Heather Garrison and Lillian Lillihammer were not unfamiliar with people not understanding them. Each had spent years of their life proving the impossible, well, possible; working independently; and hating each moment they had to stop and explain the fundamentals to the uniform uninformed. It was a familiar hell, and once again, Heather and Lillian found themselves in hot water.

"And you feel that your actions were justified?"

Yes. Lillian thought, turning to face the committee gathered before them. Assembled was a haphazard collection of pearl-clutchers, pragmatists and any other judgmental type that had found their way into employment at the Foundation — the Ethics Committee was, for all the good that it could do, an incredibly inefficient system that Lillian did her best to avoid, or circumvent. But this time, I don't think 'trust me' is going to fly.

Before she could get a chance to swallow the incoming deluge of barbed insults, Heather jumped in.

"Do we really have to convince you that we were the good guys? You're talking about this as if we wanted to end the world, or were secretly conspiring behind your backs, determined to break the rules and doom civilization." Heather rolled her eyes. "I know that you probably don't understand what we did, but Lillian and I do. We know exactly what we did, and personally — I stand by it."

"So why don't you explain it to us. From the start."

"Again?" Lillian found herself asking before she could bite her tongue, as Heather began to laugh beside her. Shit.

"Yes, again. But this time, try not to summarize the events or say that 'you wouldn't understand, so I'm going to skip ahead'. From the top. Please. And do mind your tone."

My tone?, Lillian thought, as she began to plot every way that she would destroy this ma—

Heather turned to her, and with just a small a twist of the brow and a subtle stare, Lillian had come to understand as a silent promise that Heather would reward good behavior.

Lillian held her tongue; after all, she would be using it later.

---

---

Heather Garrison was late for her own meeting, and for once, it wasn't Lillian's fault. It was her own fault this time; after all, she was the one who wouldn't let Lillian sleep this morning.

That's how that works, right? thought Heather, as she pulled a sweater over her pale camisole.

By the time she dashed into her office, turned on the computer and joined her meeting, the other attendee was already waiting with their camera on. Heather watched as a sandy-haired waif of a man spoke over his shoulder — it was Jordan Wheeler, the scrawny researcher from Site-72U, speaking to an unknown figure off-screen.

"—do you want me to do about that?" Jordan said, grinning, not realizing Heather had joined the call.

"Well, for one thing," said an unknown voice from off-screen, "you can start by apologizing. With dinner."

"Oh, so you want me to take you out? On a date?"

"I didn't say it was a date."

"You didn't say it wasn't."

"Well? Do you… want it to be a date?"

Adorable, Heather thought as she watched in silence. It was a nice reminder of why she kept pushing herself, why she did what she did; because of people like them, all around the world: the ones the world would rather not think about.

"Am I interrupting something?" Heather said sarcastically, as she announced her presence to Jordan and the mysterious man. Jordan, for his part, spun to face his camera, his cheeks burning in an embarrassing shade of crimson, accompanied by a sheepish grin.

"No, sorry. I shouldn't have been so unprofess—"

"It's fine, I don't really care that much." Heather smiled warmly. "Plus, I don't really think I'm one to talk — but if you want any tips about dating within the Foundation, I'm your gal. Though, that can probably wait until the end of the meeting."

Jordan grinned back with an empty look and a hopeful smile — telltale signs of an optimistic outlook. Good, Heather thought, at least one of us is an optimist.

"Sorry about the delay, by the way. Lost track of time," Heather said, blushing. "So, Jordan! How are things at Site-72U, after Lillian and I came to save your sorry asses?"

Heather managed to keep a straight face for about half a second, but when Jordan began to bluster and fumble for the right words, Heather broke.

"I'm kidding," Heather said, laughing. "But seriously, how are you?"

"Things are good! I'm… I'm good." Jordan said, blushing as his eyes darted to the left, back to the offscreen individual he had been talking to before Heather interrupted. "No new issues, though, we are still trying to figure out what to do with the extra manpower that we… well, that we had forgotten about."

Heather smiled. "Fun way to put it. How are the people who had been taken by 'absence'? Any complaints or issues from them?"

"Not really," Jordan said, shrugging. "A little bit confused about the line between their mind and reality, but no new immediate problems from what we can tell."

"You've been talking to them a lot, then?" Heather asked, her inner mischief following a gut instinct.

Jordan blushed. I was right, Heather thought with a satisfactory smile. Time to do what I do best; give them a little push.

"Well, you know — I kind of do a bit of everything around here, and I guess that includes counselling," Jordan said, clearly trying to play it off.

"How is the first person we rescued? Since it was the first time I'd done it, I wanted to make sure that he was doing alright — what was his name again?" she asked, leaning in with glee.

"Winston," Jordan answered, a bit too quickly. He paused, and cleared his throat awkwardly. "I mean, I think that was Winston Cheung-Levitt. He's doing good."

"Good!" Heather said, hesitating; and then, with a glint in her eye, she gave into her impulse. "I should probably set up a time to speak to him, just so that I can—"

"No need," the other voice said, interjecting from off screen. A tanned, toned man with short blue and black hair came into view, leaning in from behind Jordan's chair, arm resting onto Jordan's shoulders. He was much closer than he needed to be — and clearly, that was intentional.

Especially if Jordan's face was anything to go off of, given he was glowing like a lighthouse.

"Well that makes things easy," Heather remarked as she smiled in satisfaction. "How are you, Winston? Readjusting well?"

"I am, thanks to Jordan here. He's been there for me the entire time — even when I have nightmares in the middle of the night."

"You're having nightmares? What about?"

"It's always foggy," Winston said as the smile fell off of his face, replaced by a thousand-yard stare. "But it's usually an empty room, with a box on a pedestal. Somehow — I know that inside of the box is a story. I don't know how I know this, but I just know that a woman hid a story within it. The story… I know I heard the story before, when I was taken. Part of it, anyways."

Winston shivered, eyes glazing over as he further relived the nightmare.

"I approach the box," he continued, "trying to open it, because I need to know how the story inside ends. I struggle with the box, but the lid won't budge. Right as I feel it start to shift, a darkness envelops the room and the box begins to glow a deep purple… and then I wake up."

"Well," Heather said, frowning, "that's not great. It sounds like there are still some remnants of 'absence'. Hopefully, it doesn't get any worse."

Because worse, Heather thought, is disappearing.

"One more thing," Heather said, "and then I can let you go. Winston, we know 'absence' targets ambiguous minorities — I have written down that you are mixed race. Is that right? I just want to make sure, so we can start trying to figure out who 'absence' is going after next."

"Yeah, I'm mixed race," Winston nodded, his worries having been buried somewhere within. "But I'm also gay, do you think that matters?"

"Not to me," Heather joked, "but I can think of a few people who might… appreciate that. Thanks, Winston, that's helpful — I'm worried about 'absence' coming back for you, because of the dreams, so, maybe don't try to open the box in the future? Oh, and you should have somebody you can talk to regularly, somebody who won't forget you as easily. That should help stop 'absence' from coming back. Do you have somebody like that?"

Winston and Jordan were looking anywhere; just not at each other. Cute.

"I… I—" Winston stuttered awkwardly.

"Good." Heather said, unable to keep the impish grin off of her face. "Just remember, no matter what HR says: it's always fun to date a coworker. Trust me."

The look on their faces was priceless. Unfortunately for Heather, the time for fun was over. She still had an anomaly to solve, and people just like Winston to save — the clock hadn't stopped yet. Not as long as 'absence' was around.

---

---

Lillian Lillihammer was a creature of habit. When she sat in a chair, it was her chair — one claimed, eons ago, her claim marked with repetitive, absent-minded etchings made with her delicate, long fingernails. A habit was not a pattern to break, and none would dare sit in Lillian's spot — and if they were unaware of her habit, somehow, Lillian was more than happy to make it clear enough that they would never forget.

Unfortunately, and despite the fact that Lillian loved her, Heather Garrison was an agent of chaos. So when Lillian walked into the conference room early — of course, who else would be sitting in her place, but Heather. She made it all the way behind Heather, before she finally looked up from her notes and saw Lillian.

Heather's eyes lit up as she leaned her head back, straining to reach up to Lillian, who in turn, leaned down and kissed Heather in a warm, loving embrace.

"What was that for?" Heather asked, a faint pink decorating her cheeks as she caught her breath.

"You're taking over as Section Chair, right?" Lillian asked facetiously.

"I am? Good for me." Heather paused, lost in a train of thought. A moment later, she continued. "I'm in your spot, aren't I?"

"Yep."

"Thought the scratches seemed familiar. Like home." Heather shrugged. "Well, I'm comfy, so I think I'll stay here for the meeting. Unless, you'd rather… make me move?"

Flirt. Lillian thought, shaking her head as she walked around the conference table, sitting down and lounging lazily — absent-mindedly, she restarted the process of claiming a new chair, scratch by scratch.

"Were you right?" Lillian asked as she began to think in parallel about other issues. No point in wasting idle time.

"Oh, about the 'absence' victims? Kind of. They are all still safe, but Winston was complaining about nightmares, and it makes me think that 'absence' could come back at any time."

"So it does leave a 'backdoor' of sorts?"

"Less than that." Heather put down the stack of pages she had been pouring over, and rubbed her eyes. "It's not even an idea that gets left behind, it's more like…"

"The impression of a memory?"

"Yeah. Like an invisible footprint, pressed into the mind. All you see is that it was missing, and you can roughly make out the shape."

"So what shape does it make?"

Heather scrunched her face. "It doesn't. It just… doesn't exist."

"Of course," Lillian said, throwing her hands down to her sides. "Why would it be easy?"

"Right?" Heather said, resting her chin on her palm, propping her head up.

"Well," Lillian said, her tone taking on a more serious lilt, "at least they still exist."

"Things are getting worse on your end?" Heather asked, concern leaking in.

"Yeah, you could say that."

Since the two women had realized the origin of SCP-8843, they decided to divide and conquer. Heather was focused on researching the individuals, and trying to identify a way to return those that 'absence' had taken, while Lillian tried to figure out just how many people were disappearing globally. Unfortunately, neither had made the breakthrough they were looking for.

Ergo, this conversation. Lillian mused. I'll point out the obvious answer to her problem, and she will suggest the most roundabout, but elegant solution to mine. Just like every time.

"And?" Heather said with an amused quirk of her lips. "You trailed off, babe."

"Don't you expect that by now?"

"Sure. Doesn't mean that I can't shame you for it."

If anybody else had been in the room, Lillian would have reacted differently. If anybody else had said that to her, Lillian would have torn them a new one for 'deigning to assume her thoughts'. If anybody else was watching the two of them, Lillian would have controlled herself better.

But they were alone. So Lillian stuck her tongue out and gave Heather the middle finger.

"Cute. So?"

"Fine. Yeah, I mean, we were right. It's getting worse." Lillian sighed as she remembered the statistics. Each number, a missing name. Each missing name, a missing person. A problem that she couldn't drop, another individual who wouldn't be missed because — because it would be impossible for anybody to remember them, other than her.

She was the lone witness to the conceptual abstraction of millions of people, each a soul that only she could remember, one that would one day disappear into the abyss. That was, unless they could do something about it.

That burden kept her working.

"It's that bad?" Heather asked, pulling Lillian back from her reverie.

"Bad," Lillian answered, "is putting it lightly. Bad is when a Site nuke goes off. Bad is when we have to rely on Willie. This isn't bad babe; it's catastrophic."

