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  Paige rolled her eyes. “You make him sound like such a meathead!” she exclaimed.

  Sean looked up, his eyes still half glazed and wider than they normally would be. “But I AM a meathead. If I’d wanted a desk job, I’d be somewhere like the Meredith Reynolds, or the ArchAngel, organizing battles and maintaining the Empress’s forces…” His eyes lost focus again and his attention dropped back to his holoscreen.

  Brock cocked his head empathetically. “Well, it sounds like you’re the best person to do this. If they said this was high risk, it’s likely you’re the only one who has enough operational experience to deal with whatever is going down in that area of the ship. Plus, if any of us get found out, we need you in a position to come rescue our asses!”

  Sean bobbed his head, warming to the idea.

  Maya pulled herself together after her fit of laughter and managed to feign some sympathy. “Yeah. And I suspect that there will still be an opportunity for you to do meathead stuff. The ship must have a gym. And other meathead operatives for the heavy lifting and stuff. I’m sure you’ll find your groove.”

  Sean glanced over and nodded appreciatively. “Maybe I’ll tell them my nick name is ‘Meathead’… just so they don’t get the wrong idea.”

  Paige shook her head, sniggering to herself. “I think we might be missing the point of going under cover!” she said gently.

  Sean didn’t hear her, his spirits lifting a little. “Yeah. I’m going to call myself Meathead for this one,” he declared a little more decisively. He stood up, pulling himself to his full height. “I think I’m gonna enjoy this gig,” he said. Then he turned and walked out, with his usual Sean-cyborg-Royale swagger.

  Maya started giggling again. “Meathead!” she said shaking her head.

  Brock started vibrating with silent laughter too. “Wait till he realizes that his role is the Head of Administrative Services, as a representative for an external auditing company!”

  “Oh shit…” Paige snickered. “Let’s not break that to him just yet. Let him get used to the desk-job thing for a day or two…”

  Brock wore his ‘I’m-not-taking-the-blame-for-anything-that-happens’ look. “Well, it’s right here in black and white on his briefing doc.”

  “I wonder how long it’s going to take Meathead to read it…” Paige chuckled.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Gaitune-67, Base Ops Room

  The call connected on the console holo and two smiling faces came into view.

  Molly sat up a little on her invisible chair, shifting enough to encourage Neechie to jump down from her lap. “Greetings, gentlefolk,” she called out, as if her voice needed to travel further because she knew they were connecting from a long way away.

  “Greetings, Molly,” Arlene called back, warmly. Giles made some greeting like “Hi, how are you,” but his voice was a little fainter on account of him being a little further from the holo.

  Molly felt happiness lift inside of her as she looked on the two old friends over the connection. “I’m good. How are you both?”

  Arlene responded for the two of them. “We’re doing ok,” she told her. “Giles obviously is grumpy about the tedious work load, but we’re doing well. Making progress,” she summarized.

  Giles protested. “We’re working through the moons one at a time. And there are eleven of them! Arlene’s calculations sucked ass.”

  Arlene grinned and tilted her head at him. “See?”

  Molly smiled. “So you’re in the Orn system?” she asked.

  Arlene pulled her console chair a little closer, pushing Giles out a little. “Yes. I must say, the moons are rocky and deserted for the most part. But when you look out at the system, in almost any direction, it isn’t half beautiful…”

  Giles interjected. “It is, but what is more fascinating is how eleven of these moons ended up in such an intricate orbit - so close together. And so similar in size. There’s no physical way it could have occurred naturally. It just doesn’t make sense… Unless…”

  Arlene frowned. “Unless you buy into the conspiracy theory!”

  Giles huffed. “It’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s just physics. Occam's razor, etc etc.”

  Arlene shook her head at him and smiled back at Molly. “See what I have to put up with?” she joked, playfully.

  Giles pretended to be offended and folded his arms. “Well, I shall just be quiet then, shall I?”

  Oh my ancestors, they’re like an old married couple.

  You noticed that?

  It’s hard not to!

  It’s humorous.

  It’s sweet. As long as they don’t end up killing each other.

  That is a consideration.

  “So,” Arlene said, changing the subject. “You had information for us?”

  Molly shifted in her seat a little. “Well. Kinda. It’s like…” she took a deep breath before continuing again. “I had a realm shift, and I saw some things. I had no one else who might know what it meant, so I thought I’d reach out to you. In case you can help.”

