***3 years later***

“And so, having vanquished his enemies most thoroughly, Clifford the big red dog set about stabilizing the monarchy by fragmenting the power wielded by his vassals, such that no one else could threaten his rule ever again! The end!”

“What’s ‘Vankish’ mean?” Seraphine asked just as Perry arrived, carefully stacking wooden blocks. Gareth was in Gramma’s lap, peering intently at the images of brutal conquest, if the cover with Clifford in Manitian regalia was to be believed.

“van-quish means…” Gramma met Perry’s gaze, and honest-to-God, looked a little bit sheepish. “It means ‘won’t cause problems anymore’.”

“Okay. AAAAH!” Seraphine let out a shriek and smacked the tower of blocks with all her might, sending them scattering across the room.

“Okay, hope you guys had a good visit with great Gramma,” Perry said, shaking his head at the old witch, his tone disconnected from his expression.

Trying the same shit she did with me.

“…but it’s time to go home.”

“FIVE MORE MINUTES!” Seraphine shouted at the top of her lungs while Gareth seemed to retreat deeper into Gramma’s lap, pulling the book up behind him like a snail closing its door.

Perry heaved a breath. The twins didn’t get to see their great grandma very often. They had two moms normally, and two grandmas waiting in the wings to shower them with affection…Although, Nat’s mom is kind of my last choice.

“Alright, five minutes, and then we go. Agreed?” Perry asked, holding an egg-timer from gramma’s kitchen.”

Seraphine grunted, going back to her blocks.

“Sera, look at me, five minutes, then we go. I need you to agree or we’re going right now. Five minutes, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Gareth?”

“…Kay,” emanated from behind the book covering Gareth’s face.

Perry set the timer and sat down in front of Sera. If he could get Sera to walk out the door under her own power instead of screaming and bawling, that would be a win.

Perry helped Sera make towers so she could knock ‘em down. He’d long since learned to only make them good enough to get knocked down. She wasn’t looking for wonders of engineering. Maybe when she was older, she’d appreciate something that could stand under its own power.

Or maybe she’d just enjoy knocking down bigger things.

“How have you been, Paradox?” Gramma asked.

“Oh, you know, same old, same old. I’ve been trying to get some Industrial Tinkers to move over to Manita to make rebuilding the capital go way faster, but as soon as they lose internet, electricity, and plumbing, they back out.

Not to mention, other Manitians have a thing about letting Earth humans on their turf. they think they’ll steal the planet from them, so the attitude is…unfriendly.”

“Can’t you do anything?”

“Yes, but I can’t do everything,” Perry said. “Part of the selling point is Manitians retaking their own homeland, and I’ll be damned if I carry an entire society’s infrastructure on my shoulders.”

Perry paused between tower knock-downs.

“That being said, Manitians are starting to take civil engineering classes in droves. There’s also a swell in demand for synthetic symbiotes.”

Gramma scoffed. “The power of kings in the hands of the rabble. What could go wrong?”

“You know as well as I do that that’s a strawman argument,” Perry replied. “I control what’s in them. It’s basically the same as leasing out heavy machinery. Sure they could do some property damage with it, but one super would be able to handle them easily.”

It was mostly achieved by throttling the speed of operation. The construction synthetics packed a lot of telekinetic punch, but they could only move at a couple feet per second. The concrete slurry summoning had high volume, low pressure.

Gramma didn’t look happier.

“You’re just mad because some kinds of magic are going to become pedestrian. You don’t have to worry. All the really good stuff is going to stay ours.”

“Paradox, I’m…proud of you.” Gramma forced out, causing Perry to do a double take. “You’ve done more in a few years than I have in a lifetime.”

That must’ve been painful to admit.

“Have you tested the twins’ Attunement yet?” She asked. “We have to maintain the strength of the bloodline and I would like to know which of them I should be doting on. I have my suspicions, but haven’t tested them myself out of respect.”

There she is.

“You will dote on both of them equally or I swear to god…” Perry said, brandishing his backhand.

“Or else Daddy’ll vankish you, Gramma.” Sera said, imitating his gesture.

