Chapter 63

Video in previous post

Chapter 63 Differential Edit

63. 

Freya was still floating as they left the diner. She didn’t realize they were going to Hiidenkirnu until Lynn’s Mercedes was pulling into the gated visitor lot. In a panic, Freya realized she’d brought the Starball right to the lab. What if all their equipment started flaking out like the whiteboards at Grayson?

“It’ll be ok,” Lynn said, noticing she was tense. “I’ll do all the talking. Freya wondered if she could leave the Starball in the car, but it seemed wrong to her, she was deeply averse to being separated from the orb. She took a deep breath and went inside, knowing all the while that she was a fool.

They’d remodeled the lobby since the last time Freya was at Hiidenkirnu, and it smelled different than she remembered. Before it had been like a hospital in here, the lingering scent of bleach, shoes squeaking against linoleum floors. Now everything had been redone in cedar, stacked slate, and blue-green glass, there was a distant scent of varnish. It barely felt like a laboratory anymore. 

Hiidenkirnu’s CTO was waiting for them in a conference room that was a triangle of blue-green glass jutting from the side of the Hiidenkirnu building. There was an impressive view of the rising hills dotted with evergreens. 

Freya had expected to see the old systems administrator, a big fat man named Karl who was perpetually clad in Birkenstocks and a ratty Dimmu Bogir t-shirt. But apparently they’d remodeled their staff too. 

Oliver Karhu was a slight blonde man with wire-framed glasses and a fashionable gray suit. He had an air of distraction, as if he badly needed a cigarette and only needed to get this interrogation out of the way first. His phone was constantly buzzing with alerts, and he had to pause often to check on them. He’d apologized about the first interruption, but after that it was just understood this was how it was going to be.

As she’d promised, Lynn Harris did most of the talking, and Oliver listened intently. A few times he had to politely ask her to hold on so he could answer a pressing message. Freya could see a distorted reflection of his phone’s screen in the glass behind him but she couldn’t make out much. There were at least five people demanding his attention at once. It was like he was in a collapsing building, rushing from room to room trying to shore it up.

What had Lassa done? 

The Starball was growing warmer and warmer in her pocket, and she wondered what the hell it was doing. She looked at the reflection of Karhu’s phone, expecting everything to start glitching out any moment. 

“What can you tell us?” Lynn Harris asked, when she’d finished with her account.

“Well first, Freya may I see your phone?” 

Freya looked to Lynn, who nodded at her. Freya slid her phone across the table to Oliver, who had set his laptop on the table. Connected to it was a black plastic box the size of a deck of cards.

“OK. Do you need to keep it?” Freya asked. 

“I don’t think so. I’d just like to see if there’s anything running on it that shouldn’t be. I’m going to take a forensic image of your phone first. That way if anything happens we can still recover the data.” 

“OK. All my pictures and stuff are on iCloud anyway,” she said. Freya and Lynn had already gone through all her texts, there was nothing she couldn’t explain. 

She didn’t like the thought of Lassa’s work snooping through her photos but there was nothing to be done now, at least she didn’t have anything too risqué. There were pictures of the Starball and the meteorite, but Freya doubted Karhu would know what he was looking at. The really embarrassing things were all her sad little declining e-mail chains with her former friends, the slow dissolution of all of her relationships, but they wouldn’t care about that either. There would be almost nothing from her mother, Lassa didn’t text and seldom called.

Karhu performed some arcane combination of button presses and shut the phone off, when it booted back up it was displaying a black and white terminal. He asked Freya to enter her password, and it took a few tries for her to get it, the little cursor didn’t move as she typed and it tripped her up. When she managed to unlock it, Karhu got a cable from his case and plugged her phone into the imager. 

“It will take a little bit to make the image, it’s backing up everything,” Karhu explained.  

“What can you tell us? We’re happy to cooperate but we’re more or less in the dark here,” Lynn said, impatience was already snaking into her voice. 

“We’re very worried about Lassa. I was unaware of the issue with her home internet, really she should have notified me at once. I’m going to take a very close look at her machine and find out if it was compromised, and at some point I would like to take a look at the router and see if there’s any issue with it. I don’t expect to find anything there, cross-platform malware is very uncommon. Does Lassa have a personal phone?” 

“No, she only has the Hiidenkirnu one,” Freya said. 

Oliver nodded. “So I really wouldn’t expect to see anything on Freya’s phone then. Most likely either Lassa’s phone or her workstation are compromised. Did you bring her computer?”

“Yes,” Lynn Harris said, and she passed him the leather laptop bag she’d brought from Lassa’s room. 

“That’s great, thank you. As to what’s going on, I’ll tell you what I can. This is still an active intrusion and we’re working to secure it.” 

“Can you tell us when it started?” Freya asked. 

“We noticed something strange about a week before Lassa took a week of PTO. When she was absent we noticed a correlation between her being in the office and the unauthorized transfers. Then we began to investigate her account and we saw work orders being generated for testing that made no sense, things totally unrelated to her department. At first we were wondering if this was intentional sabotage, but also we are very concerned about her mental state. I understand she was involved in an altercation at your school.”

Freya nodded, the day of the fight, where this had all begun. It seemed so long ago.

“She’s going through a tough time, but I don’t think she’s gone crazy or anything,” Freya said. “I’m trying to get her to see a therapist.” 

“We need to talk with her as soon as possible. The idea of her machine being compromised makes the most sense. A lot of the data that was transferred is from projects Lassa would have no knowledge of, and there was simply too much taken for one person to parse it all. It’s all quite puzzling.” 

Freya wasn’t puzzled, and the desire to know what the hell the Starball was up to burned in her mind hotter than the orb in her pocket.

“What kind of stuff was taken?” Freya asked, and Lynn’s eyes flashed with warning. “I mean, I understand you can’t be specific, I’m just curious,” Freya amended, hoping she hadn’t gone too far. 

“Like I said, a huge volume of material. Not only from Hiidenkirnu but from our CRADA network. Lassa’s division is RH, most of the work that was errantly ordered and the material taken was NPP.”

Freya and Lynn’s eyes met, neither understood. They turned back to Karhu, waiting for him to translate the jargon to English. 

“Oh, of course. CRADA are research agreements we have to share data with government entities. They’re one of the reasons we have to get to the bottom of this quickly. We need to inform these institutions of the breach. RH is reproductive health.”

“What’s NPP?”

“Neuropsychopharmacology. Antidepressants, anxiolytics, that type of thing.”