Lillian reached down into a small bag she had carried with her, and opened it — between the folios, scattered notes and ephemera, she retrieved a print-out. She placed it on the table, spinning and facing it towards Heather.

"Look at this. If the rate of disappearances was staying the same, we would have a lot more time, but—"

"But it's exponential. Fuck."

"Yeah, exactly. There's no way that we can catch up with the rate of disappearances, especially when we're this far behind."

Heather leaned back in her chair, sighing angrily as she collected her thoughts. "So. Where does that leave us?"

"Damage control?" Lillian replied, shrugging. "Unless you can figure out some way to stop 'absence'—"

"Do you have a way?" Heather asked, a bit too pointedly.

"No," Lilian answered begrudgingly. Good luck getting me to admit that again.

As if reading her mind, Heather laughed. "Wow. Lillian Lillihammer, not knowing what to do? Stop the presses, we have to tell the rest of the section chai—"

"Shut the fuck up. Do you have a solution?" Lillian said, as each woman wore a matching grin.

"I mean…" Heather paused, trailing off as she stared blankly at Lillian. Ever the flirt, and given this wasn't her first end-of-the-world scenario, Lillian took the chance to study her girlfriend. A slight twitch of her sharp nose, the non-stop movements of her eyes, the way her freckles almost seem to shimmer under the florescent lights, not to mention the sleek lines on her jaw that Lillian loved to—

"I've got it," Heather interjected, completely ignoring how romantic Lillian had been.

Internally, mind you, but still. Rude, Lillian thought as she waited for Heather's incoming rant.

"What if there were more of me?"

"I mean, I can think of a few ideas, but…" Lillian said, as her mind ran wild with the possibilities.

"Not the right time babe, I'm trying to get somewhere." Heather stood up and began to pace, as she often did, before turning to dramatically focus back to Lillian. "Right now, how can we save the victims?"

"You mean other than what you did at Site-72U? Nothing. All we have is your fucked up mind, no offense."

"None taken," Heather said, smiling. "It is very fucked up, thanks to us. But you're right, the only solution we have is when I pull them out of nonexistence, and I can only do that because of what 'absence' did to me."

"So," Lillian began to speculate, "clones?"

"Do you really think that the Foundation wants more of me?"

"Good point."

As Heather and Lillian independently tried to solve their predicament, they had inadvertently created a tableau. Heather, standing, her arms crossed as she furrowed her brow, while Lillian leaned forward on her elbow, lounging on the table, as if reaching out to pull Heather to join her. If it wasn't for the ever-constant reminder that they were the only ones capable of saving the day, well — it might even be considered picturesque.

But as with all still lifes, things can only remain static for so long.

"Hey," said Heather, speaking slowly as if scared of her own idea. "Why… why does it have to be me?"

"Your connection to 'absence', babe."

"Right, but — that's my deadname. The Deadname Meme, that's the core issue here, but maybe…."

Heather almost ran to a nearby whiteboard, and began sketching incoherent diagrams and figures.

"So here is 'absence', big bad and whatever. It was able to come into the Noosphere through the Deadname Meme, through my bridge that I inadvertently created."

"Right," Lillian said, nodding along. "And that infohazard you so lovingly crafted spread throughout the world like a wildfire, allowing 'absence' to reach into the minds of all. Yeah, we know this."

"Babe, don't you see?" Heather turned, walking over to Lillian and grabbing her hands. She was, despite everything, smiling with a newfound determination, one that was undeniably infectious. "It's a two-way street."

Of course it is, Lillian thought, the obvious answer slamming into her like a ton of bricks. "So you think anybody could do what you did?"

"What? Babe, you know that there is nobody like me," Heather teased. "Seriously though, kind of? Not everybody everybody, but… Okay, the reason I was able to feel and manipulate 'absence' was because I know this. I know memetics, I know anomalous ontology, I know who I am — plus, having a brilliant girlfriend by my side certainly helps. But it's not like I'm the 'chosen one' or some dumb bullshit, right?"

"If you ignore those weird fairy tales, sure." Lillian paused, signaling Heather to go on.

"I am, because fuck pataphysics," Heather said as Lillian laughed, rolling her eyes.

"In that case, sure, I guess there is no difference between you and somebody else who has the skills and abilities to fuck with the Noosphere. Oh, and they would also need to be willing to risk their very existence, their memories, not to mention their lives. Can't forget that small detail."

As the thought hung in the air, Heather and Lillian arrived at the solution at the same time.

"I think we need to make a team," the couple said in a half-unison. "Right?" they both replied, in a mixture of joy and amusement. Heather leaned down, cupping Lillian's chin and pulling her up into an energetic, passionate kiss.

There was just something about solving a mystery that got both of their engines started.

At that moment, the door to the conference room opened, as Karen Elstrom leaned in, looking around.

"Should I… should I come back in a few?"

Oh, Lillian realized, right. The actual meeting. Where we would have to explain everything that has happened to all of the section chairs, so that we can get their valuable and unique insights into our problem.

It struck Lillian that she and Heather had just rendered that meeting irrelevant.

"Don't bother, Karen," Lillian said as she stood up, grabbing her girlfriend by the waist and pulling her close, Heather inadvertently letting out a little squeak. "We solved it before the meeting started."

Without missing a beat, Karen tightened her lips with an unimpressed look. "Of course you did. I'll let the other chairs know that you did it. Again."

---

---

"Thank you all for coming. You are here because… I'm not going to lie, you are not the elites, you are not special — you are here because you can do something with the Noosphere, and you were available on short notice."

Great speech, Heather thought, 'You're not special', how fucking inspiring.

"Sorry," she said to the room, "I haven't really done this before. That was a bad speech, let me try again."

As she gathered her thoughts, she went down the line of the gathered few, reviewing the situation.

Lillian, obviously, lounging across those crates like a cat. A known, adorable quantity.

The next figure down the line was Hana Thompson, an anomaly turned field agent turned friend, back from Heather's Site-19 days. Hana noticed Heather's look, and gave a friendly smile. Beside Hana was Jordan and Winston from Site-72U. The two were quietly talking amongst themselves, as Winston had to stifle a laugh. At the end of the line was a figure that Heather was not expecting — a starkly pale woman, made only paler by her dark, black clothes. Her make-up screamed 'fight me', while her buzzed undercut, dark hair and colored fringe screamed 'queer'.

"Billie Forsythe," Heather said as her mind found the name. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

"Rude." Billie looked like she was trying to play it off, but Heather recognized the way she squirmed and the telltale chips in her black nail polish. "Nothing better to do, and it seemed interesting."

"Do you have any experience with the Noosphere? Or the abyssal nightmare being of nonexistence that we lovingly call 'absence'?" Heather asked, already knowing what Billie's answer would be.

"The Noosphere? Not a fucking clue," Billie snapped. "But non-existence? The abyss? An eternal world of nothingness, oblivion and the dark and depraved entities that call the emptiness home? That I know. I know it too well."

Interesting, Heather thought, considering for a moment, before making up her mind. Edgy as fuck, but interesting. I like her.

"Fine, you can stay, Billie. Everybody else, thank you again for coming on the short notice. We don't have a lot of time to waste, and there's a lot to get done, so here's hoping you learn fast."

Let alone if this will actually work, Heather thought, not wanting to scare their slap-dash team off.

"So," asked Jordan, rubbing the back of his neck. "What can we do?"

"Great question," Lillian chirped from the back of the room, hopping off of her stacked crates, like a cat taking a stroll. "We're hoping that you will be able to save some missing people."

"How many people are missing, exactly?" asked Hana, a furrow in her brow.

"Millions, give or take," Lillian said, as if that wasn't an absurd and non-exact number.

"Oh. That's more than I was expecting," Jordan replied sheepishly. "And there are… six of us?"

Don't say it like that, Heather thought, resigned to making it work.

"We only have six people because we don't have the time to gather more. We don't have the time to recruit and hire experts, to contact members around the globe, to refine and collaborate until we have an army; the Foundation might be okay with a 'minor deviation', but those are people who are going to die— no, not die."

Heather swallowed, looking at the gathered crowd with a grimace. Death would be a mercy.

"They will no longer exist. Poof, gone, in a flash." Heather laughed lightly, shaking her head. "Nobody will know they were even missing, so yeah, the Foundation is right — there would be no consequences to the veil. But what about them?"

Nobody knew what to say. The room was silent, save for the overhead ventilation and Lillian's rhythmic tapping of her foot; at that moment, Heather realized she was crying.

She had expected this to be a complete disaster; not only was she in charge, she was responsible for… this? Was she responsible for everything that had happened, all around the world?

Yes. Who else would be responsible? she thought, the guilt hanging around her neck like a wrought-iron noose.

This happened because of her.

This happened because she was scared.

You are responsible for the abyss, and all it brings, she thought, almost in a trance. Nothing else is to blame. Nobody else is behind this.

That's not true, Heather's inner voice cut through, as if surfacing in a flood of molasses. This is all because of 'absence'.

You were so scared of your own name, you gave birth to that void. You are the abyss, Heather, and you are ravenous.

Heather couldn't breathe.

---

Lillian watched as, midway through attempting to wrangle the kindergarteners they called a 'Special Temporary Task Force', stopped abruptly and stormed out of the gymnasium that they were gathered in.

"Shit," Lillian said. "Who was watching? Did you see anything that set her off? Were there any cognitohazards you saw but ignored, any patterns or blips? Anything at all?"

"What?" Hana asked, eyes narrowing as she tried to understand Lillian's rapid fire questioning. "One moment she was speaking, the next she was crying. So yes, I saw her."

"Gold fucking star," Lillian snapped. "But fucking useless. Listen up, because I am only going to ask this one more time. Did any of you notice anything change from the moment Heather was talking to the moment she ran out? An itch, a cough, something deep within you, I don't give a shit what it was. But if one of you knows something about why Heather lost it, you need to tell me right now. Or else."

Lillian's hair flipped around, like an aura, as a protective rage welled deep within her. Who the FUCK thinks they can hurt my Heather? I'm going to fucking ruin their lives the moment I fin—

"Umm," one of the drones said as Lillian snapped to attention. She turned, glaring at him as she recalled his name.

"Winston. What did you do?"

"Oh god I'm sorry, I didn't do anything!" he said in a panic, shifting slightly to stand behind a Jordan, who had crossed his arms and was glaring at Lillian. "I just… I think I did notice something."

"Get to the fucking point," Lillian demanded, sick of wasting time. "You have ten seconds before I leave to go after her. Tick tock."

"Shit, right," Winston said, locking eyes with Lillian. He took a deep breath, and swallowed, a calm falling over him.

7 seconds.

"Right before Heather ran off, but after she started crying, I noticed something."

"Congratulations. 5 seconds, get to the fucking point."

Lillian began to walk towards the doorway; she had timed it in her head, and would be walking out when time was up, and not a second afterwards.

Winston ran alongside her, maintaining eye contact.

Finally, some fucking initiative, Lillian thought, mentally moving Winston up in the rankings.

"It was like when I was taken. By 'absence'."

Lillian stopped walking.

"What do you mean?" Lillian asked in a bone-chillingly calm tone. "Describe it. Exactly."

"I'm not quite sure I know how to phrase—"

"Figure it out," Lillian said, cutting him off. "Did you hear 'absence'? Did you feel it?"

