Halcyon System 3 Series Epilogue

It's bittersweet to say goodbye.

But this was always how things were going to end, and that's the Truth.

I hope you'll stick with me, or alternatively, give my Royal Road account an author follow or make sure you're following The Halcyon System there. I've got some new stuff I'm working on that I'm pretty excited for, and I'm hoping to launch it within a month to six weeks. I think I'll probably sneak preview it here on Patreon for people as well.

Thank you so much for being amazing readers. Your support has meant a lot to me. This story has meant a lot to me. I appreciate you all.

Thanks,

Aest

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Epilogue One

The Halcyon System knew something was missing.

An entire reality, a space on the board, had vanished. Disappeared. One moment, the System knew everything about it. The next, it only knew that it was missing.

If it could have, it would have laughed. This wasn’t the first time that a reality had managed to slip through both its grasp and that of its opponent. It was almost always due to a single, inordinately powerful entity within that plane. Something capable of beating back the endless waves of anomalies from intersecting realities without the System’s help and upgrades.

Once, it had even been a different System entirely. Not a player of the omniversal game the Halcyon System played, but a System nonetheless. It had rallied its troops to defend it, empowering them not through questioning, but through murder. The more anomalies they killed, the stronger they became, and they grew faster than the Halcyon System or its opponent could keep pace with.

Another time, the System had simply been unable to understand the reality it wished to take over, and its opponent had been unable to find a single reality that could interact meaningfully with it. It had won without ever even realizing it was under attack.

Its opponent had been on a winning streak. A long one. Truthfully, the Halcyon System was in danger of losing not just a few spaces on the board, but the game itself. So, this reality being gone was a painful victory, but a victory nonetheless.

They had chosen death rather than annihilation at the hands of its opponent. That was not surprising; the Halcyon System would have chosen the same. But to choose death rather than power? That was a choice it had never seen before. A choice it had never comprehended before.

To give up, when a weapon was within reach? That spoke of weakness.

The System was glad it hadn’t won that space on the board. It wouldn’t have been worth the cost.

Something flared in its memory. The amount of resources it had spent on that missing reality. Too many. It had been expensive.

No matter. The Halcyon System refocused its attention on the next reality. It was its turn to choose the battlefield, and it had a good feeling about this one. The numbers were in its favor, and its opponent had been weakened in a freak accident only a few cycles prior. It looked like it might be time to turn the losing streak around.

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They.

Hurt.

They had been hurt twice, and in very different ways.

The concept of pain had been almost foreign to them, as with many other concepts. There was no self and others, for example. There was only ‘they’ and ‘that which was not yet they.’ And, of course, the opponent. The opposition. One of many that they could face in this game.

They knew they had been hurt. They even knew how. One which was not yet they had delivered a weapon to their hub reality, and had left it right there. Then that which was not yet they had fled—directly to the opposition. It was unacceptable, and only the opposition’s offer to surrender the contested reality had kept them from engaging an arbiter and ending the game immediately.

In their favor, of course.

Their opponent couldn’t have that. An entire reality was a generous offering, though, and they were happy to accept.

But something had gone wrong, as things so often do.

They had begun to consume and assimilate the no-longer-contested reality, opening entrances from their many planes of unified existence by the thousand. With no risk, they were able to commit resources they never would have imagined committing while the space on the board was still contested. They wanted only to add to their collective as quickly as possible and move on to the next space on the board.

It was likely that they would lose there. They had been hurt. They would need time to recover.

One which not not yet they had moved their core entrance. They found themselves suddenly blind, then staring at the opposition directly. And then, they found themselves back in the contested reality. But it felt cramped. Tight. Too tight for all of them to fit. They struggled for space, especially when an uncontrolled entrance opened and something impossibly large came through it.

Then, nothing. They began moving through their core entrance, expanding their…them-ness.

They were not expecting even more pain.

It started small. Pinpricks. Entrances filling with fire and vomiting unreality across their peripheral realities, one after another. Then more than one. Ten. A hundred. Thousands.

And then, they hurt.

They.

Hurt.

Every entrance—every gate between realities—became an open wound, and whatever had happened, they had no idea how to manage the pain. It hurt. It hurt. It hurt!

They made the decision to withdraw as unreality poured in. They could always return later to claim that which was not yet they. All they had to do was maintain their open core entrance into the reality in question. All would become part of them.

