He woke up feeling like a full-body transplant.

He wasn't supposed to be here, wherever here was. Here was an expanse of undifferentiated white, like the blank of an unprinted page. It didn't hurt to look at — it didn't hurt his eyes. It made his heart ache. He began to tremble.

He sat up, and immediately felt sick. One expected one's perspective to change when transitioning from horizontal to halfway vertical. When it didn't, his stomach lodged a protest. He tasted funnel cake, and remembered where he'd been before this new exciting chapter of his life abruptly began.

"I would like," he spoke into the void, "to go back to my date."

"This date is much more important."

He knew that voice. He'd heard it before. Before passing out in the hotel elevator. And maybe before…

The ridiculous woman walked in front of him, and he crab-walked backward away from her. The cozy coat of stars, the infinity glasses, the purple hair and the look of gleeful madness. The woman who had kidnapped him.

The woman who was, almost certainly, Ilse Reynders.

"What are you?" she asked him. Her voice was somewhere between sweet and sour.

He shook his head, staggering to his feet. Whatever the white was, it neither compressed nor resisted his weight, merely supported it. He couldn't begin to formulate an answer. The question wasn't fair.

"What are you?" she repeated. It came out differently, but he couldn't parse the difference. Her blue eyes were wild.

"Confused," he responded honestly. "What am I doing h—" He shook his head, and felt another mild push of nausea. Too many churros at the fair. "When are we? You said something about an important date."

She smiled too much. It looked like it had to hurt. "I told you. The climax. That's your here and hwhen. Somewhere safe, where we can talk. About you."

"I'm just me!" he wailed. "Plus or minus. Somewhere left of where I started. Is that what you're after? You want to know about abstraction?"

He caught a glint on her iris that probably had nothing to do with the lens of her glasses. "I want to know why so much of the universe orbits a man with no gravity. If you're not the protagonist, Placeholder McDoctorate, tell me." Her final words punctuated the white so forcefully, he could have sworn they were written in the firmament. "What. Are. YOU."

They had known the word before, but had not understood what it meant.

'Thriving'.

They had not thriven — hadn't known that word at all before needing it today — at the Simpson Centre. Nor at the Provisional Site. They had done the Good Work, but it had not been good to them. It had been an obsession, and a living. They had made a difference, and that had made a difference to them, but still. Ilse had been living half a life.

In the incinerator, even less. Fractional. Split in seven; perhaps more.

But one day, between her bungalow at Grand Bend and her office deep in the earth — on the subway, holding Jay's coffee for them and holding James' hand, trying to keep a dossier clamped between her arm and torso, when suddenly her pager started beeping, and James plucked it off her hip and then promptly dropped it, and it slid beneath the seats, still beeping — Ilse understood what it was to thrive.

Dozens of projects on the go, and an ever-growing gaggle of researchers spanning the spectrum from junior to senior helping execute them. Presentations at conferences in cities she never would have been able to visit in the first of her old lives. (In her second life, visits were a thing that happened to her.) One of those cities hadn't even existed when she took up residence in the ADDC.

Administrative duties. Social engagements. A partner. A child. Pets. None of it was easy.

All of it was easy.

Things which stopped other people dead, Ilse found effortless. Their aggregated knowledge and expertise let them run laps around everyone else. The daily tribulations bedevilling those around them had considerably diminished effect; it was as though Ilse were sheltered from hardship by decades of accreted armour. A shell of shed skin and dried tears.

Their life wasn't perfect. They weren't perfect. Clumps of orange hair still turned up in the bathroom trash can. An invisible tether still tugged them toward the empty chamber at the heart of AAF-A, particularly late at night or when they stayed underground a little too long. They had a violent aversion to windows and mirrors, and bad things happened when they didn't back off.

But this. This was what they'd been waiting for. This was the reward.

If they'd been able to see this light at the end of the tunnel, it wouldn't have seemed so dark.

Jay ruffled Ilse's eternal hair and kissed her on the forehead before heading for their office, James in tow. The most modern family at Site-43.

