I was trying my hardest not to annoy Aesa too much. I knew she had no love for me...or seemingly for anybody other than her 'hubby-wubby' Al. And that was fine by me, I didn't need to be liked, so long as she was still helping us out.

But God, I could only imagine her level of annoyance, given my own, with the constant little ejaculations of 'Wondrous! Simply wondrous!' or the like that kept leaking out of Tobias.

He was possibly the most excited I'd ever seen anyone, ever. With his blue and gold ruffled outfit, waxed goatee and bald head, he looked like asian Shakespeare, time-travelled to the present day so he could gawk at every possible little thing.

The fact that these two were our current leadership on an operation to send us flying across dimensions did not fill me with confidence. I probably felt about as great as Rito looked. AEGIS seemed mostly intent on listening to whatever snippets of conversation were technical. Lia was just seemed exhausted, sleeping on the floor, restless and tossing, and though I hoped it wasn't her burns troubling her again, I knew better.

She'd changed slipskins, and had her rifle on her back, even as she slept. I wondered just how bad changing her clothes had been; I'd wanted to help, but AEGIS assured us that she had it handled, and with her help, I was confident that whatever wounds were under there, they'd been treated as best they possibly could be.

But still. Seeing her sleeping in pain was almost more than I could take. Maybe I only found Tobias so annoying because his unmitigated glee was in stark contrast to the seriousness of our actual troubles.

Or maybe he was legit annoying.

"My word! Is that a veyoch distiller?"

Aesa stared at him. "What the hell else would it be, old man?"

"I'd never dreamed of seeing one in person!" he squealed. "What fuel source do you use to prime the ignition, pray tell?"

"Uh. Kerosene. It's cheap."

"Splendid!"

As always after one of these exchanges, she looked at me, as though to tell me that it was my fault this shit was happening to her. Technically true, but I felt myself equally the victim here.

"Okay, so," I said, interrupting another unrelated outburst from the bald guy. "We've got a bit of direction from a note. We've got...Tobias, who's given us some loose direction within that direction. And we've got Aesa who can engineer things."

"You are damn right, she can!" Tobias laughed.

AEGIS pushed her glasses up. "You said earlier we need three things. An engineer to build us a 'phone', which we now have. We need someone on the other end, and a line to connect them. Not that I doubt you or anything, but I've been wondering...why?"

"Why what, my dear?" Tobias answered, still looking around the room while the rest of us sat.

"Why do we need so many complicated bits and pieces. I mean, if we're just dimension-hopping--"

"JUST dimension-hopping?" he scoffed.

She rolled her eyes. "--then Aesa does it all the time. Why does this time have to need all this...extra...stuff?"

Well that question prompted him to sit down, and I knew we were in trouble.

"Because, my dear, you're not looking to jump around at random. You're looking for a stable-linked probabilistic binding. Which, unlike the random-linked bindings that Aesa employs, requires some immense finesse to maneuver into a connection."

"Yeah, I have no idea what that means," I said.

"Think of it like this," Aesa cut in. "We started at Earth, which exists somewhere in probability-space. And other things like where I live are more-or-less likely to be proximal. Wrap your head around that so far, or do you need a crayon?"

"Yes, I understand that. All the weird places you go, they're close to Earth."

"Not close. Probable. Everything in dimensional travel is based on probabilities. So you see, if I go somewhere, it's very easy to wind up anywhere. But it's very unlikely to wind up at, anywhere specific. Say, a parallel Earth. In fact, I've never done it, and will never do it in my lifetime."

"Unless this venture pays out," Tobias grinned.

She stared at him blankly. "Yeah. No. Still impossible. For all the reasons you already explained."

"Okay, so for the laymen here," I cleared my throat. "Can you explain what you mean, and what those reasons are?"

AEGIS had an answer, so I knew I was just the dumb one here. "What I think Aesa is saying is, basically...imagine you're throwing a ball from your front yard, blindfolded, and you've...well, as you do...you've got a hell of an arm. It's got to land somewhere, right? And if you're like her, and just want to explore the neighborhood, you don't really care where it lands, you'll land somewhere and see something new."

She tented her fingers, and when nobody corrected her, continued. "But let's say you wanted to visit...Paris. It'd take an impossible throw to land that ball there."

"Impossible being the key word," Aesa confirmed.

"Yes. Without a device to help us out, at least. But even if we did make...I don't know, a super-accurate catapult or whatever, the fact remains that the shot is still incredibly precise. I'm to understand that the other parts we're lacking, they're to provide that direction that a machine by itself couldn't?"

"Couldn't have said it better myself," Tobias chuckled. "The line and the receiver, as I called them before; their role is to guide this ball of yours to the right place."

"And...what if we miss the shot?" I asked.

AEGIS didn't have an answer. And to my surprise, Tobias just turned to Aesa, who shrugged.

"You remember that HEV exosuit I was building for Al?" she asked. I shook my head. "Oh, right, it was the blonde chick who saw it. Well, the dimensions are a cruel and uncaring place, kid. You're likely to eat a solar blast or radiation spike or get stuck in some place where time doesn't work right if you just go bouncing around. That's what my powers protect me from, but they don't extend to anyone else. Hence the suit."

