Two problems left.

First, the one she assigned me. I look at the impostors. According to the readouts on the machine, they should be unconscious for another thirty minutes or so, Good enough. I lower the glass wall of the isolation chamber. 

Woah. I can feel the Depths calling, even through the shield I put around the rip. It’s not too bad—nothing I can’t ignore, for now—and I’ll need that power soon. I place each of the sleeping bodies in one of the booths they’d used for the transfers (and for the monster injections, for that matter). With a couple of minor tweaks, they become suspended animation chambers, and something more.

That done, I turn back to the rip. It’s invisible, but it’s beautiful. I open a small hole in the shield I put around it, and tease out a string of the substance of the Depths. I instantly start splitting into more of me. Too much. Too much.The universe doesn’t need even more of me. I narrow it to a thread. That, I can handle. Barely.

After a quick test of the available power, I return to my favorite of the six remaining identical consoles. Wow this is easy. While I can focus enough to do so, I make some more adjustments to the remaining machinery.

—--

Each of the impostors wakes up to find themself standing in a room with mirrored walls. After a moment, their reflection begins speaking to them.

“You’ve done some horrible things,” I say. I’m using their own trick to talk to them. It seems only fair. “It’s not fair that children were left here. It’s not fair that your world was destroyed. But that doesn’t justify the lives you’ve taken, or those you tried to take.”

Some of them try to justify themselves. A couple break down crying. Two plead for mercy. Three stand impassively.

“I’m giving each of you a choice,” I say. “I’ve disabled all the machinery that would let you reach outside of this world. I’ve made sure that there’s enough food to last for another sixty years.”

Several of them wail at the idea of being stuck here for the rest of their lives, this time with no hope of ever leaving. Three of them curse at me, one of them very creatively.

“That’s one choice. You can stay here, and live out your lives such as they are. A life sentence seems more than fair considering what you’ve done.”

Excuses. Cursing. I wait for the responses to die down before I offer them a solution much like one Parker offered herself not too long ago.

“I’ve looked at your records. You weren’t always like this. When you were my age, I think you were all decent people. Those are the people I’m offering this second choice to. If you choose, you’ll be sixteen again. In all ways. You won’t remember anything since then. And then I’ll find you a home.”

Several of them argue that both of those things are impossible. I don’t bother responding. I just wait them out. One of them says something very familiar to me.

“You’re asking us to commit suicide!” She says.

“I’m not asking you to do anything. I’m offering you the chance to give a gift to your sixteen-year-old self. To trade your life for hers.”

There’s more cursing. More crying. I let them see each other in the mirrors and discuss it among themselves. Eight of them fairly quickly decide on option two.The other four try to argue them out of it, but their minds seem to be made up. It seems like the thought of being left here forever with even fewer people for company is starting to sway the others.

Finally, all but two of them have chosen option two. I isolate them all again and address just the first of those two. From what I’ve gathered, he’s been their leader for the last fifteen years or so. The whole body theft plan was his idea.

“Are you sure this is the choice you want to make? You’ll never leave here.”

He launches into a stream of profanity. 

I leave his reflection staring at him and move on to the last of them. It’s the fourth member of our girl band. The one whose body Parker didn’t bother to put back before she left. It figures.

“Are you sure this is the choice you want to make? You’ll never leave here.”

They shrug. “I’d rather stay here alone like this”—she gestures at her body—“than go through life again like I was.”

Oh come on. What are the odds? 

“Seriously?”

“There’s nothing wrong with that!” She seems offended.

“No, no. I’m sorry. If that’s all that’s stopping you, that’s easily fixed when I do the other stuff.”

“Really?”

“How could I not help another trans girl out?”

I wish I could go back to Promise and do that for everyone.

I switch back over to Mister Creative Profanity. He seems to have tapered off.

“It’s down to just you. Last chance to change your mind.”

I stick around for a little while this time. The profanity is really impressive. I don’t know if it’s just this language of theirs, or what, but this guy is good. Eventually I get bored, though.

—--

I widen the thread of energy from the Depths to a thin string. I pour a little of myself into each of eleven chambers. Let myself become a little part of each of them. I trace their world lines backwards. At first, just in memory, but the bodies rapidly catch up. Even the two who were in the wrong bodies soon have their bodies aligned to their memories. 