Keenly Freya could remember Lassa angrily saying Dr. Garbuglio didn’t know a tenth of what she did about the Lunesta. She was racking her mind, could Lassa have actually been involved in some kind of espionage? The Starball was uncomfortably hot, but she didn’t want to take it out of her pocket. 

When had the Starball started working on her? Had it been tearing around in the Hiidenkirnu system trying to figure out how to pacify her? She could remember it struggling to calm Dan down, the layer of frost at the edges while his mind was on fire.

As she whirled with ideas, the imaging of her phone completed.  Karhu took one of the data cards out of the imager and flipped the tab to read-only, then put it in a little plastic case and wrote on the label in pen. 

“OK. Now that we have a backup, let’s see what’s happening on your phone.” Karhu said. He had long fingers with neatly trimmed nails, she looked for calluses to see if he was a guitar player but there were none. She remembered Karl had been a bass player and idly wished he were here instead. There had been something comforting about how disheveled he was. 

Karhu was rapidly tapping through pages of text, looking through lists of processes and services, he gave a little running commentary about what each process did. Freya and Lynn were both paying close attention.

“There it is,” he announced, seeming almost disappointed. “They didn’t even try to hide it. Unusual.” 

Karhu turned the phone around so they could see it, pressing a fingertip at the top of the list. Most of the processes had names like MEMOSRV, but the top one’s name was just Ø. Next to it were columns indicating memory and processor use, Ø was close to 80% on both. 

“Is that why my battery life has been awful?” Freya asked. 

“Almost certainly, though this is an older phone, you’re probably near end-of-life on your battery too. I’m going to have to ask if we can keep your phone after all, I’m sorry.”

“That’s fine. So is it something like Stuxnet or whatever?” Freya asked. 

“Really unlikely to be something on that scale, that kind of state level malware is very difficult to detect. This almost seems amateur, but I won’t know until I can examine it.” 

“Do you think our router is infected too?” 

“I don’t think so but now I’d like to take a look at all the computers in your home. Lassa’s phone is android, so maybe this is a cross-platform threat after all.” 

Karhu inhaled deeply, and sighed, rolling his thumb and index finger against his temples. His phone kept chirping against the table and he looked down at it as if it were making him seasick. 

“Can I see your phone as well?” he asked Lynn, she shook her head.  

“There’s privileged data on it, I can’t let you make an image without a court order,” Lynn said. Freya wondered how much of that ‘privileged data’ was sexting with Lassa. But Lynn did have other clients after all.

“That’s totally fine, can I just check the running processes like I did on Freya’s phone?” 

“I wasn’t on their wireless network ever. I use my data plan.” Lynn sounded a little defensive.

“Do you mind if I look anyway?” Karhu pressed. ”It should only take a second.”

Reluctantly, Lynn Harris surrendered her phone, hovering at his side as he worked through it. Lynn’s phone was an android, this time Karhu didn’t need to reboot the phone to get to the list of running applications. Freya couldn’t see the screen, but from their faces, she could guess what they were seeing. Looking upset, Karhu turned over his own phone, tabbed away from all the angry notifications and pulled up his own process manager. 

The Ø process was at the top of the list.

“Oh fuck,” Karhu groaned. “You have no idea how much worse my day just got.” He shoved the phone away from himself in disgust. It spun at the center of the table and rattled against it with a notification.

“We have to get the authorities involved now. This is way too big,” Karhu said, clearly daunted. 

Lynn and Karhu began to talk about Hiidenkirnu’s lawyers, and which agencies would need to be notified of the breach. 

Forgotten, Freya hung her head in silent despair. It was all about to slip away from her. The government would swarm in and find out everything. They would take the Starball, they would lock her up, she would never see Dan again. Wild thoughts of escape flashed through her mind, taking Randall’s truck and running for it, trying to escape to Canada.  

Please stop. Just let me make it through today. PLEASE. She clenched her fist around the Starball in her pocket, wishing for the millionth time it could just talk to her. She felt the cool clarity of its efforts to calm her, and then her eyes focused on Karhu’s phone as another flashing red notification set it buzzing angrily against the tabletop. 

“Hey,” Freya interrupted. She pointed at Karhu’s phone. The Ø process had disappeared from the list. Karhu reached across the table and took the phone, scrutinizing the screen. They looked at Lynn’s next, the process was gone. 

“Mitä vittu,” Karhu breathed. 

In her fist, Freya could feel the Starball begin to cool.

* * * 

As the morning dragged on, the conference room became a gyre of confusion. Hiidenkirnu’s lawyers arrived and got into a huddle with Lynn Harris. Flustered-looking technicians were arriving and Karhu was rapidly dispatching them to tasks around the building. There were missed buttons on dress shirts and mismatched socks, a ripe, hung-over musk in the air that said the emergency summons had been too urgent to even shower. Freya was left with nothing to do, wishing she’d brought a book. Karhu and the lawyers were trying to convince Lynn Harris to surrender her phone, and Lynn was digging in her heels. Freya could tell from the tone of her voice they would have to take it from her by force. 

A flurry of words passed between Karhu and the lawyers in Finnish, Freya could pick out only a little, but the words Tietokone pandemia clung to her as if barbed, she could not shake them loose. The argument got increasingly heated, finally Karhu managed to convince Lynn to remove the battery from her phone and slide it into one of the signal-blocking sleeves. She promised not to turn it back on until she heard from the authorities.

With the compromise reached Freya and Lynn found themselves politely banished to the lobby, watching more and more people streaming in. It was all about to be a fiasco. Freya had ignored all the warnings, let all the chances to tell someone slip away. People were rushing in every direction, looking distraught, like ants whose hive had been kicked to pieces. How much was this all going to cost? How big would it get? Everyone’s weekend was ruined, and it was all her fault. 

Freya groped for the guilt she should have felt, there was nothing. She could stop all of this right how, rip the Starball from her pocket and hold it into the air like a beacon. With all of their eyes upon her she could confess everything. The idea seemed as distant and fanciful as if she planned to levitate. 

The nausea and aversion she’d felt before did not return, they were no longer necessary. She wanted to check her phone for the time, and then she remembered they’d taken it. Behind the reception desk was a blank clock face with no lines and no numbers, it was just after three. Two hours until she could see him. Nothing else mattered. 

Chapter 68

Video in previous post

Chapter 68 Differential Edit

68.

In the night the Sillas River rose over its banks. The black water climbed up the hill and seeped under the newly-painted garage door. The river lapped at the tires of Randall’s truck before it flooded into the house, Freya felt her bed begin to float, all around her was the sound of trickling water. 

