1

Amanda was having a delightful nap dream free of any good or bad omens when Friedkin knocked on the door and, not getting a reaction out of either Amanda or the dream characters, slipped into the room on tiptoes and stood watching near a wall.

He found himself in a spacious, cozy kitchen, with flowerpots on the windowsills and decorated napkins on the table. The details were all fluctuating and blurry, of course, as dreams usually were.

He had a steep learning curve himself, figuring out how to navigate the imaginary spaces of backstage. It required a certain kind of liquid concentration, clarity of the mind (which Friedkin already possessed in buckets) and calmness of touch (which he had to work on rather more). It took him a while to master - exactly how long he wasn’t sure, since he hadn’t invented imaginary time yet at that point - but he adapted wonderfully in the end. He only ever had smaller slips, like turning his own head into a pumpkin for a few minutes. Nothing alarming at all.

Now, he walked among the dream with confidence, stabilizing the details with a single swift motion of his hand. Amanda hadn’t noticed him yet. She was engaged in a lively conversation with Martin (who looked perfectly normal), Vogel (who also looked normal and was wearing a dress), a person Friedkin did not recognize who turned out to be Amanda’s classmate from high school, and oscar-nominated actress Naomie Harris.

They were all having tea with cupcakes and Friedkin almost lost thread of the conversation (which was nonsensical to begin with), distracted by how nice those cupcakes looked. Dream food, he thought, was the best; not only did it taste exactly as amazing as you remembered, it also never contained a single gram of real sugar or saturated fat.

He waited for the dream to flow forward naturally, until the kitchen disappeared along with the guests, replaced by a garden bursting with a trillion colours simply too vivid to be real. That is when he approached Amanda with a friendly smile on his face, and was met with a slight scowl.

“Not you again,” Amanda rolled her eyes, “I’ve just gotten the hang of this,” she added, showing him a daisy-chain made from some magical flower.

“This is a dream,” Friedkin told her.

“Sure it is,” she dismissed, but before she could say anything else, he snapped his fingers, making her blink and stop, mouth slightly open in surprise. “Damn. Yes. Of course. I’ve missed all the signs again, haven’t I, and I’ve been… wait. Why are you in my dream?”

“You’re tired,” he explained, sitting down on the emerald grass. “It wouldn’t work if I tried to contact you in the real world. I think. Cause I don’t really understand that much, honestly. Like I know things, right? All of the things. But I don’t understand them. Anyway,” he tapped the grass near himself, inviting her to sit down as well, “I’ve been hopping in and out of backstage and I am discovering a lot of things. Some of them cool, some of them scary. Some just really weird.”

“Weird… how?” Amanda asked, sitting down next to him.

“Weird like, not making any sense whatsoever,” he shrugged, “I’d try to describe it but I’d need to invent some new words for it, I guess. And they don’t sit well in my head either. I really kind of hate this entire situation,” he frowned for a second. “But maybe I’ll find a way to get my actual body out of the backstage. Oh, also, how did it go? Did you solve everything?”

“Yeah, actually!” Amanda smiled. “Did not expect it to work but seems like it did. They are still negotiating, those bosses and Lilly and everyone, but I think it will be okay.”

“Oh good. Phew,” he breathed out in relief, “cause I was really worried! I’ve tried to find that book to see if the ending had changed but I couldn’t. Think I threw it so hard it landed in a parallel dimension.”

“I think I did it,” Amanda carried on, “with my mind? Somehow. I had a moment in that cave, when it felt like I was seeing these different treads and times, how they were moving, and how they were all connected. And it’s like I caught one of those strands in my hand and pulled it towards me.”

“See, you’re getting there,” Friedkin nodded.

“I don’t need the magic wand, yeah?”

“You don’t need anything other than your head.”

“But… why?” she chuckled suddenly, shaking her head in disbelief. “You’re telling me I am some sort of reality-affecting demon witch or whatever?”

“Or your universe wi-fi is just a bit better than for most people,” Friedkin shrugged. “You’ve been downloading a lot lately. Now you’re branching out into uploading. You’ve noticed it, haven’t you?”

“What, the cracks?” she asked, a hint of exhaustion in her voice.

“Yes. Those. Nasty things,” he wrinkled his nose in slight disgust, “I’ve been watching them for a while. One has been getting bigger but now it shrank down again. That gave me hope that you worked it out. Prevented the bad ending.”

