Herod's body was leaning back in the chair, hands in his lap, feet up on the console, his eyes closed.

His mind was in an eVR space.

Sam stood by the scrolling lines of code, staring at them. Herod stood next to him, feeling a slight bit of relief at being back in the digital realm where he belonged.

you're a real boy now... floated up in his mind and he shivered.

Sam looked at him out of the corner of his eye. "You all right?"

"Yeah. Just... her, you know," Herod said.

Sam nodded. "Yeah, I get it," he turned back to the code. "Part of me feels that the next person near me who wonders aloud how Terrans ever got anywhere since they're all so silly and all so nice is going to get slapped so hard that it'll scramble their SIN."

Herod snickered. "It's that old meme of the drunk guy eating jam."

"Behold! Humanity!" Sam laughed. He leaned his head against the code for a long moment, his laughs moving to sobs. Herod patted his back, letting him get it all out. Then he looked up. "All right, the time dilation is accounted for now. Temporal stabilizers are running at 19% load and optimum performance. Phasic buffers and cross loading systems are online and running at 8% load."

Sam stepped back. "OK, this should work."

"Why can't you just message them through the SolNet connections," Herod asked.

"And say what?" Sam said. He laughed. "Dear Sir and/or Ma'am, I, someone you have never heard of but should totally trust, have a complex template and scientific system that I want you to use without spending the next three years trying to understand it. Signed: Not a hacker."

"OK, yeah," Herod said, smiling. It felt good.

The stars knew there hadn't been much to smile over for what felt like eternity.

"Funny thing is, I had people actually give me their login and password by signing it SolNet Security more times than you'd believe," Sam said. He snickered. "You wouldn't believe how dumb some passwords are."

Herod frowned and Sam laughed.

"The top five passwords have always been: 12345678, the reverse of that, QWERTY123, ABCDefg123, password," he laughed. "If not that, then like their last name with their birthdate, creche number. Always so simple I could scrape their password eight times out of ten with a simple social media snuffleupagus."

Herod wanted to blush. He'd used Herod228ab582 on over half his signins, including his bank account.

"There's a lot of language filters, and nobody has used this system in, well, forever," Sam said, reaching out and tapping the code, bringing systems online. "I've identified who I need to talk to. I'll use a basic avatar and the speech translation system so I don't have a problem with the time dilation."

Herod snapped his fingers, summoning up a chair and a glass of whiskey. "All right," he said.

"Let's do this," Sam said, and plunged his hand into the code.

----------------------

Four Cluster General Imak "Tik Tak" Takilikakik looked at the numbers on his computer display and sighed in a combination frustration, exhaustion, and depression.

No matter they tried, no matter how many specialists they brought in, the numbers refused to change. They even refused to slow down.

Nearly twenty-five percent of the Lanaktallan EPOW's had died of severe neural scorching.

Three billion living beings.

Feeling slightly guilty he turned off his display and used his datalink to order a bowl of vanilla ice cream with walnuts sprinkled on it.

He needed the comfort.

He considered, for a long moment, of calling Matron Neskila'at, of reaching out to her for comfort and reassurance. The military channels could reach the other systems still 'bagged up' but he was loathe to use official channels just to have his family's matron comfort him.

He slowly rubbed his forearms together, resisting the urge to lift his hands and start hewing on the tips of his fingernails.

The view outside his window was beautiful, but it did nothing to help ease his distress, it offered no solutions, no possible way to...

There was a sudden shimmer in the air and Tik Tak stood up, moving back, his hand touching his temple as he pinged security.

Before the signal could even go through a huge booming noise filled the air, the concussive force of the noise slamming him back against the wall.

The window exploded outward, his desk shattered into splinters and whipped around in a circle, the floor was ripped away to expose the room below, the ceiling was shredded apart, revealing the empty office above him. Glass, wood, metal, chunks of wood, concrete, plaster, carpeting, and ceramic showered over the immaculate green lawn and the parking lot.

A shimmering being of pure code iridescent code stood in mid-air. Great wings made of gauzy energy streamed for the junction of where three human figures had been fused together, each looking a different direction with eyes that were covered in folded cloth. A winding flowing twisting eternity symbol of burning warsteel, covered in staring eyes, flowed over each head. The figure was girded in shining armor. The one facing Tik Tak had a burning sword in its four arms. The one facing to the rear left held a shield and a lamb in its four hands, and the one facing to the rear and right had scales in its four hands that were weighted with flickering images of lives lived.

FΣΛЯ ПӨƬ!

the voice rang out as loud as thunder. Vehicle windshields in the parkinglot shattered, glass in the buildings for a two mile radius shattered. The voice echoed off the mountains a hundred miles away.

"I bring thee, General Imak Takilikakik, succor for the Lanaktallan in sore need of mercy! Have thy technicians and medical personnel attend the files that I leave unto thee!" the three mouthed figure roared out. The sword lifted to point at Tik Tak and he felt his implant shudder as code streamed straight to it, then to his personal data storage.

"THE HOUR OF DELIVERANCE AND MERCY FOR THINE FOES HATH ARRIVED!" the figure intoned.

The entire lawn suddenly flowered. The ragged edges of the massive hole in the building was suddenly edged in pure gold. Rainbows appeared, streaming from the building and off into the sky.

It suddenly vanished.

Tik Tak swallowed thickly, blinking, and silently congratulated himself on not wetting his pants.

-------------------

Sam looked at Herod and shrugged.

"Huh. No reply. Well, I left it in his inbox," Sam said. "Maybe I didn't have it turned up high enough? The interference is pretty thick."

Herod shrugged and offered Sam a glass of digital whiskey.

"Eh, I'm sure it's fine. Give him a few hours to have it verified by the techs, then send him another avatar to check up on things," Herod said. "Leave it on low power, we don't know how strong the transmitter is."

"Oh, good point," Sam said, accepting the glass. "Do you suppose he knows I left him a message?"

"Eh, he's a busy man. It might take him a while to find out," Herod said.