"No, no — I didn't hear it, but I did feel somethin—"

"You felt like 'absence' was watching you?"

"Will you let me finish?" Winston erupted in frustration, struggling to stay calm. Lillian raised her hands, signaling that she would wait for his answer. Winston's breath hitched, as the blood drained from his face.

"No," he said, "I felt like 'absence' was in the room with us."

---

Heather Garrison was locked in a box that she held the keys to; despite that, she could not get out. Heather Garrison had run out of words in her story, and sat on an empty page, the margins beckoning.

Heather Garrison was falling apart, and…

And I deserve it.

And, as if she had an internal alarm for whenever Heather was insulting herself — Lillian burst through the door into the dusty, disused office that Heather had squirreled herself away in.

"Hi," Heather meekly eked out.

"Babe, thank god," Lillian ran to Heather, grabbing her in a tight embrace, and showering her face with kisses and concern. "Winston started talking about 'absence', and—"

Fuck, Heather thought. "And you thought that I had—"

"Disappeared? Yeah."

"I'm okay."

Lillian laughed. "Really? You call this okay?"

"No, but…" Heather sniffled, rubbing her eyes. She didn't know how long she had been crying for, but her eyes stung with each new tear. "What the fuck is wrong with me?"

"What kind of question is that?" Lillian said in a friendly, yet mocking tone. "Why are you the problem?"

"Because!" Heather yelled, like a dam bursting. "Because everything that is happening, all of the fucking missing people? That's my fucking fault. That's on me, for thinking I could escape my deadname. That's on me for thinking I was smarter than the rest of the Foundation. This is my fault, because I didn't think ahead, I didn't plan — I just did, and now the world is fucked."

"First off," Lillian began, "you should have known you weren't smarter than the Foundation; I've worked here longer than you."

Lillian turned, holding Heather by the shoulders, an arm's length away. Heather felt Lillian's warm, strong hands gripping her and focused on the feeling. She focused on each finger, on each pound of pressure Lillian applied to her skin. She felt Lillian's pulse in each digit, breathed in her scent, and just tried to take it all in.

I don't want to forget this, Heather thought. I don't ever want to forget how Lillian makes me feel.

"Secondly," Lillian continued, breaking Heather from her silent reverie. "The world isn't fucked until we give up. You know that, right?"

"What?" Heather asked, too upset to try and put the pieces together. "Just explain your point, I'm ca—"

"Hey, hey," Lillian said, gently interrupting her. "Anything for you, Heath." Lillian sat down on a dust-covered table, pulling Heather with her. Lillian sat behind her girlfriend, arms wrapped around and over her, like a warm blanket on a cold, snowy night.

It was nice.

"Just," Lillian said quietly, refusing to meet Heather's eyes, "promise that I can be… I can be vulnerable with you? Fuck, I don't know how to do this, but I'm going to actually talk about how I'm feeling, okay? Just… don't fucking tell Harry."

"I wouldn't dream of it," Heather said, leaning into Lillian's neck, and feeling the tension in her muscles slowly drip away.

"So. Do you know how many times I've faced the potential end of the world?" Lillian asked.

"I'd… I'd wager, at least twice?"

"Funny. Babe, we are going to spend the rest of our lives looking at ways that the world could end. That's the fucking job. Somebody has to, and honestly, do you trust the other idiots who work here? Do you think that anybody but you could have this level of insight into memetics overlapping with ontology, overlapping with abstract concepts? Do you think anybody else could even keep up with that sentence?"

Heather didn't want to admit it, but the words came tumbling out of her mouth anyways. "No."

"Here's the shitty thing," Lillian said, draping her chin on Heather's shoulder, kissing gently along the crook of her neck. "If we don't deal with the problems, nobody else will. And that fucking sucks. That's hard, that's horrible and exhausting, and it beats down on your every single day of your fucking life. But you know what? Do you know why I am still here, why I still try and do the good work?"

"You fucking Section Chairs," Heather sniffled, "and your 'good work'."

Lillian laughed, nuzzling into Heather's side. "Listen, if you had met Scout—"

"A bit tough," Heather teased. "You know, given I was… actually, don't worry about it."

Lillian laughed, and for a second, the room felt a little bit warmer. The weight on Heather's shoulders had faded a bit, the pressure that threatened to choke her had dispersed.

I am going to be okay.

"So," Lillian said, as if dragging it out would make the question any easier. "Why did you run?"

Heather scoffed. "It's stupid. You're going to say I'm an idiot."

"No I won't," Lillian reassured her, "I promise I'll only think it."

"Great." Heather took a moment, checking if the door was closed — as if that mattered — before taking a deep breath and admitting the truth. "I—"

Heather froze — but the moment she saw Lillian's eyes, the frost melted. Layer by layer, fading away until Heather felt raw and naked before her lover; that was a look of eternal commitment.

"I'm here for you."

That was the final piece Heather needed to know. She means that. She means that, no matter what. She is here, for me.

"I'm not a leader."

---

Oh, Lillian thought, ready with a speech for every inevitability, but that. What the fuck is she—

"Babe, what are you talking about?" Lillian said incredulously. "You are confident, competent, and a badass. What's missing?"

"Sure," Heather replied, frowning and playing with a frayed end of her hair.

"And?"

"And that doesn't make me a fucking leader, babe! You're a Section Chair, you have experience leading. Me? I'm just some jackass who thought she knew what she was doing. How the hell am I supposed to lead if I can't even explain what I was doing?"

Oh, Lillian realized, the pieces slotting into place. Wait, I do have something for this.

"Heather, do you know how I became Section Chair?"

"You annoyed the former chair so much that they quit, leaving the role vacant for you?"

The women laughed, as Lillian played it off. "I mean, kind of? But it wasn't like I had any advance warning, I wasn't prepared, I didn't know what leadership was. All I knew was that I was the smartest person in the room, so who else would be in charge?"

"Exactly. So why am I doing this instead of you?"

"No," Lillian said, "I was a fucking idiot. You don't want the smartest person in charge, have you seen how stupid some fucking geniuses are? No, you can't have a niche expert leading, because they have only grown more insular, more petty — they don't collaborate well, because 'who else is at their level'?"

"So you have idiots in charge?"

"Yeah. It happens a lot. It shouldn't but it does," Lillian smiled, grabbing Heather's hands. "No, a good leader is somebody who gives a shit about the people around them. A leader is somebody who agonizes over each decision. A leader is somebody who thinks about their wellbeing last, because they know that a leader isn't the keystone. A leader is just the force that keeps an arch from collapsing — the trust they put into others is the keystone in the middle, keeping the whole dang system afloat."

"Arches? Of course, you know my love of classical architectu—

"Shut up, lovingly — my point is this. Heather, you care more about the rest of the world than I thought anybody could, while still being as brilliant as you are. Me? I'm a jaded fucking bitch who is sick and tired of the world. I surround myself with files, notes, cognitohazards and hallways full of mind-fuckery because — that's not me. I am not a leader, I just sit in the chair and play one on TV."

Lillian looked at her partner with pure devotion and intensity. She stared into Heather's eyes, the pair linked in a way that none could match — a binary system, orbiting around each other in a brilliant dance. She saw the person that she would spend the rest of her life with, and she knew just what to say.

"You inspire people to be better. You inspired me to give half a fuck, which nobody else has managed. You…"

I need Heather to hear this. To understand it. To listen.

Lillian stood in front of her sitting girlfriend, holding her and looking every part the loving partner; Heather couldn't look away, as she waited for Lillian's sentence, enraptured.

"You are going to save every single person who was impacted by 'absence'. I know this, because I know you. I don't need you to believe in yourself, but—"

"Can I believe in your belief in me?" Heather finished for Lillian, a slight smile on her face.

"Yeah. I was going to be more elegant, but yes. To start, believe that I am right; a given, obviously. You are a leader. You are competent. You are sexy, smart and you can fucking do this. Okay?"

Heather stood up.

"Okay."

There's my girl.

---

"What's up, chucklefucks," Lillian called out as the doors swung open back into the gymnasium, Heather trailing behind. It had been about 15 minutes since Heather had… taken a momentary leave of absence, and both women had left the room.

To their surprise, everybody was still here.

"Welcome back, Heather!" Jordan offered pointedly, sitting at a folding table with Winston. Their heads were buried in their laptops, taking the spare moment to catch up on work. The Foundation was the same everywhere; not enough time, and definitely not enough people.

Hana and Billie, however, were sprawled over a stack of supply crates, looking like the young adults they really were.

It's sad, Heather thought, but I never see Hana… act her age? I don't think I've ever seen Hana, the 20-something? And fuck, Billie finally has somebody to talk to who isn't old, boring, or her family. Is that… why the fuck is this bare level of human decency and connection a fucking rarity in here?

"…do you do for fun around here?" Hana asked, absentmindedly twirling her hair.

"Me?" Billie asked, her expression ambiguous. "If I'm lucky, I get some time alone — and I explore."

"Fair enough," Hana said. "Do you go on hikes? This area seems like a gorgeo—"

"Can't," Billie said, shaking her head. "Too many triggers, it's not worth it. I spend an hour outside, I spend a week inside, recuperating."

"Right," Hana replied, awkwardly, "your…"

"Condition, the thing that makes me 'fragile'?" Billie said sarcastically, finishing the thought for Hana. "Yeah, it's a pain in my ass. What about you? How do you stave off the boredom at the illustrious Site-19?"

"Not much? So there's Meri," Hana said, looking away and pursing her lips. "She's my friend, but the Foundation makes us schedule 'play dates' through them, so it's not like we see each other very often." Hana frowned, trying to think of something that wasn't as depressing.

"Oh, and they let me use the pool!" she said victoriously. "Do you swim?"

"I wish. My mom wouldn't let me near the pool, even if she was drowning." Billie said, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. "Never learned. She won't let me do shit."

"I get it," Hana said, looking around conspiratorially, before continuing in a more hushed, subdued tone. "Sure, I have a job at 19, but — despite that, a lot of people refuse to call me anything but SCP-6317."

"So, girls," Heather said, leaning over on the crates, "are you done swapping scars?"

"Emotional ones? Sure," Billie joked. "So, what's the deal. Are we done here? Or do the scientists need to do more science, or whatever the fuck you do?"

"You know…" Heather considered, "we might be done. We went into this with a halfcocked idea, and I really appreciate all of you for coming to help but…"

You stop the spread, and then you neutralize the cognitohazard.

Heather stopped mid-sentence, freezing in place.

---

"Uhh, Heath? What's goi—" Hana began, before being cut off.

"She's figured it out," Lillian said so casually that it felt rehearsed. "Give her a second, and she'll have a plan."

Those who had not spent as much time around Heather looked at each other, skeptically, as Lillian stood there without a care in the world. The shared confusion created an internal language in the moment; and through silent gestures, the gathered few attempted to communicate silently.

Are… are you going to say something? Billie thought as loudly as she could, looking at Hana, wishing that telepathy was as common place as the flu.

Me? Fuck no. You do it, Hana replied, with the swift nudge of her head.

Me? Why the fuck am I involved in this, I'm fine waitin—

But Jordan didn't have time to finish the silent conversation, because it was Heather's turn.

"We were trying to solve the symptoms, but not the cause," Heather said, shaking her head as if it was obvious. "Why the fuck would we spend time and effort on undoing what has already been done?"

"So," interjected Billie, "our first priority needs to be stopping 'absence' from taking more people?"

"Exactly."