She’d had this dream before. Freya always escaped the house somehow. She would ride her sodden mattress down the swelling river like she was Huckleberry Finn, drifting past the steeples of flooded churches and over drowned neighborhoods. But there was something out of place, the smell of the river was wrong. Freya knew the black water of the Sillas River intimately, it had been in her nose, in her lungs. It had a a slightly brackish, stony smell. The water flooding into her bedroom smelled like bacon.

Freya blinked, the lights in her room were dark and the sky outside was overcast. But the harsh fluorescents of the kitchen were shining too. She had a wincing expectation that they would blind her, but the eyes that saw them were already acclimated. She could still hear the trickling of the river, but then she felt Dan grin, it was the sound of bacon hissing on the griddle. He was at work at the diner, they’d linked while she was still dreaming. 

Oh no, Freya thought, worried about what he might have seen. She remembered the way Dan shrank from her dream of death. But there was no dread from Dan, he was even disappointed that the dream had broken up. From miles away he beamed that he’d been alarmed at her dream at first, but he was beginning to enjoy it. It broke up the tedium of washing dishes.

Dan’s hands were in a sink, scrubbing as fast as he could. Freya could feel the warm water through his gloves, she felt pressure of all those dishes piling up at the end of the counter. The actual dishwasher had called out sick, she could feel a little exasperation on the edge of Dan’s thoughts as he explained. It wasn’t the first time, and Dan suspected the man would be fired soon. 

Dan didn’t mind washing dishes, but dishwashers didn’t make tips, every time this happened it cost him twenty or thirty dollars. She could feel his frustration, he’d brought it up to the manager before but he’d been rebuffed, and he couldn’t afford to quit over it. 

Freya had a sudden desire to make things better, she had money, she could just give him some. Her thought met resistance, Dan’s thoughts about money were tangled in pride and embarrassment, and she let the idea go at once. She didn’t want to make him feel worse.

Instead she turned her attention to this new ripple of Unity. She’d never joined Dan while she was asleep before. Now that she was fully awake she was trying to gauge how they felt about it. 

Dan was concerned, but he thought it was generally a good thing and she agreed with him. They wanted the unity, wanted to be close. Dan felt a deep, protective happiness, he liked to feel that she was safe and warm, wound up in the covers while he was working. 

I can work too, she asserted, but she felt a little mirth in response. She’d slept in until 10 AM, Dan had to wake up at 5 AM for his shift at the diner, even after he’d done all the driving last night. Freya felt guilty, she wished she could do more, but Dan beamed back that he was just happy to have her mental company. Dishwashing was monotonous, there was no one to talk to.

Freya needed to pee. The urge had been increasing since she’d woken up, and now Dan was beginning to feel her discomfort. She was dying of embarrassment, there was no way to hang up on Unity. Dan tried to assure her it was ok. 

Go ahead, he thought, I’ll focus on dishes. 

Freya was mortified, but it was becoming imperative. She felt him trying to focus elsewhere but at the same time he was fighting against his own interest, part of him wanted to know how it felt. Her cheeks were aflame with shame, but she really had to go, for a moment in the bathroom she just shut her eyes and felt blessed relief.

Afterward she could feel a momentary terror from Dan that he’d gotten so caught up in the feeling that he’d pissed his pants. 

He had to stop washing dishes and run to the bathroom himself. Freya had the same weird fascination he’d had, peeing felt very different as a man. Dan noticed her interest as he was hurriedly zipping up and washing his hands to rush back to the dishwashing station.

Sorry! I’m so gross, she thought, but Dan wasn’t ashamed. He’d been desensitized to so many things growing up with a twin. It was just a human thing, her reminded her. She brushed her teeth, and her stomach was growling, it didn’t help that the smells of cooking food were all around Dan.

She peeked out at the driveway, Lassa was still gone. She had the urge to check her phone, but then she remembered it was gone and she was glad of it. She was already with the only person she wanted to hear from. 

Was that true? Dan questioned Freya, with concern on the edge of his thought. She felt a little embarrassed, but it was true. She didn’t have any other really close friends anymore. 

They spirited back and forth on that point, Dan was showing her how from the outside he could see that a lot of people liked her and would be closer if she let them. It was both illuminating and humiliating to see his perspective, when he felt her tiring of it he dropped the point. It wasn’t something she could fix any time soon. Unity had become more comfortable, differences between them that had once seemed like they might tear the world in two had been reduced to minor distractions. 

What if it never ends? 

Neither of them was certain which of them had formed the question first. Could they go through their whole lives like this? 

Freya had a sudden vision of Dan, red in the face, screaming at her to get out of his head as his hands closed around her neck. Miles away, she could feel him wince, clenching a plate tightly in his gloved hands. The image hit him like a physical blow. 

I’m sorry!

Dan reeled for a moment, it took a second for both of them to come to terms with the intrusive thought.

That’s not us, they tried to assure themselves, but it was just a thin film at the surface of their fear. They shared a worry that once the newness all drained away, terrible things might be revealed at the river bottom. 

We’re wasting this. 

Freya focused her will, determined not to let her wayward thoughts capsize the Unity this time. She thought of something nice she could do for Dan, out of habit she began thinking of ways to hide it and spring it on him at the right time. She realized how dumb that was and they almost laughed aloud at it. There could be no surprises between them.

You don’t have to, Dan smiled, she could feel the tension in his cheeks, the sense of lift in his chest as he grinned. 

I need to practice anyway, Freya thought, tuning her guitar. 

Freya played her guitar for Dan as he washed dishes, miles away in the diner’s kitchen. He could hear her every bit as clearly as he’d heard the concert the night before. She began to play Stormy Monday, and feeling his slight disappointment, dropped it after a few bars moved on to Down in a Hole. Rock music was much more interesting to Dan. Even as his enjoyment picked up, he felt a little guilty about it. 

You don’t have to change what you’re playing for me. 

She nodded in the empty room, she didn’t have to, but why waste this moment? What he liked was what he liked, there was no use pretending. 

Freya played on, tapping her repertoire for songs she thought he might like. She played Change and then Violet, and he was really getting into it, nodding his head at the sink. 

The dishes accumulated and disappeared, her fingers slipped over the frets, and the torrent of thoughts passing between them became gentle waves climbing slowly up the shore and slipping back into the sea. Freya’s hunger and Dan’s weariness faded into the background, and time lost all weight. They were at peace. 

