Archive of Our Own

“Effie? Zeb? Are you there? Are you–guys? Where are you guys?”

The radio in the kitchen had abruptly cut out, leaving Caspar with a sick, empty feeling in his stomach and the sound of static buzzing in his ears. 

He peered out through the kitchen’s front window into the dining room, to check and see if anything else abnormal was going on. 

Ava was scribbling peacefully at her booth, Gloria was having entirely too good a time just wiping down tables, and Leif was presumably still upstairs working on whatever quantum doohickey he’d mentioned in passing before disappearing an hour ago. Was it possible he’d done something to mess up the radio? Crossed some wires, jammed something, broken the connection? Caspar’s mind filled with an amalgous cloud of unpleasant scenarios; all terrifying outcomes and no concise causes. 

Ava happened to look up from her notes and lock eyes with Caspar through the window. The interminable scratching of her pencil came to a stop. She frowned. She set down her notebook. She scooted awkwardly out of her booth and–why was she coming over here? Why is she coming over here?

Caspar shuffled away from the window. He must’ve looked really panicked, or something. Great.

“Zebulon? Effie?” he checked again, to make sure they hadn’t come back. If Ava had gotten up from her booth in the middle of working and come in to check on him for no reason, she was going to be pissed. 

Still nothing. What brand of disruptive sci-fi anomaly was this? What fresh horror had arrived to greet them today? Was it Leif? What was he doing up there?

As if in answer to his question, Leif came thundering down the stairs with an armful of clanking metal parts. He cleared them just as Ava came through the door. 

“Caspar,” they said in unison. Leif’s voice was urgent and firm, Ava’s was hesitant and questioning. Together, they were . . . kind of creepy.

Leif dumped his load of gadgetry unceremoniously in the middle of the counter. 

Ava grimaced at the clatter. 

“Caspar, did you lose contact with Zeb and Effie?” Leif asked breathlessly. 

“Yeah . . .”

“Oh,” Ava said thoughtfully.

Leif turned to her. “Is that not why you came in here?”

“Well, I . . . I didn’t know. I . . . Caspar made a face!” 

Leif raised an eyebrow. “You came in here because . . . Caspar . . . made a face?”

Gloria, who had appeared in the kitchen after Ava to see what all the commotion was, said, “Caspar’s always making faces. He’s an expressive guy. I don’t see why we’re sounding the alarm.”

“Because I was working on a device that scans airwaves and calculates the distance they’ve traveled in space to triangulate their location of origin, and I think I did something, and I was worried we wouldn’t be able to hear Effie and Zebulon anymore, and I was right.”

“Oh,” said Gloria, sinking into a chair. “Well, that’s. Not . . . good.”

“It’s really not,” Caspar agreed.

All of a sudden, the radio crackled to life, and a voice came out of the static. 

“Ex–give it–Ex, I can handle it, I promise . . . well, no, my body doesn’t have a built-in PA system, but I think they can hear me anyway . . . well that’s sweet of you, but–wait, wait. Don’t. Move.”

The four of them stood there, staring. They’d all perked up like a tiny band of meerkats, sticking their heads out of their burrows to look at each other in curiosity. 

“Here, take it,” Shel’s voice returned in a whisper. “It’s them. I just know it.”

Sometimes Caspar wished he could shove his head back in a hole under the ground. But other times . . .

“Caspar?”

“Ex? Ex, is that you?”

“It’s me! Shel found the frequency! Shel, oh my god. You found them.”

“Ex.”

“Caspar.”

Caspar knew he was grinning like a maniac. He couldn’t help it. He hadn’t heard from his friend in a long time. At least, it sort of vaguely felt that way. Time didn’t really matter much to him anymore, and he suspected it didn’t matter to Ex either.

“Are the others with you?” Ex asked through the radio.

“Uh, yes. Yeah,” Caspar breathed. They were. By some miracle, they were all still here with him.

“We’re here!” Gloria chimed. 

“GLORIA!” cried Shel.

“I’m here too!” Ava shouted.

“AVA! EEEEEEEE–” Shel squealed excitedly.

“We need your help,” Ex interrupted them. “Something’s . . . happening.”

“Goddamnit, I hate when things happen,” Caspar grumbled. 

“What’s going on over there?” Leif asked, concerned.

“Um, I don’t really . . . Shel, do you want to tell them?”

There was a shuddering breath from the other side of the radio. “Sure. Okay. Um . . . well, it’s the root system. It’s sort of . . . falling apart?”

“The entire root system of your planet is falling apart?” Leif sounded horrified.

“Well, not literally,” Shel corrected. “More like . . . losing touch. Um . . . Gloria, remember how I said that when we first arrived here I could hear the plants speaking to me? Like, we could communicate?”

“Yeah,” Gloria nodded. “It was pretty awesome.”

“Weeeeeell . . . it’s getting harder and harder.”

“And I’m guessing that’s not normal?”

“Nope,” Shel sighed. “As these plants mature and reproduce, our connections should be growing stronger. We should be expanding and reinforcing our underground network. We should become more sensitive to each other’s needs. But we’re not. It’s like . . . everything’s all jumbled. These days, I can only understand a word or two, and they can’t seem to understand each other either.” 

“Well this is mysterious indeed,” came Effie’s voice through the radio.

“Effie!” Caspar yelled. “You’re back. Okay–have we lost Ex?”

There was a soft click.

“No, I’m still here.”

Ava scooted closer to the radio, squinting at it as though her stare could intimidate the object into revealing its secrets. “Shel,” she asked carefully, “how long has this been going on?”

“Um . . . I guess things started getting . . . weird . . . about a month ago.”

“A month?!” Caspar cried. “Ex, you can transport anywhere you want, any time, any place–why didn’t you come get us sooner? Why didn’t you come to us for help?”

“Well, I thought about it, but I didn’t want to leave Shel alone with the saplings, and I wasn’t sure how long I’d be away, and of course they said I could go, but–”

“Wait,” said Gloria. 

There was a noise through the radio that sounded suspiciously like Shel giggling. 

“Pause. Back it up. Let’s put a pin in this very important, possibly life-or-death-of-a-whole-civilization conversation and talk about that. When you say the saplings, do you mean . . .?”

“WE’RE PARENTS!” Shel squealed. “OF A WHOLE RACE!”

“Well, just parents of six, for now,” Ex said gently. “It’s a good start, though. Assuming we can figure out what’s confusing all the native flora so much.”

“Congratulations,” Gloria said proudly. The delight on her face was infectious. Goddamnit, why was everybody making Caspar smile today? 

“Thanks,” said Shel. “So, um . . . any ideas on how to fix all of our root systems and underground fungal networks and spore transfers and pretty much everything? Because it’s all going wrong and I think it’s going to be really horrible? If we don’t do something? Maybe?”

“Uh, okay. Shel, don’t panic. Um . . .” Gloria looked around wildly. 

“We can’t exactly steer this thing,” Caspar said slowly, sadly. “We . . . I don’t know how to get to you.”

“It’s okay. Me and Shel have been working on a plan,” Ex reassured him. 

“Oh, good,” Ava muttered. 

What’s her deal? Caspar asked Leif with his eyes. Leif just gave him a slight shrug in response.

“Leif, are we coming through the radio right now?” asked Ex.

“Yup,” he replied proudly. “I made a few adjustments, so now we can scan for new transmissions.”

“Okay.” Ex took a deep breath. “Ready, Shel?”

“Mhmm!”

“Leif, fire up the scanner as far as it’ll go. I’m going to warp you here.”

“I’m sorry, you’re going to what?” Caspar asked.

“The scanner doesn’t really have . . . levels,” Leif explained regretfully. “It’s already on, and we’re picking up your feed, so . . . this is about as good as it gets.”

“Is there anything you can do to make it stronger? I’m having trouble latching on to the diner’s physical form.”

“Uh . . . I can go up on the roof and wave some giant antennae around?”

“Yes, perfect, do that!” Ex said with a noise that sounded like her fingers snapping. 

“Oh-kay! Planet, um . . . wait, what did you decide to name it?”

Shel’s voice floated softly into the room. 

“Midnight,” they said. “We called it Midnight.”

Caspar and Leif looked at each other. 

Leif grabbed a few large metal rods from off the counter and made for the stairs. 

“Planet midnight . . . here we come.”

Ex’s voice crackled back in. “Effie, Zebulon . . . try to relax, and, um, go with the flow. This might feel a little weird to you if you’re used to being . . . one with the diner or whatever.” 

“We shall trust in the Lord’s plan,” Zebulon said agreeably. 

Leif had disappeared up the stairs, and a series of clanging noises were filtering down through the ceiling. 

“So, wait, what exactly are you doing?” Ava called through the radio. 

