THEN: LATE APRIL, 2015

It started with the dreams.

Wendy sat and typed, trying to keep the conversation going with her coworkers in the Department of Ed. The ones that survived, anyway. She encouraged them to use Skype and some of them were looking into using Zoom, which was only a few years old and not that great. Mostly it was just email and some chatting on Facebook, which wasn’t a good idea, since that meant people were looking at Facebook.

Trying to come up with equity programs and school curricula and school year schedules was hard right now. Everybody was starting to panic again, not just about bombs from the sky, but about politics. There still wasn’t a president or a federal government, three months out. It took three months for the RNC and DNC to re-form enough to start leading the national parties. The Republicans held a disjointed primary with an incredibly low voter turnout and somehow nominated Donald Trump for president. The DNC was still trying to find someone in the cabinet, what was left of it, to take over. Several surviving Under-Secretaries were petitioned to declare themselves Secretary and thus become President-Elect by default, but none of them were jumping at the opportunity. A lot of them were in hiding. Most folks were concerned that the aliens would simply nuke a new seat of government as soon as it was declared, anyway, so why try again? State governors were still holding off sending new Senators or holding House elections out of the same fears.

No checks were coming to pay salaries, so most of the federal employees were working without pay, which meant they were starting to quit. The more Wendy argued to just hang on, the more people grumbled and discussed which state government they were considered moving to. Even her boss, the Under-Secretary of Education, seemed to be absent most days. He and Wendy had been lucky to be in the N.Y.C. office when the probes hit D.C. Now he just talked about everyone he knew back in Washington that was gone. He was lost.

Wendy continued to try to hold it together.

The hardest part of trying to keep working, though, were the dreams. Ever since Andrew brought home that silly pendant from the Bird Labs a month ago, her dreams had taken a turn. She didn’t even want the damn thing, but Andrew was so sweet, and it meant a lot to him. Wendy had gotten used to tolerating a lot of things that mildly annoyed her over the years - the way Andrew called her Gwen (he hated ‘Wendy’), which she never cared for, for example. The way he referred to her style choices as “the Wiccan stuff”. His casual dismissal of her bisexuality as something that was a college flirtation, even though she had had girlfriends when he met her. He never really got it.

She wore the hex pendant when he was around, to be nice. Nice. She had been a rebel when she was younger - coming out to her parents, goth on some weekends, doing rituals in her bedroom and leaving the melted wax and spell books she got from the library everywhere, and eventually academia (surprisingly rebellious for her Irish Catholic family!) Now she was trying to be nice. Her relationship was nice, and stable, and stability was a good thing to have these days.

The dreams suggested otherwise. It started with dreams of exploring. Her in a maze. Walking through an old house that never ended, or that had repeating rooms. A lot of the rooms looked like the den in her parent’s old Princeton house that doubled as a library. It had started as a second living room, but over the years she had packed the knickknacks and bought and stored books. It started with language books - French and Latin which she took in school, and then German and Russian and books about language and then books about books about languages. Feminist theory (which she buried in the back, so her parents wouldn’t make comments.) Comparative religions.

The dreams featured other libraries, too. The one at Uni (mostly languages, gender theory and world cultures.) The small one in Andrew’s Princeton house they shared (Kabbalistic studies, Wicca, theory of language, some mathematics, information theory that Andrew used.) The smaller one that was basically a wall of a bathroom in the shore house on L.B.I. (fantasy, and a mix of everything else.) The government ones in D.C. when she was there.

Some of the libraries she didn’t recognize. Some of them looked like her mind was creating them out of articles she read - places overseas she had never visited. Ones in fantasy books she read about. Not a lot of digital ones - which was funny since most of her research was online these days. Mostly paper, and chalkboards, and stuff written on leather and skins she couldn’t identify.

As the dreams intensified she found she was wearing it more and more. Something in her mind was responding to it, and she found herself unconsciously rubbing it during the day, when she was stressed or tired. Andrew was delighted to see her wearing it. She didn’t really understand it. She had questioned him a few times at first that it didn’t have QEM in it or some other material, but he said no. Her brain got logy when she didn’t wear it… so it was easier to just wear it.

