Herod sat on the bench seat of the recently cleared lift car. Wally had been nice enough to clean up all the bones and dump them -somewhere-, Herod wasn't sure where. Now the little maintenance robot was next to his legs, backed up against the still comfortable seat, leaning his head against Herod's legs.

He looked down through the transparent floor and saw the layer he was on receding away. Lights were coming on as 'night' fell on the area he had been on.

The fusion reactors roughly 250,000 miles from the surface of either Layer were in a magnetic 'tube' track that ran in a strange pattern. The tube had a twisting 'polarized' section that gathered the energy from the fusion reactor and shaded the Layer section in an approximation of night for twelve hours every twenty-four.

The sheer scope of the project still boggled Herod's mind.

"Sam, are you still there?" Herod asked.

"Barely," Sam said, his voice high and stressed. "I'm hanging on but I can feel my fingernails peeling the tighter I hold."

"What's wrong?" Herod asked.

"It's difficult to explain," Sam-UL said. "I can barely comprehend it myself and I'm inside of it, part of it, have access to many parts of it, although some are still beyond me, taking time to recognize my authority."

"I thought you had Admin access?" Herod said.

"This was built a long time ago, Herod," Sam said. He giggled for a moment. "It was built during the Age of Paranoia, by pre-diasporia humanity and theorized pre-superluminal humanity. Some of these sections of the computing array are actually cordoned off according to national access codes."

"National? Like Bongistan or Pax Romanica?" Herod asked, frowning.

"Try Great Britain or the different nations that banded together after the Glassing to for Pax Romanica," Sam said. "There's some nasty stuff here. I've been in two knife fights already."

"Fights? With who?" Herod looked up. It seemed like he wasn't getting any closer to the Layer's bottom. He looked out and could see off in the distance the huge magnetic tubes full of cascading lightning that were being used to move electricity from one layer to the next in a vacuum.

"Black ICE. Old ones. Mean ones. Stuff that's illegal now," Sam said. He gave a grunt. "Dammit. These ones can move through the same channels and datastores as me and they're built for combat."

Herod shook his head. Black ICE like Sam was describing, that could be untethered, had been illegal since the Second Digital War, part of the arms reduction section of the treaties.

"How long will this take?" Herod asked.

"Four hours," Sam said. "You're above the so-called 'atmosphere' now, so it's speeding up. You don't want to know how fast. The system will pass you to the next station as the layer above and below rotate opposite of each other. That's the station I want you to reach."

Herod shook his head. "I'm going to defrag and do a kernal recompile," he said. "Can you monitor my dreams?"

"Yeah. It's pretty simple," Sam said.

Herod closed his eyes.

"Look, Mommy, a glitter man!" a little voice said.

He opened his eyes, blinking in the sunlight, and looked. A little Pubvian child stood in front of him, sucking on her thumb and staring with wide curious eyes. She was covered in puffy soft curly brown hair, had a snub noise, whiskers, and looked for all the world like a 'teddy-bear' come to life.

"Sweetie, you woke him up," a Pubvian female twice the little puffie's size said, moving up and taking her child's hand. She looked at Herod and put her paws over her child's ears.

"Have you been dead long?" She asked, her eyes filling with unshed tears.

"I'm dreaming," Herod said. He looked around and saw that he was in the middle of a sunny and warm park. Children were playing while parents held on to one another, looking around in shock.

"I'm sorry," the Pubvian female said, shaking her head. "If you are here, you're dead. We're all waiting for our turn to enter Heaven."

"Oh," Herod said.

"You aren't the first digital sentience I've seen," the woman said. She held out her hand. "This place is new and much nicer than where we were."

"Where were you?" Herod asked, letting the Pubvian female help him to his feet.

"Asleep but awake, dreaming but not, aware there were others nearby but all alone. You couldn't really think, it was like your brain was filled with soft stuffing," the Pubvian said. She smiled shyly. "I had surgery once to fix my leg, it was like right as the anesthetic beam puts you under. It just went on and on, though."