“Well,” said Ex, “I’m basically sending out a regular sonic transmission, but I’m expanding the shape of the waves to create a sort of physical tunnel and warp you here instead of warping myself over there.”

“. . . As a scientist, that sounds . . . highly implausible.” 

“I mean, it’s Ex,” Caspar said jovially. “She can do just about anything.”

“Right,” Ava scoffed. “I’m going back to my booth. You can call me if you need me. But since Ex can do anything, I doubt that’ll happen anytime soon.” 

She walked out, leaving Caspar confused and aimless, which, now that he thought about it, wasn’t much of a departure from his normal state of being.

“Caspar?” Effie whispered through the radio a few moments later.

“Yeah?”

“Is she gone?”

“Yes.”

“Well. You should probably go check on that.”

“I’ll stay here to keep them in contact with Leif,” Gloria said. “You go.”

“Why me?” Caspar whined. 

Gloria looked at him like this was a stupid question—it wasn’t a stupid question—and he departed with a wordless sigh. 

He wandered slowly over Ava’s booth, where she was already fully ensconced in her writing again. 

“Hey. So, um. What was that?”

“What was what?” she asked, not looking up from her notebook. 

“You kind of stormed out. Like you were mad at me.”

“I’m not mad at you,” she said. She made mad sound like a kindergarten word, like something a baby would say, and that made Caspar, well . . . for lack of a better word . . . mad.

“Then what’s the problem?” he asked impatiently. 

“The problem,” Ava said, shutting her notebook in exasperation, “is that I don’t know what Ex is doing right now.”

“What do you mean?”

Ava wouldn’t meet his eyes. “She has . . . capabilities . . . that are . . . beyond my understanding.”

“Okay, look, Ava.” Caspar ran a hand through his hair. “I know that’s not your favorite. Like, I get that. But her and Shel’s entire planet is in danger. Can we maybe just focus on that for the time being?”

“How do you expect me to focus on anything when I don’t understand what’s going on? We’re just jumping headfirst into something that we know nothing about.”

“Sometimes you’ve just gotta go with the flow! I mean, you have capabilities beyond my understanding, and I don’t let that stop me from blindly following your directions, do I?”

Ava finally looked at him. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll be cooperative, or whatever. But I’m staying here until we land.”

“Fine by me,” Caspar said. He went out to the parking lot, planning to watch Leif waving shit around on the roof and point and laugh at him. 

All of a sudden, with a jerk so sudden and intense he didn’t register it at first, the diner lurched into motion, spinning and tunneling through the fabric of space-time. 

His vision went fuzzy, everything was spinning—did he black out? He definitely blacked out, because when he came to, he was dangling by one hand from the gravelly edge of the parking lot. 

Leif was on the ground next to him now, clutching his arm and wincing—shit, he must’ve been flung off the roof—and a continuous ear-piercing shriek of radio static was somehow filling the echoless chasm of space around him. 

He dared to twist around and look behind him—Jesus, his neck hurt—and almost vomited directly into outer space when he saw the familiar planet—Midnight, apparently—approaching at a horrifying speed.

I guess it worked, he thought sleepily. 

Sleepy? I do feel sleepy. That isn’t good. Am I concussed? 

Rather more urgent was the fact that Leif had been dislodged by a sharp change in the diner’s trajectory and was now rolling toward him across the parking lot. Like, directly toward him. Like, directly toward the one hand he was using to hang onto the edge of the parking lot. Like, potentially dislodging his fragile grip on survival and knocking them both into the distant recesses of space. This was, like, really fucking bad. 

In his blurred peripheral vision, Caspar could see Ava and Gloria rushing out to the parking lot. Gloria was holding onto the doorframe, swinging around it as she tried to regain her footing. Ava ran out too quickly and fell to her knees as the diner jerked around. 

“Leif!” Gloria yelled, slipping and using the doorframe to pull herself back up. “Stop—rolling—”

Ava looked around frantically, standing up against the physically impossible space-wind that battered her from all sides. 

She skinned her knees. She’s bleeding.

They were hurtling downward, only a few hundred meters away now from the planet’s surface. 

 “Where’s—oh god. CASPAR!”

Ava started running. Clumsily, slipping and falling and rising again. Bobbing blurrily on the edge of Caspar’s vision. 

She just couldn’t quite get there before Leif did. 

He rolled straight onto Caspar’s fingers, swiftly crushing them, and because he was weak and cowardly and couldn’t hold on to anything that mattered,

Caspar let go.

 A loud blast, like a massive expulsion of jet fuel, sounded in his ears. 

Cold, metallic arms wrapped around his waist. 

His stomach lurched as his free-fall began to slow down. 

He coughed and gasped and blinked a few times.

“. . . Ex?”

“I gotcha,” she said, lowering him to the planet's  surface.

Her jet thrusters turned off, but the ringing in Caspar’s ears continued. She laid him down. He was surrounded by greenery, and peering up through the tall ferns, flat on his back, he could see the diner descending, now at a much more reasonable pace. 

Leif had taken his place dangling from the edge, but he had a solid two-hand grip on the concrete, and Ava had two fistfuls of his shirt. Gloria was scrabbling toward them, looking down in terror. 

When they all landed, Caspar tried to get up and move, but he really couldn’t bring himself to do it. 

That was okay. They all came to him. 

He had some pretty great friends. 

Somehow. 

For some fucking reason. 

“Caspar!”

He coughed. “Ava?”

She got to him first, but she didn’t do anything or say anything else. She sort of just stood there, vibrating, like she was scared to move or speak.

“Caspar?” Gloria asked, racing up behind her. “Can you stand? Can you move at all?”

“Uh, yeah. Hang on.”

Ex offered him a hand, supporting him as he shakily stood up. Ava stared at them, frozen helplessly. 

Leif trailed up behind them, clutching his arm. 

“Leif,” Caspar said, although it came out as more of a croak. “Are you okay? Is your arm broken?”

“Probably,” he said, shifting awkwardly. “It’ll be fine. I know how to take care of it, and it doesn’t hurt too badly.”

“How can a broken arm not hurt too badly?”

Leif shrugged, but it was a careful, contained motion. “I’ve been through worse,” he said.

“That doesn’t make me feel better.” Caspar rubbed his head. His eyes fell on Ava again, and he frowned. 

“Ava. You’re bleeding.”

“No I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You are.”

“You’re concussed.”

“Not necessarily.”

“He’s definitely concussed,” Ex confirmed with a quick biomedical scan.

“Well, fuck.”

“I know how to take care of that, too,” Leif said confidently. 

Caspar turned to Ex. “Thank you for saving me,” he said earnestly.

“Um, absolutely do not thank me for putting you in that ridiculously dangerous situation. I didn’t know it was going to be like that, I swear.”

“If you didn’t know,” Ava said, “you shouldn’t have done it. You put my friends in danger. You didn’t have any idea what was going to happen and you just went for it.”

Seems a little hypocritical, Caspar thought silently. 

Before Ex could reply, Shel came bounding over.

“Thank goodness you’re all safe,” they cried, flinging vines and branches out toward everyone. 

“Shel!” Gloria laughed as she was pulled in by a vine. “You’ve gotten so big!”

“There’s lots of sunshine here,” Shel said happily. 

Caspar stood there in a daze, taking part halfheartedly in the reunions and exclamations and exchanges that didn’t really make sense to him at the moment. 

All of a sudden, Ava yelled, “EVERYBODY SHUT UP.” She hadn’t moved an inch from where she initially stood. She sounded panicked, on the verge of tears. 

Everybody shut up. 

Caspar had assumed she had something important to say, like she’d made some sort of discovery or noticed something about the atmosphere on Midnight or finally figured out the secret of the entire multiverse. 

But she just stared at him. Her hands were out at her sides, palms spread, somewhere between a don’t move and a back down gesture. 

Her eyes roved all over, frantic and shuddering.

After about fifteen seconds of this, Caspar cleared his throat. “Um . . . what are you doing?” 

“Shhhh,” she hissed. 

She walked over slowly, dead leaves crunching under her feet, dissolving into the soil. 

She grabbed his shoulder at an awkward and unceremonious angle, leaned down, and put her head sideways against his chest.

He held his breath. 

“Breathe,” she commanded.

What the fuck is—oh.

She’s listening for a heartbeat. 

Oh, fuck. 

He breathed in and out. 

“There,” he said quietly. “Happy? Bossypants.”

Ava stood. She cleared her throat. “That’s acceptable,” she said. Then she turned and walked straight toward the treeline, promptly vanishing into the woods.

There were some confused looks, and there was some more conversation, and his brain still wasn’t quite latching onto what was happening around him, and next thing he knew, they were all back in the dining room, and Leif had produced an assortment of medical equipment from god knows where, and after dealing with his own arm, he was now tending to Caspar’s head while Ava stood in the corner, still staring at him. It was terrifying. 

