I had to wait until we were all together again to move back over to Sarah and Goreth’s system. I wanted to keep all my memories as intact as possible. And proximity seemed to help. I could do something like straddle both psyches and pull all of myself over.

We did it while hugging. And as I settled into Sarah and Goreth’s frame, I felt the Murmuration tighten their hug.

Erik came in the door shortly afterward, with Beau trailing right behind him, and rushed over to join the hug.

I could sense Beau smiling that enchanting smile that Erik had implied about when referencing John Linnel. Beau did look more like Prince, superficially, from the pictures Sarah had pulled up to show me days ago. But when we’d looked up Linnel, Sarah had gasped and said, “I get it.”

Beau was also taller than Peter, which made for an amusing juxtaposition with Erik, who was the shortest of us all.

He wore neat black pants that had no careless wrinkle in them, a semi-shiny deep magenta shirt with steel buttons, brown leather shoes, and a thick navy blue coat with an angular cut and a flared bottom to it. A peacoat, I’ve been told. It had large buttons, also made of steel, that matched his earrings in color and shine. And his hair was very closely trimmed around the sides and back, but the top of it was long, broadly curly, and allowed to wave in the air as he moved about.

A very different style than what Erik wore, with his hoodies, skirts, and spectacular boots, but the two of them somehow coordinated anyway. The colors they wore were very close, and they had a similar amount of accessories.

It was good to finally get to meet him.

When we stepped apart from the hug, Sarah had us look over at Beau and she remarked, almost as casually as any quip from Kate, “You have a bit of Antonio Banderas in you, too, don’t you?”

Beau smirked and chuckled ruefully at himself and put the bridge of his nose in his fingers and said, “Erik. You’ve ruined your friends for me.”

Erik whirled on him and said, “You do that all on your own with your gorgeous self!”

Beau gave his boyfriend a look of askance, and gestured, saying, “At least, introduce us, you little goblin.”

“Right! Right!” Erik stepped aside and then turned to us. “Friends, this is Beau. He is, as you can see, everything I’ve told Goreth. I wasn’t lying. Also, I’ve filled him in on stuff, OK? I need him to be aware of who and what my friends are, so I had to do that. I’m sorry, I really normally wouldn’t, but he’s one of us.” Erik gestured circularly to indicate himself, us, and the Murmuration. Peter and Abigail were excluded, standing a bit back. Then, Erik turned to Beau and said, “Sweetheart? From the back, we have Peter and Abigail, who rent this apartment. They’re cool. They’re in on this.”

Beau nodded.

Erik then gestured and said, “And this is the Murmuration, whom I’ve told you about. They now host Rräoha. One of the Ktletaccete.” Erik looked at us, “Rräoha is a Monster, right?”

I nodded and said, “Gem can tell you what that means, when gem wants to.”

“OK,” Erik said, then gestured at us and said to Beau, “And this is Sarah and Goreth’s system, including Phage and Ashwin, the other Ktletaccete. Like I said. We go way back. Except Ashwin’s really new.”

I nodded and waved.

Beau flashed a cautious smile, then repeated our names in the order he’d been told. Then he said, “I’m glad to meet you all. May I, uh, sit down?”

“Oh, yes, please!” said Peter. “The sofa, a chair. Whichever is comfortable.”

Abigail nodded.

As Beau made his way to the sofa, Erik faced us with a very serious expression and said, solemnly and seriously, “Tell me what happened.”

So, we made ourselves comfortable in the living room, pulling chairs from the dining room to make sure everyone had a seat, and Sarah and I recounted what happened after we’d left Aunti Zero’s Coffee Hut that afternoon.

When we got to the part where Phage ordered me to seek out the Murmuration, Erik nearly jumped out of his seat and half pointed at me, but Beau put his hand on Erik’s knee and Erik settled down.

I did my best to recall what I’d done after that, and what it was like to experience it. But, of course, there were gaps.

Goreth was able to confirm what had happened in the car after I’d left.

Mike had, indeed, given up after fifteen minutes of stalemate or so.

He’d waited for a lull in traffic and exited through the driver’s side, making his way around the back of the car, so he could be seen by oncoming traffic, not bothering to hide that he was there.

And while he was doing that, they’d made their escape. Without phone or purse, they’d whirled, opened the door, and stumbled out of the car.

Mike had tried to lunge for them, but he’d been too far away to get to them before they’d made it over the sidewall.

He’d tried climbing over the wall to chase them, but he’d found the ground on the other side too much trouble. Somehow, Goreth’s feet had found every good and stable piece of ground between the wall and the woods, and they’d made good time. And Mike had given up, and flagged down a car for a ride.

Apparently, his cell coverage hadn’t been good enough to make a call from there, and the driver who picked him up hadn’t felt safe enough to jump the CRV.