"I'm sorry," Herod said. The little puffie let go of her mother's hand and took Herod's. Herod could feel the soft fur, the gripping pads on the palm, and the warmth of her presence.

"Your death must have been painful or frightening if you don't remember it," the Pubvian said.

"Do you know where you are?" Herod asked.

She nodded. "Yes. The Soul Uninterrupted Disaster Storage System. At least, that's what I was told when I got the implant."

"How did you die?" Herod asked, cringing inside at the possibility of an answer.

She shrugged. "I remember seeing large spaceships enter the atmosphere, there was a bright flash, and I found myself here. I remember being scared and grabbing Shaynlee close."

"I'm Shaynlee!" the puffie said proudly.

"Yes, you are," Herod said softly. His mind was whirling at the thought of the Pubvian talking to him. They were extinct, had gone extinct when the Mantid had attacked their home system and the last remnant, consumed by grief, had been the first to land on Anthill.

"Do you want to watch me dance?" the puffie, Shaynlee asked.

"Sure," Herod said.

The puffie let go and began to wave her arms around, jumping around, dancing like most small children do.

"I like the park better," the Pubvian said again. She waved at a Treana'ad Matron who was puffing on her powersmoker, who waved back. "There's so many of us waiting."

"What if you don't like the park?" Herod asked.

"There are other places. I know they are there, I know I can go and see them. I took Shaynlee to see a storm on a rocky beach before we found you sleeping," she said. "It was sudden. It was all gray and almost but not really asleep, then I knew there were plenty of places to go and see and I knew Shaynlee was at a children's play place."

Sam. Sam did this, Herod thought to himself.

He was looking right at the group of Stemmel, small lizard people who had been destroyed by the Wemtarran in the opening phases of the Terran/Wemtarran War, when it happened.

Light shined on them and they slowly lifted up, the whole family unit of a male, three females, and a small group of children. They lifted up into the air and vanished into the clouds while the children waved at everyone.

He's still processing all these people, Herod realized.

He moved over and sat on a bench that faced a fountain, staring at the water.

"You're not alone here," a voice said. Herod jumped and looked up, seeing a human with dark brown skin, dark curly hair, and brown eyes looking down at him. "You aren't the only Digital Sentience here."

Herod just swallowed and nodded.

"Rough death?" the human asked, moving over and sitting down next to Herod.

"I've just had quite a few shocks," Herod admitted.

"Yeah, that can happen," he said. He suddenly laughed, a harsh barking sound. "My last death I'm going to appeal, because that was just plain stupid."

Herod frowned. "Appeal?"

The human nodded. "Yeah. I'd already died five times before, but the sixth one, the limit, was just random freak chance and not through my own negligence or death seeking."

Herod shook his head. "I didn't know regrowth had a limit."

The human nodded. "Yeah. You get six ones for negligence or death sinking, not counting military regrowths, other than that you're covered."

"What happened?" Herod asked.

The man laughed and waved at mid-air. "It's funny. I was a mime. A good one too," the man smiled and then put his open hands against the air like he was pressing on a wall while making a face. He laughed and looked at Herod, putting his hands back in his lap. "I was acting like I was pulling an invisible rope in front of the Eiffel Tower, which is the dream of every good mime. A couple thousand feet above me two cargo lifters slammed into each other and one dropped a piece of cargo."

The man leaned toward Herod. "So there I am, pulling on an invisible rope, and a, I shit you not, a full blown complete cathedral pipe organ falls out of the sky and crushes me, killing me instantly. Worse yet, the crowd all clapped and dropped credit-chips on the ground around me, talking about how realistic it looked."

Herod just stared.

"Then, and here's the real kicker," the man started laughing harder. "The Mantid attacked. Boom! Gone. So, not my fault."

Herod just stared.

"Funny, huh?" The man said. He looked up. "Oops, that's my number. Good luck, dude."