Caspar’s head was bleeding a little, which he hadn’t realized until Leif started dabbing at it with something soft that had been soaked in some sort of liquid that stung, holy hell—

“ACH,” he winced.

Ava straightened up in the corner like someone had remotely activated her from standby. 

“What the FUCK ARE YOU DOING?” 

“I—I have to clean the wound,” Leif told her apologetically. 

“Not like a clueless amateur, you don’t,” she snapped. “Do it right.”

“I . . . am?”

“Obviously not,” Ava huffed. 

“Fine,” Leif said. “I’ll try and be gentler.”

Caspar took care not to make any more pained noises, or to make eye contact with either of them—easy with Ava, but considerably harder with Leif, who was staring directly into his face as he worked. 

Gloria made everyone tacos, and Shel and Ex came in for dinner even though they couldn’t eat it, and then they went to sleep outside with the saplings, and they all rested for a few hours. The saplings . . . Caspar had met them at some point, he felt sure, but everything was still so fuzzy . . . he’d been introduced, learned the names . . . wow, he couldn’t remember any of the names, that was just great . . . there were six of them, weren’t there?

He fell asleep behind the counter trying to figure it out. When he woke the next morning, Ava and Leif were already hard at work again, inspecting the planet’s geology and interrogating Shel and Ex. 

There was a pleasant smell wafting from the kitchen—maybe Gloria had put something in the oven to bake? 

Caspar rolled off his behind-the-counter mattress and ambled in the vague direction of the delicious smell—

He jumped and clutched at his chest as he turned the corner into the kitchen and saw Gloria standing there, hands on her hips, waiting for him. 

“Jesus Christ,” he yelled, clutching his chest. 

“What’s the deal with you and Ava?” Gloria asked; a loud, panicked rush of words, like she’d been holding them in for a very long time. 

“What deal? We don’t have a deal. There is absolutely no deal happening. I don’t make deals. You can go ahead and ask Leif what happens when you make deals, and he’ll definitely say, ‘that’s bad, don’t do it.’” 

Gloria stared at him.

“No deals,” he repeated, clearing his throat. 

Gloria sighed, dusting her hands off on her apron. “Look, Caspar, I’m not trying to presume anything. I’m just . . . confused.”

“About what?” Caspar asked lightly, putting a hand against the countertop and leaning against it in a way that he hoped looked casual.

Gloria groaned. “GaaaaaaaaahhhhhhIdon’twannasayit. It’s gonna sound weird.”

Caspar raised an eyebrow. “Oh no! Something weird? I’ve never heard anything weird before in my life. Certainly not from you.”

“I would like to . . . gently inquire . . . about, the, erm . . .  nature, of your . . . relationship.” Gloria coughed. “To her.”

“She’s not any more special or important to me than the rest of you, if that’s what you’re asking,” Caspar said gruffly. “You’re all . . . I love all of you. I’m sorry if I–”

“No, that’s not what I–” Gloria cut herself off with a stricken expression. She took a deep breath. “We’re all weird here. We’re weird individually, and we’re weird collectively, and we’re weird about each other. But you and Ava . . . you’ve achieved a whole new level of weird.”

Caspar looked at the ground and tried not to think very hard about what Gloria was actually saying. None of it made sense anyway. It didn’t matter.

“Or–maybe not a new level,” she amended, “but a new brand. Like, your own particular variety of weird that Ava should probably claim as her intellectual property before anyone else tries to steal it and she gets angry.”

“Hey!” Caspar said, narrowing his eyes, “How come it’s exclusively her intellectual property? I’ve had a role in this too, you know!”

“A role in what, exactly?” Gloria asked, leaning forward across the counter. 

“I DON’T KNOW!” Caspar shouted.

“Well maybe try and figure it out,” Gloria said, “because a little insight into that whole . . . situation . . . might be helpful.”

Caspar wrinkled his nose at the word situation. The fact that he and Ava were now classified as a situation in their time-traveling, dimension-spanning diner made him feel . . . he didn’t know. 

Weird. Gross. Like he’d messed up and he was doing it wrong, whatever it was. 

“I don’t like figuring things out, Gloria,” he said, more quietly. “I don’t want to figure it out. That would just . . . ruin it.” 

Gloria’s eyes softened with gentle curiosity. “Ruin it? Ruin it how?”

“I don’t know. Just . . . lots of things are really, really great . . . before you name them. Before you assign them rules. Before you start studying them and categorizing them and picking them apart.”

There was a pause.

“Yeah, I get that,” Gloria said. “But, just . . . I want you to keep something in mind, okay?”

Caspar sighed. “What is it?”

Gloria looked at him, hesitating. “I just want you to think about Ava. What is Ava’s worst fear?”

“. . . Experiencing a normal human emotion?” Caspar guessed. 

“No. Her worst fear is not understanding things.”

“Oh.” Caspar could sort of tell where she was going with this. 

“I get that you don’t want to start labeling and categorizing and analyzing and doing other science-y crap on your personal life, but . . . I mean, it’s Ava. She might like to have some idea of what’s going on. She might appreciate it if you could . . . provide her with some . . . concrete information.” 

She wasn’t wrong. Caspar hated it, but she wasn’t wrong. This wasn’t just about him. He didn’t have to get exactly what he wanted all the time. And unlike Ava, he knew how to compromise. 

“Fine,” he conceded. “You’re right.”

Gloria gave him a comforting smile and turned away. 

“Just–” he hesitated. 

Gloria stopped in her tracks. 

“What if this is different?” Caspar asked quietly.

She turned to face him. 

“What do you mean?”

“I mean . . . what if this is something she doesn’t want answers about? I mean, she’s never acted like . . . like she’s unhappy. Or like she wants things to change. Or like she’s confused, or like she’s . . .” he trailed off, unable to articulate his real point. “Maybe she doesn’t want answers,” he said again. “Maybe she’s okay with how things are.”

Gloria paused, thinking. “I mean, I don’t know anything for sure. You could be right. But what I do know is that’s usually how you feel. Not how she feels.”

“I guess.”

“I mean, it’s Ava.” She said it apologetically, like it was something that couldn’t be helped.

“Yeah,” Caspar agreed quietly. “It’s Ava.”

Gloria patted him on the shoulder as she exited the kitchen, sending a tiny cloud of corn flour into the air.                       

“Caspar?” a trepidatious voice called from the radio in the corner.

Zebulon.

In lieu of a response, Caspar sunk forward into the counter and put his head in his hands.

“Are you alright, dear?”  Effie asked.

“I forgot you guys were listening,” he grumbled. 

“We’re always listenin’,” Effie replied cheerfully. “And we have some advice we’d like to share, if you’ll hear it?”

“Effie, I really appreciate you,” Caspar said, face still buried in his hands, “but seeing as the two relevant parties here are me and Ava, I don’t think the answer is going to come from Jesus.” 

“Not from Jesus, this time,” said Effie. “Just from me and my husband, as your dear personal friends.”

“If you have something to say, I doubt I can stop you from saying it.”

“As reluctant as you may be to hear it,” Effie huffed, “We sense that there is indeed some tension here that must be addressed.”

“Really? Wow. That’s . . . thank you, Effie, for that enlightening revelation. I had absolutely no idea.”

“But,” Zebulon interceded, “as my wife was going to say before you so rudely interrupted her with your flippancy . . . the tension may not lie solely betwixt you and Ava.”

Caspar remained facedown on the counter. His arms weren’t a very effective pillow anymore. He was getting bruises on his shins. Wait, not his shins. His arm-shins. The bones in his forearms. The hard part above his elbow, whatever that was called. Ava, Leif . . . one of his science people would know.

“And who,” he muttered loudly into his hands, “do you think it–it lies betwixt? Who is it betwixting?”

“That, I cannot say. I think you must discover it for yourself.”

“Effie. I thought we agreed that whenever you and Zebulon know something–excuse me, when the Lord tells you something, you share it with us. Whom is this tension betwixt?”

“Patience, Caspar.”

“Wow. I’ve never heard those two words in the same sentence before,” Leif commented as he strode in through the swinging kitchen door. 

“Fuck you,” Caspar said.

Leif furrowed his brow. “Are you okay?”

Caspar swallowed. “Sorry,” he said, straightening up from his slump on the counter.

“No, it’s okay,” Leif said. “You’ve, uh . . . really been through it these past few hours.”

“We’ve all been through worse. Especially you.”

“It’s not a contest.”

“But if it were . . .” Caspar trailed off, sighing. “I complain too much.”

Leif shrugged. “I mean, I would argue that you don’t complain enough.”

“How’s that?”

“You’re just . . . not the best at sharing. I guess none of us are.”

“Well, compared to, say, you, I’ve never really had that much to share.”