All the time.

-

“Gwen, you sure you don’t want to go?” Andrew asked for the third time. “The weather is nice, and you don’t have to live in the Bird labs. You can stay in the house. ”

“Nothing’s open. It’s the off-season,” she said. She glanced down at her sketchbook and picked up a pencil.

“That’s not true. There’s a lot of people there now because of the event. Some of the restaurants opened back up. There’s… uh… mini-golf.”

Wendy sketched something idly next to her laptop while she listened to him. It was sort of a Kabbalistic language rune, but lately she had been connecting how so much of language - especially written language - was just deep structures in the brain expressing themselves. Concepts, universal ones, appeared in language independently. The brain self-organized to accept and process those concepts. Maybe an evolutionary mutation that made the brain receptive to outside information theory? In any event, it seemed (to her) like it wasn’t a coincidence that this letter combination for Gevurah, the Kabbalistic fifth Sefirot which vaguely stood for Judgment, looked some of the Egyptian glyphs for the judgment of the dead, if they were all… kinda… mashed together and rotated in three dimensions.

“Gwen? You there?”

“Sorry,” Wendy said, looking up at him. He had a suitcase and his laptop bag. Ready to go. “I’m just… sort of wrapped up in this stuff.”

Andrew craned over to look. “That doesn’t look like D of E work. More drawings?”

Gwen moved her papers around, self-conscious now. “I just get ideas sometimes. It’s something about language theory. I might publish it when things settle down. But-” she said, gesturing at the laptop, “it’s just not a good time, Andy. I’ve barely got anybody responding to anything. The Under-Secretary is still awol in New York. If he doesn’t respond soon, I may need to go in.”

Andrew shuffled, looking uncomfortable at that. “I’d prefer you didn’t. A big population center like the city, more government... It sounds like D.C. all over again.”

“Did you get that from the wreckage?” she said, drawing the next symbol, and linking it to the first one. That looked right, she thought.

“We’re not getting anything from the wreckage about politics yet.”

“I won’t go to New York, if it makes you feel better. Besides, I invited Xeniya over for lunch.”

“Mmm. That’s nice.” Andrew looked around awkwardly. He wasn’t exactly comfortable around Professor Raptis. She was another academic at Princeton (materials engineering) and, well, everybody knew everybody there, and the two of them met at a function and just hit it off. Xeniya kept inviting Gwen to the Hispanic clubs she ran, which didn’t make sense to Andrew - Gwen was mostly Irish, and Xeniya was only half Hispanic (the other half was Greek, supposedly.) She didn’t seem as cerebral as Gwen anyway - she preferred to spend her free time researching blacksmithing, primitive alloy making, digging up dirt and smelting... all very dirty. She also had a bit of a predatory look when it came to Gwen, but Andrew wasn’t worried about that. Gwen was married, and her experimental days behind her.

Wendy stood up and gave him a hug, then pulled back to smile. “I’ll be fine. The cell networks have been working OK. You can call if something big happens, right?”

Andrew nodded. “We’re doing some big deconstruction and there’s a lot of quarantining materials because of the QEM. I’m probably going to be there for a couple of weeks. If you stay, you have to fend off Mrs. Wills. You sure?”

Wendy rolled her eyes. Mrs. Wills was the widow next door who liked to stop by every couple of days. She was a nosy little so-and-so, and didn’t approve of Wendy’s dress, ‘wiccan stuff’, or alternative friends. She only stopped by when she needed someone to deal with the garbage which was something she felt was beneath her. She also called Wendy ‘Gwen’, too, no matter how many times she corrected her.

Wendy shrugged. “I’m OK. If things with the department continue to go sour, I’ll let you know.” Wendy wasn’t trying to rush him out, she hoped he felt. Be cool, girl, she thought to herself. I’m definitely not rushing you out because Xeniya’s coming over. Or because I’d rather work on this than talk to you. Hmm.