“But I don’t want all of this!” Amanda exclaimed in frustration. “I don’t want these powers. Why do things keep happening to me against my will?”

“I didn’t want to end up in the backstage either,” Friedkin said, “but hey. You get used to it. Sometimes, things just happen cause it’s just like that, right?”

“What a profound piece of wisdom…”

“…And you don’t always know how they happen or why the happen to you, and sometimes they really suck. But you can always become the boss again. Start helping yourself. Let other people help you. Can’t control everything, but if you have someone to rely on, at least someone willing to stand with you… it’s not so bad,” he smiled. “I only had myself and wow, I annoyed myself so much in the beginning, you have no idea, but eventually me and my other me’s became great friends.”

“You have gone completely mad in the backstage,” Amanda pointed out.

“Oh absolutely,” he beamed, “but also I’m right cause like, come on, I have all the info, I have to be right.”

They both laughed at it for a second, and as they got distracted, the field around them slowly morphed into a bench in front of some building.

“Right. I better be going,” Friedkin announced, “so two things. First - keep an eye on the cracks. Something huge is happening and we should all be on the lookout. Second, you know how there are more people like Dirk and the Rowdy? Cause you should start looking for them too.”

“Wow that was super vague and unhelpful but thanks I guess,” Amanda smirked. “Cracks, holistics, become the boss of things. Got it.”

She was about to wake herself up from the inside of the dream when another question occurred to her. She turned around to where Friedkin was standing just a second ago and found herself staring at a vast wasteland of blackness. Every detail was gone from the dream, and so was Friedkin.

“Any big revelations for me then?” Amanda asked, staring up at the blackness. “Final words of encouragement?”

A moment later, she was awake, and Todd was standing near her and gently shaking her by the shoulder.

2

They crawled out of the cave in the early morning hours of Sunday, rubbing their eyes and trying to get accustomed to sunlight again. The desert was as empty as ever; their cars and vans were still in their place and largely unscathed, apart from the multiple scorpions which had decided that the roof of Farah’s car was the prime free real estate deal they had been searching for their entire life. Lilly removed the scorpions with ease.

“They don’t sting you unless they really have to,” she explained, catching them by the tail and dropping them to the ground, “unlike wasps, which hate you personally and will absolutely sting you if you as much as look at them wrong.”

A few minutes were spent checking various pockets and bags for potentially forgotten objects and making sure that the entrance to the cave was once again covered by sand.

“What’s gonna happen to the spaceship then?” Dirk asked, helping to push sand with the side of his shoe.

“Bosses will take care of it,” Lilly replied, “it’s company property and all. I got it back to operational so they’ll just check it back in.”

“Isn’t it missing a whole lot of important parts?” Todd frowned slightly. “I thought those guys,” he pointed at Slavic Mafia, who were busy pushing their van out onto road, “were selling bits of it for years.”

“Oh they were not taking anything crucial,” Lilly said, “they were quite smart about it, actually. It’s like breaking into a car but only taking the car radio. Right,” she patted the sand with her hand for good measure, then stepped back to admire their work. “That will do.”

“And what are you going to do?” Dirk asked, looking first at Lilly, then at Roger who was standing close, the box with Erwin the cat in his hands.

“The current plan is to get back to Seattle,” Roger responded, “and we’ll figure it out from there. A lot of discussion and catching up to do.”

“You don’t have to drive us all the way,” Lilly added, “drop us off in the nearest city. I have a friend in LA, they’ll come over to help out.”

In the background, the Slavic Mafia had finally managed to push their van back onto the road, after which the bosses kindly informed them that this could have been achieved using one simple setting of their device. They did not come over to say goodbye; instead, they simply jumped into their van and rolled away. Dancho waved at them through the window as they wheezed past in the general direction of San Francisco.

“We’ll be off soon as well,” Amanda chimed in, jumping out of the back of the Rowdy van. “After Martin deals with the engine. That car is getting old,” she mused, “might be time for a new one.”