“You’ve been alive longer than I have.”

“Yeah. Well.” Caspar didn’t really know what to say to that. It almost didn’t feel true. 

“Is it Ex and Ava?”

“What?”

“I’m just saying, having two really good friends who don’t like each other is a serious and valid problem. Boy, I have stories . . .”

“They don’t like each other?”

Leif laughed incredulously. “Um, no. No, Caspar, they very certainly do not like each other. It’s palpable. Like, the texture of the air gets itchy and uncomfortable when they’re in the same room.”

The texture of the air?

“This sounds kind of like a you-specific thing, Leif.”

“My point still stands. They are majorly not cool with each other.”

Ah. I suspect this has something to do with the tension the Mucklewaines were referring to. 

“And that’s my problem, why, exactly?”

“I mean, it doesn’t have to be,” said Leif. “You’re just sitting around and moping like it is. So I assumed it was.”

Unfortunately, that was really fair. 

“Okay,” Caspar sighed. “I’m going out to talk to them. Or, whichever one of them I find first.”

Gloria was back out in the kitchen, talking to Shel, who was giggling and saying something about lasers that Caspar didn’t have the bandwidth to really listen to as he walked by. They must have all come inside for a break. 

Except . . . 

Ava wasn’t in her booth. 

Ex was nowhere to be found. 

Leif was watching him go with a concerned expression, eyes boring into the back of his head. 

He was beginning to understand the concept of the air having an irritating texture. 

He soaked in the familiar jangle of the door as he walked out to the parking lot. He held it in his head and tried to let it drown out the unbearable internal screeches of terror. 

It didn’t work. Ex and Ava were both standing at the edge of the parking lot, facing away from him. The screeching got louder. It was more of a feeling than a noise. 

Ava was smoking a cigarette, staring wistfully off into the horizon. Ex was looking at the ground, arms crossed. 

Caspar was about to walk over and say something, really, he was, but then he heard what Ava was saying and stopped in his tracks. 

“. . . that you were there to save him. Whatever would we do without you?”

“. . . Sarcasm?”

“YES!” Ava shouted. 

“I don’t know what I did to make you hate me so much,” Ex said. “Last time we saw each other, you seemed . . . I thought we were okay.”

“Well, you saved our collective ass. And I don’t hate you, I just . . . you’re a little inconvenient."

“How am I inconvenient?” Ex cried, throwing her hands up with a loud mechanical whirring sound. “I’m an ultra-powerful interdimensional being with the ability and desire to protect you all from any harm that comes your way!”

“Yes,” Ava snapped. “That’s the inconvenient part.”

“I don’t understand,” Ex said sullenly. 

“Of course you don’t.”

“. . . Explain it to me?”

Caspar knew that, regardless of the subject at hand, Ava would never be able to resist such a request. In spite of himself, he listened closely for her answer. It was a while before she actually spoke.

“I used to have to protect him from you.”

She was standing far away, and it took Caspar a minute to register her words. When he did, images flashed through his mind:

Ava, shepherding him into the walk-in when she could see the fight getting to be too much. 

Psst. Caspar. Get in here if you’re gonna be such a crybaby. I’ll distract her—yes, I know, just—come on—

Ava, yelling at Ex to piss off and go jump in a river somewhere. 

Ava, arguing her heart out, sometimes to the point of what sounded like tears, to the point where Chad or whoever it was almost succeeded in making her feel like a worthless piece of shit for never having loved anyone the way they told her she was supposed to. 

Ava, telling him it’s alright, you can come out now—yes, Caspar, I promise—

It had become a pattern; a routine. Caspar, of all people, understood the value of routine. 

“You mean you used to get to protect him,” Ex said quietly, almost too soft for Caspar to hear. 

That was when he realized that he was, in fact, straining to hear their conversation. This could no longer be classified as casually overhearing something. He was intentionally eavesdropping. That wasn’t okay. He turned around and went back inside. 

“Back so soon?” Leif asked. 

“They’re busy talking,” said Caspar.

Leif hummed. “That’s unfortunate. Hey, can you help me with something?”

“Sure, what do you need?”

“I left my scanner up on the roof and I don’t want it to get damaged. This planet gets a lot of rainfall, and it’s pretty unpredictable. Would you mind getting it down for me while I ask Shel a couple more questions?”

“Uh, sure,” Caspar said, heading up to the roof. He didn’t have the energy to complain or argue. 

The problem, he realized upon reaching the roof, was that he didn’t know what the scanner looked like. There was a mess of assorted technical contraptions scattered around, and most of them were connected to each other somehow, and none of them looked like they could easily be isolated and carried downstairs . . . 

But Caspar wasn’t totally incompetent, okay? He could figure this out. He wasn’t going to go back down empty-handed. He stood there for a long time and surveyed the technological mess, determined to do something actually useful for once in his life. 

Suddenly, he heard footsteps and a murmuring voice behind him. 

“Scanner, scanner . . . where . . . ? 

Aw, snails.”

Caspar whirled around.

“Ava?”

“Goddamnit,” she said. “Leif sent me up here for his scanner.”

Caspar frowned. “He sent me up here for his scanner. What, did he not think I could handle—oh.”

Ava glared at him. 

Oh.

“This is ridiculous,” Caspar said quickly. “We’re grown adults. Why does he feel the need to force us to talk to each other?”

“It’s beyond me,” Ava said. “I’m going to go back down there and let him have it.” 

“Okay,” Caspar said, nodding supportively. 

Neither of them moved.

“Um. Thanks for taking care of me yesterday,” Caspar said, and immediately wanted to kick himself in the stomach and bash his own head in and scream and punch a wall. 

Ava chuckled bitterly. “I didn’t do shit.” She looked at the ground. 

I used to have to protect him. 

She looked so sad. 

“That’s not true,” Caspar protested. “I mean, did you see Leif waving all those gauze pads and shit around? He was totally incompetent. He probably would’ve re-concussed me if you weren’t there.”

Ava smiled.

Ha. 

“And after the crash, nobody else thought to check if I was actually still alive by concrete biological standards. A very basic and very important step in the process of rendering first aid. Clearly they’re all idiots who don’t have the first idea how to keep me safe.”

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better,” Ava complained, but she couldn’t seem to stop smiling. 

“I’m saying it because it’s true! Who else was going to verify that I had a heartbeat?”

Ava’s face fell. “That was stupid,” she muttered.

“Um, no, it was not stupid. You’re a theoretical physicist with multiple doctorates. You did it. Therefore, it’s not stupid. That’s, like, the transitive property or something, right?”

“Sure, Caspar.”

There was a long silence. Nobody did anything. They stood there and stared at each other some more. Caspar opened and closed his mouth a few times. 

“. . . Gloria thinks we’re weird,” he said finally. 

Ava raised her eyebrows. “That’s a . . . bold statement, coming from her.”

“Yeah,” Caspar laughed awkwardly. “. . .  Are we, though?”

“Are we weird?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes, Caspar. We are weird.”

Well.

Fuck.

“Does that . . . bother you?”

“No, Caspar. No, it does not.”

Oh. 

Good. 

“And if it bothers Gloria,” she added sweetly, “then she can suck my—”

“Or, alternatively, she can adjust her attitude,” Caspar cut in.

“Yes,” Ava sniffed. “That too.” 

Caspar hesitated. He actually really liked how this conversation had gone so far, and he wasn’t looking forward to ruining it. Unfortunately, his sole purpose in life was ruining things, so he decided to push forward. 

“Gloria did say a few things that were perhaps not totally off-base.”

Ava looked . . . scared? Disgusted? There was a very specific expression on her face that seemed to pretty accurately mirror how Caspar was feeling. Nauseous and gross and wrong and like he wanted out of this whole situation. 

“Like what?” she asked sharply.

“That you like to understand things,” Caspar said slowly. 

“Yeah? So?”

“So, it might really suck for you if we’re weird and you don’t get it. 

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Wow, I said that so wrong. Um . . .” Caspar struggled to find the words. 

“You know, I’m not sure what conversation we’re having, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to have it.”

“Well I certainly don’t want to have it, but Gloria seemed very sure that you would.”

“What are we even talking about?” Ava groaned, dragging her hands down her face. 

Caspar took a breath and steeled himself. “Okay. Basically, as I understand it, this is what happened. And I’m paraphrasing, because the real conversation was fucking stupid. 

“Gloria said, ‘you should define your relationship with Ava,’ and I said ‘no, actually, we’re fine and dandy just the way we are, thank you,’ and she said, ‘Ava’s probably not fine and dandy because she likes to know exactly what everything is all the time,’ and I said ‘that really sucks for her but I don’t want to do all that,’ and she said ‘this isn’t all about you, Caspar,’ and I said ‘yeah, okay, fine,’ and now apparently Leif’s in on it too, and he sent us to the roof, because I guess everyone and their mother thinks that we need to talk about our feelings.” 