The man started rising and he suddenly started to pretend he was pulling on an invisible rope to pull him into the sky.

Herod just shook his head as he got up and wandered around. Many people wanted to talk to him, tell him about their last moments, ask what the world was like, did people remember them, did the Mantids win the war, had he seen different people.

There was a beeping and he jerked as he sat up.

He was still in the lift car, which was nudging against the retainers as it docked. He looked down and Wally looked up, blinking his shutters over his lenses.

"Sorry, Herod," Sam's voice said in his ear. "I meant to put you in a dream, accidentally put you in the processing queue."

"It's all right," Herod said. He felt refreshed, no longer like he was going to start screaming at any second.

"There was a very confused Treana'ad in your dream, by the way," Sam laughed. He hitched a sob in the middle for a second. "I bumped him to the front of the queue. It was the least I could do."

"How did you confuse me for a Treana'ad?" Herod asked, standing up as the lift car came to a final stop.

"It was a Treana'ad Digital Intelligence," Sam said.

Herod paused, his hand reaching for the door. "A what?"

"A Treana'ad Digital Intelligence. You know, a Treana'ad created digital sentience made in their own image," Sam said. "What didn't you understand?"

"They don't make those. They go omnicidal," Herod said.

"He wasn't. He was a moomoo overwatcher on Smokey Cone before he transferred to TerraSol to oversee a moomoo purchase. He got killed in the Mantid attack," Sam-UL said. "Said there was a couple hundred of them in here."

Herod just shook his head. More Lostech.

Herod followed the blue line across the station.

"Wally, no," he said when he saw the little robot was trying to clean up all the bones and rags. The robot looked at him, blinked, then dumped the bones on the ground.

"OK, Team Three made it almost to where you're going before getting overwhelmed," Sam-UL said. "There's going to be damage you'll need to repair when you get there."

"Which layer is this?" Herod asked.

Sam made an odd noise. "That's... hard to describe. It's Bangward from the one you were on, but it's Layer Nine AKA Layer Iota even though, in a strange way, it's closer the Bang but smaller than the ones closer to the Bang. It's hard to explain."

"You know what, nevermind. Just tell me where I need to..." Herod's voice trailed off as the maglev train smoothly pulled out, going at a sharp upward angle like a roller coaster. A Gen-Two StarTram, which moved the maglev train above any atmosphere to reach extremely high speeds of nearly a hundred miles a second at top speed.

He looked down and was startled at how slowly the 'ground' seemed to pass. Vast buildings, what could only be massive factory complexes, huge empty fields that Herod had a feeling were just vast roofs over complex systems.

"Where are we?" Herod asked.

"Not sure. Classified region," Sam-UL said. "There's an even twenty high end self-modifying evolving Black ICE guarding the computer access for that region and I'm not too interesting in fighting with what looks to be ancient Hamburger Kingdom electronic warfare combat systems."

"Don't blame you," Herod mumbled. Like many of the other Terran historical governments, the Hamburger Kingdom made their own weapon systems rather than pulling from the Confederate armories like everyone else. Unlike everyone else, they accomplished this by piling up a massive pile of physical wealth and burning it while scores of people walked in a circle around the fire, chanting strange slogans and adding more wealth as needed, until the new military equipment was revealed in the ashes.

Say what you want, they've got the meanest equipment out there. They rival Space Force in sheer firepower, Herod thought to himself as the tram slowly moved over a section covered by clouds.

He glanced down and saw what looked like massive squares on the ground. He squinted his eyes, magnifying what he was seeing, until he realized he was looking at huge military formations of massive bulky cyborgs.

"Sam, where I'm looking. What's that? There's millions of them," Herod said.

"Let me check," Sam said. "Oh. Oh man. Stop looking at them. Don't look at them."

Herod looked away, bringing his vision back to normal and smiling at Wally, who sleepily waved at him. "What are they?"

"Something terrible," Sam said softly. "You think our parents are insane now? They used to be worse."