“OK. Love you, Gwen.” He grabbed his stuff and made it to the front door and then looked back into the kitchen, half-smiling at her. Wendy waved back. “Love you too, babe,” she said.

Andrew left. Wendy figured she’d be in the shower before he was down the stairs to get ready, but she thought about something she missed in the drawing, and went back to sketching. Once Xeniya got there, instead of the usual five minutes, she had to really pry Wendy away from her work, so it took almost half an hour to get to the fucking.

-

Afterwards, when Xeniya wanted to get more comfortable and finally pulled off her sweater completely, Wendy noticed the choker with the hex on it. She hadn’t noticed it before, because in her lust she had just pushed clothing out of the way without taking them off to get to what she wanted, which was mostly tits. Wendy’s sexuality when it came to men preferred the brainy, soft types; but when it came to women her desires was pretty much “perpetually horny fourteen year old boy”, a fact her close friends who knew her leanings teased her about.

Once Xeniya finally unbunched and peeled the sweater and bra off, though, Wendy noticed it, and pointed it out. Xeniya looked down in its direction, but she couldn’t see it past her chin.

“Yeah,” Xeniya said, hooking it with a finger. “Hex fasteners. I know a few people with friends at the Bird Labs who got them one. I really want to try and get it apart and see what’s inside, but I assume someone’s gonna do that soon enough. You notice anything unusual about it?”

“Not exactly,” Wendy said. She wasn’t sure now was the time to mention the dreams, or where her mind was wandering… Right now, in fact. There was a Celtic rune she was now thinking of that had the right geometry to fit into her judgment drawing, which sort of combined the Moon Spirit, but really linked back to the kabbalistic Chokhmah which powers the energies of creation, but in the feminine, which has the same geometry as -

“Two weeks, huh,” Xeniya mused. “I oughta bring an overnight bag, hmm?”

It has the same number of vertices, Wendy thought, and they connect up here, she thought, drawing in the air -

“Hey?” Xeniya interrupted, waving a hand in front of Wendy’s face. “You there? You went away again.”

“Sorry,” Wendy said. “I’m just… my brain’s looping on some work thing.”

“Wow,” said Xeniya, lying back, arms over her head. “It must be something pretty big. I’ve never seen you tear your eyes away from these, huh.” She playfully smiled.

Hmm, Wendy thought. It must be something big.

-

As the days passed, between trying to email her boss, meetings on Skype, and sex with Xeniya (who hadn’t moved in after all but still came round daily for the sex), Wendy worked on her project. It wasn’t simply work. She thought it was compulsion at first, but it eventually didn’t feel like that, either.

It was more like - certain concepts and connections just seemed to come easier. Which led to more connections and more concepts, which made it exciting to keep working on it. She would just look at things, and for some reason she was more sensitive to seeing things. Seeing patterns. Seeing shapes. Writing them made them more real; sometimes drawing them in the air helped.

For someone else this would all have been suspect, but for Wendy, well… she was used to ritual, after all. She had Wiccan practices and spellbooks that she sometimes used. She used to think of it more as a meditation but she was seeing connections there, too. Even the Catholic rituals from her childhood: the way she used to cross herself, she could see how it connected, if you wanted to put the geometry together.

The point where it all “got serious” was when she was working on a certain Viking rune, Teiwaz, the upward arrow, the mark for authority. She could see the link between it and Malkhut, the bottom of the Sefirot, which also represents authority, and in proto-Hebrew had an arrow-like symbol. Neither was exactly right, in her way of thinking, since they missed the necessary linkage back to the will, Keter, or possibly this Futhark rune that would fit. It was like there were constants that people tried to make real through picture and intention, and sometimes people sensitive enough got a glimpse.

She had spent a day drawing, and plotting, and doing geometry, and researching, and doing mind-clearing rituals where she meditated on it, and drawing it in the air, and during one of the drawings after she drew it, she could swear a few strokes of it left an after-image in her vision for a few seconds. She continued, improving, until after one pass…

…the whole symbol remained in the air, glowing, then fading out.