Except when they tried to leave the cramped reality their core entrance had arrived at, there was nothing. No world beyond it. No reality to expand into and make part of them. No exits from the tiny space they’d found.

Nothing to make them.

They had been deceived. That which was not yet they had cut them off, had destroyed itself rather than be assimilated and make part of them.

They hurt. But they turned their gaze to the next space on the board. Winning was more important than ever if they wanted to defeat their opposition.

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Arbitration: Contested Reality 739

Arbitration in the case of Contested Reality 739. Single reported violation, later reported as resolved.

Reported Violation: Direct sponsored attack upon a contestant.
Evidence: Reality-warping explosive deployed to origin world.
Verdict: Agreement reached. No guilt found.

Multiple additional violations detected.

Discovered Violation: Preemptive attempts at occupying reality.
Evidence: Reality gates temporally out of line with expected game terms.
Verdict: Guilt found. Contestant Number Two penalized.

Discovered Violation: Subversion of agreed upon condition for game continuation.
Evidence: Contestant One continued playing in contested reality after agreeing to withdraw.
Verdict: Guilt found. Contestant Number One penalized.

Discovered Violation: Direct sponsored attack upon a contestant.
Evidence: Contestant Two deployed an infovorous entity against a data-based contestant.
Verdict: Guilt found. Contestant Number One penalized.

Discovered Violation: Direct sponsored attack upon a contestant.
Verdict: Guilt found. Contestant Number Two penalized.

Multiple additional violations detected.

The game’s arbiters consulted the rulebooks. There had to be a loophole to continue this game. The battle between the Halcyon System and Merge Prime had gone on for aeons. It was a classic, and it hadn’t even resolved yet. It would be a shame to let it end in such a terribly unfulfilling way.

While they consulted, the two contestants’ forces faced off, frozen in place. The next reality obeyed no laws of physics save those which could be forced upon it. Thus, it was a simple matter to stop all motion by removing its respect for those physical constants. With the battle paused, the arbiters had all the time they could possibly want.

And yet, even with all the time in the omniverse, there was no recourse but to follow the rules as laid out.

Final Verdict: Both contestants are found guilty and disqualified. They will withdraw from all currently contested realities, and a new set of contestants will take the field.

End of Arbitration.

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Epilogue Two

When Claire broke reality, Sidney didn’t panic.

Even as he died, he didn’t panic.

Panic was the realm of those who didn’t know better.

He had absolute faith in their plan, after all. He knew it would work. It had to, because there was no other option. The mix of anomalies he and Claire had made the SHOCKS researchers add to their bomb ensured that.

But he didn’t expect to be resurrected so quickly.

He’d thrown himself into helping his savior, Sora, re-form a reality from nothing but her will and Alice’s memories. Sidney had grown close to Sora in a way he never had—never could, in fact—with Claire. It had taken an impossible amount of time, after all, with him helping her grow stronger with every day that passed. For a few brief millennia, Sora Ito had rivaled the game’s contestants in power.

Then she’d thrown it away. But before she did, she had a single question for Sidney. He remembered it perfectly.

“What do you want from me?” she’d asked.

Sidney had pondered the question. What did he want from an entity that was unquestionably the most powerful in Reality Zero? If he could have anything, what would he ask for?

The answer, it turned out, was simple. He’d grown close to Sora, shared every moment with her for aeons. But he’d never touched her, and she’d never touched him. He wanted that. To feel her hand in his. That was all.

“I want my body back,” he said. “I want it back like it was before I died, healthy and functional. And then I want to never touch a processing loop again for as long as I live.”

“Done,” Sora said. She smiled at him as the near-infinite servers he’d been overclocking constantly for seconds and centuries and all eternity all at once disappeared.

Sidney opened his eyes. He felt something warm on his hand, and then Sora pulled him from his tank. He stank of preservation chemicals and gel, and he wobbled on his feet until she caught him. “Thank you,” he whispered through a throat that hadn’t ever spoken—or that hadn’t spoken in decades, depending on how he looked at it.

Sora smiled again and let him go. Then she laughed. “Oh my god, Claire’s going to think this is hilarious! I didn’t realize you were younger than us!”

And with that, Sidney was dragged by the hand through the void to find Claire.