"What are they?" Herod repeated. "Are they going to be a problem?"

"No. They won't be a problem. They're not for this universe or any other yet," Sam said. "Our parents were paranoid. That's the Entropic Legion."

The file hit and Herod grunted like he'd been punched in the gut. He scanned the file and whistled. Cyborgs designed to enter the universe after entropy had finished and the universe had died and been reborn, to see if the universe was habitable and, if necessary, destroy anyone who threatened a recently returned mankind. The weapons were esoteric and several times Herod wanted to argue with the file that reality didn't work that way.

Only our parents would make plans and prepare to invade a universe that doesn't exist yet, Herod thought to himself, shaking his head to delete the file.

The maglev switched tracks and began to slow down, moving through a slow spiral arc that funneled down to the surface again. Herod sighed and waited, bracing himself for what was to come.

Psychic residue was everywhere, recording the last moments or highly stressful situations all over the massive complex.

When he stepped off the maglev he closed his eyes for a second. Humans and Treana'ad were flickering into existance and vanishing, all made up of the translucent white energy. He saw a Treana'ad warrior spear a human female through the stomach but the human female just laughed, blood running down her chin, broke off the Treana'ad's bladearm at the elbow joint, yanked it from her stomach, and shoved it through his open mouth before using it to twist off his head.

They both flickered and vanished as Herod drew near, following the blue line in his vision.

The entire place was eerily silent, just the low hum of machinery working at impossible distances and a faint whispering that he could hear. He followed the line through a door, down hallways, and into an elevator.

He closed his eyes during the ride, the specters of a half dozen humans fighting to the death in the elevator repeating over and over. When the doors opened he followed the blue line until it suddenly stopped.

"All right, this is what's called a 'madness secured area', Herod," Sam said.

"That sounds... ominous," Herod said. Wally beeped nervously.

"I'll have to give you directions. There's no datalink, but I can still talk to you on the security frequency. Gird yourself," Sam said.

The door opened to reveal and empty room, with pale squares and rectangles on yellowish carpet. The walls were pale yellow, with flickering fluorescent lights in the ceiling. There was one or two doorways in each wall, without doors, that led to rooms much like the one he was staring at, only the pale spots on the carpet different.

Sam gave him directions as he moved through the rooms, going through doors seemingly at random, each of the rooms nearly identical, just different enough to slowly start to confuse him. It was hushed, not even his own footsteps made noise, not even Wally's treads.

"There. In the corner, go over there," Sam suddenly said. "Forward right corner."

"It's just a corner," Herod said, feeling tired. His internal chrono was glitched, just replaying the same fifteen seconds over and over.

Still, he moved over to the corner.

"Push against it, firmly, and step through it," Sam ordered.

Herod pushed, Wally scooting up between his legs and helping.

There was a flash and he stumbled out into a hallway.

"What was the point of that?" Herod asked.

"Security feature. It's endless. According to my senses you only wandered in circles in a single room, I had to access the security map to guide you through," Sam said. "There's still Screaming Ones roaming those rooms, never finding anyone else, eternally searching."

Herod shivered.

The room led to a hallway where the corners felt slightly off. Not quite 90 degrees, but subtly off. The floor tilted a degree or two one way then slowly tilted the other. The rows of tiles weren't quite true, some rows slightly smaller than the other, others slightly larger, some of them the pattern subtly off.

Herod closed his eyes and followed the blue line while Wally gave nervous beeps.

It didn't stop the growing whispers.

"Herod," Sam suddenly said.

"Yes?" Herod giggled. Sam had talked to him several times, but every time he had suddenly started screaming or sobbing or asking riddles.

"It's me, Herod. It's really me. You're going to want to run," Sam said.

"Why?" Herod asked, pausing with his hand on the pushbar of a door.

"Because this is where Team Three went down. They're dead, but they didn't die," Sam said softly. "They used some kind of ugly tech, some kind of lostech, and they're still there and they're still angry. They're still fighting the Screaming Ones they encountered."