"And it works great," Al grinned. She rolled her eyes, but I thought I caught a hint of a smile.

"So basically, all the random shit you can stumble upon around here...it's the same kind of thing near our destination."

"Yep." She looked bored. "I mean, completely different stuff, the dimensions are nothing if not unpredictable. But yeah, same in the effect they tend to have on a human life."

"Okay," I agreed. "So...that explains why we need all this stuff. I guess my current question is...not to be rude but...why aren't you working on building this machine?"

She scoffed, and got up. I thought she was going to get something to show me, but she just came back with a box of frosted cereal, and began eating it by the handful. She got maybe three fists in, before Al appeared with a bowl, spoon, and milk, and anthropomorphised her somewhat.

"Um?" I asked.

"Oh, you were serious."

I sighed. "Yes. Please. We're kind of on a deadline. Emphasis on 'dead'."

"Well," she crunched through a mouthful of cereal. "As I said before, and as I'm sure I'll say again, on account of your lack of mental aptitude--" she swallowed. "For the layman: that means you're dumb. The problem is, it's impossible, so why the hell would I start trying. If you're just looking to get spaced, we've got plenty of airlocks."

"It's not impossible. All we need is those two other things, right?"

"Yeah. Sure." She crunched down on another mouthful. "Just like how you're a time machine and a winning lottery ticket away from winning last month's jackpot. Just two other little things."

"Okay, well maybe," AEGIS spoke up "you can tell us what these things are, and we'll get out of your hair and go find them, instead of sitting here?"

"Sounds good to me." She paused to slurp milk from the bowl loudly. "Of course, I don't really know, I just build the thing, so ask him."

We all turned as one towards Tobias. "Oh my. Yes. Hello."

"Please continue," I groaned.

"Right. Well, you need a semistable void medium. That's a type of...tunnel, if you will, which connects two unrelated places in probability-space. A wormhole, for example. If you happened to have a black hole handy."

"Yeah, I'm fresh out of those," I sighed. "And the other?"

"Something from your target dimension. Something from which we can...to put it simply...pull coordinates. In truth, we'd be examining the quantum-links of the tachyons--"

"Got it," I said. "And I'm beginning to see the problem. We don't actually know where we're supposed to go since we're just operating off this little puzzle, and if we don't know where we're going, we certainly don't have either a tunnel or a thing from there."

"And let's be clear," Aesa said, her mouth full. "The only way something would have gotten here, from there, is if someone else made that same throw back to your front yard, from Paris. Except they did it by pure chance, because you know they weren't aiming for your stinky front yard." As if that wasn't conclusive enough, she swallowed and then finished. "So yeah. It doesn't exist, it's impossible, and that's why I'm not building your stupid deathtrap machine."

"The note references an angle-gate. Is that a thing?" AEGIS asked.

"Nope. Just made-up jargon to me."

"Then...I think I know what that's referencing at least. And from the sound of it, we've got kind of an abundance of tunnels right now."

"Ah," Al said. "You're talking about all the people who've been dumped out here in the void recently."

AEGIS nodded. "Yeah. Justice has a power that lets him space someone apparently, and when he does, it leaves a tiny little triangle-thingy behind, that seems like an 'angle-gate' to me.

"Sure," Aesa said. "Except we know where most of them go, don't we? They lead to where the bodies were dumped, which is all around here. He's just dumping them randomly, so they wind up in proximal probability-space. Or, in the metaphor, chucking footballs blind, himself."

AEGIS smiled. "Maybe I can...if...if we can identify the missing people...and cross-reference with the bodies they've found...then we know the ones that are still unaccounted-for, those must have gone further into probability-space, right?"

"I...guess?" I agreed. "I mean...we'd have to hope there's exactly one person missing. And um...well...I think Justice has killed a few million people by now, and I kind of doubt there's census data that's up-to-date on that--"

"Oh dang," AEGIS muttered. "Maybe if we just read the headlines about the lawyers who had been picked off before now, though?"

"I guess it's worth looking into. I think you're onto something with the angle-gate." I scratched my head as I reread Soran's note.

Pursue ??? through angle-gate via alztraz-beta-compression and arrive at THE BEACON.

Why '???'? Why couldn't Soran just fucking tell us who the question marks were? Did he not know?

That wasn't the right question to ponder. Soran didn't know any of this shit, it was Mage's power doing the writing. The question marks were probably just as unknown to Soran as alztraz-beta compression was. So then, did the powers not know who, for some reason? They were failing, allegedly, had they missed this one piece of critical data? Or were the question marks literally part of the puzzle?

Fucking Soran. Even dead, he was still making things hard for us. I was glad he'd gotten spaced, at least.

I turned to blink at AEGIS, and she stared at me. "What?"

"Where's Soran?" I asked.

"Uh, he died. Remember?"

I shook my head. "I meant, was he one of the bodies that was recovered from spacing?"

"Why are you asking me? Ask her. Ask him."

"This guy--" I said, digging through pictures on my mobile until I found one of him sent by Cosette as mission briefing. "Do you recognize this guy?"