  Arlene was listening intently. Giles had sat back a little but was still paying close attention too.

  Arlene had leaned on the console in front of her, and had her hand by her chin. She waved it a little. “Go on,” she said, encouraging Molly to share.

  Molly took another deep breath. “Well. I’d just finished a call and Neechie was hanging around, which is why I knew at first that it was a realm jump. So the usual started happening. Feeling ungrounded and so on. And then I saw an image, as clearly as I see you in the hologram before me. It was a series of planets in a weird array, all in this cluttered orbit.”

  Arlene started poking at her console, her attention no longer on Molly. Then a second holoscreen appeared, with the exact same image Molly had been describing.

  “Something like this?” she asked.

  Molly’s mouth dropped open. “How did you do that? Was Oz able to pull an image?”

  Arlene chuckled lightly. “No, no, no… This is where we are. This is the Orn system we were just telling you about.”

  Molly’s mouth dropped open. “But that’s exactly what it looked like.”

  Arlene bobbed her head. “Well, good,” she confirmed, matter-of-factly, unmoved by the fact that Molly’s visions actually meant something.

  “So what does this mean?” Molly asked.

  Arlene looked back at the camera. “Well, for one, it suggests that your realm jumping is getting more precise and useful. I wouldn’t be surprised if Neechie was helping you access aspects of your higher self that knows everything from past, present and future.”

  Molly allowed the new paradigms to float into her consciousness, cognizant that Oz could always give her a replay later.

  Arlene continued. “As for what the scene means specifically, what else can you tell us?”

  Molly closed her eyes, trying to recall the incident again. There was a pause on the line while she summoned the sequence in her mind’s eye.

  “I saw some kind of doorway. In stone. Like an entrance to a tomb. Or a temple.”

  She imagined herself there, recalling the details. “There was a smell of how the air goes when it’s hot outside, but cold inside the stone walls. And there were markings. Like the Zhyn characters. But not. Maybe a different language. Or older. And they were worn away a bit, making it hard to make them out for sure.”

  She moved her head as if looking up and around, her eyes still closed, her mind lost in her memory. “The constellations were strange… but that would make sense if it were in the Orn system, an area of space I’m not familiar with.”

  Arlene whispered to Giles. “So it’s a tomb, above the ground…”

  Giles nodded, his eyes not leaving the holo of Molly.

  Molly could hear Arlene’s voice again. “Anything else in the sky?” Arlene asked.

  Molly shook her head again. “No - just a beam of light falling on it. Lighting up the glyphs.”

  Arlene’s voice seemed a
little more excited. “Can you see where the light is coming from?”

  Molly shook her head. “No. But then I was somewhere else.” She paused a moment, as if reliving the experience. “I turned, and looked down, and I was in a bedroom… looking at a drawer next to a bed. A bedside cabinet.”

  “Whose bedroom is it?” Arlene coaxed her into revealing more information.

  Molly shook her head, a strand of her blonde hair dropping in front of her face. “I’m not sure. I feel like it’s a girl. But a little girl who is quite… precocious. She feels as if she’s beyond her years, or something. She’s… strange.”

  Arlene’s voice reached out to her. “What else can you see in the bedroom?”

  Molly’s brow creased up, as if she were trying to see closer. “There were red curtains over by the window. And outside… a building like the Capital Building in Spire. The room was sparse. Like a religious dorm or something. There were some Estarian beads on the wall.”

  She paused, her head looking downwards now. “But on the bedside table, there are tablets. That aren’t being taken.”

  Arlene’s voice penetrated her consciousness. “How do you know they’re not being taken?” she asked.

  Molly answered simply. “I just know.”

  Molly was silent. Giles and Arlene waited, watching. Wondering if there was any more information to come.

  Molly suddenly opened her eyes. “That’s it,” she told them. “That’s all I saw.”

  Arlene had been taking notes on her holo. She flicked up and down the screen, making sure she had everything she needed.

  Molly watched the holo screen waiting for Arlene’s opinion. “So what do you think?” Molly pressed, a twinge of anxiety in the corners of her eyes.

  Arlene pursed her lips, and then closed her holo. “I think,” she told her, “that you’ve been seeing things that may help us narrow our search down.”

