(This is only the second draft of the book Worthless. Expect typos, plot holes, odd subplots and the occassionally wrongly named character, especially minor characters. It is made public only to give people a rough idea of how the final story will look)

Chapter 16

The same place. The same cracked pavement. The same ruins. Establishing a good, solid, and most of all, safe arrival point in another time was never easy, you worked with what you had. You worked it long and hard, using it until, for whatever reason, it no longer worked. Until it was not safe. This was safe.
Everything hurt. Arms, legs, body, face. Arriving at those impractical angles was bad enough, but when the small details of the time machine calculations were just a little more off than that, the velocity, no matter how miniscule, that one might arrive with were a painful experience.
It was going to be a bit of a walk, but that had been calculated into the plans. It was insanely dangerous to arrive during a time that you already existed in, and somewhere, deep inside the town that glowed so threateningly in the distance, deep in there, the earlier Marie was falling through a building. Soon, she would fall outside the building, and then, she would return through time, a fraction of a second before smashing into the floor of the lowest level of the city. But that was another Marie, now. That was Marie of the past, even if this was, in fact, the far future. The walk remained the same. The pains in arms, body, and most relevantly, legs would still be the same, likely for the entire walk. Nothing was broken, which made the trip a success in most respects. Nothing broken, no permission to complain. Not the most elegant mantra, but it was one of the first ones taught and learned by heart during Embassy training.
The place smelled. Having been picked up by Yuna had masked the smells, for most of the journey, sitting fairly comfortably inside her street cruiser, most likely an Embassy issued vehicle. This period, this age, was labeled "Neurocrat Dominion" by Embassy analysts, named for the people in charge that manipulated minds or outright controlled people through mental implants, not so much a new wave of slavery as a way to insure valuable investments. The guard that threw chained bolts from his arms had some cybernetic implants, that was very clear, so he likely had some embedded control, a little thing in his brain telling him to do his job and not rebel. Augmentations cost money, and those who paid did not play around.
The city didn't smell, at least not the upper levels. No doubt some disagreeable scents had passed by during the fall to the low levels, but that had happened too fast to really care. The rest of the city never smelled, not on its own. Filtered air kept the population density from becoming a petri dish of diseases old and new, and the scrubbed air had artificial scents added. The scents varied by place and function. Sweet and acidic aromas, like citric compounds mixed with lab grown flowers, kept people active and positive in commercial areas, salty breezes and imitation soil made for a strong relaxation effect on the upper levels, especially in the luxury resorts that had most of the direct sunlight that the cloud dispersers built into the buildings ensured them. Bad weather was pushed away for the rich and powerful, so they could bask in the sun with the smell of sea and healthy farmland around them. Here, in this age, those things were not just artificial, they were also rare and expensive. At The Embassy, they were waiting just outside the veil that hid the thing from public view. The symbols of living poor in the countryside had, over centuries, become the symbol of living rich on top of a city of those lesser than you. Times changed.
The ruins weren't just ruins, of course. Broken structures, some old enough to perhaps have existed back alongside The Embassy's main branch back in 2015 Nakskov. You might be able to drive out and find one, standing in a small hamlet outside the main towns! But here, they were background noise, dull colors of decay that marked long gone roads like animal trails in the forests that no onger existed either in this age. But amongst those broken structures, life still had its day. Reclaimed houses, the ones that had withstood time, decay and war best, were repurposed as homes and places to socialize. The bar that Yuna had found was far from here, but other places not entirely unlike it were probably around. But they were not important right now. They were not the mission.
"Hey, dyadyo, yo reg de pas ta Big Mouth?"
The old man sitting by a stump wall, clutching a fancy bottle someone much wealthier had likely discarded and he had gotten his hands on, looked up from his thoughts, or from his stupor, depending on what was in that bottle. He had dirty fingers, covered by the dust that was everywhere in the ruins, but his knuckles looked bright and pinkish in the hand holding the thing. He treasured it, it seemed. Needless items, like bottles in fancy designs, were a city thing, and often one for mid to upper levels. That bottle had a story, being in the ruins, but even if the old man knew that story, few were probably going to hear it.
