what to think. At first, I thought you were just really stressed from everything with your father. Then you showed up with the journal, and I thought something was really up. But then I checked the library for records on this beaver dam, and I couldn't find anything, so I thought it was some kind of forgery, maybe something to do with your father's wares."

"… And then?"

"Well, then I decided to call up the Imperial Archives in Halnya—"

"Wait, you what now?"

"—to ask if they had any record about the beaver dam. And you know, usually they're really friendly no matter what kind of ridiculous information you ask for, but with this, they got really evasive and kept trying to find out who I was and why I was asking, so yeah, I think this journal is legitim—Myra, what's wrong?"

Myra had grabbed her friend's shoulders and started to shake her. "Iz, you don't know what you've done!"