Somehow, news seemed to have gotten around before there even was any news. Teddy had long since grown used to it; the edges of the blasted lands were a tight-knit bunch of weirdos, and they all wanted to know anything that was going on, for better or worse. It meant that Teddy never had any problem selling off his junk, because everyone knew when he had something to sell, often before he was really sure himself.

For all anyone knew, this whole event could have been nothing, with the Administrator coming and going and saying nothing to anyone. Still a crowd of hundreds had gathered around the gate to Teddy's well-defended little yard, and they were restless already. There was no bloodshed, not that Teddy could see, but there was also no easy path through the crowd. They were all staring, and they had every right.

It was centuries since anyone saw a human being fly. Out here, even with all the work Teddy had done at reclaiming old technology, it was rare to see anything fly. Hover, yes, but the monsters that made the world into madness would attack anything they saw. If you couldn't keep them from seeing you... you were in trouble. They might even chase you out of the wastes and into the sane world.

It had not happened in an age, and most people were eager to make sure it would never happen again.

Teddy slowed to a stop well short of the crowd, and the Administrator surveyed the gathered people for a long minute, then looked up at Elaine. "Would you please give us a lift into the compound?"

Elaine looked at the administrator, then the crowd. She gave a thoughtful toss of her head, then said "Sure." On her feet, the sandals that Teddy had not noticed were gone reappeared, and she set down next to the hover sled.

Then she picked it up, with both of them still aboard. As though the two people and large steel machine weighed nothing, she lifted back up off the ground, over the heads of everyone, and inside. Her movements were awkward, to be sure, but she showed no hesitation or uncertainty. Like her, the Administrator seemed unconcerned.

Teddy, of course, was scared out of his mind. He clutched the steering as tightly as he would if the woman was shaking it trying to knock him off, and every time she shifted the sled in her arms, he gave a pathetic little whimper.

Teddy had faced nightmare monsters, and he would again, but this? This was crazy. She was holding them up with her hands! Even knowing that it was technology, and hover fields, and... something, it was still crazy!

Crazy though it might have been, both Elaine and the Administrator kept their cool, unaffected facades from the beginning to the end. When the hover sled touched down and Teddy was free to release his rigid, unyielding grip on the steering column, he discovered he was the only one in the compound who was freaking out.

The others, somehow, looked on in awe, as though it were a miracle and not a sign of madness and the end of the world. To keep himself from hyperventilating, Teddy took a series of ever-slower breaths and tried to calm his shaking hands. He found himself pacing, which wasn't uncommon for him, and eventually got his heart rate under control.

By that time, the Administrator and Elaine had decided to take up purchase on Teddy's single most prized possession: a couch he had dug out of a long-buried furniture store. It had taken months to get all the fine sand out of the synthetic stuffing and re-fill all the cushions, and it was his proudest accomplishment as a scrapper. Unlike too many of his wares, no blood had been spilled to get it; it was just a monument to hard work and dedication.

It felt weird that they didn't even ask, but then, both of them came from worlds where such furniture was not uncommon.

Somehow, Teddy was a lot less surprised that either Elaine or the Administrator had also made a tea set--complete with hot, steaming, fresh tea--on a little end table appear out of nowhere. Teddy was not completely unfamiliar with tea, and might have had a stock of fresh leaves somewhere around, but he certainly didn't have a sterling silver teapot or white ceramic cups with little flowers on the side, and that table...

Actually, the table was probably his. A glance around found that it had been moved out of the corner. There, too, was his box of tea on the counter. So presumably just the tea set and some boiling water, which was reasonable for people who could fly and tear holes in space.

So Teddy, now far calmer, set himself down on the far end of the couch, where he wouldn't be brushing up against either of the two women, and graciously accepted a teacup from--Teddy dropped the hot tea into his lap when he realized that Elaine Many was both sitting on the couch next to him and also standing there pouring tea.

Archons made no sense. None. It simply wasn't possible.