The gathered nodded in assent, falling into place as Heather looked at each person who had given up their time to be here. Throughout the room, for a split second, it really did feel like telepathy was real — for a second, everybody in the room had the same thought.

Okay, Heather. What can we do?

---

---

When you take six people who have nothing better to do (not on account of a lack of obligations, mind you, rather, as a result of the significance of the moment) and put them all into a single room and give them a single task, it turns out that things can be very productive.

In less than a day, Heather, Lillian and their band of merry misfits had switched gears entirely, having scuttled the concept of 'retrieval teams', instead having turned to their comfort zone: memetic bullshit.

"How are we doing?" Lillian asked, leaning over Heather's shoulder as she finished checking some diagrams on her terminal.

"Not bad," Heather answered, not looking up from her work. "Winston has been doing incredible work with the technological-metaphysical bridge, and as far as I can tell, these cognitohazardous matrixes should hold. Hana and Jordan have configured our ontological filter, and that should be calibrated correctly now; and Billie, you were—"

"I was making sure that we could get the power, orphic outflow and privacy needed to actually make this work. And yeah, it's done," Billie said lazily, from the corner of the room she had claimed as her own. They had told her she didn't have to stay, given the fact that she never was invited in the first place; she had found a way to make herself useful, partially out of spite. "Remind me again how all of this is going to save the day?"

This was a very generous way of describing the swarm of cables, kit-bashed thaumatic cores, Noogenic foci and para-technological inverters, all surrounded by an astoundingly complex cognitohazardous sigil and multiple ontological anchors. This, simultaneously, simplified the interdisciplinary effort that had swelled in a miniscule amount of time, and undercut the sheer conceptual impact this could leave in all of their respective fields.

This was the solution.

Hopefully, Heather thought, chewing on her lip. Take two, right?

"Billie, I think it's… well, Heather had told me that it was a bit like a combination of—" stammered Hana, fulfilling her role as the youngest in the room.

"Hey, Han," Lillian said in a gentle, but slightly condescending tone. "Why not let Heather explain it?"

"Sure, Lillian," Hana replied, "Always happy to listen to my elders. I'm going to go and monitor the disappearance rates."

"Your elders, huh?" Jordan joked, pulling up a chair. "So, Heather, what witchcraft do you have for us today?"

"Ha. Not quite my thing," Heather reminded Jordan, as she naturally drifted to the front of the room. She turned to face them, and froze.

Remember: your bullshit got you Lillian, Heath. You can explain an idea to the people who were working on it. Just… go for it.

A moment to collect herself, and she was ready.

"Okay," Heather began, standing tall with her dusty rose dazzlecoat, frazzled hair and signature heeled boots. "Originally, we were going to save the people who 'absence' had already taken — obviously, that was stupid, and that's why we are here now instead of playing MTF Agent in the other room still. While yeah, it could have worked, it doesn't actually fix the core issue."

"Which is?" Winston asked, having just awoken from a power-nap. He hadn't left the room in the past 24 hours, and was just coming back from a coding-induced haze - Heather and Lillian were not expecting that level of devotion, but welcomed the surprise.

"Oh, you know, nothing big," Lillian drawled. "Just 'absence' fucking obliterating people."

"Ah," Winston nodded. "Right. That."

"Like Lils mentioned," Heather replied, "yeah — 'absence' will still eat people. Well, not just anybody—"

"Only people who are forgettable, right?" added Hana quietly, as if not wanting to disturb the other experienced attendees — of course, interrupting somebody is generally considered disruptive. Thankfully, Heather liked Hana.

"Basically," Heather nodded, half-leaning onto a table behind her. "Think about it this way: 'absence' is a being that represents 'nothingness' as an idea. Outside of the mess with my deadname, it consumes 'irrelevant information' — yes, we do not have a more specific definition than that, welcome to the world of Anomalous Ontology."

"Sure," said Jordan, "but what makes an idea 'irrelevant'?"

"Great question," Heather said, leaning forward in excitement. "That's what we had to figure out: How 'absence' tells what ideas are irrelevant, and which are important."

Now, if I was Lillian, I would skip the explanation, Heather thought, looking over to her girlfriend for guidance, and just jump right to what is going to happen. But…

It struck her. I'm Heather, not Lillian.

So, Heather trusted her instincts.

"You know about the different regions of the shared Noospheric field, and the Noosphere itself, right?" Heather asked the room, looking around at puzzled faces.

A single hand shot up.

"Thanks, Lils," Heather joked, rolling her eyes. "What about literally anybody else who isn't the fucking head of the department that, I don't know, focuses on the Noosphere and ideas?"

"Hey!" Lillian shouted, "You asked, and yeah! I do know about them, it's not my fault that every—"

"Babe," Heather said, a bemused smile hiding a glare of daggers. "Do you want to be in charge?"

Lillian lowered her hand.

"Great. Anybody else?" Heather waited a moment. "No? Awesome."

Heather hopped onto the desk fully, sitting down and crossing her legs, getting comfortable before continuing.

"So the Noosphere is made up of multiple different parts. You can make up as many different categories, ways of sorting the concepts, and methods of identifying different memetic signatures to find the underlying hierarchy of ideas — but, as is made evident by the glazing of the eyes, all of those details are fucking boring and not actually practical. I'm smart, but I'm not a fucking nerd; I deal in ontology, the science of 'ehh, close enough', and that's how I look at things. Practically, and based on what is actually relevant."

Heather leaned back, relaxing as she settled into a familiar place. This? This is something I know how to explain.

"Basically, the Noosphere exists as this conceptual void, of all information, concepts and memetic bullshit that exists in our universe. It contains information that we, as a collective human society, all have an understanding of, information that a handful of us know, and information that no living human is aware of. Again, in actually useful terms, there's three main 'areas' of the Noosphere: active, passive and inactive."

The world could be ending, and even then Heather wouldn't have noticed; she was on a roll.

"First, the active Noosphere: this contains ideas and concepts that people around the world are actively thinking about. Simple. Easy. The passive Noosphere is similarly simple, consisting of all ideas and concepts that people around the world know about, but might not actively be thinking about. The passive Noosphere contains ideas that we can remember. Finally, we have the inactive Noosph—"

"We get it," Billie said, failing to mask any emotions. "That's just ideas where we don't know that we don't know, right?"

"Yeah. Exactly." Heather answered, smiling at Billie, contrasting the looks of incredulity that all others had pointed at the younger Forsythe. "How did you know?"

"I'm not stupid," she responded plainly.

Fair enough.

"So, Heather, may I ask — what is the point of these categories? They seem fairly arbitrary." Jordan said, perhaps, a bit too formally for Site-43. He'll get used to it, if he sticks around us for long enough.

"Great question, Jordie," Heather answered, watching Winston start laughing as Jordan winced at the nickname. "So, we know what 'absence' does; it attacks forgotten people and obliterates them."

"Please," Lillian begged, "I'm desperate. Babe, can I please just tell them?"

"Lillian," Heather said in a mock-scolding tone. "You're going to have to get better about sharing my time with ot—"

"Fuck sharing," Lillian said, jumping up. "Okay, here's the deal. 'Absence'? It can only go after the inactive Noosphere. That's what 'irrelevant' information is closest too — we think that, as the influence of 'absence' spreads in a person, they become more and more insular, and conceptually irrelevant. That is to say—"

"That they lose all relative meaning. We think," Heather said, wresting back control of the room from her impatient partner. "Actually, huh,"

Heather turned and pointed across the room at Winston, who feigned surprise. "Me?" he said, as if there was anybody else she could be pointing at.

"Yes! Winston," Heather said, stalking towards the confused man. "You have first hand experience with… sorry, I can't think of a nice way to say this, but you were almost obliterated by 'absence'."

"Yes," Winston said, grimacing at the memory. "Rough way to say it, but that's right."

"So," Lillian said, grabbing a chair and sitting on it backwards, facing Winston. "Did your first time hurt?"

"Ha," he said, shaking his head. "No, it didn't hurt. It just… came on like a fogbank."

"Were you still conscious?" Jordan asked, hand reaching out to comfort Winston. "Do you… do you remember it?"

Winston shook his head. "No. That's the worst part. I could think, but… it wasn't like I am now, where I have a body, and a mind, and a lifetime of memories. When I was missing… I had no body, I barely had a mind and…"

"And 'absence' had the memories," Heather said, finishing the thought.

"Yeah."

The mediocre mood that had slowly been cultivated was shattered by the reminder of what would happen if they were wrong.

We can't be wrong, Heather thought. Not again. We're running out of time.

She spun on her heel, and walked over to the cobbled-together components that made up their saving grace — they hoped.

"Based on that," Heather said, not looking at the group, as she bent down to inspect the contraption, "it sounds like 'absence' does target victims who are being pulled into the inactive region of the Noosphere, as others forget about them."

"Okay, so what?" Hana asked, absentmindedly moving her hand to her hip, only to meet pure air; they hadn't let her bring her camera with her. "It's not like we can set up a filter, right?"

"Think about it this way — when we remember lost information, it moves from the inactive Noosphere to the active Noosphere." Heather paused, shooting a look at Lillian that said 'let the children try and be right, okay?'

Heather didn't continue until she saw Lillian signal 'fine, but I'm not happy about it.'

"So," said Billie, who had silently approached the machine as well, looking down at it; yes, she had even mastered the art of condescending to an inanimate object. "How the fuck does this junk remember people?"

Billie paled for a second; but Heather couldn't tell if it was in fear, or excitement.

"Don't tell me," Billie continued, "don't fucking tell me you put brains into the fucking box."

Heather couldn't help but laugh.

"God no. This isn't that complicated, this is a glorified fucking flashlight," Heather managed to get through her laughter, the situation having become too absurd to remain stable. "Babe, explain."

"Finally," Lillian said, as if a set of training weights had dropped off of her arms. "This is a Noospheric lighthouse. Thanks to Winston's code, my brilliance and Heather's determination to use anomalous ontology in horrifying ways — we can track the next target of 'absence', or rather, the most irrelevant non-existent person who is in danger."

"So how does this help us save them?" Hana asked, the pieces not falling into place.

"I thought Heather said you were smart?" Lillian said, a little more honestly than she had meant it. "It's simple. This will—"

"You've got a grey," Hana said, interrupting Lillian's flow.

"It thinks about people. Makes them relevant," Billie said tersely, picking up the answer all while glaring at Lillian. "Just like a fucking 'lighthouse' does for the shoreline. It makes the invisible, visible."

Wow, Heather thought, let Lillian lead for a single minute and the entire team goes to shit.

"Come on guys," Heather said, trying to defuse the tension. "Don't you want to see it in action?"

Heather knew saying that would reunite the room towards the common goal; after all, half of the fun of working for the Foundation was seeing all the undiscovered, world-changing technology that was put together in about a single afternoon.

And as long as Heather could keep them all from killing each other, they just might have a solution.

---

---

As the lights, screens, and machines whirred to life, the testing room vibrated with a similar level of anticipation. As the colors of the monitor slowly faded in, all eyes strained in hope that the project would be a success, desperate to see; well, that was part of it, nobody knew what to expect.

Heather was right, this is exciting, Lillian thought, as she tapped the edge of her keyboard in anticipation. She was in the command chair, array of monitors in front of her — there were readouts, charts, status indicators and everything else that most would consider useless, but had been deemed relevant by Heather, Lillian and the gang.