She played at the tempo he worked, it was a curious kind of dancing between them. Hearing the music through her ears only, he could better see the contrast between them. She was trained to hear the notes, and her hearing was better in general, it lent the experience a magical, almost otherworldly feel for Dan.

The experience was more than just listening, as he was exposed to the way she thought about music, he was beginning to understand more. She could feel him learning in little bursts of epiphany, starting to recognize pieces of structure in the songs, hearing notes he’d missed before. 

Freya realized that if Unity didn’t end, she could almost certainly teach him enough music theory to begin playing on his own. The idea  swelled up into a huge excitement between the two of them. It was something he’d never thought he could do, but now anything seemed possible. What an incredible gift that would be! She thought about the mandolin, the way he’d been entranced by The Battle of Evermore. 

We could play that together, Freya beamed and they were both engulfed with joy at the thought. Learning like this was pure pleasure. Dan wanted to reciprocate, to give her something in return but he wasn’t sure how. She already knew how to run and he wasn’t that much further ahead in Krav Maga than her. Her mind flashed to homework, and Dan could feel her dread, the to Freya the idea of trigonometry was like a storm front on the horizon.

I can help, no problem, Dan thought, and she could feel him smiling, the confidence behind the thought. She went through her ritual of putting her guitar away and got out her textbook. She felt apologetic that he had to do homework while he was at his job. 

But she felt that he was interested in the challenge, he was eager to see what he could remember. At first Dan was straining to recall how everything worked, it had been two years since he’d studied this. But as he remembered one thing, the next would lock into place, rapid-fire like the teeth of a zipper. It was an exhilarating feeling. 

The great stone of comprehension she’d been slowly rolling uphill felt like it was gliding on ice. Dan’s understanding was as sharp as a blade, he sliced through the problems and then doubled back to help her see how he’d done it. The sensation of simultaneously teaching and learning was pure pleasure. 

After thirty minutes of working with Dan, Freya went from being certain she would fail the class to wondering how she’d ever been afraid of this. It was all locked in, she had it. They were radiating together, happiness and gratefulness, there was a sense of nuclear potential trembling between them. If Unity didn’t stop, neither of them would ever struggle with a test again.

I could retake the SATs! The thought exploded in Dan’s head, an answer to all of his fears about the future. Freya agreed immediately, envisioning herself sitting at a computer, feeding him every answer.

We’re more together, they thought, the idea towered above them. It was exhilarating and frightening, within the Unity they were an entirely new kind of being. 

Until the end of his shift, Freya and Dan resonated on the idea, wondering what it meant, how they could use it, what dangers lie within. Just as everything seemed possible, Unity began to falter. Despair swallowed them at once. 

“I miss you already,” Freya sighed, clinging to the threads. She caught only a pale ghost of his response, but she knew exactly what he wanted to say. It wouldn’t be long until they were together again. They’d planned to meet Radomir and the others that afternoon at the China House Buffet.   

Freya was alone again, suddenly aware that someone had rung the doorbell several times, and they were thumping on the front door now. She wondered if she could just wait for them to go away, but if they were that insistent it was probably Lynn Harris. She scrambled to come up with some excuse for not answering. 

Already the air felt too still, lonely thoughts crashed about in in her skull, sad and unaccompanied. She threw on clothes and answered the door.

Chapter 70

Video in previous chapter

Chapter 70 Differential Edit

70.

China House was the only buffet for miles. Every weekend a host of large and strange creatures descended on it to feast on an endless train of spare ribs and orange chicken. The parking lot was jam-packed, Freya noticed several vehicles had spilled into the adjacent lot of Hersch Plumbing Supply where “VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED” signs abounded. Apparently all-you-can-eat-shrimp was worth rolling the dice.

Oliver tilted his head at Freya, as if to ask if she were sure this were the right place. She returned a rueful nod, this was inexplicably Radomir’s favorite restaurant. She continued to scan the lot, there was more on her mind than illegal parking. When she didn’t see Malcolm lurking in wait with a gun, she thanked Oliver for the ride and said she hoped he could get some sleep. 

Inside the restaurant her friends were posted at at one of the huge round tables. Freya’s eyes locked onto Dan’s at once, and only reluctantly let go. There was an empty seat beside him that was obviously meant for her. Next was Radomir, and Brad and Cameron came after. Jeanette was to Cameron’s left, her face lit up with a smile when she saw Freya. Tate was next, looking like he was on top of the world, Riley was beside him, sitting close. Immediately Freya could tell they were together. How on Earth had Tate pulled that off? Freya would have bet anything he had no chance. 

Dan was still staring at her as if he’d been ensorcelled. Everyone seemed to follow his eyes to Freya and there was a flurry of giggling. They were so obvious. 

Burning in her mind was Malcolm’s death threat, but Frey realized if she told the others now it would ruin the whole meal. She pushed the impulse to share what had happened down, she would tell them later.

Radomir stood up and she gave him a careful hug that was little more than draping her arm around him. Rad sounded very congested as he greeted her. There was still tape on either side of his nose, and there were splints inside his nostrils. He told her they would come out in a few days and his sense of smell was supposed to return within a week or two. The swelling had gone down a great deal. 

Strangely he seemed much happier after the terrible beating than he had before it. Freya guessed after days in the hospital, anything was an improvement. 

Freya’s stomach was backflipping with demands, and her eyes kept being drawn to the steaming hills of paradise, but she pushed it all away to sit down and talk with Radomir. They were here for him after all.

“You look so much better. How is everything?” 

“The ribs are the worst of it. Six weeks of practice this idiot stole from me. Six weeks!” Radomir growled, and a jolt of pain shot across his face, raising his voice had been a mistake. Jennette took a sharp breath, her eyebrows leapt up in concern.

“It will be over before you know it,” Freya said delicately. She tapped her fingers around her eye, it had been black once too. The darkness surrounding Radomir’s eyes was still there, but she could see it getting spotty around the edges. 

“I am almost done with the book!” Radomir said. “Lem is amazing, as soon as I finish I want to talk with you about it. Guess my favorite part?” 

“The symmetriads,” Freya guessed at once. Radomir’s face lit up, she knew she had it. 

“Yes! I went back and re-read that section three times, it was all I could think about for the whole day.” 

He had a look on his face like she’d done a magic trick. But it hadn’t been difficult to figure out. The symmetriads in Solaris were city-sized formations of living plasma that rose kilometers above the sentient ocean. They created forms of incomprehensible complexity, and then after a few days they crumbled back into the sea as if they’d never been, and no one could offer any explanation. 