As the years peel off, I find it hard to keep myself separate from them, and them from each other. I manage, but it’s a strain. Once I’m done, I leave them in that suspended state, for now.

—--

I thought it would be straightforward. They found Earth after only a few years of looking, after all, and I can search faster than they could. But another Earth isn’t good enough. I can’t fool myself into thinking that dumping twelve sixteen year olds onto my Earth would have an acceptable chance of a good outcome.

I need someplace better. Unfortunately, the kind of scans I can do don’t really give me enough information to determine that.

I have to do this the hard way. I’m going to have to fix this world.

I extend my senses into the seed bank and frozen zygotes stored under the ark. I’m dancing on the edge of overload as I synthesize all information I can glean there with what I have already absorbed from the archives into a template for a healed world.

When I’m done, days have passed. I don’t remember most of what I did or thought during that period, but that’s fine. I have what I need.

After making sure that Mr. Creative swearing is confined to the living quarters, I open the passage from the ark to the surface. This involves punching a hole through thirty feet of solid rock at one point, where the ground had liquefied in the final moments of the chaos above, but, overall, goes smoothly.

I might as well start right here. I open my connection to the depths as wide as I can without worrying about being overwhelmed. I bring up the template in my mind’s eye, and superimpose it on the world around me. 

A circle about two hundred feet across comes to life. That isn’t going to cut it. I increase the flow from the depths a tiny bit. I once again try to make the template reality.

This time the circle is a little over four hundred feet in diameter.

I can’t draw any more power. I’m on the verge of breaking up already. This is the most I can do at a time. I can do it pretty much continuously, but, at this rate it would take me approximately sixteen thousand eight hundred twenty two years, four months, and six days to take care of the entire land surface. That would still leave the oceans.

There are a couple of small problems with that. For one, I don’t know that the machines that are keeping the kids in suspended animation will keep working for that long. Second, I can’t imagine that I could do this for even a tiny fraction of that time without going completely insane.

It doesn’t take me long to find the solution.

What does take a while is giving up on finding a different solution. 

It’s the only way I can think of, but I’m not going to do what Parker did to me. I’m not mad at her, since, for obvious reasons, I know that I would have made the same choice. But I know better now.

I focus for a moment, then take a step to the right at the same time I take a step to the left.

I say nothing to the other me, and she says nothing back. There’s no need. Unlike other copies and echoes from Parker’s memory, she and I are equals. She’s no more a copy of me than I am of her. The only difference is that she took a step to the left and I took a step to the right.

We resonate too much to stay near each other for long. So, we walk, and the land comes to life around us.

A day later, when I’m at a safe distance from left-me, I take a step to the left. This time, instead of walking, I set off at a run. There are five other continents besides this one, and they need healing, too.

Fifteen splits later, it’s not safe for me to split again. This world has reached its me saturation point. I’ve got a year or so of walking to do, but I think I can handle that. I hope I can.

—--

If I didn’t have to worry about proximity, there would be more efficient patterns. As it is, I sometimes cross swaths of ground that another me has already covered. At six months, that’s happened five times. Those make nice breaks. 

At one year, five months, and eight days, I’m one of the last of me to finish her part. I’ve felt the ripples of the other mes merging for the past three days. At the beginning, I’d tried to time things to have all of me finish at the same time, but I couldn’t account for every little glitch.

Like, the day I’d spent pulling a three-mile chunk of basalt up from the depths (little ‘d’) of the planet because I thought it would look neat jutting out of the surface. Or the three days I’d spent building a small subterranean city because I was so tired of walking that it was either that or raise a volcano under me so I could ride a wave of magma to the coast.

The nearest other me is a day’s walk away, and heading back for the ark. Her course bends slightly away from mine, as there’s yet another me closer to her on the other side. That’s just as well. I’ve made my decision.

As I continue my run back to the ark I occasionally adjust my speed so that I’m not the one closest to another me. The ripples from the mergings are getting stronger, so I slow to a light jog. I don’t want to get accidentally caught up.