"Da pas?" he asked, slowly, clearly astounded that someone would talk to him. He couldn't possibly see that he was being talked to by a tired, annoyed, and bruised time traveler. All he saw was a young woman in a jumpsuit that had been repurposed in much the same way the ruins had. Leather straps used in place of metal or plastic buttons, flaps cut to vent the heat from arrival. He likely just thought he was talking to another ruin dweller
"Da pas e der," he said, straining his voice audibly to seem stronger. The path is there. He was pointing down a broad piece of road through old structures that seemed safer than the average around. His accent was local, a broken form of the streetborn variant of English that was common in these parts. It had Danish here and there in it, a word or turn of phrase, but it was a worker's language, meant to function with international factions. Good for finding work, although this dyadyo, this old geezer, looked well past his strongest days. What he might have been was a mystery, and would remain that.
"Wa yo in Big Mouth?" he tried to yell as he slipped into the background again, but his voice cracked, mixing the last few words with a rough cough.
"No mush. Go see sum." What do you want in Big Mouth? What everyone wanted in Big Mouth. To see someone that most people stayed the hell clear of!

Big Mouth was not so much a mouth as it was a hole in the ground. In the city, marketing was a clever string of techniques, using screens and targeted sounds to plant soft ideas in the unwitting heads of peole, then letting those ideas harden until they became a need to do or buy something. From selling food substitutes in the lower levels to swaying faction politics up higher, few knew why they were thinking their own thoughts, but everybody knew that, so the big lie was that the knowledge evened out the trickery. In the ruins, things were simpler. You got a big hole in the ground that you want people to respect? Congratulations, you own Big Mouth. Except nobody owned it, of course.
"Marie?"
The question came from somewhere shrouded in shadows, hidden from even the sad, greyish black sky that the ruins were left with after the city had its sunshine.
"Marie, is that you?" it continued. "You look like shit!"
"I've been told that."
The source of the friendly insult stepped out of the shade. A crippled leg, replaced with makeshift components by amateur hands. A few reinforced ribs from times of better cashflow, and a hand with fingers augmented for strength, but likely just so that they had some at all. The man, looking like he was in a bad shape in his thirties when he was more likely in a good shape in his late fifties, smiled and opened up for a bear hug.
"Wa yo... What you been doing all these months? Haven't seen you around much!"
Ebony, named ironically for his pale skin, released the mighty grip of the hug. This allowed air in again, and was much appreciated.
"Sorry, official business, Eb."
The man smiled.
"Yeah, you tell me and you have to fail to kill me, right?" he laughed, a deep, roaring laugh, followed by a deliberately hard slap to the shoulder. Much of him were repairs, just to keep him upright. But there was still man enough left when he was.
"Listen, chan," he added in a hushed voice, being pretty obvious about it being just for drama, "we got prima new soaks in the dungeon, I still get you in for free, see?"
Along with his brother, at least that was the claim, Ebony had a serotonin spa, more commonly known as a sleep lab, somewhere in Big Mouth. He never gave the exact location, and there were procedures to follow, all to add a bit of security and a lot of mystery around it. Rumor had it he used to be a medical researcher, until he ran into some political feud between factions he had always refused to name. Now he helped people relax, for a solid profit, of course. Even the perfectly safe and legal experiences in the sleep lab were a bliss for people who had a hard time sleeping well, which was pretty much everyone in the ruins. Business tended to be good.
"Nah, not today, Eb. I got duties. Could use a friendly guide, though?"
The man nodded, looking around the place as if to see if dangers already lurked. His strong cheekbones and tall, slender stature made him seem especially intimidating, hinting at him perhaps being not entirely alive, a sort of skeletal look he had carefully nurtured over the years. Wispy, was the proper term. He was wispy.
"All for you, chan babe," he then grinned. "You still carry good word with the runners, right?"
"Yeah, we get a shipment of city supplies now and then, whatever they don't manage to sell in the fancy stores. Why, you need something?"
The man laughed again, a cheerful roar.
"No, my sweet, I never need anything. I just make sure never will, you take?"
The last line came with a knowing wink. He looked like a bruiser past his prime, maybe someone's bodyguard a decade ago. But there was a brain in that head of his that worked faster and caught more than most would even think to try doing. He didn't want to go work for The Embassy, and didn't want to know what went on if it had nothing to do with him, but whatever he felt pertained to his work, he was sharp as a blade at it.