“So I don’t wanna sound paranoid,” Todd began, walking away from the group and towards Amanda, “but are you okay? Broadly speaking. Cause that whole bit in the cave, with time stopping and…”

“I’m fine,” Amanda smiled briefly, “seriously. I mean, I am not fine, I’m amazing. I mean, okay,” she added after he rolled his eyes, “yes, everything that keeps happening to me is more than mildly disturbing and if I had a choice I’d rather, uh, not, but,” she paused for a second, “but… I am learning to be okay with it and that’s the important point.”

“You sure?” Todd insisted. “I don’t know if it’s just me, but everything feels more… intense lately. Like a storm is coming, very, very slowly.”

“It’s not just you,” she said, “but I’ll deal with it. Trust me,” she looked over his shoulder at the Rowdy throwing empty soda cans at each other’s heads and smiled again, “I’ve got people I can rely on.”

“Fine. I’ll just have to deal with the fact that my little sister really can take care of herself then.”

“Yes please!” she laughed shortly. “I’ll call you more often. Also, I am begging you to talk to Farah, and also to Dirk.”

“I’m not sure I have something to talk about.”

“And that’s exactly why you should talk to them. Seriously, Todd… stop running away from yourself.”

“Will do,” he nodded, and pulled her into a hug. “Alright. Go say goodbye to everyone. And stay safe on the road.”

Eventually, the only people left were Dirk, Todd, Farah, Lilly and Roger. There was also Erwin, but he was fast asleep in his box, dreaming of the deepest, darkest oceans he had never seen himself. Soon enough, everyone was in the car with Farah at the wheel, ready to leave the desert for good.

“I quite like this planet, you know,” Lilly mused, looking out of the window as they were driving away, “no, actually I fucking love this planet. But one place I am not going to miss? The goddamned desert. Nothing against it, personally… I just really, really hate sand.”

3

“Life is very good,” Amanda thought, pouring sand out of her shoes, “and on this topic alone, I refuse to change my mind in the face of any contradicting evidence.”

The van was rolling fast across the empty roads, with Cross at the wheel and Gripps changing the radio stations every few seconds on the passenger seat next to him. Amanda felt awful; she was hungry, severely in need of coffee, and yearning for a hot shower and a fresh pair of socks that did not have the entire Californian desert in them. At the same time, she felt happier than she had in a long time.

A few steps away from her, Beast was making bracelets from a new batch of collected junk, while Martin and Vogel were clearing the van’s floor from empty cans and candy bar packages. Gripps had finally settled on a station and was singing along horribly at the top of his lungs to a Green Day song. The noise was overwhelming; it was threatening to give her a headache. It also made her even happier.

“Any plans for the next few days and/or years, drummer?” Martin asked, noticing her faint smile and absent stare.

“Some,” she nodded in agreement. “One of the first things, boys and Beast… how do you feel about some networking?”

“Networking?” Vogel repeated. “Is that a sport game that’s like volleyball but stupid?”

“No that’s netball,” Martin disagreed, “networking is when you put together pieces of fabric to make a craft.”

“That’s patchwork,” Cross shouted from the front, “networking is when Internet providers treat all websites equally.”

“That’s net neutrality you’re thinking of,” Gripps told him, “networking is the channel that shows Adventure Time.”

“That’s Cartoon Network,” Beast said, then signed something that could be roughly translated as “networking is when all the workers unite to protect each other’s rights.”

“That, uh,” Amanda frowned for a second, “I don’t actually know what that is. A labour union I guess? Anyway, what I mean is, do you want to go looking for other people like us? Holistic, I mean.”

There was a momentary pause, then a general sound of enthusiastic agreement.

“Nice,” she smiled, “but before we do that, can we make a stop at a specific gas station?”

Amanda wasn’t sure how she managed to remember and locate the exact gas station she was thinking of, or what arrangement of events ensured that it was completely empty, apart from the girl at the counter. Just in case, she looked up briefly at the sky and gave it a thumbs up. “See, universe,” she thought, “you really can do it, if you try.”

Tamika didn’t notice her walking in. She was too busy making an enormous pyramid out of paper cups, hovering on tiptoes over it, just the tip of her tongue poking out of her mouth in concentration. Amanda managed to walk all the way to the counter without being seen. She gave the girl a few seconds to react, then knocked on the counter.

“Yes hello what can I help you with?” Tamika replied on autopilot, then turned around, saw Amanda, tried to stand up straight and fix her hair in one move, and knocked over the entire paper cup pyramid with her elbow. “Oh,” she mumbled, her cheeks getting even darker than they usually were as she blushed, “hi.”