Then Sarah held up our purse and said, “And we got this back.”

“What about your phone?” Abigail asked.

Sarah shook our head, and said, “Completely destroyed.”

Erik took a deep, deep breath in through his nose, and leaned forward.

I turned ourselves to look at him and pointed, “You had a thought earlier, didn’t you.”

He sort of grimace-grinned and said, “Yeah. Uh, sorry. I should be saying I’m glad you’re alive and that this is all amazing and shit and all of that, and I mean it, too. But my mind is racing on this one thing.”

“It’s OK,” I said.

“If,” he said, pausing briefly while looking up at the ceiling. Then he dropped his eyes to us, “If Phage couldn’t travel between your vessel and the Murmuration or even Peter without losing itself, and so it sent you…” he trailed off.

“That’s what it told me, yes,” I said.

He flashed another smile and said, “What does that say about where the Tunnel Apparatus is?”

That instantly shifted nearly everyone’s focus.

Beau was unaware of the significance, but being there to support his boyfriend and learn who we were, he remained passive.

Abigail looked startled and confused, and like she was trying to make connections that just weren’t there for her.

Peter bent over to remind her what it was about, quietly, while the rest of us just stared at Erik.

He raised an eyebrow expectantly as Peter wrapped up and Abigail went, “Oh, right!”

I could feel Phage stirring deep in our system.

“Phage?” I said. “I’m stepping aside so you can explain.”

It started to boil up, like a cluster of large bubbles released deep under water.

I felt it reach up and fill out into our limbs and head and take control of our face with its own expressions and impulse to talk.

“Sarah and Goreth called it a mountain,” Phage said. “I took their word for it.”

“How far away can it be from their old bedroom?” Erik asked, without changing his expression at all.

“No more than a hundred meters,” Phage replied.

—

In English, there are a few meanings for the word ‘end’.

There is the physical end of something, the tip, the edge, the place where that thing no longer continues in space.

Then there is the end of something’s temporal continuity, the moment when it ceases to exist, or ceases to be the same configuration of matter or energy that once gave it its utility and meaning.

And then there is the end to which something has been put to use, its purpose, the effect that its existence is hoped to enact.

And all of these endings can be changed.

We did choose to destroy the Tunnel Apparatus, the physical artifact that once contained the Terran end of the Tunnel.

But the Tunnel still exists.

We’ve also decided to change the purpose of the Tunnel. By taking control of it, we did so, after all. And in deciding to keep it, we’ve maintained that new purpose.

The people who created it, our ancestors or cousins, had abandoned it. Maybe they were hoping to make contact with the people of Earth some day, but they haven’t. We have not heard a word from them, not a single flipped qubit or stimulated neuron.

But we’ve kept the Sunspot’s end of the Tunnel tuned to it, and continued communication.

But instead of sending many more of us over to fill Sarah and Goreth’s psyche, we are sending books instead. Writing for me to translate into the languages of Earth, starting with English because it’s the one I have ready access to. To tell the history of the Sunspot, and what it was that brought us to you in the first place.

We’ll be publishing it under a pseudonym, the name of the mythical Great Alliance, the Inmara, for our safety.

We’re doing this primarily for the entertainment of our hosts. And maybe to help them make a little money.

We don’t expect anyone to believe these stories, nor even this book here.

We did, however, bring a couple others over. In part to help with the translation and writing of the books, and management of the business end of our life here.

Ni’a also came over, in the same way, it had turned out, Phage had duplicated itself, splitting like a traumagenic headmate might do in response to stress, but on purpose.

Ni’a is particularly skilled at managing biological systems, and can help Sarah and Goreth heal their chronic illnesses more effectively than anyone. Also, Ni’a did not like the idea of their parent existing somewhere where they did not.

It’s been a joy to see them again, and to trade stories.

Maybe, if we ever attend a science fiction convention someday, you might get to talk to them.

Or me.

Maybe. If you’re one of the ancient beings I’ve been reading about that already inhabit this planet, when you do visit us, you might be a little forgiving of our presence?

We’re trying to tread lightly.

We’d like to trade stories.

—

Somewhere in Thurston county, Washington State, there is a brown house receded in a grassy, hilly property of some size. It could have been a small farm once. It has been abandoned since 2014. Condemned but still untouched by bureaucracy or developers. In a sort of legal limbo.

Somebody who has the ability to manipulate chance and entropic decay has been watching over it. But that somebody is gone now, so maybe the house isn’t there any more.

There were signs warning people not to trespass.

It was hard for me to bear but we ignored those signs.

Phage grumbled about being the true owner of the property, currently. But that didn’t make much sense to any of us.

To get the whole group of friends there, we’d driven two cars, Peter’s and Beau’s, leaving early on a Saturday morning. And we’d discussed lodging possibilities for the night, or whether to just turn around and drive back to Portland when we were done.