Ten years of growing up, ten years of training, ten years of dancing, and thirty years of darkness.

Despite Radomir’s pledge to wait until he’d finished reading, they were swept into a conversation about the Solaris. Freya and Radomir were caught in the radiant excitement of sharing something that had touched them both deeply. They each wanted to say three things at once, more than anything it reminded her of the Unity, the way a memory seemed new when she felt it Dan. 

Beside her, Dan’s brow creased as he tried to follow their animated conversation. The rest of the table was staring at them, with no clue what they were talking about.

“Neeeeeerrrrrds,” Cameron lowed, and there were a few snorts but no laugh. Radomir’s blackened eyes blinked in annoyance. 

“Is this too complicated for you Cameron? Perhaps we should talk of Harry Potter so you can keep up, you dumb muggle.”

Cam mock-gasped, and held his hand to his heart, Tate broke out laughing at the reaction and the way Radomir’s voice honked at the end of his sentence. Cameron seemed about to retort, but the waiter arrived with a tray of sodas. Everyone took it as their cue to get food, happy to let the minor tension dissipate.

Freya lingered in her seat to process what had happened. Dan remained with her and they watched the others swarm the buffet line. She was struck by the way Cameron had made a farce of their conversation, sensing their intensity was making others uncomfortable and skewering them to relieve it. It was the kind of thing she would have been oblivious to before, but now the undercurrents of conversation were impossible to ignore. 

Dan’s look was questioning, and she tried to figure out if his expression was jealousy or concern. Perhaps he felt the same frustration she did, that she had to wonder what he was thinking at all instead of feeling it. She squeezed his knee under the table in reassurance, and he smiled at her. 

“This is so hard,” she confided, her voice low, and he nodded in understanding. He took her hand and they sat there, trying to reconcile the morning and the present, but her thoughts were restless and drifting.

The way she and Radomir had been geeking out and gushing with enthusiasm was so close to Unity. Freya grappled for a word for the experience. It combined the joy of finding something unexpected, the feeling of understanding and being understood, and the sense that she was not alone any longer. It was a kind of electric sharing, a little like the Norwegian forelsket, but without the romance that word implied. As she thought about it, she wondered if that was actually true. 

All through eighth grade, Freya had a terrible crush on Radomir. They were alike in ways she and Dan would never be. She couldn’t help but wonder what Unity with him would be like, and at once she felt guilty for considering it. Freya had been given an incredible, unique bond that no one else on Earth had ever had, and already she was greedy for more. 

When they were Reunified, Dan would feel that desire, it would carve into him like a knife. Looming over her were the thoughts she’d had that morning, even more strange and forbidden. She couldn’t forget them, couldn’t deny them, the harder she pushed them away the stronger they would return. That was the price, it was impossible to conceal who she really was and what she really wanted. 

Don’t go there! Dan had hissed at her, but how could she not? She was suddenly aware she was gripping his hand too hard. 

“You ok?” Dan asked quietly.  

“Yeah, just spacey, I haven’t eaten all day,” Freya began, making and excuse out of habit. “No wait, that’s not the truth I’m sorry,” she said, catching herself. “There’s a lot of weird shit running through my head and I’m afraid of it. I’m worried about what you’ll think, what it will do to you when we’re together again.” 

“Oh man, I’m right there with you,” Dan said. “I keep being afraid stuff I think will pop up and make you think I’m awful or hurt your feelings.”

“I can take it,” Freya assured him.

“It’s so weird talking to other people after being with—being you. Normal conversation is so difficult and incomplete,” He looked out at their friends joking in the line as they inched forward with their plates. Freya and Dan’s eyes met, something desperate passed between them.

“I miss you,” they said together, sitting inches away from each other. 

Freya took his hand and they shared a a deep breath, for a moment she was afraid the Unity was about to begin right that instant. She was sure neither of them was ready. But it was only ordinary closeness.

“Let’s get food before I die,” Freya joked. They joined their place in the line. 

* * *

It was four plates until Freya began to feel sated. There were no jibes this time because everyone else was pigging out just as hard as she was. One by one they were defeated.

“What have we done?” Cameron lamented, his face screwed up in exaggerated anguish. Freya was still pretty sure she could return for a fifth. 

As they were all reeling, Freya’s phone buzzed with a notification. It was Lynn Harris. She’d been asleep when Freya texted her. In a three paragraph text, Lynn said would handle filing the police report, told Freya to be careful, and asked if she needed anything.

“Death threat?” Dan asked, eying her screen. Freya felt a moment of pique, she hadn’t wanted to bring it up here. But everyone had heard him.

She pulled up the text with the pistol and showed him and the rest of the table, watching everyone’s postures stiffen.

“Is that a real gun?” Riley asked. 

“I think so,” Freya said. “I can’t read the writing on the barrel.”  

“Let me see,” Brad Kayal said, and she slid him the phone.

“That’s a Ruger SP101, it’s a five shot .357. It’s real,” Brad confirmed. He and his father owned a small arsenal of weapons.  

“Where did he get it?” Tate asked

“He’s 18, he could have just bought it at Cabelas. This is really fucked up, you might want to skip town until they catch him,” Brad advised, with a deep frown. 

“Skip town?” Freya repeated, wondering why she hadn’t thought of that.

“I dunno, like visit relatives or something. This is so fucked up,” Brad said.

Dan was rubbing the back of his head. Freya turned to him, full of sudden excitement. 

“Do you want to go to Paris?” Freya asked.  

“Je ne pais Francais,” he said.  

“She means Paris on Route 26,” Tate chided Dan.

“I definitely mean France,” Freya corrected Tate. “I’m for real, let’s go.” The table was quiet for a second, she’d said it a little too emphatically and come across as desperate. 

“I would in a heartbeat,” Dan said, rescuing her from the awkwardness. “But I don’t have a passport.”

“The Paris here has a bowling alley,” Tate offered. 

“I’d rather get shot, thanks.” Freya rolled her eyes. 

Cameron broke up laughing while Jennette’s mouth made an “O” in surprise.

“Let’s all go to New York for a week,” Radomir said. “I want to go to the New York Ballet. That’s George Balanchine’s theater.” 

“I’ll go!” Jennette chimed in with naked enthusiasm, and Freya smiled at the color that rose to her cheeks afterward. She was surprised to see the hint of a smile on Radomir’s face too, his eyes on Jennette as she looked away. Maybe the beating had broken his shell as well as his nose. 