As it unfolded ahead, Big Mouth went from a random assembly of shacks to a rustic promenade of creatively reclaimed houses and the remains of taller buildings. Smells of food, most of it artificial, wofted by, tempting the sense to follow, as was likely the plan. Small vendors, looking like a tourist shop alley back in other times, sprawled out in a spiderweb of tiny streets, their glowing signs shielded to glow mainly downwards, and with minimal reflections. The city cared very little about the ruins, but when the rare case erupted of some criminal craze bag trying to rob some company stronghold in the upper levels, and that criminal decided to duck and cover in the ruins, city enforcers always came to the places first that glowed the most. If they saw less of the glow, they saw less of a reason to visit.
"Where you going, chan?" he asked, walking fast enough that he got ahead, stopped to grab a small snack from one of the vendors, and then kept up as if he had followed obediently all along. His legs worked well, considering the horrible job done to replace the left one, and his height worked to his advantage. His slender build also helped him slip easily through the crowd, which seemed to change from dense to barely there at a moment's notice.
"Could you please stop calling me that, Eb. You make me sound like a child."
Ebony chuckled, this time a far more restricted outburst than his previous laughter.
"You dis me for using your name, you dis me from being too flirty, and now you dis me for treating you like a baby sister. Something you'd like me to call you?" he mused, not taking any of it too hard. It wasn't meant to be harsh, either, just a friendly poke at a funny habit that had worn our its charm.
"I still like buddy."
A loud laugh, this time attracting some attention to him. "Buddy? You're classy. Too classy for this, may haps," he said, waving crudely at Big Mouth's many vendors with his large hand, a few crunchy snacks falling out of his little, white bag.
"Aight, buddy, where you going, then?" he finally said, a false tiredness in his voice, again making him seem like he was talking to a chihld.
"I need to talk to someone out by the eastern edges. They have s..."
Ebony suddenly slowed his brisk pace down to a crawl, dropping behind.
"What you want along the edges, Marie? Those are not nice places."
Seeing him turn all concerned like that was unexpected. Hebony was a stoic man, either keeping his calm under pressure or making jokes about things others would avoid even talking about. Protective, yes, but this was not protective. He was worried.
"I'm not seeking a nice place, so not a problem for me, really."
He fell silent at that rebuke. It was in no way made to shut him up, but simply a statement of fact. It was difficult to tell if he sqaw through that.
Of course, he was right. With barely another word spoken, he traced a path fairly directly through the cluttered dirt streets of Big Mouth, making shallow greetings at more than a few people on the way. He seemed full of questions, wanting to know more. More about what anyone sane would want with the people along the edge. But he never asked. And as the edge came into view, even the places surrounding it seemed to agree with him, a lower volume of sound sinking over the place like a hushing blanket. People spoke less there, and they kept their voices low.
In many ways, the edges were where the name of Big Mouth began to make more sense. The place had grown over time, spreading out from its humble origins near these edges, so much so that its birthplace was now hidden so deep inside. The mouth in question was the remnants of a once grand mine, harvesting trace materials from the ground. According to what few records existed, or more likely what records people claimed to once have seen, the operation had tapped into a small supply of rare earths, digging tons of earth up for less material than what could be moved in a big bucket. Embassy mineralogists had debated it for some time, what exactly could be deep in the Lolland ground worth all that effort, but the conclusion was still not found. Whatever it had been, now, the gaping hole in the ground did, indeed, look like some twisted mouth about to swallow anything and anyone up who dared pass by. Old mining facilities, sturdier than the common home and built long after most of the ruins, had formed a perfect core for a settlement of drifters and rejects to squat in, and things had grown from there. The surrounding parts had, in time, attracted a more wholesome population, of course. By the edges, the odd ones, and the scary ones, had remained.
"Look, Eb, could I ask a favor of you?"
The man turned, looking almost a little pale.
"I am not going in there with you, ch... Marie. I don't like that place."
It was odd to see him so unsettled by something that looked so innocent, at least in comparison to everything else.
"That's okay. I just want you to come back here, exactly here, in an hour. If I'm not here at that point, let the right people know, alright?"
The tall man nodded, his eyes shifting to the old mining structures several times. He kept looking back at them, both nervous and full of distrust, as he briskly walked away.
Every part of the place looked like a trap. If any spot had no signs that someone might be preparing an ambush, it was only because it looked like the whole spot was about to collapse and kill everyone in it. Large beams of old world steel kept up platforms that were slightly warped under their own weight and the duress of time. Flimsy catwalks between looming towers were bent out of shape, many snapped, the two remaining ends hanging like thick, tangled spiderwebs against the greyish sky. Anything even a bit above the ground, no matter how solidly anchored by pillars and chains, seemed to sway like tall grass, even though there was little wind to speak of.