Ilse Reynders. Age one hundred and forty-one, as of yesterday. The ambulatory echo of seven lives lived and lost in tragic simultaneity.

Jay Everwood. By merely existing, they had taught a late Victorian relic that it was never too late to ask yourself who you were.

Researcher James. Eternally six years old. As though the innocence that had died in the incinerator had been reborn in sunlight.

She could live another fifteen decades and never stop marvelling at their… everything. Their implausibility. Their singularity.

Their luck.

It was only a minor thunderhead, far on the horizon, that Ilse knew it was doomed not to last.

Home and work were one.

That, at least, wasn't much of a change from the incinerator — or even before. Ilse had never known what it was to commute. Now that they did, it was the gentlest of all possible adjustments. The subway station was a five minute walk from their bungalow; they had priority placement thanks to two different seniority metrics. The ride was over in about forty minutes, and then there they were. That was if they needed to go in at all; many of their duties could be performed just as well from the comfort of their study. But they liked going in. They liked the process of going in. Even after a decade in what they still thought of as 'the outside', transition hadn't lost its novelty. They were looking forward to a trip to New York next year. It was distinctly possible they could experience being lost.

She hadn't been lost, in that sense, since her first day at Groningen.

Ilse was staying late tonight, in the office which had once been Wynn Rydderech's. They had an office of their own, but liked to divide their time between here and there. Keep the memory alive. The space was festooned with mementoes, some of them his — removed from storage — and some of them hers — removed from much deeper storage, or else newly acquired. Anyone examining the items would wonder at a life defined by its central interval. They had no tokens of her time behind glass. It had all withered away, as they never would.

Ilse hadn't aged a day since crossing that threshold.

They could still be injured. They could still get sick, though it never lasted more than a day. If nothing dramatic intervened, it was very possible they could live forever. They hadn't yet confronted how they felt about that…

A gentle knock on the door, and then it opened. That was the arrangement they'd made with their co-workers: let me know you're here, then come on in. They were never too busy for company. They could never get enough of it.

Harry's silver hair caught the faux-sunlight from their ceiling fixtures, sparkling so bright they had to blink away the halo. He had an appropriately pious look on his face, and they knew he was delivering bad news. "You're down late."

"That's a fun joke," they smiled. "How long were you holding onto it for?"

"Couple hours. Knew you'd give me the chance to use it."

Ilse often stayed past quitting time. They didn't really get tired — though they could sleep, as the debt she hadn't paid in 1942 was always there at the fringes of their consciousness — and the trains never stopped their endless pacing, so they could go home whenever they liked. They saw their partner and their child all the time, and there was no need to keep to a rigorous schedule.

Ilse gestured at a chair, one of half a dozen clustered around their desk — optimistically, an optimism often rewarded — and he swept his labcoat forward to sit down. "Wanted to remind you of the thing."

They nodded. "Not a great start."

"Hard scientists," he tutted. "Always need more details. The O4 Summit."

Ilse nodded again. As an Esoteric Polymath, the Foundation's abstruse term for geniuses-at-large, they were required to attend these quarterly meetings of the best and brightest. They'd missed the last one. Probably an Overseer had told their Director to make sure they didn't miss this one.

Ilse didn't let people down very often, but when they did, they could feel the latitude allowed for their movements. They were too important to come down hard on. It felt… strange, but not altogether inappropriate. They'd put in their time. They were due some consideration.

And they'd used it last quarter to take their son to Canada's Wonderland. He'd asked, and they'd promised. They didn't let people down, when it counted.

"That all you dropped in for?" From anyone else, this would have been an invitation to leave. Ilse always wanted the answer to be 'no'.

"Yeah." Harry scooted his chair forward, put his elbows on their desk, and folded his hands beneath his chin. The desk was so big, surfaced entirely in academic papers, that they were still sitting a metre apart. "I guess we're also due, uh, the thing. Other thing."

"Decennial review?" they suggested.

He snapped his fingers, the sound muted beneath his palm, and nodded into his knuckles. "I'll go first: you're perfect. Your turn."