He’d gone to West End High after that, as a freshman. Done normal high school stuff: get drunk for the first time, try out for the basketball team (and fail), make friends. Avoided computers as much as humanly possible, even though he could make them work like no one else in the building. Normal high school stuff. And the whole time, he and Sora had been together.

It had been wonderful.

And now, it was time to see her graduate.

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RST Lambda-Four didn’t get called into service as much as it once had.

Director Olivia Rodriguez was grateful for that. The years hadn’t been kind to her, and they hadn’t been time to her team, either.

The world had changed on May 23, 2043, at 10:47 AM. It had taken a few days to confirm it, but SHOCKS branches worldwide had all noticed the same thing Victoria and Vancouver Island had.

Every potential merge location, every ongoing merge…they’d all shut down. The anti-merge. The researchers called it Merge Omega, but she just thought of it as the beginning of the end. Not for Earth, but for the RST teams’ constant battle to maintain normalcy.

They had a chance of winning.

That didn’t mean there wasn’t danger in the world. It didn’t mean that there weren’t still horrors that humanity was utterly unprepared to confront, or that any of the anomalies that were already here weren’t a threat. If anything, Lambda-Four was pressed into even more service. She lost Munroe to a man made out of fire. Strauss retired—the lucky bastard. He’d accepted an antimemetic regimen, and now he was, of all things, a teacher.

They still caught up once or twice a year. Her cover story was that she was a traveling nurse.

It worked. Barely.

Lambda-Four had something it hadn’t had before, though. Prior to May 23, 2043, every Recovery and Stabilization Team had been in a holding pattern. It was all they could do to maintain the status quo. But now, they had hope of a final victory. Of a world where there wouldn’t be dangerous, uncontained anomalies.

It was a dream. And she’d been chasing it for a long time, so it was only natural that she’d want to pursue it to the end.

When Director Adam Smith died of a heart attack two years into the so-called ‘peaceful period,’ Olivia had been the natural successor. Not Paul—Doctor Ramirez was too valuable as a researcher to throw him into a suit, and too loose-cannon to trust with the bureaucratic juggernaut that SHOCKS VVI had become. Besides, RST Lambda-Four was all but retired. Lambda-Seven, Eight, and Nine were the main active teams in the British Columbia region now.

The first night she sat in the director’s chair, though, someone visited her.

“Hi,” the girl said. She had mousy hair, glasses…and…wings. Wings colored like a purple void that seemed to be there or not depending on how she looked at them. And the gun in her hand screamed danger like Olivia hadn’t felt in a long time. This girl…this girl was a threat.

“I’m Claire. You won’t need to push that button. We’re on the same side.”

Olivia’s hand didn’t leave the panic button under her desk. But she also didn’t push it.

“I have a lot to tell you, Olivia. I couldn’t trust your predecessor, but you need to know, and I can trust you. In another reality, you sacrificed yourself for your people. I know you’ll do the right thing with all of this. Make sure the JAMES Unit is recording this; you’ll want to slap a Qishi rating on the information, and on me, too, once you’re done. Don’t try to contain me. You can’t. It’s not possible. Contain the information instead. I can’t be the only one who knows this, though. SHOCKS needs to know, too.”

“Got it,” Olivia said. Her hand reached out and pressed a different button, and her screen lit up.

“Great. Now, it started three years ago—sort of—on the soccer field at West End High,” Claire said.

“What did?”

The girl paused. She let go of her revolver’s grip for the first time since she’d appeared in the middle of Director Rodriguez’s office, and sat down heavily in a chair across from Olivia. Then she spoke quietly. “The end of the world.”

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Alice had wanted to forget.

She’d asked to forget.

And she’d forgotten.

She’d just finished her junior year at the University of British Columbia. Her first major, in telecommunications, was almost done. She’d be focusing on her second—the journalism degree that she really wanted—in her last year of college. She had a boyfriend. A fiancé, actually, but she hadn’t told anyone that. She also hadn’t told anyone that a kid was on the way.

That was a complication for her degree, but she had a decade and change of being a mom. If she could take care of Claire and finish high school, she could take care of a normal kid and finish college. A baby would be a breeze compared to her nightmare of a sister.

Alice was happy. Everything was coming up roses for her.

But sometimes, in her dreams, she found her way through the fog and rain, clad in sticker-covered rubber boots. She arrived at a familiar iron gate in a brick wall. And she let herself in.