The idea danced in front of them, bright and enticing, but it was just a daydream. Radomir was still hurt, he’d been fading visibly as the meal went on. There was no way anyone’s parents would let them blow off school for a week to go to New York on their own.

But for a second Freya could see them all piling into Brad’s Explorer and driving eight hours to New York City, laughing like fools. They could walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and take the Staten Island Ferry past the Statue of Liberty, all the things she’d done with Randall. She could picture the rapturous look on Radomir’s face at the ballet. She could walk through Central Park with Dan and kiss him at Bow Bridge. She could take him to the guitar store where Randall bought her the Ovation and they could pore over the memory together. She shut her eyes for a moment, wishing it was true. Wishing she could escape.

Chapter 78

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Chapter 78 Differential Edit

78. 

Freya and Dan returned to the Rabbit Hill Inn, feeling better after they’d eaten. The clerk at the front desk welcomed them back warmly, and they were in luck, no one had booked their room. Freya checked in and arranged to have their clothes laundered overnight. She didn’t want to wear the same underwear for a third day straight. 

The room wasn’t ready yet. Freya walked over to maître d’ stand and made an order, then she joined Dan in the common room. He was sitting on a big plaid couch in front of the hearth. Freya joined him and rested her head on his shoulder, smiling with anticipation. It wasn’t long before a waiter arrived with their hot chocolate. It wasn’t quite as good as Lassa’s, but the look of surprise on Dan’s face was what Freya had really wanted anyway. They stared into the fire and drank together, so close and yet so far.

There was another couple in the common room, playing cards at a little table beside the fireplace. Dan was craning his head, interested in their game. Freya recognized them, the Germans from their first night at the inn. 

“What game is that?” Dan asked Freya quietly, trying not to disturb them.

“It’s cribbage,” Freya told him, noticing the little peg scoreboard. Watching the game brought back a host of memories. Randall had loved cribbage, it was one of his favorite ways to spend a rainy afternoon. He knew so many weird card games, Piquet, Casino, Gin Rummy, and a dozen others she’d forgotten. Sometimes they could convince Lassa to join them and they’d play Sergeant Major, a three player trick-taking game Lassa had learned in the army. Lassa’s favorite was Schnapsen, a two player game of intense concentration that Freya could never quite beat her at. Randall used to claim he’d won once, but Freya had never seen it happen.

There was a point in elementary school when everyone was getting into card games and playing at lunch. It was one of the first times Freya could remember feeling really different from everyone else. The other children liked to play things like Uno and Go Fish, but Freya found them pure tedium. They were barely games at all, just the luck of the draw. When Freya tried to teach the games her family played, they other children found them confusing, they forgot the rules and accused her of making them up as she went along. 

Freya’s train of thought was interrupted when Dan got up. She assumed he was headed for the bathroom, but instead he walked over to the older couple and struck up a conversation. Freya felt a pang of alarm, she was afraid he would annoy them and embarrass her. 

Instead the couple seemed thrilled to talk, Dan had cracked some joke and they were both laughing. How did he do that so easily? Everyone always liked him, no one ever liked her. Freya despaired on the couch until she reached a point where it was more awkward to sit alone than to join them. Dan smiled and introduced her.

“This is Freya Jokela, she’s the brains of the operation. Freya these are Jeremias and Frieda Waltz.”

“Freut mich,” Freya said. The Waltzes lit up.

“Sprichst du Deutsch?” Frieda asked. 

“Nein, Entschuldigen Sie,” Freya said. “Finnisch?”

Frieda and Jeremias both shook their heads, and Freya was a little relieved. “That’s ok, my Finnish is pretty rusty anyway. I’d like to learn more German, I loved Düsseldorf.”  

“We are from Essen! It’s just up the road from Düsseldorf,” Frieda said. Freya could already tell she was the sterner of the pair.

“I’ve been to Essen! I went to the ATT there, it’s a big convention for amateur astronomers.”

“Ah! A star-gazer. Is that what you’re studying?” Jeremias asked.  

“No, we’re both still in high school. It’s like uh, what do you call it, gymnasium?” 

The Waltzes turned to each other, eyebrows raised. 

“I can’t believe you’re that young. It’s so rare to meet Americans who know anything about Germany. You haven’t even mentioned Hitler yet.”

“That was my next question,” Dan joked. 

Freya had expected they would just exchange a few awkward words and part ways, but Dan seemed eager to converse. Soon they were being invited to pull up chairs and sit down. They learned Waltzes had meant to fly back to Berlin today but the storm had delayed their flight. Freya guessed they were in their mid fifties.  

The Waltzes seemed a little stir crazy, just as eager as Dan to talk. That was something that Freya had never quite gotten used to in mainland Europe, people were so gregarious and happy to chat with strangers. It was a far cry from living here in the Northeast, which was much more like being in Finland.   

“Are you here with your parents?” Frieda asked, once they’d settled in and pushed the cribbage board aside.

“No, we’ve just been skiing,” Freya explained. “Are you here on holiday?”

“The end of our trip is a holiday, the beginning was business. Frieda is a professor of sociology at Universität Duisburg-Essen, she was invited to speak at Dartmouth for a symposium on migration.”

“Oh wow, that’s really impressive. I’m applying to Dartmouth, but there’s no way I’m getting in.” 

“Why not?” Frieda asked, turning her focus onto Dan. “How are your marks?”

“Good so far,” Dan said, looking a little uncomfortable under her sharp gaze. “What about you, what do you do?” he asked Jeremias. 

“I’m very fortunate to be married to a famous academic, sometimes they let me tag along and speak too,” Jeremias said, he had a wry smile. Frieda shook her head. 

“He’s only pretending to be modest, because this trip his lectures were better attended than mine,” Freida explained, giving Jeremias a sideways glance. “Which by the way, is a rarity.”

Jeremias held up his palms in surrender. 

“Truly,” he grinned. “I’m an inventor, my patents are primarily concerned with vertical farming, specifically aeroponics. Are you familiar with aeroponics?”

Freya nodded, but Dan shook his head.

“Essentially it’s using a nutrient mist to feed plants, rather than having the roots continually immersed in water. It’s much more complicated, but it solves a few problems with hydroponic systems. Most importantly, it uses far less water, which will be pivotal in the days to come. Also it’s likely the way to go if we ever want to grow crops in space stations or the like,” Jeremias nodded to Freya. He was trying to include her by building a bridge to her interest in astronomy. She recognized and appreciated the move. 