They laughed. "Hardly perfect. I've got so much on the go, and it's not all moving along that smooth. If I kick off tomorrow—"

There was a lump in their throat. They swallowed it, but still found themself unable to finish the thought.

"It's real," said Harry in a low voice. "You got out. You're going to stay out. And you have all the time in the world."

They put on a brave face. They'd been very brave, in the past, but what they were facing down at this moment always put the fear into them. "This world, maybe."

Ilse had never ridden in a limousine before.

There was a surprising amount of fanfare and pomp for these conferences, considering they happened every three months, and considering the sheer number of people involved. The Foundation had thousands of personnel at Security Clearance Level-4, and while most of them were not invited to the sessions, and many of the ones invited wouldn't come, it was still shocking to see how much money was poured into making sure the select not-so-few felt as special as the Overseers considered them to be.

Once upon a time, the summits had been a reminder that everyone was at the beck and call of Overwatch. Nowadays, it was something akin to a celebration.

And why not? A high enough price had been paid that they could celebrate for a hundred years and never take the sting off.

Site-240 was an administrative hub for this part of Africa, and as such had the most dramatic meeting space. It had been built with the occasional O4 Summit in mind, and the interior was sufficiently grandiose, if functional: coral stone and tile, glass and steel, soaring ceilings and frescoes on the walls. Scenes of triumph and failure, accomplishment and loss. Memories they all carried with them, monumentalized for those who came later.

Ilse and Harry walked in silence to the central chamber, a vast and echoing rotunda filled with semicircular black wood tables set for precisely the number of attendees in the building today. They found their places easily enough; they were in the front row, right in the middle.

Pride of place.

All around the room, a colourful variety of personages filled the air with a cheerful hubbub. Personnel from every Department, every facility, had places set for them in the various rows. Many were shaking hands, renewing old acquaintances or grinning grit-toothed at old rivals, even enemies. Ilse could sense hard feelings in tense shoulders or set jaws. Not all of these people had been to hell and back on the same train. Not all of their scars were visible, but they were no less keenly-felt for it.

The O4 Council was an extension of the Site Directors' Executive Council of the Whole, a flexible body of high-level executive and administrative personnel and trusted parascientific counsel regularly convened to vote on matters of vital importance which were nevertheless still too minor for the eyes of the Overseers. They could be called to vote at any time, with mechanisms for telepresence set up across the Foundation, but these quarterly summits involved direct interaction with the O5 Council itself to keep everyone on the same page. This summit's Council reps were already in the room, already seated, already looking directly across the inlaid marble carving of their sigil on the floor.

Looking at Ilse and Harry.

For most of the people in this room, it was remarkable to see the Overseers as anything but silhouettes in the dark. Ilse had never been to Site-01, but still thought of them as shadowy and not-quite-human thanks to the distant and enigmatic force they'd exuded on each of her past lives. It was now apparent they were merely human beings, or at least looked the part. Familiar human beings, even. Not all of them were here, just the ones with business before their inferiors: the Governor, the Practician, the Liaison, the Advisor, the Oracle. Or at least their factotums, which Ilse understood to be something between body doubles, clones, and host bodies. The unclarity was undoubtedly intentional.

Ilse had been to a few of these summits, and each had been subtly different. The post of Master of Ceremonies was cycled between a wide variety of appropriate persons; today it was the Chair of the Ethics Committee. He walked across the floor to where the arrows converged, and stuck his hands in his mustard-yellow jacket as he waited for the hubbub to quiet.

Ilse watched the Overseers carefully. If they still harboured any resentment of the man in the middle of the room, they hid it well.

"Okay," he said, and not for the first time Ilse marvelled at the acoustics. Though they could still hear the chatter around them, the speaker in the centre reverberated at a much higher volume. "Let's get started. Hello, and welcome to the summit! I'm Jeremiah Cimmerian—"

"Ahoy-hoy!" someone called from a back row, and the room erupted into laughter.

Cimmerian affected a scowl. "I'll be forwarding that act of plagiarism to… myself, once we're done here. But first, let me take this opportunity to welcome our honoured guests from the Overseer Council: O5s -3, -4, -5, -8 and -9!"