“I was going to call first,” Amanda explained, smiling, “here’s the money I owe you.” And she handed over a fifty dollar bill. “Don’t need the change.”

“Is that… all?” Tamika took the money and stuffed it into her pocket, visibly disappointed.

“Well…” Amanda began. “Depends. Would you like to quit your job and run away with me and my gang of weirdos to roam the streets and try to figure out the laws of the multiverse and beat up jerks occasionally and maybe possibly go on a date with me but only if you want to?”

“Girl,” Tamika grinned, leaning slightly over the counter, “you had me at ‘quit your job’. Even if you followed it with ‘let’s go live as outcasts in the Siberian taiga’, I would have been on board. But yes. Yes to all of it.”

“And the last bit?”

“Yes. Very much the last bit.”

The gas station shop was locked and the “out of order” sign left blazing. A single quickly scribbled note on the counter declared that Tamika would not be returning, ever, and the check with her remaining salary would have to be sent to the provided address.

“Careful,” Amanda said, letting Tamika into the van, “the ceiling is not very high.”

“Mm,” Tamika nodded, and took a seat near the window. The inside of the vehicle was a lot to take in at once.

“Right then, boys and girls and everyone else,” Amanda announced, “let’s roll.”

“This is nice, drummer,” Martin smiled, shaking Tamika’s hand. “You’re bringing people in. Feel like a proud dad of a big family.”

“The more people, the better,” Amanda replied.

“True that. Tell you what though,” Martin added, sliding left on his seat, “…I think we will need a bigger van.”

4

Despite spending several days in a deep coma of unknown genesis, the doctors were happy to report that neither of their mystery patients had suffered any adverse effects. Both woke up with full memories of what happened to them just before they lost consciousness; both opted to give a generic “I felt very weak all of a sudden” stories instead.

One of the first things Kevin did once he could talk normally again was call the detective agency and ask for their bank account details. He would not listen to any of Farah’s polite protests. As far as he was concerned, she did her job perfectly. He was alive and healthy after all, his pacemaker replaced for an ordinary device with an ordinary battery, and the being watched feeling had disappeared completely and never came back. So he absolutely insisted on paying the full price he promised.

Orson observed Kevin with mild curiosity. They talked to each other during their week or so of recovery, and quickly discovered that, despite growing up in the same state of the same country, they were living in completely different worlds.

Every day, Kevin would learn a plethora of facts he previously had no idea about. On one occasion, while they were having dinner together in their shared hospital room, Orson complained about likely going into debt to pay his medical bills (as the job of a mercenary did not involve a health insurance), which shook Kevin to his core. He did not know that people had to pay for their healthcare. The whole concept seemed ridiculous to him.

“And what do people do if they can’t pay for their meds?” Kevin asked.

“Depends,” Orson shrugged, “take out a loan. Ask people for money online. Some sort of a satanic ritual is an option, I suppose.”

Kevin did not discuss it further that day. It was a lot of information to process in one go.

Alexandra came to visit Kevin almost every day, and they talked a lot, too. Not every compromise was reached (especially on several art-related topics), but enough to finally declare that they could be friends again. She offered for him to stay at her place while he recovered and returned to full strength. He agreed without a moment of hesitation.

“What are you doing once you get out then?” Kevin asked during an evening hour of tea-drinking.

“Eh, you know,” Orson replied, “get back home. Pay the overdue rent. Get some crappy job to pay for everything.”

This surprised Kevin; he had no idea that people had to have awful jobs for a living. In his mind, every job was decently enjoyable and important, and only differed in the type of things you had to do for it. He asked Orson what he would really want to do, if he could actually choose. He paused for a few moments. He had not been asked this question since middle school.

“Social worker, maybe?” he responded eventually. “Or school psychologist. Something to do with people. I love working with people. Just never had the money to go to college.”

This surprised Kevin; he had no idea you had to pay for any college. In his mind, most colleges and universities were free, and you only paid to get in if your grades were not good enough. He spent half the night googling things and thinking over different options as his entire picture of the world set out on a continental shift. In the morning, he was ready to share his new exciting idea with Orson.