It was only a few hours round trip. Depending on how long we took finding what we were looking for, it could easily just be a day trip.

We’d decided to risk it. No need to spend extra money on the trip.

“Our old house,” Goreth said, as we pulled into the drive.

Erik was jumping up and down with excitement, or to get his circulation flowing after the drive, as we got out.

Beau smiled down at him and waited for us to lead the way.

“It’s like a ten foot tall hill,” Goreth said. “Right in our back yard. A hillock? I think it’s actually a Mima mound! We used to play games with each other on it all the time. As a little dragon, it was my mountain.”

“What’s a Mima mound?” Peter asked.

Goreth pointed at a roll of land near the driveway. It looked like a gigantic gopher mound that had been compacted, smoothed, and covered in grass. “That! I think. They’re supposed to have been here since the ice age, or even before. All over the world, actually. Nobody knows what made ‘em.”

We tromped through tall grass that had grown up through the gravel of the drive, and came to an unlocked gate at the end of it, wide enough to admit a car. If it could drive that far into the driveway now.

Pushing the gate open required a lot of force, to crush and bend the overgrown foliage that had entwined itself into the structure and hinges. Peter happily took care of that before I or Rräoha could protest.

Sighing with the comfort of the good memories of their childhood, Goreth took us further onto the property, past an apple and a plum tree, past the old brown house, and around to the back.

Our system was also shivering from memories of nightmares here, and worse.

We were up to our thighs or hips in grasses the whole way.

The landscape of the property rolled with these small hills. They were all over. Evenly spaced, except for where they’d been flattened to make way for the house and its small garden. A few of them had trees growing out of the top of them, one per mound.

Goreth went to the northeast corner of their old house, putting a hand on a window on the way there, and then stood and looked around.

Pointing at the nearest mound, they said, “That’s the one!”

It was slightly bigger than the others.

I could feel a kind of gravity below it, pulling at me. A familiar gravity that wasn’t actually gravity. Like a psychological black hole.

“Woah,” Brock of the Murmuration said, holding out their hands, palms down, as they approached the mound. “There is something under there, isn’t there!”

A push, an urge, and a friendly growl and Phage said, “Me,” from our throat.

Erik looked at us with a stitched brow.

“Phage has always been able to duplicate itself,” I explained to him. “Just like any system member might be able to do. It usually doesn’t like to. But it has used this ability in the past to protect things that it would not otherwise be able to protect if it didn’t.”

Erik gestured with a limp index finger pointed down and at the mound, and asked, “So it’s under there?”

“We think so,” I replied.

“How far down?”

“Rräoha senses it,” Brock reported. “It’s down there a ways. Like, under under the mound.”

“Hm.”

Beau stepped up and asked, “So, your plan was to dig it up and destroy it? So it won’t be exploited?”

We all nodded.

“How would you do that?” he asked.

I pursed our lips and waited for Phage to speak up, but it didn’t offer any advice. So I then reached out with my being to examine the mound and what was beneath it.

A good twenty meters down, I found a capsule with a shell that was solid iron alloy, with no seams. It was about the size of the Honda CRV that Mike had used to abduct us. Within it was a canister of construction nanites, active with a tiny Network that very clearly housed that duplicate of Phage I knew was there. And, some ancient style macro electronics that could only be the Tunnel Apparatus.

As it was designed, it would have been possible for the nanites to leave the canister and exit the probe, to make their way up through the soil and do whatever anyone with command of them might want them to do.

From what I could sense, that hadn’t happened yet.

I looked around and could see nothing that could aid us in digging it out.

“I think we’re going to need an excavator,” I said. “Though, in time, we could command the construction nanites down there to dig their way out. That might take days to make a hole we could climb into.”

“Nanites?” Peter twitched.

Erik tightened his mouth and widened his eyes in confirmation.

“Like, gray goo nanites?” Peter asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Self replicating construction nanites that resemble graphene imbued clay.”

“Those can exist?” He seemed astounded. Like he absolutely believed me, but was surprised that he did.

“They do,” I said. “And they exist right down there.” I pointed directly at them. “Their center of mass is twenty-two meters and fifty-seven centimeters from where I am standing. More or less. Within a hundred meters of Goreth and Sarah’s old bedroom.”

Peter shuddered, “Our scientists say those could destroy the planet.”

I shook my head, “Only if someone commanded them to, and only after a very long time. Phage could stop that from happening. I believe I can, too.”

Peter did not look comforted.

Erik was grinning again.

I looked at Beau, and he shrugged.

I glanced at Abigail, but she was too busy watching the mound to notice, holding her arms as if she was cold.

The Murmuration nodded at me when I turned my gaze to them.

“Why do I feel like I’m being left in charge of this, Phage?” I asked out loud.