Those readings are the key to stopping 'absence', Lillian mused, if we're right this time.

"So," asked Jordan, "what does anything here mean? Is it working? Is that light good?"

"Yes," said Winston, "the light is good. I think."

"Wow. We are all experts, aren't we?" Billie snarked, rolling her eyes.

"Thanks, Baby Forcythe," Lillian said, "but I'm the expert here. Okay, everybody listen up, and I will go over this one more time."

"Babe," Heather said, catching the room's attention. She had been napping in a corner of the room when they had shown up, having worked all night with Lillian to get things finalized in time. Nobody had noticed her waking, but the moment she spoke — it was like something shifted in the room.

Seriously? Lillian thought, watching as the rest of the room ignored her in favor of Heather. Do they know who I am?

And, like a mind-reader, Heather continued.

"Lils, everybody here knows that you are the smartest in the room, myself included." Heather smiled, rubbing the dust from her eyes. "But, we also know that you will not explain shit unless you have to — why don't you let me?"

"Fine," Lillian grumbled, as she moved to stand— but before she could, Heather was in her lap, and rolling the chair back in place.

Not that I would ever fucking say this, Lillian thought, but I think I'm getting used to being used as furniture by Heather.

"So," Heather said, as the trusted few gathered around, "highest level, this machine can be used to apply 'focus' to a certain idea in the Noosphere."

"Focus?" Hana asked. "Like, thinking about something? Focusing on it?"

"Yeah, exactly. Say we measure focus as one unit being a single person thinking about an idea — as a person thinks about an idea that has been forgotten, or is considered irrelevant, it slowly becomes more and more relevant as it gains more 'focus'. The more people thinking about an idea, the more focus it gains, and the faster it becomes relevant again — the sooner it re-enters the active Noosphere."

"So it's a robot human to look at things?" Jordan asked. "Couldn't we have all just sat in a room and meditated about it instead?"

And maybe next, we can all sing kumbaya? Lillian thought, glaring. Okay, you know what? Now I see why Heather took over.

"Ha," Heather barked, as she pointed to a read-out monitor above. "So, you know how there are six of us? This machine is, conceptually, like one thousand people in deep meditation, remembering every single facet of the missing idea. This? This is a fucking drone strike compared to weaponizing our thoughts and prayers."

"How?" Winston asked, looking as if he had just finished mental calculations. "The machine and code shouldn't amplify anyth—"

"We don't," Heather said, waving away the concern. "I was being facetious earlier, it's not really simulating focus. We are instead associating a very powerful concept of relevance to the target idea, simulating the focus, and thanks to re-associative restructuring, it should make anything we target impossible for 'absence' to take."

"Huh," Winston said. "And you can just… do that? Anybody could do this?"

Well, not anybo— Lillian began to think, before Heather replied.

"No, not anybody," Heather grinned, "Just us."

That's my girl.

"So," Hana began, "how are we going to find the victims of 'absence' if we can't remember them?"

"Great question," Heather said, turning to point to a large screen on the side. It was a massive wireframe rendering of ambiguous shapes, almost like constellations — on closer inspection, there were no shapes, just a series of dots or nodes.

"This is the Noosphere," Heather said, pausing for emphasis.

"In a box!" Lillian added, to ruin said emphasis.

"It's the Noosphere?" Billie asked, eyebrows cocked to the side.

"Ish," Heather said, tilting her hand side to side. "This is an approximation of the Noosphere, based on mapping ideas and associations. We can't really say 'where' something is in the Noosphere, we can just say what it is 'relative' to. But as far as it matters, pretend this is a map. Lillian, would you be a dear and pull up the tracer?"

"Me?" Lillian asked, bewildered. "Would you like me to type around you, princess, or should I do so with my mind?"

"Dealer's choice," Heather answered, teasing Lillian with a look in her eyes.

…Fine.

"Are you two done flirting?" Billie scoffed, having sat down into a chair — incorrectly, mind you.

Everybody laughed — even the couple. After all, crises make the strangest of bedfellows.

"Yes, sorry," Heather said through light laughter. "Okay, last explanation — this is a heatmap of the Noosphere, tracking the density of a certain association of an idea."

"Instead of targeting an idea that we can't remember," Lillian continued smoothly, "we've calibrated it to track association with 'absence' instead."

What's that look for? Lillian thought, seeing Heather's quizzical, yet gentle stare. "Hey, I'm helping!"

"You are," Heather said, "I'm just surprised."

"Shut up."

"Anyways — as Lillian said, we are tracking 'absence', or rather — the ideas that are most associated with it. Hopefully, that will show us whomever 'absence' is going after next."

"So we can get there first," Hana said in sudden understanding.

"Exactly," Heather said, nodding.

"Okay," Jordan said, looking at the screens in confusion. "So how do we do that?"

"Us?" Lillian said, before laughing. "We don't do shit. That's why we built this machine — here."

Lillian hit a few keystrokes, and the main monitor changed to display a readout of conceptual identifiers, and a bar chart, arranged into rows.

"Okay, so this shows every idea, sorted based on association with 'absence'." Lillian said, scrolling through the list. "At the top is the strongest connection."

"Is that 'absence'?" Jordan asked.

"Nope," Lillian said, laughing. "That's Heather."

"Oh."

"Yeah," Heather said, interjecting. "Don't worry about it, I'm fine now. I think. Whatever. Do we want to try this out?"

"I guess?" Lillian replied, narrowing her eyes as she read the stats. "Typically, I would say we should wait until 'absence' was actively going—"

Fuck, Lillian thought, cursing herself. Of course I had to say that.

"Hey, doesn't this mean that 'absence' is hunting?" Hana asked in a hurried tone. On the monitor, a bar was climbing rapidly, speeding up as it did.

Showtime, Lillian thought, cracking her fingers in anticipation.

"Yeah, 'absence' is going after somebody," Heather said morbidly, now focused on the task. She shifted over so that both her and Lillian could access the keyboard, and the two began to work the machine in tandem.

As their fingers flew across the keyboard, and Heather adjusted dials, each called out small pieces of information to the other, as the remaining few watched in bewilderment.

"Okay, identifying concept… I've got it narrowed down to this conceptual cluster, here." Heather said, bouncing between the different monitors.

"On it," Lillian said, swiftly keying in the information. "Okay, identified the specific concept node, we know what 'absence' is going after next."

"How long do we have?" Heather asked.

"Not long," Lillian responded, as she continued her calibrations. "But we should be locked on — spinning the matrix up now, how are they systems holding up Winston?"

"Not bad," he replied, having been watching those monitors like a hawk. "I'll need to tweak some of the thaumic connections afterwards, but they should hold for now."

"Got it," Lillian said, focused on not letting 'absence' beat her at her own game. Sure, it might be Heather's ontology, but…

I'm not going to lose to some fucking idea from another universe, Lillian thought, frowning.

"Okay, the cognitohazardous matrix is spooled and primed. Ready to go, Heath."

All commotion stopped, as they turned to Heather, tensely waiting for her next command. She was staring at the monitors, as if looking for something.

"What's wrong, babe?"

"I just… No, sorry, it's nothing. Good to go, everybody ready?"

They nodded.

"Okay. Do it."

Lillian hit some keystrokes, and the machine spooled up, a dull hum filling the room. Engines pulsed, as the thaumic links and memetic matrices lit up, glowing, holding stable. The contraption radiated a powerful energy, and felt significant; the anomalous ontology was now active, the room shifting around it.

And then, all at once — it was done, and the machine rested in silence.

"Did we do it?" Jordan asked, hopefully. "Did we save somebody?"

"Fuck!" Heather shouted, as she looked at the screens. "Fuck! I was right, god damn it—"

"What's going on, Heath? It didn't show any errors." Lillian asked. What did she hesitate for earlier?

"No, but, look," Heather said, pulling up the list of names. "We saved the one we targeted, the most 'irrelevant' idea. But only that one."

Lillian looked at the monitor and sure enough—

There are ten other people that 'absence' took instead.

"Fuck," Lillian concurred.

"Somebody want to translate from their secret language?" Billie asked, sarcastically.

"Look at the number of nodes," Jordan said, solemnly. "There are ten more people missing."

"What does that mean? Didn't the machine work?" Billie replied, confusion replacing the snark from earlier.

"It did," Heather answered, turning to look at Billie. "But we can only save a single person at a time. The moment we started targeting the most 'irrelevant' idea, 'absence's' next target—"

"It became too relevant, and 'absence' took other ideas instead." Lillian finished, mirroring Heather's grimace.

"Not ideas," Jordan said morbidly. "People. 'Absence' removed ten people from existence."

"So? What do we do now?" Hana asked, looking back and forth between the others in the room.

"We?" Heather said sardonically, any attempts at gentleness having faded. "We don't keep doing anything. We aren't responsible for fixing this."

She stood, turning to the rest of the team.

"Thanks, everybody. But this is my mess, this is my problem, and nothing we've been doing has worked. I've wasted enough of your time, so you know what? Don't worry about it. You should all go home, I don't want to keep dragging you through failures."

She smiled, and Lillian spotted a tear or two fall from Heather's eye, before being surreptitiously being wiped away.

"Are you sure?" offered Hana, "I mean, I could—"

"I really appreciate it, I truly do. But… I think I have to deal with this problem on my own. Sorry, guys."

Heather purposefully walked out of the room, and Lillian followed after her without a moment's hesitation.

Good luck ditching me, babe, Lillian thought as she stalked after her. You're stuck with me now. We'll figure this out. I hope.

Lillian hated being uncertain.

---

---

Site-43 was buried deep underground, and, despite the claustrophobia present the moment one remembered said fact, was generally considered a cozy kind of Site. Site-43, the casual, relaxed place that it was, mandated no forced schedules, routine meetings or detailed oversight — so long as you got your work done, nobody quite cared how you did it.

That also meant that you could work, whenever, wherever you wanted, so long as your work was being accomplished. That is why, it was not a surprising fact that Heather and Lillian were awake, sitting in their living room, a half-emptied bottle of wine passed back and forth between them.

"—and then I wake up," Heather said, overenunciating every syllable. "I'm not fucking lying, I swear; every night in my dreams, I see a clock, ticking down, and every night, it's closer and closer to midnight."

"What," responded Lillian, leaning forward and crawling along the floor to be curled up alongside her partner, "do you think will happen when the clock strikes midnight?"

Heather paused.

"I don't know, I always wake up first," Heather said, rolling her eyes as she took a sip. "Duh. Pay attention babe."

"Oh, how could I? My mistake, your highness."

"Me? High? Not tonight babe, you think I would light up without you?"

"You better not."

As the two settled into each other, the warm glow of affection heating the room, the night took on an uneasy silence. Lillian had quickly found Heather following her… unexpected departure, and neither had broached the topic at hand.

What the fuck would I even say? Heather thought, Sorry, I'm just going to give up — I was wrong, again!

Absence. The abyss. The void. Nothingness. Her escape. They were all one in the same, and had become a veritable knot of Damocles, threatening to strangle her the moment she slipped — Heather was up against the wall, and couldn't run.

Not even in my mind, Heather thought morbidly, closing her eyes. As she meditated, she began to envision her Noospheric anchor, the harsh black spikes wedged into the ground like a nail through a hand — it was suffused with an immense and radiating amaranthine miasma, billowing clouds of periwinkle cascading off of the sharp, harsh edges. Absence. Or what it left behind, I guess.