“So I was thinking,” Kevin said, “that I can just like, start paying for other people’s things? Medical bills, college degrees… just give people money so that they can change their job. That kind of stuff. Cause I think… people like me should not have this much money. No. I think people in general should not have this much money… God I don’t even know how much money I have!” he laughed. “ I have people to tell me that. That seems very stupid. I should do something about that too.”

“Yeah,” Orson nodded, “that sounds like a nice plan. Like something that would make you happy.”

“Great! I’ll start with you then. What sort of degree did you want?”

“Oh,” Orson’s eyes widened in surprise, “I’m, uh, I’m not sure I can, really. Forty seems a bit too late to get a completely new career.”

“Why the hell not?” Kevin asked. “I’ve heard that people in Japan get degrees in their sixties and seventies. You’d be a young man in a Japanese university.”

“Well…” Orson began, his brain full of a thousand reasons why he still couldn’t do it… then gathered up all those thoughts and chucked them into an imaginary bin. “Oh screw it, yes! Yes, I’ll go to college. You know how they say, you only live once.”

5

The two unfortunate sales managers spent their entire two week flight back to Ursa Major Collective going meticulously over every tiny detail of their fictitious cover-up report. They double-checked all the dates, then checked them again independently from each other, hoping to expose the other for mistakes (there weren’t any). They fabricated an entire autopsy report and argued endlessly over the made-up time of death. They had a four hour long discussion over all the corrections they were going to make on Lilly’s reports, and a six hour long discussion on how they were going to seamlessly slip in the suggestion of taking over the operation.

When, at last, they arrived to the spaceport (Lilly’s ship in hyperspace tow, jumping out a whole day later due to dimensional fluctuations), they felt incredibly prepared for any possible questions.

The only question they were asked was “so did you get there and back okay?”.

The carefully edited and manufactured reports were handed over to the oversight managers, who gave them to their assistants to skim over and summarize the most important bits. That one page summary was sent further without reading through fifteen different steps of the corporate hierarchy ladder, during which they were mostly only read by secretaries and ticked as read by workers while checking their emails in the bathroom. Eventually the entire fifty page text was transformed into a single digit in a column and shown in tiny font on a presentation during a board of directors meeting, who stamped the entire spreadsheet with their blanket stamp of approval.

Neither the board of directors or the CEOs ever found out there was once a person called Elid who faked their own death and abandoned their citizenship and career to discuss obscure physics with a bunch of humans in the distant corner of the Milky Way on a planet known to almost everyone outside it by just two words: mostly harmless.

Meanwhile, fifty light years away, on that very same planet, four engineers were drinking tea with lemon and discussing something loudly in a variety of Slavic accents.

“Right,” Grażyna said, then stuffed a whole chocolate chip cookie in her mouth and spent a few seconds chewing, washing it down with tea eventually, “the raw materials talk - done. For today, at least. I cannot hear another word about taxes or I’ll go insane. So… what about the tech?”

“Depends,” Dancho replied, “Are we getting blueprints or are we getting licenses to produce?”

“Blueprints. They’re only offering the stuff that’s been their equivalent of public domain for ages. Nothing too revolutionary.”

“Like a better Playstation?” Milena asked.

“No, like a battery that’s maybe twenty percent more efficient at energy storage than the best one we have.”

“Well that would be huge…”

“Exactly. Hey, maybe a better Playstation too, hell knows. Anyway,” Grażyna continued, “we need to figure out what to do with it.”

“We can’t sell that to some huge company,” Dancho pointed out.

“Obviously not,” Grażyna agreed, and everyone else nodded energetically as well, “I don’t want my old bosses to ever meet my new bosses. Ew.”

“We could deal with it ourselves,” Milena suggested, “set up a company and…”

“No,” Grażyna shook her head, “not dealing with that either. We’ll already have to manage a whole supply-demand chain for like fifteen different metals and minerals. Ugh. We’ll have to hire people…”

“What about then,” Varya began, “if we track people who already working on the technologies, talk to them, and be like hey, we have an idea, want to take a look?”

“Huh,” Dancho scratched his ear thoughtfully, “but that’s just… giving it away?”

“You want monetize it?” Varya asked.

“Oh we’ll be getting a shitton of money from the other stuff,” Grażyna dismissed, “I just want that stuff off my hands and doing something useful.”