"Missa, wa is want, wa is waaant," sounded the coarse voices from every corner, it seemed. What is your want, what is your want. A basic sales pitch, little different from any other, but in these parts, it took on a daunting tone, as if the place and the people automatically made the business vile.
"Got yo bump in it," another voice cred out, to nobody in particular and everyone within earshot. Got your fight inside. Arenas, only few of them allowing death matches. Few, but not none. A rough place, for rough people, those ready to risk anything to make a bit of cash.
"Yo come in, yo come in, all mersh, all mersh," a voice said, a hand following it, grabbing. All it took was to grab the hand in return and tug hard, and the seller regretted. He was a scrawny thing, looking not too old but with plenty mileage. Dusty skin, pale grey with a slightly sick orange-pinkish shine under the surface. A few blotches, pale brown and fuzzy, marked his face. No cybernetic augmentations to speak of.
"No need mersh." No need of merchandise, no need of random stuff sold. The man got the message, trying less than subtly to pull back his hand.
"No mersh, got it, got it," he proclaimed with a mix of fear and annoyance in his voice.
"Yo say be Happy Marla."
The man's eyes darted around, desperately looking for some help that, in this place, would never come. People looked and saw it all, heard it all, but nobody reacted. When strangers showed no fear of the locals, bad things could easily be brewing. Nobody wanted a part of that.
"Happy Marla?" the man asked, clearly rhetorically. "I see Happy Marla. Wa pay?"
He wanted pay to show the way, that much should be expected, of course. Sadly, time jumps didn't come with a purse on arrival. It would have been wise to have asked Ebony for a bit of cash, but that was a wasted opportunity now. Then again, the moment the man got his hand back and saw that his help might not be needed enough to pay for it, he volunteered the basics.
"Happy Marla," he half whispered, perhaps for drama, perhaps in reverance, as he pointed at a broken spire farther down the narrow street, closer to the edge of the Big Mouth itself.
"Was yo to Happy Marla?" he asked before falling back into the small crowd.
"No much. Got q's." He said nothing more. Nobody wanted to know what questions a stranger might have for Happy Marla.
It was barely a minute of walk to the broken spire, but that minute had enough pressed into it. Fights, brief but vicious, would break out with little or no warning, never to be explained and probably never truly concluded, either. Short bursts of flame could shoot out at any second from some obscured vent, crisping the eyebrows of a passerby, or worse. Goods, mersh, got swung around by eager sellers, some of it not safe to swing. But at the broken spire, which had apparently once been a large antenna, complete with a now torn platform midway up, the ground opened up. Nobody wanted to know what people talked to Happy Marla about. Nobody wanted to set up shop near her place of business, either.

Smallish, nearly compressed between small hills of debris from collapsed buildings, the entrance looked more like a gap in the landscape than any form of door. The debris had fallen somewhere else and been moved there, that much was clear from its composition. That, or some nearby building had been littered with antennas and catwalks, enough to pile up as they fell.
"E nu ges," came the voice from inside, even thicker with local accent than most others had been along the way.
"No, No new guest, Marla."
The woman smiled at the response, but it didn't seem like a smile of someone talking to her.
"Not Marla, chan. I am just her humble servant."
She stood not very tall, but like Ebony, wispy, which made her seem taller. Tall, but smaller in size. Wearing a dress of fabrics so thin her silhouette shone through in the light from a living flame somewhere deeper in, her colors seemed to make her blend into the walls. Pale yellow, light brown, straks of green. Earth tones, a walking contradiction of the stone and metal that dominated the landscape outside.
"Enter," she said, her local accent all but gone from one word to the next. She turned, but an almost hidden reflection near the back of her neck told that she was still watching. Expensive tech, there had to be money to be made in being Marla's servant. Unless Marla owned her, in true neurocratic fashion, perhaps just during office hours.
"You are not from this place," she correctly stated. It was hard to hear in her voice if she was asking, or if it was simply a statement of fact, of some powerful observation.
"No, not in many ways."