The applause was polite, and restrained. 3 looked amused. 4 looked annoyed. 5 looked pleased. 8 looked bored.

9 looked directly at Ilse.

And they looked different. Very different. In fact…

"We're gathered here today so that our Councils might converse on matters of importance to this organization writ large. We'll be hearing reports and petitions from many of your Departments and facilities, and new initiatives direct from Overwatch Command will begin here in this room. So, without further ado, I'd like to turn the floor over to the Director of the Emergent Threat Tactical Response Authority!"

A man with slate grey hair and a military bearing swaggered to take Cimmerian's place, an almost-imperceptible limp only mildly attenuating the effect. Dr. Dan had a presentation on proactive anomaly use in a post-convergence world, and Ilse found it terribly interesting. They found everything terribly interesting; things they hadn't experienced, voices they hadn't heard, information they hadn't possessed. It all had a lustre they could scarcely resist, seen through their own eyes instead of millions of tiny refractions from a pane of imperfect '40s glass. A decade wasn't enough to wear it off. A century might stand a chance.

Dr. Dan had a lengthy exchange with O5-4 which gradually shifted into an argument, to the great amusement of the other attendees. At one point the Director of ETTRA threatened physical violence on his sponsor, which more than anything served to underline how far the Foundation had come — if not in civility, at least in negotiating a richer tapestry of hierarchy. Rex Alces, Jay's replacement at the GoI Research Group, gave a presentation on new developments in Europe and Asia with O5-5 that seemed precariously balanced on the tipping point between duet and comedy routine. The Director of Site-15 had a similarly tetchy back-and-forth with O5-8, though to Ilse's ear and eye it seemed like a poor imitation of the opening act; their arguments about the rights of digital consciousnesses were no more tedious, but she found their personalities less endearingly abrasive than… well, just plain abrasive.

Ilse wasn't sure what was going to happen when they presented their own research. Officially, they didn't have a sponsor. When absent from these summits, they let the Director of Site-43 present for them; the few times they'd attended, it had been the one-sided sort. The possibility of lecturing to a room full of their colleagues was always exciting.

The initial presentations proceeded in the order of their sponsors' Overseer numbers. Ilse always came after -8. -9 never seemed to sponsor anybody.

They could have drawn conclusions from this. Conclusions auguring with things they'd known about the Foundation, themselves, and their fate for a long, long time.

They'd simply chosen not to.

The Summit was slated to occupy the entire day, as there was an interval in the presentations where members of either Council could put questions or proposals to the other. There were a few shorter breaks to eat or drink or make use of the washroom facilities, and the main chamber's concourse was catered; support staff and delegates and Site Directors congregated in bunches, discussing both matters before the assembly and those of more personal consequence. Every need was predicted and provided for, down to zero latency autotranslators for the primary speakers and their questioners, and the array of accessibility features in the venue. The overall impression was that the Foundation appreciated its star employees, and wanted to make sure they understood their own worth.

But it wasn't any of that which drilled home Ilse's unique position. It was the way absolutely everyone who saw her, whether up close or at a distance, obviously already knew who she was. The way some of them crossed the atrium just to speak with her, whether they had anything important to say or not. The way a hush fell over the chamber when she began her presentation, with an implied respect rivalling that accorded to the Overseers themselves.

It was weird. It was, sometimes, pleasant. It wasn't something she saw herself ever getting used to.

She loved things like that.

Harry gave an interesting talk on comparative historiographies, a matter very much in vogue since the past decade. Rivera from 120 had a retrospective on ontokinetic shift which impinged on something like twenty different fields; probably nobody in the room except Ilse understood every word, and their import. Hours on hours slipped past, and still Ilse found themselves hungering for more. They almost wondered why they'd ever thought of skipping out on these summits, before a faint rustle in their pocket brought their phone to their attention, and they saw the photo Jay had sent: Researcher James' crayon rendering of the extended mural outside AAF-D. Then they remembered, and felt a pang of longing for something they'd had this morning, and would have again this night.

Eight decades lashed to one room in Site-43, and still the pull it exerted on them was nothing more sinister than a gentle lull to sleep.