Ava blinked at him. 

“Can we just . . . not?”

“Not . . . what?”

“HEY GUYS,” Gloria shouted from downstairs. “SORRY TO INTERRUPT, BUT THINGS ARE HAPPENING!”

Caspar raced gleefully down from the roof, not even bothering to glance at Ava. He silently thanked Gloria for saving his ass from whatever tragic hole he’d been about to dig himself into. 

He collapsed, relieved, into a booth in the dining room, ready and willing to face whatever astrophysical anomaly was waiting for him. 

Everyone was there–Gloria, Leif, Ex, Ava, now, too–except their sentient plant friend, who was nowhere to be found.

“Where’s Shel?” Caspar asked casually. He was a little concerned, sure, but that feeling was dampened by the intense, blissful relief still flooding his brain. He wasn’t sure why, but standing up there, having some sort of serious adult conversation with Ava, had felt like an abomination, like an insult to everything he stood for. It had made him feel sick in a very particular way; a nausea that was familiar to him, but had never been so overpowering before. 

What had he been about to say?

If he was honest, he probably would’ve said anything just to make the conversation easier, to end it faster. He just wanted out. He wanted out without disappointing Leif and Gloria, without disappointing Ava, without disappointing himself. Without hurting anyone or failing to meet anyone’s expectations or failing to meet his own expectations–although, were they really his own? Where did they come from?

He was buzzing with questions. They were drilling into his brain, rattling his skull. Was this what it felt like to be Ava?

No. He didn’t want to think about Ava anymore. That was how he’d made himself sick. 

Gloria had told him to figure it out, for Ava’s sake. So he’d tried. He’d tried to figure it out. He’d tried so hard to come to some definitive conclusion, to decide on something, and he was still trying, and the effort was making him ill. 

Looking back at that conversation on the roof, mere moments ago . . . what had he been doing that entire time? Thinking, thinking, trying to come up with a simple explanation, a word for how he felt that he could say out loud and immediately shut everything down. He just couldn’t come up with anything that felt true. Only weird, artificial concepts that his brain kept vomiting up with the force of a hundred of Leif’s particle cannons–this, here, choose something, choose whatever you want, you can make it true, you’ll feel so much better once you just decide, and then you can tell Gloria, you can tell everyone, and they’ll all understand, and you won’t have to answer any more questions or explain yourself to anyone ever again, and Ava will be happy, and she won’t be waiting for you to say stuff and do stuff that you don’t want to do.  

God, that relief had been so, so temporary. The conversation was over for the time being, but his train of thought was barreling downhill and couldn’t be stopped. His brain was still churning out ideas and explanations, commanding him to just choose. 

Where did all of this come from?

None of it had ever seemed like a big deal before today. He’d noted in passing that his bond with Ava was . . . interesting, but he’d never felt the need to analyze it further, to quantify it. Now, it had become a constant, visceral nagging. He couldn’t shut it off. Maybe it all came down to the fact that he was concussed. Of course his brain was working a little differently right now. Although, he would have expected it to be slower, not faster . . . 

Why can’t you do this one simple thing, Caspar? 

Why can’t you come up with something to tell her? 

Something to tell the others?

Oh, I can come up with things alright. I’ve got stories. They’re probably not true and they make me feel like I’m gonna throw up, but they’re really good stories. 

“Caspar?”

“Hmm?”

“We’re all going outside to see Shel. Are you . . . okay?”

“I’m great! I’m great.”

“You can count on him to ask a question and not listen to the answer,” Ava grumbled.

Okay. Pause. Analysis time.

Was she only referring to what happened just now, or was that a comment on something that happened in the past?

Did I ask her a question and not listen to the answer? Has she been trying to tell me something? Is there something I’m not getting? Is that why everyone’s hounding me about this?

As Caspar followed the others out of the diner and into the forests of Midnight, he sent out a desperate plea to the multiverse that his brain wouldn’t continue to go through these exercises each time a sentence came out of Ava’s mouth. 

“They’re out here,” said Ex. “I didn’t want to leave them, but I had to come back and get you guys, and they weren’t budging. They’re so sad. I . . . I don’t know what to do.” 

Okay, what? 

First of all, what’s going on with Shel? Clearly I missed a lot while I was busy overanalyzing my emotions and sorting all of my past interactions with Ava into categories. 

Second of all, Ex sounds like she really cares about Shel, right? Like, they’re super close. This could be a marker. Do you care about Ava more, or less than that? 

Whaaaat the fuuuuuuuck kind of question is that? 

Shut up, Caspar. 

 “Shel?” Gloria said tentatively. “How are you doing?”

Shel was in something akin to a kneeling position, looking dejectedly at . . . a tree? A fallen tree, ripped out of the ground, leaving behind an enormous muddy crater in the shape of its stump. They were surrounded by saplings, their leaves drooping toward them in concern. 

“It was my favorite tree,” Shel whispered. “Ex helped me take extra special care of it. We watered it and weeded around it and regulated its nutrients every day. It used to talk to me about all the different birds it had seen. Everything that had lived in its branches.”

“I’m sorry, Shel,” Gloria said. 

Ex walked over slowly and held out one mechanical hand. Shel reached out and twined one of their vines around it. 

“Can we do anything to help?” Leif asked. Shel shook their head dejectedly.  

“How about we all just sit here for a minute,” Gloria suggested. Shel nodded.

And so, they sat.

Caspar struggled to center himself in their collective period of mourning.

Calm. 

Quiet.

Please, just one second.

The second didn’t last nearly long enough. 

Before he knew it, they were all trudging back to the diner to make a plan. Six saplings, whose names he couldn’t really remember, hopped along behind them. 

Time was moving funnily, even more so than usual. His head hurt on the inside and the outside. 

He spent the whole walk staring at the back of Ava’s head and trying to feel a certain way about it besides nauseous. 

Gloria held the diner door open for all of them, and as he filed in behind Ava, he attempted to quiet his brain once and for all.

You’re crossing a threshold. 

Leave it outside.

Focus on helping Shel and Ex.

They gathered around a table, placing the radio in the center. The six saplings hopped around the open floor space, excited by their new surroundings. Ex sat at the very edge of the booth and watched them from afar, keeping one eye on their activities at all times and occasionally instructing them to settle down. 

Shel filled Effie and Zebulon in on what had happened, which was good, because Caspar needed a recap too. 

“When I went out to my favorite tree this morning,” Shel said, “it had been knocked down in the storm. I know that sounds pretty unremarkable, but the thing is . . . it’s one of the biggest, oldest trees on this entire planet–at least, the part of it we’ve explored so far. It doesn’t make any sense that my tree would have fallen down while all the smaller ones stayed intact. Besides, the storm last night wasn’t even that strong.”

It was news to Caspar that there had even been a storm last night.

Ava tapped her pencil absentmindedly against the edge of the table. “It certainly is strange . . . in the past, how have storms worked on this planet? Are there lightning strikes? Is that what happened to the tree, or was it a big gust of wind? It didn’t look like lightning . . .” As usual, Ava’s questions sounded more like her thinking out loud than her actually asking anyone anything. 

“I don’t know,” Shel said miserably. “I mean, yes, the storms have lightning, but it’s never caused problems like this before, and the wind hasn’t either. We’ve seen much worse weather, and between the two of us, we’re usually able to keep the plants very safe.”

Ava’s restless pencil-tapping slowed to a stop. “Safe how?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at Shel.

“Um, I mean, lots of ways,” Shel replied. “Like, sometimes Ex and I build things so they can have cover, and we set up guards so that animals can’t go in and eat them, and we give them extra nutrients to help them grow faster. Mostly, we try and keep as many things alive for as long as possible. We’re trying to get it to look like my old planet, all covered in greenery, so that it’ll be an ideal environment for . . . you know . . . recreating my entire race.”

“Interesting . . .” Ava said. She began writing something in her notebook. Caspar peered over her shoulder, but her notes were completely unintelligible to him. He saw something about the Hardly-Weiner Equilibrium (was that what it said? He had no clue) and decided to give up entirely. 

“Pardon me,” said Effie, “but might my husband and I offer a suggestion?”

“Not now, Mucklewaines,” Ava murmured. “I’m onto something . . .”

“We feel that what we have to say will be relevant to your theoretical musings,” Effie insisted.

“Fine. I’m listening.” Ava didn’t stop writing, but the speed of her pencil slowed from feverish scrabbling to a casual scrawl, a sure sign that she was preparing to multitask. 

Zebulon cleared his throat. “When Shel first told us about the confusion of languages here on Midnight, I was reminded of a story from the Bible.”

Ava stopped writing and faceplanted into her notebook.