The woman giggled, a coy little sound, like someone being flirtatious, however odd that would seem under the given circumstances. Even the way she walked seemed like she was trying to impress, a feminine walk, swaying hips and narrow steps. Outside, many things had been hard to make out, but now, the soft brown skin, likely of Mediterranean heirtage or cosmetically faking it, could be seen more clearly. A wristband, made to look like gaudy jewelry, was apparently the source of most of the light in here, making her seem to glow, herself.
"Why does a stranger want to see Happy Marla?"
"Just questions, nothing wicked, I swear."
She turned her head slightly, just enough for the profile of her face to become visible. She never seemed to try to look behind her, perhaps just turning for the slight touch of style it lent to her walk.
"People here swear many things to me when they enter," she said in a playful tone, so playful it seemed a touch sinister. "They just swear a lot when they leave."
As she spoke, she pushed aside a curtain made of tiny trinkets, little bits of plastics and metal that had once belonged inside complex devices, from the looks of it. Somehow, it seemed natural to expect a skull or some large, sleeping reptile to be waiting inside, but the room looked unnervingly normal. The curtain itself was perhaps the most unnatural thing about it, the trinkets heavy, making the entire curtain weigh a lot against anyone pushing it aside. She, the nameless servant of Marla, had to be fairly strong for her size. Then again, she clearly could afford expensive cybernetics, so it would not be a stretch to think her arms had some enhancements to them, if any part of them was natural, at all.
"Marla, there is..."
The servant fell quiet as Happy Marla entered, waving a hand at her to shush her up.
"A stranger called Marie," said the woman. Her arms were thin. Not slender, but thin. The long dress or robe she wore covered her body and legs completely, but the way it fell, they would have to be thin, too. Her face had the contour of every bone in it, every muscle marked as a narrow bulge under the light brown skin. She looked too young for the age she had to have, according to Embassy files. That could, of course, be cosmetic surgery, but in honesty, it seemed more a side effect of her thin stature. There was barely any fat on her, every bone and muscle moving visibly as she walked, like small animals beneath a tight blanket. She was not wispy, not like the servant or Ebony. She was merely thin, very much so.
"Yes, I am. I wasn't aware someone had announced me."
Happy Marla, perhaps living up to her name, smiled and chuckled.
"Little girl," she said, sounding on the very edge of being slightly offensive, "the spirits tell me everything about everyone. That is why nobody lives here, they fear I may hear their secrets."
With one hand, she sent the servant a delicate signal, sending her out of the room. The walls, round as a nearly perfect circle, put a large, equally round table at the room's center, five chairs around it. Everything seemed made of heavy, dark wood, but that would be impossibly expensive. Fake wood of this quality, though, would have also cost a pretty price.
"What secrets do you know from me already, then?"
Marla simply smiled, fondling a few statues carved in stone and more quality fake wood along shelves as she walked to the table.
"The spirits only carry warnings to me. They say nothing ill of you."
As she sat down, something about her changed. Her smile became more like that of a wolf, her eyes squinting in a peculiar way.
"In fact, they say disturbingly little about you. It makes me curious to who this new guest of mine is."
The chair seemed even more like real wood to pull out from the table. Solid, with a hint of soft surface, and the textures of paint on polished wooden planks. The sound as it scraped along the stone floor matched, too. A fake this good could easily begin costing near what the real thing might! And of course, when sitting in it, the chair was as cumbersome to move back under the table as a real one, too.
"Then they don't tell you what I want?"
Happy Marla shook her head, showing a few signs of irritation that she actually had to ask a client about that. If she was what she was meant to be, she would be used to having everything before she even stepped into the light. Lacking even a sliver of it, lacking anything at all, left her feeling incomplete, vulnerable.
"It's nothing grand, though. There is a building in the city, or a segment of building, whatever you want to call it. I need to what's inside of it, in great detail."
Happy Marla turned a small item, what looked like a funny dice, between her long, thin fingers, looking down her nose across the table, some hints of disbelief in her eyes.
"Maybe you should go and look? I do not make guided tours of the city for people, you know."
As if to make a taunt, she flipped the dice thingie quickly a few times between the fingers of both hands, hiding her face in a mock mysterious way behind it.
"I was there."
Happy Marla's fingers stopped. She already had a fair idea of what would come to be asked of her, but she was playing it close to her bony chest. It was likely her way of reading a would-be client, to judge who would and who would not be a client worth taking.
"I was there, but it is impenetrable."
Happy Marla continued to play coy, showing no outward signs of understanding.
"It is impenetrable to any physical being."