After the shock wore off, Wendy did it again a few times. It took a few tries to bring it back. Further refinements had it stay longer. She also found she could give it a little push, and it would gently float forward.

She clutched the hex pendant, thinking. Wendy wasn’t stupid. She knew all of this started when she had started wearing it. There had to be a connection. For now, though, maybe a test.

There was a knock from the door and she heard the tentative squeaky “Hello? Is Andrew there? I need some help with my garbage cans?” from Mrs. Wills.

Definitely a test.

-

“Hi, Mrs. Wills,” Wendy said, smiling as best she could from the top step, looking down the two steps at Mrs. Wills. “Andrew’s back in Holgate.” She waved one hand, a long “hello” wave. Not exactly subtle, but she needed her hand up in front of her. This would take some getting used to. She flicked out an Authority, tethered to a Crown, looped back to her own name in Futhark, then gave the whole thing a push so it floated down to the widow.

“Oh, hello Gwen. Um… It’s just that the cans, you know. I could use some help.” As Wendy watched, the barely visible and glowing icon came down and just sort of sunk into Mrs. Wills, right below her throat. The widow didn’t react - didn’t see it, didn’t notice anything. She sort of jumped slightly, but didn’t seem to notice she had even done that.

Well, here goes, Wendy thought. She flicked another down while speaking. “Emma,” Wendy said, “it’s probably best if you take your own garbage down, now, don’t you think? It’s good exercise.”

Mrs. Wills eyes flicked down to the cans in confusion, then back at Wendy. “Oh… well. That’s…uh. That’s an interesting thought…”

Wendy frowned and did it again, drawing it a little bigger this time. “I really think it’s a good idea. I think people would be impressed if you did it yourself.”

This time when the rune hit, Mrs. Wills’ face brightened up a bit. “Oh my. That’s just what I was thinking. It would be impressive.”

Another rune. “Also, if you don’t mind, I like to be called Wendy.”

“Oh..I…I always preferred Wendy. It’s a much nicer name.”

Watching the widow dragging her own cans, smiling, Wendy had a brief moment of introspection about what had just happened. Once you got past the world-shattering implications, this would need a lot more study before she could share it. There was the ethical consideration of what she just did…

On the other hand, she had spellbooks upstairs that were basically the same thing - spells to get someone to love you, or to invite good fortune, or good business, or health. All of it was basically asking the universe for stuff. Not that much different from what she had just done (except this was the first magic that had quantifiably worked, of course.)

“I’m only going to do good,” she said out loud to herself. She nodded.

“I’m going to help.”

She went back inside and got on the phone with the N.Y. Department of Education office. Surprisingly, the Under-Secretary had come in today, another positive sign from the universe, Wendy thought.

-

A week later, Andrew got a call while he was elbow deep in disassembling some kind of solid-state data storage, then a text saying it was urgent, from Wendy. He trotted out to the open air to take the call.

“That’s…incredible,” he said, a minute after listening to her very excited, breathless speech. “He stepped down! And he made you Under-Secretary? Is that even possible? And then that makes you Secretary? I thought the Under-Secretary and… uh… the Deputy and the Secretary was a presidential appointment?”

“They are,” she replied. “And once he made me Under-Secretary, and with both the senior roles deceased, they just all promoted me up, and I appointed a new Deputy and Under-Sec. So yeah, I guess I’m acting Secretary now. I mean, everybody in the department voted on it. I guess at some point when we have a Congress they can ratify it or replace me. And he announced that he was resigning anyway, so somebody had to step up. He said he wanted to spend more time with his family.”

“I thought he and his wife were having problems,” Andrew said, frowning.

“Well, I said this would be a good time to work things out with his wife, and he agreed, and he stepped down! It does mean I have to go into the city a few days a week, and I know you don’t like that, but we can talk more when you get home.”

“Wow.” Andrew paced around the area in front of the compsci tent, considering. “The funny thing is… I mean, as Secretary, that puts you technically in the line of succession for President.”

“Does it?” her voice on the line said, innocently. “I hadn’t thought of that.”