More than a few of the attendees were flirting with a public nap when the final presentation finally wrapped. Before the MC could call the proceedings to a close, however, something happened which had not happened at any other summit Ilse had attended.

O5-9 stood up, unannounced, and took the floor.

And the glamour, if there had been one, fell away. It wasn't O5-9 at all; the clothes were right, but the face was wrong. "I am not the Oracle of the Overseer Council," she announced in a high, clear tone. "My name is Alice Forth, and I will now address this summit with matters pertaining to the Temporal Anomalies Department."

The rest of the day might as well have been an endless procession of horrors. Ilse immediately felt cold, alone, and afraid.

"All personnel lacking Level-5 Kronos credentials are now dismissed, with the following exceptions."

Around the room, the delegates were already packing up their bags and standing. Ilse glanced at Harry, who hadn't moved. They stood up as the fauxracle recited her shortlist. They pulled out their phone, suddenly desperate to see that photograph again. To talk to Jay. To remind themself that their home was still waiting for them. That they belonged.

"…and Ilse Reynders," Forth concluded.

Ilse sat down. It felt, for a moment, like free-fall.

The doors to the auditorium had closed behind the final departees, leaving only a handful of the highest-ranked members of the Foundation and a few curious — terrified? — underlings.

"The Temporal Anomalies Department has undergone a… restructuring." Forth smiled at her remaining audience, as though this was not the most ominous and enigmatic thing she could possibly have said. "I am presently handling Directorial duties."

What? Ilse was seconds from hyperventilation. What had happened to Thaddeus Xyank? What had happened to the Oracle?

"As a consequence of this change — itself a consequence of matters outside our control, with which some of you are perhaps familiar — it will be necessary to make additional allocations of personnel to that Department." Ilse froze. "I'm sure you will understand that it is impossible for us to make our chosen candidates aware of their selection in advance, or to allow any candidate to refuse their assignment. If you are in this room, and not in possession of Level-5 Kronos credentials, you may now count yourself recruited to, and inducted into, the TAD."

They might as well never have left the incinerator. They were seeing the world in double, triple, quadruple vision now. Like the vapours of the omphalos were driving them to visions.

"Your respective direct superiors are either in attendance here today, or have already been notified of this alteration in your career paths. They are familiar with protocols for short-notice TAD reassignment, and will prepare you for the transition ahead."

As though it were a millstone in a light breeze, Ilse's head turned slowly, slowly, slowly to face the man seated beside them. His expression was pained, his lips a thin line. Now they knew why he'd been so insistent on their attendance today. "What the hell, Harry?" they hissed.

There was no way, simply no way, that the words carried farther than their seats. Nevertheless, Forth raised her hand and spoke: "Is there a problem, Dr. Reynders?"

Flushing fiercely, Ilse shook their head.

They didn't trust themself to speak.

Should have spoken. Should have protested. Should have said something.

Ilse closed her eyes to half-lidded, set her jaw, and refused to say anything as Harry led her back out of the auditorium, back to the waiting limousines.

They rode in silence. Her phone was a lead weight in her pocket.

She wanted to say something. She needed to. She needed to talk this over. Find a way out of it. Turn back the clock.

Change the past.

She needed to speak, but she couldn't. Her voicebox wouldn't cooperate. Her jaw wouldn't open. Her hands were clenching and unclenching, and it took her the entire ride back to the satellite outpost to understand why.

She was unconsciously grasping for the pencil.

They'd been flown in, but they weren't flying out.

Ilse stared at the octagon of energy flaring in front of her. The chamber was almost comically scientific-looking, given its contents, but she found nothing funny about it. The thaumaturge in the corner gave her a nod, and she stormed into the unknown without looking back. Harry had been trailing behind her since the limo ride, and he was right to.

For his safety.

There was a crackling of energy, and a brief moment of blindness, and then she was standing in a ritual circle surrounded by aquamarine tiles. A yawning young man in a hooded labcoat was monitoring the temporary Way from a desk in the little chamber, and he nodded as she materialized. It should have been a novel sensation. Another experience to be cherished. Instead, Ilse was incandescent.