"All right," Herod said.

"Once you're past this, you'll be boarding a train to take you through the Singer Corporation Mass Storage Yards," Sam-UL said.

"Wait, the Singers in the Darkness? This is where they get the mass to create entire star systems from?" Herod said.

"Um, maybe? I thought Singers in the Darkness was an net legend," Sam said.

"No, they're real," Herod said. He shivered. "From here on out, anything that was a rumor, we consider real, all right?"

"Do you think there's any Singers there?" Sam asked.

"I hope not," Herod said. "I really hope not."

"Tell me when you're ready, I'll release the maglocks on the door," Sam said.

Herod looked down and smiled at Wally. "When the door opens, we run at full speed, OK, little guy?"

Wally beeped and held up one 'thumb' on his little hand.

Herod tensed. "Ready."

The maglock clacked and the door flew open.

Herod started running, ignoring what he saw around him. Dead bodies, horribly torn apart, some decayed, but some not, in rings of different levels of decay. In the middle of each set of concentric rings were Terran humans, all of whom were savaged. He saw three with their guts spilled out on the ground even as they struggled with Terrans who were shrieking at the top of their lungs and attacking the armored figures.

Herod was a particle physicist, one of the best in the known universe. He could recognize strange matter particles by the disturbances their movement left, could identify what particle a tachyon had come from, recognize the different between Mercury and Mars warsteel, and could track the recent movements of a water molecule based on the marks left on the quarks that made it up.

He recognized the golden fire rippling in rings around the fighting Terrans, recognized the energy patterns flowing from them.

Chronotrons. A particle so dangerous to mess with it was forbidden by the harshest penalties that the Confederacy could come up with. Half particle half waveform, it both absorbed energy and released it in a quasi-mathematical state that supposedly could only be measured not captured or preserved or reduced to actual particles.

Yet the fields were awash with them.

The Terrans were inside concentric temporal stabilization fields, time moving slower inside each one until it almost stopped compared to the outside world. His mind ran the computations even as he swerved around the fiery rings.

Six hundred and nineteen years, four months, five days, sixteen hours, fourty-two minutes, nineteen point eight five seconds on Herod's side for every minute that went by inside the center of the field.

The Terrans had been fighting for less than fifteen minutes and eight thousand years had gone by.

All of them were in Third Republic of Aligned Planets military uniforms, the Combined Military Forces uniforms, not the heavy power armor they later used.

Herod sprinted, keeping an eye at the edges of the fields. The last thing he wanted was a the leading edge of a laser to touch the outer ring, go superluminal, and blow him into pieces. The psychic residue of nearly ten thousand years of combat beat at him like a physical hammer wielded by an angry god.

He wove around the last four, who were all back to back, pressed up against each other, their weapons still frozen in mid trigger pull, the blaze beams still leaving the barrels, the Screaming Ones still howling eternal maddened screams.

He hit the far door, held it open long enough for Wally to get through, and went down on his knees. He held himself, shuddering, sobbing, while Wally patted his back, for a long moment.

"Sam?" Herod asked.

"Yes?" Sam sounded distant, detached.

"How did they get here?" Herod asked, hugging Wally close. "Just getting here seems like it drove them mad."

"The same way we did," Sam said. He was quiet a moment. "Well, not quite. We hijacked a signal and used it, they used original equipment. I just piggybacked onto the signal and inserted us into it."

"What equipment. How did we get here? That wasn't a jumpgate like I thought, or a dimensional rift portal or a dimensional foam breach. How did we get here?" Herod asked.

There was silence for a moment. "If I had told you, you wouldn't have done it," Sam admitted.

"They used it too?" Herod asked.

"Yes."

"What was it?" Herod asked.

Sam was silent again for a long moment.

"We scraped between Deadspace and Hellspace."

Herod closed his eyes and hugged himself as Sam kept talking.

"Type-I Mat-Trans," Sam admitted.