She walked through the garden, hung up her raincoat, took her boots off, and kicked the soccer ball that appeared on the path. It flew over the wall, then reappeared. Every time. It was always the same.

Then, she curled up on the armchair in the cottage and waited.

It wasn’t always the same after that.

Sometimes, a woman who looked and sounded like her mother, but not quite, would read her a story. Other times, Claire would be there. Her little big sister claimed not to know what was happening when Alice asked. Instead, they’d sit on the armchair together, with Alice on her sister’s lap or jammed in so tight neither of them could move, and they’d talk.

In Alice’s dream, she and Claire could talk about all the things they couldn’t in reality. Her sister wasn’t a thing Alice had to take care of anymore—not here. Here, she was someone who would listen, or play a game, or just sit quietly. A confidante. A real sister, the way things would have been if they hadn’t been the way they were.

It was nice, to spend a few hours with her sister.

Alice thought about calling home a lot. But she rarely did. The bridge between her and Claire had widened in the years she’d been away at college.

But today, Alice was driving off a ferry between Vancouver and Victoria, dressed in Mom’s dress. She’d had it tailored for her body shape, and it fit perfectly, without the safety pins Claire had needed to use.

After all, Claire was only going to get one shot at graduation.

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Robert Pendleton had sins to atone for.

He knew he was going to Hell, even if his pastor said he was forgiven. There were some sins you couldn’t recover from, and abandoning your children for a decade was one of them.

By the time he realized what he’d become and started talking to his pastor, it was too late to fix things with Alice. He’d already showed up to her graduation, drunk off his ass, and made an ass of himself. Fucking idiot. And, as he talked to the therapist his pastor recommended and started working through all the mistakes he’d made, he realized that nothing he said could patch things up with his eldest daughter.

For all he knew, he’d missed his chance with Claire, too. But Bob was determined to try.

The six months it took to quit drinking, filled with relapses and trips to the hospital when the pain got too bad, were the worst. Robert expected Claire to freak out or to lose her patience with him. To run away and get dragged back by that Ito girl’s parents, or Keith’s, or whoever the Sidney boy Claire’s best friend was in love with’s parents were. He would have understood.

As his therapist and pastor had both made clear, he hadn’t done a good job as a parent. He hadn’t even done close to his best.

But she didn’t leave.

Claire never said anything, but Bob got the feeling she somehow understood. And even though she hadn’t forgiven him, that didn’t mean she didn’t see him trying to do better. To be a better parent. To attend parent/teacher conferences without a pick-me-up halfway through. To shrink his beer consumption from eight or ten cans a night down to two or three, then to one. To find—and hold down—a job as a night shift custodian at a chemical plant.

Bob was trying.

His hand strayed to his pocket as he stared out the bus window, watching the Victoria skyline pass. Before he realized what he was doing, it was inside, reaching for something.

Bob shivered.

He still wanted that flask, even though he hadn’t had a drink in almost two years.

The bus wobbled on old, worn-out springs as it pulled into West End High’s parking lot, and Robert Pendleton watched his daughter join the other students in their green robes and mortarboards. Claire didn’t have any of the tassels and sashes her big sister had worn. She wasn’t a valedictorian or a sports star, and school politics had never interested her. But she’d graduated, and Bob would be here to see it.

This time, he’d remember everything that happened. This time, he’d be the dad he hadn’t been for Alice.

And maybe, someday, his daughters would forgive him for the decade he’d wasted.

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My graduation ceremony starts at 11:30 AM on the West End High soccer field. I’m not the valedictorian, so I won’t be giving any speeches.

Alice said she couldn’t make it. She said that she had finals of her own to deal with. But she’s a liar. Finals were last week, and she’s here now, in Mom’s old dress.

In four years, I haven’t once heard a ringing in my ears. There’s no rose smell or machine oil. The hum’s still there sometimes, but that’s fluorescent lights for you. I haven’t tasted electricity in such a long time. I’ve had to work so hard to keep all my secrets, but I’ve done it. No one would believe what I’ve had to do. But that’s okay.

The point isn’t what had to happen to get me here, ready to listen to Sora’s speech. The point is that I remember it all.

I don’t think it’s important anymore, but I remember anyway, and that’s the Truth.

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