"Ah, but then, what being would be going in to look for you?" she asked, still pretending not to know.
"Your spirits, I would figure."
The dice thing stopped moving, slowing down before becoming fully still. Looking just over it, making unblinking eye contact, Happy Marla let go of it, and it remained hanging in the air.
"Nice trick."
Magnetics, nothing more. Strong, directional magnets in the table, and smaller ones to repulse them built into the dice thingie. A parlor trick, stage magic. Cheap antics. It took nothing more than reaching out to poke the thing and it moved beyond the cone of magnetism, falling down. Catching it was a little harder, but it worked. With a bit of a frown, but somehow also a pleased frown, Happy Marla followed it all with her eyes, not moving a muscle to fight it.
"So you think that my spirits would do your dirty work for you, Guest Marie? You think they will obey you."
"No. I think they will obey you when you tell them to help me."
"You carry no cash. You give me no reason."
The small card in the time travel suit was slightly charred along two edges, but it had been pressed between two pieces of wood to keep it away from oxygen. The wood had been more or less worthless on arrival, but the card still held together nicely. It made a nice flip sound when pulled out of the pocket, too!
Happy Marla took the card, turning it over to look at it. Then her coy smile faded.
"You represent The Embassy?" she asked, voice full of doubt.
"I do. And I think you know that any help will be repayed in full."
She looked the card over one more time, and then her eyes peeked over the card.
"Spirits you shall have, then, Guest Marie."
She snapped her fingers, again in an excessively dramatic way, and the first woman, the selfproclaimed servant, returned.
"We are having a seance, Teresa," said Happy Marla, voice too loud to be normal. Whatever her actual age, she was clearly already skilled at the spectacle, and it seemed best to simply ignore her odd manners, for now. "Bring the items."
The table snapped open, revealing a spiral structure inside, which immediately spun and thus pulled the entire table surface into the thick center leg of it. That leg then sank into the floor, leaving the floor an open space. The servant, Teresa, obediently left the room, making a very subservient nod towards Happy Marla, keeping it still impossible to tell if she was a willing help in on the act, or had her will actively bent to obey by implants or the like. Whatever the case might be, she left with quick, purposeful steps, obviously knowing her role in this act quite well, perhaps even as well as Happy Marla herself.
A moment later, she returned, carrying a small suitcase, which she placed in the center of the round room, on top of where the table had retracted into the floor. The suitcase opened, or more correctly, it unfolded, exposing an array of thick plastic antennae inside, which popped up like one of those children books with cardboard figures inside. She then stood up and walked to a shelf along the round wall, pulling out a wooden box. From it, she removed two sets of goggles. She handed one to Happy Marla.
"No, the old model."
Both Teresa and Happy Marla froze at the interruption. But it only took a second for Happy Marla to soften up.
"Why, Teresa, it seems our guest is versed in our field."
Teresa's face didn't move a muscle, she simply nodded, even adding a small bow, then took the goggles back from Happy Marla. As she walked back to the shelf, she seemed a bit upset, or perhaps uneasy, about the choice of headwear being called out. Whether it was her choice, Happy Marla's, or simply a standard one was impossible to tell, but she seemed to put some personal honor into it.
The other goggles she pulled out looked horrible. They were old and worn, with cracks in the plastic, obviously not the self-repairing material that most new products had, including likely the pair of goggles now stowed away. Wires protruded, clearly tampered with or repaired from damage by hand, little knots on them where wires had been fused together with very basic tools. They were clearly not the presentable kind.
"Unshielded?"
Happy Marla smiled, but her smiles were starting to look a bit strained.
"Yes, removed the shield from them myself. If taken out of this room," she said, pointing her fingers around the circular room, "they will see nothing but interference patterns from every electrical wire in the vicinity."
Silently, Teresa handed out the goggles. There was something new in her eyes, something unfriendly, as if she was beginning to dislike the event. But she played the part of servant well, not giving the slightest hint of wanting to do anything about it.
The goggles fit snuggly, old fabrics sliding over the skin like a thick, soft blanket, sealing the eyes in airtight. The sensation was instant, the lack of moving air feeling like pressure against the eyeballs. It was imaginary, of course, simply how it felt when the movement of the head never resulted in movement in the air around the eyes. The screens inside the goggles turned on a moment later, showing the exact same room. A slender rim of black surrounded the field of vision, but it was easy to ignore.