“That’s brilliant then,” Milena said, and sipped her rapidly cooling tea, “first, they’ll know exactly what to do with it, second, it won’t even be that suspicious, and third, those would be mostly engineers in universities, right? So they are probably less likely to use it for shady stuff. Yeah, Varya… that’s genius.”

“See, I say smart stuff sometimes,” she beamed, “like when I said we should go to desert for fun.”

“That was not a smart idea,” Grażyna laughed, “but hey, from the current point of view? I’ll grant you that as a move of visionary genius.”

6

The Cooltown Universtity Institute of Physics and Applied Mathematics was still standing firmly in its place when they came back from California, and Lilly was simultaneously relieved and slightly disappointed to find it intact. They arrived very early in the morning on a Tuesday; the premises were largely empty, apart from a couple of grad students coming back home after a long night in. A pleasant, peaceful silence fell on their shoulders, like a sloppily but lovingly made jumper that used to be prickly once, but was now nothing but softness, comfort and memories.

Roger couldn’t help but smile when they approached the building. Fifty years he had dedicated to this place, so many decades spent working hard while getting honestly not that much for that hard work… and he did not regret a single second. He had always believed that people did not go into academia for the salary, or the status, or prestige - no, academia was for those who could not imagine themselves anywhere else. Who would have withered away from sadness were they to be deprived of their beloved topic of interest. It belonged to those who cared so passionately and so stupidly that they simply had to live their lives surrounded by that passion. And he was just like that.

Yes, Roger thought to himself as Lilly opened the back door with her key and let them both in… if someone was to offer him a second life, a complete rewind from the beginning, he would have spent it exactly in the same place.

They went up the stairs to Roger’s office, and put the music box (now missing a key from its middle) on its dedicated place on the shelf, and made tea for two. The atmosphere felt just a tad awkward and constrained. Here they were, next to their closest person in the entire world, desperate to speak yet not quite sure how to start.

“You know I come from a line of sturdy bastards?” Roger said at last, half-joking, half-serious. “My parents both made it into their nineties. Mother was 93 when she died, father was 91. And my grandpa Daly, he was a mighty old jackass. Made it till 96.”

“What did he die of?” Lilly asked with a faint smile on her face.

“Fell of a ladder while picking apples.”

“Oh drop it!”

“I’m serious!” Roger chuckled softly. “He got up on a ladder to pick apples on the farm, fell down backwards, hit his head and died. So all I’m saying is, life might not be over for me just yet. Yes, quite! Might have another ten, even fifteen years here, huh?”

“Yeah just don’t climb any ladders please,” she smirked.

“And after my time is done,” he continued, “you don’t lose yourself in mourning, like I did because of you. Keep going. There are people out there, so many good people. The world doesn’t start and end with me.”

“I don’t think there are others, Roger,” she sighed. “I’m pretty sure you are The One.”

“Well why can’t there be another The One,” he replied. “Look, I found you twice! Who says you can’t find another me.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“Well you better make it work,” he insisted, “because from what I’ve gathered you’re staying here on this planet for longer than I will be staying, and it is too miserable to deal with on your own. You don’t have to find another me, you know. You can just have someone. Just someone to care about.”

“Yeah, alright,” she gave up, rolling her eyes for a split second, “I can probably manage that.”

They paused for a second, enjoying their tea. Both felt a terrifying black hole form somewhere in the pits of their stomach. Perhaps it was a deep, existential sadness… perhaps hunger. They did not have any snacks to go with the tea.

“You know, I did suspect things about you,” Roger mused.

“Oh really?”

“Yes,” he nodded, “when you turned up at the institute out of nowhere - a stranger, and so familiar at the same time. Except I thought you’d turn out to be Arthur’s secret granddaughter or some such.”

“That would be so predictable though, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose so.”

“Well, anyway…” she mixed the tea in her cup absent-mindedly, “I thought I’d want to jump straight into work, get this place running again, but actually I kind of want a holiday now. You know, after everything.”

“A holiday, you say?”

“Tell me what, our summerhouse… is it still around?”

“Still standing very much,” Roger confirmed proudly, “was robbed just a week ago by those managers of yours, but otherwise in near perfect condition.”

“Nice,” Lilly smiled, “so… what would you say to spending a few days to a week away from this all? Go for walks, go fishing maybe… play chess, catch up on some books. Talk.”