“Why do you say it will become more important?” Dan asked. 

“Water scarcity. You may not think of it now—” Jeremias waved a hand out the window to the heavy snowfall. “—but assuming there’s no nuclear unpleasantness, it’s the number one problem your generation will face. Most water supplies are already considerably strained, the problem will only increase as the population grows. There will be ten billion people on the earth in 2100. We don’t have enough clean water for the eight billion people who are here right now.” 

Jeremias paused to let them consider that, this was clearly a subject he’d spoken on many times.

“I’ve read that basically everyone will have to go vegetarian at some point, because livestock is energy-inefficient,” Dan offered.

“Disastrously inefficient, and I could go on for hours about it. But even if we assume it were possible to convince everyone to go almost completely vegetarian, that’s not enough. Once you factor in sea-level rises and water scarcity, the picture becomes far darker. Then if you consider the upheaval of the mass-migration and inevitability of conflict, it’s darker still. So what are we going to do?”

“Destroy ourselves,” Freya said. At once she felt she’d been too edgy. But Jeremias gave her a serious nod.

“That’s a good bet, considering our current trajectory,” Jeremias agreed. “The problem is very large, and seems far in the distance. Most people just want to push it out of their heads and get on with their lives. Science is hard, it’s demanding, and the money isn’t great. So most ignore it, and hope someone else will figure out the problem while they become lawyers, fashion designers, systems administrators. They chase after what pays, trying to be the best-dressed rats on a sinking ship.”

Freya and Dan exchanged a look, the conversation had gotten so serious. The Waltzes were watching them very closely.

“So, how do you stop the ship from sinking?” Dan asked.

You don’t, Freya thought, but she held her tongue. At the back of her throat was the memory of river water. 

“Well the first step is admitting it is in fact sinking. I’ve been disheartened to learn that isn’t a given in this country. You are both aware that there’s a big crash looming, correct?”

Freya and Dan nodded their heads.

“How bad do you think it will be?”

“Pretty bad,” Dan said, rubbing the back of his head. “Like probably mandatory population controls, rationing, a lot of depression and drugs. Like those rat experiments where they kept increasing the population density and they all went crazy.” 

“That’s John Calhoun and his behavioral sink,” Frieda interjected, frowning with disapproval. “They’re fascinating experiments, but you should know much of that research only applies to rodents. They couldn’t replicate his results with primates. What about you Freya, how do you think it will go?” 

Frieda and Jeremias kept making a point of including Freya. She would have liked to recede into the background but it was impossible. She took a moment to think before she answered. 

“My dad used to say we’re in a race between being buried under two hundred feet of seawater or fourteen thousand warheads,” Freya said. Unity withdrawal made her feel so bleak.

“She’s the brains of the operation for sure,” Frieda concluded with a nod. 

“Wait, two hundred feet?” Dan blinked. “Is that for real?”

“That’s the low end for a scenario with total glacier melt. It’s probably more like two hundred and thirty feet of sea-level rise. Seventy meters,” Freya added for the benefit of the Waltzes. She wasn’t sure if they needed the conversion or not.

“She’s right,” Jeremias said. “We used to think it might take thousands of years for the glaciers to melt. Now we’re learning there are half a trillion tons of methane hydrates trapped beneath Antarctic ice, it’s bubbling up from Greenland, and there’s far, far more in the arctic permafrost. It’s going to create a feedback loop. Methane raises temperatures which accelerates warming which releases more methane. London, Shanghai, Calcutta, Buenos Aires, New Orleans, they could all be gone in your lifetimes, or your children’s.” 

Dan looked a little stunned, Freya was caught on the words, “your children.” She wasn’t going to have any, but somehow the words still loomed large in her mind, heavy with significance.

“That’s not a sure thing though, right?” Dan hedged, he was not ready to accept this idea. 

“Nothing is sure in this world. But the more data we get, the clearer the picture becomes. 

“Can we do anything to stop it?” Dan asked. 

“No,” Jeremias said, with total certainty.

“If there’s nothing we can do, I might just major in swimming,” Dan joked.

“Ha, not a terrible idea. But I only meant there’s no halting the change. There is a tremendous amount you can do to help adapt to it. Here’s something no one told me when I was your age, or if they did it never sank in: You each have thirty five years of meaningful work in you, maybe forty if you’re lucky. Take away family, and that work is the only real impact you will have the world. Let me ask you something, how would you like to change the the world in those thirty five years?”

Freya and Dan were silent for a moment, thinking about it. 

“Maybe become a doctor? You could help so many people,” Dan said.

“When I ask this question, that’s often the first place people go. When people think about a career, they think only about themselves. When they think about their total contribution to the world, they think about everyone else. So yes, you could become a doctor, and you would have a tremendous positive impact on the lives of many people. Over the course of your career, you would treat perhaps thirty thousand people, and save a great many of their lives. Generations later there would be thousands of people alive who would never have lived because of your intervention. It’s an admirable goal. But…” Jeremias trailed, turning his eyes from Dan to Freya.

“But it’s just bailing water,” Freya said, guessing where he was going. 

“Exactly. Looking at your hypothetical career as a doctor in the greater context, out of ten billion people, your work touched .0003 percent. Which is like saying you saved the country of Liechtenstein but left the rest of the world untouched. That career also tends to exacerbate the problem we were talking about before, more people, more mouths. Let’s consider another direction. Do you know who Fritz Haber was?” 

Neither of them did. All Freya could think of was Fritz Lieber, and she was certain this wasn’t about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

“Fritz Haber was the father of chemical warfare. He was a very accomplished chemist and a leading advocate for the use of poison gas in World War I. His first wife was also a PhD in chemistry, but she was bitterly opposed to using gas as a weapon of war. She committed suicide less than a week after the first gas attack in Ypres. Haber continued to push for development of chemical weapons until the day he died in 1934. This was even after he’d been expelled from Germany for being Jewish. Later, during the holocaust, an insecticide Haber invented was used in the gas chambers. Zyklon B. The nazis used Haber’s own creation to murder his relatives.”  

“He sounds like a bit of an asshole,” Dan joked, and Jeremias nodded in agreement but didn’t laugh.   

“He looked the part too, bald as a cue ball, with a push broom mustache and a pince-nez. If you saw a picture of him, you would swear he’s the archetypical evil scientist. But what if I told you he was also the savior of mankind?”

“That sounds like a pretty crazy plot twist.” 