Elaine turned on the couch and smiled at him. "Sorry," she said. "I guess you haven't seen anything like that before, have you?" Without pausing, she continued the conversation with the tea-serving Elaine, who was picking up the teacup he had just dropped. "It's just my ability--multiple bodies, same mind, with a bunch of equipment I can call up if needed. Very useful, especially in war, although it does have its own... peculiar vulnerabilities." The sitting Elaine, who had been taking a sip of tea in the meantime, gave him a wry smile and continued, "It does however come with all sorts of benefits, not the least of which is being able to confuse the ever-loving hell out of people."

The administrator sipped her tea silently. Teddy thought she might have been either blushing or trying not to laugh. He didn't look too closely.

"I have to ask," said Elaine suddenly, pointing to the oval archway and the racks upon racks of scavenged equipment, "how did you come by all this? Some of it certainly seems to be... if not made by Blackhat City, certainly of their tech level. Are you a scavenger?"

Teddy was very pleased that he managed to neither spill his tea nor enter another panic attack. He had been forced to field questions like this a number of time, just never... from a victim. "Yes, I am a scavenger," he said. "I find..." he paused, trying to find a euphemism where he hopefully wouldn't need to spell things out. "...decommissioned archons and recover the technology used to create them."

That made Elaine freeze in place. The standing Elaine glanced over at the Administrator, but she was neither shocked nor disapproving. In fact, she removed her sunglasses--Teddy had never known one to do that--so that Elaine could clearly see her eyes.

"We are aware of his activities," the administrator said quietly. "As far as we are aware, he has caused no suffering nor harm to anyone. An... oversight of previous generations mean that archon bodies were preserved when..." she paused to rephrase what she was saying. "Archon bodies, as you know, rebuild themselves. The Blackhat organization, erroneously, believed that they had accounted for all possible ways of mentally killing Archons, and whenever it detected a braindead archon, it would destroy the body. The event, the... apocalypse you could call it, proved them wrong. It mentally killed archons worldwide, and yet the death was not detected. As such, their bodies remain to this day, much as yours did."

"And you loot the corpses." Elaine's voice was suddenly hard and full of disapproval.

Teddy would not have been able to respond to that comment, but the administrator did. "It is the view of our organization, the Administrators, that Teddy Helmann is doing a service both to the people of his world, and to the dead archons whom he is scavenging from. He has been respectful of the dead in ways that others, I assure you, have not." She matched standing Elaine's stare evenly. "I know this is a shock, but I do not personally believe that he deserves any disrespect."

Both copies of Elaine turned away from the person they were watching, and both seemed to be lost in thought. After a minute, standing Elaine set down the teapot and vanished, leaving only the one sitting on the couch.

"How many have been found?" Elaine's voice wasn't on edge anymore, just... introspective?

"Alive? A few were found within the first century. To my knowledge, there hasn't been another since then." The administrator took another sip of her tea. "Ciddia would know for sure. This is good tea, by the way."

A silence fell that lasted several minutes. Teddy couldn't help himself from looking away, but when he finally looked up, he found Elaine staring at him. He matched her gaze, trying not to think about how he had butchered her half-naked body with a knife.

"I suppose I ought to meet her," said Elaine out of nowhere. "She's still the same Ciddia, right? From back then?"

"Yes," replied the administrator, as she reapplied her sunglasses with one hand and set the tea aside with the other. "She is ancient. Older, I suppose, than you are."

Elaine laughed as she stood. "Far older than me, girl. The Blackhats were around for centuries before I got there. I'm just a soldier who got lucky."

Teddy looked at her, in her thin shirt, knee-length pants, and sandals, and wondered how she could immediately and unironically call herself a soldier.

The administrator simply reached for her bracelet and pressed a button, and a portal ripped open in a bit of open space. She stood and moved next to it, clearly waiting for Elaine to go first.

Elaine paused just at the entrance and looked back at Teddy for what seemed like a very long time. "I forgive you," she said out of nowhere, before stepping through the portal. Before Teddy could respond, the Administrator followed, and the portal closed with an electric zipping sound.

Teddy alone for a long moment before he realized they had left the tea set behind. He hurried to grab it and put it away before someone decided to make off with it; among all the other problems he was having, he didn't need or want to think that such a precious gift was going to be stolen out from under his nose.