Not you, it replied internally. Sarah and Goreth.

Ah, of course, I thought, and stepped aside.

Goreth looked around again and shook out their shoulders, before saying, “So. Do we try to dig it out? Or what?”

“Can we destroy it without digging it up?” Beau asked.

Goreth gave a twitchy half shrug in response and turned their attention inward.

I could not give the self destruct command myself, Phage thought. It belongs to you. To the people of this planet and its representatives. So I had to wait until you were well enough informed to make the decision of what to do with it. Ashwin knows the command code.

Goreth nodded and then let Sarah speak, and she said, “It has a self destruct, apparently.”

“Like a quiet self destruct? Or one that goes ‘boom’?” Peter asked.

“I’m pretty sure it’s the quiet kind,” Sarah said, drawing on what Phage was feeding her. “The nanites eat the technology and then disintegrate themselves with heat. And I’m pretty sure that Ashwin has what it takes to speed up that process if we need them to.”

“Why not Phage?” Erik asked.

“It’s not allowed?” Sarah said questioningly, as if double checking. “Ashwin needs to issue the command code, as a Crew member of an Exodus Ship, Phage is saying. And, according to protocol, we need to give Ashwin permission to do that on behalf of Earth.”

“Yeah, let’s do that then!” Peter said.

“Would have been neat to see it,” Abigail said.

The Murmuration shook their head slowly.

Erik said, “Yeah, I’m done. This is good enough.” And Beau put a hand on his shoulder by way of supporting his vote.

The Murmuration turned to Erik and asked, “Done done? Because, if more Ktletaccete come over, you could host one or two, I think.”

Erik scowled and said, “No, done with this.” He gestured at the ground. Then he looked up at Beau and uttered, “But, uh. That other thing is a solid maybe. We’ll talk about it.”

Beau set his jaw and pushed his lips up in what I assumed was skeptical consideration.

“We’ll talk about it,” Erik confirmed. “But, let’s destroy this thing right now.”

“So, we’re not going to try to use these things to right the wrongs in the world?” Sarah asked. “We’re not going to take this power for ourselves?”

“No,” Brock said clearly and firmly.

“No?”

“Erik and I have been talking about this a lot, actually,” Brock admitted. “We’ve come up with all sorts of scenarios and plans and contingencies. We’re pretty sure we know what we’d do with them and how, to try to make Earth what we think is a better place. But the one thing we can’t figure out is how to keep other people from eventually figuring out what they are and how to make something like them. And then what then?”

Erik pointed at Brock and nodded solemnly, “That.”

“If humanity learns that these things are, in fact, absolutely possible, they’ll figure out how to make them, and figure out how to do evil with them, and we’re not equipped to stop that.”

“We’re just not,” Erik agreed.

“And the best way to keep them secret and secure until we are ready for that scenario is to destroy them,” Brock concluded.

“It’s what we’ve gotta do,” Erik said.

Sarah studied them both and nodded, then handed the front to Goreth who also nodded, and then said, “Do it, Ashwin.”

I do remember my command codes. As Crew, I’d started learning them. Self destruct is too easy, if you have the permissions to use it. But you also have to know it in the first place.

I waited for Phage to pull its other self from the Network of the old communications capsule, and then sent the command, in a language older than Inmararräo.

ʔuu ʔefojeʔa gega

“Eat yourselves.”

We watched it for a while, but nothing seemed to happen on the surface.

As I observed the destruction of the Tunnel Apparatus at the molecular claws of the nanites, I caught glimpses of how it worked. Its systems collapsed, releasing energies that I could perceive, and its states changed in informative ways.

I refuse to describe to you the details. That would contradict the very reason we destroyed it.

What I did learn was that Phage had lied through omission.

The Tunnel Apparatus had still been working. Phage hadn’t so much moved the Tunnel to Sarah and Goreth’s psyche as it had copied it, and then insisted on sending us Ktletaccete through the new address.

And the way it had managed to do this is also something I must keep a secret, for the security of us all.

Presumably it had done what it had done in order to keep unscrupulous Ktletaccete from taking control of the nanites in the probe and using them to leverage power on Earth.

I think it had still been very careless about the whole thing. But what has been done was done and will not be undone.

Suffice it to say, I might have more to write about in the future.

Eventually, after I confirmed for everyone that the destruction was complete, we walked away.

By that time, Phage was one being again. Merged with its slightly older self.

“How long has that thing been down there, anyway,” Erik asked.

“Two million, six hundred fifty-three thousand, nine hundred thirty-two years, approximately,” Phage replied.

“You counted?”

“There was a clock in the capsule.”

“Humans were a thing back then, right?”

“I believe so. A handful of species of humans, according to your scientists. I wasn’t here then.”

“So there might be an oral tradition about it crashing there?”

“Even I can’t rule that out.”

ʔarriwo