Aesa gave a cursory look and ignored me. Al took much longer, and then shook his head.

"He had a power. I heard it go off right at the end," I said, remembering. "It was...was what's-her-name's? I can never fucking remember her name. Trish's girl."

"Haley?" AEGIS asked.

"Yeah, her! She had this hyperspace-throw power, where she could shoot stuff sorta...cross-dimensionally. It made this loud crack noise when it went off. Right as Justice banished Soran into the angle-gate, I heard that noise."

"What'd he throw? He wasn't holding anything was he? Just a desperate move to try to hit you on his way out?"

I shook my head. "I don't think so. I don't think he had anything there...but himself. I think he must have thrown himself, in an effort to get back."

"Astounding!" Tobias exclaimed. "Then he is certainly deceased, in the most spectacular way possible!"

"How's that?" I asked.

"Because he did random, unprotected void travel, weren't you listening?" Aesa spat. "We've gone over this."

"No, he's thrown others before, and they all survived. Me, even. And AEGIS, Whitney, Saga, and Karu. From Las Vegas to San Francisco."

"Impossible," Tobias stroked his moustache. "The void exposure would have killed you. There's no way any of you could have survived. Maybe most of one of you, if you were very lucky, might have navigated around all possible hazards. But all of you?"

"He's right," Aesa nodded. "Even if your friend had, let's say, perfect luck. I'm assuming all this throwing happened pretty close together, time-wise?"

"Yeah, within minutes."

"Well," she grinned smugly. "As you learned last visit, these probabilities and their connections are always in flux. Having a clear shot can take minutes or hours, and stays open for seconds. There's no way your buddy did all that over the course of minutes."

"Well it happened," I argued. "I don't know how, but it did."

"Unless," Tobias said, suddenly struck by something. "Unless he posses the same gift as you, my child."

"I ain't your child, gramps." Coming from the girl who acted half my age, but called me 'kid'.

"Yes, yes. But you said your powers protect you from the elements of the void. Perhaps his do the same. Perhaps...while thrown...whatever is projected is put into some form of hyperspace sheath, sheltered from the ravages of the void."

"Wait, question," AEGIS said. "If -- ignoring the whole 'is-he-alive' thing, because frankly, I don't care if he is -- but if he did put himself in a...hyperspace...sheath or whatever...what would that do to the angle-gate he was put into?"

"Why, he'd transform it around himself, of course!" Tobias jumped to his feet. "Great heavens!"

"I missed something," I said. "This is exciting, why?"

"Because," AEGIS' eyes sparkled. "That gives us the possibility...the very remote, but very possible outcome that Soran landed in Paris."

"Like...in Paris?"

"Metaphorically," she giggled. "He has the powers to not need a machine or any of the other stuff we've talked about. He could launch himself across dimensions...and he must have! He must be the question marks in the note, and his is the angle-gate we're supposed to follow!"

"Well I'll be," Aesa said, looking absolutely unphased. "You really did it. You really found a hole in the world you can use to kill yourselves. Congrats. Oh, and you're still missing the third piece."

"Be that as it may," Al said, getting up again and walking over to where she began pouting. "I think that two out of three impossible tasks is very impressive. And we can start helping, can't we?"

"I don't wanna," she said. "I wanna stay with you. I don't have the parts anyway."

"I know where we can get whatever parts you need," I told her. "Rio's got a bunch of industrial machines she's taking apart, and Whitney's got circuitry and other components. I don't think she'll mind, if it's for this."

"Or if she can play with it afterwards," AEGIS grinned. "God, I bet she'd love a stable-linked probabilistic binding generator in her mobile."

"I don't wanna!" Aesa wailed, but she hardly struggled as Al stripped her on the spot, gently taking off the puffy jacket and hat she was wearing. "Al, I don't wanna. We have a date."

"And we'll have many more dates my love," he said, kissing the top of her head gently. "But today, we're helping our friends."

"Your friends," she muttered.

"Our friends. You're helping them, and I'm sure they'd love to return the favor anytime, right guys?"

I tried not to consider the fact that there were any number of ways we'd wind up dead before we next got an opportunity to travel the dimension, but agreed with enthusiasm anyway.

"You're all idiots," Aesa said, as she shivered.

It took surprisingly little time for her to turn. She shivered and complained for less than a minute before her face went blank, her eyes going dark and unfocused, as though she'd been drugged. She just sat there though, silent and unresponsive, no matter how excitedly Tobias crooned.

Al gave us all a small, sad smile. "If she's not working, that means we're missing parts she needs. She won't stir until we have access to them, and then she'll tell me what to retrieve. Let's go get those parts and get to work -- I'll have a gate ready in just a minute."

What followed was a very bizarre few minutes of popping into places we knew around the world and making off like a bandit with the strangest combinations of things. At each stop, Aesa directed Al, nearly wordlessly, while her hands moved seemingly on their own, possessed-like, as I'd seen Rio work before.

Must be a technopath thing. I didn't really know, and didn't really care. We were a step closer to our goal, and that was all that mattered, with Justice threatening, a mere half hour away.