Harry started speaking almost as soon as he crackled into existence beside her. "Yes, I knew."

Ilse started for the door. The rookie thaumaturge moved as if to open it for her, then recoiled at the force of her advance and let her do it herself. The door slammed against the far wall as she poured herself into the hall, Harry hot on her heels.

"Ilse, slow down."

"I'm going home."

"Of course you are. But let's talk about this."

"Piss off." By her standards, this was foul.

"Dr. Reynders."

She stopped, hands clenched, and seethed without turning around. He walked into her view, face contorted with regret. "First of all, you know we don't have any say in this."

"We used to," she snarled. "We could have."

"Second," he continued, "you know this is for the best." She stared up at him, incredulously, and he continued at a rapid clip as though afraid of losing his nerve. "You haven't learned anything new, anything really new, in years. You're amazing at what you do, and you're making a big difference, but you could be doing so much more. Growing. Improving."

"Not your decision." Whether or not what he had said was true, what she said absolutely was.

"I know that. But you know how time works, more than any of us. The demands it makes—"

"I think I've earned the right to make demands of my own," she fumed.

He nodded. She wanted to reach up and stop the bobbing with her hands. Maybe a firm grip. Perhaps a slap. "And I'm sure the Overseers realize that. But they need you, Ilse."

"Is that your third point?"

"It's adjunct to the first. My third point is that you've known this was coming for a long time, long before I did, and we haven't been through… everything we've been through," and for the briefest of instants she felt the rush of empathy she knew would overtake her fully once the rage wore off, "to let time beat us in the end. Have we?"

He waited for an answer.

"Reassignment to TAD is usually permanent," she said finally. It sounded like surrender.

"The existence of the TAD," he reminded her, "is evidence that nothing is permanent."

She was in no mood to be comforted by platitudes or truisms. She gathered up the last of her dignity, snorted through her nose, and nodded. "Fine. I'm going home. I'm going to talk to my family, and pack my things."

"Okay." Harry reached out, as though to put a hand on her shoulder, then visibly thought better of it and stuck both hands in his labcoat pockets. "Okay."

She headed for the elevator which would take her to the third sublevel and, eventually, the railway station. From there, it was a short ride on the Red Line back to Grand Bend.

Except she took the Blue Line instead, headed to the AAF-A undercroft, walked into the long since scrubbed and sanitized incinerator, curled up on the floor beneath the window and cried like she hadn't cried in years.

She crept silently across the porch, and was careful not to disturb anything on her path through the front door and kitchen and into the bungalow proper. It didn't make a difference; she caught a glimpse of moonlight on moving glass from the living room, and sighed in resignation.

Jay was sitting by the window, blinds open a crack to watch the front approach, wine glass in hand. They'd been together long enough that Ilse could read her partner's expressions like a clinical paper; what she saw tonight, though, was complicated in the extreme. It looked like Jay wasn't sure how to begin. As always, Ilse related.

Finally, the other smiled grimly. "It happened. Right?" They pitched their voice low. Across the house, James was asleep.

Wordlessly, Ilse nodded.

Jay looked out the window, and again Ilse saw light reflected in something smooth and glassy. "Feels too soon. Doesn't it?"

"It always would have." Already Ilse was regretting the confrontation with Harry, even though she knew it wouldn't amount to anything. Even after all they'd accomplished, some things were still inevitable. "We're just flotsam in the tide."

Jay smiled, and looked her in the eye. "Ilse Reynders, going with the flow? Never happen. You're like a civic engineer. Make it flow your way."

Ilse smiled back at them. "I appreciate the vote of confidence. But this is the TAD. It's bigger than… well, it's bigger than everything."

Jay snorted softly. "You'll be Director within a year."

Ilse suppressed a laugh, miserable though she felt. "I'll have forgotten what years are within a year."

Her partner stood up, walked over to Ilse's armchair, and reached down to ruffle her hair. As they had before the rupture in their routine. The imposition of fate. The pronouncement of prophecy. "That better be the only thing you forget."