The more time that had passed since her memectomy — the working name for the surgical procedure of removing memories, through the application of the inverse concept — the clearer her mind became. At first, it was a struggle just to recall facts. As her mind recovered, and developed alternative synaptic bridges, she began to recall things more rapidly. She had been able to simulate rough memetic layouts mentally prior to her severance from 'absence'; just last week, she held multiple simultaneous memetic arrays in her mind, at once.

But I'm not getting smarter, Heather thought, at least, I don't think so. And it's not my memory, like Lillian.

No, it wasn't as clean, it wasn't as simple an explanation. It was simply as if Heather woke up one day, and her thinking space had grown. If her mind was a table, it had been a small, cluttered workbench before — ramshackle, with rough edges and little workable space. Now? Her mind was a farm table, smoothly finished, but gnarled wood. The tree that had made her metaphorical mind must have been ancient.

And that was the one part that she couldn't shake.

"—water?" a voice said clearly, as Heather blinked to notice that her girlfriend was no longer by her side. Lillian was standing in front of Heather, leaning down, their faces inches away; Heather's eyes darted as she took a generous peek, while Lillian gave her a knowing smirk.

"Sorry?" Heather said in a dazed, and recently distracted state. "What did you say?"

"Mmm," Lillian cooed as she stood up, putting a hand on her hip and looking down at Heather, sitting on the floor. "You get too distracted by something?"

"You could say that."

"Well, I would hope that you were distracted by something important."

"Oh, very important."

Lillian quirked an eyebrow. "Only very important?" she said.

"The most important."

"Better. Now, let me ask you again, do you want some water?"

"Desperately," Heather said as she finally noticed just how thirsty she had been.

"Give me a second, I'll be right back."

---

How do I say something? Lillian asked herself as she busied herself in their kitchenette. There was only so long you could take when getting two glasses of water, but she intended to milk it for everything it was worth. How the fuck do you talk to your girlfriend about the impending apocalypse-level disaster that she may or may not have caused, but is one of the only people who can resolve it? How do you say, hey! Time to get up and do our jobs, and somehow have the fucking answer! Let's go be heroes!

The water began to boil in the electric kettle beside her — why she had turned the kettle on in the first place, to make two cold glasses of water, she hadn't figured out yet, but unless Heather asked, it would buy her a bit more time. And she was 95% sure that Heather wouldn't ask.

Probably.

Lillian turned the glass over in her hand, as she once again considered her options.

Either I go in there and just rip the band-aid off, or, I go in there, rock her world and then in the post-coital haze, broach the topic, Lillian considered as she weighed the two options she considered most likely to work. On one hand, we are adults, on the other hand, sometimes you just need a good fuck to solve a problem.

Lillian knew which answer was the fun answer, but the hard question was which would be the right one to make?

So, she thought about their relationship. She thought about the two of them, Heather's life since moving to Site-43, their budding weird-power-dynamics-but-they-both-ignored-it relationship, every moment they had, laugh they shared, memory they made — she thought about each and every moment that she had spent with Heather Garrison, and in that moment, she realized something.

Lillian had rediscovered something that she had hidden away in herself, long ago, in a time when she decided to put herself first, when she decided to become the woman she was today. She had stumbled onto something she had forgotten she had ever dreamed of, ever conceived of — she felt it in the very core of her being.

Our way, Lillian thought decisively. If I'm going to make a life with her, the least I can do is make my plan with her.

As she walked back into their living room, water in hand, Lillian began to absentmindedly hum a few bars of Mendelssohn, as her mind began to coordinate something big.

---

"I've been thinking…" Lillian said as she returned to the living room with two glasses.

Heather hadn't noticed how long she had been gone — she had been busy dreaming of her own mind, watching the haze shift and ebb, dancing to some invisible current.

"Thinking what?" Heather asked, rousing herself from her navel-gazing.

"About 'absence'."

"What?" Heather asked, "did you finally remember the easy and obvious answer?"

Lillian laughed melodically, as if singing an arpeggio only she knew, as she sat down onto the floor beside her partner. "No, silly, that's your job. I'm just the beauty in this operation."

"Really?" Heather asked, giving Lillian a judging glance as she sipped her water. "Okay, but seriously, what were you thinking about."

"I was thinking about earlier," Lillian began, idly stroking a finger up and down Heather's arm.

"What? When I fucking crashed and burned the first team I led?" Heather said, frowning. "We were in the same room, right? Because I didn't think me fucking up was that hot."

"Shut up," Lillian said, playfully pushing Heather away. "You were fine. Trust me, I was worse."

"What? Your team fell apart and the project was a failure too?"

"No," Lillian laughed, leaning up against their sofa, propping her head up with her hand. "No, the project was a success — they just kicked me off of the team after the first day. Something about how I wouldn't let the others do anything, calling me controlling and stuff."

"What? You?" Heather responded, not concealing her snickers.

"Listen," Lillian protested, "I may have been younger, but I was always a genius. I just also happened to be—"

"An asshole?"

"Antisocial."

"Right."

"Whatever," Lillian said grabbing Heather by the shirt and pulled her into an embrace up against the couch. "My point is, you are not that. You aren't some antisocial hermit, you're this weird extroverted kind of leader that people actually want to listen to. I know you were too busy in your own head, but I saw how everybody in that room looked at you."

"They wanted it to be over with," Heather said, scowling.

"They wanted you to tell them what to do next," Lillian corrected her. "They were looking to you because they believed in you. All of them. I don't get it, but… somehow, you got through to each person here. At one point, or another, you saw them, the same way that you saw me; and you accepted them."

"I didn't… it's not like I was trying to do that, I was just trying to find an answer—"

"Babe, you had your answer," Lillian said, firmly. "When we severed your link from 'absence', you were safe — maybe the only person safe from 'absence', but you had your answer. But you won't quit until you have an answer that works for everybody. That's what makes you a good leader; you are stubborn in an optimistic way — something that frustrates me more than you could possible know — but I love that. The fact that you can't let something go until you have a real answer; that's one of the first things I fell for."

"I just…" Heather said, trailing off. I just don't think I can do it.

"You what?" Lillian asked, her tone gentle as she cupped Heather's face in her hand. "You can talk to me."

"I just… I feel like a fucking idiot. This all started because I wanted to get rid of my deadname. How does one trans person's longing for identity lead to fucking genocide?" Heather asked facetiously.

"Very carefully?" Lillian offered, as Heather snorted. "You can't blame yourself, it's not like you're the one stealing away queer people in the night. Right? I mean, if you are, I bet if you stopped doing that you could very well save the day, again."

"Sure," Heather said, "if I was 'absence', then yes, I would simply just not erase queer, mixed-race, disabled, or otherwise marginalized folks. But it's not that simple."

"I mean," Lillian drawled, stretching like a cat, moving further into Heather's personal space. "Isn't it simple? How complex can it be, if all it took was one cognitohazard?"

"You of all people should know what bullshit that sentence is," Heather said, as Lillian gave her a knowing grin. "First off, my deadname meme was not simple—"

"Have you noticed," Lillian interjected, "that you used to hate it when people called it that? You told me it was called the 'Name Changer', do you remember?"

Oh god, Heather thought. She remembered. Fuck, of course she remembered!

"I think," Heather dragged out, "it's pretty fucking bullshit of you to ask me if I remember something. But yes, I do remember."

"So what changed?"

Heather didn't know if she'd consciously thought about it before, but before she could realize, she was giving the answer. "Now I have you."

"So?"

"So who gives a shit anymore. The Deadname Meme sounds funnier anyways, and I like how it pisses off the old scientists who only deal in 'facts' and 'professionalism' — I have you, and now, I don't worry about what others think. At least, not as much."

Heather laughed, and felt like a gust of wind hitting an autumn leaf; she was weightless, and ready to take on anything. She looked to her side, Lillian looking up at her hungrily, and saw the person who meant the most in the world; the woman she would do anything for.

The woman who could disappear, if I don't fix this, Heather thought, wishing she could push the idea away. But she couldn't, and she knew that. Instead, she kept smiling.

"What is it?" Lillian asked. "What's so funny?"

"It's funny, isn't it? It feels like everything comes back to the same place. Our relationship, my life here, my memories, this anomaly: they all lead right back the my Deadname Meme. All roads lead to…"

Oh.

---

Did it… Lillian hoped. Did it happen?

Heather had that look again; Lillian vibrated in anticipation. Both to hear Heather's new plan, and for the pleasure she got out of an elegant solution; the latter a given, since it was Heather she was talking about.

Seeing that look, and anxiously waiting to hear the answer, Lillian realized how hot it was to see your significant other in their element.

Heather is my entropy, Lillian mused, wishing she could live within that chaos.

---

"Okay," Heather began, as the pieces slowly fell into place in her mind. "I think I have a plan."

"I knew it," Lillian said with a smug look.

"Of course you did. So, I was thinking—"

"As one does," Lillian interrupted playfully.

"As one does, about my Deadname Meme. About how I had it self-propagate so that I didn't have to worry about spread, so that I didn't need to worry beyond creating it; once it was real, it would ensure its own existence, through spread, adaptation and iteration."

"Right. Your cognitohazard-infohazard loop."

"And it got me thinking — what if there's a way that we can let 'absence's' victims… save themselves?"

"Oh my god. You could use 'absence's' signature to find all of the victims—"

"And you could teach them how to pull themselves back into the Noosphere!"

"Exactly!" Heather said excitedly, before frowning. "But, there's a problem with that."

"Being?" Lillian asked, impatience getting the best of her.

"Same thing as our last attempt; either we are distributing them one at a time, or we have to somehow turn this into an pyramid scheme of memories. Both ways, it's not practical, and we just don't have the time and resources to cover that much metaphorical ground."

Heather was on a roll now, and could feel the shape of the solution coming together.

"Right, of course," Lillian muttered. "We need to scale it."

"But then I had another thought — we are trying, effectively, to get things in the inactive Noosphere back into the active Noosphere; what do we know the victims share in common?"

"One, they all share 'absence's' conceptual signature. Two, they" Lillian said, before trailing off. "they're all in the inactive Noosphere."

"So we're working backwards. Don't find them by looking for 'absence'—"

"Just find anything inactive, and sort it later. Babe, that's brilliant, because—"

"Because, by identifying what is in the inactive Noosphere, we are effectively, remembering it."

"Wait," Lillian said. "I get that we can figure out the details of what we are making, but I think you missed something. What's our vector here?"

"Oh, right," Heather said, pausing for a moment, before rolling with her gut. "We need to create the inverse of 'absence'."

"What?" Lillian asked, a look of genuine confusion having appeared.

I don't fucking know! Heather thought in a panic, I guess, it could—

"So 'absence' loves to eat irrelevant things and people. We know this because when we tried to save somebody, the moment they were in our focus—"

"Absence moved on to the next most irrelevant person," Lillian finished in a moment of understanding. "Somehow, 'absence' can tell what ideas are least relevant in our Noosphere, and will always try and eat the largest meal it can. Why the hell does it do that anyways? It has to, because it needs irrelevance to survive? Do ideas even need to eat?"

"This one does," Heather said. "At least, I think."

"I mean," continued Lillian, "it makes some sense, right? It got stronger the more of your memories it ate, and now—"

"It's just doing the same thing, but on a cosmic scale."

"And once again, we are back to scale. What kind of idea has that same level of scope as 'absence', but would be able to deliver infohazardous instructions to remember lost people?"