While they spoke, Gareth climbed down from grandma’s lap and started making his own tower. He didn’t seem to understand that a bigger tower needed a wider base, just stacking one on top of another, but at least he seemed determined to make it to the ceiling, wobbling on his tiptoes as he tried to make it reach.

Sera lunged over and smashed Gareth’s tower.

There was a moment of stunned silence.

The egg timer went off right as Gareth started crying uncontrollably, scraping the blocks together with his arms while ugly-crying like a man who’d lost his life’s work.

“Time to go!” Sera said, taking the opportunity to shirk responsibility, heading for the door while her brother suffered a total meltdown.

Awesome.

It took a while to calm Gareth down and explain to Sera why she shouldn’t break her brother’s things. Perry was pretty sure it went in one ear and out the other, but that didn’t mean they should stop trying.

Perry took their hands and led them out of gramma’s clinic. If the twins were bothered by all the fantasy creatures staring at them, they didn’t show it.

It’s a bit different when you grow up getting stared at, Perry thought as they stepped out into the street.

“One moment,” Perry muttered, letting go of Seraphine’s hand and raising his fingertips, allowing the Essence to flow.

Portal.EXE

37.872115 -122.263442 / Current Location

Normally he would’ve named it after the original spell creator, but Perry had pared the spell down to the scientific bare essentials, only doing exactly what it needed to do. There was no simpler form it could take, no maker’s flourish of glowing rims added.

It was just Portal.

The distortion in spacetime snapped into place, showing the outside view of his lab as if it were right in front of them.

“We’re not going home?” Gareth asked.

“No, your mom’s aren’t home right now,” Perry said. “They’ve got all sorts of prep work to do now that The Tide’s on the way in again. They’ll be back later tonight, so we’ll spend a couple hours at work, then meet them at home.

“Have Eugene watch us!” Sera suggested.

“Eugene is a biomechanical combat drone designed to…vanquish with extreme prejudice, and he’s younger than both of you. So no, I’m not having Eugene babysit.”

“Boo.”

“You might see a dragon.” Perry said with a shrug.

“OOOH!”

Whatever Sera was about to say was cut off by the sudden booming voice that vibrated the world around them.

“Attention, people of Earth, we come in peace.”

Perry glanced up and spotted hundreds of chunky landing craft wobbling down to the ground, speakers blaring a pre-recorded message at ear-piercing volume.

We are the Descendants of Armstrong. For two generations, we have lived in peace on the moon. However, five years ago, our genetic recombinator ceased to function, and without a Specialist capable of repairing or replacing it, we found ourselves facing a crisis. An extinction event that will see our people dwindle to nothing.

But the eldest among us have heard tales of our founder’s origin. Of a place known at ‘Earth’, where there are beings known as ‘women,’ who are able to create life.

“The moon needs women!” the speakers blasted out as the low-tech landers set down on the ground and people in faceless space-suits began filing out, wobbling shakily before toppling over and floundering under Earth’s extreme gravity.

“Uuuuuugh,” Perry groaned, rubbing his forehead.

“Something wrong, Daddy?” Gareth asked, eyeballing the space-suits desperately trying to stand.

“Nah, somebody else will deal with it,” Perry said with a shrug. “It just shows that we’re close to High Tide. It’s like the weather itself becomes Weirdness.”

“Sir, you can’t park flying craft here,” A local policewoman said, trying to help the moonlanders to their feet.

“Thank you sir,” The lead suit said through its speakers, panting with effort. “Can you direct us to one or more females of reproductive age?”

“Sir, the atmospheric pressure on this planet is incredible! These readings are like nothing I’ve ever seen! It’s almost identical to our suits!” One of the suits said, holding an old-timey gauge.

“Keep it professional, Jenkins,” the shaky leader of the expedition said. “It’s normal for them. Just focus on the mission at hand.”

“Right. Women.”

“Hand out the artist renditions. We’ll start the search. Hopefully we can find some and convince them to come back to moonbase with us by the end of the day.”

With his perfect eyesight, Perry made out a series of crude stick-figures with big circle-boobies being passed around.