Ilse reached up to take Jay's hand, and held it to her lips. She didn't say a word.

Words had power, but there were powers stronger still.

Ilse had known what suffering was before most of these people had been born.

"It's been my pleasure to serve as your Section Chief." The Site auditorium had been hers for the asking, if she'd wanted it. There were plenty of meeting rooms she could have used. But this felt right. She clasped the empty window sill, and leaned forward subtly so that her nose passed through where the glass had once been. "The work you do is more than just the culmination of foolish old dreams by foolish old folks, come and gone. You take the mistakes of yesterday, and turn them into tomorrow. That's your alchemy. That's the Good Work."

It was brief, and barely rehearsed. It wasn't nearly what she wanted to say. They clapped anyway, and the sound was deafening in the incinerator.

She stepped out for the last time, and turned right. Back to the subway. Retreating from one home to another, to parts unknown…

The bulkhead door was closed.

Ilse turned around again, and their heart leapt into their throat. Harry was standing at the far bulkhead, smiling, and ten years vanished in a blink.

"Don't make me do this," they grinned through tears.

"Don't be a stranger." He was already weeping, too.

Ilse embraced him at the door, already sniffling, already steeling for what was on the other side of that bulkhead.

Automation had made great strides since 2021.

By the time Ilse completed the circuit and was headed for the station, every bone and muscle ached exquisitely.

By her count, through glassy eyes, not a single god-damn one of them had missed the chance to see her off.

She thought she would completely break down when Jay met her at AAF-A in their little Volvo, James grinning radiantly from the back seat. But she laughed, instead, and didn't stop laughing until they were well out of the parking lot.

"What's so funny?" Jay asked when the stitch in Ilse's side finally stopped the convulsions.

"Director in a month," she repeated, throes of ecstasy and agony wracking her body. "Temporal Anomalies Department. Jay, I'll be home for dinner. Every. Damn. Day."

The waiting room was dull and dingy. It was, after all, in a mall.

Strathroy-Caradoc Plaza had been on life support for decades. The most recent mechanism of its unnatural lingering was the SCP Foundation, which had taken up residence beneath in a facility founded out of convenience and then maintained out of sheer usefulness. The people here had strange stories of their own, which Ilse had only glimpsed.

And wasn't glimpsing more of today.

"You know why we're here?" A thin, middle-aged woman named Ana was rocking back and forth in her plastic seat, visibly thrilled to be deep in the bowels of commercial failure.

"Beyond the obvious?" A somewhat younger man named Stephen sat on Ilse's other side, completing their little trifecta. Having judged Ilse the sanguine one, he'd reluctantly adopted the role of the choleric.

"Yeah," Ana smiled. She waved at the cracked tines and faded lino, as though curating some work of high art. "Why we're here, specifically?"

"Doesn't the TAD have a presence at 232?" Ilse guessed.

Ana shook her head. "Nope! Chronometrics."

Ilse groaned. Stephen merely looked confused. "What the hell is Chronometrics?"

"Don't think about it," Ilse recommended. "It's probably, I don't know. Day-five-hundred information."

He frowned at Ilse. "Then why do you know what it is?"

Ilse blinked.

Ana's brown eyes were wide. "This is Ilse Reynders," she said.

Now it was Stephen's turn to blink. He blinked again. His eyebrows slowly raised.

Ilse started speaking again, if only to stop the alarming transformation. "There's a lot of time agencies. Maybe they're all the same agency. Maybe we're about to find out."

"Probably not," Ana sang cheerfully. "I bet it only gets more confusing on the other side. But, yeah. Chronometrics has a deal with the TAD. Everybody getting zapped up gets reviewed on the way. They're probably watching us now. OoooOooooOoo!" She raised her hands in a fair imitation of a sheet ghost.

Ilse and Stephen stared at her until she stopped. Then Ilse chuckled, and Ana laughed brightly.

"Wait," said Stephen. "R—"

"By ME!" A wild-haired woman in a simple lab coat — Ilse recognized her immediately — blew into the room, planting her hands on her hips and grinning. Ilse hadn't seen the door open. They craned to look.