"Hmm," Heather thought aloud as she weighed their options. "Well, okay — with the Deadname Meme, the spread was through verbal triggers, but it took time to expand."

"A luxury we lack," Lillian pointed out. "So, Heath, what is the answer? What is our big plan for dealing with problems that are laden throughout the Noosphere, with no real distinction on where those missing people could be, and a ticking clock?"

"We need something that already exists," Heather said, biting her lip. "We don't have time to build a fully custom entity to serve as the vector, so…"

"Store-bought is fine?" Lillian joked. "Right, let me just think about all of the off-the-rack concepts we can—"

Fuck, Heather fumed internally, as her puzzle ran against a wall. How the fuck am I supposed to think of an idea that has the same size and scope as the Noosphere itself?

"Wait," Heather said, "we're being stupid."

"Again? I thought we had agreed to stop doing that," Lillian joked. "So what's the answer babe?"

"The Noosphere itself."

---

She's joking, right? Lillian thought as she stared at her girlfriend.

"You're joking," she reaffirmed aloud, "you want to break the Noosphere?"

"Well, kind of?" Heather said, trying to play it off. "Not break it, more like… use it?"

"Okay, explain," Lillian said in a mixture of anticipation and impatience, "what's your masterstroke?"

"So, ignoring the different regions, we can think about concepts, ideas and people within the Noosphere as having two possible states; relevant, and irrelevant. We know that there are degrees of relevance that can be compared on a Noosphere-wide scale, and we know that we can simulate focus to remember an irrelevant concept or person."

"Right," Lillian interjected, "but the problem is still scale. Our rig could only remember a single target at a time, what kind of machine do you think the Foundation has in secret that would be able to do this?"

Ignoring all of the eigenweapons, that is, Lillian corrected herself internally.

"Fuck machines," Heather said derisively, "an interface is the issue. We can't have this many degrees of separation between the Noosphere and the solution — so we have no separation. We make the Noosphere remember people for us."

"You," Lillian began, "want to train the Noosphere to find the most irrelevant person or idea, and target them itself? Like a fucking tamed bear? Heather, the Noosphere is a fucking conceptual dimension, not just some idea you can catch."

"I know that, asshole," Heather barked back, "but the Noosphere already does things like this. You've read the studies, you know that it can patch holes within itself, bridge conceptual gaps — hell, it essentially has an immune system the way it isolates impossible concepts, or at least tries to."

"And if there's an immune system," Lillian realized, "we can give it a vaccine."

"Exactly. Teach the Noosphere to make its own antibodies, fight the infection off itself."

"I mean… yeah, that would work. One question, how?" Lillian asked innocently, with a devilish grin. "What are we going to teach the Noosphere to do?"

"Well," Heather said smugly, "do you remember how the Deadname Meme works?"

"Yeah," Lillian replied, "you associated the concept of your deadname with 'absence' and it did the rest."

"So, we just need to teach the Noosphere to associate the forgotten individuals with the concept of 'relevant' — and then hope it works."

You make it sound easy, Lillian thought, but…

"Heather, can I be honest?" Lillian asked, feeling unsure of herself for the first time in years.

"You? Asking if you can be honest? Funny."

"Great, thanks," Lillian answered, glowering. "I just…"

"Hey," Heather said, grabbing Lillian's hand. "You can say anything to me. Always."

I know, but the real question is am I willing to admit it, Lillian worried, freezing, weighing her options. It's not about if I trust her—

She did. So she spoke her mind.

"I… god, I can't believe I'm fucking saying this, but, I may be out of my depth," Lillian admitted. "When we are talking about memetics and countermemetics? You know I'm right there. Coding, reality bending, dancing around the edges of the Noosphere? That's fine. But this level of… idea fuckery?"

"Anomalous Applied Ontology?" Heather offered with a slight smirk.

"Yeah, that—", Lillian paused to laugh, before continuing. "God you make me feel like a Junior Researcher the moment you get on a roll. I think what I'm trying to say is this; for once, I am willing to admit that I'm not the one with the master plan who will save the day, and I don't even have the experience to know if what you're saying is accurate enough."

Heather nodded, indicating Lillian should continue.

"It's just that," Lillian said, "I… I guess, what I'm trying to do is, ask you this: do you think it will work?"

"Yes," Heather said decisively. "It needs to."

Lillian didn't know if she felt any more confident, but seeing the fire in Heather's eyes — that was more than enough to convince her.

Not to mention, enough to get my motor running… Lillian thought, trailing away into a world of carnal distractions.

---

Less than 8 hours later, after a quick dalliance, followed by a power sleep, the two women were back in the testing room alongside the machine the team had built. All it took were a few modifications, and some tweaks to the memetic arrays. Before, it was designed to apply a specific concept to a specific part of the Noosphere — now, they had it configured to deliver a very complex concept to the entire Noosphere, a far cry from the original purpose or design.

So, Heather worried, when it doesn't work, that's why.

She reviewed the memetic groupings in her mind, like going down a checklist.

Okay, we've built the concept, and from our initial conceptual pings, we've found a way to help the idea cascade throughout the Noosphere, Heather reminded herself. It was unconventional, but they had managed to bind a vector to 'absence's' signature; it wouldn't be the delivery method, but it would help them ensure it was distributed throughout the Noosphere.

"So, what's left?" Heather asked Lillian, who was busy at work checking the Noogenic foci.

"I think," Lillian said, "we're finally done."

The two had been working in tandem for hours, a half-spoken sentence here, a rhetorical question there; like two drones from the same hive, each knew exactly what the other was doing, and moved around them in a delicate dance. From the outside of the room, it almost looked like the two were waltzing to a silent melody — a somber thought, to accompany the stakes of their situation.

"Okay, so — do you think it will hold?"

"The machine?" Lillian clarified. "Yeah, it'll be fine. But, the Noosphere? No clue."

"Yeah, well," Heather said, "that's because nobody else has been as reckless enough to try it."

"We're not reckless! We're just…" Lillian paused, looking for the words.

"Innovative?" Heather offered.

"Rebels."

"Cringe."

"Yeah, well," Lillian said, "you're the one dating an old lady."

"Come on, Lillian," Heather teased, "everybody knows you're a catch. I'm lucky to be dating you."

The two kissed gently, separating after some time.

"I've been thinking," Lillian mused, interrupting the dull silence of their machine. "We're literally changing the very fabric of reality, or at least, conceptual reality; is it ethical for us to be doing that?"

"Right," Heather considered, "fucking ethics. I mean, to reframe it: are we ethical to save millions of minorities? I think so."

"Right," Lillian agreed, "but we can't ignore the fact that the Noosphere is a constant, and we are going to be 'adjusting' that. It's like if another researcher just… slightly fucked with gravity. The ramifications alone would be staggering, and—"

"And they will be worse if we don't." Heather swallowed hard. "I don't think we have a choice."

"There's always a choice," Lillian said, "it might be a stupid choice, but there's always an option."

"Right, but — we're not stupid," Heather said grinning. "Look, worst case, reality is a little hinky for a bit, and we patch the fuck-ups later. We are stuck between a rock, and a bigger, meaner conceptual boulder; I don't know about you, but I'm not going to stand around and wait to be crushed."

"Sure, but," Lillian said, falling into her Section Chair tone, "do you want to do this without authorization?"

Heather gasped dramatically, rolling her eyes.

"Oh no! We don't have permission to do something!" Heather snorted. "And when has that stopped us before, boss?"

"Look, I don't give a shit about me, but," Lillian said, "you're not immune from bullshit like I am. I don't want you to have to face the Ethics Committee. I can't… I can't risk losing you."

"That's not going to happen," Heather said. "If I have to face the Ethics Committee, you will too. We're in this, together."

"Yeah," Lillian nodded, grabbing her girlfriend's hand and squeezing it hard. "It's us, against the world."

"Not the world," Heather corrected her, "just the abyss."

And tomorrow, if everything went right, there would still be a world to live in.

I hope.

---

Lillian Lillihammer was a heavy sleeper — she blamed the lack of sleep she typically operated on, but the truth of the matter was that she had always been this way. It was a pain in the ass to get her out of bed, and you could demolish half the site and she'd sleep through it. The few times she would wake in the night were notable — through the shifting sands of slumber, Lillian heard the faint sound of crying.

"Hey," Lillian mumbled blearily, "Heath, you okay?"

Silence.

"Heath?"

"Hi, sorry," Heather eked out, moving her head to rest on Lillian's shoulder, snuggling in. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, it's just…"

Lillian opened her eyes and slowly turned her gaze to her girlfriend — Heather was staring back, hungrily, faint tear marks decorating her face like war paint. Lillian brushed a tear away, as Heather leaned into her palm; the two shuffled, as Heather began to spoon her.

"You should go back to bed," Heather whispered into Lillian's ear. "I just needed to be beside you. That's it."

She's worried, Lillian thought. So am I.

"You know," Lillian muttered, "it's all going to wor—"

"I just…"

"What is it, babe?"

Heather was silent, but Lillian could feel her body tensing, see the torture that Heather was putting herself through mentally, wishing that there was some way that she could help her.

"If we break the world tomorrow, I can't lose you. So just… be here, with me?"

"Of course, my love," Lillian said gently, "we're here. Together."

As Heather settled in further, Lillian began to drift back to sleep. Right as she was on the precipice of unconsciousness, she felt Heather's warm, wet breath on her ear.

"Lillian," Heather said slowly, dragging out each syllable of her name in a sultry fashion. "I want to feel you. I want to feel the world slip away in the throes of ecstasy, and I want my mind to go blank. I just… be with me?"

Lillian didn't answer her verbally — she simply turned her head, and kissed Heather, the women leaning into the other, hungrily searching for that companionship. She felt Heather's hands begin to roam across her body, shuddering with each light touch, tracing their way all over — Lillian began to be lost in the sensation, the faintest noises leaking out of her mouth.

"Touch me," Heather begged, as Lillian took no time to fulfil her lover's request. As the two women twisted and writhed against each other, hands and mouths exploring the bodies of the other, like explorers recording every single square inch of their skin — everything else fell away.

And even if it was just for the moment, they had each other, and they had now — and that was enough.

---

---

It worked.

---

"I'm sorry," a committee member said, "but do you really need to share your erotic escapades with us?"

"No," Lillian snarked back, "but you told me not to skip anything. Your words, not mine."

"Babe," Heather warned between slight laughter, "is that helping?"

"It's helping me," Lillian answered, crossing her arms and facing the committee. "So, was there anything else?"

"Yes," the committee head said exasperatedly, "you didn't finish the story. You didn't explain what happened, the events that actually led to this ethics hearing. The context is helpful, but — the file doesn't explain what happened the next day, when you tried your 'solution'. It's redacted; I'm sure you had some hand in that, Dr. Lillihammer?"

"Who? Me?" she said, playing it off. "No, I don't care about things like this. I still don't get what the problem is here, we did it, you know that, right?"

"No, Dr. Lillihammer, that is our point. You have sufficiently explained the events leading up to the reason for this hearing, but you have not addressed why this was the only solution. On top of that, you have avoided discussing the results of your actions, and the grander impact on the anomalous world at large. Frankly, it feels like you two are dodging the question, and have more to hide."

"Or," Heather said sternly, having stepped between Lillian and the committee, "maybe the point is that this is a waste of time. It worked. The solution worked — what don't you understand?"