“The Tower of Babel,” Effie pressed on, ignoring her. “I, too, began to wonder about its applications to our present predicament. And the more we learn about what takes place here on the daily, the more I agree with Zebulon’s idea that Shel and Ex are behaving very much like the people in the story.”

“That is not to say,” Zebulon interceded, “That their behavior has been in any way ill-intentioned or immoral.”

“No, not at all.”

“We simply think that there are lessons to be learned from the Tower of Babel, lessons that you two, as shepherds of a new era for this planet, may find useful.”

Caspar wasn’t loving the trajectory of this meeting. It didn’t feel productive. It felt more like he was about to hear a sermon. He didn’t want to hear a sermon. But if everyone else around him was somehow maintaining a positive, respectful attitude (except for Ava, she didn’t count), then so could he. 

“What’s the story?” Shel asked eagerly. “Is it another one about the Garden of Eden? Are there plants?”

“Not . . . as such,” Zebulon said, “but there are manmade structures which my wife and I are envisioning as a metaphor for plants.”

“Go ahead and tell us, then,” Gloria said, looking between Ex and Shel with concern. 

“Well, alright,” said Effie. “It began when the peoples of the Earth all gathered in one place and decided to construct a great city with an enormous tower, a tower that they hoped would reach the heavens. They poured everything into this tower; kept building it higher and higher, in order to make a name for themselves. In order to reach a higher plane. In order to reach God.”

“What does this have to do with us?” Ava groaned.

Okay. So Ava just said a sentence. How does that make us feel? Did we have any particular response to that? Do we have any dramatic declarations that we’d like to make? No? 

CASPAR. GOD.

“God declared that the peoples’ language would become confused, and that they would be dispersed across the Earth, such that they would be humbled, and unburden themselves of the lofty and grandiose delusion that they could reach the Lord’s heavenly plane,” Zebulon continued. “The people were divided, suddenly speaking in a hundred different tongues. They were unable to communicate, unable to build the tower any further, unable to stay in the same place, working toward the same all-consuming goal.”

“Okay,” Ava said, clearly impressed. She set down her pencil and leaned back against the leather covering of the bench. “For once, this actually seems to be a very useful analogy. I was going to explain it in terms of planetary-scale population ecology, but that wouldn’t have quite captured the language problem.”

“Well, thank you, dear,” Effie said. “Although for once seems a little inaccurate, given all the many things we’ve been right about over the years . . .”

“Yeah, I guess,” Ava responded dully.

Okay, WHAT the FUCK is happening? 

Why is she being agreeable?

Did she actually compliment the Mucklewaines?

Is she fucked up?

Did I fuck her up?

More than ever, Caspar wished he hadn’t said anything. Why had he listened to Gloria? Sure, Gloria had an excellent track record of understanding social situations and helping people accordingly. That didn’t mean she knew what she was doing in this instance. 

She’d been so sure that talking would help. But really, the fact that he had even brought it up to Ava, the fact that they had sort of almost talked about it, the fact that he was even still thinking about it, that it even existed as some sort of issue, that there was in it to speak of . . . felt horrible. 

It was like he’d made up some sort of fake problem, just pulled it out of thin air, and slapped a sticky note on it that said THIS IS A PROBLEM, just to make sure that everyone would notice and go, aw, gee, I’d better help Caspar with his PROBLEM, just to make sure that it would become a big deal and get in everyone’s way, especially Ava’s, because god forbid he go two minutes without her attention, so let’s make it a thing now, that seems like a great idea, HEY GUYS, I HAVE A PROBLEM, LOOK AT MY PROBLEM, ESPECIALLY YOU, AVA, SINCE YOU LOVE SOLVING PROBLEMS SO MUCH.

Wait. No. This wasn’t his fault. This had all come from Gloria, not him.

But it also came from Leif. And Effie and Zebulon. And . . . all the things they’ve said over the years . . . I mean, if they’re all saying it . . . they’ve always acted like . . . 

It is. It is my fault. It did come from me. If I wasn’t acting a certain way, why would they all say I was acting that way?

Caspar decided to give up on figuring it out. He didn’t owe anyone an explanation for anything. He was doing just fine. 

The only problem was . . . that was about the fifteenth time he had decided to give up. It still didn’t work. His brain wouldn’t let it go. He tried to make it stop, and he just couldn’t. It was an absolute fucking nightmare. 

Is everything irreversibly weird now?

Has it always been weird?

God. I think my life is ruined.

When Caspar tuned back in, Ava was arguing with Ex.

Oh, shoot. Abort. Go back. Return to the doom spiral. Reality is worse.

“How?” Ex was saying desperately. “I have all this power . . . how do I know when and where to use it? How much is doing too much?”

“I don’t know,” Ava said angrily, “It’ll probably take some trial and error. But whatever you’re doing right now? Definitely too much. You need to take a step back and let nature . . . run its course, or whatever. You’re wreaking havoc on the ecosystem.”

“By being too helpful?”

“Yes!”

“This is ridiculous.”

“What’s ridiculous is the idea that you should be responsible for regulating the ecological and environmental health of an entire planetary body.”

“Yeah, I agree,” Ex cried. “I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. I can do pretty much anything, and now you’re telling me that’s bad and I could accidentally destroy everything by trying to help too much. You’re telling me that even if I do something I know is good, something that brings life and light to this planet, that it can actually have horrible consequences. How am I supposed to decide what to do?”

She was as emotional as Caspar had ever seen her. He wished he knew how to help. He shot her a worried glance, and she bravely swallowed her tears or whatever it was that formed in the eyes of androids, trying to alleviate his concern. 

“Ex,” Effie said gently. “Ava is right. It will take some trial and error. And although things seem to evolve quickly on this planet, as she rightly pointed out, these trials will still require a great deal of patience. There will be long periods of uncertainty, during which your actions will have no discernible outcomes, and the choices you make will not be identifiable as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ until years after you have made them, if they are ever to be identified at all. But you will learn, in time, when and where your gifts are best used. You and Shel will learn to exist alongside the other life on this planet, rather than seeking to govern it. You shall discover what separates aid from control. You shall create a thing of great beauty, without leaving the scars of great deeds. You shall nurture its growth without pulling it up by hand from the Earth. You shall use the unnatural to mimic the natural, and not to supersede it. You shall find your place in this new world and gently settle there, for there is no need to carve out a crevice of safety when the whole of nature embraces you with open arms. We have complete faith in you and utter admiration for your cause.”

Effie’s speech was lovely and all, and it did seem to make Ex feel better. However, he was still hung up on the “Ava is right” part. This had to be some kind of record for Ava and the Mucklewaines agreeing with each other. 

“I just . . .” Ex sighed. “I chose to stay here with Shel, because I wanted my powers to mean something. I wanted it to mean something that I am the way I am. And I don’t regret it, I . . .” she risked a sideways glance at Shel, who peered shyly back through their leaves. “I love it here. I really do. But if I can’t use my powers to the fullest . . . if I’m hurting more than I’m helping . . . maybe I was wrong. Maybe this isn’t what I was created for.”

Alright. This wasn’t Caspar’s area of expertise, and he didn’t want to make waves or anything, but he was not letting Ex go down that particular bullshit train of thought. Not today.

“Ex,” he said determinedly, “You were created by my ex-wife to hunt me down. That doesn’t make it your purpose. You get to choose. You found a purpose here. That’s all that matters. You went looking, and you found it. Nobody can take that away from you.”

“But . . . if I chose it because I was suited for it . . . and it turns out I’m not suited for it at all . . .”

Caspar cut her off. “First of all, did you really?”

“Did I really . . .?”

“Choose it because you were ‘suited for it.’” Caspar shot a glance over at Shel, and then back at Ex. She understood.

She smiled. “Maybe not exactly,” she admitted.

“Right,” Caspar said. “And second of all, if it really is so important to you that you’re the right person for this job . . . I’m here to tell you that you definitely are. You have the power to do what needs to be done, but the integrity to use it responsibly. You’re willing to step back and actually think about what you’re doing. You wield your power from a place of compassion for all living things. You have enough power and enough sense to be an effective leader. It’s a rare combination. Trust me.” 

“Really?”

“I can confirm,” Ava said, nodding. “Being powerful and gentle is a pretty unique skill set. One that you’re going to need while you’re learning how much external regulation is healthy for a developing planet.” She shot a glance at Caspar.

She’s helping. 

She’s being nice to Ex now.

God, I’ve really fucked up, haven’t I?

What did I do to her?

“Thanks, guys,” Ex said quietly. “You really think I can do this?”

“We know you can,” Zebulon said enthusiastically.

“I believe in you,” Shel whispered, nuzzling against her. “We can figure it out together.”

Ex smiled, breathing a sigh of relief and sinking farther into the bench.