"How does The Embassy know of these esoteric things?" asked Happy Marla, standing up from her chair with unnecessary grace, folding her long fingers near her waist. "These forces are not a matter of history, to my knowledge?"
Knowing what to say to people outside The Embassy was always a challenge. There were things impossible to tell, like the core time travel work being done. There were things easy to tell, like the work to protect vulnerable individuals with potential to help others, even without saying that those helped were typically time travelers themselves, or people with a special role in history, or no role at all and thus without consequence to recruit. But there was a chasm of grey in between those two, and this was part of it.
"Fifth force science has been around for very long, Marla. All we are needing are the talented individuals to lend us a hand with using it."
She looked less than impressed with that answer, sending her servant a look that seemed to scream for her to watch out for anything unusual. She clearly prefered her clients to be dimwitted or simply ignorant of what went on.
The goggles switched on without warning. The talk with Happy Marla had been distracting enough that Teresa initiating the suitcase device had slipped by unnoticed, and now, strange and blurry lines moved through the air, slowly and softly, like seaweeds under the water. Except unlike seaweeds, these turned on their own volition.
"You have your spirits," Happy Marla said, having walked to the very edge of the room, her fingers still folded above her waist as she stood in silky shadows.
"What do I do?"
At this, Happy Marla snickered, taking some pride in being the one with all the answers again.
"Ask. The translator will do the rest," she answered, pointing at the suitcase thing on the floor.
"Alright, then. Spirits, what is in the building by Reintegration Square, the one that has had two small holes made in it within the last hour?"
There was little in the way of visible reaction. The lines had already expanded into hazy bands, like a bad film effect, looking like glowing, transparent cloths in the air. Then, after a few seconds of just moving around randomly, they seemed to get excited. Several of them expanded more, growing to the size of carpets, writhing about in the air. Some slipped away, escaping from sight in ways impossible to actually follow, while others swirled almost aggressively around the room.
"What's going on? Are they trying to answer?"
Happy Marla never commented. Her face was more than a bit bewildered as she tracked the floating things, these spirits, around the room. Then, as her face behind the clumsy goggles seemed to have lost some of its cool, she looked at her servant.
The servant, Teresa, was standing on the edge of the room, holding something in her hand. It looked like the same kind of high quality fake wood that the table was made of, but it was small, and very intricate. With even the slightest movement of her fingers, she pushed parts of it around, exposing what looked from a distance like small geometric symbols. The spirits seemed very interested in the item, diving to swoop around it again and again, with increasing fervor!
"Marla, are they trying to answer? Does the translator..."
Suddenly, Teresa's eyes appeared in front of the goggles. She had moved fast, very fast, and very quietly, but not out of any kind of fear. With one quick move, she pulled the goggles clear off, making it feel like she was pulling the eyes out along with them!
"What are you into, guest?!" she demanded, gritting her teeth as she asked as if to bite if not answered quickly.
"What the #*@!? Are you insane, lady?!"
She clearly did not like that answer. The feel of her fingers against the throat was brutal, their speed and strength clear signs that she was heavily augmented, only with such skill that the cybernetic enhancements looked like real flesh and bone.
"Madam," said Happy Marla from behind her. Teresa never turned to look, only pointing an angry finger.
"Quiet," she hissed, and Happy Marla fell quiet. "I want only to hear from you, Guest Marie. What would my spirits find in your building?"
"Your spirits? I thought that..."
"You thought nothing!" she almost yelled, the fingers squeezing tighter. "Now talk!"
"Madam," said Happy Marla, or whoever was whom in this stageplay, but Teresa, who definitely was nobody's servant, made a growling sound to repeat her previous orders.
"The spirits say that there are unnatural machines in there, that you have been..."
"Madam!!" shouted Happy Marla, finally getting the attention of Teresa. When she looked back again, her eyes were filled with fear. Her body seemed to slip away as if pulled by unknown forces, but she was clearly just diving away and letting go at the same time.
In the middle of the room, sparks were circling, drawing nearly solid lines in the air. The spirits, visible even without the goggles, were racing about, highly agitated, very chaotic in their movements. The sparks drew rough outlines of what had been clearly visible through the goggles, something that was not to be taken lightly, if rumors about these things were to be believed! And then, they first swooped past Happy Marla and then Teresa. Then, they turned their attention on what they really wanted!