  Molly’s face brightened. “Well, that’s great then!” she said. Her face dropped a moment later. “But why?” she asked.

  Arlene took a deep breath, and then glanced over at Giles, who was cleaning his fake glasses.

  Realizing he was now being invited into the conversation, he sat up a little and pulled the chair forward. “I believe that as you’re becoming more proficient in your realm jumping, you’re able to access more and more intelligence out of time.”

  Molly frowned. “Out of time?” she asked.

  Giles nodded, placing his glasses back on his face. “Yeah. So as humans… or any organics I know of… we experience time in sequence. Like frames of a movie.”

  Molly nodded her understanding and Giles continued. “Thing is, all these frames exist at once. Plus there’s an infinite number of possibilities, which all have their own track of frames.”

  “Ok…” Molly agreed slowly. She’d read her fair share of theoretical physics. The only problem she’d had with it was that it was purely theoretical.

  Giles continued his point. “So imagine all of these frames, and then not necessarily being tied to them. So you’re able to look at all of them out on a table in front of you.”

  Molly bobbed her head. “Yeah ok. I get that.”

  Giles decided not to labor the point. “Right. So when you’re realm jumping you’re basically accessing these other frames, from that altered perspective. What I’ve been calling ‘out of time’, or more precisely ‘outside of time’.”

  “Hmmm,” Molly mulled the idea for a moment. “That sounds… plausible. And it certainly explains all the different things I’ve been experiencing with the jumping and drifting.”

  Giles smiled, and then leaned over to speak quietly to Arlene, well aware that Molly could still hear him. “It’s unnerving how quickly she accepts these things.”

  Arlene nodded with a detached smile on her face. “I know. It freaked me out a little when I first met her. I still haven’t figured out if it’s personality or just rapid processing of new paradigms.”

  Molly eyed them playfully. “Erm, hello? Still here,” she called waving. “Even I know it’s rude to talk about someone in the third person as if they’re not there.”

  Arlene smirked a little. “My dear, we thought you were beyond such social conventions.”

  Molly relaxed in her seat. “Well. Yeah. That’s true. I only mentioned it coz I thought it would be funny,” she confessed blankly.

  Arlene and Giles burst out laughing.

  Molly looked at them, completely puzzled and missing the unintentional joke. “I don’t understand,” she said, as their laughter subsided.

  Giles wiped an eye from behind his glasses. “It’s funny because you tried to make fun of yourself and we didn’t get it… and then you explained it - which was hilarious. And then it was a double whammy when you didn’t understand why we found it funny in the end.”

  Molly’s expression was still deadpan. “I think my head is about to explode.”

  Well, you wanted to try your hand at organic-peoples’ humor!

  True. I wish I hadn’t now.

  “Ok,” Molly said brightly, “this has been useful and enlightening. What’s next?”

  The conversation continued for a few minutes longer, and eventually they said their farewells.

  Giles clicked off the call, and sat back thinking.

  Arlene glanced over at him. “You didn’t want to talk to her privately then?”

  Giles frowned. “Whatever for?”

  Arlene rolled her eyes and moved her console chair back across the cockpit to her usual spot. “No reason,” she said, a hint of humor in her voice.

  Giles couldn’t tell if Arlene was having a dig, or genuinely encouraging his interests in Molly. Plus, she had her back to him as she made the comment, making reading her expression even more difficult. He suspected she had done that deliberately, on account of the many papers they’d written in the early days about facial cues for evaluating truth and credibility.

  Either way, trying to form any kind of relationship with Molly from god knows how many light years away, and while in close proximity to his very long-ended ex, was not his idea of a smart move.

  He got up, stretched his legs and ambled back into the make-shift living area of the Scamp Princess.

  Gaitune-67, Kitchen

  “So where’s Paige tonight?” Brock asked.

  Pieter stuffed some fries into his mouth and then realized he couldn’t answer. He chewed deliberately, bobbing his head and pointing at his mouth, then swallowed hard. “She’s with Carl. Again.”

  Brock’s face animated. “Wow that girl must be getting some!” he sang in his lilty, playful way.

  Maya placed her burger back in the open take away box. “Hey, some decorum Brock!” she chided.

  Brock did his pretend serious face. “Ooops. Sorry,” he said, a little sheepishly. “Looks like the sex police are out in force!” he added cheekily.