Caspar wasn’t sure what all he’d missed–something about the planet Midnight being a vegetation-covered version of the Tower of Babel, something about Shel and Ex needing to stop building their particular selected areas of it to the heavens . . . and now Ava was showing them some graphs and trying to impart her knowledge of native plant conservation and agroecology.

Two saplings hopped up onto Caspar’s lap, competing for his attention. One of them was covered in . . . parmesan cheese?

“You got into the parmesan, you rascal,” he scolded. “How did you even find it? Where is it this time?”

The sapling shook its leaves and made a noise that sounded a little like a sneeze. 

“I’m calling this one Sneezy,” Caspar declared, thereby getting himself off the hook for actually learning the sapling’s name.

“You know what?” said Leif from the other side of the booth. A different sapling was sitting on his shoulder, brushing little leaflets against his ear. “I’m gonna call this one Pockets.”

Shel and Ex looked at each other, confused, and then burst out laughing. Caspar grinned at Leif. For a moment, everything was completely and totally fine. 

Then Gloria said, “You know, I’m really glad we were able to help and everything . . . and that Ava and the Mucklewaines figured out that the language thing was just the planet’s natural evolutionary response . . . and that too much external interference can disrupt an ecosystem until it needs to fight back so no one element becomes too powerful . . .”

“But?” Ava asked, urging her to get to the point. She seemed annoyed at Gloria for slowly and deliberately rehashing everything they already knew, but given that Caspar had missed so much of the previous conversation, he was still finding this incredibly helpful. Plus, this was Gloria’s way of working around to a new statement, and she always got there eventually. 

“But,” Gloria said. “It seems like a really tough solution. I mean . . . I don’t know about you guys, but I would find it really hard not to interfere with something if I knew that I could make it better. It’s going to take a lot of . . . well . . . bravery. And the wisdom to decide when to intervene. I totally believe in you guys, I think you’re the perfect people for the job. But for me . . . I don’t think I have that.”

“Trust me,” Caspar snapped, “You don’t.”

Everyone went quiet. Gloria looked at him, and the hurt and confusion in her eyes made him want to walk out of the diner and stand there until all the years caught up to him and he decayed into a shriveled corpse and broke down into pieces and those pieces withered into ash and those ashes were scattered to the winds. 

“Caspar . . .” Ava said. “It’s not her fault.”

She knows why I’m freaking out.

“No,” he said. “Of course not. I’m . . . gonna go.”

He scooted out of the booth. The saplings toppled off of his lap and landed gently on the leather beside him. He walked back through the kitchen, down the back hall, and into the deep freeze. Distantly, he heard voices calling his name, followed by Gloria saying “Let him go, guys,” and then he was hit with a blast of icy cold, and the metal door swung closed behind him.

He closed his eyes. Icy currents swirled around him. Maybe if he just laid down for a minute, and let the snow drift over him . . . 

He knew it was stupid as he was doing it, but he also knew that no one was around to judge him, so he lowered himself to the ground and stretched out in a pile of snow. He shivered and moved around, trying to somehow get comfortable. Eventually he discovered that the less he moved, the better he felt. The longer he lay still, the less cold he was. 

The sky was gray, but the gray was too bright. It hurt his head. He closed his eyes again, and then he regretted that decision, because he kept imagining things that Gloria and Leif probably thought he’d been imagining this whole time, kept imagining that whatever they thought about him and Ava was true, kept imagining what that would look like, and he hated it. He hated it. 

Snow landed lightly on top of him. He could feel each individual flake as it met his face, the stinging cold and the prickle of fluff against his skin. It was soft. Quiet. He hadn’t felt anything quite so gentle in a very long time. 

Maybe he never had to go back out there again. Maybe if he just laid here, waited for the snowfall to pick up . . . maybe if they came looking for him, they would walk past without even noticing. 

He couldn’t even look at Ava’s face without questioning everything he’d ever known. He felt like there was some standard he was failing to meet. A mark he’d missed. Some very important objective he had lost sight of. Something he’d never find, but now he would always be looking for it, because it was brought to his attention. 

His brain raced and raced, trying to put things together, trying to formulate an explanation that matched whatever everyone was probably thinking. He felt like everyone knew something he didn’t, and they were all just waiting patiently for him to catch up. 

He was never going to catch up. 

Something was nudging his cheek. 

“Ow,” he mumbled. 

The thing poked him harder, turning his head sideways against the snow. It was a boot.

“Caspar, if you die out here, I swear to god–”

Ava?

“Caspar, open your eyes and get the fuck up.”

“No,” he mumbled. “Can’t.”

“Yes, you can,” Ava said, trying to haul him up. “Come on. You’re going to get hypothermia and die. You’re talking like you’re halfway there already. Although at this point, who knows if that’s the concussion, or all the exposure to the weird atmosphere on this planet, or just your charming personality.” 

Caspar didn’t appreciate the sarcasm, but he stood up.

“Open your eyes,” Ava said.

“Can’t,” he mumbled again. “Can’t look at you. Not good.”

“Why can’t you look at me?” she demanded. 

“My brain is not . . . working right. Gloria broke it.”

“She broke your brain?”

“It’s all . . . messed up . . . now.”

“Okay, you know what, you don’t have to open your eyes, but you do have to start walking. Come on. We’re getting out of here.”

“No . . .” Caspar slurred in protest. “You can’t save me. You keep doing that. They think it’s weird.” He tried to sit back down in the snow, but Ava caught him.

“Well fuck all of them,” Ava grunted as she hoisted him back to a standing position. “We’re going. Now.”

“No . . .” Caspar argued, but he walked forward.

Walked was maybe a bit of a strong word. He couldn’t exactly feel his legs, and his eyes were closed, and he was leaning heavily on Ava for support–

“No. Bad,” he said urgently, trying to pull himself away. For one glorious moment, he was standing on his own two feet. Then he collapsed back into the snow, and Ava had to haul him up again. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you,” Ava yelled. 

“I don’t know,” Caspar sobbed. 

Oh, shit. I’m crying. Well that’s embarrassing. 

The tears were warm when they fell, but then they froze cold against his face. He wished they would go away.

“Caspar?”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m messed up.”

“No, you’re not,” Ava said fiercely. “Keep going. Come on. We’re almost there.”

Caspar didn’t want to be almost there. He didn’t want to face the others. 

He wasn’t really ‘almost there’, anyway. He wasn’t even close. He was never going to catch up. Never, never. 

“Ava, I’m sorry,” he said. His head felt so fuzzy, but he knew that this was important. He had to say it before his head got even fuzzier and it never worked again. 

“Nope,” she said. “Not the time. Keep it moving.”

“I’m going to fail you,” said Caspar.

“Only if you collapse before we reach the door,” Ava grumbled. “We’re almost there. Move your butt.”

Ava shoved open the door to the deep freeze, wrapped an arm around him, and dragged him out into the light. 

She guided him to a booth in the kitchen. 

Someone wrapped a blanket around his shoulders, and someone else brought him a hot cup of coffee. He couldn’t see who they were. His eyes were still closed. 

After a minute, Ava said, “Everybody out.” There was no room for argument. Everybody went out. 

There was silence. Caspar sipped his coffee. 

Then Ava said, “You need to open your eyes, now, Caspar.”

“No.”

“Yes.” 

Some of the feeling was coming back to his fingers and toes. He didn’t like it. It was itchy and miserable. 

“No.”

“If you don’t open your eyes, I’ll tell Effie and Zebulon, and they’ll start yodeling at you.”

Caspar’s eyes shot open.

Fuck.

“Welcome back,” Ava said. 

“No,” Caspar said again. It was all he could think of at the moment.

“What’s wrong?” Ava asked.

“Nothing.”

“You just walked into the deep freeze and laid down in the snow.”

“Yes.”

“Caspar.”

“What?”

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

“No.”

Ava groaned. “Why are you always so . . . GAAAAAH.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t tell me you’re sorry, just explain to me what’s going on.”

“I . . . I don’t have an explanation. I owe you one, and I don’t have one. I owe everybody one.”

Ava frowned. “Says who?”

“What?”

“Who says you owe anyone an explanation?”

“Gloria.”

Ava sighed, pressing her fingers to her temples. 

“We’ve been over this. I love Gloria, but in this case, she can really and truly take her opinion and just . . . throw it in deep cold storage.”

“But she’s not wrong.”

“She is. She is literally wrong. I am here, telling you, to your face, that whatever she said was wrong. You don’t owe me, or anyone, anything.”

“But you . . . I have to . . . I’m supposed to tell you how I feel.”

Ava wrinkled her nose. “Supposed to?”

Caspar struggled to sit upright. His focus was returning, and while he wasn’t thrilled to be coming back to reality, he was determined to make the best of it. 