When I reach the Ark, there are just two of us. Me and Them.

They are terrifying.

The power flowing through Them is almost palpable. They really could boil the oceans and raze the continents (again). Without thinking about it, I take a step back—like that would do any good if They meant me harm.

Even someone without my enhanced senses or other abilities would know that what I am looking at is not just a seventeen year old girl. I can sympathize with the impostors wanting to lock me away forever, if they had ever faced anything like Them. They seem strangely familiar.

“You noticed that, huh?” They say. Their voice has the slightest reverb effect. I’m pretty sure that’s on purpose.

Annoying.

“You know you’d do the same in our shoes,” They smirk.

Oh, I get where I recognize Them from, now. I’d been pretty out of it, what with having exploded into a billion pieces, but I remember Them.

“Seriously?” I ask, “Why? Why are you like this?”

“See our previous statement.”

They’re right, I guess. The idea of lightly tormenting my past self for her own good is sort of funny, and the fact that it’s Parker, not me, makes it funnier. But what if—

“We won’t screw it up.”

What I really want to know is—

“We’re not like the ones who destroyed this world. Imagine thousands of minds ripped from their normal existences and merged against their will. Whatever that becomes, it will not be stable or sane. We took a different path.”

I see. They’re what I, or Parker, was trying to become when we nearly came apart in the Depths. If I’d just let go, then, maybe I would have—

“No,,” They interrupt my thoughts, again. “We wouldn’t have. We are tens of thousands of years of experience beyond who we were then.”

Fine.

“We know the answer, but We have to ask. Are you sure you want to stay?”

That’s it. The solution I’d found to my last problem. What do I do when I’m done?

“Sure? Not even close. But I’m staying anyway,” I answer, and before they can interrupt, “and, yes, I know you’re going to cut me off from the Depths when you leave. I’ll be about where I was on Earth. I’m not expecting to be a goddess or anything.”

“Would you like us to stay until they are safely awake?”

“No, thanks. I’ve got this. I’m pretty sure they’d sense you, and being in abject terror for their very existence wouldn’t be a good start to their new lives.”

“Fair. We’ll be going, then.”

“What are you going to do once you’ve scared the stuffing out of our creator?”

They approach me and place a finger on my forehead.

For a timeless instant, I’m back in the Depths. I grasp infinities upon infinities. I could swim forever there and never encounter another soul, or take a small step and be among countless throngs of beings of unknowable power. Then I’m back.

“Oh, this and that,” They say. And they’re gone.

They’ve left me my string to the Depths for the moment. I’ll need it for one last task. Speaking of which, it’s time.

I’ve decided that the best way to handle waking up the sleepers is one at a time. I can sit and have a quiet conversation, and, hopefully, give them a calm reëntry into the world. Starting with one in particular.

—--

“Who are you? Where am I?” she asks.

I’m sure I’ll be hearing that a lot. 

I tell her who I am. I tell her why I’m here. I tell her what she and the others did. I’ve got video recordings of various parts. That helps a little with the disbelief and lack of trust. I picked her first because I need an ally, and I suspect she’ll be one. Almost finally, I show her the message her older self left for her.

“You can actually do that?” she asks.

“That” is changing her body to match her identity.

“For another ten minutes or so, yeah. If you want. After that, no.”

“Why would you?”

“Why wouldn’t I? I know what it’s like.” 

I’m not surprised when she accepts my offer. She’s a little bit disappointed with the minimal initial changes, but she understands the need to be recognized by the others. And, once I give her a brief sample of what the final result should be, she’s all in.

She also agrees to be my ambassador to the others.

As soon as we’re done with her changes, I feel the connection to the Depths close. The ‘ten minutes’ thing was totally made up. Instead, I knew that They had set it up to turn off once I used it this one last time. No more miracles for me. I’m okay with that.

One by one, Lana (her name for the moment) and I wake up the others. I let her do most of the talking, and that seems to work pretty well. Even the ones who are the most doubtful at first give in once they see the videos from themselves.

Once they’re all awake, we gather in the common room of the house that They made for us.

It’s going to take a while to decide what we’re going to do. To come up with a plan.

That’s okay. I’m going to be here a while.