“I would say my enthusiastic yes,” Roger responded, “I have not taken a holiday in years. And I am retired!”

“Settled then,” Lilly declared, and downed the last few sips of her tea in one go. “And, oh, one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“I still have no one to leave the cat with,” she said, scratching her ear, “so… I guess there will be three of us.”

7

There was much cleaning up to do when they came back to the detective agency office.

In fact, it was almost surprising the place was not more thoroughly trashed, considering they had left it after two break-ins and a whole day of using it as a retreat/case brainstorming facility. They did not think about that before leaving, of course. Mundane concerns like that tend to get pushed to the periphery in the middle of an adventure. No one says to themselves, while actively being hunted by mildly homicidal aliens, “well I better throw away these uneaten pizza slices or they might attract rats.” And that, though reasonable, is exactly why the detective agency office now had rats.

Or one rat, to be precise. It was sitting on the coffee table in the guest room when Todd, Dirk and Farah unlocked the door and came in.

“This door is busted,” Farah pointed out as she attempted to put it back on its hinges to lock, “we’ll probably have to replace it.”

“We can replace this entire office with the money we got for this case,” replied Todd. “Or get a better one.”

“I don’t need a better one!” Dirk disagreed. “I love this office. It’s like a home to me. Well, a second home, after my actual apartment. Or maybe a third cause there’s also your place,” he pointed briefly at Todd, “and Farah’s too… point is, I am not changing locations just because I can technically afford it. This is perfect anyway. Look, we even have pets!” He beamed, pointing at the rat that sat perfectly still on the table, either unwilling or unable to move.

“Oh I bet we have more of those pets,” Todd chuckled, kicking an empty churro box with his foot, “hey, Mona, how come we have rats?”

“Only one rat,” Mona corrected. It wasn’t very clear where she popped in from; it could have been, with equal probability, from the couch, the table, or the straight from the floor. “I fed it with cookies and milk. I hope that is fine.”

“I’ve no idea,” Dirk told her, “but he looks happy.”

He attempted to pet the rat, which decided that, finally, it had reached the limit of politeness for the quality of food it was provided with, jumped off the table and darted for some far away corner.

“We better start cleaning this now,” Farah declared, “or we’ll get too scared and will be tempted to burn the whole place down.”

Everyone in the office, including Mona and even the crows that sat outside the window, whole-heartedly agreed.

The whole day was spent throwing out the trash, fixing the door, disassembling the giant corkboard full of now irrelevant clues, and washing every surface that was sticky or slimy or dirty in any other way. They ordered takeout somewhere in the middle of that heroic feat and enjoyed it sitting in a circle right on the floor. Nothing was urgent; there were no deadlines to beat or people to protect. On that afternoon, they could just enjoy each other’s company and the total lack of any sort of phone calls.

Eventually the work day came to a close and the tasks were done and over with. Dirk was dusting the last two shelves in his office, and Mona was sited on the windowsill outside, a magpie among the crows.

“I’ll need some time off after all this,” Farah said, more to herself than to Todd, and leaned wearily against the nearest wall. “I did not realize a place this small could have so much dirt.”

“I need time off after the entire case,” Todd nodded in agreement.

“That too.”

“And I also need…” he hesitated, and looked at her, frowning slightly. “Hey, so I hope you don’t take this badly, but…”

“Yes?” Farah asked, and he could see the relief in her eyes immediately, which was enough for him to keep talking.

“I was thinking,” Todd said, “that we really are better off as friends.”

“Oh god, yes,” she breathed out, “sorry, I’m sorry if that sounded rude, I’ve just been thinking about this non-stop our entire drive from California.”

“Me too,” he exclaimed, “cause I was watching Roger and Lilly talk, and…”

“Yeah,” Farah nodded, smiling, “I thought, wow, I wish I had something like that. I wish I had a friend that close. And then I thought, isn’t that what we were trying to do? Cause we bonded so much while we were looking for Dirk… obviously, we’re close, obviously! But do you really want to be all romantic close, or do you want to be solid platonic with a bit more like, physical affection close.”

“Has to be second,” Todd smiled back, “cause I feel like, after that many attempts… if we keep trying to make this what it isn’t, we’ll just ruin what we already have.”

“Oh, thank you,” she muttered, and pulled Todd into a hug, “this was giving me so much anxiety, that exact worry, and you know I already have enough things to be anxious about.”