“You like to understand things,” he said slowly. “So I’m supposed to explain myself so that you know what’s going on in my head. And then you can, like, science it or put it in a category or something. And . . . you’ll be happy. You won’t feel like it’s weird anymore.”

“Caspar . . .” she whispered. “Who said that I wasn’t happy?”

“Um . . .”

“Caspar.” Ava looked at him steadily. “Don’t dissect the frog. Please.”

Caspar didn’t know what to do. This was not the conversation he’d been imagining and dreading for the past several hours. This sounded almost like Ava wanted the same thing he did, which was impossible, because he had no idea what he wanted. 

“But . . . you always want to dissect the frog.”

Ava shook her head and gave him a slight smile.

“Not always,” she said. “Not this time.”

“Really?” Caspar whispered. “I–We don’t have to?”

“No. This one time . . . we’re gonna leave it alone. Okay?”

“Okay,” Caspar croaked. Tears of relief pooled in his eyes. “But–”

Ava shushed him. “Nope. There’s nothing I need to understand that I don’t already. I understand perfectly. If other people don’t understand, that’s their problem.”

“Okay,” Caspar nodded. “Okay.” He couldn’t stop smiling. It was gross.

“I’m going to call them in here and tell them to leave our frogs alone,” Ava said.

Caspar nodded again.

“GUYS!” Ava yelled. “FAMILY MEETING!”

Gloria and Leif rushed in with handwarmers and another pot of coffee. They’d clearly been waiting for permission to spring into action. 

All of a sudden, the booth was crowded with warm bodies holding warm things, and Caspar started to feel almost sleepy. The relief of talking with Ava, and his physical exhaustion, were both catching up with him.

“Hey! His eyes are open!” Leif said, clapping him on the back. “I was kinda worried they’d frozen shut.”

“Nope,” Caspar said, blinking aggressively. 

“Caspar, I–I’m sorry,” Gloria said. “I shouldn’t have tried to get in you and Ava’s business. I was more trying to find stuff out than actually trying to help, and even if I was trying to help, it wasn’t my place.”

“It’s okay,” Caspar sighed. “I shouldn’t have gotten mad. I just . . . I couldn’t stop thinking about it, once you said something. I felt like I was doing something wrong. Like . . . like everybody expected something that I couldn’t give. So then I tried to make stuff up, and that felt horrible, and then I couldn’t stop making stuff up, and then I didn’t know what was going on, and I felt like a failure. And now I’m wildly oversharing about it. Huzzah.”

Ava looked at him, sorrow in her eyes.

She knows.

She knows what it’s like.

Gloria nodded. “I didn’t mean to make you feel like that. I’m sorry. Also, I’m not sure oversharing is really a thing with us anymore.”

There was a pause, and then Leif spoke.

“Someone once said to me . . . ‘there’s a lot of destructive powers in this world . . . but none so destructive as the need for a good narrative.’”

“Woah,” Gloria said. “That was deep.”

“Yeah,” Leif said. “It’s true. And, Caspar . . . Ava . . . I just want you to know that . . . your story is amazing. It’s heartwarming and cinematic and momentous and meaningful and utterly fascinating. You don’t have to change it. You don’t have to fluff it up or exaggerate it or take things out or add things in. You don’t have to alter the narrative to appeal to the masses. And you never, ever have to change it to appeal to me. I promise you that.” 

Caspar wasn’t sure how long he’d been needing to hear that, but wow. How did Leif know exactly the right thing to say? How was that even possible? 

“Leif, I . . .”

“The truth is good enough. The truth is beautiful. Bert-Bert taught me that.” 

Caspar wasn’t sure how to ask his question. Luckily, Ava voiced his thoughts aloud.

“Leif . . . you know what it’s like. How do you know what it’s like?”

Leif smiled shyly. “My life, as you know, has been . . . pretty weird. And never once, at any point, have I looked around at my relationships with other people and thought, ah, yes, this makes logical sense. I care about all the right things at the right times in the right amounts. Because, um . . . I don’t. I had a hard time caring about anything, for a while. Or at least, I thought I did, and I got mad at myself for it. But then I realized that I do care. I just couldn’t focus on one thing, or one person, because it was all important.”

“Huh,” Caspar said. His head was still spinning, and he was honestly shocked at how well he’d followed that. “Well that was . . . relatable.”

“Same,” Ava said.

“Actually, same,” said Gloria. “I’m not just saying that to say that. I’ve always felt like my priorities were a little out of whack. I chalked it up to the patriarchy, but . . . there’s always been other stuff too. I don’t know.”

“The patriarchy is certainly a large part of the problem,” Ava noted. 

“It’s one of the many systems on Earth that make our lives waaaaaay harder for absolutely no reason,” said Leif. 

“Sometimes it’s not you,” Ava said. “Sometimes it’s the world.”

Leif nodded. “Thank god we’ve been outside it. And now we know the secret.”

“The secret?” Ava asked. “What secret? I wanna know the secret!”

Leif smiled. “The secret,” he said, “is that all of the rules are made up.”

Caspar grinned. He looked at Ava, and she smiled back.

The radio crackled to life. “Not all of the rules,” Zebulon interjected. “There are a few very specific rules that were given to us as a gift from God.”

“The most important of which,” said Effie, “is to love thy neighbor. If y’all are doing that much, in whatever way feels true and meaningful to you . . . then I think you’re doing a very good job indeed.”

They all smiled and sat around and drank their coffee.

Ava had already picked up her pencil and was scribbling in her notebook again. She really never took breaks, did she? Caspar peered over her shoulder to see what she was writing.

At the top of a long page of equations–a reference sheet she’d made, maybe–she was scrawling, All the rules are made up.

All of a sudden, Caspar shot bolt upright in his seat. 

“How long was I in the deep freeze? Are we moving right now?”

“Yeah,” Leif said apologetically. “We weren’t sure about the mechanics of the whole thing, but Ex wasn’t able to hold us here, and the diner took off as usual. We should be touching down for the next shift in a few hours.” 

“I . . . I didn’t get to say goodbye.”

Leif grinned. “Come with me,” he said.

He led Caspar up to the roof and flicked some sort of switch. A satellite dish rotated and locked into place, and several bulbs started glowing red and green. 

“Ex,” he said. “Shel. Can you hear us?”

“Loud and clear, Leif!”

“We found Caspar!”

“Oh, thank goodness. Is he here?”

“Yup! Say hi, Caspar.”

Caspar looked at Leif, overjoyed. “We can talk to them whenever we want now?”

“Pretty much,” Leif said. “Impressive, right?”

Caspar just shook his head and laughed in disbelief.

“Hey, guys,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye.”

“It’s okay!” Shel said. “We can talk anytime now!”

“Yeah, that’s pretty awesome,” Caspar said. “You guys doing okay? Ready to start regulating your own regulations like a meta-regulatory agency?”

“Ready to try,” said Ex. 

“I know you can do it,” Caspar said confidently. 

“Thanks, Caspar,” she said. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you too. Come back for us any time, okay? We open at six.”

Ex laughed, bright and metallic over the speakers of Leif’s contraption. “Okay. Goodbye, Caspar.”

“Goodbye, Ex. Goodbye, Shel.”

“Goodbye!”

When he and Leif walked back downstairs, Ava and Gloria had gotten the heat cranked up, and there were about twelve more blankets piled at the booth. 

“Guys, I don’t need that many blankets,” Caspar protested. “How do we even have that many blankets? Where did they come from?”

Ava shrugged. “Around. But if you really don’t need them . . .”

Leif already knew what she was going to say, apparently. 

“Blanket fort?” he asked hopefully.

“BLANKET FORT!” Ava yelled, throwing her hands in the air.

“Wow,” Gloria said, marveling. “You two really are geniuses.”

“I know,” Ava said, tossing her hair. “Caspar? You in?”

“Um . . . do we have room for a blanket fort in here? Aren’t we just going to have to take it down in a few hours?”

“Wow, man. Way to kill the mood,” Gloria complained.

Ava pouted. “You are absolutely no fun at all.”

“I’m no fun? Why, because I don’t want to sit around trying to mathematically determine the radius of every single body outside the windows in my spare time? You’re one to talk.”

“I’m sorry your infantile definition of a good time isn’t on par with mine,” Ava snarked. 

“You’re the one asking me to build a blanket fort.”

“And you’re refusing, because your primary directive is to be an obstacle to my happiness, and your foremost desire in life is to be left alone to sulk. Well tough. No more sulking. We’re building a fort, and we can’t build it without you, so you don’t have a choice.”

I love you.

Caspar smiled at the sheer relief of having a thought that was actually his own. It didn’t feel made up. It was true. 

“Okay,” he said. “Fine. Let’s build a fucking blanket fort.”

They built a blanket fort together at the point of null entropy, where no rules were followed and nothing was dying.