“In the midst of scheming to poison the continent and then conquer it, Haber created something of incredible importance. He devised the Haber process, where hydrogen and atmospheric nitrogen are combined with a catalyst to synthesize ammonia. This was an enormous discovery. The Royal Swedish Academy had to hold their noses and give Haber the 1918 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, and rightly so. The synthesis of ammonia was the most critical development in agriculture since irrigation. It lead to the widespread use of nitrate fertilizers which had a huge impact on crop yields. To put that in perspective, there are nearly eight billion people alive on the earth today. Without the Haber Process, it’s estimated there would be less than four. Half of humanity, without him you two might be looking at an empty table right now. Take all those poor souls who were gassed, and even if you want to expand that to people killed by explosives derived from his process, and he is still somehow the greatest saint of all time.” 

“Jesus,” Dan breathed. 

“Far greater than that one too,” Jeremias quipped, and Frieda gave the faintest shake of her head. In that tiny gesture, Freya recognized a friction between the two that was decades old. Jeremias didn’t miss her look, he seemed seemed to realize how far afield he’d drifted. 

“In any case, that’s something to think about! I must apologize, I didn’t intend to veer our conversation into genocide.”

“It’s fine. This is fascinating,” Freya said. Dan nodded in agreement, he’d been hanging on every word.

“Anyhow, where I meant to be going with all of this is, there are other Haber Processes we must find. Monumental discoveries that will change the world forever. Novel ideas to provide clean water and nutritious food to billions of people who are not even born yet. So when you are wondering what to do with your brief span on this earth, I would urge you to consider that we need as many bright young people working on this problem as possible. You two are inheriting a terrible mess, and no one will blame you if you choose to throw up your hands. But if you want to try and save the world, the hard sciences are the place to be. There’s a terrible war on the horizon, and if we want to prevent it we need to make incredible strides in water purification, crop yield, and energy production. It’s our only chance for survival as a species.”

Freya clutched the Starball in her pocket as the two of them grappled with everything Jeremias had said. She’d known a lot of this, but there was something undeniable about having an adult sit down and level with them. It felt like Paul Atreides had sat down to tell them all about his Golden Path. 

There was something hard and determined in Dan’s face. The conversation had touched him deeply. As she reflected on the change, Freya thought if the room was ready she would bid the Waltzes adieu and drag him back there this moment. 

“I will absolutely think about that. Thank you,” Dan said, looking sober and shaken. Freya wondered how many times Jeremias Waltz had given this little lecture. It had the practiced feel of something he had performed again and again, smoothing it down until there were no notes out of place. He was a herald for the end of the world. 

“Of course, this is only one part of the picture. Unless we better understand ourselves, we will never get there,” Jeremias said with a nod at Frieda. She took the cue. 

“At its heart, this is a problem with our nature. We’re trying to run a global society on tribal programming that was meant to cap out at a hundred individuals. Two hundred years of industrialization fighting against two hundred thousand years of inertia. I assure you we’re going to have a much harder time changing who we are than what we eat or how we generate electricity.” There was some distance in her look, she seemed drained. Freya could tell she didn’t share Jeremias’ optimism.

“I’m sorry I don’t have a similar sales pitch for sociology,” Frieda said, drumming her fingers on the deck of cards. “There are far too many of us already, and I’ve just spent an entire week doing nothing but talking about it. You two don’t play bridge, do you?”

“I know spades,” Dan said. “They’re similar, right?” 

“Only in the way that a minnow and a marlin are both fish,” Jeremias joked. “They’re both trick-taking games. But bridge is much, much more complicated, the bidding is a real brain-burner.”

“I would be down to learn,” Dan offered, with a look to Frieda. Freya realized Dan was picking up on her discontent and trying to prop her up. 

“I love card games,” Freya added, getting on board. But Jeremias and Frieda were shaking their heads.

“Thank you for the offer. I have no doubt you would both be excellent players. But it would take all evening to teach, and we’re going out for dinner soon. If you’re interested, I’d look into seeing if there’s a bridge club near you and attending their new player day. Bridge is one of those things that is very difficult to get into, but increasingly rewarding the longer you play. It’s an incredible feeling of gestalt when you and your partner are really on a streak together.” Jeremias took Frieda’s hand, trying to draw her out of her funk. Freya couldn’t resist the urge to smile at Dan. 

If they only knew. 

Dan was frowning, she could tell he felt a bit of “how dare these Germans think I’m too dumb for their game.” But she could understand. Serious players found casual play insufferable. Randall was that way with pool, if there wasn’t money on the line, it wasn’t a game to him. 

“How was Dartmouth by the way?” Freya asked, changing the subject. 

“It’s a great school, I met some incredibly bright people there. Good luck on your application by the way,” she offered Dan. 

“It would take a miracle. I’m still trying to figure out how to pay for college at all. If I can’t get an athletic scholarship somewhere I’m probably going to have to join the military for the GI Bill.”

The Waltzes’ eyes went from Freya to Dan, unraveling the situation. Frieda exhaled through her nostrils in disapproval, it took Freya a moment to understand it wasn’t directed at her.

“It’s just criminal that higher education isn’t provided by the state in America. There’s so much wasted potential. In Germany, public universities have no tuition,” Frieda told them.

“Maybe I should try and immigrate,” Dan joked. 

“There’s a long line I’m afraid.” 

The front desk clerk glided over to their table and let Freya know their room was ready. She’d completely lost track of time, it was already getting dark outside.

“Here, let me get your e-mail address,” Jeremias said, pulling out his phone. “I’m good friends with the director of the US branch of Nuffield, it’s an agricultural NPO. If your marks are good and you’re interested in studying the field, he might be able to help you secure a scholarship.”

“Seriously?” Dan said. 

“Yes, absolutely. I can’t promise anything of course. But, it can pay to let old people talk your ear off from time to time. Thank you both for the conversation, apologies for being a bit fanatic!”

“Thank you, you gave us a ton to think about. Auf Wiedersehen,” Freya said. The Waltzes smiled as they left. When they were gone, Dan turned to Freya with his eyebrows raised. 

“Did they just give us a quest to save the world?” 

“It’s a geas,” Freya said. When she saw the look on his face she knew she would have to explain. She felt unreasonably irked. Dan should just know what she meant, they should just be one. Every moment without the Unity hurt a little more.

Dan could tell. He set his hand over hers and leaned over. 

“I miss you too,” he whispered in her ear and squeezed her hand.   For a moment that was enough.