"Let's go step by step," a committee member offered. "So, you ran the sequence on the morning of March 11th. What happened when you did so?"

"It worked, as expected. The idea propagated throughout the Noosphere, and it immediately caused a cascading reality shift."

"So you willingly broke reality away from the baseline?"

"No," Heather said while glaring, "we willingly found a solution to a significant, global problem that nobody else had noticed."

"Yes," the head of the ethics committee responded, scanning a sheet before her. "Those missing millions, it says you rescued them from 'absence', but, what happened to 'absence' itself? What actually changed after reality shifted?"

"Oh, right," Heather muttered, exchanging a look with Lillian, a silent conversation taking place. A moment later, she continued. "So, 'absence' consumed forgotten ideas, as you know by now. When we changed the Noosphere, we effectively taught it to observe itself — we showed it how to make irrelevant and forgotten ideas relevant and remembered."

"Can you undo that?"

"Unknown. Nobody has ever shifted the Noosphere on this scale, in this way."

"Are there any consequences?"

"No," Lillian interjected, "Unless you count the fact that knowledge can't be lost anymore as a bad thing."

"Excuse me?" a committee member shouted. "What do you mean 'knowledge can't be lost anymore'?"

"Right," said Heather, shooting Lillian a dirty look. "What my girlfriend means to say is that, because the Noosphere itself remembers things now, ideas cannot be forgotten from the Noosphere. Even if we can't remember them, the Noosphere does."

"Are you telling me," the ethics committee leader said, "that as a result of your unauthorized project, amnestics have been rendered useless?"

"Wow," Heather said, "Jump to conclusions much? We never said that."

"You said ideas cannot be forgotten anymore."

"No, I said the Noosphere can't forget them. Amnestics sever the connection between a memory and the mind, and typically, those memories fade entirely. The same thing happens, the only difference being that the Noosphere now has a copy that cannot be lost — like a back-up, or an archive."

"And that's it? That is the extent of the results of your actions?"

"Well," Lillian said, "there was one other thing."

"Yes?"

"Since the Noosphere can't lose information anymore, it… well, it's been expanding. Rapidly."

"Is that a good thing?"

"Great question," both Lillian and Heather said in unison, in a tone that left little ambiguity around their exhaustion with the process.

"Now," Heather said, "was there anything else you didn't get? Or are we done?"

"We're done," a committee member sneered. "Expect to hear our decision and your deserved repercussions within a few days."

Without a moment's hesitation, the two linked arms and spun, walking with purpose.

"So," Heather asked Lillian, "how do you think we did?"

"Honestly?" Lillian replied. "Better than I expected."

Expectations are a funny thing. In one moment, you can be stuck dreading an inevitable demise, and the next, realizing that you were wrong and the world is safe. You can expect a package at the door, and be shocked when an unknown child shows up and knocks. Lillian and Heather prided themselves on being ready for any inevitability.

Neither expected what would come next.

---

---

Lillian had been working at the Foundation for a very long time.

When she had just started, she remembered how excited she had been, being invited to a meeting with a mysterious figure. She hadn't stopped speculating to Harry and Eileen at the time, and her mind ran rampant with the potentials, and dreamed opportunities. The subterfuge was intoxicating — why else would they avoid sharing the name of the other party?

In the end, the meeting was an explanation of her healthcare benefits.

So, ever since that, she treated all anonymous appointments the same; as a nuisance, that she would avoid, if at all possible. If it was important, they would find her.

Like today.

When the agent appeared at their door this morning, and verbally informed her that her presence had been requested off-site, she was intrigued. When the agent ignored her casual usage of hazardous phrases designed to buy her more time, Lillian knew that this meeting had some degree of importance.

The fact that she had no choice on attending only supported that.

But who is it? Lillian wondered as she walked through unfamiliar hallways of some nameless, unlisted facility. She ran down her list of usual suspects, but drew a blank. Whomever wanted to see her — they knew Lillian, but she didn't know them.

Lillian hated the not knowing.

"We're here," the agent said, with little room for discussion.

"Thanks for the guided tour," Lillian mocked. "Do you have a review card? Or a Yelp I can leave a comment on?"

The agent did not respond.

"You're all the same. Humorless."

The agent once again motioned to the door.

"Fine, fine," Lillian protested, "I'm going in."

The door opened into a rather plain office; no, not just plain. An office devoid of a personal touch — a sterile environment, one that looked unused prior to today. At the desk sat a figure, androgynous and blurry — yes, blurry. Lillian rubbed her eyes, but the figure did not sharpen.

Is that a memetic scrambling field, or—

"The blur," the unknown individual calmly said, "is a result of my own abstraction, not your vision. Please, Dr. Lillihammer, sit."

"Sure, no problem," Lillian said, casually lounging into the offered chair. "So, is this a personal call?"

The figure didn't react.

"Your name came across my desk recently."

"Oh? People are talking about me, shocker, what are they saying now?"

"That you broke the Noosphere."

"Well," Lillian answered, "that's just untrue."

"Yes, right." The figure paused, and methodically looked through a stack of papers, pulling out a sheet — at the top of the page was Heather's ID photo. "Dr. Heather Garrison — she was the one who broke the Noosphere, then?"

"It's not broken," Lillian said in exasperation, "it's just different."

"That," intoned the mystery figure, "is simply a matter of perspective."

Lillian didn't react — she knew that, when you are dealing with somebody who clearly has as much power in the Foundation as the mystery individual did, there was a time to snark, and there was a time to shut up. You never know what side they are on until they tell you themselves — and even then, you can never be sure.

The blurred individual stared at Lillian — at least, as far as she could tell, the individual was looking at her, but who really knew. The room was silent, save for the methodical, constant ticking of clock hands. Each sat in silence, awaiting the other's next move.

"I saw your proposal, by the way," the figure said.

"My proposal?" Lillian asked in surprise. I don't know what they're talking about, I don't have any—

"Yes. Your Site proposal."

How did she—

"You mean Heather's propo— wait, how the hell did you find that?" Lillian asked tensely. "That's still a draft, and Heather has been doing most of the work; my name is just on there because—"

"Because you are her boss," the figure said pointedly. "My methods are irrelevant, what matters—"

"Irrelevant?" Lillian interrupted in disbelief. "No, it's not like that was on the internal Foundation server. That was on our personal computer, which is only very rarely connected via the intranet, and has custom security and protections installed. There are more stun and kill agents protecting our data than most Foundation facilities — so who the fuck are you, and how did you get this?"

Lillian watched as the figure slightly tilted their head, like the look a quizzical animal gives a human child. A moment later, they extended their hand to Lillian.

"O5-7."

Shit. An overseer? Lillian thought, as she took the proffered hand. The overseer felt both physical and yet, almost like they would slip away out of reality in a second. Like the ghost of the memory of a person.

Okay, Lillian, you might be in deep shit right now. Remember. Damage control, you take the blame and do everything you can to protect Heat—

"Neither of you are in trouble," the overseer said, following by what Lillian guessed was the closest approximation they would come to a laugh.

"You sure?" Lillian asked. "I think the Ethics Committee had another opinion on the matter."

The Overseer waved her off.

"Not one that matters," they responded, folding their hands together and pressing their index fingers together to a point. "Explain something to me," the overseer continued, "what happened with the entity known as 'absence'?"

"We ran tests after the reality shift, and we couldn't find it," Lillian said, shrugging. "We could find all of the traces of it within the Noosphere, and we found its signature, but 'absence' itself? It disappeared. Now every time we try to lock onto 'absence', it just snaps to Heather."

"Naturally," the blurred Overseer replied, as if this were a daily occurrence. "And the concept of 'nothingness'?"

"Still exists," Lillian confirmed, "so we're just trying to figure out where 'absence' went."

"In a way," they mused, "the evidence of 'absence's' absence is evident in the absence of perspective."

That was the problem with Overseers. You deal with enough esoteric bullshit, and you start thinking in riddles. Lillian was bad about that, she would admit, but O5-7 was worse.

"You and Heather," O5-7 said, leaning back into their chair, "are reckless, arrogant and tumble closer and closer to the abyss with every passing day. You two are forces of nature; fixed points of reality that bring destabilization with them. A natural disaster, a tornado of energy, memetics and bad luck."

"Thank you," Lillian said, "I'll take that as a compliment."

"It was." The Overseer was quiet, staring at Lillian intently.

Lillian tapped on the desk impatiently, biting her tongue and forcing herself to ignore the unwelcome feeling of being perceived, scrutinized, examined like an anomaly that deserved contai—

"Your funding has been granted," O5-7 said abruptly. "Congratulations, Site Director Lillihammer. I expect great things from you, and from Heather."

Huh, Lillian thought, stunned by the newly gained information. That is unexpected. How should I put this…

"No thanks," Lillian said, giving the overseer a gentle smile. "I'm not a leader."

"Are you rejecting the funding, then?"

"No, just — make Heather the Site Director, not me. She's the Anomalous Ontology expert, and given how much overlap the Site is planned to have, conceptually, and the intended focus of the Site—"

"Dr. Heather Garrison is your junior by nearly a decade," O5-7 said, "do you really believe that she would do a better job running the Site than somebody of your tenure and expertise?"

"You're going to make me admit it?" Lillian asked, buying herself some time. "Fine. Yes, I'm smart, but I'm a shitty leader. If you want to fund this Site, and you want it to succeed? Make her the director, she'll figure it out. She always does."

O5-7 looked back in silence, evaluating her response.

Not enough? Lillian worried. How about this?

"And," Lillian continued, "the way I see it, I'll still be working there too, just underneath her. And since our plan was to split our time between 43 and the new Site, well — at 43, I'll be her boss, and at the new Site, she'll be mine. I think that makes our relationship ethical again, right?"

Through the blur, Lillian was sure that the Overseer had smiled.

"Why don't you go home and tell your girlfriend the news," the Overseer said, standing and gesturing to the door. "She just got a promotion, and that's a cause for celebration, no?"

Indeed it is, Lillian thought as she smiled, pulling out her phone and beginning the memorized path back to the entrance of the mystery Site.

"Hey, babe, guess what?" Lillian asked, excitedly.

"We're fired?" Heather guessed, laughing on the other end of the phone.

"Not quite," Lillian replied. "Unexpected development, but the future is looking a lot different now."

"You're getting a promotion?"

"No, you are."

"Oh."

"Oh? That's all you have to say, Director Garrison?"

It took Heather slightly longer than a standard blink to notice what Lillian had said — when she did, Lillian's eardrum practically burst when Heather screamed in excitement on the other side of the phone.

"Holy shit, really?" her girlfriend asked. "The Site? My Site? That means I get to staff it myself, right?"

"Have you been plotting, babe?"

"Maybe. I might have a few people in mind," Heather said. "Wait, did you submit the proposal early?"

"No, the fuckers managed to find a way into our system—"

"Must have been a pretty powerful fucker?"

"Something like that."

"I don't know what I expected," Heather said, still dreaming of the future. "It's the Foundation, and nothing is private."

"That's not true!" Lillian said, her cheeks lightly painted red. "Us. The moments we have together? Those are private. For us, only."

The two lovers chatted casually, talking plans for the future, as Lillian wandered through another maze of concrete, linear corridors. Their lives were a juxtaposition of mundanity and the absurd, existence and the abyss; they lived in the Margins, creating memories together and a life they could call their own.

Those memories were precious to both of them. After all, each had promised the same thing.

They would never forget the other, not even at the end of the world.

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