The door wasn't open.

"By you what?" Ana looked comically serious.

"Reviewed by," the woman said, some of her bravado immediately fading. "Reviewed by ME!"

"I didn't finish saying that," said Stephen.

"Dammit." Now the woman was definitely crestfallen. "The timing's still off. We're never going to get it settled before the Event."

Ilse blinked. "Event?"

"Oops." The woman slapped her forehead. "You don't know about that over here. It's too leftward. Rightward?" She spun in place, then sighed. "Whatever. I'm—"

"Of course you are," Ilse interrupted smoothly.

Now the woman looked briefly panicked. "Oh, no. I'm losing time."

Ilse laughed. "Sorry. Couldn't resist. Hello, Dr. Azzopardi."

It took Azzopardi a moment to realize what they'd done. Realization dawned, and the chronometrician's eyes lit up. "Ilse! Good to see you. Down in the trenches with the…" She frowned, then looked mortified. "Uhhhh, right! First day. Right?" Her eyes were now wilder than her hair. "Right?"

Ilse nodded, trying to ignore the pit opening in their stomach.

Azzopardi clapped, then clapped again. "Excellent. Well, you all check out. Right folks, right time. Negligible drift, low odds of a paradox. Except the good one. The good one is…" Her smile became manic. "…not your concern! Ana… it's Ana this time, right? Please nod… good. Awesome. Follow me. Leave the chair."

Ana-this-time stood up. Ilse reached down to wiggle the base of their chair; it was bolted to the wall.

"Always got to check, don't you?" Azzopardi winked at them before leading the first candidate out of the waiting room.

The two remainders sat in silence for the next few minutes, listening to the old mall's plumbing cycle in the ceiling and walls. Ilse considered taking Ana's seat, reducing the awkward proximity to the other candidate.

Eventually Stephen shook his head, and looked Ilse in the eye. "What're you leaving behind?"

"Nothing."

It wasn't clear if their precise meaning came through. Stephen's eyes narrowed. "Do you think it's true what they say? About people selected for the TAD?"

Ilse shrugged. "What do they say?"

"That yanking us out of the timestream doesn't affect the course of history." He swallowed, and Ilse saw the gnawing inadequacy lurking behind his affected cynicism. "That we're people who don't matter."

If this question had appeared on an exam, Ilse would have suspected someone was attempting to raise the class average. The answer came as easily as breathing. "People who don't matter don't exist."

Ilse meant their smile to be comforting, but a lot of mirth slipped into it. As easily as breathing. They'd needed to take classes, the first few weeks out of the incinerator…

This time Azzopardi actually opened the door, and called for Stephen. He stood up, glanced at Ilse with a shy smile, and left them alone.

Alone with their thoughts.

People who don't matter don't exist. Something about that, about their own thought, or its phrasing, bothered them. They were still turning it over in their head when Azzopardi appeared again, and called their name.

The room beyond was even smaller, most of it dominated by a machine. It started at the floor, a few feet in, crept up the walls, and covered almost the entire ceiling. It was made of flat black metal, except for a few fluorescent panels thrumming with energy. There was a platform in the middle, and Ilse realized what it was they were looking at.

Something that didn't exist.

Yet.

Azzopardi gestured at the platform, with a flourish. "Time's a-wastin'!" she declared, and then laughed. "Not literally. Hopefully. Not yet."

It was probably safer than the Way had been. The TAD knew what they were doing. It was probably unlikely to erase Ilse from existence when they stepped forward.

Unless that's what they want, of course.

They could see him again. His hateful face. The contortions of Machiavellianism behind that obscurant moustache. Hear his words. The innuendo. The poisonous implications.

The resentment.

The recognition.

He'd known they were going to end up here. And he hadn't been happy about it.

People who don't exist, don't matter, Ilse thought.

So they pictured Jay. They pictured James. They pictured the entire personnel pool of Site-43, two thousand strong, lined up just for them. To speed them on their way.

They stepped forward.

It happened in a fraction of a fraction of a lifetime.

The transition was so abrupt, they almost didn't HELP ME notice.