The policewoman looked around helplessly, her gaze locking on Perry, who was obviously magic, standing in front of a portal wearing a Manitian long vest covered in enchantments.

‘Help me,’ she mouthed desperately.

‘you got this,’ Perry mouthed back, giving her a double thumb’s-up.

Unless these guys had tinker-tech, then they weren’t a threat to anybody. And that meant the ball was in the Franklin City Police Department’s court….regardless of how weird it was.

They were far too weak to kidnap anyone.

Matter of fact, Perry was pretty sure they wouldn’t be getting out of Earth’s gravity-well in landers like that.

“Alright, let’s get out of here before we get caught up in their bullsh…damnit,” Perry muttered as he noticed Sera wasn’t where he left her.

“Why are you wearing puffy…umm…all-over coats?” She asked, tugging on the sleeve of one of the teetering moonlanders, who nearly fell on her under the added strain.

“Well, young man, it’s because-“

“Yes, that’s all well and good,” Perry said snatching up Sera, “but we have places to be.”

“I wanna talk to the weird people!” Sera shouted, beating her fists against Perry’s shoulder.

“Too bad, you broke your brother’s tower, so no moon-weirdos for you today,” Perry said, hoisting the howling girl over his shoulder and heading through the portal.

An instant later, they were in San Francisco, outside his lab, with an inconsolable Seraphine and quiet Gareth.

Perry tossed a scrap of meat to Eugene, who devoured it in a single gulp, watching the three of them enter with its predatory gaze.

They wove through the cluttered hall full of Perry’s creations, suspended in preserving fluid. The suspended creature grew cruder as they walked down the hallway, the new giving way to the oldest versions as they walked.

Bio-tinker offered a huge bonus to creating living things, but it was still insanely difficult to create life from whole cloth.

Not modifying DNA and injecting it into an egg.

Making the whole thing from scratch.

“Hey, Perry,” a voice called out, belonging to an older researcher that Perry had gotten to know fairly well over the past three years.

“Check this out,” Leo said, holding up his phone and showing Perry a video of a guy with a weird leather outfit shaking hands with one of Tyranus’s diplomats, with the subtitle: ‘First commercial air travel route opens between Eternal empire and Australia.’

“I’ll do you one better,” Perry said as they passed by “Look up ‘Moon landing, Franklin City,”

“What are you-oh, whaaat?” Leo took off his glasses and squinted at his phone.

“That’s Pre-High-Tide for ya,” Perry said with a shrug.

“I guess, damn.” Leo said, frowning at the video making it’s way across the internet only minutes after the landing. “Think it’s a hoax?”

“I don’t really care one way or another,” Perry said with a shrug. “I got my own shi-“ He glanced down at Sera and Gareth playing with paperclips.

“Stuff to deal with.”

Perry was sure acclimatizing a city of all-male astronauts who’d been stranded on the moon for sixty years and had never seen a woman in their entire lives to life on Earth would be a great romp for some newbie heroes. Good plot for a romantic comedy even, fully of wacky misunderstandings and misadventures.

Best let newbies have their wacky misadventures, Perry thought, herding his kids into his office, pausing to stare at the swirling hologram above his desk.

A sparkling galaxy, lazily spinning in the air, shone down on him with faint blue light.

Perry’s 3-D Map of Essences.

Perry had thought it would be the culmination of his career in magical science, but honestly, it was the jumping-off point.

Beneath the hologram was a package from Tyrannus, with a note attached.

Finally got a sample. Don’t ask how. I’m sure we’re both excited to see where it falls on the Map. Enjoy.

Inside the package was a box. Inside the box was a plastic sample tube wrapped in E-nullifying tape.

inside the tube was a tiny pinch of white powder.

Perry dipped a finger in it and tasted it, flying in the face of common knowledge not to put random white powders in your mouth.

“Yep, definitely not anthrax,” Perry muttered.

Unicorn horn.

Perry frowned, rolling the flavor around in his mouth as the Taste Perk decoded the genetic makeup of a unicorns and their powerful abilities.

There was something else…something that triggered a deep memory.

“Dave?”