It felt like burning while frozen. The sparks plunged through everything, through skin and chest, through bones and heart, racing into the body and seeking their way through it from the inside, grabbing, probing, studying, like a tourist lost in a museum. They finally found their goal, and the feeling of them rushing towards the brain was too much. Everything seemed to go dark, like fainting, but instead of waking later, it was a darkness of images. The spirits talked to the brain, directly, touching every neuron and synapse, twisting and activating, ransacking memory and placing knowledge without going through the senses. The building, flashes of it from every side, every possible angle and perspective. It disintegrated, like a toy pulled apart by a studious child, and the unimportant parts became nothing. A raw core of meaningful contents remained. A large machine, lines running along its sides, like that on the Moon, like the abandonned one in the machine forest. But this one was active. This one was switched on. And the spirits did not like it one bit!
"I think you should leave," said Teresa's voice through the dark, as the images evaporated, leaving nothing but blackness. Then, the room came into focus again. The floor was cold, pressing against the back like a heavy load. "I think you should get up and leave, right now, while the spirits permit it," she added, voice stern and clear.

The air outside felt oddly liberating, despite still being the same as before going into Happy Marla's. In the distance, the lights of the city shone silently, meaning very little so far away. Up close, every light no doubt had some significance, but at a distance, it was just another glow in the dark.
"How did you get here so fast?" asked Yuna, her one arm looking strangely stiff.
"Yuna, what are those?"
Yuna looked at the city, following the finger as best she could.
"The lights?" she asked, clearly confused.
"Yes, the light going into the sky. That sky beam thing in the middle."
She stopped, turning her body in the direction she was looking. Somehow, the question seemed to distract her from her own quesiton, relaxing her along the way.
"Marketing," she answered in a voice that seemed judgemental, as if it was something everyone was meant to know. "That one is a night club, I think. I never went there, but it's supposed to be expensive as hell."
Then, she turned, ignoring the finger and instead pointing to another sky beam herself.
"The red one down there is a nutrient superstore, the yellow one in the distance is a high class rail bike chain, I think."
The vertical beam of blue light in the distance never moved. A night club, nothing else. Marketing.
"I timed out."
Yuna seemed startled at the remark.
"I timed out before I hit the ground. The suit is probably in a million pieces, but I went back to The Embassy. A few weeks of rest and recovering, and I came back here."
"You could have said someting," she said, snapping mildly. "I thought you were dead."
"No, I really couldn't."
"What, some timeline stuff? You would have changed the future? Or the past?"
"No, I just had to go somewhere that I couldn't take you."
It was impossible to know if her silence came from her understanding the predicament, or from her not understanding it but not wanting to dig.
"Did you get what you needed?"
"Yeah, I got what I needed. That's kinda why I called you here."
That last remark made her frown, her face expressing both excitement, worry and some displeasure, all in the same stare.
"Yuna, I need you to evacuate every Embassy office around the city. Shut down every current operation and get everyone who is not a hundred percent native far away from it. Keep them there until I return to say the coast is clear."
"I can't do that, I'll need...."
She stopped to look at the small piece of plastic suddenly handed to her.
"All the important information is on this. Give it to your highest ranking person at your Embassy of Time branch office. They'll understand what it means. And then..."
The hardest part was difficult to get out. Yuna was native, she belonged in this time, was born here. She was not a time traveler. Nothing from the machine would affect her. But the machine was just one part of a very big equation.
"... then, I want you to run. Get away from this place, go into hiding. Find some places far away from the city, from any city, and just stay there. Take whatever you need to survive, bring only the people you trust, the minimum number of close ones, who have no unbreakable ties to the city. Just leave."
Lacking the details of the situation, she was understandably confused. She looked at the small piece of plastic that contained all the info from the spirits, or as much as could be made understandable to humans without entering their actual damned minds to place it there. Then she flipped it over and snapped it into a small opening behind her ear.
"Yuna, no."
She just stared.
"Yuna, I don't want..."
She just stared, not saying a word.
"The password is WRATH."
As she opened the files inside her brain interface, her expression changed slowly along with the realization of what those files contained. When she finally looked up, she had tears in her eyes.
"But that's... everything," she stammered, clearly trying to comprehend what she had just seen, heard and experienced.
"Yes. A clean start. There will be no place for you to run once we're gone."
For a few minutes, we stood in silence and just watched the sky beams market their trivial goods and services in the distance.