“Sure thing,” he told her, still holding on to the hug, “I need some time alone as well. Have more stuff to reconsider. Oh. You’re, um, you’re vibrating.”

“Sorry,” she broke the hug, blushing slightly, and pulled out her phone from her breast pocket. “That’s Tina. She must have woken up like an hour ago, that’s when she texts me the most.”

“You and Tina sure talk a lot.”

“Yeah,” Farah confirmed, already looking through the messages with a dreamy smile on her face. “We’re leaving, right? I’ll be in a car. Join me when you’re ready.”

And she walked out of the agency still reading through the texts on her phone.

Dirk emerged from his cabinet a couple minutes later, slightly out of breath and with a few chunks of dirt in his hair.

“That was a battle I was not prepared for,” he explained, and fell heavily onto the sofa. “I think I need some time to rest before we leave.”

“Sure,” Todd nodded, and took a cautious seat next to him. “Oh, you have some, uh,” he mumbled, pointing at Dirk’s hair.

“What?” Dirk asked.

Instead of trying to explain further, Todd reached forward and ran his finger’s through Dirk’s hair, removing all the dust.

“Done,” he commented, brushing his hands on the side of the sofa. “Uh, well, anyway… I just broke up with Farah. Again.”

“Oh I am so sorry Todd,” Dirk responded immediately, and it was very clear from his voice he was not that sorry, though definitely concerned and a little bit scared.

“It’s fine,” Todd assured him, “it was very amicable this time. We’ve decided we’re better as friends.”

“Well, that’s… better, I guess? Sorry, not very good at picking appropriate reactions for this sort of thing.”

“It’s fine. Just wanted to keep you informed. That I’m, you know, single. Completely.”

“Very valuable information,” Dirk replied, completely oblivious as to why the information was shared with him, “I will note that down. Todd Brotzman: completely single.”

“And you?”

“What about me?”

“Are you… single?”

“Very strange questions today, Todd,” Dirk gave out a single laugh, still utterly confused by the whole exchange, “but yes, unless I’ve had some memory loss which I wouldn’t know about anyway, I’m pretty sure I am single.”

“Right then,” Todd declared, jumping out from the couch as if it became scolding hot all of a sudden, “that’s all I wanted to say. Dinner then? Farah’s in the car already.”

“Wonderful,” Dirk agreed, “I am starving for some rice noodles.”

The door did not lock properly, but they did not bother with trying to get it secured. It had Mona to keep a look on it, as well as a whole family of crows and one decently well-fed rat.

And besides, even if someone were to break into Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency… what in the name of all that is queer could they possibly hope to steal?

8

“…what in the name of all that is queer could they possibly hope to steal?”

“There,” Friedkin beamed, closing the book in one swift motion and setting it down on the coffee table, “that is a much better ending.”

“Not a bad book either,” one of the other Friedkins agreed.

“No, it wasn’t, like, terrible,” original Friedkin agreed, “a bit longer than I thought it would be. Hate it when I am tricked into reading too many words.”

He fell back into his armchair, closed his eyes, and enjoyed the peace for a few moments. By any fair standard, he deserved a firm handshake and possibly even a congratulatory card. Definitely a card, he thought. After the amount of jumps it took him to end up back in his beloved house, with the library and the garden and the oh-so-comfortable armchairs, he was seriously in need of some rest.

“Let’s see what’s going on then,” Friedkin said to his other selves, then imagined up a tall glass of beer and poached the remote from the coffee table.

He flipped through the channels for a while, never stopping on any for longer than a few seconds. At some point he almost fancied watching a species on the planet of Krumlatar invent fire for the first time, then changed his mind. He had seen the invention of fire five times already and there’s only so much variety you can get out of a major civilizational milestone before they start getting repetitive.

“Fine then,” Friedkin sighed, “if this one is not cooperating… let’s check out some other ones.”

He got up from his armchair and walked up to a door that was not in his house before. The door opened, slowly, and a few of the Friedkins peered in, slowly. The room was a cellar.

And inside the cellar was a straight row, stretching for so long it was either infinite or just unimaginably large in number, of identical television sets showing different pictures.

“I mean,” Friedkin smiled, “…there’s got to be something interesting happening somewhere… right?”